Aníbal's 3 Star Guide: Queen Walk GoVaHo
Introduction:
Hey guys, i'm "Aníbal", co-leader at the clan "Buckeye Bandits". This is a guide directed towards my clanmates that want to learn this attack strategy but I welcome anyone that is interested to try this out and give me feedback. I have been using this strategy for more than a year now and it has given me consistent 3 stars against most of the bases I come up against in war. All that said, this is still a Basic guide for people that want to start learning how to 3 star. Keep in mind that this might not be the best strategy for every base but is definitely a "go to" strategy for most of the th9 war layouts you find out there. Also, the more experience you get doing queen walk govaho's the more details you will notice that weren't covered by this guide, if that is the case, I invite you to comente what you think is missing so that I can include it in the future (I will credit you).
Troop/Spell Composition
1 Golem (from cc) / 8-10 Valkyries / 13-10 Hog Riders / 6 Wizards / 0-4 wall breakers / 3 Archers
2 Poisons / 2 Heals / 0-1 Jump / 1-2 Rage
Planning the attack
Step 1: Do I have a free lure?
what is a free lure?
A free lure is when you are able to bring out the clan castle troops using only 1-3 hogs and under low risk circumstances.
How do I know if the base I am attacking has a free lure?
First off, you have to scout the base and click on top of the clan castle so that you can see it's radius.
If you see any defenses that are inside the radius of the cc, than you have a free lure, because you can send a few hogs to those defenses to bring out the cc troops.
Example 1:
On this layout you can see that you have a free lure from the NW side. You can drop 2 hogs on the archer tower and it will probably lure out all the troops inside the clan castle.
Example 2:
On this layout you can see that you don't have a free lure from any side. This is what will happen on most of the cases.
If the base does have a free lure, the first thing you will do in your attack is kill the cc troops.
How do I kill the cc troops after luring it?
Once all the troops are out of the clan castle, drop your queen. The cc troops will start going after the queen, once they start getting close, drop 1 poison spell between the troops and the queen and another poison on top of the queen. Once the cc troops are on top of the queen use her ability.
If you don't have a free lure, you will not kill the cc troops at the start, instead you will start by dropping your queen. So if you don't have a free lure, skip to step 2.
Step 2: Deciding where to drop the Archer Queen.
There are a few things to consider when deciding where to drop the queen.
1. Xbows (top priority)
The problem with xbows (especially when they are lvl 3) is that they have high dps and long range. An archer queen under 4 healers can tank around 150 dps without losing basicly any health, So in general, if your queen is tanking 2 standard point defenses (Level 11 archer tower or canon) at once, she shouldn't lose any health. Now if she is tanking a level 3 xbow and 1 standard point defense, she ends up slowly dieing. So a basic rule for dealing with xbows is: If you can't reach them, avoid them.
But how to I know if my queen can reach an xbow or not?
The queen has a range of 5 tiles, so if anythin is within that range she can attack it.
As you can see in this image, if you count the tiles on the floor, you will notice that the xbows is within 5 tiles range from the outside of the walls. So for example, if my queen where on top of the red dot, her range could reach all the white dots which are the tiles within 5 tiles of her. An easy way to help you count tiles is knowing that walls use up 1x1 tile and defenses use up 3x3 tiles.
On the image below you can see that this xbow is unreachable by the queen because it is not whitin the 5 tiles range(white squares), considering she is on top of the red square.
Sometimes the smallest distance between the queen and the xbow will be set up as a diagonal, in these cases you can use pythagorean theorem to calculate the distance.
My queen can't reach the xbow, how do I avoid it?
Scout the bases and analyze the xbow range by clicking on top of it.
On this base, for example, as you can see I dont have a free lure, so now i have to decide where to drop my queen. Both the xbows are out of range of my archer queen, so I want to avoid them.
On the images below you can see that I click on top of the xbows to see its range, that's when I come to the conclusion that if I want to avoid the xbows I should avoid dropping my archer queen on the East and SW sides. So I can drop her either on the North/NW side or the South side.
2. Air Defenses (Medium Priority)
The problem with air defenses is that they can target the healers that are keeping the archer queen alive. If this happens your queen walk will fail because she will end up dying without getting enough value out of her walk.
This is an example of a bad positioned AQ/Healers. As you can see the queen cant reach the AD because the smallest distance between her and the AD is 6 tiles and the queen's range is only 5 tiles, so she will walk right past it. As the walk continues the healers will be dragged along behind her and and end up getting in range of the Air Defense.
How do I know if my queen can reach the AD?
As i explained in the xbow section of this guide, the queen's range is 5 tiles long, in case you haven't seen that part go check it out.
Why did you give this only medium priority?
In general this isn't a very common mistake, mostly because the air defenses tend to be either to deep inside the base, making their range irrelevante to queen walks, or to exposed, making them reachable to queen walks. What you have to be careful about is when your queen goes around corners just like in the example above. That's when most of these mistakes happen so always keep that in mind when you decide where to drop your queen.
3. Air sweepers / High DPS / Enemy Heroes (Low Priority)
Why are these things a problem?
Sometimes you will find air sweepers that will be pointing towards a direction where you plan on pathing through with your queen walk. If this is the case, what will happen is, instead of being able to tank 150 DPS like a queen under 4 healers normally, she now can only tank around 80 DPS (which is equivalent to 1 standard point defense , like a lvl 11 archer tower or cannon). But most of the times your queen will be under attack by more than 1 standard point defense. So what will happen is, if you queen isnt able to deal with the sweeper or the point defenses, she will end up dying.
Example
Sometimes you will find a large group of point defenses in a place where you were planning on dropping your queen. The problem with this is that, since the queen can only tank 2 standard point defenses at once, most of the times the queen will slowly lose her health and end up dying.
Example
Sometimes you will find enemy heroes in a place where you were planing on dropping your queen. The problem is that he will and the defenses next to him will probably end up killing your queen.
Why did you put all this in the same category and why did you set this as low priority?
All though these are all different problems the solution is simple and the same for all of them: use 1 rage spell.
In case you dont know, healers are also affected from the rage spell ability so if you drop a rage spell on top of both your queen and your healers, she goes from only being able to tank 150 DPS to being able to tank 400 DPS.
So be prepared to drop that rage between the healers and the Archer Queen. And also, NEVER USE QUEEN ABILITY TO DEAL WITH ANYTHING OTHER THAN CC TROOP. This is important because some times the base has valks in the cc, and a rage spell isnt enough to keep your queen alive against valks, so always save that ability to deal with CC.
4. Clan Castle Lure (High Priority)
*This section of the plan is only for the bases that don't have free lures. If the layout has a free lure, you dont have to take this section in consideration when planing the attack. But for the layouts that doesn't have a free lure, continue reading.
This is the hardest part of the attack so make sure you plan this out very well. Since the layout you're attacking doesn't have a free lure, you have to find a way to lure the cc with a few hogs. The hogs will always target the nearest defenses, so, if you take out, with your queen, the defenses that are preventing you from having a free lure, your problem is solved.
Example: So, after analyzing this layout our attacker noticed that the base doesn't have a free lure, but has exposed xbows, so he decided he wanted to drop his queen NE to get the xbow. But since there is high DPS in that area, he was prepared to use his rage to keep queen alive. Now he only has to figure out one thing to finish planning his queen walk: how will he lure cc?
In yellow I marked the defenses that are preventing him from having a free cc lure, so, if he takes out those defenses with his AQ, he will be able to lure out the cc troops with only a few hogs from the defenses marked in blue.
So here's how it all went down:
Step 3: Kill Squad
As soon as you use your queen ability, you should start this step immediately. Time is always an issue when you're doing queen walk attacks so don't waist it.
Golem
The first part of this step if deciding where you want to drop your golem. This is a very simple task, all you have to do is take some things in consideration:
- You always want to deploy your golem somewhere your Archer queen will be in the future. This is to prevent your her from dying alone while your KS in on the other side of the base (and thats what normally happens if you don't do this).
- You always want to deploy your golem close enough to the queen for her not to end up dying anyways. I say this because sometimes people end up deploying the golem to far away from the queen. Even if she would technically be in that place in the future, if its too far away from her she wont get there.
- You always want to deploy your golem as far as possible from the queen to get as much value from her walk. I know this might seem like it contradicts 2. But the truth is, the secrect to finding the perfect place to drop the golem is finding the balance between "close enough to be safe" and "far enough" to be worth it"
- always have an alternative plan in case the queen goes the opposite direction. This is probably the most important tip on making your plan, sometimes you make a plan expecting your queen to go one direction, but than she ends up going the opposite. When this happens and you're not prepared you end up not knowing where to drop your golem, so always be prepared.
- make sure you drop your golem a place where he will tank all the defenses that might target the wizards you will use to funnel. I will explain this better soon.
On this attack, that we already analyzed the from the last step, the attacker expected the archer queen to go West after killing the cc, so he planned on deploying the golem on the west cannon, but, just in case she went East, he had an alternative plan to deploy the golem on the East cannon.
Funneling Wizards
As soon as your golem is distrating all the defenses the might target your golem, start deploying your funneling wizards immediately.
An important tip when you are making a funnel is that most of the times your queen already made half the funnel for you, If thats the case, you will only need 3 wizards to make the other side of the funnel, since you will be bringing 6 you will have 3 for clean up. If by any chance your queen doesn't make half the funnel for you, use 2 wiz on each side and save 2 wiz for cleanup. Always have cleanup troops !
on this attack yellow = golem, light blue = wiz and orange is the queen half of the funnel.
Valkyries + Barbarian King
As soon as the funnel is made drop your Barbarian King and all your valks in the middle of the funnel.
You will use your jumo to get your Kill Squad to the core and once they are there use 1 heal spell on top of them.
*2 minute rule: It is extremly important that all your kill squad is deployed before 2:00, this means that your golem should be going done at around 2:15 min left. If your killsquad isn't all deployed by 2 min you're likely to run out of time.
Step 4: Surgical hogs
As soon as the kill squad is at the core of the base and tanking all the reamining defenses, deploy your hogs on the distracted defenses.
If you have more than 8 valks and less than 13 hogs than use your second heal on the KS, if not, use them on the hogs.
Guys, just a quick notice, I know that steps 3 and 4 are alot more sloppy compared to steps 1 and 2. Thats because I've been working on this non-stop for a few hours now and I need a breack. I will edit steps 3 and 4 troughout this week to make it as good as steps 1 and 2 so stay tuned, I want this guide to be a refrence for clans to suggest to their members so any feedback is welcome, tell me if you didn't understand any part of this guide. Also, I will be posting some replays from my own attacks using this strategy in the future with how I planned it, how it went and everything, so stay tuned!
Credits: I want to tank OG Mudbone, Doug and TreadCutter for assisting me in the process of making this guide.
Originally Posted by OnomatopoeiaDeerMeatMan
