Legendary Deck Spotlight: Giant Balloon

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Today we are stepping away from the usual hog rider cycle decks or the royal giant decks and we are going to discuss an air deck.  This deck features the giant and balloon as the most offensive combo that specializes in air attacks.  Since the balloon card is an epic, some of you free to play players may not be able to use this deck as your epics are pretty low in level.  However, if you feel that your epics are high enough for the challenge, this just might be the deck for you.  This deck does contain the ice wizard as a legendary but it can easily be swapped out for the archers.  My personal evaluation of this deck is pretty advanced because facing an opponent with a lot of towers or not knowing how or what the opponent will counter with will make it a lot more difficult to pull off a win.  This deck also uses a legendary, the ice wizard, so some of you guys might want to rethink using this deck.  The ice wizard however can be easily swapped out for the musketeer or archers.

BASICS: AVERAGE ELIXIR AND HOW TO USE EACH TROOP EFFICIENTLY 

This deck has an average elixir cost of 3.6 elixir ans using the following cards:

TROOPS: USED FOR DEFENSE AND OFFENSE.  IMPORTANT TO USE THE RIGHT COUNTER FOR EACH TROOP

Skeletons- This one elixir card is basically a cycle card.  A cycle card is a cheap troop that you can use very fast in order to get the better cards in your deck.  It essentially makes it so that there is seven cards in your deck and not 8.  The skeletons will either be used in order to cycle to a defensive position or an offensive position.  The defensive combination you would cycle to is the cannon and ice wizards combo, or the barbarian and ice wizard combo.  The offensive combo would be the giant and balloon combo.  Do not be fooled though, as these skeleton can tank very well for your towers.  They can slow down a pekka, prince, or any other high damage, single target unit coming to your tower.  These skeletons can stall enough time for you to be able to defend against a pekka and you would be able to save a tower.  Additionally, these skeletons can effectively stop a hog rider from doing a ton of damage to your tower, although your barbarians are a better choice for the job.  In conclusion, the skeletons are a best card for cycle decks and can save your tower from major damage in desperate times.

Barbarians– In this deck, the main job for these troops is a defensive stance.  Combined with the ice wizards, these troops can pretty much tak out any non splash oriented push.  They can take down pekkas, princes, and three musketeers by themselves.  Additionally, the barbarians have a super easy time taking down the hog rider.  If you place your barbarians in a good spot, the hog rider will not even get one shot off.  The Barbarians can also help defend against the  Dark Prince if the situation is desperate, but is not recommended counter since the Dark Prince is a pretty good Barbarian destroyer.  The barbarians can also shred the sparky in placed correctly.  If they are placed directly on top of the sparky, on ore two barbarians will die and the other 2 barbarians will finish that sparky up.  Save your barbarians for defense and never use them to start an offensive push.  However, if they defend successfully, don’t be afraid to use them in a counter push.  These barbarians are surprisingly strong in terms of damage per second and health points.  In my opinion, the Barbarians are one of the biggest staple cards in the game.  Also, if you push with a balloon behind two or three barbarians, and inferno tower will have a hard time targeting the balloon.  Just like in other decks, the barbarians remain present and I still think it is a necessary card to have.

Ice Wizards-  The ice wizard is only three elixir and provides a big defensive advantage.  Because of its slowing capabilities, it could almost render enemy barbarians useless all by itself.  If its paired up with barbarians, it can counter almost any mush.  It could provide a major elixir advantage if the opponent made a huge push and you only needed 8 elixir to defend.  Additionally, if you don’t have your barbarians ready, you can pear up your ice wizard with a cannon.  This combo will stop most ground heavy pushes because the cannon does very high damage to ground troops since it cannot hit air troops.  This defense is very cheap, only costing 6 elixir, and can defend against an expensive push started by the enemy.  The ice wizard by itself can defend against a minion horde by itself, generating you two free elixir.  I think that the ice wizard is one of the best legendaries, just below the princess, because it is easy to use and effective in many circumstances.  The ice wizard is also good to go against swarm deck because it does splash damage as well as slow the swarm down so your crown tower can put in some defense damage in too.

Giant- The giant is your main tank if your push, expect for maybe the barbarians on a counter push.  The giant leads your balloon towards the tower getting shot at by enemy troops.  Ideally, your balloon makes it to the tower unharmed and drops their bombs.  Usually, this is not the case.  Most players usually bring at least one building into their deck, whether its the cannon, inferno tower, or elixir collector, they will all distract both your giant and your balloon.  Because of this, your giant loses its ultimate tank status and switches to more of a guard that tries getting its payload, the balloons bomb, to the tower.  Of course you want your giant to soak up all the damage of the enemy troops, but this will most likely not happen.  You giant is there just so it takes enough damage for your balloon to get one shot off on the tower.  Two shots are unlikely but is possible.  Because the balloon’s initial bomb damage and its death bomb does about 800 damage combined, you can afford to only get one shot off each push.  Use your giant and balloon effectively, and you will get towers down in no time.

Balloon-  Your balloon is your main damage dealer in your deck.  If it goes onto the enemy tower, you will see your opponent tower’s health bar drop like crazy.  A level 3 balloon will do just over 700 damage per bomb dropped.  However, your balloon is very weak towards minions.  If the enemy isn’t tactical, the minions will spawn the minions on the giant.  However, if they are tactical, which most of them are since they are in legendary arena, they will wait until the balloon crosses the bridge and then they spawn the minions on top of the balloon.  Because of this, you may want to be ready to support your balloon with preemptive arrows, which will be explained in the arrows section of this article.  The balloon can also be well supported by your ice wizard, but you may want to save it for a defensive counter if your opponent has a high cost deck.

TOWERS: HOW TO USE THEM AND WHERE TO PLACE THEM

Cannon- The cannon is your only tower in this deck.  It hard counters an enemy hog rider extremely well and should be your go to defense for them.  Additionally, if combined with the ice wizard, it can stop most ground pushes.   It also has a great distracting capability where it will pull balloons towards itself, saving your tower from 800 damage.  It can also pull and damage giants, giant skeletons, and any type of prince effectively.  Watch out for the Royal Giant though.  As of the May 3rd update, the Royal giant can out range almost all defenses causing them to gain an easy 3 elixir.  That being said, you can place a cannon after their royal giant is in rage to not only hurt their royal giant, but to also distract it from your tower, saving your a few precious hundred health points.

SPELLS:  THEIR MAIN USES AND HOW TO MAXIMIZE THEIR POTENTIAL

Arrows- Arrows are your main princess killer.  keep in mind that you need at least level 8 arrows or you should switch this card for fire spirits.  The reason is that to kill a level 1 princess, you need at least a level 8 arrow card.  Level 2 princesses will take level 9 arrows and so on and so forth.  Also, you can use this card to kill minion hordes for a big profit and goblin barrels for a one elixir profit.  Arrows can also help you kill small swarms like skeletons, minions, goblins, spear goblins, or the skeleton army.  Arrows is a very good card to have in your deck because it is only 3 elixir and can counter many things for an elixir advantage of some sort.

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.