Background Information
This deck is made for you to constantly push against your opponent. This allows you to have control against your opponent. Because of the nature of this deck, most of your troops are cheap and easy to place down. Your biggest tank is your valkyrie which provides both aoe damage and dome defensive health. The elixir collector is in the deck to ensure you can keep a huge amount of troops deployed.
Basics: Average Elixir And How To Use Each Troop Efficiently
The average elixir cost for this deck is 3.3 and contains the following cards:
Troops: used for defense and offense. Important to use the right counter for each troop
Valkyrie- The Valkyrie, even though it has a slow movement speed, can be quickened. If she is put in front of your fire spirits, she will move at the same speed as your fire spirits. This element of additional speed is why I consider her to be viable when compared to the dark prince. The Valkyrie also only costs four elixir which is fairly cheap. Also, if you put her in front of your hog rider, your opponent will have a very hard time countering your push. Instead of their usual barbarians, skeletons, spear goblins, or regular shank goblins, they have to think of some other way to counter your push. This is because your Valkyrie, now acting as a splash damage tank for your hog, will kill any of those counters extremely quick. If they place an inferno tower down, you can easily time a zap spell to reset its damage and you can plow straight to their arena or crown tower. Another good troop to pair up with the hog rider Valkyrie combination would be the fire spirits. The fire spirits would not only help clear any skeletons, spear goblins, barbarians, archers, or regular shank goblins even faster by help supporting the Valkyrie, but the fire spirits can also counter any air troops. Without fire spirits in your push, our assault can be easily taken out by the minion horde or be somewhat countered by the three elixir minions. With the fire spirits, the three elixir minions will be reduced to nothing and the minion horde will be reduced to a single, half health minion. Having these two troops to support your hog rider will make your push extremely strong and very hard to defend. The Valkyrie is extremely durable against most troops because she has high damage and a good amount of health. The valkyrie can tear through the barbarians, the goblins, the spear goblins, the skeletons, the archers, and hut spam strategies. However, the Valkyrie only attacks group troops so she will be extremely weak against the three elixir minions, the minion horde, and the baby dragon.
Goblin Barrel- The goblin barrel because it only costs only three elixir, it can be used at almost any time. When your opponent counters this, they probably will use a fire ball and it will become a become a bad elixir trade for your opponent while arrows stop being a good elixir trade for your opponent and are now an even elixir trade. Now, the only good elixir trades for your opponent is the zap spell and the fire spirits. The goblin barrel can be very effective and can through your opponent off guard. The goblin barrel is mostly if not always used to be thrown at your enemy’s arena or crowns tower. Once the goblin barrel breaks, three goblins pop out and start to attack the tower. After each of these guys take a swing, about three hundred hit points gets taken off at a time. This lets you get some quick burst damage onto your enemy crown or arena tower if you surprised your opponent or if they do not have a counter in their hand. The goblin barrel, if needed to be, can be used as a quick defense. If you has an enemy prince coming by and you have no good troops to defend against the enemy prince, you can shoot your goblin barrel down right in front of the prince. However, the goblin barrel is mostly an offensive card. Another offensive push you can do with the goblin barrel is the goblin barrel and zap spell push. This push makes it so that your goblins gets a few extra hits because your enemy tower is stunned for one second. Because of this stun, your goblins are able to get a few hundred more hit points then they would without the zap spell. the goblin barrel costing three elixir is what I think is a great card that usually gets some damage on to your enemy towers and has few elixir advantageous counters for your opponent. You can also throw your goblin barrel to the corner of the map allowing the enemy’s arrows or fireball to miss, wasting their elixir and allowing you to keep your goblins alive.
Goblins- The goblins are another great card besides the spear goblins. For being unlocked at such an early arena, it has quite a high use rate among legendary arena players. The goblins is a very good card because they provide a grouping of low health units which helps defend against high hitters like the mini pekka and prince. They also give a lot more damage out so they work even better than the spear goblins when defending the prince and mini pekka. However, they are not good enough to do it by themselves and they need the support of spear goblins or minions to do the job efficiently. If you would end up doing minions the mini pekka and prince will die without a hit on the tower and you can start a counter push of the minions and a balloon, with the balloon tanking and in front of the minions of course. The goblins can also be used in the giant, the goblin, and the bomber push. This is a pretty weak push if your opponent does have minions but at this level they probably will have the minions focus on the giant and not your supporting troops so this push should still work. The goblins can be killed by all splash damage troops very easily and are very vulnerable to the direct damage spells whether it is the lightning spell, the fire ball, or the arrows.
Spear Goblins- The spear goblin card is one of the most basic troops in the game. For its early unlock at Arena 1, it is surprising how well they perform. The Spear Goblins not only can defend against goblins, enemy Spear Goblins, and Minions in a on verse one with the help of your Tower, but it can also be used at the very beginning. If the Spear Goblins are 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 those Spear Goblins chip 300 damage off their tower. 300 may not seem like a whole bunch, but do that 2 or three times in a match, and you got yourself 1000 free chip damage. The Spear 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 spear goblins are extremely vulnerable to splash damage units like the bomber, the valkyrie, the witch, and the baby dragon. The spear goblins are also very vulnerable to any direct damage spells such as the fire ball, the arrows, and the lightning spell. Just like with most ground swarm troops, they can pig push a hog rider. Pig pushing will be explained in the hog rider section of this article.
Miner- The miner will act as your tank in this deck. When you are set to do a sparky push, you should send your minter to your opponents tower that you are attacking, The placement of the miner should be a random side of the tower but not the inner wall. This makes it harder to counter the miner with regular shank goblins because they may guess your miner’s location wrong and that will allow your miner to lock on to the tower for some damage. By sending your miner our right before the sparky crosses the bridge, you allow the miner to tank and let the sparky get to the tower easier. The sparky push should also be supported by the fire spirits, ice wizard, and goblins if possible. The miner also has other uses in this deck. If your enemy has more elixir collectors on the field than you like, you can send a miner on to one and the miner will do some crazy damage to it. Also, your opponents may think that the miner is going for their crown or arena tower and spawn defending goblins or minions really far away from the miner’s location. Just like with the elixir collector, the miner is also great at destroying hut spammers by targeting their tomb stones, goblin huts, barbarian huts, and furnaces. The miner is also a great princess killer as he can spawn right next to her and take her out in two shots. The miner is very vulnerable to things the princess is to like princes, pekkas, musketeers, and any air troops like minions and the baby dragon.
Fire Spirits- The fire spirits are your other splash damage card. The reason why they are not your only splash damage card is because they die when they give out damage. This makes it hard for them to support a push all the way through because once they run into a troop, they no longer can support your push. However, their damage is insane for only two elixir. Their damage exceeds 500 and can be put out all withing one second. This lets the fire spirits easily kill bunched up troops very easily like skeletons, spear goblins, and the regular goblins. It can take out equal level spear goblins, skeletons, or regular shank goblins with only one out of the three fire spirits that are present. This means that this one card that only costs two elixir can kill all three of those cards costing a combined total of five elixir. The fire spirits can also nearly take down barbarians to the grave. The fire spirits can make the barbarian’s health points go so low that your arena tower can finish them off with out taking any damage. This gives you a three elixir value and a great quick reaction counter to swarm troops. The fire spirits can also help strengthen your anti air defense against any minions or minion hordes. However, they do not do well against higher health air troops like the lava hound or the balloon because they lack sustained damage. The fire spirits do not do well against high health singular targets like the pekka, prince, or balloon. They also are countered by the zap spell. It does a so so job against troops that have medium health like the mini pekka, musketeer, and wizard.
Towers: How to use them and where to place them
Elixir Collector– The Elixir Collector is a very special card. Most people don’t see its full potential. At first glance, most people just think it just gives you two additional Elixir. While this is true, there is a hidden, more important use for it. The Elixir Collector allows you to build up an even bigger push faster than without one. This lets you gain an elixir advantage on your opponent during your assault or perhaps when you need a quick reaction defense. Since it is such a valuable card, instincts tell you to put it at the back of you base, where it can’t be touched. this is a good strategy because you can easily protect the elixir collector from any troops. Just be aware of any direct damage spells your opponent may have as they can get the crown or arena tower and elixir collector combo on you for a big elixir advantage. However, there is a draw back into putting an elixir collector in the back. Since you are down on elixir for a defense, the enemy can send down a elixir heavy push and you will have a hard time defending because you are very low on elixir. For example, a hog rider user can immediately rush you and destroy the tower. To counter this quick offensive push made by your enemy, you can put the elixir collector between your arena or crown towers, two to four squares in front of your king’s castle. This will make hog rider pushers think twice before making the attack. If they do launch one, be ready to deploy your minions, barbarians, and or the spear goblins to help take down the hog rider. I suggest having at least one elixir collector on your side of the map at all times because this deck is a bit expensive. If you want two down on the field at the same time, i recommend placing the elixir collector far away from each other. If you put them too close together, the enemy may rocket, fire ball, or lightning both of your elixir collectors for a huge elixir profit.
Spells: Their main uses and how to maximize their potential
Zap– The Zap spell is mainly used to support your golem. The best way to use the zap is to either severely injure a minion horde and let your spear goblins or your minions finish them off. The other major use for zap in this deck is to stun any inferno towers. With the most recent update,. the zap will now reset the inferno tower’s damage. This will greatly increase the survivability of your golem and make this deck even stronger. Remember, the longer your golem stays alive, the longer your high damage per second troops stay alive, and the more damage you can put onto enemy building, arena or crown towers, and on their troops. The zap will be your best friend because since it resets the inferno towers damage, it is better than the freeze spell. As a bonus when compared to the freeze spell, the zap spell only costs two elixir while the freeze spell costs four elixir. This lets you put two more elixir into your push that would have been spent on freezing the inferno tower. I recommend you zapping the inferno tower when the inferno tower’s beam is on the second stage. This will allow the golem to receive little damage and by the time the inferno tower resets, locks back onto the golem, and charges back up, the tower should be destroyed by your golem and the other supporting troops behind him. With this zap your pushes should be able to hit harder and last longer, a great support spell when trying to take down an enemy arena or crown tower. The zap spell hard counters small troops like the spear goblins, the regular shank goblins, the skeletons, the minions, and the minion horde. The zap also counters the gobblin barrel spell quite well. It has a hard time when trying to kill high health point troops like the golem, the pekka, the barbarians, any tpe of princes, the balloon, and other troops like that. The zap can also stop the princes harges and make them start walking before they charge again . This allows the zap to be used in some tight defenses when a prince is right next to your tower.
