COC Defending against Hogs

[The_Dom]

Took a section from a reddit post, http://www.reddit.com/r/ClashOfClans/comments/2xxxad/warstrategy_th9_war_base_design_indepth_guide/. I don't agree with all his comments, but his discussion about hog proofing is spot on. This applies to all levels that have giant bombs, always double them up and create multiple pockets where they could be to keep attackers guessing.

Part 4: Defending against Hog-Based Compositions

Hogs are freaking powerful at TH9, so you definitely want to be prepared for them. It is practically impossible to make a TH9 war base fully hog-proof, but you can make it very difficult, and I'm here to show you how. There are four keys, but as I already talked about the CC in part 1, I'll dive into the other three.

Part 4a: The Giant Bomb

As you all should know, when hogs set off two giant bombs at the same time (i.e. a DGB), they die. Thus, you want these. However, I've seen so many people place these incorrectly, so here's a detailed guide on DGBs.

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  They should be in between defences. (Note: teslas are defences too! A sneaky trick is to set up a DGB next to a tesla, this makes it look like a bad spot for a DGB when it's actually an okay spot. If you decide to do this, be very careful; you'll have to have something right next to the tesla, otherwise you'll have a spawn hole.)

  
  
  
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  Length-wise DGBs are bad, it's hard for hogs to trigger them at the same time. Width-wise is the way to go.

  
  
  
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  Don't make them easily reachable. If I can send a hog and set off a bomb we've got a problem.

  
  
  
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  To prevent what I just talked about, I've seen a lot of people stick a defense right in front of the DGB to "protect" it. In general, this a BAD idea. If I send my hogs right on that outer cannon, they'll kill it, split to the next two defences, and set off ONE bomb, but not the other. If the attacker drops down a heal there, your DGB has just been rendered useless, because the hogs will get healed up before they trigger the next one, which means you're screwed. Here's another example. In this base, the DGB only works if you can get the hogs to travel from the cannon to the AD (or vice versa). Thus, if you send hogs in on the wiz/arch tower, only one bomb gets set off at a time.

  
  
  

Alright, so what's the proper way to have DGBs? Basically, you don't want to protect it, you want to divert the hogs so they go around it, then come back and run across it (like a circle). Here's an example. The red line represents how the hogs will path, and as you can see, no matter where you send them in, they go in a circle, and at some point they have to run through the DGB. Notice how there is no defence directly blocking the DGB; if I put a tesla there, that would draw the hogs in, and then they'll jump into the DGB and set off one at a time.

Here's another example. This one's a bit more complicated and not just a clean circular path. However, one way or another, the pathing all leads to the mortar or the AD without triggering a bomb early, which is what you want.

Try not to put your DGBs too close to each other. If I can set off both DGBs with a single kill squad (usually some sort of golem/wiz/heros mixture), that's not good. Separate your DGBs with another compartment/lots of stuff in between.

I like to have around 4 good potential DGB spaces. The AQ also plays a part in where you want to place your DGBs, so I'll talk about that next.

[KILLERGUN]

Good stuff with the strategy topics dom! really helpful