Is it just me or is Barchers the only effective looting strategy?

I started in June last year and have nearly maxed my Th9 with the exception of walls (which are half lego and half skull ) and my heroes (Level 10). Other clan members have been playing for years and struggle to keep their builders busy with their giant-healer strats.

I have 2 barracks on barbs and 2 making archers and only use spells for war or AMAZING loot. We war everyday and doesnt really bother me.. barchers @ level 6 costs around 48k and i just hit collectors for 200k to 350k in gold and elixer. Yr camps are full in no time and even did a trophy push to master with them just for the gems.Seems obvious if u need loot, spend minimum on troops for maximum reward !!

Any one else have a cheap attack strategy?

I switched to giant archers. I use maybe four or six giants to take place of barbs if its a regular collector raid. If I find a honey hole I use all fourteen giant, royals, two wizards, archer and spells. Only reason its not barch all the time is I'd missed out on good storage runs potentially.

it's effective because you only go for collector raids
there is one similar that is faster as more effective than barch, but costs DE

it's BAM, barch with minions, faster because minions cooks in Dark barracks
more effective is subjective, but for me, it is more effective
since Minions are air, and has high DPS/housing space compared to Barch
down side is they cost DE (if you're conservative to DE)

I know everyone says to use barch but I would rather go for storages that have good enough loot. Barch doesn't get me deep enough into the storages, what I basically always use is.....

10X Giants l5
10X WB l5
20X Minions l3
25x Goblins l5
20X Barbarians l5
40X Archers l5
King l7 if ready

2-4 Wiz in place of a few of each: Minions/Barbarians/Goblins (usually if army camps are full I'll train up a few wiz just because)

Check for CC troops, lure if needed, drop giants toward the storages with WBs to get in......

Barbs then archers to back up the giants, and also around the base if collector's are full......

Then I'll drop my King behind the barbs and archers.

Goblins when storages are exposed....

Minions to pick off remaining buildings or to take out storages like with Goblins.

I almost NEVER use spells farming, less than 5% but if I do its a rage spell to get to the storages before they are taken out.. ...

This is more expensive but works for me way better than barch......

Keep in mind I almost always boost 3 Barracks + my King......

Without boosts I think the time wouldn't be worth it and I would do BAM instead. .......

I'm th8 in gold iii atm......

I usually average ~300-350k combined Gold and Elixir per raid, right now all elixir upgrades finished so only looking for gold, in that case I average around 175k gold per raid......

I don't have to press next a bunch, silver I I did but gold iii has better loot.

My main target for storages are th7s, for collector's it's whoever hahaha.

Good luck: )

There's a dark elixir strat that will lose you pretty much all raids but is very good for farming.
Consists of 18 giants, 10 wall breakers, and the rest goblins. Also, bring one heal spell. Use the giants and wb to break into the core(or wherever the de is) and the gobs to take it. Using this, I farmed 10k-15k a day without boosting barracks and without being on fo hours at a time. I would just get on, raid, and get off.

barch is for collector raiding so maybe not always.
League farming and storage raiding would be effective too.

Also for easy DE:

If you have money to spend on gems boosting DE Drills helps quite a bit.....

Obviously max your DE Drills ASAP.......

@ th7 = 15 gems = 1,080 more DE/day
@ th8 = 30 gems = 2,160 more DE/day
@ th9 = 60 gems = 4,800 more DE/day
@ th10 = 90 gems = 7,200 more DE/day

Helps get you enough DE for hero upgrades and research then you don't have to worry about farming for DE and instead just focus on gold and Elixir.

It is not the only way way but it is efficient because the army composition is cheap and fast to train. I may include some giants and wall breakers so still possible to go deeper into some bases if you have a hero.

Barch is an effective combination in terms of time than lure, IMHO.

I've replaced barbs with giants to a 124 archs, 12 giants, 8 wb and 4 hogs (this just to take out any cc if needed), 2 rages and 2 heals (droping it just if the amount of resources is interesting enough).

To choose a combination I think most on time than resources wasted.

Before this I've used barchs for farming but I realized some facts:

1º) Barchs many times didn't let me go for storages at downtown, just collectors out of walls.
2º) I can, and usually do, put giants like barbs, just for archers coverage to take collectors out of walls.

So, IMHO, giarchs is a more effective combination. And in terms of time very similar to barch.

Im a big fan of bam but if you like barch Ive seen many people use gibarch (barch with giants) but you said you mainly hit collectors and thats how I farm to. Barch and bam are best for that imho.

I don't like to spend a whole lot of time hitting next. Although, I just hit TH10 this week in Gold 2 so 40-50 nexts is pretty common.

However, at th9 I exclusively used barch with 8 wall breakers. I liked BAM, but it usually makes it more difficult to upgrade your heroes since you are using about 360 de per fight. Faster army means you can attack more bases, and you can still go positive in de farming, but it's very difficult to make as much net positive as when you are using barch.

So I did my barracks like this:
Barracks 1: 4 wall breakers, 67 barbs
Barracks 2: 4 wall breakers, 67 barbs
Barracks 3: 75 archers
Barracsk 4: 75 archers

Then I would search for 300k or more gold/elixir to steal. If it was just in collectors, I wouldn't use wall breakers or king. If I found a base with good loot in the storages, I would use heroes, spells, and wall breakers to help my barch army get to it.

These are two different styles of raiding so they require a different strategy. When you are going for collectors, you just want to spread your troops out to minimize the effectiveness of the defender's aoe defenses. When you are going for storages, you still want to start off spread out to take out the outside buildings, but then you want to group your barbs/archers (typically in two different groups). You will typically want to use your healing spells on groups of barbs that are stuck on a wall in front of a wizard tower and/or a healing spell in the middle where mortars are trying to blow them up.

A few rules to farming effectively with this:
1) Try not to use heroes or go for storages unless you have at least 2 healing spells
2) Try not to use healing spells or go for storages when your heroes aren't available
3) There are always exceptions to every rule (weak th8 base with high amounts of loot in storages will still be good targets when you don't have either spells or heroes available)
4) You will want to avoid going for storages on th9/10 bases, especially with high level walls.

I hope this helps. I found it to be an extremely efficient method of farming as it allowed me to go for high amounts of loot no matter whether it was in collectors or storages.

By the way, if you are newer to th9 and you want to use this strat, upgrade barbs to level 6, but do NOT upgrade archers to level 6 while you are still farming elixir for drills and army camps. The archer upgrade is 6 million elixir, plus your archer cost goes up by 100 per archer. That's an extra 10k elixir per attack for 2 dps per archer. The extra 4 hp they get help your attack in two scenarios.
1) Level 5 mortars won't 1-shot them anymore. This is only beneficial against weak TH8's who haven't upgraded their mortars from TH7 yet.
2) Level 6 wizard towers won't 1-shot them anymore. This is max level for TH8 and one of their more expensive upgrades so it's kinda rare that you even want to barch a base like this anyway.

Some FYI showing why level 6 archers is a ♥♥♥♥ upgrade:
Level 8 cannons don't 1-shot level 5 archers, but level 9 cannons 1-shot both level 5 and level 6 archers.
Archer towers levels 8 through 11 will always 2-shot both level 5 and level 6 archers.
Level 5 teslas don't 1-shot level 5 archers. Level 6 teslas 1-shot both level 5 and level 6 archers.
Only maxed out little bombs (th9 upgrade) will 1-shot level 5 archers

Thanks some great accurate guides there.. i agree 100% with the above. Though i really don't mind hitting next a few extra times, as by the time I return home my next army is ready or nearly there. Nothing worse than waiting while the last of yr troops cook.
I will use spells if i have the spell factory on boost but try not to gem too often. i usually just carry 2x rages and a 2xheal. Occasionally a jump spell, was suprised how effective it was paired with a rage in the centre of the base on storages with just my barchers. But only use them on good loot and never collectors.
I also used BAM for a while and found although armies were ready faster in most scenarios more archers allowed me to overwelm defences where my minions (only Lv3) were getting picked off and in Gold leagues it was slowing my hero progress.
I don't know how many others do this but when i first upgrade my TownHall I max all elixer upgrades so now all i focus on is Heros and defences. That way every drop of elixer goes on walls and Lab upgrades. i just fill my storages, then when a builders free spend elixer on walls and put him back to work on a xbow or cannon etc. Nearly halfway through lego walls and tossing up lavas or not before Th10. I hear the loot penalty is crazy! Lol
I will practice though with a few more wallbreakers and maybe even a couple of giants. Thanks for the input ! Appreciate it

I also was a fan of BARCH into the day I start using GiBarch (idk how it is the name) with Giants working as Golem likes.

I drop Giants to draw 2 or 3 Mortairs fire away and get into the center with Barbarians and Archers (with BK is like 50% of times 3 stars).

Giants also use the same amount of time per space to create so I don't actually lose time.

I'm putting one Barraks with Giants another with Arches and the last with Barbs, takes around 20 minutes to make with only 3 Barraks.

It's certainly the most efficient strategy for the overall recruitment being very low that can yield large amounts of loot. Only problem comes up when you want to hit the stores deeper insid the base for loot and the splash damage decimates your troops. And sometimes people don't really want to spend as much as 10-15 minutes hitting the next button, and then realizing you spent close to 100k in gold searching for a base with stocked collectors and mines. But nonetheless, barcher with 4 wall breakers is always my go to for looting, unless I am testing new attack strategies.