Choosing Your Troops

Pekkas vs. Valkyries

Generally, I find valkyries to be superior to pekkas.  They have much faster movement speed, they can attack two buildings at once, and they generally take down buildings much faster than pekkas.

However, pekkas have their advantages as well: they are immune to spring traps, they have much higher health, and they hold up well against giant bombs and wizards towers (unlike valkyries).

So, how do you pick which one to use?  For me, the deciding factor is whether or not the enemy base is built with well placed spring traps.  Take this base for example:

The three white circles highlight one-space gaps in walls, which 99% of the time means there's a spring trap there.  The two white lines highlight narrow lanes which are also usually filled with spring traps.  Since a base can have a total of up to 6 spring traps, a kill squad of 8 valkyries can be flung to pieces easily if all six or even half of the spring traps gets your valkyries.  For this specific base, a pekka is highly recommended, because pekkas are too heavy to trigger springs.

Another factor to include in the decision of pekkas vs. valkyries is whether or not the buildings are spaced far apart, or very tightly clustered in your enemy's base.  If all or most buildings are spaced out and not touching one another, the valkyrie advantage of hitting two buildings at once is negated and pekkas becomes a more favorable choice.  If the enemy has a very concentrated and tightly grouped base, valkyries are recommended, because they can rip up 2 buildings simultaneously AND because rage and heal spells will cover more buildings for the valkyries to stay under.

The last factor to include in deciding whether to use pekkas or valkyries is funnel difficulty.  Pekkas are much easier to funnel than valkyries, because valkyries are willing to walk a longer distance than pekkas to avoid attacking walls.  So to funnel a valkyrie squad, you need to make a larger funnel than you would for a pekka squad, eliminating 3 or 4 buildings on either side of your funnel.  Valkyries are also notorious for going into a funnel and then running right back out to the perimeter again.  The reason this happens is because valkyries will actively seek out buildings that are directly next to other buildings, so they can attack two at once.  Sometimes valkyries will start pushing into a base, but they'll start working their way back out again because there are clusters of collectors or builders huts outside that draw them away.  So valkyries are a little more unwieldy in this regard, and pekkas are usually easier to "steer" into your funnel.

So in summary:

Pekkas

• Good balance of health and offense
• Immune to spring traps
• Resistant to giant bombs and wizard towers
• Easier to funnel/predict movement
• Better for widely spaced enemy bases

Valkyries

• Very high offense, low defense troop
• Can attack two buildings at once
• Weak to traps and wizard towers
• Difficult to funnel/predict movement
• Better for tightly grouped enemy bases

Hogs vs. Balloons

For three-stage attacks, hogs or balloons are usually used to eliminate the remaining defenses on the outer rim of the base.  The primary factor is choosing which to use is the air defense placement.  If all the air defenses are in a single compartment in the core, or if your kill squad will likely destroy all the air defenses on its march to the core, balloons are preferred.  Take a look at the following base:

In the picture above, all the air defenses are in a single large compartment in the core.  If you can funnel your kill-squad into that compartment, it should be easy to take them all down, and balloons can finish off the remaining defenses.

So, what advantages do balloons have over hogs?  The balloons only real weakness is the air defense (same with dragons, air defenses are the only real thing that stand in their way).  When you factor in traps that can harm balloons vs hogs, balloons easily have the advantage.  Enemy bases can have a total of 4 black air bombs at TH9 (and only 2 black air bombs at TH8) and 4 red air bombs.  Each black air bomb can only kill 1 balloon, and it takes about 3 red air bombs to kill a group of balloons (though most bases don't bunch up their red air bombs like that).  Compare that with hogs' weaknesses.  Hogs are weak to spring traps, and each spring trap can spring up to three hogs.  With 6 total spring traps on a base, spring traps can eliminate up to 3 x 6 = 18 hogs in a worst case scenario (!).  Black air bombs can only eliminate up to 2 or 4 balloons by comparison (1 bomb per balloon).  Hogs are also weak to giant bombs, especially if two are next to each other, which most bases will do.  It would take at least 3 red air bombs grouped together to wipe out a group of balloons, and most bases do not cluster their red air bombs together.

Balloons are, however, susceptible to skeleton traps set to air mode, because balloons have no way of fighting back against air troops.  Hogs are weak to skeleton traps too, but once all the defensive buildings are cleared, they will attack the skeletons, so this gives hogs an advantage in this regard.

The other advantage balloons have over hogs is that they are an air unit, so they are immune to cannons, mortars, and the Barbarian King.  That's essentially half as many defensive buildings that can hurt you compared to using hogs.