Drop Ship along with Minions are one of the most powerful attacking strategies right now, especially for Builder Hall 8 but also strong at Builder Hall 7.
With the buff of Drop Ships along with the release of BH8 and the additional Army Camp at BH8, they simply can’t fail and I get constantly 60% 2-Star attacks and better with it.
In this guide, I’ll show you how it works and how to perform these attacks.
Dropship & Minions Strategy
While the Baby Dragon was the air tank at BH6 and lower, it gets replaced by the Drop Ship at BH7+ for several reasons:
- Drop Ships have more hitpoints
- Drop Ships don’t need to be alone in the air to use their special ability
- They spawn ground units that distract defenses as well
So, the general idea of this attacking strategy is simply using Drop Ships as tanks to the path of the Builder Hall and place Minions behind them.
This will normally get you the Builder Hall plus around 50% and then you send in your Battle Machine to get additional percentage.
In case you can’t reach the 2-Star with your Drop Ships & Minions, maybe because you didn’t get the Builder Hall or enough percentage, the Battle Machine still saved the day for your attack.
Also, in most cases the Giant Cannon is next to the Builder Hall and you can get it down with your air troops so your Battle Machine is able to you a nice slive of the base without getting destroyed by the Giant Cannon fast.
The key elements of the attack is not spamming – spamming will get you in trouble. But with some easy-to-apply rules you’re set to go to not fail any attack:
- Choose the right side to attack
- Build your funnel
- Minions deployment style
These three things are something I want to show you now.
Who should use this strategy?
In my opinion, everyone at Builder Hall 8 (or Builder Hall 7) that has upgraded the Drop Ships and Minions to at least Level 14.
You can also try it out when you have some Power Potions available to get a feeling for it 🙂
There are no certain bases that can defend against this, especially at Builder Hall 8 and I have never failed an attack with no stars so far using it.
How to win with Drop Ships & Minions
Your army composition is 50/50:
- 3 Army Camps of Drop Ships (2 if you’re BH7)
- 3 Army Camps of Beta Minions
Now I will show you how to execute the attack properly.
Base Scouting & Attack Point Selection
There are 2 things you will do before you start your attack and that’s selecting the side you want to attack from and spotting defenseless outside trash buildings for extra percentage.
Attack the base is actually an easy choice in most cases that should meet these parameters:
- Fast route to the Builder Hall
- Flat side/not corner
- Not directly into the Air Bombs (they should be on the opposite side of the Builder Hall)
Here are some examples for you where you can see what I mean:
Now you should have enough time left so scout corner trahs buildings or Army Camps that you can snipe with 1 Minion.
These are easy-to-get extra percentage, but the amount of sniped structures depend on how expensive it will be to build your funnel (see below)
Building the funnel
Now here’s the crucial part that can make or break your attack.
You need a flat side with 4-5 buildings that your Drops Ships will target first and then secondly lead them directly in direction of the Builder Hall.
If there are buildings in front or at the side, the risk of your Drop ships not going for the core and leaving your Minions alone (making your attack fail are too high)
I have here several examples of bases where I marked you the buildings that need to get eliminated before sending the Drop Ships.
I also recommend checking for Hidden Teslas at obvious positions as a Hidden Tesla far in front of the other buildings can group up all your Drop Ships at once and make them an easy target for splash damage of the Roaster or Air Bombs.
You can use up to 7 Minions in advance of the attack, but I recommend you to limit it down to 5.
All the Minions you don’t need for your funnel are perfect opportunities to snipe army camps on the other side of the base.
Execute the attack
Now here’s the fun part – destroying the base 🙂
You will send your Drop Ships either in a perfect line (when there are 4-5 buildings in your funnel) or in two lines (if you have 3 buildings):
Right after them you will drop your Minions ONE BY ONE (Not the finger-drop line deployment!).
The reason is that you don’t want to overspend their long-range ability – imagine you have 10 Minions targeting an Army Camp and all of them spend 1 long-range shot -> that’s an overkill and will make them come closer to the Drop Ships and get splash damage from Bombs & Roaster fire.
So, you will use like 8-10 Minions and deploy them carefully. Use 1-2 Minions for low-hitpoint buildings like Army Camps, Mines, etc and 3-4 Minions for Storages, Lab etc.
Your goal is to get the first line of buildings down at pretty much the same time so your Balloons don’t group together too much.
Once the first line is down, you can start sending in Minion after Minion and try to make them target the defenses in front of the Builder Hall.
You’ll get the feeling for it very fast how to deploy them depending how the Guard Post troops distract, what defenses are still there etc.
IMPORTANT! I always save up 3-5 Minions and watch the attack – as soon as the path to the Builder Hall is free, I will drop them to make sure to get the Builder Hall down.
This will help you to not have to send your Battle Machine for the Builder Hall.
When all your Drop Ships and Minions are down, you should see half the base being destroyed and all you now need to do is clearing with the Battle Machine.
You should have like 1:30 minutes left so no need to rush it.
Select a spot where you can get as many buildings as possible.
Conclusion
This attacking strategy is not spamming, it’s like Barbarians in the air with good timing. If you simply spam down your troops you will see many of high-percentage 1-Star results. You can ALWAYS get a 2-Star with this strategy when you use the tips above and not just spam down your troops 🙂
