ZOMBIE DOOM - Level 12 war clan seeks experienced TH9+

http://i.imgur.com/LuYTvYf.jpg


Looking for a serious war clan with great donations and active members? Become a Zombie...

Zombie Doom:
-Level 17 clan with 540+ war wins. Solid war core of TH 11-12. USA based. Best war win streak = 38. Last perfect war = 10/9/18.
-Continuous war, with ability to opt out for hero upgrades and unavailability
-Expect high level, 3 star attacks
-No trophy pushing required
-Generous with donations
-Fun people, No Drama!
-Most of us are in our 30-40's, work during the day but are around for donations
-Communicate via in-game clan chat only, no external apps required

You:
-TH 11 or TH 12 - no rushed bases
-War experience necessary
-3 star mentality, with willingness to learn and grow
-English speaking
-Must use both war attacks, always
-Fair play war clan
-Donate generously, but no ratio requirements

To Join:
Send a request to Zombie Doom (#8ULGUJ92) with "Brains!"

I'm thinking of occasionally adding some daily coc tips in these chats, just for the heck of it and to keep it interesting. Maybe you can learn something from them, or better yet add some of your own to share with me! :)

I'll start with this one:

Daily tip #1: Ever wonder how the queen AI works, and when she targets walls? To understand this, you have to know that the queen has an attack range of 5 tiles, and a "vision" range of 8 tiles. If nothing is within 5 tiles for her to attack, she will look for an accessible structure within her "vision" range of 8 tiles and walk to attack it. If, however, she finds nothing within 8 tiles that she can directly attack (ie: not behind walls), then she will look for the closest building in the map (even behind walls!) and will hit walls if she has to to get to it.

Daily tip #2: Merging a queen walk with a killsquad can sometimes result in the healer switching targets. For example, merging a queen walk with a golem-valk killsquad often results in the healers switching target to the golem. Why does this happen? This happens because the healers target the damaged unit with the highest unit weight/camp space. And in this calculation, heroes are considered 25 camp space. Thus, when planning to merge aq walk with a killsquad, it's best if the killsquad does not contain a golem if the healer switch is undesired. On the other hand, for attacks like HPVB where you want the healers to switch targets and start healing the pekkas and nearby bowlers/valks, make sure all defenses targeting your queen are destroyed before the merge. This will ensure the queen is at full health, thus allowing the healers to switch target to a equal or lower weight unit.

You can also exploit this fact on a queen walk that targets an area with a high concentration of defenses. To save yourself a rage spell, you can deploy 1-2 giants first with the 4-5 healers, then deploy the aq behind. The defenses will target the giants, and the queen can do a non-healer queen walk. The healers will switch target once the giants are dead, or if the aq gets hit. But make sure the queen does not walk outside of healer range before that happens! Note: Healers have no heal penalty on non-heroes, so in theory the giants can tank longer than the queen can under healer support.

It seems a lot of people aren't very clear about how war weights work, so I'm going to dedicate the next couple of daily tips to this subject.
I find it hard to explain to new members on the limited clan chat why they shouldn't upgrade certain things, so leaving this here as a resource and directing them here will be helpful.


Daily tip #3: How war matchmaking works.

During war search, coc tries to find another clan with similar offensive/defensive strength that is currently also doing a war search. In theory, finding another clan with similar offensive/defensive strength makes for a more fair matchup, but the way they do it is very flawed and is subject to exploitation, so it is vital to have a good understanding of the underlying algorithm. Basically each base in the roster is assigned a numerical "war weight" value based on their current defensive and offensive power. These numbers are summed up across all the bases involved in the current war, and the matchmaking tries to find another clan with the same approximate summed war weight number.

One way to calculate the approximate war weight of a current in-war base is to sum up all the gold in all 4 storages plus the town hall (note: I have not fully verified this, but people much more involved than I am rely on this to measure all sorts of things). Do not sum up the numbers during prep day, since that just reflects the resources you currently have.

Details:
1) War weight is determined by defensive structures (eg: archer towers, cannons, walls, and even the heroes) and troop upgrades.
2) Not all defensive buildings or troop upgrades are weighed the same. Some are worth a lot more than others. I will provide more specifics about this on a later daily tip.
3) On average, defensive structures weigh more than troop upgrades.
4) Upgrading spell factory does not contribute to war weight, even though the extra spell slots are a huge boost to offensive power. UPDATE: Upgrading spell factory enables specific spells, and those might add to war weight. I'm not too sure about this, but it seems to logically make sense.
5) Upgrading the town hall by itself does not contribute any to war weight

Daily tip #4: Engineering

To exploit the matchmaking system, a lot of players engineer their base to heavily favor offense over defense. In theory, offense is more important in war than defense because each player gets two attacks. If only one of those attacks is a 3-star, then in theory that should cancel out the harm done when they get 3-starred. However, if both attacks are 3-stars, then that gives a huge advantage to the clan. And by keeping war weight down on the lower members, it can allow a clan to have higher overall townhalls in their roster relative to the opponent (eg: Our #1 can be a th11, but their #1 is only a th10).

There are two degrees of war weight exploitation that often happen:

1) The first form is what most people refer to by engineering. This is when a base has a super-rushed defenses but a very developed non-rushed offense. An example of this is a th10 base with no walls and just 1 cannon, but has 11 spell slots and fully upgraded troops and heroes. This base can easily take out any th9, but is weighed probably like a standard low th9 or even a th8. The clan with the engineered base has a huge advantage. This is also complete exploitation of the system and often judged to be cheating. I strongly recommend people not to do this for sportsmanship issues. Besides, if supercell ever decides to re-adjust the war weight system, these people will likely be screwed, as it takes a long time to catch back up on defense.

2) A .5 upgrade path. This is a base that prioritizes offense over defense, but usually has all the defensive structures from the previous town hall level complete. For example, a th 9.5 base is a th10 base with fully upgraded th9 defenses, but with fully upgraded th10 offense. The way I see it, this is just a player following the "upgrade offense over defense first" rule and is actually a recommended thing to do.

Conclusion
There is a very important golden rule to fall out from all this information, and that is:

"Players should only upgrade their defense if and only if their offense is strong enough to take out their own base."

For th9s and below, a player is considered strong enough to take out a base when they have a 50% or higher chance of 3-starring a given base on a fresh hit. A player who can rarely 3-star a base with level3 xbows has no business upgrading their own xbows to level3. When they do so, they become a liability to the clan.

The rules are different for th10s and above, since currently it is very difficult to 3-star th10s and th11s with good base layout, even for a skilled player with fully maxed offenses. So for th10s and above, a player is considered strong enough to take out a well-made th10/th11 base when they have a 75% or higher chance of 2-starring that base. For example, a th10 player has no business building infernos if they can't consistently 2-star other th10s, especially the common ring bases we see a lot in the amateur clans we often get paired against. And a th10 has no business upgrading any defenses if they can't 3-star th9s 75% (preferably higher!) of the time on a fresh hit.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE: Clash Tutor suggests that in an effort to fight engineering, supercell has updated their algorithm to penalize players with offensive upgrades that vastly exceed their defensive upgrades. Check this video out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Jw7xNgYQGc&t=0s
Regardless of whether this is true or not, the golden rule above still applies!

Daily tip #5: War Weights

Below is a list of war weights for nearly all defenses and troops. For most of them, a range of war weights is given, indicating what the war weight is for level 1 and the max level of the given defense/troop. For example, the cannon war weight is "100-81", meaning at level 1 it is 100 and at level 14 it is 81. This means it costs 100 war weight points to build the cannon, and it costs 81 war weight points to upgrade it from level 13 to level 14. These numbers can add up; for example, a level 14 cannon actually weighs a total of 1222 war weight points. For defenses like the tesla with just a single number, it means each level upgrade costs the same war weight.
Generally the numbers increase/decrease linearly through the levels.

Section 1: Low war weight defenses/troops/spells
Here are defenses & troops with low weights and good bang-for-the-buck. The defenses here are worth upgrading as they provide very good defense while not increasing war weight by too much. Not all the troops/spell upgrades here, however, are that useful for war. Interestingly enough, the heroes aren't weighted that much considering how powerful they are offensively and defensively.

Defenses
Cannon: 100-81, Archer Tower: 100-87, Air Defense: 50, Air Sweeper: 20, Tesla: 100, Air Bomb: 100, Spring Trap: 20-28, Skeleton Trap: 80, Air Mine: 15, Giant Bomb: 150, Walls: 8

Troops/Spells
Archer: 150-100, Barbarian: 100-60, Minion: 120-100, Goblin: 50-30, Wall Braker: 100-80, Wizard: 150, EQ: 150-135, Rage: 100-80, Lightning: 60-80, Haste: 140, Archer Queen: 37-44, Barbarian King: 13-20, Grand Warden: 75-79

Section 2: High war weight defenses/troops/spells
This is the section with the most controversial defenses. Some of these, like the wizard tower, can provide a decent boost to defense at the cost of a moderate amount of war weight (especially at the higher levels). Others, like the mortar, are relatively useless and imo shouldn't be upgraded too much considering their cost. I would defer upgrading any of these defenses until all the section 1 ones are done, and you can 3-star similar bases as yours more often than not.
The troops upgrades are another story. This section has all the good troops you will need for war, so upgrade these asap, especially troops you use often. Defer upgrading those you never or rarely use. Of particular note is the 400-800 war weight of the bowler, and the 500 war weight of the skeleton spell. Don't upgrade those unless you plan to use them.

Defenses
Bomb Tower: 500-400, Wiz Tower: 450-215, Mortar: 450-360, Xbow: 350-300

Troops/Spells
Lavahound: 160-420, Baby Drag: 150-350, Balloon: 100-260, Bowler: 400-800, Hog: 120-250, Dragon: 160-480, Giant: 120-330, Golem: 160-400, Healer: 180-220, Miner: 200-450, Pekka: 120-350, Valk: 100-220, Clone: 300-400, Healing: 230-170, Jump: 250-150, Poison: ?, Skeleton: 500

Section 3: Ultra high war weight defenses/troops/spells
The defenses in this section should be avoided for as long as possible. Imo you shouldn't even consider these until Sections 1/2 are completely done, your heroes are relatively high level, and you are pretty good in war. They are undoubtedly very powerful defenses, but they come at a huge cost in war weight. If you can't justify their cost, you shouldn't build them!
As for the troops, I would avoid upgrading the witch at all unless it's a vital part of your war attacks. The freeze spell is a bit trickier, since it's vital to a lot of th10/th11 attacks. If you're a newbie th10, I would upgrade the other core war troops first before upgrading the freeze spell.

Defenses
Inf Tower: 2950-2200, Eagle Artillery: 5200-4750

Troops/Spells
Freeze: 1000-1600, Witch: 800-2200

Most of these war weights are obtained from here: https://spanser.net/CoCGuide and cross-referenced with another excel sheet I downloaded somewhere else. For the most part, that website is pretty accurate; however, it is horribly wrong with the war weights of the walls.

UPDATE: After some observations on my part in our clan wars, I have noticed that inferno towers seem to be weighted much much higher than indicated by the numbers above. The inferno towers seem to be worth 5 points each at level 1, and much less for subsequent levels (something like 0.5 points each level per tower). The "points" refer to the gold/elixir score that shows up when attacking someone in war, which itself is derived from the resource value I described in a previous post. Note that 70 denotes a max th9 / early th10, while 90 denotes a fully maxed out th10. So just putting down 2 level 1 inferno towers takes you halfway to a max th10 weight-wise.

Daily tip #6 Traps
Here are some common effective uses of traps (not including hidden teslas).

Spring Trap
Place them to spring hogs or valks. To spring hogs, place spring traps between 2 defenses, and make the defenses diagonal from each other for maximum impact. A level1 spring trap can spring 3 hogs or 1 valk, a level2 can spring 3 hogs or 2 valks, and a level4 can spring 3 hogs or 2 valks or 3 bowlers. All other levels (especially the max level) are essentially useless.

This is a great guide on placing spring traps (a lot of non-obvious information there!):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-SYrA0tMEs

Bombs
They do negligible damage but they can instantly kill level5 (th9) wallbreakers. Place them in likely wallbreaker locations, but make sure to place them 1 tile away from the wall. This is because it takes a second to detonate the bomb, so the wallbreaker has to trigger the bomb before it reaches the wall. To defend against max level6 wallbreakers, put 2 bombs side-by-side, 1 tile away from the wall.

Giant Bombs
Double giant bombs no longer instantly kill hogs. However, if combined with a couple of normal bombs, they can still instantly kill hogs! The placement is tricky, but this video should help:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X5BvjmGj7o&t=3s

Giant Bombs are also useful against bowler kill squads, and against bowler-witch attacks. Place them in likely approaches. Putting them next to inferno towers can also be useful, since it prevents the opponent from healing killsquad units that trigger the bomb.

Seeking Air Mines
Best when used to kill healers or lavahounds. Placing them in healer-killing locations is tricky, because it's hard to guess where the healers will come from. However, lavahounds have very obvious pathing, so to counter that attack, it's best to place 2 air mines each next to the 2 ads farthest away from the archer queen. This is because the ads near the queen are likely to be taken out by a killsquad.

Air Bomb
Used for killing balloons in lavahound-ballon style attacks. Place them away from ads and away from obvious lavahound paths. You don't want them to hit lavahounds. Rather, you want them to hit packs of ballons when they enter areas not covered by lavahounds.

Skeleton Trap
In ground mode, they are useful for chasing down hogs, distracting queen or pekkas, nerfing mass miner attacks, or wreaking havoc with killsquad pathing. They are also useful to counter suicide-queen or queen walk attacks against an inferno, since the skeletons can distract a queen long enough for other defenses to do their damage.
In air mode, they are good for harrassing balloons in laloon attacks. Placement strategies is similar to that of Air Bombs.

Sparkles: Question....for a govaho, do you recommend bringing wall breakers for the valks or just letting them chew through the wall?

That's a very good question! Let's just make this the daily tip for today!

Daily Tip #7 Bringing wallbreakers when using govaho

Normally I would never bring wallbreakers when using valks, since the valks can easily and quickly break through even a max wall. The camp space dedicated to the wallbreakers can mean 1 less valk, and that can make a big difference.

However, govaho can sometimes be a special case. Two reasons for this:
1) You want a good return on investment for the 2 golems
2) You usually don't take out the cc beforehand in govaho

If you let the valks break through the wall, they will be the first one through, and in theory they will end up tanking all the nearby defenses that aren't already targeting the golems since they will run ahead of the golem. Furthermore, they will probably trigger the cc and hidden giant bombs and end up getting hit hard. By using wallbreakers, you can delay deployment of the valks so that the golems enter the base first, and more likely than not will end up tanking more of the defenses and hopefully triggering the cc.

That being said, the decision to bring wbs should be made on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes the clan castle is so far inside that the golems will never trigger the cc. Sometimes all the nearby defenses can target the golem even outside the walls, so there's no need to worry about the valks taking too much damage. And if you're planning to drop a poison+heal to counter the cc anyways, there's no need to worry about having the golems tanking the cc. Etc etc.

So yeah, take into account all these issues and you can make up your mind whether to bring wallbreakers on the specific base you're hitting.

Disclaimer: I usually don't do a straight-up govaho, so it's not exactly my area of expertise.

Hope that helped!

Daily tip #8 Funneling Bowlers

This is an excellent guide on how to funnel bowlers. A must-watch for anyone using bowlers!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U65bQKPtFA

To add to that video, I want to elaborate on why bowlers in particular are trickier to funnel than other units people are used to funneling. Let's start by summarizing the main points of the video.

There are 3 types of buildings involved in general funneling:
Layer 1: Buildings outside of walls that are reachable/attack-able by the unit you are trying to funnel
Layer 2: Buildings inside walls that are reachable/attack-able by the unit you are trying to funnel
Layer 3: Buildings inside walls that are not reachable/attack-able by the unit you are trying to funnel

In a nutshell, the goal of general funneling (for all troops!) is to destroy all layer 1 and layer 2 buildings so that the next closest building is either a layer 2 building leading inwards toward the direction you want, or a layer 3 building (once the wall is breached). The video above gives tons of examples about exactly what this means. For bowlers specifically, the best place to funnel is an area of the base that juts out, which provides two "corners" (again, see video for more details).

Most people's funneling experience generally involves pekkas, valks, or just the BK. These are easy to funnel because their targeting range is 1 tile (ie: they're melee units), so for them there's no such thing as a layer 2 building, since they can't attack over walls! Funneling these units just involve taking out the layer 1 buildings to the left and right of the point of entry.

The queen, on the other hand, has a huge 5 tile attack range. Provided all layer 1 buildings are destroyed, this means she naturally destroys all nearby layer 2 buildings with her huge range and ends up heading inwards towards a layer 3 building. Her range is an asset for funneling. Note: It doesn't always work out that way, but she's certainly easier to funnel than bowlers.

However, bowlers and wizards are relatively tricky to funnel inwards (ever notice how you can never get all your wizards to go in?). They both have a medium 3 tile attack range (the bowler bounce hit plays no role in funneling), which means their range is long enough to target a layer 2 building 0 or 1 tile away from a wall, but not long enough to usually take out more than the closest layer 2 building. As a result, after they take out the closest layer 2 building, usually another layer 2 building nearby is the next closest building they can hit. They go off to the side to attack that building, and the funnel is completely screwed. And this is why wizards and bowlers are more difficult to funnel than other types of units.

Daily tip #9 Upgrading Archer Queen

How useful is it to upgrade the archer queen? Everyone says it's important, but it's hard to quantify exactly why and at what levels she's the most effective. Especially since each level upgrade only very slightly increases her stats (A 4-10 dps increase doesn't sound like much!). But it's not about the stat increase exactly; rather, it's about whether that stat increase will hit a "sweet spot" that can allow the queen to take out a particular structure in less hits!

So here's an excellent guide that covers many of the sweet-spot levels of the archer queen:
http://www.onehiveclan.com/blog/aq-l...spots-analysis

Notice that this guide is primarily focused on the archer queen's attacking power, because when it comes to this hero, the best defense really is a good offense. The faster she takes out the trash buildings and defenses targeting her, the less damage she will take. The guide focuses mostly on her royal cloak ability and how many hits it takes to take out some important structures when the ability is activated. Of particular note is that at level 5, the archer queen can hit 4 times with the ability, at level 10 she can hit 5 times, and lastly at level 30 she can hit 6 times. Those are huge differences!

The ability is important, especially at th10 when the archer queen often has to pop the ability to take out infernos. But at th9, her regular damage is arguably more important, since th9 is all about taking advantage of the relatively strong th9 offense to counter the relatively weak defense of a th9 base.

So I wanted to focus more on her non-ability damage and give a concrete example on exactly how the archer queen would fare against a common setup. I chose my example to focus on the most common buildings the archer queen will face at th9, that being the storages, collectors, cannons, and archer towers.

So let's imagine there's a th9 cannon and archer tower behind a wall, protected by a gold storage, an elixir storage, a gold mine, an elixir collector, and a builder hut. Let's say you deploy a lvl4 golem to help tank while the queen attempts to take out the trash buildings followed by the defensive structures (for simplification purposes, I'll assume all incoming damage will cease only when both cannon and tower are destroyed, and I'll also be ignoring any queen walking time).

So for starters, here's information from the above website (see the super-detailed spreadsheet) on how many hits it takes to destroy these structures at each level. Note that I list whatever it is at level 15, but for subsequent values I will only indicate when it changes. For example, at level 15, it takes 6 hits to destroy a gold mine, and it'll be 6 hits all way way until level 21, when it changes to 5 hits. Note: I consider all the levels listed here except the level 15 one as "sweet spots", since they represent a reduction of time spent on very common structures.

Gold/Elixir Storage lvl 11: 13 hits (lvl15), 12 hits (lvl17), 11 hits (lvl20), 10 hits (lvl24), 9 hits (lvl29), 8 hits (lvl33), 7 hits (lvl39)
Gold mine/Elixir Collector lvl 12: 6 hits (lvl15), 5 hits (lvl21), 4 hits (lvl30)
Cannon lvl 11 (th9, 80dps): 7 hits (lvl15), 6 hits (lvl17), 5 hits (lvl25), 4 hits (lvl34)
Archer Tower lvl 11 (th9, 75 dps): 6 hits (lvl15), 5 hits (lvl18), 4 hits (lvl27), 3 hits (lvl38)
Builder Hut: 2 hits (lvl15), 1 hit (lvl31)

So here's how long it'll take to take out this setup with the various level queen, and how much damage will be incurred by the lvl4 golem (6000hp) during that period.

Lvl15 hero: Takes 13+13+6+6+7+6+2=53 hits @ 0.75s per hit = 39.75 seconds (40 seconds)
Incoming damage: 6200 damage (it'll pop!)
Lvl20 hero: Takes 11+11+6+6+6+5+2=47 hits @ 0.75s per hit = 35.25 seconds (36 seconds)
Incoming damage: 5580 damage
Lvl25 hero: Takes 10+10+5+5+5+5+2=42 hits @ 0.75s per hit = 31.5 seconds (32 seconds)
Incoming damage: 4960 damage
Lvl30 hero: Takes 9+9+4+4+5+4+2=37 hits @ 0.75s per hit = 27.75 seconds (28 seconds)
Incoming damage: 4340 damage
Lvl35 hero: Takes 8+8+4+4+4+4+1=33 hits @ 0.75s per hit = 24.75 seconds (25 seconds)
Incoming damage: 3875 damage
Lvl40 hero: Takes 7+7+4+4+4+3+1=30 hits @ 0.75s per hit = 22.5 seconds (23 seconds)
Incoming damage: 3565 damage

At level 15, the archer queen can't do damage fast enough to prevent the golem from popping, whereas at level 40 the golem would still have 2435 hp left! That's a huge difference!

I hope this gives people a much better idea on the whens and hows of archer queen upgrading.
(This is why I immediately upgraded my queen to 31 when I reached th10. I wanted to take out the huts in 1 shot!)

Daily tip #10 Th9 Laloon army compositions

Quick summary on laloon attacks (all th levels): Typically it is composed of 2 phases. The first phase is some type of kill squad to take care of the queen, the cc, and maybe an ad or two. It's important to emphasize that a laloon attack must have some plan for taking care of the queen, since the queen can single-handedly ruin a laloon raid if unaccounted for. The second phase involves the lavahound-loon deployment in a clockwise or counterclockwise fashion (more on this in a future daily tip).

Today we will cover common laloon army compositions at th9, which is something that is often not very well understood. I will cover th10/th11 compositions in a future post.

The ad/ad+1 lavahound rule
One of the most important questions to answer in a laloon attack is how many lavahounds to bring. Lavahounds exist for 3 reasons:
1) To get rid of any air traps that might otherwise take out your loons
2) To tank, and more importantly, buy time for your loons to take out the defenses in the base. The more lavahounds you have, the more time you have to take out the defenses
3) To provide clean-up with the pups
The idea is that you want to bring 1 more lavahound than the number of ads remaining after the killsquad is finished. So if the killsquad manages to take out 1 ad, then there are 3 ads left and you'll need 4 lavahounds for phase 2.
It's also a perfectly reasonable choice to replace 1 of those lavahounds with 6 loons, since more loons means you'll tear through the base faster, and therefore you need to "buy" less time with the lavahound than otherwise required (see reason #2 above). This is because the December 2016 update has made the loons much faster at attacking, which means they can go through a base faster than before.

The 5 lavahound/golem/bowler rule
At the most extreme, your killsquad will not take out any ads and you'll need to bring 5 lavahounds for a penta-laloon attack. However, if you choose to take out 1 or more ads with your killsquad (and you usually will), then you should carefully subtract from the 5 lavahound requirement to beef up your killsquad. For example, if you plan to take out just 1 ad with your killsquad, then you should bring 4 lavahounds and at most 1 golem for the killsquad. If you plan to take out 2 ads, then you should bring 3 lavahounds and either 2 golems or 1 golem + cc bowlers. If you plan to bring 4 healers for a queen walk (roughly equivalent camp space to 2 golems), then you'll only have the camp space for 3 lavahounds, which means you need to aim for taking out 2 ads with the walk. Etc.
As mentioned before, you can also optionally replace one of the lavahounds in the scenarios above with 6 extra loons.

Number of balloons
Penta-laloons attacks usually mean bringing 20 ballons at th9, since you won't need any camp space for funneling troops. However, for other laloon variants, you'll want 12-15 loons (Or more if you plan to replace one of your lavahounds with 6 extra loons, as mentioned before).

Funneling and Killsquad Troops
You typically have very little camp space for funneling troops. For example, if you do a 2 golem 3 lavahound with the minimum 12 loons, you'll only have 30 camp space for funneling and ks troops. That's equivalent to 5 wizards and 5 wallbreakers. But you'll want more than 12 loons usually, which means the 5 wizards+5 wallbreaker is around the maximum number of funneling and ks troops you should bring. It's also recommended to bring a couple of minions for cleanup, in case the pups on one side of the base are all taken out. Note: Wizards are not great clean-up troops because none of the ground-based traps have been taken out by the attack, except for those encountered by the ks.

Heroes
For any laloon variant without bowlers, it is highly beneficial to have high level heroes. This is because you won't have much camp space for the killsquad, so you'll have to rely on heroes to do most of the damage.

Common Laloon Armies
All laloon attacks are base-specific. (eg. Just because you want to take out 2 ads with the killsquad doesn't mean there are 2 ads near the queen for you to take out!). Here are some common compositions that are used.

5 lavahounds, 20 ballons (old style)
This is what is known as a penta-laloon. Old-school penta-laloons required a certain symmetrical base layout and relied on raged pups to take out the queen. However, this style of penta-laloon is not recommended for typical maxed out th9s.
Old-school penta-laloon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPUCnHBhsFg

5 lavahounds, 20 ballons (new style)
The "new" way of doing penta-laloon requires an exposed queen. Start by using 3 loons to take out a defense and lure the cc. Then use the bk and aq to lure the cc to near the enemy aq, and take out both cc and aq.
Newer style penta-laloon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIxnCHRHvAE

2 golem, 3 lavahound golaloon
Use 2 golems and heroes + funneling troops to take out cc, queen, and 2 ads. You need strong heroes for this, and 2 ads placed near the queen. One of the lavahounds can also be optionally replaced for 6 extra loons.
Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8epN6DH4rQ

1 golem + 4 lavahound golaloon
Use 1 golem and heroes + funneling troops to take out cc, queen, and 1 ad. You need strong heroes for this. Easier to find bases to target with this composition. You just need an ad near the queen, and not too many concentrated defenses nearby.

1 golem + cc bowlers + 3 lavahound gobolaloon
Similar to "2 golem, 3 lavahound golaloon", except you rely on power of bowlers to take out the 2 ads. The key is to take out the queen, cc, and 2 ads fast as you only have 1 golem. One of the lavahounds can also be optionally replaced for 6 extra loons.

2 golems + cc bowlers + 2 lavahounds gobolaloon
This strategy emphasizes a super-strong killsquad push to take out 3 ads, and phase 2 is just to take out the backend defenses.
Example (latter half of video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhEYYNmZ2fA&t=320s

Daily Tip #11 Laloon deployment and base layouts

A standard laloon involves a first phase killsquad to kill the queen, cc, and maybe an ad or two. This usually involves entering the base from somewhere and creating a "wedge", much like the "wedge" created for goho attacks. Once the wedge is created, keep in mind the following advice concerning the next phase of the attack (the laloon phase):

Clockwise(CW) or Counterclockwise(CCW) deployment
You want to deploy your ballons in a CW or CCW fashion around the base. This ensures all the balloons will head towards the center of the base, since for every balloon that is deployed, the defenses to the left and right of it will already be targeted or already destroyed.

Main Pack vs Supporting Loons
You will usually deploy a strong first pack of loons that you will designate as the "main pack". This pack usually consists of 50% or more of your loons, usually more. To do this, deploy more loons towards the first few defenses (eg. 3-5 loons per defense, instead of the usual 2 or 3). The idea here is that this main pack will travel through most of the core of the base, and you will surgically deploy supporting loons to ensure the main pack of loons do not stray. All your spell usage should mostly be concentrated on this main pack of loons as well. Here is a good video explaining this in more detail:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xjy8qXfJPiE&t=0s
Note: This is in many ways similar to how you should deploy hogs as well.
Note: Before you even begin attacking, you should already have a plan on where every single one of your balloons will be deployed!

Edge of the ring
Start the CW/CCW balloon deployment to the left/right of the wedge. This is an often overlooked but very important point! Often people start deploying balloons at the nearest ad, but you really want to deploy the balloon at the closest defense near the wedge. This is for 3 reasons:
1) The balloons will not have to come back to the wedge from the other side of the base at the end of phase 2 to take out that last defense. Remember that balloons travel extremely slowly!
2) That defense by the wedge might end up taking out many of your cleanup pups because your lavahound and balloons will be on the other side of the base
3) One of the main purposes of the kill squad is to create a wedge so the loons will predictably path away from the wedge. But if the loon deployment starts in the middle of a whole bunch of defenses and not at the edge of the wedge, then that defeats the purpose of the "wedge", and the loons can stray left or right.

Lavahound deployment
Usually deploy 2 lavahounds to the first ad. You usually want to send the 2 lavahounds from 2 different directions and as far from the ad as possible to help soak up any seeking air bombs and mines. Deploy initial set of balloons only on defenses covered by that first ad. Once the first ad is destroyed, deploy your 3rd lavahound towards the next ad, but time it so that the initial lavahounds will reach it first. This is so that the weakened lavahounds will soak up the potential air mines at the next ad. Repeat this process for all remaining ads.

Lavahound vs balloon deployment timing
Deploy the lavahounds/balloons so that the balloons will reach the defenses right after the lavahound reaches the ad attack range (or as close to that as possible). This might mean deploying the lavahounds from far away so that it gives ample time to deploy and time the balloons.

Wizard Towers
Wizard towers are the biggest danger to big packs of balloons, especially when all ads are outside of their attack range (and thus a lavahound can't tank for the balloons). Reserve a few balloons to deploy towards the wizard tower *before* your main back reaches the attack range of the wizard tower. This essentially uses a smaller number of balloons to tank for the bigger pack. The other strategy often used is to deploy a heal spell to negate the wizard tower damage.

Troll Teslas
It is often helpful to reserve a loon to take care of any troll teslas at the corner of the base so the pups and main pack of balloons do not have to travel across the map and waste precious time.


Next, let's discuss some common ad layouts, and how that affects laloon attacks.

ADs close together
This means the ads are usually placed near the center of the base, and they are all within attack range of each other. This makes it tough to tank with the lavahounds, because the lavahounds will be hit by multiple ads at the same time, instead of taking them out one at a time as discussed in the "lavahound deployment" section above. However, since the ads are close to each other, a phase 1 killsquad will have a much easier time taking out more than 1 ad. Therefore it is useful to consider a stronger killsquad for these base layouts.

ADs right outside of each other's range
The ads are neither close nor far from each other. They are barely outside of each other's attack range, but they are far apart enough that a phase 1 killsquad might have difficulty taking out more than 1 ad. However, the weakness of this layout is that the ads are within the attack range of most of the defenses in the base, which means it is susceptible to a strong phase 2. Therefore it is often possible to use a smaller killsquad to take out the cc, queen and 1 ad, and then bring a higher number of lavahounds and balloons to take care of the rest of the base.

ADs far apart
The ads are usually placed very far outside, usually making them very vulnerable to being attacked. Ring bases usually have this type of setup. It leads many people to mistakenly believe that the base is susceptible to laloon attacks. What may not be obvious is that the ads are outside the attack range of all the defenses near the core of the base, which means when the balloons reach that area, they will be completely vulnerable! One way to approach a base like this is to make sure to path a big chunk of loons towards the core at the same time, and use majority of the spells on the loons to take out the core. The ads on the outside should be easy to take out with supporting loons, since they are easily accessible from the outside.

Offset ADs
The new anti-laloon meta is to bunch up all the ads on one side of the base, and put the queen and most of the other anti-air defenses (xbows, wiz towers, archer towers, inferno towers) on the other side. This ensures the loon do not benefit from lavahound tanking on the queen side. One way to approach this style of base is to use the killsquad on the "exposed" queen side to take out most of the defenses there, then use a smaller number of lavahounds and loons to take out the backside. Since the ads are close together, the loons can reach each of the ads relatively quickly and therefore not as many lavahounds will be necessary.

Daily tip #12 Spell usage during laloon

Here are pointers for laloon spell usage:

Zap+Quake
Generally speaking, Zap+Quake is not recommended for laloon. The 5 spell slots are much better spent on the ks or loons.

Heal Spell
Useful to cover areas far away from ads, or to counter wizards towers or teslas farms as mentioned in the last tip. It is also very useful to use after taking out an inferno tower, since the loons likely have low health after taking out the inferno tower.

Haste Spell
Obviously, use this instead of rage spell to speed balloons. Not only does it take half the spell slots, it also gives significant speed improvements over rage spell. A couple of tips about using this spell:
1) Balloons coming out of the haste spell will still have the haste effect for a few tiles. So cast the spell "earlier" than expected to get the maximum benefit.
2) Only haste towards the ad if the lavahounds are expected to get a pounding. For bases with low level ads or with ads placed very far outside, it's oftentimes better not to use haste so that the lavahounds can take more damage and have a better chance of popping. The pups are important for cleanup!
3) It's important to use haste to counteract the sweeper push. Always know exactly where the sweepers are before the battle to help plan out haste spell placement!
4) Haste spell lasts pretty long, especially at later levels. So if you plan to use haste spells for the first set of loons, it will be useful to pre-cast the haste spells before any loons are dropped.
Here is an indepth laloon haste spell guide:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhIAPaOChko

Rage spell
1) Use a rage spell for the phase 1 killsquad, especially if it involves bowlers.
2) In certain parts of the base, sometimes it's important not only to speed up the balloons, but also to increase their damage. This can be the case if the balloons meet up with an unexpected tesla farm. A tesla takes 2 hits from a balloon to take out, but under rage it will only take 1 hit! Might also be useful to use it against areas with high hp defenses, such as infernos, eagle artillery, or xbows.
3) Use rage on skeleton spells and/or pups to help take out the queen. The rage spell is also necessary for old-style penta-laloon to help take out the queen with the pups.
4) It's sometimes useful to cast rage spells for the loons that will target the inferno, because oftentimes the inferno is able to take out many loons before it gets taken down. Using a rage ensures those few loons still alive are still able to take out the inferno.

Skeleton spell
2-3 skeleton spells can be very useful to take out the archer queen! This can work if the archer queen isn't protected by too much splash damage defenses such as wizard towers and mortars. Once the balloons are nearby, rage the area, then cast the skeleton spells! As a bonus, usually there will be some pups nearby that will be raged as well! This usually ensures that not only the queen, but everything nearby will be destroyed as well!

Daily tip #13
(Placeholder. To be filled in the future!)

Daily tip #14
(Placeholder. To be filled in the future!)

Daily tip #15
(Placeholder. To be filled in the future!)

Daily tip #16
(Placeholder. To be filled in the future!)

Daily tip #17
(Placeholder. To be filled in the future!)

Daily tip #18
(Placeholder. To be filled in the future!)

Daily tip #19
(Placeholder. To be filled in the future!)

Hope we win the next 2 wars. Defeat the 11-war win streak curse!

We're at 10 wins....now on to the ellusive 11th....

And of course it's a tough and unbalanced matchup for us. The curse is real!

Woohoo we're in good shape! Can it be? Can we break the curse and win in a war that is so heavily stacked against us?

11 wins!!!

We slaughtered them! 57/60! They only got a puny 54/60 score :)

Now on to 12...

... and 12 doesn't seem like a problem either

Going for 13!

Doh, bad match for us :(

12 is a good run! :-)

Wow, that's some major engineering we're matched against. Not cool.

We're putting up a good fight! It's going to come down to the end

So close...

Looking good this war!

New war tonight, on a 2 win streak!

How do you like the new game mode?

I haven't bumped in forever! I am ambivalent about Boatland

I am kind of concerned about the villagers of Boatland. They are all female and fall asleep everywhere. The only other person there is Builder Bob, who seems a little creepy. Overall would not visit. But thumbs up for gem mines!!

I'm enjoying the Builder Base myself. It does not replace the main game in any way, but it's a nice and challenging diversion!

It is kind of fun...and also seems to be distracting people from the main game so there is great loot available :-)

I think we can win this war!

4x star bonus is great!

War starts tonight!

Yeah, 4x star bonus is great! I got so much loot that I ended up upgrading my BK back-to-back. Had too much de!
The loot bonus at Champion League is also causing me to get de too fast, even with the minimal raiding I'm doing.
#FirstWorldProblems

Lol, can't say I've ever had too much DE, but does sound like a nice problem to have!

Upgrading to Lvl8 baby dragons in boatland! And going to rush a little to bh5 tonight. Having fun :)

:-o congrats on bh5!! Thats exciting!!

What boatland army did you usually use at bh4? I'm currently using giants and archers which is so-so.

At bh4, I just made sure my base was really hard to 2-star. Either they can destroy the town hall and not much else, or they go from other side and take out most of my base but can't take out th.
Then I just make sure I get a higher % 1-star than they do. I usually used all archers, or 1 camp space of barbarians (10 barbs) to tank and the rest archers. Not very elegant, but worked for me. I got pretty good at picking off trash buildings with minimal amount of units.


But I hear having high level archers and giants works really well at bh4 to get 2 or 3 stars. I was so focused on getting the baby d to lvl8 that I couldn't spare any elixir to upgrade the giants and archers.

Thanks Chaos! Omg, I didnt realize there were 8 levels of baby dragon! I still have lvl 2 :-) hehe. I guess I wont be attacking like Itzu anytime soon

I got 100% on a base today with giants/archers, so I'm liking Boatland better, at the moment

My offense is so rushed. Other than baby d, i think you match or beat me in all other unit upgrade levels, lol

Hehe....I've been watching boatland strat videos on youtube. Now I want max baby dragons too!! All the cool kids are doing it :-)

Upgrading to lvl10 baby drags now! Woooot!

It was great watching my new lvl2 inferno roast the enemy. I've been th9.5 so long, it's nice to see the burners work for me for once!

Wow been a while since we bumped this!

Oh no, I haven't bumped in over a week! Bad Sparkles :-(

I've been slacking off too, Sparkles! We suck at recruiting :)

Stupid clocktower nerf!

Omg, I just got level 10 baby dragons and Boatland is soooooo much better!!

Making kids cry in Boatland...

Lvl 10 baby dragons are cutting it for me anymore. Maybe it's my trophy level. Oh well, guess I'll aim for lvl12 and seeing how that works.

Yes, bh6 ruined baby dragons. I have been matching more 6's even at my level, and its no fun anymore :-(

We're slacking off!

Need to start bumping again! I've been slacking big time!

I am growing bored of Boatland... but getting lvl 12 baby dragons in 2 days might help!

I am growing bored of Boatland... but getting lvl 12 baby dragons in 2 days might help!

Me too. I've been slacking off. Too much going on IRL.

Battle Machine to lvl 10. I'm just going through the motions in night-mode/boat-land. Home Village much more fun.

Let's get more high quality players into our badass clan!

I agree, Chaos!!

Hope they make some good matchmaking changes!

Yes, tired of heavily engineered clans!

Tired indeed! Still no MM changes!!!

Wow we lost this time after only 4 win-streak. That rarely happens these days. Should be 10+ minimum!

Not enjoying Builder Hall much these days. It's like Home Village, but permanently stuck at th6 with no prospect of war.

You've been much better than I have been about bumping! Yeah, boatland is getting boring, I agree

Doh, forgot to bump again!

Bump bump bump!

Happy long weekend!!

The giants in the builder huts keep messing up attacks and my base is littered in cakes. Time for clashiversary to be over...

I heard from somewhere that a builder hut upgrade will be available at the end of clashiversary. Not sure what that means or how accurate it is...

Oooh, that would be fun! Unless it involves the builder huts permnently having giants in them....

I dont know what to do with boatland anymore... it's getting boring :-(

Great war win!

Boatloand just got a little bit more interesting now that I have witches upgraded. Really really got bored of the minion/drag attacks

Night witches! The bats are cool. A lot of people attack me with them and its either an epic fail or my base gets wiped... I guess kind of like loon attacks. I haven't maxed witches yet

Next unit to try out in boatland: cannon carts! But I'm still at lvl2 with those, haha

Boatland 7! I grow weary....

Double war loot is great!!

Recruiting from London!

New update. Hurray!

When is the new update coming???

Liking the new update!

Builder base is hard. Need to upgrade them bombers.

You have been so much better about bumping lately than I have! Thanks so much!

Np Sparkles! I do what I can :)

Looking good this war, despite the bad matchup

Hope the next war goes well! They're super engineered...