BACKGROUND INFORMATION
This deck was created to center around the theme of all rares. Within the rare cards, I have decided to use the barbarians as tanks and the bomber as the source of splash damage. The ice spirits and cannon card will mainly be used for defense. The minions and spear goblins can act as the anti air troops if you so happen to run against a balloon deck. Overall, I think that this deck is fairly well rounded and you can climb efficiently if you focus on upgrading only these cards.
BASICS: AVERAGE ELIXIR AND HOW TO USE EACH TROOP EFFICIENTLY
The average elixir cost for this deck is 4.3 elixir and the following cards used are:
TROOPS: USED FOR DEFENSE AND OFFENSE. IMPORTANT TO USE THE RIGHT COUNTER FOR EACH TROOP
Giant- The giant will be one of your biggest tanks health wise but is not your biggest damage dealer. Costing at five elixir, you want to start off every major push will your giant in the back of your map. This will allow you to regenerate some of your elixir that you spent letting you build up a more expensive and bigger push to defend against. Once you get another four elixir stored up, send your hog rider behind your giant. Make sure though that the hog rider is not directly behind the giant. If your enemy does counter the giant with barbarians right when he crosses the river, they will not hit the hog rider. Instead of the barbarians killing the hog quickly, the barbarians will be distracted by the giant. Also, there is the snowball effect where they keep trying to defend but by the time you send out another troop to defend, your next push has already been set or you will have a solid defense with towers building up. Once this starts happening, it is very easy to secure victory because your enemy is elixir deprived and you can just keep sending troops at him. However, your opponent can place an inferno to stop the push fairly well, and that is buy using the inferno tower. I recommend zapping the enemy’s inferno tower when it is on its second stage of damage. This will let the giant survive the longest amount of time and it will not get the highest damage setting until the very end of his life. With that counter down,there is only one more to address. and quite possible the easiest to think of, the minion horde. You can counter this by having your spear goblins, a quick and easy card, support your push behind the royal giant. Along with the help of your fireball, you should be able to easily take down the minion horde without having to much damage be put onto your giant. By knowing and memorizing how to stop your enemy from countering your push, you should be able to drastically improve your win ratio.
Mini Pekka- The mini pekka is very versatile on defense and can be a treat if put on offense. The mini pekka is considered a glass cannon, where it deals a lot of damage but have little health in comparison. The mini pekka is great at countering high health tanks. The mini pekka can kill an enemy hog rider in two hits and only lets the hog rider get off one shot on your tower. Of course the mini pekka may only need one shot if you have some supporting troops defending with the mini pekka. This will also make the enemy hog rider not even get one shot off on to your tower. The mini pekka also kills the royal giant very efficiently. The mini pekka, since it does so much damage, will kill the enemy royal giant in just a few hits. This makes it hard for the royal giant to get much damage off on to your tower. With only the mini pekka defending your tower, the royal giant may get around 500 damage off of your tower. However, you most likely will have other troops, most likely the musketeer or the spear goblins, supporting your mini pekka which will make the enemy royal giant drop even faster. The mini pekka also kills the regular giant very easily and it can solo defend good enough. You do not need to worry about supporting your mini pekka with anything else. The mini pekka works great against single targeting troops like the musketeer, the wizard, the valkrie, the prince, and the troops previously mentioned above. What makes the mini pekka strong against the prince is that your mini pekka can easily survive the charge from the enemy prince, letting your mini pekka take in lots of damage while also dishing it out. The mini pekka is weak against swarm troops like the spear goblins, the skeletons, the regular shank goblins, and the barbarians. The mini pekka is also weak against some air troops like the minions and the minion horde.
Wizard- The wizard is your support for your hog rider in this trifecta deck be adding lots of splash damage to enemy ground and air units. The wizard is an overall great card to have in your deck because it is the most effective card that does splash damage to both air and ground troop. Its fast fire rate compliments the giant’s sluggish moves. Additionally, the wizard helps counter what the hhog rider is weak against, small critters. The wizard can one shot many small troops like the skeletons, the spear goblins, the regular goblins, the three elixir minions, and the archers. The wizard can also make quick work of swarms of troops killing the barbarians in three shots, the minion horde also in three shots, and the skeleton army in a few more shots. The wizard however is pretty weak when being attacked. The wizard can be easily killed by an enemy lightning spell or rocket. The wizard can also be killed by a relatively high level fire ball. The wizard is actually pretty good on defense. It can kill oncoming enemy barbarians by itself. It is also the best troop to use when countering the minion horde because your wizard can one shot the minions making quick work of the minion horde. However, the wizard is not so great at countering high health troops like the prince, the pekka, the golem, and the lava hound. The prince and pekka do too much damage to even let the wizard have a chance and the golem and the lava hound have too much hit points for the wizards relatively weak fire balls to do any noticeable damage. However, an extremely well timed wizard can completely kill all the lava pups that spawn from a lava hound with one fire ball. This also is the same with the goblin barrel. An extremely well timed wizard can kill the goblins from the goblin barrel all in one go. The wizard costs five elixir which is one of your higher costing cards. I recommend saving your wizard only for your trifecta push because this is a key troop for it. Only use your wizard for something else if it is the only option from saving your arena or crown tower.
Hog Rider– This is the heart and soul of the deck. The hog rider is part of your trifecta push that includes the hog rider, the wizard, and the giant. This will be the troop that will do the most damage to the Tower and it will also be your main offensive unit. Because of the Hog Rider’s decent health stats and its 
great damage per shot, it is a great unit to attack with. Additionally, it only targets defensive buildings which make it that much easier to control. There are some standard moves in playing the Hog efficiently. The moves that till be gone over in this article is the Elixir pump rush and pig pushing. If you are above or at arena 6, there is no doubt that you see a lot of Elixir Collectors about. Normal players want to protect their Elixir collector and put it in the back of their map. If it starts in their starting hand, that is going to be played first 90% of the time. If they do place it in the back, take advantage of the five elixir they just used. Try to make a Hog push in the combos of Hog and Spear Goblins, Hog and Minions, or Hog and Barbarians. If you don’t have the Hog in your starting hand, make a small push maybe of just Spear Goblins and see how they react. This move has given me so many wins since I found out that this worked. The Tower will fall if nothing happens to that push. Usually, they send in a panic Fireball and you still get about half their Tower. The second strategy is called pig pushing. It can be hard to master for some so it is recommended to practice with your friends. The basic concept of this is to nudge the Hog a little bit to the outside by spawning troops right next to the hog. The picture to the left shows how to pig push pretty well. It also shows the counter to the pig push in case you run into anyone also using this tactic. The counter to this is pretty ineffective since the movements happen so fast. There is barely any time to react to this strategy. If you do pig push, make sure your are on the side where the defense is further away from your chosen spawn location. Failure to recognize which side is the one to do it on can result in an ineffective and useless push.
Dart Goblin- The dart goblin card is like the spear goblins but only one of them and it is stronger. For being one of the the three dart goblins, it is surprising how well they perform. The dart Goblins not only can defend against goblins, enemy Spear Goblins, and Minions in a one verse one with the help of your Tower, but it can also be used at the very beginning. If the dart Goblins is used right at the start, you force your opponent to either react to them by placing a much more expensive troop, leaving an option to have a hard counter ready, or make them just watch the dart Goblin chip 200 damage off their tower. 200 may not seem like a whole bunch, but do that 2 or three times in a match, and you got yourself 500 free chip damage. The dart Goblins can also kill a Princess that is on the bridge very quickly as long as the princess is distracted. If the princess is not distracted and you deploy the spear goblins, they will die before they can kill the princess, making you basically waste three elixir. On a very good note however, you can do an advanced move with these spear goblins. The dart goblins are extremely vulnerable to most damage units like the musketeer, the Valkyrie, the prince, the bowler, the fire spirits, and the miner. The spear goblins are also very vulnerable to any direct damage spells such as the fire ball, the arrows, and the lightning spell.
SPELLS: THEIR MAIN USES AND HOW TO MAXIMIZE THEIR POTENTIAL
Fireball- The fireball is an important card in your deck. In a desperate situation, you can destroy barbarians or a minion horde very quickly. Since the ice wizard can do this job for a better elixir value, you should only use the fireball on those troops if you need them dead in an instant, i.e. they are right next to your tower. Also, if you have level nine arrows and your opponent has a level three or four princess, your arrows won’t take her out. If this situation happens to you, your fireball will always to the job. The fireball is also the best option to take out the triple musketeers. Combined with arrows, this combo can completely destroy high level triple musketeers. Also, because of the May 3rd update, making the elixir collector lose 20% health, and the May 18th update, causing the elixir collector to lose 9% more health, the fireball can now actually counter the elixir collector very well. You can basically may an even trade elixir wise and do a medium amount of chip damage to the tower. A good combo in addition to the elixir collector and tower is that if you hit other troops with that same fireball, you will come out ahead in terms of elixir.
TOWERS: HOW TO USE THEM AND WHERE TO PLACE THEM
Bomb Tower-This card is what I would call your foundation defense. If its in your hand, play it once you get max Elixir. This card provides big value on defense and can help intimidate your opponent from an aggressive assault. This card also works magic against any hut spammers, the barbarians, the hog rider and any goblin pushes. Against the barbarians, the bomb tower can unleash enough bombs to be able to kill all four of the barbarians without even being swung at. Against the hog rider, the bomb tower will easily destroy the enemy hog rider but be careful that you do not do this trade that often. Your opponents hog rider costs only four elixir while your bomb tower costs a whopping five elixir. This gives you a negative elixir trade and that is why I would recommend you to use your tombstone when countering an enemy hog rider. The bomb tower is better suited at countering the royal giant because its extremely high health can provide a huge distraction while other troops can damage and kill the enemy’s royal giant. You can also wait until the royal giant crosses the bridge and then place your bomb tower down so it is within range of the royal giant. This will make the bomb tower have multiple purposes as being the damage sponge for your arena or crown tower and also help damage the enemy royal giant. Also, if your opponent supported their push with goblins, barbarians, or some other ground troops, the bomb tower can also kill those troops while killing the royal giant. The bomb tower can work well in this deck and is perfect because it has a skeleton on top of this tower. The bomb tower costs five elixir and stays with the theme of an all skeleton deck.The opponent may also send out a minion horde to destroy the bomb tower. Sending your own arrows to kill the Minion Horde will not only protect the precious tower, but also let you gain an Elixir advantage. Since no Elixir Collector is present, this card, when on the field, will give you a little Elixir defense bonus. Beware of the royal giant as it out ranges the bomb tower’s area of influence.
Furnace-The furnace has some offensive capabilities. The furnace is a card that can help support your pushes. The fire spirits can be a great addition to constant pressure push. Even though you only get 2 fire spirits, they can still do a ton of damage. Two fire spirits can reduce a whole minion horde down to everything but one, single half health minion. This greatly reduces the damage going on your troops and lets you get a lot more damage on to your enemy’s crown or arena tower. The furnace can also be used just as a stead supply of chip damage. With a reasonable level furnace, one fire spirit will always make it to the enemy crown or arena tower. Since each fire spirit can do a decent amount of damage, your opponent has to keep an eye on this furnace. If you opponent just leaves that furnace alone and does not try to counter it at all, you will get a lot of damage off onto his or her tower. The total damage will be around 500 to 1000 damage, quite a lot for only the cost of four elixir. The furnace can also be used in a hut spam strategy. The furnace can provide aerial and ground coverage which only the goblin hut can also provide. It also provides much needed splash damage in the hut spammer deck. Where as before a hut spammer would be completely destroyed by a minion horde, the furnace, along with the goblin hut, lets you easily counter the minion horde very quickly. The furnaces main job, in my opinion, is a defensive one. If you place it behind one of your crown or arena towers, it is very safe and can essentially block off that whole lane. The reason that it can block off a whole lane is because the two fire spirits do a ton of damage. If an an enemy tries to push up the lane where your furnace is located, they will probably receive four to six fire spirits during the whole time of their push. This can be up to eight hundred damage and completely destroy a ton of pushes. Eight hundred damage will kill barbarians, hog riders, balloons, or prince pushes. Because of this, you can sort of influence your opponent to push your other side. A good idea to use the furnace like that is when one of your towers is stronger than the other. If you place the furnace on the side of the weaker crown or arena tower, you make that weaker side a lot stronger. The furnace makes a tough decision for your opponent to make to whether attack the weaker side with the furnace, or attack the stronger side with no furnace. The furnace can also be placed in front of your king’s tower a few squares forward. This, in an addition of being a spawner building, makes the furnace be able to be a big distraction. The furnace can distract the hog rider, the giant, the royal giant, the balloon, the golem, and the lava hound. This can act as a tank for your tower and absorb the damage from troops instead of your own crown or arena tower take the damage. Both of these defensive strategies are very useful but you should use them in their specific situations. If they have a hog rider, place it up front. If one of your towers has 1500 health, place the furnace behind that tower. After you get to know the furnace, you will know what action is the best to take in any given situation.
