Funneling Troops

To learn how to funnel troops, you first need to know how the troops "think".  Most troops will attack any building without preference, but some troops will target specific structures, like how giants and hogs only attack defensive buildings.  But the number one rule all troops will follow is this: attack the easiest building to reach.  Oftentimes, this means they will attack the building closest to where you dropped them.  BUT, if the closest building is behind a wall, most troops would rather walk to a farther away building rather than try to break down a wall.

Let's take a look at an example base:

This is a pretty typical base layout: multiple compartments/wall layers, town hall in the center, defensive buildings behind walls, and collectors and barracks lining the outer edge.  Let's see what happens when we drop all of our troops in a single location:

If you dump all your troops in a single point, they will first attack the nearest perimeter building, and then move on to the next nearest perimeter building, and so on until they run out of perimeter buildings, at which point they will finally start attacking walls and working their way inside the base.  We've seen this happen a million times before, the pekkas or valks or king "refuses" to go into the core, and they end up walking around the base getting shot at by all the defensive buildings.  The reason they do this is because they are following the path of least resistance, and troops would much rather walk 6 tiles than attack a building behind a wall that's 2 tiles away.  One way to help counter this is to use wallbreakers, quadruple-quake, or jump spells to break open walls.  But the best way to direct your troops is through funneling.

To funnel this base is particularly easy, and can be done by eliminating the following buildings:

And that's all it takes to funnel!  Just envision the path your troops will take as they stroll around the perimeter, and eliminate 2 or more buildings along that path.  This will force your troops to stop following that path and move inward instead.  Let's see what happens when we drop troops from the top of the map after we've eliminated those 4 buildings:

So, the troops will still go to the two storages at the top because they are closest to the drop point, but rather than following the white arrows and walking ALL the way around to hit the next storage lining the perimeter, they will attack the walls and start moving in (indicated by the green arrows).  As lazy as troops are to attack walls, they are even lazier to walk that far to attack another building.  For good measure, most troops will not choose to walk the span of two standard buildings.  If I only eliminated one of the collectors or barracks on either side, the troops will most likely have walked a little further and continued walking around the perimeter.  Remember, all the good stuff you want to destroy is nested deep inside the base, and you want to try your best to get your troops to NOT walk the circle of death around the perimeter of the base, where they will be destroying useless buildings like army camps, barracks, and collectors.  Always funnel your troops into the core!

And in case you're wondering where the name "funnel" comes from: