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Hog 2.6: the deck with the potential to outplay |
There is a Hog 2.6 discord server you can join. It has videos against most matchups and you can talk to the rest of us pushing with 2.6: https://discord.gg/fXUqFYx
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Author: David Song,
Date Created: September 28, 2019
IGN: 2%-battery.
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If you are looking for info for a specific matchup that isn’t covered here, please let me know through a comment here. I’ll try to research them and write what I find here.
If you have any more questions, put them into the FAQ section (or anywhere in this document really), and I’ll answer them.
- This guide & other guides
- Summary
- Basics
- Starting plays
- IMPORTANT
- Videos & Gameplay Flow
- Basic Gameplay Flow
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Strengths
- Weaknesses
- General Tips & Concepts
- Difficulties that I faced in the past and present
- Differences in single & double elixir
- Biggest ways to improve
- Auto Pig Push
- Ice Golem + Hog Details
- Anti-Tornado
- Anti-Tornado slidelines
- Against Inferno Tower and other buildings
- Against Mega Knight/Pekka/Bowler
- First Plays
- Interactions of 2.6 (Please Read)
- Other cards’ interactions with 2.6
- Dealing with Barbarian Hut
- King Tower Activations
- Skeleton & Ice Spirit Tech
- Recognizing Decks
- Matchups (moved to another doc)
This guide aims to figure out how to play against every matchup. This guide is not complete and far from perfect, so feel free to let me know if I’m wrong or what you guys think, have questions about, and what to add. This Google doc should allow anyone with the link to comment, so please do. This is an extensive document, so please look through the table of contents for what you need. If you find that you have a question or some information is missing, please comment here directly.
If you're above 8k in trophies, you probably should just go to the matchups section of this guide.
If you are here to complain about the deck, go away. This deck has a 1-2% usage rate.
If you are looking for an introduction to this deck, go here:
I recently looked at this guide and it’s one of my recommendations.
https://clash.world/deck-building/hog-cycle-guide
That guide is a little old, but most of the basics remain true (major changes are Royal Giant having less range now and Hog getting an auto-pig-push). This Reddit post has links to other guides for you to look at, which is very good. (Feb 26, 2017)
https://www.reddit.com/r/ClashRoyale/comments/5wdea4/strategy_26_hog_cycle_most_informative_and/
Esopa has a 3-parts video tutorial on this deck that I think goes further in-depth than any other guide I’ve seen on YouTube. (Mar 7, 2017)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io8XRkVQbVc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2UqTxlztHQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzuZ09DRNYU
In my opinion, this deck is outdated and isn’t exactly the greatest anymore. In fact, Hog Rider is the worst legitimate win condition in the game at the moment (worst on ladder, GC, and CC; 5th worst on top 1k). However, with its short cycle, it has the potential to outplay and punish mistakes. However, this deck RELIES on outplaying. If you just thoughtlessly send Hogs, you’ll only beat thoughtless players who make the mistake of using their Hog counter elsewhere, or players who don’t have good Hog counters. Or if you don’t see mistakes to punish, you’ll never get good damage and miss your opportunities to win. In short, if you aren’t actively trying to outplay, you aren’t playing the deck right. And because the playstyle of 2.6 is to outplay, there is no formulaic 1-way to win the game. It all depends on your ability to outcycle, outplay, and your decision-making speed.
This is meant to be an advanced guide, so I expect you have played this deck before. If you haven’t, I suggest you scroll down to the “Videos & Gameplay Flow” section of this guide and watch a few of Yersoncz’s streams):
I expect you guys to be able to do the following things:
- Defend against single troops (Mini-Pekka, Elite Barbarians, Wizards, etc...)
- Defend a generic push (like Giant Wizard)
- Knowing what cards die to your spells
- Roughly keep track of cards (specifically Spells and Hog counters) (this can take practice)
- Roughly keep track of the Elixir (if you can’t do it, assume you are down Elixir)
- Auto-pig push Hog
- Know the ideal placement for cannon against every Building targeting Win Condition (watch the ultimate building placement guide on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy7102X1rRI )
- Note: this old video uses Royal Giant’s old range.
- Recognize which Building placements a Hog can ignore (again, watch the building placement guide linked above)
- Maximum kiting distances to kite Melee Troops with Skeletons, Ice Spirit, and Ice Golem. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5AiL-Avbi4 This is OJ’s video about Kiting)
- Surrounding Troops with Skeletons
- Know how much damage your Spells do
I will mention these throughout the guide, and sometimes I will cover these, but I won’t really spell it out though.
There are videos on YouTube on how to do these if you don’t know how yet; in fact, you can learn pretty much all of these by just watching good gameplay of 2.6 Hog Cycle.
2.6 Hog Cycle is a deck that relies mostly on player skill rather than card strength. Individually, none of the cards are strong, but together, you can win many matchups.
To put it simply, this is a chip deck, where you defend as much as possible while playing hog riders with minimal support for damage. Minimal support includes cards like ice spirit, ice golem, and later into the game, prediction spells.
The whole point of ice golem, ice spirit, and skeletons in this deck is to buy time for your cannon and/or musketeer to shoot them down at range.
Cannon, musketeer, and fireball are primarily the cards that you will want to be saving in response to your opponent. The other 5 cards can be played somewhat unprovoked. There are some exceptions, but you generally do not want to play ice golem (necessary against X-bow) or log (necessary against log bait) unprovoked, unless you know that your opponent’s deck allows you to.
Generally, you will not support your hog riders to brute force their way past defenses, but you will be trying to place hog riders when they are vulnerable (without elixir or the proper defenses in hand) by either out cycling or waiting for the right moment (for when they overcommit their elixir or if they use their defensive card elsewhere).
This deck is very cheap, and it allows you to get back to cards very quickly, which is important for defense and offense. For example, cycling to a second musketeer on defense, or cycling to a second hog before the opponent gets back to their defense again.
Generally, it is ok to wait and leak 1-2 elixir at the beginning of the game if the cannon is in your starting hand, but you shouldn’t wait longer, since you are playing a cycle deck. Try to play hog, or your cycle cards to start the game. Try to save Log and Ice Golem, but if you don’t have any other plays, it’s alright to use them.
Knowledge of building placements is key in 2.6, not only for your cannon but also for knowing how to take advantage of your opponent’s building placements.
For the following images, assume a unit is coming into the LEFT lane.
The numbers refer to the number of tiles between the cannon and the river, and the number of tiles from the cannon and the left princess tower respectively. So if you place a cannon in the 4-2 placement, you will place your cannon 4 tiles from the river and 2 tiles from your left princess tower.
This is a 4-2 placement. This is the STANDARD placement for most win conditions. If you are not sure about placements, this is the main placement that will work most of the time.
The only exceptions are balloons placed in the bypass position, and lava hounds placed at the edge. This is the standard placement to use against lumberloon if the balloon is not placed in the bypass position.
This placement should be used against giant or goblin giant sparky decks since this placement prevents the tanks from bypassing the cannon. Same with Giant Prince. Same with elixir golem placed in the back (a second elixir golem can be placed at the bridge) and with golem placed in hog’s auto-pig-push position. Same with golem placed in the corner, being pushed by another unit.
Note: This placement will usually pull all ranged units and melee units in the left lane. On the right lane, it will only distract magic archer, dart goblin, princess, and firecracker. This cannon placement does activate king tower for firecrackers in the left lane.
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This is a 4-3 placement. This is the maximum pull position for any big tank. You just have to know when it is safe to use. It is safe to use for golems placed behind the king tower, giants that aren’t being pushed away, hog/ram riders that aren’t placed in the bypass position.
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This is a 3-3 placement. This is an anti-fireball position for big tank decks that use fireball, which includes giant and goblin giant. This also can be used against 2.9 X-bow to tank the X-bow for a short duration. This is also good against any misplaced hog riders/ram riders. This placement also pulls melee units from both lanes.
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This is a 0-3 placement. This is the anti-lightning or anti-earthquake placement. Generally used against big tanks placed at the bridge that have lightning or royal hogs with earthquake.
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This is a 0-2 placement. Used almost exclusively to pull balloons against lavaloon and miner balloon decks. This placement pulls balloons placed anywhere, except when the balloon + bats/minions trick is involved. (use a 0-1 placement if you see them use the trick, one tile closer sideways, or fireball the edge of the arena to push the balloon closer to the cannon.)
Note: a 1-2 placement still pulls balloon. This is used in case the opponent might send flying units to kill cannon so that you can place units in front of the cannon to protect it.
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This is a 4-1 placement. This is only for pulling balloons placed in the bypass position. This does not pull lava hounds placed in the corner. This is the main placement used for the double cannon balloon pull to the king tower. The second cannon’s image is shown next to it. It is directly in front of the king tower, 3 tiles from the left princess tower, a 7-3 placement.
WARNING: If you are late on the cannon, Do NOT use 4-1 against hog rider, since it is very famous for bypassing this placement. If you are late with cannon, I actually suggest a 5-0 placement, shown further below
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This is a 3-1 placement. This placement not only pulls balloons but also pulls lava hounds. This placement also works with the double cannon pull (the second cannon goes in the same spot). However, this placement isn’t used very often because the cannon is vulnerable to a fireball, which will kill it if the lava hound is also attacking it.
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This is a 5-0 placement. This is generally used against graveyard. It will also pull any units in this lane. This placement is also useful if you need to play a late cannon against any hog riders or ram riders.
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Musketeer has a few placements that you will be commonly using.
In front of the king tower. This placement is generally used against small pushes in single elixir time, or when your opponent isn’t able to play their spell on the musketeer. It is great against dual lane pressure, but it risks spell value if you need to place a cannon in the center as well.
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Behind the King Tower. This is nearly the same as the placement in front of the king tower, except it is delayed a little. In particular, this can be used against lava miner decks, since the musketeer is in range of the second princess tower, as opposed to placing the musk at the side of the arena.
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Side of the arena. This placement is used when you think you will possibly also play cannon during a defense. This usually prevents spells like lightning and poison from hitting both the musketeer and the cannon. Generally used against any push with a big ground tank.
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Corner. This placement serves the same purpose as the side of arena placement, except delayed. Generally used as the starting response against golem in the back.
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Center Building Snipe. For sniping any buildings 3 tiles or fewer from the river
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X-bow Snipe. This one is necessary to know in order to beat X-bow. It is out of range of any teslas that the opponent might support the X-bow with.
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Play cautiously in single elixir time, unless you really know what you are doing.
Please do the following:
- Mostly use unsupported hog riders
- Hog + fireball is a very common mistake I see new 2.6 players make. Don’t do it.
- Try to play passively and try to get a feel of your opponent's deck, and start checking the hog counters.
- Not play hog in front of a surviving musk if you aren’t close to 10 elixir.
- I commonly see players trying to hog in front of a musk, and it is often a mistake.
- Try not to use cannon without knowing the opponent’s deck.
- This is alright if you really have to, but it is still risky. You just lost a good defensive card. That cannon would’ve been good when they rushed you right afterward, eh?
Protect your DPS! In order of prioritization, you need to protect your musketeer and your cannon (and in some cases, your skeletons). Usually, failing to protect these damage dealers will result in a botched defense that puts you at a disadvantage and it will just ruin the rest of the game. Use all of your cycle cards to their utmost potential to protect (in most matchups, this also includes log).
Outcycle buildings! Most of the time, you will not be able to brute force your way past a building, because hog rider just isn’t strong enough for that. Instead, you need to get to a second hog rider while destroying the building and make sure that the SECOND hog rider deals damage.
Play musketeer/cannon before other cards to get to another. Against decks that can potentially get rid of your musketeer or cannons with spells, it is important to play them early as a setup, so that in case they get rid of them, you can quickly cycle to another one. Remember that cannons and musketeers are important aspects of defense.
Making positive elixir trades will help your game, so read interactions carefully.
Try to save ice golem for offense rather than using it on defense. Against many decks, ice golem + hog is the default push you will be making, so if you end up using your ice golem on defense, your offensive potential will be severely weakened for a while.
Go opposite lane! Experienced opponents will just stack units to deny the lane you are attacking, so you need to make sure you can threaten to win on both lanes.
Sometimes, you have to stop playing hog rider. This is especially the case when you are in a disadvantaged state.
Yersoncz’s unlisted streams (He streams in the evenings EST on YouTube). He speaks Spanish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I84rnM4OE6E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_cLNfvvDVo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggSOfOSC8L8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5Bhzx9ru20
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOHOGTM_SCk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5A41_HZlyw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcxzkCIvHJ0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KBQISb6TBs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLhzHwVdpp4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLejBjnQBpk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PAjurfZGgk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_vRUpQmcZE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnDPYzPmg7A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YP3-F24Law
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DY5E-M8VuCc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogDs_13mMYg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd4qHy48kXM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36ANwYJcVbU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-o_iO2N7ig
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK1kyCxj-Oc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt1f6i_p3tY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju4CxCIFOo8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5YGc0vk89k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlkUW3qKrX8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQVnycTAv8I
You’ll see me reference Yersoncz a lot in this guide, since he is a good 2.6 player that streams live a lot on YouTube. Also, some screenshots are from his gameplay. Some are from my own gameplay (you’ll see my level 12 king tower).
Livestreams of Oyassuu おやっすう are listed here
https://www.mirrativ.com/user/2504289
His youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCe2TWF-BqZUqzEz3dHaYa8g
Youtube Mhero1’s YouTube channel has a lot of gameplay of Jack and Lucas, the best 2.6 players in the world
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOnUsDRg-KdzUa8m0GELN0Q/search?query=2.6
Jack’s Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHeHL3GcLSW5rh_25gf4SpQ/videos
LucasXGamer’s Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJdNX6mkUs2-6TDk8zi0-Zw/videos
2.6 specialist’s Twitter and Instagram feed has a lot of useful tips and interactions
https://twitter.com/2pt6_specialist
https://www.instagram.com/2.6specialist
KVC’s very long playlist of 2.6 hog cycle replays https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgjJTIorIZ6F88R4a8VAxjtNVQGpZaEvf
A Japanese Hog Channel
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoH33GAjqG-uHs-InMp92nvj2Ab7htr4t
Generally, most games will follow this pattern. However, matchup specific details should override what’s written here.
- Use hog. Opponent’s hog counter is played. Identify if it can be outplayed.
- Defend until you get hog again.
- Use hog. Second hog counter is used. Identify if it can be outplayed.
- If you wait too long to play hog, you will be sent back to step 1
- You can play hog while you are defending. This is common in double elixir.
- Defend until you get hog again
- Repeat 1-4, but save and/or use the necessary cards to outplay the hog counters if possible.
- Keep track of musketeer counters. Check if you need to save your spells.
- If hogs cannot connect and there are no musketeer counters, cycle musketeers to win.
- If hogs cannot connect and there are musketeer counters, spell cycle and defend.
Q: Is electro spirit better than ice spirit?
A: In the past, yes, but not right now.
Ice spirit got buffed and now has an evolution.
Here are the benefits of electro spirit though:
- The opponent can't activate KT if you use it on defense
- You don’t have to worry about activating KT if the KT is already activated.
- Most opponents don't bother activating KT if there is a hog in front of espirit
- Better against bats (and night witch)
- Better against GY
- Better against any swarm
- Better against goblin barrel
- Better against clone
- Better chance to chip tower when played behind hog
- Better against cards that almost die to fireball
- Better against cards that almost die to log
- Better chance to reset X-bow and make troops retarget
- X-bow players can’t protect their archers from spirit log combo
- Better against clumps of troops (helps in double and triple elixir, where 2.6 can struggle)
Just keep an eye out for activating KT. If you want to play electro spirit as part of an attack, try to play it so that it doesn’t offer an easy KT activation. The most common way to do this is to use electro spirit on defense, since they can never activate KT that way.
Q: Why can’t I defend?
A: Take a look at your own replay to find out where the issue was. Were you at an elixir disadvantage? If so, find out why and fix that. You didn’t have the right cards in your hand? Maybe you didn’t think to save the cards that you needed. Maybe your defense was bad and you have no idea what to do? Read this matchup guide and hopefully, you will have a much more concrete idea on how to defend pushes.
Q: When do I use Musketeer vs. Cannon on Defense?
A: Against single medium health units that aren’t building targeters, you should try to not use musketeer or cannon at all. Just try kite prince, dark prince, lumberjack, baby dragon, mini-pekka, mega minion, and other cards if you can. It’s ok to use musketeer or cannon here if you have no other good options, but make sure to get back to it quickly enough, since they are your best bet at defense.
You generally want to use musketeer on medium-sized pushes since the musketeer can counter pushes.
Cannons will reasonably only be used in a few scenarios
- If musketeer is out of hand, and you need the DPS to defend
- There is a large push, and both musketeer and cannon are needed
- You need to pull a building targeter (wall breakers, hog, balloon, giant, golem)
- Your musketeer isn’t getting much counter push value, and cannon isn’t necessary to pull anything, so cannon is a cheaper option than musketeer.
- For example, you can use a cannon against a princess on the bridge.
Q: What is the upgrade order of cards in this deck?
A: TL;DR
- Musketeer
- Ice Golem
- Fireball
- The Log * (absolutely cannot be 2 levels below where you are at. 1 level below is fine)
- Ice Spirit
- Cannon
- Hog Rider
- Skeletons
Defense is the most important factor in this game, so your upgrade order should reflect that.
Musketeer first, since that will be the bulk of your defensive DPS and your only real air defense. You really need your musketeer to survive fireball
Then ice golem. It is very important that your ice golem kills skeletons and bats, for both defense and offense. With the sheer amount of skeleton army in lower ladder, this is very necessary. Also, ice golem needs to be able to handle NW bats in order to beat golem.
After that, fireball. You really need the fireball + log to kill both witches. Fireball is fairly level dependent, and is used in many other decks as well. It is a huge advantage if your fireball is one level higher than your opponent’s cards.
If you can, the log is next. Although it doesn’t need to be at the same level as the rest of your cards, The Log absolutely cannot be 2 levels or more below where you are at since you need your logs to kill dart goblins, rascal girls, and princesses. Realistically, this may be one of the last cards to MAX (since it only needs to get to 1 level below max).
Then ice spirit. An underleveled ice spirit will die to many things that it should survive, like a musketeer shot. Getting your ice spirit to the proper level will be key to making positive elixir trades and taking less damage. Having an Ice Spirit lower than your opponent’s king tower level makes ice spirit chip damage impossible.
Then cannon. Cannon is fairly easy to level up, but it is also one of your DPS cards, so it is pretty important for defense.
And then these last two I think are interchangeable.
Next is hog rider, your win condition. Having a low-level hog rider can prevent you from getting hits, but this scenario doesn’t happen very often. Your hog will be useful as long as your opponent doesn’t have enough elixir, which you can do a lot if you are good.
Then skeletons. Skeletons aren’t too bad underleveled, as long as their placement is perfect. Your skill in placement will cover for their level. These cards depend more on your king tower level though.
Skeletons’ level matters against graveyard, but you don’t encounter graveyard in lower trophy ranges very often.
Q: What do I do with a bad hand like Fireball, Log, Cannon, Musketeer?
A: Play the log, one of your cycle cards. You still have a fireball in hand, so you should be safe from log bait in case they use a goblin barrel.
Q: What do I do with a bad hand like Fireball, Ice golem, Cannon, Musketeer?
A: You can wait a few seconds, and if nothing gets played, you can safely play ice golem in the back. An X-bow deck will likely play something before you do.
Q: How do I play against lava hound?
A: Scroll down to the Matchups section of this guide. There are many subsections for lava hound decks.
Q: How do I win against mega knight?
A: Scroll down to the Matchups section of this guide. Mega knight is a control deck, where they defend and counter push. You probably attacked at the wrong time and got punished for it.
MK is also used a lot in midladder, so read the section on interactions to deal with it.
Q: David, why aren’t you higher in trophies?
A: Am I even that low anymore? My highest trophy count is 7180, ranked 4309 global. I used to be low, but now I’m in a respectable trophy range. I’m still in the middle of researching all the matchups, so I haven’t learned all the matchup details yet. I will go much higher in ladder once I learn what to do in each matchup. I do play pretty well, but not consistently enough to never make mistakes.
Why does this deck even work? Lots of guides don’t really cover overall concepts about how this deck is different from others, or what makes it strong and why it works(reminds me of Metro’s tutorial on Soldier 76 in Overwatch). I’m going to cover some concepts about this deck that you should keep in your head. Play to the deck’s strengths, and make up for the weaknesses with skill.
- The strength of cheapness
Having cheap elixir cost cards in your deck gives this deck a few benefits
- Quick responses. I’d say this is the biggest strength of this deck. This means you can spend all of your elixir and still have a response if your opponent decides to attack the opposite lane or something. Only cycle decks have this advantage. If any other deck decided to use all of their elixir, the opponent would not be able to play units for a few seconds.
- Defend cheaply for positive elixir trades. Most units in this game cost on average 4 elixir, so if you have the knowledge, you can defend with positive trades.
- Fastest cycle. What does this mean for this deck? Upon using a certain card, players have to use 4 other cards in order to get back to the first card. Having cheap cards means you are able to spend less elixir (and time) to get back to a card you just used.
- “5” card hand. Because your cards are cheap, you could easily spend 1-2 elixir to get to your next card and only take 1 second to reach it. This is almost as if you have 5 cards in your hand. The more options you have, the better.
- Starting hands aren’t so bad, since you can cheaply cycle to get a better hand.
- Musketeer + Kiting
Kiting is a powerful defensive tactic in this deck. However, not all decks can take advantage of this tactic. This deck is able to greatly take advantage of kiting due to the range, DPS, and health of the musketeer. Even if you kite a unit very far from your princess tower, the musketeer's range allows it to keep shooting the unit with good DPS. The musketeer’s range also lets it defend both lanes, as long as you kite units to the center. Few units have a 6 tile range to do this effectively with kiting. Musketeer’s health allows it to survive while this happens. Usually, large range comes at the trade-off of low health, like dart goblin and princess. However, musketeer is tanky enough to survive an equal level fireball. The only way to quickly get rid of a musketeer is through lightning or rocket, both of which cost 6 elixir, which will put your opponent down 2 elixir.
- Hog Rider’s Speed
The speed of Hog Rider is very fast, so Hog Rider is a very good punish-play. Specifically, you want to look for moments in the game where the opponent can’t defend well, such as when they have low elixir (maybe they spent a bunch of elixir on building a push, or while they are attacking), or don’t have the right cards in hand. Also, countering the hog will usually require a certain timing or placement to fully stop the hog. Furthermore, not all cards will be able to counter well.
This means that playing Hog Rider will focus your opponent’s attention and elixir on the hog. Even better, if the opponent is low on elixir, the hog rider’s speed allows it to reach the tower before a counter can be played. Only a few win conditions like Goblin Barrel and now Wall Breakers share this advantage. Most other win conditions spend a certain amount of time on the field before they become a threat, which allows you to regain your elixir to prepare for it.
- Synergy of Support on Offense
Hog Rider is your only real offensive unit, but most of the rest of your deck (Ice golem, musketeer, ice spirit, fireball, log) is able to support your offense. With lots of offensive support options, you can outplay defenses.
- Hog + Musk + Fireball Synergy against buildings
Hog rider has the ability to jump over the river, and can auto-pig-push to bypass 4-3 buildings. Musketeer allows you to snipe buildings placed 3 or less tiles from the river. Fireball’s radius lets you hit the princess tower and almost all center building plants. This synergy makes it so that no matter how a building is placed, 2.6 hog cycle has the tools on hand to deal with it.
- Low stats
Cheap cards have low stats. That’s just the way it is. This means that your cards are fragile and do not output very much DPS. Also, this means that your cards must be played in combination with each other, since each card individually sucks. This is the main reason for losses: any 1 mistake will lead to your units dying before they do their job and losing your tower.
- Only 1 real offensive unit
Only your hog rider has a real offensive threat. So if you just used your hog, you will not be able to attack effectively for a short period of time.
- Only 1 real air targeter
Musketeer is your only air targeter that isn’t a one-time effect. Against decks with lots of air units, you will be very dependent on kiting air units around while your princess tower and musketeer take them down.
- Only 1 real tank
Ice golem is your only real tank on defense, unless you are using hog as an emergency. This makes it so that you have to be very careful with your ice golems if you need them on defense.
- Only 1 swarm
Skeletons are your only swarm unit. Sadly enough, this is the highest DPS card in your deck, and probably is the best card in 2.6 hog. Make sure you use skeletons wisely.
- No real splasher
Every splash card in hog 2.6 is a one-time effect. You will have to strategically rely on your one-time effects to deal with clumps of units. Or kite units around, and let your single targets deal with them over time.
- Number/Popularity of Hog Counters
Pretty much every good deck has 2+ ways to counter hog. This makes it very difficult to get any meaningful amount of damage with the hog rider, turning hog 2.6 into a spell cycle deck. Without some kind of outplay, even getting 2 hits with 1 hog is uncommon. And even if you do outplay, you most likely only get rewarded with 1 hog hit against good players.
- Hog sucks with support
Hog rider is only a light tank, so any support units that might be behind it don’t get very much value because the hog dies too fast.
- Offensive spells almost have to be used as predictions
Because hog rider has such low health, you pretty much have to use prediction spells to make your hog get value. If you don’t predict and only try to react, your hog takes a lot of damage, and you put yourself down more elixir, and your opponent doesn’t need to defend your hog anymore.
- Lightning kills cannon and musketeer
This fact can really hinder your ability to defend. Thankfully, musketeer and cannon can be placed far apart enough to prevent good lightning value.
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If you want quick tips, look here. Lots of tips apply to all decks.
- If you start fireball cycling, stop playing hog rider. I feel like this is a very overlooked idea that most people don’t think about.
- Obviously, don’t give spell value (applies to all decks). In this deck, that means playing your musketeer and cannon far apart, unless your opponent already played a big spell. A generic defense for 2.6 would include cannon in the 4-3 placement, musketeer at the edge of the arena, and cycle cards above the cannon (or on top of the tank) to kite units towards your cannon and away from your musketeer. However, if your opponent’s spells are out of hand, then a musketeer in front of the king tower is better.
- Don’t leak elixir. Pretty obvious, especially since this is a cycle deck. You can always just spend elixir on your non-important cards to further your cycle and get to your important cards. If you are clever enough, even skeletons played in the back can result in something useful as they walk up.
- Remember this deck nearly never plays lone cards. Combos are what make or break.
- Knowing when to play hog is very important. Missing the opportunity to play hog will result in your opponent getting back to their hog counter, wasting your previous hog that drew it out. Basically wasting your time and elixir. Keeping track of counters is the best way to know.
- Just like when you try to keep track of hog counters, try to see if there are any musketeer counters. If there are not, try getting as many musketeers as possible. That may be your win condition.
- Try not to waste cycle cards unless you really have to cycle to a card you need (generally, hog, musk, ice golem, fireball, or cannon). For example, if you really need an ice golem, it’s fine to use a log or 1 elixir cards to get there.
- This deck is called “2.6 hog cycle”, but you might want to think about calling it “musketeer cycle” too. It is very easy to kite first and play musketeer second, but playing musketeer first and kiting second is better. You want to get your musketeer back as soon as possible, since it is your main defensive DPS.
- Fireballing 2 units is better fireballing than the princess tower & 1 unit. Use fireball wisely to get value. Generally, hitting three units, or 2 units + tower is a good fireball.
- Defend your DPS units, which are musketeer, cannon, and sometimes skeletons. Generally, ice golem is used to protect, but other cards like cannon or hog can be sacrificed to protect your musketeer.
- This video is a very good example of protecting musketeer the right way: https://www.replayroyale.com/v/tv1536998736_0
- Defend your DPS by kiting. An ice golem used for kiting is way better than an ice golem used for tanking.
- Place your musketeer in safe locations. Against big pushes, it’s better that your tower takes a little damage than your musketeer dying.
- A Musketeer almost dies to a fireball, so it is important that your musketeer takes 0 damage while it is defending. If even 1 skeleton or bat gets to the musketeer, it’ll die to a fireball.
- Fireball does 172 tower damage. But in certain scenarios fireball allows hog rider to do an extra hit or two, so it’s as if the fireball did 400 or 600 damage. Look for those scenarios and use them to finish a game. Same for the log.
- Don’t do prediction spells with no prior intel. You might get a lucky prediction, but it is far more common for players to run spell-proof hog counters. You can use prediction spells after you’ve seen the opponent’s deck.
- We all know to use cannon when it comes to big pushes. However, when musketeer is not in hand, it is fine to play it as a substitute for mini pushes. Just make sure to cycle back to it early.
- Ice golem is a very important card on defense. Think carefully before using it on offense. Same for musketeer when sniping buildings.
- This is a cycle deck, so pay close attention to the order you play your cards in. Important cards like ice golem, hog, musketeer, cannon, and fireball are cards you generally want to have ready at all times, so you may have to play these earlier, before you play your cycle cards.
- Remember, playing hog rider puts you down 4 elixir. Even if you defend well with good elixir trades, your opponent generally won’t be far behind in elixir. And if you don’t defend well, you will definitely be behind in elixir.
- Baby dragons can really ruin the kiting value of your skeletons. You may want to consider letting it lock on to an ice golem or princess tower to let your skeletons (and thus your musk and tower) get value during big pushes. Failing to do so can make you lose the tower.
- If you are trying to kite something away (like prince or pekka) from your tower or musk and it is already pretty close, it’s better to play it safe than try to get the best kite possible. I have lost a lot of games due to failing to get that best kite. So DON’T TAKE ANY UNNECESSARY RISKS WHEN IT COMES TO KITING THINGS AWAY FROM MUSK OR TOWER. If something is getting close to your tower, a safe kite would be to place skeletons at the bridge.
- The best way to get hog damage in during double elixir is to send in hog after they just defended and during their counter push. If it’s not possible, start spell cycling. It is said that 2.6 is a fireball cycle deck in double elixir.
- To further the spell cycle, log cycling from the start of the game will add up to a lot of damage. Also using ice spirit to further chip will also help.
- Don’t let ice spirit die without freezing. This can make or break your defense.
- This image shows how the trophy number of your opponent blocks the health bar of a building placed in that corner. As long as the building-in-the-corner exploit exists for you, it’s better to play your opening hog into the left lane (where the trophy number is) so that it discourages the other player from possibly playing a building in that corner. If they do, your fireball will just get value since it’ll do damage to the tower you’re already attacking.
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- This deck is the cheapest cycle deck in the game that is viable, barring the 2.0 PONOS miner WB cycle and some really cheap logbait decks, so as long as you are actively outcycling, you’ll be able to get to cards faster than your opponent.
- This will be mentioned later on, but don't throw away skeletons and ice/electro spirit. I see this a lot. Ice spirit can buy you enough time to defend, and one of your best kiting/distracting cards.skeletons are crazy bulk dps that will help you in a lot of matchups.
- Read the feedback and help channels in the discord. There are some amazing tips there.
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- Not knowing how to get past hog counters
Sometimes I’ll face a deck that counters hog too well, like graveyard decks with bowler. At that point, perhaps I’d probably just start spell cycling. But after the game (or during the game), it’s good to think about what could be done instead. For example, against fisherman, I thought that there was nothing I could do, but after seeing other 2.6 players come up with clever ideas, it seems that there is usually an answer. Either that, or just start spell cycling.
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Dealing with lightning
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Obviously, space musketeers and cannons further away. But dealing with lightning is not only that. When it comes to defense, it becomes easy to not think of using hog. But hog becomes the correct play when it comes to preventing or delaying the lightning from happening. The longer the opponent goes without using lightning, the more damage is done by the musk or cannon. By the time the opponent gets 6 elixir again for a lightning, the damage done by your units has been done.
Lightning proof squares are very gimmicky and buildings and troops there are very hard to protect, so lightning should be considered while defending.
For a 12 elixir push from your opponent (Golem + night witch, Lava Hound + balloon), if you force out 3 or more elixir on defense with your own offense, your opponent will be forced to use lightning extremely late. If your opponent uses little to no elixir, you may have to use a lightning rod.
Also, for some reason, I initially tried to cycle 2 musketeers in single elixir against decks I suspected had lightning, but it was proven to be a mistake. If you play musketeer early, there is no possible way for you to place cannon and not be in lightning range of the musk. There is no need to play musketeer early in single elixir. You can decide to do so in double elixir.
- Dealing with miners sniping musketeers
When it comes to miners sniping your musketeers, it is good if your musketeer is played between the princess towers, so that a miner will be targeted by the other princess tower. It is important to save your musketeers, so in case you need to save a musketeer, I believe log + ice spirit + skeletons will save it. If your musketeer is in your 2 tower zone, then just the log and skeletons will save it.
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- Turning the game around
Usually, after 1 bad defense, you simply lose the game. However, there are 2 ways to come back after a big damage deficit. That is prediction spells and musketeer damage. Prediction spells are simple enough. However, the offensive musketeer is something I learned that made it very easy for me to finish off the second tower. For most of the game, defending against 2.6 is simply a 1 card-response, like an inferno tower. Players also frequently deal with musketeers behind hogs, since that is quite common. Rarely do players see musketeers in front of hogs. With the musketeers huge range and the hog pushing it from behind, there is little time to react to the musketeer.
When a tower is down, placing both a hog and then immediately a musketeer on the closest tile to the tower (so musketeer goes in the front) can make the musketeer quickly lock on to the tower, dealing several hog hits worth of damage. The hog rider (placed first) will tank the princess tower, and the musketeer will tank the king tower. When combined with prediction spells, this combo can easily deal 1500+ damage.
You can do something similar with ice golem + musk, but I would only recommend this if the tower is kind of low.
- During a defense, playing cycle cards instead of waiting for 4 elixir to fireball
I have a bad habit of continuing to play cycle cards during a golem push when doing so gives very little value. In that case, I should have waited until 4 elixir to fireball instead.
- Lack of detailed guides from the best 2.6 players:
I wish Jack, LucasxGamer, Yersoncz, and the other good 2.6 players put out a guide (usually, their English isn’t good). If you find a Japanese or Chinese video with commentary on how to play 2.6, let me know.
For single elixir, it is a case-by-case scenario depending on what your opponent is running. So don’t listen to those guides that tell you to play aggressively in single elixir, because that is only against certain matchups. Playing aggressively can easily make you lose to cheesy decks like the balloon LJ freeze deck and bridge-spam. It’s very common for both players to have healthy towers up until double elixir time.
A lot of new players misunderstand when other guides say to play aggressively in single elixir time. What that really means is that you can play hog at the bridge, whereas in most other decks, you can’t exactly just use a card at the bridge like this.
In double elixir, you have more freedom to outplay. This includes playing prediction spells, sniping with musketeer, using ice golem with the hog rider, etc. Cannon gets played far more in double elixir, due to the size of pushes during this time.
During single elixir, generally, you play hog opposite lane when your opponent plays a card. During double elixir, generally, you can play hog opposite lane of your opponent’s units, but you can also play hog during your opponent’s offense. It will help kite some of the units and relieve some pressure from your defense, and your opponent will also be low on elixir.
In double elixir and onward, it becomes increasingly difficult for your hog to reach the tower, so you should definitely consider fireball cycling.
After looking at some not-so-good 2.6 players, I can identify some easy ways to improve
- I’ll say it again: stop doing hog + fireball so much. It’s an 8 elixir overcommitment which will put you down a lot, and it is very easily outplayable. Also, lots of people run spell-proof hog counters. And you are trying to brute force your way through. Hog 2.6 is not a deck where you brute force your way past all defenses. If you want to do that, go play beatdown.
- Keeping track of hog counters. This is super useful against hog counters that are weak to spells, so you can do a prediction spell. This is really important in low ladder, where skeleton army is very popular.
- Stop playing hog with a surviving musketeer/ice golem in single elixir. Unless you are close to 10 elixirs, counter pushing with a living musketeer/ice golem by playing hog is pretty much always a bad idea in single elixir (this is usually overextending). Most of the time, you are at an elixir disadvantage, you’ll have no elixir left, and your opponent will have enough elixir to defend. Also, your opponent can stop this combo relatively easily (like a skeleton army lol). This is a super bad move if your opponent plays Pekka, Mini-Pekka, or Mega Knight. A simple inferno tower will also counter this.
- Using Hog + musketeer in the pocket after one tower is down. After learning this trick, taking down my opponent’s second tower became so much easier.
- Waiting for better fireball opportunities and not wasting your fireball early. Depending on the deck, you can wait for better fireball opportunities. In fact, holding on to a fireball makes it so that your opponent can’t afford to make a huge push, since that gives you a good fireball, or you can easily get value from your fireball if they decide to make a big push anyway.
- Know and use the best cannon placement in every scenario. Cannon is basically useless if you don’t use good placement each time.
- This includes using the anti-lightning placement. This is extremely useful in Royal Giant lightning matchups.
- Don’t assume that you are GODLY at timing your cards, especially against cards like X-bow and Sparky. Play your distraction cards a bit earlier than usual, just in case. Being too late to distract is the number 1 preventable mistake you will make in your games.
- Learning to use skeletons and ice spirit properly. For example, skeletons can completely counter bandit and electro wizard and ice spirit can fully counter hunter. Super positive elixir trades like these help a lot when it comes to saving you elixir.
- Using skeletons on tanks. The DPS of 3 skeletons is surprisingly higher than cannon or musketeer’s DPS. Use that to your advantage.
- Saving ice spirit for resetting the miner. This is pretty important against miner control during double elixir.
- On defense against golem, stop playing cycle cards earlier to get 4 elixir for fireball. An example would be playing skeletons on a golem and then waiting for 4 elixir to fireball the golem push. The skeletons by themselves will DPS the golem and also kite units towards the skeletons and cannon, so you don’t exactly have to keep playing cards to further distract their units. If you continue trying to distract their units, you mightve not have elixir to do a necessary fireball.
- Knowing when and when not to play musketeer in the back or corner. Especially against beatdown, which can have lightning.
- Playing cannon early against golem. Unlike an early musketeer, which can walk itself upwards into lightning range, or a more vulnerable position, cannon will stay where it is, making it a much safer defensive investment. Playing it early will allow you to cycle to another one in case they get rid of it with a lightning.
- Reading goblin barrels. This will help you reliably defeat log bait.
- Waiting for better hog opportunities. This is especially important in mega knight and pekka matchups, as they can easily counter your hogs.
- Actively outcycling and resisting the urge to play fireball/musketeer. This is pretty important against decks that are also cheap. It’s very easy to unknowingly slow down your own cycle by using more expensive cards.
- Using the max kiting placement. This helps you regain elixir and sometimes changes interactions. For example, you can place ice golem at the river in the opposite lane to kite, or place it 3 tiles below the river in the opposite lane to kite. Placing the ice golem lower will drag units into the 2-tower zone.
- Activating king tower. This is pretty useful. There is a section on this further below.
- If you are not sure if you have elixir advantage, try to wait until you have 10 elixir instead of playing hog at 4 elixir. It is easy to assume that your opponent has the same amount or less elixir as you. However, that is often not true at all, especially if you have just used a hog or a fireball earlier.
I’ve come across a stunning number of players who do not know about this, so I’m finally adding it to this guide. The auto pig push is an easy way for your hog rider to avoid misplaced buildings, or buildings placed late, so it is something you HAVE to learn since buildings are so popular.
The auto pig push is simply putting the hog rider on either of these 2 spots(The blue squares with the numbers 4 and 2 on the pic to the right):
You will notice that if you put the hog rider on these spots, the hog will jump over that small part of the river. This will allow the hog to bypass the following NON-SPAWNER (and NOT elixir collector ) building placements:
Assuming the hog is auto pig pushed on the left side:
For spawners (and elixir collector):
This combo may look simple but is actually more intricate than you think.
Getting the tiles or the order wrong can easily get your hog tornadoed to the king tower.
Here’s the gist of what you want though:
As you can see, in the bad image, the hog is still vulnerable to getting tornadoed, while in the good image, the hog rider is safe from getting tornadoed.
I highly suggest that you go into training camp and practice the following ice golem hog combinations to prepare against tornado.
The first type of ice golem hog is the classical variation. There are two types: 1 type in the middle of the bridge, the other at the inner side of bridge (closer to the middle of the arena). There isn’t much of a difference between the two. The classical variation is done by playing IG and almost immediately hog behind it. The downside of the classical variation is that you need both IG and hog in your hand at the same time. You cannot do this if the hog is your next card, because you need to wait some time for the hog to enter your hand. Getting hog into your hand means you have to play 5 cards to cycle to your hog, which slows down your cycle.
The second type is the famous variation. You will see most of the top 2.6 players using this variation. You have to play the ice golem first, wait 1 second, and then play the hog rider on the same tile. This way, the ice golem walks a little in front, the hog rider will land behind it. The advantage is that hog rider is a bit further away from the center of the arena. Also this variation is perfect for when hog rider is your next card. The downside is that hog is not played ASAP.
However, I do not use either of these, due to the fact that in these variations, hog or ice golem can easily get pushed sideways a bit so that hog ends up on the other side of the ice golem, allowing the hog to be tornadoed to the king tower. The most famous examples is using the knight to push the hog sideways in icebow and splashyard. The placement that I personally use is this third type:
I call this Vinny’s variation, in honor of “Master Choker Vinny”, who discovered this variation. This one is immune to hog getting pushed sideways, due to the fact that hog is now more towards the edge of the arena now. It is very similar to the famous variation, except that it is much more immune to getting pushed.
Hog not getting played ASAP is ok. These “delayed hog” options are especially made for situations when hog is your next card in hand while ice golem is in your hand, so make sure you look for hog in your next-card slot.
It is easy to mess up these timings and placements a lot, so make sure you practice these a bit in training camp first, until they feel natural enough that you don’t have to think about it anymore.
Now, there is 1 way to achieve an anti-tornado ice golem + hog if you have hog in hand and have ice golem as your next card. Even though the opponent can see this hog coming and has lots of time to react, this is good to know in case you are playing against golem tornado, and have hog in hand and ice golem as the next card. You place hog low on the inner edge, and the ice golem at the bridge ASAP on the inner edge.
Another variation to know would be if you want to play ice golem ahead of time with hog somewhere further away in cycle. You can use the image on the left. Hog is obviously played sometime later when it enters your hand.
You want the inferno tower to target the ice golem and make the hog push the ice golem into the inferno tower. The extra ice golem death nova will help a little. This way, an ice golem hog fireball push is actually about to let your hog reach their princess tower. The placement is this picture below:
Normally, against Mega Knight and Pekka, you do not want to be playing ice golem + hog at all, since both will pretty easily stop them and you will lose the ice golem, which is precious on defense against these cards. If for some reason you have a surviving ice golem, or if it is overtime, you will have to play the ice golem + hog so that the princess tower targets the ice golem, but the hog rider runs in front of the ice golem.
The reason you want the hog rider in front is because the mega knight and the pekka are extremely fat, and together with your own ice golem, your hog’s path to the tower will be blocked. Allowing the hog rider to run ahead makes the path clear, and allows the hog to get 2 hits.
You do this by playing the ice golem first on the outer side of the bridge, waiting 1 second for the ice golem to come down, and then playing hog rider in the auto-pig-push spot. The hog rider will jump, land, and push the ice golem a little forwards, so that the princess tower targets the ice golem first, and then the hog is free to run towards the tower.
Against bowler, you do not want the bowler to target your ice golem, since princess tower + bowler will quickly take down the ice golem and then the hog. You want to keep both alive for as long as possible, since the bowler’s DPS is not very high.
- Cycle to cannon in hand
If cannon is not in hand, you are vulnerable to hog riders and other fast win conditions, so cycling skeletons/ice spirit/log to get to cannon is a good idea. Of course, don’t spam these cycle cards at once, but try to do this before the opponent gets 10 elixir. This is for opponents that might play hog or something similar when they hit 10 elixir. Skeletons split in the middle deters your opponent from immediately attacking. If you don’t get to cannon in time, skeletons + ice spirit + log will stop a hog if you time your ice spirit and log apart (freezing and knocking back at two different times is better than freezing and knocking back at the same time). The freeze and the knockback need to be done in the vicinity of the skeletons. Same with skeletons + fireball (knockback in the vicinity of the skeletons to stop a hog). Usually, this is done by playing skeletons in the back or playing ice spirit at the bridge, or logging (if you have fireball in hand, to be safe)
- Cycle Ice spirit
Ice spirit is probably the least useful card in your deck, but it also applies pressure to your opponent. If your opponent ignores the ice spirit, you can assume that they aren’t using a cycle deck.
- Wait a few seconds and leak 1-2 elixir to see if your opponent makes the first play.
I see this is commonly done in top ladder. You do this when you have hog in your hand. It is really good if your opponent makes the first play, since you can always just go hog opposite lane right afterwards. Depending on their first play, you can also make a guess if tornado is in their deck. If you think they do, you can play the “anti tornado” skeletons behind the hog rider, as I mentioned above.
- Hog (cycle cards optional)
Playing hog as the first play is fine, although cycling skeletons and ice spirit first though is good too. There is some risk to playing hog if you do not have cannon in your hand. If I do decide to play hog as the first play, I prefer to wait 1 to 2 seconds after hitting 10 elixir, since players tend to play a card at 10 elixir. I play hog opposite lane if they do. Depending on how good the rest of my hand is at kiting, I play an ice spirit or skeletons 1 second later. It’s risky to play a hog and not have any kiting cards since it is very likely you will need to kite something directly afterwards.
I would do it one second later for a couple of reasons:
For both:
- For the sake of cycle, getting hog back in hand is very important. I used to play ice spirit before hog in order for it to deal with skeleton army better, but getting back to hog is more important.
- Also, if a card with splash is played (Wizard, furnace, etc), skeletons/ice spirit will survive and get some value.
Adding skeletons:
- In the case of tornado, the skeletons will be far enough behind the hog such that if tornado is played at the normal timing, the skeletons will reach the princess tower unharmed and do a lot of damage while the hog is at the king tower. If you play the skeletons too early, the tornado will kill the skeletons. If you play the skeletons late correctly, they will be forced to:
- deal with the skeletons (even or negative elixir trade), OR
- tornado early and take the skeleton damage (around 2 hog hits worth, not including the initial hog hit), OR
- tornado late and take 2-3 hog hits with some skeleton damage.
- In the case of Electro-Wizard, the skeletons will be far enough behind the hog that if E-wiz is played normally at the early timing, the skeletons will take some damage for the hog, letting it get 2 hits instead of the normal 1 hit. If the opponent wants to E-wiz both the hog and the skeletons, they will have to play it late, letting the hog get 2 hits.
- In the case of a melee unit placed high, it will retarget on to the skeletons. This includes Pekka, Mini Pekka, lumberjack and more.
Adding Ice Spirit:
- You want to use the ice spirit to freeze the unit after its deploy time is finished. Freezing the unit during its deploy time just wastes your freeze time.
- Same E-wiz reason.
If my hand is not so good at kiting (for example: fireball, log, musk, ice spirit, next card cannon), I would not play my cycle card after the hog. If for some reason I do play it after the hog and my hand is not good for kiting, I would play a log/musk early to get to those cards to defend the counter push.
Also, I find that skeletons usually aren’t too useful after the hog anyways. Skeletons work much better on defense.
- Cycle The Log
The reason why this isn’t as good as the best options is in case your opponent is playing graveyard, or worse, giant graveyard. If your opponent plays bait, that’s also a problem, but you can alleviate this problem if you only cycle log while you have fireball in your hand.
- Cycle Ice Golem
The reason why this isn’t as good is in case your opponent is running X-bow. Cycling ice golem can leave you without a good way to deal with X-bows. This is safer though, if you have hog + fireball to deal with the X-bow.
- Cycle Skeletons
Oftentimes, your opponent defends the hog with a mini pekka, lumberjack, or prince, and those skeletons would have been really nice to have on defense in the beginning of the game.
- Ice Golem + Hog
Don’t play the anti-tornado hog with ice golem first play without prior intel. Here are the reasons why:
- Pekka. With anti-tornado ice golem + hog, you will still only get 1 hit against a well-placed Pekka. Not only that, ice golem is very good for dealing with Pekka by kiting it to the opposite side. But if you play ice golem + hog, your next ice golem won’t be in hand in time to deal with the Pekka.
- A bowler or mega knight will also counter this, and they will counterpush
- A tesla or inferno tower will also counter this for a positive elixir trade.
- It’s a 6 elixir commitment. If the opponent decides to go all in on the counterpush, you won’t have enough elixir to defend.
- Not only that, you won’t have ice golem, which is a very important card on defense. Using it on offense as the first play of the game is very risky.
- Hog + Fireball or Log
Again, without prior intel, this is stupid. If I see that the opponent defends the hog with something that dies or almost dies to fireball, I would not fireball. It’s too much elixir spent, and you won’t have much elixir to defend well. It’s too early in the game to be making commitments like this without knowing the opponent’s deck. A hog+fireball can easily make you lose to a counterpush with balloon or X-bow. Instead, you should defend with a musketeer with support.
In the case of log, if goblin gang is played as defense, don’t use your log. Chances are, the opponent is playing log bait. Resist the urge to use log so early in the game, or else you might get punished with a goblin barrel. Instead, you can just use an ice spirit + skeletons or an ice golem.
- Waiting too long
Don’t wait too long. Your deck can really capitalize on outcycling during single elixir. Even if you don’t have anything you want to play, you should try to give yourself a better hand, or set up the field to your advantage. Cycle to a cannon, or chip with ice spirit. Play skeletons in the back. You can even log the tower (if you already have or will have fireball in hand)
- Musketeer
This is just really bad against lava hound decks and balloon decks since the musketeer is your only reliable air counter. This is also just super bad if cannon isn’t in your hand either
- Cannon
You are leaving yourself vulnerable to nearly every win condition
- Fireball
Waste of 4 elixir.
After your first play, you should be able to somewhat figure out your opponent’s deck and they will know yours if you’re in high ladder, but not so much in mid ladder. At this point, it comes to matchups and following the general gameplay flow. However, in order to understand matchups, you must first understand interactions. There are obvious ones, but there are also subtle ones that are very important and can swing a game in your favor. It is important to learn about each card’s interactions in order to learn how to outplay them.
1696 health 318 damage at tourney standard, 2472 health 463 damage maxed.
Hog can be used to kite both princes and mega knights.
Takes 10 hits to take down a princess tower.
Will take tower: Ice golem + hog, Hog + skeletons
Almost takes tower: Hog + 1 skeleton
Will get 7 hits: hog alone
Will get 4 hog hits if ignored with king tower activated
Will get 3 hog hits against mega minion, archers, barbarian barrel, knight
Will get 2 hog hits against Minions, valkyrie, night witch, skeletons, inferno dragon,
Will get 1 hog hit against Sparky, lumberjack, goblins, Mega knight, electro wizard,, guards, bats, goblin gang, witch, mini pekka
Completely countered by all buildings, barbarians, skeleton army, elite barbarians
Hunter, Pekka, or Mini-Pekka + princess tower can let the hog get 0 or 1 hit, depending on timing and placement.
Important: Pekka and Mini-Pekka do not 2 shot a hog rider (they can only do it with the help of the tower, so ice golem to distract the tower can help). With the princess tower distracted with an ice golem, the hog rider can get 2 hits against a Pekka/Mini-Pekka.
It can run past Tesla placed 3 (only if the tesla is not above the ground) or more tiles from the river. Can run past any building placed 4+ tiles from the river on the opposite side. Cannot run past a center spawner placed 3 tiles from the river on either side.
- 720 health and 218 damage at tourney standard, 1050 health and 318 damage maxed
- 1 shots goblins and below
- Can be used to snipe buildings that are less than 4 tiles from the river
- Can kill a bowler if the bowler was fireballed
- Shoots bowler 3 times before musketeer gets hit, after that, musketeer only get 2 shots for every one boulder
- Shoots sparky twice before the musketeer gets killed
- If you let a lava hound get to the tower with the musketeer shooting it (when it crosses the bridge,) the lava hound only gets 5 hits before popping
- The Musketeer is killed by Tesla in 4 hits
- The Musketeer is killed by a witch in 6 hits
- Survives about 5.3 seconds against an X-bow
1197 health, 84 damage and 84 death damage at tourney standard, 1795 health, 123 damage and 123 death damage maxed.
Your deck’s best bat killer.
The max kite to the other lane is 3 tiles from the river. It’s death splash is important against skeletons (skeleton army, graveyard, witch), bats (nightwitch), and clone. It will kill equal level skeletons and bats, but not when they're 1 level higher.
Takes 2 hits from Pekka/Mini-pekka
Takes 1 jump + 3 hits from Megaknight or 5 normal hits
Takes 5 hits from lumberjack
Takes 1 charge + 2 hits from prince or 4 normal hits
Takes care of mini-pekka by itself on defense
Placing ice golem in this position lets the unit go into the 2-tower range for extra DPS.
Can tank an X-bow for about 8.8 seconds, so it’s good for recovering elixir against X-bow.
Can be used against an enemy hog rider to pull it into a 4-3 cannon (place ice golem on the tile the hog lands on after they do an auto pig push) Seen here: https://youtu.be/rt3cQd1Phtw?t=465
742 health 175 damage at tourney standard, 1081 damage 256 damage maxed. 30s lifetime.
1 shot goblins and below
Can tank 3 hog/RG or 2 hog/RG hits + log/zap or 1 hog/RG hit + fireball
Can stop Hog by itself. Can stop Giant/RG with skeletons’ help. (can solo giant, but it is nice to add more DPS anyway)
Generally dies to Balloon by the time it gets 2 hit
Can tank an X-bow for ~5.4 seconds
230 health 110 damage at tourney standard, 334 health 159 damage maxed.
Another bat killer, although not as reliable.
Can tank 1 hit from Baby Dragon, Bandit, Cannon, Musketeer, Flying machine, Goblin, Princess, Fire Spirit, Miner, Knight, Barbarians
Can tank 2 hits from bat, minion, spear goblin, ice wizard, archers, ram rider
Survives zap
Can kill skeletons, bats, guards (no shield)
Can survive a full attack from electro-wizard (both zaps hit),
1 shot by Wizard, Tesla, Lumberjack, and other high damage units.
Can take care of 2 waves from furnace, skeleton army, ice wiz, hunter by itself on defense.
As long as the ice spirit approaches the spear goblins, only 2 spears will hit the ice spirit before ice spirit jumps, allowing ice spirit to deny spear goblins on defense. Denies a lone hunter on defence. Ice spirit’s splash and jump is big enough to freeze both a giant and a sparky behind it. Can run up to a musketeer and freeze it.
Freezing archers lets musketeer 1 shot them, lets log kill them, and lets princess tower 2 shot them.
81x3 health 81x3(243) damage at tourney standard, 119x3 health 119x3(357) damage maxed.
Deceptively the highest DPS card in hog 2.6. Can stop bandit with the help of both towers (2 tiles to the side of princess tower, 2 tiles in front of king tower). It can stop Electro-wizard if it is timed correctly to push it backwards when it locks on to the princess tower. Can effectively surround ice-wizard, bowler, sparky. If split in the center correctly (early timing), it can waste a lot of time for prince and dark prince. Can be used to counter fisherman both on defense and on offense.
Skeletons can deny 2 waves of fire spirits. Can counter bandit on defense. Counters mini-pekka on defense. Also counters skeleton army.
689 damage 207 crown tower damage at tourney standard, 1004 damage 302 crown tower damage maxed.
Fireball + ice spirit can kill the units that barely survive fireball.
Fireball can hit an X-bow + princess tower if the X-bow is placed normally (1 tile away from the bridge so that tanks can be played in front of it).
290 damage 58 crown tower damage at torney standard, 422 damage 85 crown tower damage maxed.
Deceptively does more damage than 1 musk/cannon hit.
Logging archers lets musketeer one-shot them. Logging a golem near death also logs the golemites.
Has a long enough range so that you can place log at the bridge and hit the princess tower. This is very important when it comes to countering medium-health ranged units with just log. If you wait for the unit to cross the bridge and playing log 1 tile behind it, the log keeps the unit within tower range for longer, but does not clip the princess tower
Again, please read. I’m trying to include a lot of important not-obvious interactions
If you are having trouble with a specific deck, please read the card interactions of each card in the deck. It will help a lot.
Archers: Takes 1 musk shot + princess tower hit to kill. Log + ice spirit also kills. Just logging will let the princess tower kill them. Ice spirit + princess tower will counter both archers.
Baby Dragon: The secret killer of this deck. For a center baby dragon, skeletons and ice spirit can prevent all hits, and activate king tower if the baby dragon was close enough to the middle. Musketeer can 1v1 a baby dragon, but both will die. If ice spirit tanks 1 hit and freezes the baby dragon, the princess tower and musketeer can take down the baby dragon with no damage. An ice golem can tank a baby dragon while the princess tower takes it down.
Tanks 6 musk hits. Kills musk in 5 hits. Kills ice golem in 8 hits. Fireball + 3 musk hits kills baby dragon.
Balloon: A musketeer + princess tower will just barely take down the balloon (you will still take death damage). A cannon pull to the 2-tower zone + ice spirit will also just barely take down the balloon (you have to freeze it in the 2-tower zone, otherwise you get hit). Side balloons are pulled by 3-1 cannons. Other balloons are pulled by 4-2 cannons. All balloons are pulled by 0-2 cannons. 5 musketeer shots and a fireball will take down a balloon.
Bandit: Skeletons alone will defend with princess towers. Ice spirit can also be placed to mitigate most damage in emergencies if placed near the tower. Ice spirit at the river close to the bandit and log at the bridge with princess tower shooting will kill the bandit. Fireball + log also kills. A bandit will dash at a hog played in the auto pig-push position. Hog can kite her to the opposite lane. Check the Skeletons & Spirit Tech chapter for ways to counter.
Barbarian Barrel: Used quite often to deal with skeletons, center cannon, or a musketeer near the river. If it is played to your musketeer and your musketeer doesn’t die to the barrel, you can save your musketeer from the barbarian with the log. 1 musk hit + log + 2 princess tower hits kill the barbarian. The barbarian won’t even get a hit on your musketeer (only the barrel will damage the musk). Barrel damage + 3 barb hits will kill musketeer. A barbarian that rolled towards your tower will get 2 hits. But if it walked from the bridge, the barbarian will get 0 hits. Barb barrel on defense against hog rider will get the hog 3 hits.
Barbarians: can be killed with a fireball. After logging them, musk will kill them in 2 shots. Musketeer will normally 4 shot them, but any damage like an ice spirit will turn that into a 3 shot. On defense, a good player will play barbarians away from the princess tower to prevent spell value, so observe how your opponent plays barbarians before you prediction fireball. An ice spirit can tank 1 barbarian hit.
Bats: On defense, an ice spirit played to the side of the bats will kill all the bats. Electro spirit will reliably kill all the bats. An ice golem played in front of the bats will kill all the bats. Sadly, there are times when you need to fireball bats.
Against hog rider, bats played quickly will only let the hog rider get 1 hit. However, if you use hog + ice spirit into bats, the ice spirit will kill a few, and the hog will get 3 hits. Also, if you play hog+electro spirit, your hog will get all 7 hits if you can hit the princess tower too.
Battle Healer: Quite tanky, similar to a knight’s health. She heals herself and other units when she hits.
She also heals herself passively (you will see her repeatedly flash yellow), but also can lose the passive heal (you will see her stop flashing). 2 shots ice spirit. she regains her passive heal after a few seconds of inactivity.
After a few ladder games where I faced off against battle healer, I found that she was not too difficult to deal with, as long as you have your cannon and musketeer down. I used a standard 4-2 cannon and side musketeer. Try to kite her around to prevent her from healing the other units around her. You can use log on her to further prevent her from getting any hits.
Battle-ram: A 4-2 cannon should take care of it. A 2-2 cannon will pull battle-ram from any side. In some scenarios, you will want to place your cannon high so that the barbarians will spawn further away from your tower/musketeer. This is especially the case in Pekka bridge spam, in a normal 4-2 cannon will pull the Pekka and the spawned barbarians to come closer to your tower.
Bomb Tower: 2 hog hits + fireball kills bomb tower. You should only fireball if the bomb tower is not optimally placed though (meaning the hog doesn’t go into the 2 tower zone)
Bowler: This is a spell proof hog counter. Fireballing a bowler will let your musketeer win a 1v1 with the bowler. Kills ice golem in 5 hits.
Cannon Cart: Difficult to handle with 2.6. Fireball + Log destroys the cannon cart’s shield. 4 shots kills musketeer. A 4-2 cannon + princess tower will trade with cannon cart.
Dart Goblin: Dies to ice spirit + 1 musk/cannon hit. Reacting instantly to dart goblin at the bridge with skeletons at the bridge will negate it. Kills ice spirit in 2 hits, so an ice spirit won’t survive to freeze with a dart goblin targeting it. Can be lured into tower range with a 4-3 cannon or a 6-0 cannon.
Earthquake: 7 tile diameter. Lasts 3 seconds with a tick each second. Kills cannon quickly. Kills skeletons in 1 tick. Does kill ice spirit/electro spirit in 3 ticks. Since it is commonly used with hog decks, there is no cannon placement that is safe from earthquakes and pulls hog at the same time. Instead of trying to place the cannon in a different position, still play the cannon in the standard 4-2 placement so that the hog enters the 2-tower zone, and then use ice spirit + log or ice spirit to keep it in the 2-tower zone and maybe use musketeer as well to kill the hog.
Electro Giant: 4-3 cannon and a spirit still gets 1 hit on your tower. It’s best to have both a musk and the cannon to attack it. It is common for tornado to be used on your musk here. For Electro giants that walk on the inner edge of the bridge, you can use a 5-2 cannon to pull it very far.
Electro-Wizard: Dies to fireball + anything. Can be countered by skeletons alone. Also countered by log + ice spirit (play them one after the other immediately). Doesn’t one shot equal level ice spirit/electro spirit based on season 17 balance changes, but will one shot ice spirit/electro spirits that are 1 level lower
Elite Barbarians: Usually requires 2 kiting cards and musketeer/cannon to deal with. However, skeletons split in the middle with a musketeer will also do fine.
Elixir Golem: As it gets smaller, those parts have faster hit speed (thus higher DPS), so deal with the smaller units quickly. You can definitely fireball the elixir blobs and get the elixir instantly back. Logging elixir blobs will now allow the princess tower to one-shot them. Try to log when the second form at half hp, this way the log effectively hits it twice. Along with the princess tower and cannon, skeletons can easily be used on the elixir golem to deal with the elixir golem twice as fast.
Elixir Pump: Fireballing the pump puts you both on even elixir. The pump only gets its value after 51 seconds, so you don’t have to fireball if there’s less than 1 minute left in the game. Be aware of this
Executioner: On defense, a musketeer + cycle card will take care of executioner. The axe does not one-shot the ice spirit/electro spirit, but if the axe hit twice, it will die. Log Fireball Log kills executioner. You can kite executioner opposite lane with an ice golem.
Firecracker: Same hp as archers. Takes 1 musk shot + princess tower hit to kill. Log + ice spirit also kills. Just logging will let the princess tower kill it. You can activate KT with it with any unit you have. A 4-2 cannon activates, but not a 4-3.
Fisherman: 7 tile hook range. When using hog against fisherman, you should try to use an ice golem in front like against tornado. Kills musketeer in 4 hits. Kills cannon in 5 hits. Musketeer/Cannon kills fisherman in 5 hits. Your best counter to fisherman on defense is skeletons. If there is a tank in front of the fisherman, cannon is the best option since the fisherman can’t pull it forwards.
- On offense
Anti fisherman trick. Can be done with skeletons or ice spirit/electro spirit.
Fisherman pulls the ice golem in this placement: Ice Golem + Hog:
Split laning to win the game, fisherman hooks the other side
- On Defense
Skeletons can be used next to the princess tower to completely negate the fisherman. Ice spirit can also be used to a certain extent when the fisherman is frozen while the fisherman is pulling itself to the tower. You can also use an ice spirit in the opposite lane to fully counter fisherman as seen here: https://youtu.be/ANE7bYiFkwM?t=1075
If the fisherman is with a Pekka or another close range threat, use the cannon to let the fisherman pull itself to the cannon. Then deal with the other unit appropriately
Now fisherman dies to fireball + log as of the most recent balance change (Oct 2019).
Flying Machine: Dies to fireball. Musketeer takes 3 shots to kill it. Ice spirit can tank 1 hit and successfully freeze the flying machine. Ice spirit and skeletons should give you enough time for the princess tower to take down the flying machine.
Giant: 4-2 or 4-3 cannon will take it out. Cannon with skeletons will be faster. 4-2 Cannon + musketeer + 1 princess tower will kill giant before cannon is destroyed.
Giant Skeleton: Tanky, has a deadly death damage. When it locks onto your tower, Log to reset it’s attack then place Ice Golem right on top of it so it is kited away. Then, use Skeletons or Cannon to kill the Giant Skeleton
Goblin Barrel: Log kill obviously. Ice spirit/electro spirit or skeletons can defend a tricky barrel that is 1 or more tiles away from your tower. You can defend regular barrels with cannon/musk + ice spirit + skeletons (shown in the matchup section for logbait). If the electro spirit hits the goblins, you’ll take little to no damage.
Goblin Cage: A well placed goblin cage will completely deny a hog. When it comes to cages that are in the standard 4-2 position, either a log or a spirit will allow the hog 1 hit. For log, let go of your finger in between the first and second hog swing. For spirit, let go of your finger before the first swing.
Goblin Drill: Log on low HP will kill the death spawn goblins. Ice golem is a good tank. Ice golem spirit skeletons does counter drill without log.
Goblin Gang: Log kills obviously. I like to use the drawn green tile placements for using ice golem to stop a goblin gang.
Golem: It takes 20 seconds for a golem in the back to walk to the bridge. When it is played behind the king tower at 10 elixir, they will be left with 2 elixir and will generate 7 (in single) elixir by the time it crosses the bridge. Musketeer + skeletons + cannon will take care of golem by the time it reaches the cannon. Logging the golem when it’s about to pop will pop the golem and also log the golemites. I’ve heard that when timed properly, you can log back the golem at your tower, kill it, and still log the golemites without taking tower damage from the golem pop. A 4-3 cannon + musketeer + both towers will pop the golem, but your cannon will be destroyed. If skeletons are added, the golem pops before the cannon is destroyed.
Guards: Usually spell proof because of the shield, but log + spirit gets rid of them. If you log them, the tower will take care of them.
Hunter: Dies to fireball log. Allows hog to get 1 hit, except when the enemy plays ice spirit, snowball, or log. A lone hunter can be stopped by a lone ice spirit (played high 1 tile into the opposite lane), or by surrounding with skeletons. You can also kite it to the opposite lane with an ice golem.
Inferno Dragon: Can be knocked back with fireball. 6 musk hits to kill. Ice spirit/skeletons to distract will let the inferno dragon do light damage to tower. Musketeer + princess tower will result in minimal damage to musketeer. Watch out for freeze though.
Inferno tower: Hog + ice spirit freeze + musk sniping will take it down. Hog + fireball + musk sniping will also take it down
Lava Hound: When it is played in the corner at 10 elixir, they will have 3 elixir left and will generate 6.5 elixir by the time it crosses the bridge. A musketeer can take care of a lone lava hound and lava pups pretty well.
Lightning: 7 tile diameter. Instantly kills musketeer and cannon. Almost kills ice golem and does over half to hog rider. A 4-3 cannon and a side musketeer can’t both get lightninged (unless the musketeer starts walking closer)
Lumberjack: Only allows your hog to get 1 hit. On defense, skeletons + log will counter it (it’s more effective if log the LJ while the skeletons are attacking. Hopefully your log hits the tower too) LJ is commonly used with loon or golem, so be careful not to overcommit, or you might not have a good defense against those cards, especially since they’ll be raged.
Magic Archer: Dies to your fireball. Dies to 3 musketeer hits. Ice golem is a good tank for it. Magic Archers have long enough range to snipe buildings placed 4 tiles from the river. For Magic Archers walking from the center, this ice golem placement is good for tanking (right image). You can also place skeletons in that same spot to tank 2 hits.
Mega minion: 4 musk hits or 1 fireball + 1 musk hit to kill. Ice spirit or skeletons can be used to prevent a lone mega minion from getting hits.
Mega Knight: Ice golem + musketeer will take care of it. So does ice golem and cannon. You either have to not let the MK jump, or you have to kite it opposite lane with the ice golem.
Can be kited to king tower in multiple ways. Cannon (4-2 placement) + ice spirit is the easiest.
Skeletons + ice spirit can do it too
Minion horde: ice spirit + skeletons can kite it to the opposite lane, and you’ll take little to no damage
Mini-Pekka: using an ice spirit with a hog on the mini-pekka won’t give a different result. Hog + log also won’t give a different result. But hog + log + ice spirit will give your hog a second hit. On defense, an ice spirit + a log will counter the mini-pekka, but only if you log during the attack animation of the mini-pekka (so the mini-pekka is at your tower when you log it). Skeletons alone will also defend against a mini-pekka
Miner: takes 53 miner hits to take down your princess tower. kills musketeer in 4 hits. Kills ice spirit in 2 hits.
Ice spirit (successful tank) + ice golem (tanking) + skeletons = 0 hits
Ice spirit (failed to tank) + skeletons (tanking) = miner gets 1 hit (0 hits if prediction success)
Log + skeletons (tanking)= miner gets 1 hit
Perfect skeletons prediction = miner gets 1 hit
Cannon + ice spirit (failed prediction) = miner get 2 hits (1 hit if prediction success)
Fireball = miner gets 2 hits
Ice spirit (failed to tank)+ log = miner gets 3 hits (2 hits if prediction success)
Ice spirit (successful tank) + skeletons (not tanking) = miner gets 3 hits
Skeletons successful tanking = miner get 3 hits
Cannon (not tanking) = 4 hits (3 hits if you place it fast)
Log = miner gets 5 hits
Ice spirit (failed to tank)= miner gets 6 hits (5 hits if prediction success)
Nothing = miner gets 7 hits
You can fireball miner to activate king tower if they are placed as shown: https://youtu.be/lVRlJCd4Zeo?t=430
Mortar: tanks 7 musketeer hits, or 5 hog hits. Mortar hit is slow enough to miss ice spirit and skeletons. Kills musketeer in 3 hits. You can activate your king tower if they place a center mortar at the bridge. Check the King Tower Activations chapter.
Mother Witch: Deals little to no damage if ignored. If you have near to no elixir, this is a good way of countering her(https://youtu.be/40gvT5UJpVA?t=356) (https://youtu.be/40gvT5UJpVA?t=165) Make sure to not surround with skeletons or it will spawn pigs.
Night Witch: tanks 5 musketeer / cannon hits. Any damage (26+) + 4 musk hits will kill NW. Fireball + log / musk hit kills NW.
Pekka: using an ice spirit with a hog on the pekka won’t give a different result. Hog + log also won’t give a different result. But hog + log + ice spirit will give your hog a second hit. Using an anti tornado ice golem hog won’t give a different result either, since the Pekka is massive enough to block the path of ice golem and hog. However, if you play ice golem on the bridge and auto-pigpush the hog, the hog will run past the ice golem, and get 2 hits since the Pekka will need 3 hits to kill the hog without the tower (tower is locked on to the ice golem). If you still use the anti-tornado ice golem + hog, a log will let your hog get a second hit.
Pekka behind the king tower of their weaker tower is a common play. You can still play hog into that lane and it should get 4 hits. If pekka is played in the corner of their weaker tower, instead of using the default auto-pig-push position, play your hog further away from that corner (so on the inside edge of the bridge), and it should still get 4 hits before the Pekka kills the hog.
Poison: 7 tile diameter. Lasts 8 seconds for 8 ticks of damage. Kills musketeer and skeletons. Ice spirit can take 2 ticks and still do its job.
Princess: Obviously a log kills. Dies to ice spirit + 1 musk/cannon hit. Dies to 2 cannon/musketeer hits. The usual tactic is to cycle and wait for the princess to come to the bridge before you take it out. However, if the princess is near a princess tower, you can play hog into it and also play a prediction fireball, which would hit the princess, princess tower, and any units attempting to stop the hog. When using cannon to take out a bridge princess, you can actually place the cannon 1 tile behind the bridge and still hit the princess. This allows the cannon to be a little safer, since any melee units would have to walk into your princess tower’s range in order for them to hit the cannon. Try not to use log on the princess since princess is a pretty good sign of logbait, more into in the Classic Log Bait section in matchups.
As for princesses being played at the bridge, it is possible to react to, but you have to be expecting it and be very fast. You have to drop your card as the princess is dropped.
Ram Rider: Like hog, Ram rider can jump over the river, so you’ll have to use a 4-2 cannon for those. Since the ram rider can charge and deal double damage, if the opponent has a ram rider push, you can use an ice spirit or a log to stop the ram rider charge so that your cannon lives longer to defend. Since ram rider can do ranged damage, try to keep any musketeers outside of ram rider range. Just 1 bit of damage from ram rider onto musketeer can make it die to fireball. Skeletons get little value against ram rider on defense, so try not to use those for the ram rider.
A ram rider by itself can stop your hog rider from reaching the tower. However, hog rider + skeletons will allow the hog rider to reach the tower. This is because the ram rider can only keep 2 things stun slowed at a time. By adding skeletons, there are 4 things for ram rider to target, so by the time the ram rider slows the second skeleton, your hog will be moving at full speed again.
Royal Giant: 4-3 cannon + musk is the main way to kill an RG. 4-3 cannon + skeletons will kill it. 4-3 cannon + ice spirit + log will also kill it. A 4-3 cannon with fireball and log will also kill it. When you have 1 tower down, a 5-2 cannon placement is better. Log can reset. If used, use log/ice spirit while the cannon/skeletons are still alive (log preferred since it gets tower damage and makes the RG walk). Usually, splashers will be with the RG, so protect the skeletons with ice golem. In some scenarios, cannon might not even have to be played. For scenarios like this to happen, Royal Giant would be placed in the back to build a push, and musketeer would be shooting it early (before it crosses the bridge). Any units placed behind the Royal Giant can be damaged with fireball + log, and at that point, the Royal Giant will be weak enough to not warrant a cannon.
Royal Ghost: Surrounding the ghost with skeletons is the most efficient way of killing it. Kiting it opposite lane with ice golem is another way to do it. Otherwise, you’ll have to use cannon or musketeer.
Royal Hogs: 0-2 cannon won’t pull all of the hogs if they are placed all the way at the side of the arena. There will be one hog that will bypass your cannon. A 5-2 cannon will pull all hogs if the hogs are split in the middle.
Skeleton Army: You can counter the skeleton army with skeletons placed high or an ice spirit in this placement. An electro spirit will also do, just place it a bit far away, so that it doesn’t die.
Skeleton Barrel: A log will take care of the skeletons. An ice spirit will take care of most of the skeletons. It will take care of all skeletons if timed correctly. Skeleton barrel death damage is not enough to kill ice spirit. Electro spirit will take care of the barrel skeletons by itself.
NOTE: Skeleton Barrel has a slight delay when the barrel is killed, and before the skeletons spawn. It isn’t much, but it’s enough to throw off your log timing, so be careful. It’s best to time your log by letting go of your finger when the skeleton barrel starts dropping (need to double check this). If you don’t have log in hand, a tactic would be to play skeletons a few tiles above the popping skeleton barrel to kite some skeletons away, and reduce some damage. Fireball now kills the skeleton barrel. The skeleton barrel will die in 2 musketeer shots + princess tower support. Alone, musketeer takes 3 shots to pop the barrel.
Skeleton Dragons: Fireball kills. Musketeer 3 shots a skeleton dragon. 2 shots ice spirit. Requires 2 shots to kill skeletons.
Sparky: 1200 hp
Dies to fireball+anything+fireball.
Musketeer walking up to Sparky gets 2 musk shots before getting killed by sparky.
Since it is very common for the musketeer to get 2 hits when walking into a sparky, after 2 musk hits, sparky will die to fireball + log + anything (26 damage or more). Usually, an ice golem/skeletons/ice spirit will do the anything part.
Alternatively, you can log the sparky while the musketeer is shooting, so that the musketeer gets 3 hits, which means that the sparky will now die to fireball.
Musketeer + princess tower will deal with sparky as long as something takes 1 sparky hit.
If you can manage it, you can use the electro spirit to stun the sparky, letting you be safe for a while longer. Try logging a fully charged sparky while placing the electro spirit down.
Surrounding with skeletons + princess tower will also deal with sparky. However, experienced sparky players will use prediction spells on your skeletons, so don’t try to surround with skeletons unless their small spell is used. Use skeletons further away from the sparky (off to the side is where Yersoncz places them).
Since sparky moves backwards from the direction it shoots, you can use this to let the sparky lock on to other things, like cannons.
When using musketeer at the edge of the arena to defend against pushes with sparky, letting the musketeer walk at all towards the princess tower will let the sparky splash onto the tower.
The first image shows an example where the tower gets hit too.
Surrounding sparky with skeletons is something to learn in case you really have to do it.
Sparky is a very big unit, so the timing is actually a lot harder. I find that trying to surround the front of sparky doesn’t work, but trying to surround the middle-back of the sparky works far better. Place the skeletons so that the center skeleton is behind the sparky for an effective surround. This won’t really work when a goblin giant is paired up with the sparky.
If you are quick, you can use a hog in the auto pig push spot while sparky is charging then drop a cheap unit like ice spirit to tank the sparky shot since the jumping hog forces it to redirect.
Seen here: https://youtu.be/rt3cQd1Phtw?t=566
Tesla: A well placed tesla can counter ice golem + hog. 1 hog hit + ice spirit/ice golem/log damage + fireball (this is the quickest way to take down a tesla). 3 hog hits + log kills tesla. 2 hog hits + 2 musk hits kills tesla. Tesla kills musk in 4 hits. River tesla’s can hit units up to 3 tiles from the river.
Tornado: 11 tile diameter. Kills your skeletons in 1 tick. Will not kill ice spirit. Can pull hog to king tower without any hits. Without pulling to king, hog will get 1 hit. However, ice spirit in front of hog will allow the hog rider to get 1 hit, since the ice spirit will tank and maybe freeze the princess tower for a bit. Used commonly in golem decks, although can be found in decks that use ice wizard or executioner. The anti-tornado ice golem + hog will not pull either to the king tower.
Wall Breakers: Dies to log + ice spirit. However, it does NOT die to ice spirit + 1 musk/cannon hit. Log lets your princess tower/musk/cannon 1 shot them. Skeletons + ice spirit should take care of wall breakers. Skeletons + princess tower can deal with wall breakers if you place skeletons as a prediction.
2 Wall breakers destroys cannon
Witch: Fireball + log kills witch. 4 musketeer shots kills witch. On defense, you can wait for it to cross and use ice golem + musk. Place the ice golem a bit closer to the witch to slow it and get rid of skeletons. Or log + musk (3 hits from musk). Electro spirit can kill all the skeletons and stun the witch.
Wizard: Dies to fireball log. Can be countered by surrounding with skeletons and using ice spirit right away. Kills musketeer in 3 hits. Basically kills cannon in 3 hits.
X-bow: 30 second lifetime. The X-bow itself is about as tanky as the Hog Rider, and does 113 DPS. An X-bow at half health will take out ⅔ of your tower’s health.
1 cannon hit deals 12% to X-bow
1 musk hit deals 13%
Fireball deals 41%
Log deals 17%
1 hog hit deals 19%
| Method | Cost | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Skeletons to stall | 1 elixir | 1.8 seconds stalled |
| Ice spirit to stall | 1 elixir | 1.7 seconds stalled |
| Ice golem to stall | 2 elixir | 8.8 seconds stalled |
| Hog Rider to stall | 4 elixir | 12.5 seconds stalled |
| Musketeer to stall | 4 elixir | 5.3 seconds stalled |
| Cannon to stall | 3 elixir | ~5.4 seconds stalled |
| 1 hog hit + fireball + log | 10 elixir | 19% hp left. X-bow lives for 5.7 seconds |
| Fireball + 2 hog hits | 8 elixir | 17% hp left. X-bow lives for 5.2 seconds (hog tanks for this duration) |
| Log + 3 hog hits | 6 elixir | 22% hp left. X-bow lives for 6.7 seconds (hog tanks for this duration) |
| 1 fireball + 4 musketeer hits | 8 elixir | 3% hp left. |
| Log + Fireball + Log | 8 elixir | 21% hp left. |
This video shows good ways of reacting to barb hut
https://youtu.be/gYf42oZCzGg?t=760
Dealing with barbarian hut gets its own chapter since it is a little complicated. Barbarian Hut seems like a super big counter to hog rider. It kind of is. But if you know the ways to deal with a barb hut properly, you won’t have much problems with it.
These are the good ways of dealing with a barb hut on the field.
- Bypassing the hut (if possible)
- Delayed sniping the hut (if possible) (more about this later)
- Slowly defending (musk in the back or 4-2 cannon)
- Delayed Hog into a hut while avoiding barbs (you want hog to hit the barb hut 3+ times)
Yerson likes to do the bottom two, most of the time together.
Here are the bad ways of dealing with barb hut
- Playing a lone hog when they can just play barb hut.
- Playing hog fireball / log into the barb hut when they use a properly placed barb hut.
- It is ok if the barb hut is misplaced
- Just fireballing / logging the hut
Bypassing with a hog opposite lane requires the barb hut to be at least 4 tiles from the river. If you are at even elixir, try to go with a hog + musketeer, so that the opponent cannot simply tornado the hog rider without taking massive damage (they only have 3 elixir to use, so they have settle with playing a knight or something). Otherwise, a hog by itself or an ice golem hog is ok if they don’t have tornado in their hand. If they do have tornado, you can go with hog and anti-tornado skeletons.
Unfortunately, you cannot bypass the barb hut if they place the barbarian hut high. However, this means you can now use the delayed sniping strategy:
We know that you cannot immediately snipe the hut with a musketeer unless the initial barbs die somehow. Luckily, you can do delayed snipe. Use a 4-2 cannon to kill the first barb, and play your musk while the 2 barb is about to die, so that it quickly locks on to the barbarian hut. If they try to defend the barb hut, you should definitely be able to fireball any ranged unit + the barb hut.
If you can’t do either of the above methods with a barb hut on the field, just defend it slowly. Place a musketeer in the lane of the barb huts somewhere near the back so that it shoots down the barbs. Preferably, you place the musketeer at the side of the arena. If you don’t have musketeer in hand, just use a 4-2 cannon. If you know they have graveyard, a 5-0 cannon also works.
You can try to get rid of a barb hut some other way with a delayed hog rider. Wait for the initial barbs to walk some distance, and throw a hog at the river at it. I’ve seen Yersoncz do this on 3-2 barb huts. But I am not sure if this is a good idea if the barb hut is placed properly
https://youtu.be/t8dy-6Va7EE?t=1675
If there is no barb hut on the field, but you know they will play one if you use hog rider, then you have to use hog in a specific way.
- Ice golem + hog when it is still in their hand
- Outcycling the barb hut
If you play ice golem hog into their barb hut, even if they place the barb hut properly, the hog will get 3 swings on the hut and the barb hut will almost die from it. Which means you can now get ready to outcycle it.
All you have to make sure when outcycling is that you don’t wait too long when hog gets back into your hand. Otherwise, you’ll miss your chance to outcycle, and they will be able to play barb hut again.
I’m making this its own section since it doesn’t fit with any other section, and it is important enough to make your game a win or a loss. Yersoncz has a video on this that I highly recommend readers to watch.
Cards you can do king activations on are:\
- Electro Dragon - easy. Use an ice spirit or ice golem between king tower and princess tower (or a single skeleton if you split it behind KT). With a 4-2 cannon, you can place an ice spirit or an ice golem between the cannon and the king tower.
- Electro spirit: very easy. Similar to electro dragon, but you don’t need to split skeletons.
- Mortar - Very difficult timing. (the key is for the mortar to shoot before your skeletons start moving)
- Balloon - easy with the double cannon method (more applicable). Difficult with the cannon fireball ice spirit method, which requires a misplaced balloon). You also can pull a balloon that is dropped in the middle of the arena with a cannon in front of king tower.
- Miner - Easy. Requires a misplaced miner. Use log/fireball. Seen here: https://youtu.be/lVRlJCd4Zeo?t=511
- Magic Archer - Difficult timing. Use log + ice spirit.
- Ice spirit + unit seems to be easier. Seen here: https://twitter.com/i/status/1227956266422550528
- This is another way to do it with ice spirit + ice golem https://www.reddit.com/r/ClashRoyale/comments/hfpjkx/a_more_simple_way_to_get_magic_archer_to_activate/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x
- Baby Dragon - Medium. Requires a center baby dragon. Use skeletons + ice spirit.
- Goblin Barrel - Easy if you recognize deep goblin barrels. Requires a deep goblin barrel.
- Bandit - Easy. Use skeletons + ice spirit.
- Mega Knight - Easy. Use skeletons + ice spirit. Or use cannon + ice spirit/skeletons. If you use the ice spirit + skeletons to do it, watch out if the ice spirit manages to freeze the mega knight, since it will change the jump timing. If you are using the cannon to do it, ice spirit is preferred, since it doesn’t die to zap/snowball.
From personal experience, it is quite easy to mess up the king tower activation for Mega Knight during a Mega Knight push. It is very often that your opponent will support the mega knight push. After using skeletons and ice spirit, using ice golem to tank support units anywhere between the towers results in failing (which I have done three times now). If you need to tank the support units behind the Mega Knight with an ice golem, you will have to place it on the edge of the arena, or much higher up.
Here is how to activate king tower against a supported Mega Knight push.
https://www.reddit.com/r/hogcycle/comments/jbvcuy/how_to_activate_kt_against_a_supported_mk_push/
Mortar: https://youtu.be/8WVs_ZtxC7E?t=266
For mortar, you let go of your finger when the timer looks between this and this:
- Bowler - as of season 14, can be used to activate king tower.
- https://www.reddit.com/r/ClashRoyale/comments/i4k3v2/2_elixir_king_activation_against_bowler_many/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
- Basically, skeletons on the 4-3 cannon placement, and then spirit at the skeletons counter-bandit placement
- https://twitter.com/cheunggl666/status/1290692132164890624?s=21
- Cannon placed in a 6-0 position + log 1 tile towards the edge of the lane to push bowler towards arena center will activate king tower https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YZXI5he3d0
- How to activate king tower with BOWLER musk log
- https://www.reddit.com/r/ClashRoyale/comments/i4k3v2/2_elixir_king_activation_against_bowler_many/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Here is another method for activating against a misplaced balloon: https://instagram.com/p/B3vnYbbF5-Q/
Skeleton and ice/electro spirit are the two most useless cards in your deck, but they still can be used, sometimes to great value. Always use these cards in a way that can possibly get value. It’s very easy to throw away these cards, and it’s very easy to think that 1 elixir doesn’t matter. I find it sad that not even some professionals even know how to use these cards properly (https://youtu.be/AXepghjFE_Y?t=178 this moment against E-wiz).
Here are a few general ideas to know.
- Identify which cards in your opponent’s deck that these cards are useful against. This basically goes for any troops that isn’t a splasher. If you didn’t read the “Interactions of 2.6” section about skeletons and ice spirit, skeletons and ice spirit can counter a lot of units on its own. Learn which cards these are, and you can try keeping these interactions in mind to make great positive elixir trades.
- There are lots of king tower activations that involve skeletons and ice spirit, so if you haven’t already, please read the above “King Tower Activation” section.
- Against miner control decks, these two cycle cards are actually extremely useful (the skeletons in single elixir, and the ice spirit during single and double elixir). The ice spirit will always reset the miner and the skeletons will deal good damage. If you play them near the king tower towards the tower the opponent is attacking, it will temporarily deter them from playing miner.
- Ice spirit chip damage can really make you win the game, so you can use ice spirit at the bridge to force a response from your opponent. If they don’t respond, you can assume that the opponent is playing some kind of beatdown deck.
- Skeletons don’t do anything alone on offense, but if you are starting the game, it can pair well with hog, so you can place your skeletons near the back, and by the time you get to your hog rider, you can play hog to pair it with the skeletons.
- Surrounding with skeletons will work on every splasher except valkyrie, charging dark prince, and baby dragon. You can use this time to freeze with ice spirit.
- Pretty much every non-high-DPS card does not 1 shot the ice spirit, so you can use ice spirit to tank a hit and distract. Some surprising ones are bandit and giant skeleton.
- Skeletons and ice spirit are involved in a lot of king tower activations.
- Splitting skeletons will work well against air units. This will make it extremely useful against minion horde. This will also work well against both the princes if timed correctly.
- You can use skeletons and ice spirit to push the musketeer backwards. This is very important in musketeer 1v1s and building sniping, since you can use this information to protect your musketeer from a unit like mega minion.
- Even if your opponent’s king tower is activated with tornado, you can use ice spirit in front of hog, or opposite lane skeletons to let your hog get a hit.
Here are some how-to’s:
- You can counter Electro-wizard with skeletons on defense by placing the skeletons on the tile where the Electro-wizard normally stops to hit the tower. Right before it attacks, when the skeletons spawn in, the top skeleton will push the electro-wizard slightly backwards, which allows the skeletons and the tower to kill the electro-wizard without your tower taking any damage.
- Countering Fisherman on Offense
- Countering 2 waves of fire spirits with skeletons (needs to be updated with new fire spirits)
- Another way to do this: https://youtu.be/_DzrCS-OVJ0?t=728
- Countering bandit, mini-pekka
- You can use skeletons to kill a dart goblin at the bridge if you react right away.
- You can use ice spirit to counter skeleton barrel skeletons like this: https://youtu.be/lVRlJCd4Zeo?t=55
- You can use ice spirit to counter goblin gang like this: https://youtu.be/lVRlJCd4Zeo?t=99
- You can use skeletons to activate king tower on deep goblin barrels: https://youtu.be/lVRlJCd4Zeo?t=485
- You can use an ice spirit to counter a dart goblin at the bridge on either of these tiles:
You can find other tricks from u/Milo-the-great on reddit and YouTube. https://www.reddit.com/user/Milo-the-great/posts/
Skeletons and Ice spirit Tips:
- Countering wizard with ice spirit + skeletons: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClashRoyale/comments/he4jbx/great_cheap_counter_to_wizard_and_a_skeleton/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x
Defending Hog Rider with Ice golem and Skeletons
https://youtu.be/It_EWzmsD_Q?si=AtICJ73es6-mK2ce
Author: sTrollZ (I’m still stuck in mid ladder, so don’t trust me that easily. It’s for your own good)
The information in this part is very unreliable and hard to use in midladder. Read at your own risk. Also, this only predicts win conditions and/or deck types.
- Archers: Almost sure sign of 2.9/ 3.0 X-Bow, especially when made as a first play.
- Baby dragon: Probably graveyard or golem with the rare egiant and/or hound.
- This is a near sure sign of tornado(the only time you’ll see fisherman with babyd is when the opponent plays RG fisherman w/out LJ (https://www.deckshop.pro/deck/detail/962)
- Bandit: Usually in bridgespam and MK control. But can be seen in 3M.
- Barb barrel: A small spell used in many decks. Common decks are bridgespam without pekka, GY, Golem, RG, and miner balloon.
- Barb barrel usually means that there is a fisherman or tornado. Watch out.
- Barbs: FB bait or Lavaloon fb.
- Bats: MK zapbait or a cycle deck.
- Barbhut: Egolem, duallane, GY etc. used a lot bcs of the vault it provides.
- Battle healer: Self explanatory. Ofc egolem, but is very rarely seen in golem.
- Bomb Tower: Usually seen in miner cycle decks. However, you can see it in GY and hog cycle, too.
- Bomber: Expect to see some kind of heavy wincon, like golem or RG. Rarely seen without nado,since it is deadly against clumps of ground units.
- Bowler: Graveyard, lumberloon, giant graveyard. Nothing else to say about it. Pretty high chance of nado.
- Cannon: Hog cycle. Nothing more.
- Cannon cart: New bridgespam, graveyard or Golem. If its golem, there's a high chance a nado is involved.
- Clone: Lavaclone or golem clone or giant skeleton
- Dark prince: Mostly used in beatdown, The wincons range from giant to golem. Very rarely used in 3M and PEKKA BS as a replacement for ghost.
- Dart Goblin: Bait(Logbait) and cycle
- Earthquake: Hog cycle, mortar eq cycle, and Royal hog decks. RG eq and Egiant EQ exists.
- Electro dragon: Golem or egolem probs. 100% chance of nado when used with golem.
- Electro spirit: All matter of decks.
- Ewiz: Bridgespam and RG.
- Elite barbs: Yeah ebarbs. You never know what to expect, but watch out for bridgespam.
- Elixir pump: golem and 3M and the occasional x-bow
- Executioner: Jack of all trades. Used in a lot of decks ranging from hog to GS, but WATCH OUT FOR NADO 100% chance of nado in high ladder, not so much in midladder
- Fireball: Yeah. I don’t know what to expect. If played with golem, rule out lightning. If played with SB or GB, expect a light bait deck.
- Firecracker: rarely used in any META or classic decks. But expect a fast wincon for the most part. It is very rarely used in other decks, but I won’t go into detail.
- Fire spirits: You never know what to expect, eh? Underused, underwhelming and understated
- Fisherman: Jack of all trades. Usually in the heavier decks- mostly rg. Sometimes egiant.
- Flying Machine: Usually in lavahound(mostly lavaclone) and FB bait decks.
- Freeze: Usually a cheesy deck. Used with its wincon, so you already know if it does get used with the wincon. For reference, expect a fast wincon or a wincon that deals a lot of damage(loon and GY are good examples)
- Furnace: RG. There is a chance for fisherman though.
- Giant skeleton: Expect RG or an off-meta clone deck for the most part. Does have nado. It’s usually used to pull troops into the GS bomb.
- Giant snowball: Hog EQ, loon cycle and RR mostly. Also used in GY and GG decks.
- Goblins: The happy noob deck(hog exenado) and MK decks for the most part.
- Goblin cage: Used in a wide variety of decks, some have nado, some don’t. You’d better check. (https://www.deckshop.pro/deck/list?containing=GoblinCage)
- Goblin gang: Logbait or some early instance of 3M or golem.
- Goblin hut: Probably graveyard, but maybe off-meta. It does provide quite a bit of chip value, so be careful.
- Guards: Primarily used in lava hound decks though.
- Heal spirit: Usually seen with royal hogs or RG as well as elite barbarian decks.
- Hunter: You see him everywhere, yet nowhere. Usually used with Heal spirit and fisherman.
- Ice golem: Cycle or Graveyard.
- Ice spirit: Expect to see some kind of cycle deck, but never rule out any possibilities.
- Ice wizard: GY and Xbow with the occasional stray beatdown deck. EXPECT TO SEE TORNADO
- Inferno Dragon: Expect to see a hound, loon or MK.
- Inferno tower: classic logbait mostly.
- Knight: Usually seen in lighter decks as a mini tank. E.g.: xbow 3.0, classic logbait etc.
- Lightning: used in the heaviest of decks. Golem or Lava hound mostly. Very rarely with hog and sometimes RG
- Log: Seen everywhere from bait to cycle. Usually a lighter deck. Heavier decks use zap, as it is a better counter to inferno.
- Lumberjack: Usually seen in golem, and light loon decks.
- MA: fireball bait or Bridgespam.
- Mega minion: Giant double prince and lava hound for the most part. Sometimes golem too.
- Minions: Lavaloon, MK and PEKKA BS(without MA)
- Minion horde: Old 3M fb bait with elixir collector. It’s commonly seen in midladder, so learn how to counter it. Sometimes seen (rarely) in fb miner control
- Mini PEKKA: usually in golem for the most part. But sometimes seen in chip and bait. Sometimes used with hog decks. Can also be found in giant graveyard.
- Mirror: I’d say that you need to keep a firm hold on log if your opponent actually has mirror.
- Mother Witch: Well, I got forced to make this part. It’s probs FB bait, beatdown(very specific cases when the support troops are able to make the push work without the MW) or counterpush.
- Musketeer: Usually seen in cycle decks due to her range and constant DPS.
- Night witch: Golem and elixir golem for the most part. If seen with a battleram, it's probs old bridgespam. High chance for nado.
- Poison: Used in decks which have long pushes, bcs of the area denial. Mostly medium to heavy beatdown and GY. Never rule out PEKKA BS though.
- Prince: Giant double prince or prince logbait for the most part.
- Princess: Logbait or chip cycle.
- Rage: Ebarbs and egolem.
- Rascals: Logbait. Probs the prince version.
- Rocket: Classic logbait for the most part, but icebow also carries it. Or in the very modern meta (as of June 2) rocket cycle
- Royal delivery: Cycle, GY and Beatdown.
- Royal ghost: Bridgespam, 3M and giant.
- Royal recruits: Usually a dual lane deck(Rhogs) or loon.
- Skarmy: Jack of all trades in midladder. If seen above that, it’s probably a giant GY, logbait or lavaclone.
- Skeleton dragons: Used in a lot of archetypes, especially dual lane(3M fb bait) and golem. Never rule out Lava hound decks though.
- Skeletons: Probably cycle decks.
- Sparky: Giant or goblin giant.
- Spear goblins: Nearly unseen, but probs a chip deck(Mortar).
- Tesla: Xbow cycle, sometimes used in logbait decks as well
- Tombstone: Lavaloon and sometimes GY
- Tornado: Golem, GS, GY and many more.
- Valkyrie: Usually seen in midladder. But if not, expect a cycle/light mortar deck.
- Witch: Probs giant.
- Wizard: N/A (midladder only) But if seen in high ladder, probs a giant.
- Zap: Mostly heavier decks/decks with a tank, since they need to counter inferno tower/dragon for their tank.
- Zappies: Fireball bait or RG GS.
Hog 2.6 Matchups <- Click that
I will just let you know, instead of jumping straight to a specific matchup (like Golem Lightning), make sure you read what is in the generic matchup (like Golem in general).
Here’s matchup data from Royale API. You can see what this deck does well or badly against.
Contents:
- Weird noobish random decks
- Generic Beatdown
- Balloon (no LH)
- Elixir Golem
- Giant Double Prince
- Giant/Goblin Giant Sparky - easy to mess up
- Giant witch
- Golem
- Graveyard
- Hog earthquake - manageable
- Hog Exenado
- 2.6 hog mirror match
- Lava Loon Matchups
- Lava Miner - difficult
- Lava Clone - not easy
- Classic Log Bait
- Log bait with prince rascals
- Log bait 2.8
- Miner Poison - difficult for me (please help me)
- Miner Mortar bait - easy
- Royal Giant
- Royal Hogs
- Mega knight Bait
- Lumberjack Balloon (lumberloon) - easy, but you can mess up pretty bad
- Pekka Bridgespam - easy to mess up
- 2.9 X-bow - difficult
- Old Ice Bow - easy
- New Ice Bow - hard counter
- 3 Musketeers
- Mortar Cycle (Nado) - hard counter
Check out the second matchups document ->Hog 2.6 Matchups <- Click that