Custom Army Compositions - Taking it to the next level….
The Builder Base has been around for about a year now. That year has been focused on building our games - leveling up and upgrading both offense and defense. We’ve developed a number of great attack strategies along the way including…
Each attack strategy has its strengths and weaknesses. As players mature their offense, they often choose just 2 or maybe 3 to focus on, providing enough strategies to get you ahead in trophy rankings so you can pull in more loot to upgrade your game. The key to being successful is both having multiple strategies at your disposal and - perhaps more importantly - knowing when to use each to the greatest effect.
This latter point comes with a familiarity with the game and different strats. For example - there was a while there when we saw lots of bases with a big, open middle and solid wall barrier all around the base. This type of base is ideally suited to attacks by Boxer Giants and Cannon Carts - whether you go with a straight up GiCart or bring along a camp of Bombers to break down the walls (GiBoCC), and later the PEKKA Cart strategy wreaked maximum mayhem on these base designs as well. Many diamond base layouts are susceptible to air attacks - the walls are designed to thwart the ground attack, but Minion Drops, Mitch, and Baby Dragon strats fly right over the walls.
This is where the generic attack strats absolutely excel. However…the base designers are always coming up with new bases, analyzing the AI’s response to building placement and wall layouts, hunting for that ever elusive “balanced” base design that will work against all strats. BH8 represents the current end-game and with maxed buildings/walls, all of the possibilities have opened up.
We are entering a new phase of the game’s evolution. The future of attacks on the Builder Base centers on the ability to use the 1 minute preview time to do just that - preview your opponent’s base design, ferret out its weaknesses/deficiencies, and compose a custom attack strategy that will yield the highest destruction percentage.
I’ve talked about this in the past as I break down base layouts to choose the right general strat and deployment vector. Placement of AirBombs on the edge makes for an ideal point of deploying your Drop Ships and Beta Minions in a Minion Drops attack; a diamond base with the MultiMortar at the apex of the base is often the perfect target for a Mitch. (And I already mentioned how to take down those big, open, box bases.)
An even more advanced technique for planning an attack includes dissecting the base into zones and/or layers then using the strengths of each troop to take out that particular zone/layer. Consider each troop:
- Raged Barbarian - Available in massive numbers and fights with absolute fury to cause massive damage and distract defenses.
- Sneaky Archer - Can stand in the middle of a bunch of defenses, invisible, and fire upon them without taking any damage for a limited period of time.
- Boxer Giants - A beefy tank that soaks up damage to create a protected space for other troops.
- Beta Minion - A ranged, air attacker who can fire on a defense from outside its effective targeting range for multiple shots and attack ground-only defenses with impunity.
- Bomber - Takes out walls to completely disrupt troop pathing created by the designer.
- Baby Dragon - Another raged attacker with range and high hit points.
- Cannon Cart - Ranged attacker that causes heavy damage and grabs 300 HP when it is first taken down so it can keep doing so.
- Night Witch - The ultimate tool for distracting air defenses and providing mass air attack damage with Bats.
- Drop Ship - The air tanking equivalent of the Boxer Giant, soaking up damage from air targeting defenses.
- Super PEKKA - The toughest troop in the game, capable of taking down walls, soaking up tons of damage (especially from the Giant Cannon), and not only does heavy damage with each hit but explodes at the end for even more damage.
If you can break a base down to its component design, you can design an army composition that uses the strength of each of these troops to achieve maximum destruction. This is how many of the players at the top of the leaderboard currently play and it is a technique you can use throughout your progression in the game.
I think this line of thinking really began back at BH5 with the popular Mass Sneaky Archer attack strategy. To be effective with an all Sneaky Archer army comp, you really needed to break an opponent’s base down and carefully trickle Sneaky Archers into the base, just a few at a time. It also introduced a whole new element of time management and many players ran out of time on their 3 minute clock.
I’ll often break a base down into a junk building layer, then particular defensive zones such as air, ground, defenses to prevent Cannon Carts, defenses to prevent the Battle Machine, and so forth. This determines both the types of troops I’ll need and how I’ll deploy them. In most cases, the first step is to eliminate buildings around the outside for both percentage points and to clear the path to the Builder Hall. This can be accomplished using Sneaky Archers and/or Beta Minions in most cases. Sometimes, it will make sense to use Cannon Carts for their greater range. In all cases, you need to keep an eye on the placement of defenses to prevent your troops from hitting their targeting range too soon. The next step is to continue clearing the path to the Builder Hall while further eliminating those defenses that could take out your final kill squad.
The final kill squad are the troops you hold back to take down the Builder Hall itself. Some players use Beta Minions, others use Sneaky Archers, and still others will use other troops like the Cannon Cart. The Super PEKKA has value here as well - if you can clear a wide berth, she will break down walls and head straight to the Builder Hall where she can take it down even up against a Giant Cannon that sits right next to it!
As you work your way into the center of the base, you’ll come under heavy fire. A typical Builder Base layout has a strong hub design - even if there are a few defenses on the outer perimeter, the center of the base is almost always where the most concentrated source of fire is stationed. Tanking is your friend here - Boxer Giants and Drop Ships for ground and air, respectively, and the Super PEKKA for ground and distracting the Giant Cannon.
If all these tactics sound familiar, it’s because they are all individual components of the many attack strategies we’ve already discussed these last several months. We’re simply taking these smaller pieces out of the bigger puzzle and constructing new strategies on the fly for the win.
I have some videos to share with replays and further discussion of customizing your attack strategies. The First Look video talks about how you can slim down multiple attack strategies to take down a base layout that is essentially a two part hybrid. The second goes into the more complex, custom strats that are designed in the opening seconds of an attack with some replays provided by forum regular, Curtisd2.
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