B-arch with hogs doesn't work, I tried it a few times at various stages some months ago, and the hogs usually get too far ahead of the rest of the units, so don't actually tank, also your archers and barbs may still have to deal with the walls. And generally you can't make enough of them, so overall you just waste lots of DE for no good reason.
Giants with archers, golems with archers, both of these work at the right trophy counts etc, so while I haven't tried Valks with b-arch I can see how it's similar to b-arch but a little faster. My only problem with valks is that they take forever to move from place to place, they spend way too much time adjusting their position rather than just attacking.
And yeah, if you're getting wrecked by air bombs using BAM, chances are you're too impatient and dumping them in in one group, you need to sprinkle them in more.
