BACKGROUND INFORMATION
This deck was created to destroy people who use hog riders, expensive troops, or a deck mainly of single targeting troops. This deck will allow you to simply overwhelm your opponent with methodical pushes from your hog rider and your mini p e k k a . Amazing synergy brought to you by the tornado will also allow you to crush your opponents in a humiliating fashion. Once you get down the micro and macro of this deck, you will be able to rise up in trophies.
BASICS: AVERAGE ELIXIR AND HOW TO USE EACH TROOP EFFICIENTLY
The average elixir cost for this deck is 3.1 elixir and the following cards used are:
TROOPS: USED FOR DEFENSE AND OFFENSE. IMPORTANT TO USE THE RIGHT COUNTER FOR EACH TROOP
Executioner- The executioner is a great card against most low health troops. You can thing of it as a ranged valkyrie. This is because he can throw a spinning axe to damage both air troops and ground troops twice, one on the way there and one on the returning trip. I prefer the executioner over the wizard because it is more tanky. Where the wizard would get killed from a high level fireball, the executioner would only be slightly damaged by it. Additionally, all swarm troops will die in one throw and the executioner can also take care of the barbarians extremely easy. The executioner would be your main defense because it is so good at it. If you do the knight and executioner combo on defense, you will get through most of the common types of pushes. Because you have the tornado in your deck, you can also use the tornado to group all the enemy’s troops together and place down your executioner to destroy them all with massive amounts of slash damage. This is an extremely good synergy that your deck has that most other decks do not have. The best troops the executioner counters are the spear goblins, the goblins, the goblin horde, the skeletons, the minions, the minion horde, the skeleton army, and the barbarians. The cards that counter the executioner fairly well are the miner, the knight, the mini pekka, the pekka, and the elite barbarians.
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.
Ice Spirits- The ice spirits can be a great card to use in conjunction with the hog. The ice spirits can be compared to the zap spell because both of those cards stun enemy buildings or troops. However, unlike the zap spell, the fire spirit does not cost two elixir. Instead, it is half as expensive and only costs you one elixir to use. In addition to that bonus, the fire spirit’s stun ability lasts twice as long as the zap spell. Because of these two stats on the ice spirit, the ice spirit is worth about four times as much as the zap spell is per elixir. However, there is one downside to using the ice spirit over the zap spell. The ice spirit, unlike the zap spell, can easily be countered. The ice spirit can be countered by almost anything from direct damage spells like the zap spell, the arrows, the fire ball, and the rocket. The ice spirit is also very fragile against any splash damaging troops because even if they target your own hog rider, the splash damage effect can still kill your ice spirit since the ice spirit has such a low health point stat. Some splash damage troops that can kill your ice spirit is the wizard, the baby dragon, th ice wizard, the princess, the bomber, the witch, and the valkyrie. Because of this, using the ice spirit is a risk reward type troop. If the ice spirit does get its stuf off before it dies, it is well worth it and you have a four times effectiveness when compared to the zap spell. However, if it dies it has a zero effectiveness when compared to the zap spell. If you find that your opponents are countering your ice spirit more times than not, you make want to switch to the zap spell. Switching to the zap spell will garuentee that you will get a stun on each of your pushes every single time. The zap spell will also get you a little more damage that is also reliable.
Skeletons– The skeletons is a great distraction and cycle card. This card can be very good when countering heavy hitting troops such as the pekka or the prince. The skeletons essentially tank for the arena towers and the damage dealers defending. This makes the enemy prince or pekka waste all their damage by only killing one small health point troop per swing. This stalls the prince and pekka long enough so they can’t get any damage on your tower. The skeletons should be used as a defensive card 90 percent of the time as they will get one shotted by almost any card and definitely get one shoted by the enemy crown or arena tower. Because of the recent update where they changed the skeletons that were spawned from four to three, it reciueved quite a big nerf and is not as useful. However, at this stage of the game I think that it can be usefull and help you defend your arena or crown towers quite a bit. The skeletons have no hard counter that gives foir opponent an equal or advantageous elixir count but the skeletons also have no offensive potential.
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 valkyrie, and the minions. 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.
SPELLS: THEIR MAIN USES AND HOW TO MAXIMIZE THEIR POTENTIAL
Tornado- The tornado card is a very interesting card. Paired with any type of slash damage, you can take on huge pushes with minimal elixir in comparison. One combo you can do from this deck is the tornado log combo. The tornado brings all the enemy’s troops together and the log hits all of them at once putting great value on your log. The other combo from this deck is the tornado and the executioner combo. Like before, you place your tornado to group all the enemy’s troops in one area. You then drop you executioner so he can attack all the enemy’s troops at once do deal a lot of damage. The tornado is also a great counter to hog rider decks. This may take some practice, but one you get it down this trick is very strong. When the enemy payer places down their hog rider, you place your tornado in a way where their hog rider is brought to the center. Once the tornado dies down, the hog rider targets your king tower, not one of the two side crown towers. The hog rider has just enough health to hit your kings dower once which activates his big cannon. This cannon will help you with more defense. This gives you free stats for basically no cost which may be the difference from winning the match and losing the match. Because of this, the tornado deserves to be in your deck. The tornado works extremely well against the hog rider, the spear goblins, the goblins, the goblin horde, the skeletons, the minions, the minion horde, the skeleton army, and the barbarians. The tornado does not work well against tanky troops like the golem, the pekka, the lava hound, and the giant.
Lightning- The lightning spell is mainly used for two things. The first one is to counter the spawner strategy. The lightning spell can be a very good counter because it can put heavy damage on 3 targets. For example, you can hit a goblin hut, a barbarian hut, and the arena or crowns tower with it. This can help slow their flow of troops quite a bit. Another way that you can counter the hut spammers is targeting their elixir pumps. You could do a combo of an elixir pump, a barbarian hut, and their arena or crown tower and get a pretty good elixir advantage. Another strategy for the lightning spell is to use iyt to destroy their defense if they have one. The best defense to use the lightning spell on is the inferno tower because the inferno tower poses the biggest threat against the pekka. By lightning the inferno tower, it will almost destroy it. And if you wait just like ten seconds before lightning spell the inferno tower, you can pretty much destroy the inferno tower to the point where it will do little to no damage to the mini pekka at all. If you do not have the lightning spell, the freeze spell if also a good option to use as it can also stop the inferno tower from doing damage to the pekka. Please take note though that after thawing out, the inferno tower damage will not reset. The good thing additionally about the freeze spell is that it only costs four elixir instead of the six elixir the lightning spell costs. Either way, any of those two spell should work just fine.
Log- The log is here because your opponent would not be expecting you to play this card. The reason why your log is here and not your arrows or your fire ball is for a few reasons. The log does quite a bit more damage when compared to your arrows. In exchange for this damage, though, you cannot target enemy air troops with the log card. In this deck,I think the log is a better choice than the arrows because you already have the furnace and the zap spell. Both of those cards combined should let you kill any swarm air troops like the minion horde or the regular three elixir minions. Also, the log is better than the fire ball in this deck because it is cheaper than the fire ball. The once elixir difference can be the difference in having enough elixir to defend an enemy counter push and to have one of your crown or arena towers completely wiped out. The log also can hit your enemy towers which can help you finish them off if they have low health. Also, just like the fire ball, the log can help support your hog rider in your main push. If you put the log right behind your hog rider, you will be able to use the log to push away and damage any defending barbarians. This push back is similar to the knock back the fire ball does to any defending enemy barbarians. The log will also sort of clear the way for your hog rider to get to the enemy arena or crown tower very easily. The log can also be used fairly well for defensive purposes. If the enemy is bring a strong push to your arena or crown tower, you can send in your log to not only damage the oncoming troops, but to also push them back and away from your arena or crown tower. This push back can help you stall for another second which can really change the tide of the battle. With that one second stall your log provides you, you may be able to reduce the damage done to your tower by hundreds of hit points. I think for three elixir, the log is a pretty good card that can help you in some situations. I see the log more of a utility card than a damage card but it still can easily counter hut spam decks. The log card is great in some decks while lacking in others. The trick is to fnd the deck that works well with the log and you can have the element of surprise held against your enemy.
