Pushing to Masters III as a Mid-Late TH8! Wish Me Luck...

(lol so who said TH8s wouldn't need the elixir collector boost?)

So Clash with Cam has inspired me to push to the Masters League to finally get Builder #5! I'm sitting at 1000+ gems at the moment, ~1400 trophy range. I was somewhat skeptical about doing this push, but as of this morning and the announcement of the (dark) barracks / spell factory 1-gem boosts, I'm definitely going for it. At the moment, I'm a mid-late TH8 with max Wizard Towers, Mortars, and Teslas. The upgrades I'm lacking defensively are most of my walls to skull, all of my Giant Bombs and Bombs, most Archer Towers and Cannons to level 10, and one of my Air Defenses to level 6. Although I'm not max, I have advantages over Cam, who still made it to Masters.

Advantages I have:

• higher level defenses
• higher level troops (including CC and King)
• the 1-gem boosts
• a good idea of how to push because of Cam's series

Disadvantages I have:

• My BIGGEST disadvantage is being is a small clan with few high-level players; 10 members, no alt in the clan, no max balloons, mostly farmers. HOWEVER, continue on...
• We are doing CWs this week and the next (this is actually a double-edged sword--while it does prevent me from doing push attacks, I can do war attacks during shield time, AND this greatly increases the availability of strong CC troops such as Wizards, Dragons, Balloons, and PEKKA)
• I rushed two of my barracks as a TH7, so they're level 7, but that should be mitigated by the 1-gem boost
• I'm trying to push in a limited period of time (these two weeks during the holidays)
• Not too much experience with pushing

Current offense levels:
Barbarian (5) | Archer (5) | Giant (5) | Goblin (5) | Wall Breaker (5) | Balloon (5) | Wizard (5) | Healer (2) | Dragon (3) | P.E.K.K.A (2)
Minion (3) [-->4 later today] | Hog Rider (1) [I know...] | Valkyrie (1) | Golem (1)
Barbarian King (10)
Lightning Spell (4-->5) | Healing Spell (4) | Rage Spell (5)

My anticipated strategy(-ies):
1400-2000 trophies: I'm 95% sure I'm going to use Barch with 3 Lightning.
2000-2400 trophies: I may still be using Barch, but it will be a lot slower for sure. I may use Spencer23$-style Barch which uses a Golem. I might also try Balloonion.
2400-2600 trophies: I'm honestly not so sure what to use. It's probably going to either be mass Dragons or GoWiPe.
I know I can always snipe, but I don't think it's worthwhile of an experience to intentionally look for snipable bases.

Pros and Cons to each strategy (as well as train times):
Barch
+ Very fast to train (less than 20 minutes without boost, less than 5 minutes with)
+ Going to plow through lower level bases easily
+ Rather cheap
- Primarily a 1-star attack
- May not work in higher leagues, esp. without Archer Queen as a safety net
- Long search time
Barch + Golem
+ Still rather cheap and fast to train (16 minutes 40 seconds if I only use 2 lightning spells, boosting factory and d-rax)
+ Can potentially be a 2-star attack
+ Coolness factor :cool:
- I have 0 experience using
- Not sure how effective it is at TH8, esp. in high crystal
- Potentially long search time
- Costs DE
Balloonion (3 Rage or 1 Heal 2 Rage)
+ Not too long to train. If I boost ONE barracks with balloons, have the other three running loons, and boost spells for 1 heal 2 rage, my army is done in 32 minutes for 28 balloons and 30 minions. 3 rage is done in less than 34 minutes.
+ Can be used for 1-2 stars
- May not be extremely reliable with less-than-max balloons
- I don't have access to max loons in the CC
- Costs a decent amount of elixir and DE, unless I happen to get it along the way
Mass Dragons / All Dragons / Dragon Spam (3 Rage)
+ Can be very reliable 3 stars low in cups, 2 stars a bit higher (1 star is almost guaranteed if executed properly)
+ Probably my best bet alongside GoWiPe for getting the final cups to Masters III
+ Due to CWs, I will have a relatively steady supply of dragons for CC donations
- Takes a bit longer to train (with boost, I can get it done in ~37 minutes though)
- Will cost a LOT of elixir, but the elixir collector boost will definitely help
GoWiPE (2 Golems + 3 PEKKA with either 1 Light 2 Rage or 1 Heal 2 Rage)
+ Reliable strategy for attacking most TH9s as well as rushers and getting 1-2 stars
+ Probably my best bet alongside dragons for getting to Masters III near the end
- I'm too lazy to calculate the complications of training the army with boosts...
- Costs a LOT of DE when continuously raiding, and a chunk of elixir
- I probably won't get reliable clan donations for PEKKA, but I can probably get wizards

Suggestions?
What do you guys think? I'd love to hear suggestions on the armies I'm using, a possible trophy base, army suggestions, etc. I'm going to try to post my results every day. Thanks guys! (if you want to see the current base I'm currently using, the info's in the signature) :o

(Note that all dates are posted in EST, or -5 GMT)

Current Trophy Count
2540 (Crystal I)

My Current Base
Attachment 82540
I found it on a random YouTube video. Southern Teaser style. I have not tested this base out, and I'm open to suggestions! I made a few swaps from the original video in the junk buildings, and I put all the elixir on one side and gold on the right to potentially attract farmers.

Day 1 - December 22, 2014
Start: 1403
Goal: 2000
End: 2034
Other notes: Used Barch, boosting 4 barracks, my BK, and my spell factory. Two boost sessions. 12 gems spent (18 if you count elixir collectors).
Sidenote: What's ironic about today when I'm starting my push is that exactly two years ago, I played Backyard Monsters.... Also, the first attack I started the push off with was against someone named "god". BAM goes god, giving me 31 trophies.

Day 2 - December 23, 2014
Start: 2034
Goal: 2050
End: 2148
Other notes: So I knew that I wouldn't have much time today to attack, but wow. I only got two attacks off for +12 each, but I actually netted +60 from defense today! 3 successful defenses (well, two of them were just people dropping cups...) and two losses for one-star from Barch attacks (-6 and -8). I knew the base I was using was a bit weak to Barch, but I guess that's a good thing in a sense that people with stronger armies that can be two- or three-starring me won't be attacking as often as Barchers. Today I only used one gem to get my BK up for defense.

Day 3 - December 24, 2014
Start: 2148
Goal: 2400
End: 2258
Other notes: So I made a very bad mistake in using two boost sessions for Barch up here.... The first session actually came to a retrogress--I kept losing battles that I thought I could win. The second one was a lot better but barely made it to Crystal II. I had a third session where I started with Barch but tried a couple of different armies (1 attack was a +20 with Balloonion and the other a +22 with GoWiPe), but I noticed that it cost a LOT of resources. 24 gems spent today (3 sessions of 6 gems each + 6 collectors)

Day 4 - December 25, 2014
Start: 2258
Goal: 2300
End: 2312
Other notes: So I got a little nice Xmas present today - first three-star defense. I actually netted -4 from defense because I had a -9 loss earlier and a -22 loss from the three-star, but I got a +27. The three-star attack was also the first time I didn't have CC troops on defense (surprising huh?). Today I had one boosting session with Balloonion (28 loons / 30 mins / 1 heal 2 rage), gaining a total of 63 cups from it (3 attacks). I wasn't raiding much today. If I continued with a second session, I would have probably gained ~140 cups in total. 9 gems spent today (6 on collectors, one on spell factory, one on Barracks, one on BK). Overall, I consider today a lot better than yesterday still, but I may be trouble in terms of elixir now...
Sidenote: The first base I attacked with loonion was a premmie TH9 with one Ground X-bow and the second one wasn't built. I two-starred him, and I check minutes later, and he was his X-bow set to Ground & Air now. :rolleyes:

Day 5 - December 26, 2014
Start: 2312
Goal: 2500
End: 2489
Other notes: So today, I put all of my gold storages (I'm at around the TH8 storage loot available cap) as well as my DE storage on the outside, alongside my TH. It's been amazing so far; three people sniped me and got a minimal amount of trophies, and it's definitely less risky that putting the TH and storages on the inside, potentially attracting two- and three-star attackers. Today I had 5 boost sessions of Balloonion and it's worked out pretty good (I actually found a premmie TH8 and even a TH5 offering insane trophies). So in total, defense resulted in -19 (but hey, it's a lot better than a potential -40 and I'm not as stressed about logging on as soon as an attack is happening). I used 22 gems I think (boosted 1-2 barracks, spell factory, and sometimes my BK, plus my 6 collectors) but I got the Firefighter achievement, giving me 100 more.
Sidenote: There was this really premmie TH8 who attacked me from Masters III that was actually upgrading to TH9, with garbage Air Defense and Wizard Tower levels. What made me salty was that I repeated clicked "Revenge" until it worked (which it didn't), BUT I literally stopped clicking for 30 seconds to check on a clanmate's base. I go back to clicking Revenge... "Village is currently under attack!" So salty.
Oh, and another thing. Despite my DE storage being exposed, I'm actually still gaining DE without even realizing it when I'm raiding (the Crystal I bonus gives more DE than the Minions cost) in addition to passive production thanks to double DE drills.

Day 6 - December 27, 2014
Start: 2489
Goal: 2500
End: 2505
Other notes: Loonion a bit
Day 7 - December 28, 2014
Start: 2505
Goal: 2500
End: 2486
Other notes: Didn't raid at all today.

Day 8 - December 29, 2014
Start: 2486
Goal: 2600
End: 2523
Other notes: Ugh... I lost way too many loonion raids in my first session... so I didn't make it very far. I tried out a different style of loonion - Surgical Strike, and it has allowed me to one-star bases without using spells that I would normally skip.

Day 9 - December 30, 2014
Start: 2523
Goal: 2600
End: 2601
Other notes: 5th builder squad! Loonion just for a bit and got lucky with two TH8s being three-starred.

Day 3 - Although I used Barch, I did not make much progress today in Crystal II, like I had been warned (outside of snipes that I didn't even intentionally search for). However, I tried out 28/30 loonion with 0.1.2 on spells, as well as GoWiPe (2 Gol / 15 Wiz / 3 PEKKA / 12 WB / 3 Barb / 3 Arch) also 0.1.2 on spells.

Day 4 - I switch to 28/30 loonion as my primary strat, because it was actually getting me a lot of two-star victories, and it took ~half an hour to train while only using 2-3 gems from boosting. My loonion comp for max troops/spells at TH8 costs 200K elixir and 270 DE, much more efficient than GoWiPe or Dragons and still capable of getting lots of two-star wins. Also, I swapped my DE storage on the outside, but most people just stole my DE and got 50% anyway. One person even three-starred me for the first time.

Day 5 - Swapped my DE storage, gold storages, and TH to the outside, because after repeated loonion, I had a surprising amount of DE and gold.

1 heal spell on your loons per raid quickly spam thick lines of minions behind the loons so they flow towards the core, as a TH8 this got me to high crystal 2 with 1 spell per raid, raiding premmie to medium TH9s and any TH8 or below I found, it's easy to 3 star max TH7 with this even if you don't use spells, it works very well, even 3 starred a few TH8s with it but it's mostly a 2 star comp because when loons die out near the TH minions usually clean the core and get shot down fast by wiz towers, from high c2 I used hogs, also tried loon surgery while up there, 24 loons 40 mins got me to master 3, from there I used gowipe/gowiva and got to master 2, then I went full ♥♥♥♥♥♥ and upgraded my valkyries mid push (50K DE) and my main comp gowiva (costs 1.6k DE per raid) kind made me run super low on DE so I dropped after spending a week at master 2, hope that helps (my channel has lots of vids of me pushing at TH8 in master and high crystal as well as lots of vids on how my raids and troop comps work, if you wanna check it out at least I'm sure you'll like it)

I'm late th8 and I reached masters in 3 days from crystal 3, using boost only for the first day (didn't have much gems). You can use barch till Crystal 2, afterwards not so much, only if you get lucky with town halls outside the village.

What I used is lvl 4 Hog raiders (30-35) with 3 lvl wizards, 3 lvl5 healing spells and 5 lvl5 archers and rest barbarians (barch is for cc killing). Hogs are cheap, fast to make and they easily destroy maxed th8 and weaker or maxed (but no holes) th9, even th10 without infernos. If you boost spell factory only you get your hog army in about half an hour, not bad.

2 things you only have to be very careful about, when attacking with hogs:
1) always check and kill cc army if there is any!
2) don't choose bases that have lvl10+ king and lvl 5+ queen!

If you hogs are below lvl3 then use something else, baloonion is ok!
Don't go into battle without king, ability is life saver!

Good luck! :o

EDIT: Didn't see that your hogs are lvl1... Get them to lvl4 asap hey're one of the best troops in coc!
After 2200 trophies you can try barching with golem (resource saving), balloonion strategy stated above, or Giants + wizz or valk+wizz!

Basically these last 2 strategies are like cheaper and somewhat weakened gowipes: you make around 10-15 Giants or Valkyries, 2 rages and heal ( or 2 heals and rage) about 10 or so wallbreakers, 10-15 wizards and rest is barch for cc killing, also its good to have 2 or 3 hogs for cc luring. First you deploy giants or valks, right after them wiz and then wb and then your hero. Hope this helps!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bojana

Didn't see that your hogs are lvl1... Get them to lvl4 asap hey're one of the best troops in coc!
After 2200 trophies you can try barching with golem (resource saving), balloonion strategy stated above, or Giants + wizz or valk+wizz!

Basically these last 2 strategies are like cheaper and somewhat weakened gowipes: you make around 10-15 Giants or Valkyries, 2 rages and heal ( or 2 heals and rage) about 10 or so wallbreakers, 10-15 wizards and rest is barch for cc killing, also its good to have 2 or 3 hogs for cc luring. First you deploy giants or valks, right after them wiz and then wb and then your hero. Hope this helps!

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my thread to gowivape: http://forum.supercell.net/showthrea...-comp-gowivape
level 1 valks will still be able to 2 star maxed TH9s, I had lv1 valks when I learnt the strategy and it's been able to 2 star max TH9s since then, lv2 valks do do a lot better against infernos, though you don't need to raid TH10s if you only want to reach master 3

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jason5267

1 heal spell on your loons per raid quickly spam thick lines of minions behind the loons so they flow towards the core, as a TH8 this got me to high crystal 2 with 1 spell per raid, raiding premmie to medium TH9s and any TH8 or below I found, it's easy to 3 star max TH7 with this even if you don't use spells, it works very well, even 3 starred a few TH8s with it but it's mostly a 2 star comp because when loons die out near the TH minions usually clean the core and get shot down fast by wiz towers, from high c2 I used hogs, also tried loon surgery while up there, 24 loons 40 mins got me to master 3, from there I used gowipe/gowiva and got to master 2, then I went full ♥♥♥♥♥♥ and upgraded my valkyries mid push (50K DE) and my main comp gowiva (costs 1.6k DE per raid) kind made me run super low on DE so I dropped after spending a week at master 2, hope that helps (my channel has lots of vids of me pushing at TH8 in master and high crystal as well as lots of vids on how my raids and troop comps work, if you wanna check it out at least I'm sure you'll like it)

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I used the first loon strat as well when i last pushed. I found it worked well ON THE RIGHT BASES. Against the right kind of base it worked flawlessly. I ended up switching to 24 loons, and the rest minions becasue it was a little more versatile. I also used 2 heal spells (usually only went through 2 wiz towers before the th) and one lighting for cc troops. I made it to c2 with that. Coulda gone farther but got bored. I would reccomend saving all expensive armies for until you can't win without them.

So about an hour ago, I hit exactly 1800 trophies after the last attack of my boost session with Barch!
Attachment 82580

Unfortunately, I suffered my first loss (21 trophies) as a 46% due to running out of time... (I had 2 lightning and a CC of wizards left). :(

But thanks guys for your suggestions! I'm going to try out the different balloonion comps and see what works when I hit high crystal. I guess I'll try the GoWiVaPe if loonion doesn't work out, but I want to use cheap armies as much as I can before moving onto expensive armies. :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Firestar493

So about an hour ago, I hit exactly 1800 trophies after the last attack of my boost session with Barch!
Attachment 82580

Unfortunately, I suffered my first loss (21 trophies) as a 46% due to running out of time... (I had 2 lightning and a CC of wizards left). :(

But thanks guys for your suggestions! I'm going to try out the different balloonion comps and see what works when I hit high crystal. I guess I'll try the GoWiVaPe if loonion doesn't work out, but I want to use cheap armies as much as I can before moving onto expensive armies. :)

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Good luck dude.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Firestar493

So about an hour ago, I hit exactly 1800 trophies after the last attack of my boost session with Barch!
Attachment 82580

Unfortunately, I suffered my first loss (21 trophies) as a 46% due to running out of time... (I had 2 lightning and a CC of wizards left). :(

But thanks guys for your suggestions! I'm going to try out the different balloonion comps and see what works when I hit high crystal. I guess I'll try the GoWiVaPe if loonion doesn't work out, but I want to use cheap armies as much as I can before moving onto expensive armies. :)

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I'm not saying barch for 50%, you can 3 star TH7s with barch quite easily with 1 heal spell per raid, it's ridiculous how many TH7 snipers there are in crystal 3, I have more TH7 & TH8 than TH9s and TH10s, I'm at 2180 cups at the moment (I think? maybe a few up or a few down) and I actually find more strong bases in gold 1 on my TH9 account, I think it's because all the noob TH7s and TH8s think they are cool if they snipe to crystal league and get killed on defense, you really should find easy people to barch up untill c2, from there on up it takes longer so bring the loons out or hogs, when I push I try not to use comps that need all 3 spells to win, eg. at c2-c1 I used like +-20 hogs and 1 or 2 heal spells per raid just to cleanup enough defenses for my infantry troops to pickup 1 or 2 stars, never raid cup offers for lower than 20, unless they have good loot