New possibly overpowered TH9 attack strategy: The Mass Valk
Good morning forumers, because our clan's heroes are about to come up for this weekend's wars I thought I'd begin a thread to follow the progress of a new, and potentially game changing, attack at TH9. Why do I describe this attack as game changing and overpowered?
Up until the last few upgrades, TH9 attack options were generally confined to three star attempts or safe two stars. Sure, you could go for three, but then one star wasn't assured in failure, while you could run a safe two star GOWIPE or GOWIWI and get your two stars but you probably weren't getting three. Side note: This is my main argument for keeping PEKKA level 4 at TH10, you don't want any more safe TH9 three star strategies. Anyway, I think we can agree that if a strategy was devised which was as safe for getting two stars (btw, this one is FAR safer) than GOWIPE while having similar three star odds to Gohos and Golaloons, it would be overpowered. Further, I describe it as potentially game breaking because previous three star TH9 attacks required timing and skill, not just the spamming of troops like TH8 hogs and end up with three stars. If your noob GOWIPE spam TH9s ever upgrade their golems and valks, you can probably just tell them to start trying this strategy and get amazing results.
Anyway, the strategy itself relies on two golems (one of which is a max CC golem), 18ish valks, 4 wizards, and about 6 hogs. Bring wallbreakers as appropriate to breach the first wall, then jump to the core. After you use your jump, you have three heals. You can either double poison the CC (if it's easily lurable) or swap your jump to a quake depending on the base. If the CC is a dragon/loon, you're going to have to make sure your queen/wizards are there to take it out early, and you'll probably want to poison it. Your valks can survive this CC composition even if they take some of the splash under heal, but it's imperative to get them down fast. If the CC is a hound, the objective would actually be to send the valks in through the funnel BEFORE the golems so the hound locks onto the valks and follows them around, doing nil damage and being ignored while you wreck the base before the queen would pick her up at the end.
The main steps to the attack are really just
1. Drop two golems with two wizards each spaced a little apart to create a funnel
2. Wallbreak your way into the base
3. Drop valks to go between the funnel
4. Drop heroes after them
5. Jump to the core. GET YOUR JUMP OUT EARLY. One of my clanmates blew this attack by dropping his jump spell when the valks were about done with the defenses in that compartment, but they were so fast that by the time the heal spell got there they were already aimlessly backtracking and circling the base. Your heal spells lasts for 40 seconds, and 40 seconds is an eternity in a mass valk attack. Even if you dropped your jump 15 seconds early, trust me you'll be fine.
6. Heal group of valks appropriately
7. Use your hogs to pick off distracted back end defenses
Note: On certain bases, the attacker may opt for a jump in/jump out method of hitting the core.
Now, why does this attack seem to work so well? I've only done a couple attacks with it so I'm still finding the answer to that, but here's what I've noticed thus far.
1. When properly timed, the damage is distributed in the following order: Golems, valkyries, golems/valks at different parts of the bases. This means that your valks are going to get a clean release into the base and won't immediately need a heal spell, and when the golems are about half dead the valkyries will spring in front of them and start taking the damage. Level 4 valks have 1200 hp, 18 level 4 valks has 21,600 hp and it is likely that each point defense will be targeting a different valk. Under heal spells, this means that you aren't taking *any* damage most of the time with your valks, and even when you are taking damage you have so much hp that you'll absorb it. Anyway, after the valks jump ahead, some defenses left behind will still be targeting the golems, but it will only be a point defense or two while your queen is behind to destroy those defenses, AND if the defense is annoying you and isn't about to be killed, just drop a single hog rider behind it! That will path your golem back where you want it to
2. With enough valks, the attack becomes similar to a Goho in the fact that walls just melt. Everyone knows the only way to stop a pack of hogs under heal spells is double giant bombs, and guess what! Healed valks don't care about double giant bombs. Even if you lose a couple valks, 13 valks will take out a level 10 wall in 2 swings (3.6 seconds), while not taking any damage because they're under heals having multiple valks tanking multiple defenses. 18 valks can take out a lego wall in a single swing! (223*18=4014>4000 hp for lego wall). My problem with previous valk attacks was bringing way too many wizards and getting caught up on walls, but mass valks solves that problem nicely.
3. Sometimes after blowing through the core the valks will go outside and run around the base. When this happens, ideally you still have about 5 hogs, two half health golems, and royals with abilities. Surgical hog the remaining defenses, watch your wrecking ball clean up the base in a short amount of time. Heck, if you have 10 valks remaining at this point it's still well over 10,000 hp and a lot of dps, so if they have to go clean up a couple defenses at the end you're not in bad shape.
In conclusion, this is an extremely simple attack that should replace GOWIPE in every TH9 noob's repertoire immediately. I'm not sure what kind of base would stop this attack well, because spread out anti-3 bases don't have the point defenses to effectively whittle down your valks (there you might even want to go four heals), meanwhile bases that are spread closer together get shredded by the valk's area splash. Further, no one builds bases to stop this attack because not nearly enough players effectively use valks so the defending keys are generally to stop other attacks (especially since "three star attackers" are generally so arrogant that they need to three star a base their fancy ways multi phased attacks like Gohogs, Golaloons, and Queen walks that work well on conventional bases but less well on their "anti-3 bases) rather than a simple brute force way, and scrubs just throw in GOWIPEs)
Just tried this in war, and....
I took a L4 golem, max golem in cc, seven wizards, two wb's, sixteen L2 valks, six hogs, two jumps and two heals against a fairly compact symmetrical max TH9 with one large compartment and lots of smaller ones. I lured the cc and used double poison on them. Then just smashed the base to bits in just over two minutes. Will be interesting to try it out on more spread bases.
