BACKGROUND INFORMATION
This deck was created to center around the balloon and the giant push. With the balloon, I have decided to use the giant as the tank and the wizard or bomber as a support card. The minions and spear goblins can act as the anti air troops if you so happen to run against a deck with a lava hound or balloon. 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
Balloon- The balloon costs five elixir and is tied with the giant as being your most expensive troop. Because of this, you have to play your balloon very strategically. The balloon does a high amount of damage and also has a high amount of damage per shot which can be very deadly in certain situations. You should support the balloon in some way. If you do not support your balloon, the enemy can just place minions, spear goblins, and or archers and make the balloon give absolutely zero damage to the enemy tower. The best way in my mind is to support the balloon with the giant in front of it. The allows the giant to take all the tower damage from the enemy and it can also help distract anti air troops of your opponents like minions, archers, and spear goblins. If the balloon is behind the giant, the balloon can easily get to the enemy’s arena or crown damage and start to go to work. The balloon’s first shoot is deployed extremely quick. Right when the balloon is over the enemy’s arena or crown tower, the bomb is immediately dropped and does around 400 to 1000 damage depending on the level. Also, if the balloon is behind the giant and is at full health when it reaches your opponent’s arena or crown tower, that tower will fall to the ground within a few seconds. In my opinion, if you get only one balloon bomb to your opponent’s tower, you are doing a great job. This strategy becomes a lot more difficult when your enemy has a defensive tower of some sort. Examples that are unlocked right now are the goblin hut and the tombstone. Those defensive structures makes it a lot harder for the balloon strategy to work because the balloon and giant will get distracted, slowing their overall movement speed because they are redirected to a certain location, have to destroy that object, in this case the goblin hut or the tombstone, and then redirect themselves back to your opponents tower. On top of this, the enemy has either skeletons spawning to help kill your giants or they are spawning spear goblins which can help kill both your giant and balloon. Another good strategy to do with your balloon is to support it with the minions. If you have the balloon tank for the minions, the balloon should get to the tower just fine and be able to get one to two shots off on the tower. Also, if the defender tries placing spear goblins, archers, minions, or even a musketeer, your minions can kill those defending troops with easy because of their high damage and their power in three. The balloon has no defensive ability as it only targets buildings. An addition to the balloon is t6hat when it dies, the balloon drops one last, low damage splash bomb. This can kill any small troop, air or ground, that was trying to kill the balloon.
Wizard- The wizard, along with your bomber, is your main source of splash damage. It can attack both air units and ground units so it is an ideal troop to support the pekka through out its journey. The wizard can help kill off the goblins, skeletons, spear goblins, and the minions in one fatal fire ball. It can also deal with the minion horde, if you ever come by one, in two to three fire balls. Additionally, the wizard is by himself, he can kill the whole group of barbarians with three of his fire balls which makes him a great barbarian beater. If he has the help of the fire spirits during the push, he only needs to send one fire ball at the barbarians because the fire spirit kamikaze damage will bring the barbarian’s health point bar down to only a sliver of health. The wizard is a great offensive unit when at the side of the pekka because if forces your opponent to place down high cost elixir troops and they will not get much value out of them. The best counter to the pekka and wizard combo is the inferno tower. This should not be too big of a problem because if you started your push at the back of your side of the map, you should have enough elixir to either counter the enemy inferno tower with either your freeze or lightning spell. The wizard can also be used as a defensive unit if your are being constantly bombarded with small, weak units from the enemy. The wizard can handle any small troop from skeletons to minions to barbarians, and anything in between. I think the wizard is a great card the can provide support to almost any card in the game. The wizard is very vulnerable to high hit point troops like the pekka, mini pekka, prince, and musketeer. It is also very vulnerable to the lightning spell and depending on the level of the fire ball, can be killed by one. Be careful that your enemy does not easily counter your wizard. Make them either take a risky move or have a very hard time getting to your wizard.
Minions– This deck uses the Minions instead of the Minion Horde. The Minions are preferred in this deck over the Minion Horde because you want to keep the cost of troops low. By keeping the cost low, you will be able to cycle through your cards faster. The Minions also do well enough against air troops like the Balloon or Baby Dragon, although for the Baby Dragon needs to target your Crown Tower first. Minions also can take out the Barbarians with the help of the Spear Goblins. This leaves you with a major counter push at the ready. Also, these blue little monsters can help destroy Prince rushes with the help of some ground troops. Even if your enemy uses Arrows, you are not at a Elixir disadvantage, unlike the Minion Horde. The Minions could also kill a Sparky before it can take its aim at the Tower. The minions are very vulnerable to anything that attacks air troops like the baby dragon, the witch, the spear goblins, the musketeer, the fire spirits and the wizard. They are also weak to the ice spirits because they can be stunned long enough so the enemy tower can finish them off. The minions are also one of your only air targeting units so you should be careful and know when the right time to use them is. If you are seen having to defend against a lava hound or balloon without your minions or spear goblins, you will have a pretty hard time defending. Because of this, if you see your opponent has one or two of these cards, you should save your minions or spear goblins just to counter the enemies air troops. The minions are also weak to direct damage spells like the zap spell and the arrows. Both of these direct damage spells will give your opponent an equal or an advantageous elixir trade. It is strong against group troops that have a medium or low amount of health. The are strong against the mini pekka, the musketeer, the barbarians, the pekka, and the princes.
Bomber- The bomber is a great splash damage troop at most levels. The bomber can’t target air troops like the wizard though. However, I sill picked the bomber because you should not be facing tons of air borne troops and the bomber is cheaper so it is easier to build up a bigger push. The bomber also has range when compared the the valkyrie which can help a lot in some situations. Just like the musketeer, the bomber has the ability to shoot over the giant shoulders unlike the valkyrie that has to walk all the way around the giant to hit her target. This speed that comes with your bombers range can help you gain momentum in a push and with enough momentum you can some times get a quick and easy three crown battle. Also, since the bomber only costs three elixir, it makes it possible to get your giant quicker from your deck and you can actually achieve two giants on the playing field at once. The downside about the bomber when compared to the valkyrie and the baby dragon is that the bomber is the only troop that will die to a fireball. This also combined with the musketeer can lead to a devastating stop if your opponent fireballs both of those troops for a major elixir advantage.
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 balloon behind your giant. Make sure though that the balloon is not directly behind the giant. If your enemy does counter the giant with a minion horde right when he crosses the river, they will not hit the balloon. Instead of the minion horde killing the balloon, the minion horde 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 fire balling the enemy’s inferno tower when it is on its second stage of damage. This will let the giant survive the longer amount of time by destroying the defending tower. 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 wizard, a quick and easy card, support your push behind the 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.
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
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.
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
There are no towers in this deck. This makes it a more offensive deck and you may have a harder time defending against the hog rider or other defense targeting troops like the balloon or the giant. If you do want to use a defense in this deck though, I would recommend switching out your spear goblins with a cannon. The cannon costs three elixir so it would not really impact your elixir count average. You would play the cannon only when the giant, balloon, or hog rider gets spawned because you want the cannon to last a s long as possible. If you send your cannon out to early, it will lose health over time, making it more vulnerable to to the damage brought by your enemy troops or direct damage spells. The cannon does great against small swarm troops like the skeletons, the spear goblins, the regular shank goblins, and it does a some what decent job on the barbarians. It also works great against defense troops like the giant and the hog rider. It does good at distracting areal units like the baby dragon, the balloon, and the minions. The cannon is very vulnerable to direct damage spells like the fire ball and the lightning spell. Even though the cannon can distract the minions, the baby dragon, and the balloon, those units cannot be targeted by the cannon and can take it out with out receiving any damage.
