BACKGROUND INFORMATION
This deck was created to center around the mini pekka and the dark prince leading your offensive charges to do damage to the enemies tower. The dark prince provides much needed slash damage and your mini pekka allows you to have a lot of damage to your enemy tower. The minion horde and spear goblins are mainly to support your offfensive pushes or defensive stances. Your spells and towers are situationaly used based on your opponents deck composition.
BASICS: AVERAGE ELIXIR AND HOW TO USE EACH TROOP EFFICIENTLY
The average elixir cost for this deck is elixir and the following cards used are:
TROOPS: USED FOR DEFENSE AND OFFENSE. IMPORTANT TO USE THE RIGHT COUNTER FOR EACH TROOP
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 Valkyrie, 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.
Dark Prince- The barbarians is your other main offensive troop in this deck. The dark prince brings in splash damage against enemy ground units but more importantly provides mobility by pushing your other troops while it has its charge on. The dark prince main use in this deck is for its invaluable charge. It is chosen over his brother, the prince, for a few reasons. The first reason is that the dark prince is a splash damage troop instead of the point damage troop the prince provides. You do not need more point damage as your barbarians provides plenty of it. Also, the splash damage is definitely needed to help take down opposing barbarians within one to two seconds. If you use the prince instead of the dark prince, the barbarians will take a lot longer to destroy and be a true obstacle to your push. The dark prince also kills the skeletons, the spear goblins, the archers, the regular shank goblins, and any hut spam strategy deck extremely well. The dark prince’s major weakness is the fact that it is a ground unit that can only target other ground troops. This makes the dark prince useless against countering any air troops like the baby dragon, the three elixir minions, or the lava hound. Also, being a ground troop makes it extremely easy for your opponent to use some minions to kill tyou dark prince for a positive elixir trade and for some free minions. However, with your wizard supporting both your pekka and your dark prince, minions or any other air troop for that matter will do every little damage because the wizard can one shot any level minion and two to three shot any level minion horde. When the dark prince is in your push along with your wizard and pekka, there is very few things that could stop this push. More often than not your opponent will take damage and can only slow the inevitable damage. Also, the dark prince only costs four elixir which helps make your offensive push a little cheaper. The dark prince also has a shield which can be super useful during some times. For example, if your enemy sends down a rocket on your dark prince, he will not go super low in health. Instead, the shield will absorb all the damage that came from the rocket and then fall off once the rocket’s damage is done. This shield is a great defense against burst damage like the prince charge, the pekka’s swing of her sword, or the lethal explosion cause by a rocket. The shield doe not work as good against smaller damage like the damage cause by a barbarian because the shield does not negate as much damage.
Minion Horde- The minion horde is used to defend against most things. The minion horde contains five minions which means that a ton of damage can be put out. A single minion all ready can do a ton of damage but when five minions are combined to form a single group, they melt anything that they attack. The minion horde counters any ground unit very hard. They can completely kill a charged prince even after it has crossed your side of the bridge. The minion horde is also every strong against the barbarians, wiping them in only a few seconds, the golem- killing him before he has a chance to do any damage to the tower, and nearly anything else. The major weaknesses to the minion horde are spells and grounded splash damage troops that can attack air troops. Spells like the zap, the fire ball, and the arrows can all either one shot the minion horde or get them very low on health. If your enemy uses that zap spell, they will gain a three elixir advantage. If your enemy uses the fire ball, the will get a one elixir advantage. If your opponent uses the arrows, they will gain a two elixir advantage. As you can see, if your enemy has any of these spell cards and uses them to counter the minion horde, you will be behind in elixir compared to him very fast and most likely have a hard time winning. The ground troops that are a major problem to the minion horde is the ice wizard, the regular wizard, and the princess. The ice wizard, along with the support of the enemy crown or arena tower, can easily kill your minion horde. This will give your opponent a two elixir advantage. The wizard can easily solo you minion horde by himself. Although it is an even elixir trade, he still has a wizard up at full health which means he got a five elixir advantage on you. This is the same with the princess and the ice wizard counters. The princess can take out the minion horde as long as she has enough time. And with her range, she, even at level one, easily has enough time to take out almost any level minion horde. It only will take two to three shots from a princess to completely annihilate your minion horde. She only costs three elixir so not only does your enemy get a free princess, but they also gain two more elixir on you. With all these counters to the minion horde, this card is a real hit or miss. If your opponent does not have any of these counters or just has a bad cycle timing, you will beat them. If they, how ever, have direct counters and play them well, you should stop using your minion horde as it will just keep on making a bigger grave for yourself. If you find yourself being counter far too often for your liking, you can switch the minion horde to the regular three elixir minions. This will still let you have an anti air=/ full ground troop counter but also let you less likely to suffer from extreme and heavy counters,
Spear Goblins- The spear goblin card is one of the most basic troops in the game. For being one of the first cards to be unlocked in the game, 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, just like your minions, are one of your only air targeting units. You should save your spear goblins just to counter any balloons or lava hounds they may have. If you see that their deck does not have any of those cards, you can use the spear goblins like you normally would.The spear goblins are extremely vulnerable to splash damage units like the bomber, the Valkyrie, the witch, the bowler, the fire spirits, 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.
SPELLS: THEIR MAIN USES AND HOW TO MAXIMIZE THEIR POTENTIAL
Freeze Spell- The freeze spell requires good timing and great placement. Usually, the freeze spell will be used for an offensive support spell for most of the time in your deck. However, the freeze spell can be used on defense if needed to be. A freeze spell along with the goblins and your arena or your crown tower can do amazing work. Those goblins will be able to kill a hog rider and a good portion of oncoming enemy barbarians withing those four seconds of free reign. The most common way to use the freeze spell is on offense though. What you want to do is use a hog rider combo that is not very expensive, lets say you are doing the hog rider goblin combo. What you want to do is send your hog rider in front of your minions so the hog tanks for the goblins. Once the hog ridergets to the tower, do not use your freeze spell just yet. You want to wait until your hog riders at around 25 percent health before deploying your freeze spell. This is to ensure that any troops the enemy will place once they see the hog will easily be destroyed. Obviously though, there are special circumstances where you should freeze earlier. For example, if they send out barbarians very early to counter your hog, you should freeze both the enemy crown or arena tower IN ADDITION to the enemy barbarians. This will allow you hog rider able to get to the tower, do some damage, and then the goblins kill some of the barbarians. This will make there be less barbarians once the freeze spell duration is over and give your enemy a less overall damage out out which makes your hog rider survive longer and do more damage. Another example to freeze earlier is if the send the minions or the minion horde, or any type of air unit for that matter. This is because the minions can target the goblins and if your goblins die, you will lose a lot of potential damage. BY freezing those air troops first, you let your goblins live for an extra few seconds which can equate to 1000 s of damage. It is very important to know when to place the freeze spell during any given situation. In the right hands, it is a night mare and is devastating to go against. If you do not time the freeze spell to a near perfect precision, you will lose 100 s or 1000 s of possible damage and waste four elixir in the process. The freeze spell works on both the ground troops and the air units. They also work on enemy crown or arena towers, enemy king towers, and any enemy buildings or structures like the cannon, the tombstone, the goblin hut, and the barbarian hut. Take note though, that if you freeze the tombstone and the tombstone gets destroyed in the process, the skeletons that come out will not be frozen. They will be treated like regular skeletons that spawned after the freeze spell has been activated.
Zap– The zap spell does do a little splash damage and almost happens in an instant. The Zap spell is mainly used to support your sparky and giant. 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 life time of your sparky and giant and make this deck even stronger. Remember, the longer your sparky and giant 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 sparky and giant to receive little damage and by the time the inferno tower resets, locks back onto the royal giant, and charges back up, the tower should be destroyed by your royal giant 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 goblin 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 type of prince, the balloon, and other troops like that. The zap can also stop the princes charges 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.
TOWERS: HOW TO USE THEM AND WHERE TO PLACE THEM
Cannon- The cannon is your main defense against building targeting troops like the giant, the hog rider, the balloon, the royal giant, and the golem. Make sure you have good placement with your cannon because its five and a half tile range is very short. Also, you should never pre place a cannon. If you do, your enemy can send any air troop, like the three elixir minions or the baby dragon, and destroy it without taking any damage. You enemy can also just place a single musketeer and out range the cannon. This can make you basically waste your defense and make you lose three elixir. Also, you cannon is out of your hand which makes it a lot harder to defend from the defense targeting troops like the giant, balloon, and hog rider. If your opponent doesn’t have those troops or they just used it and you have the cannon in your hand, you can use the combination of the ice wizard and cannon to defend from hordes of small group troops. A cannon and ice wizard combo can defend from barbarians. The cannon is very cheap which makes it have synergy with the rest of your deck. Since you have two very expensive cards in your deck, having the cheapest defense in the game will help you on defense when you are on low elixir. The cannon is strong against weak ground troops like the skeletons, the archers, the spear goblins, and the regular shank goblins. The cannon, if provided with some sort of distraction, can be good against the prince, the the mini pekka, the barbarians, and the valkyrie. The cannon, being only able to attack ground troops, is very weak against the three elixir minions, the minion horde, the baby dragon, the lava hound, and the balloon.
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.
