Tyler’s Guide to Builder-Base Base Building

Hello viewers, I (Tyler) have gotten myself together to create a general guide on how to make bases. If you don’t know who I am, I am (at the time of writing this) one of the best Builder Base players in the world and I excel at defense.

I have also gotten some other notable pro base builders (Psychopath, Fabielicious) to review and approve this guide so you know that it will be good.

As for the content of the guide, most of what I list here will be the best things to consider when creating bases. There will be reasoning behind every guideline I suggest, as well as pictures to assist in my explanations. Additionally, part of being a good base builder is knowing the most effective ways to attack a base, so this guide will naturally increase your offense as well as (obviously) your defense. The guide will start short and concise but will go into more depth as you progress through it.

This guide has a lot in it. To help you navigate, there is a table of contents (Google calls it the Document Outline) and you can click the various headers to take yourself to different parts of the guide.

Key Terms

• Key/major air defenses - these include the Air Bombs, Mega Tesla, Roaster, and Xbow (air mode)
• Cart - The Cannon Cart troop
• Major/minor defense - A defense that there is only one of (major, e.g. Mega Tesla) or a defense with multiple duplicates (minor, e.g. Cannon).
• Troop AI/Rule of three - this refers to the common way that troops in the game find their next target. Troops will generally look at the nearest three buildings, determine which one it can reach the fastest, and start traveling that way.
• Trash/Trash Building - a building or buildings that don’t deal damage. These buildings only provide their HP pools to the defense.
• Value - This refers to the amount of a base that a troop can take down, as well as the quality of targets that the troop gets. An example of “Good value” is getting one or more key major defenses and/or getting many trash buildings/minor defenses. Defenses can get good value as well, meaning that a defense killed or did damage to a lot of troops.
• Giant/Large bombs - the traps labeled “Mega Mine” in the game.
• HP - Hitpoints. The health of a building/troop.
• Ladder - The online competitive trophy scene. When you gain/lose trophies you move up/down the ladder.
• BH - Builder Hall
• [X] o’clock - This refers to analog clocks (the circular clocks with hands) that have numbers marked 1-12 around the edge of the clock face. When using X o’clock in this guide, it refers to a direction or spot in a base that would correspond with the location on an analog clock. For example, 12 o’clock would be directly North and 6 o’clock would be directly South.

General knowledge/Need to know

• Your goal as a defender is to ideally stop a 3-star, and definitely to stop a 6-star. This means we are shooting for a 1-2 star defense, and if that fails we are hoping for a 5 star defense.
• Every base can be 6-starred, and pros will get 6 stars more often than not. There is no “unbreakable” base, but there are bases that are harder to beat than others.
• Base stealing is frowned upon in the builder base community. People won’t like you if you steal bases. Please either come up with original ideas or use bases that have been openly shared with the public.
• You can save more than the default 3 bases that the game provides. If you go to edit layouts -> tap the base you want to save -> tap the white share button -> and tap “share as link”, a link will be copied to your clipboard. If you paste/save that link somewhere (Google Docs, Notes app, etc), you will always have access to that base and any others that you choose to save. (This link will expire 90 days after the last time it was used)

Choice Of Defenses For Each Stage

We will now provide a general list of which defenses to use on each stage. While using what is in this list isn’t a requirement to have a good base, you will find that almost all top bases follow these guidelines.

1st stage:

(1) Air bombs

(1) Mega Tesla

(1) Roaster

(1) Xbow

(1) Lava launcher

(1) Giant cannon

(2-3) Archer towers

(1-3) Double cannons

(0-2) Crushers

(0-2) Firecrackers

(0-3) Teslas

(3-4) Giant bombs

(2-6) Regular bombs

(2-5) Push traps

(0-1) Spring traps

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2nd stage:

(1) Multi-mortar

(0-1) Archer towers

(1-2) Double cannons

(0-2) Crushers

(3-5) Firecrackers

(0-3) Teslas

(3) Cannons

(0-1) Giant bombs

(0-4) Regular bombs

(0-3) Push traps

(5-6) Spring traps

Reasoning:

Major Defenses

Starting with the first stage’s major defenses, you will want most of the major defenses in stage one because this will give you the greatest chance at defending in the first stage. You will need all of your major air defenses (Mega Tesla, Roaster, Air bombs, Xbow (air)) to try and stop air attacks. The Mega Tesla, Roaster, and Xbow (ground) can all help against ground attacks as well. To limit cart value, you will want to bring the lava launcher and giant cannon. Obviously these will help against ground troops as well.

Minor Defenses

When it comes to minor defenses, archer towers can hit both ground and air troops and have enough range to hit cannon carts. Most bases run all three archer towers on the first stage, but occasionally you will see a good base that runs just two.

Double cannons have the highest DPS against ground troops after the Mega Tesla and are one of your main defensive tools against ground attacks. We recommend two double cannons in the first stage and one in the second, but other variations will work as well.

Crushers can also help against ground attacks and they will normally force out Pekka abilities from good players, making it so that those abilities aren’t used elsewhere. Crushers also have a ton of hp and can help tank for air defenses as well. You can really use any number of crushers in your first and second stages and have an effective base.

Firecrackers have good DPS and range but can only attack air troops. Using one of these in the first stage can be a large help against baby dragons and Battle Copters if your base needs it. Generally, the only time two firecrackers are used in top bases is if the bases are also using a ground xbow. Zero or one firecracker is more common in top bases.

Teslas are amazing. They attack both ground and air troops, have good DPS, and can surprise your opponents. Top players will run teslas on their first stages because they are one of the best tools to help trap specific people and their play styles. Some of the main weaknesses of Teslas are their range and health, and whether or not Teslas are effective in your base is base-specific. There are good bases that run anywhere from 0-3 teslas. That being said, we still recommend running at least one Tesla in your first stage.

The last of the defenses is cannons. Cannons suck. They aren’t exactly bad, they are just rarely (if ever) better to use than double cannons, crushers, teslas, etc., and thus are almost never used in the first stage. Cannons are more effective, however, when there are fewer troops being thrown at them, making them perfect for the second stage. Use all 3 cannons in the second stage.

Traps

Now onto traps. The Giant Bombs are the best trap to deal damage to troops. If placed correctly they can ruin any attack's effectiveness. You will want to run all of them in your first stage unless there is a common attack you see in your second stage that you specifically want to trap against.

Regular bombs are also good at damaging troops (they do a little over 1/3 of the damage of a giant bomb) and take up less space than a large bomb. The amount you put in your first stage can vary depending on the amount of other traps you have in your base. If you have a specific use case for the bombs in your second stage, this will vary the number of bombs in each stage as well. When in doubt, it is probably best to put regular bombs in the first stage to give yourself the best chance at defending.

Push traps. These are super important and can make or break a base. Good push traps can completely ruin an attack. You could push a bomber into danger, a cart into death, a giant into a non-tanking position, or a pekka outside of the main walls of your base. All of these can ruin an attack leading to a defense. You will probably want at least 3 in the first stage. A good blend to aim for is 4 push traps in the first stage and 1 push trap in the second.

Spring traps. These things are bad. I know I said cannons suck, but springs traps? These actually suck. They essentially only counter one troop in the game: archers, which aren’t super common anyway. Spring traps can also trigger on barbarians, but most of the time the barbarians run so fast that they just run over the spring traps and don’t get killed. These traps are good if you know people will approach your base a certain way with archers, but other than that you could essentially not place spring traps and still have a great base. Put these in the second stage where archers are more common. You might be able to put one in the first stage if you are confident it will get triggered, but it normally isn’t worth it.

Designing The First Stage

Designing a good first stage is generally harder to do than designing a good second stage. People have more troops at their disposal and there are a lot of decisions you have to make with the choice of defenses, wall layout, traps, etc. In this section, we will discuss some good practices, tricks, and things to look out for when designing a first stage.

Where to start

Starting a new base can be really hard if you don’t already have an idea in mind. Every decision you make could lead to a million different variations in attacks. It can be hard to start a new base, especially as a beginner, but there are a couple of ways that you can come up with a starting point.

The first is getting inspiration and this can happen internally or externally. The internal case looks like asking yourself a bunch of questions. What would happen if I put two double cannons together? What if I put these two air defenses close to one another? What if I did this weird thing with my walls? Etc. The external way for inspiration is by seeing what others are doing and viewing what is popular. You might see an interesting/effective layout that others are using and use similar ideas. I am not saying to steal a base. Do not steal bases. The builder base community will not like you. However, you can use other’s bases for inspiration. Did someone use an interesting wall layout that you want to try out? Did you see a cool combination of defenses that looked interesting? We suggest waiting after seeing these things and then recreating certain elements FROM MEMORY. This way you will have your own variations in the bases you build and will likely come up with something original.

Another way of starting a base is by arranging your air defenses first. This is many people’s go-to if they don’t have any other ideas in mind. This looks like placing your major air defenses (Mega Tesla, Roaster, Air Bombs, Xbow (air)) in a pattern that you are happy with (while remembering to space out at least some of these defenses by 4 tiles to protect against baby dragon abilities). You then build the rest of the base around the specific spacing of your major air defenses to get something new and original.

The other major way to start a base is to think about a new wall layout. This generally looks like creating some compartments, placing a few notable defenses in these compartments, and then continuing from there by moving around different buildings and walls until you eventually get to the wall layout you originally had in mind.

Troops/Armies to counter

Now we will talk about things you need to be thinking about as you design your base and the specific troops and armies that you need to counter.

First and foremost are Cannon Carts. Carts are THE biggest troop that you have to look out for when designing a competitive base. Cart value is one of the first things that pros look for and if carts can get a lot of value on a base, that base will be destroyed. Even if only 1 or 2 carts make it into the second stage of a base, at the higher trophy levels, that will generally lead to a 6 star. You have to reduce cart value. We suggest that you use the table of contents on this page to get to the cannon cart section of this document to really understand the ins and outs of how to counter cannon carts. The short version is to use walls, the edge of the map, the lava launcher, archer towers, the giant cannon, high hp buildings, and traps to reduce cart value.

The next biggest troop that you have to build your base against is baby dragons (air troops). Unlike Pekkas, there are no walls and push traps that you can use to influence baby dragons. You have to limit the value that baby dragons get through your trap placement, the placement of your air defenses, and the placement of your trash buildings. Ideally you will be able to get baby dragons to use their abilities in non-optimal places by using traps. You will also want to reduce the value of their abilities by spreading out your air defenses. As a side note, depending on the meta, other air troops might be viable. The tips above for baby dragons also apply to other air troops.

The last major troop that you have to prepare for is the Pekka. Luckily there are a lot of tools available for you to use to counter pekka attacks. Nearly every trap in the game (minus spring traps) can be used to counter Pekka attacks. You also have walls and multiple choices of ground-targeting defenses at your disposal. Multiple compartments, smart spacing of trash buildings/walls, and a variety of traps can all help counter Pekka attacks.

If your base can hold against the arch-cart, mass baby dragon, and mass pekka attacks fairly consistently, you have probably made a really good base. Your base won’t hold up against every attack, but if you are forcing your opponents to either get creative or fail, that’s how you know you have a good base.

Defensive tricks and common design patterns

Now we will discuss many of the common design patterns that occur in most top bases and provide reasoning for why these patterns exist. The reasoning behind some of these patterns could be overwhelming to some readers/base builders, but just remember that while the reasoning behind some of the patterns could be complex, the actual building of the patterns in-game is generally not complex.

The lava launcher compartment

You will see a very similar lava launcher compartment in most of the top bases and this is for a reason. Cannon Carts can be extremely powerful and the lava launcher defends more area against carts than any other defense with its range of 13 tiles. Defenses that are directly adjacent to the lava launcher or directly adjacent with a one-tile gap are all protected against carts. You will want to defend your major air defenses against carts and the lava launcher is arguably the best tool for this. In addition to the cart protection, if your major air defenses are arranged like the following,

Then you also get the nice 4-tile gap to help reduce baby dragon ability value (you can swap out the Air bombs and Mega Tesla with major air defenses of your choosing). As for the other building(s) to fill out the compartment, some strong options are high DPS buildings like the lowered archer tower or a double cannon. These buildings are good here because they help balance the strength of the compartment against ground attacks and ground troops will often wrap around the outside of the compartment which can be punished with high DPS defenses. This compartment is already very solid against air, but adding a lowered archer tower or double cannon also makes the compartment solid against ground.

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The two-tile wall space to counter archers

One of the first attacks that you will want to defend against is arch-cart. Good attackers will recognize arch-cart weaknesses and will most likely crush your base (if they don’t time fail). In addition, archers can be very powerful if they can target key defenses. The two-tile wall gap that you see in top bases is specifically meant to limit the value that archers can get. Archers (and less significantly, electrofire wizards) cannot target buildings that are 3 tiles away. This two-tile gap between the walls and the buildings also offers a place to put giant bombs. When it comes to cannon cart value, the two-tile gap will force the carts to try and 1v1 a tower and the cart can be easily trapped. Additionally, this spacing will make it so that the battle machine won’t get value from its ability if it uses it on a wall.

While this two-tile gap idea is not a requirement, we do suggest including these types of gaps at least somewhere in your base. They don’t need to be everywhere (adding these spaces takes extra walls that you could be doing cooler stuff with) but most top bases will have these gaps at least somewhere in the base.

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Cart-targeting defenses away from lava launcher

Another attack to look out for is the 2-3 Cart, 2-3 baby dragon, and 0-2 archer army composition. The idea of this attack is to use the baby drags/archers/air hero to take out all of the defenses that can target carts and then let the carts clean up the rest of the base. The main reason that the baby dragons are normally brought in this attack is to use two of their abilities to snipe out the lava launcher. If the baby dragons can get an extra cart-targeting defense (like an archer tower or giant cannon) out of the way as well as the lava launcher, this attack will normally end up being a free 6-star.

A great example of what NOT to do is this:

After carts clear out the trash buildings and sneaky archers test for traps/teslas, two baby drags finish the archer towers and lava launcher. The battle copter can take out the giant cannon and then there is almost nothing stopping the carts. The attacker is likely going into the second stage with 2-3 carts and an almost guaranteed 6-star.

Note: The above strategy depends on whether two baby dragon abilities can take out the lava launcher. This can be affected by balance changes. Regardless, spreading out your cart-targeting defenses will help against any kind of cart approach.

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Major air defenses separated by at least a 4-tile gap

In general, you don’t want all of your air defenses to be clumped together. This makes for an easy air attack for opponents. If your air defenses are clustered together, opponents will just use baby dragon abilities or dropship abilities to take out the large cluster of defenses and then there is a really good chance that you won’t have enough firepower to take down the rest of their air troops. The 4-tile gap not only protects against the baby dragon abilities, it is just a good amount of spacing to prevent any air attack from getting too much value from any angle.

That being said, I would also like to mention that you do not have to separate all of the major air defenses from each other. If you are using an air Xbow, having all of your major air defenses in a square or something close to a square where they are all separated by a 4-tile gap generally leads to a weaker base. You can feel free to try and make it work, but in my personal experience the bases that I have made that separate all major air defenses from one another have been good but never great. There is normally a weakness in the wall layouts required to do this and most of the time carts end up either being able to snipe an air defense or get a lot of value.

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Trash being a tile or two away from the walls

In most top bases, you will notice that the trash buildings (buildings that only provide their hp pools to the defense) are almost always one or two tiles away from the outside walls. This happens for a variety of reasons and there are pros and cons to separating the trash buildings from the rest of the base. We will start with all of the pros, beginning with the limiting of chain value. At the time of writing this guide, there are only two troops that have abilities that chain onto other buildings with those being electrofire wizards and the Battle Machine. While the amount of people who are actually comfortable using electrofire wizards is low, there will still be some strong players who will recognize the value that they can get. The battle machine is more common and if you can limit the value of its ability you should. A one-tile gap between the walls and the trash buildings solves all of the “chaining” problems.

NOTE: This one-tile gap idea can also be thought of as the spacing between your defenses and trash buildings instead. You will want at least two tiles of spacing between your trash and your defenses. For example, if you already have a two-tile gap between your defenses and walls (as per one of the previous tricks), it is perfectly acceptable to place trash buildings against the walls of the base because those trash buildings will be two or more tiles away from your defenses.

Another reason that top bases will have their trash buildings one or two tiles away from the rest of the base is to alter the pathing of Pekkas and limit the value of their abilities if they do end up on the outside of the base. For the pathing, when doing a Pekka attack the attacker will want to have their Pekkas go inside the base. However, if there are a lot of trash buildings in a separate ring around the base, some of the Pekkas might end up staying on the outside instead of going inside the base, even if walls were broken and the Pekkas had the chance to go inside. Additionally, once the Pekkas are looping around the outside of the base (which is what you want as a defender), you want to make sure that the Pekka abilities can’t actually take out any of your defenses. A one-tile gap of separation between the walls and trash buildings will normally prevent the Pekka abilities from reaching your defenses.

Additionally, you will want to limit how far the bomber ability can reach inside of your base. Most ground/Pekka attacks will use the bomber abilities early so that the ground troops can enter the base as soon as possible and not wrap around the base. Since this bomber ability is being used early and almost always on a trash building, you can limit the value of the bomber bounce by moving your trash further away from the base. When a base has a two-tile gap between the trash and the walls (rather than the normal one-tile gap), it is usually to limit the value of the bomber abilities.

One last pro for the trash buildings being away from the base is to limit the amount of value that baby dragon abilities get. One of the cons of having all of your buildings close together is that baby dragon abilities will splash onto several more buildings than if the buildings were spread out.

Moving on to cons. Really the only con to having your trash buildings away from your base is that they become less protected by your defenses. One of the great things about trash buildings is that they will stall out troops so that your defenses have more time to take out your opponent's troops. This doesn’t happen if troops are not in range of the defenses. A good example of what not to do (in my opinion) is a base that has a two-tile spacing between the walls. In this case, nearly all of the trash buildings can get destroyed by only a few archers. I have vivid memories of using one camp of archers and five baby dragons, using my archers to clear out almost all of the trash, and then circling the base with baby drags and finishing the first stage with all five baby dragons alive.

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High HP trash buildings covered by long-range defenses and being near the edge of the base.

As discussed in the previous design pattern, we want trash buildings to be separated from the base but we also want trash buildings to distract troops while our defenses fire at them. As a defender, we generally do not want to give up trash buildings for free, especially the high HP buildings. To balance this, you will normally see top bases put their high hp buildings near long-range defenses and near the edge of the base. The major high HP buildings are the

(at level 10)

Builder Hall (2750 hp)

Clock Tower (2750 hp)

Research Lab (2750 hp)

Gold Storage (2750 hp)

Elixir Storage (2750 hp)

And worth consideration is the

Builder Barracks (1450 hp)

By putting these buildings near the edge of the base and near long-range defenses, you limit or eliminate the places where carts, archers, or the battle copter can be placed to pick off these buildings.

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Extra Walls outside of Mega Tesla

The Mega Tesla is arguably the strongest defense in the game. It has the highest DPS behind crushers, it can hit multiple targets and it can hit both ground and air troops. When attacking with ground troops, it is very natural for an attacker to want to approach the Mega Tesla early and tank its hits with a giant. This is where the extra walls come in. These walls are generally put in place to weaken a ground approach going to the mega tesla early. Normally the extra walls will be placed so that a giant will path either away from the mega tesla or into multiple push traps, thus limiting the effectiveness of the attack. Additionally, the extra walls will make bomber bounces awkward/ineffective and if placed far enough (a gap of 7 tiles between the Mega Tesla and extra walls), will be unreachable by carts. While these extra walls are nowhere near required to have a good base, you will still see some top bases using this idea.

Designing The Second Stage

Designing the second stage is arguably easier than the first stage because there are fewer defenses, attackers have fewer troops, there are fewer things to think about, and there are some simple patterns to follow to ensure your second stage is effective. That being said, even though the second stage is simpler, it is still tricky to make a good base that holds well against all troops, especially carts.

Where to start

Starting the second stage is much easier than the first. If you don’t already have inspiration for a second stage, you can essentially choose where you want your Otto's Outpost and work from there. This leads to a couple of archetypes of second stages to choose from:

    Otto’s Outpost outside of walls:

This is generally one of the strongest ways to run a second stage. There will normally be several compartments which will make it harder for ground attacks. There will also be several high hp buildings near the outpost which makes it an undesirable approach point. Cannon carts also don’t want to approach Otto’s Outpost because the Zappies will take them out before they get meaningful value.

    Otto’s outpost inside of walls:

This way of designing a second stage trades off having a defensive tool against cannon carts for a better chance at a 3 or 4 star attack. These can still be good against Pekka and Baby Dragon attacks, but will normally get destroyed by some combination of archers and cannon carts.

Troops/Armies to counter

The primary troop to counter with your base, just like in the first stage, is cannon carts. Only this time you will have fewer tools to counter them. You will need to use your multi-mortar, walls, cannon placement, guard post troops, and possibly teslas/archer tower to limit the amount of value that carts can get.

You will want to defend against other troops as well, but if you follow what is in the next section (defensive tricks and common design patterns) you should be fine.

Defensive tricks and common design patterns

Firecracker next to high HP buildings - storages, crushers, Otto’s outpost

This is mostly so that firecrackers will hit the battle copter. Having high hp buildings near the firecrackers will help against air attacks in general, but having these high hp buildings right next to a firecracker will allow the firecracker to target the battle copter. If the high hp building is even 1 tile away from the firecracker, the battle copter won’t get hit and can charge up its ability for free. As an attacker, you can look for this weakness in a base and exploit it. As a defender, you will want to prevent this and put high HP buildings adjacent to firecrackers.

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Central double cannon, protected by walls and near defensive troops

It is very common for opponents to use the battle machine in the second stage. Arguably your strongest defense against the battle machine (or ground attacks in general) is the double cannon. As a base designer, you will want your double cannon (if you didn’t use all three in the first stage) to last as long as possible and deal as much damage as possible in the second stage. This will normally be accomplished most effectively by putting the double cannon in the center of the base in its own compartment. Additionally, it will output more damage and last longer if you put guard post troops or Otto’s Outpost near it. Bonus points if you can get troops to path near the double cannon early in an attack.

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Large strips of walls to force cart pathing

As a base builder, one of the first things to consider is how people will attack with cannon carts. Walls are one of the tools you can use to limit carts. The large strips of walls that you will see in top bases are put in place to specifically limit the ways that cannon carts can approach. While cannon carts can still reach the buildings that are past the strip of walls, after taking out these trash buildings they will move along the walls to areas that are likely trapped with push traps and teslas. If the cannon carts are attacking trash buildings past this strip of walls, there is also an issue of time. Additionally, for reference, to prevent a cannon cart in mortar mode from attacking a defense you will need 7 tiles of space between the defense and the outside strip of walls. If the defense is on the edge of a compartment, you can also think of this spacing as being 6 empty tiles from wall-to-wall (6 tiles is the same width as two 3x3 buildings next to one another).

You do not have to include these strips of walls in every second stage that you create, but if you are having trouble defending against carts these strips of walls are a good counter.

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Cannons near the edge of the base to limit cart placement

Cannon carts tend to be really good in second stages. As a defender, you will want to limit the places that cannon carts can be placed with the resources that you have, with one of those resources being your cannons. While cannons can’t outrange cannon carts, they can cover the edges of the base so that cannon carts can’t be placed on the edge. Cannon carts might still be able to be placed at the corner of the base and in open space, but you can use other tools to help prevent value from those directions.

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Trash buildings at corners of the base

As an attacker, the trash buildings that you will see on the corners of the second stage on many top bases are incredibly annoying. The point of these buildings is to try and make opponents time-fail. Honestly, the army camps and Bob's hut don’t provide much tanking for your defenses. The best that these buildings can provide (other than the time-fails from the corners) is just a way to influence the pathing of troops. While that is valuable, you often already have enough trash buildings to influence pathing. These extra low HP buildings will often get more value from being in the corners to make people time-fail. Although these buildings are completely exposed and can be picked off for free, if you did a good job defending in the first stage then your opponent might not have the spare troops to use on these buildings. Your opponent might have to use certain single-troop army camps on particular parts of the second stage to actually take it down, and that means they don’t have the resources for the corner buildings and might risk time failing.

Putting buildings at the corners is not as effective in the first stage because attackers have more troops and have hero abilities that can heal the heroes. By putting buildings in the corners of the first stage you risk heroes getting free healing as they walk to the extra buildings. This is a big deal for the first stage because those heroes can be reused in the second stage. You don’t risk extra healing in the second stage because there is no third stage (right now) for heroes to benefit from the extra health.

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Traps

Traps are super important. They can turn a good base into a great base, and for that reason you need to have at least some idea of how to effectively trap a base.

The first tip on how to trap is to simply test your base. Find a clan that is active and will actively accept friendly challenges, see what your clan mates recognize and trap against it. If you can’t do friendly challenges then you can run the base on the ladder. You will get better at the initial trap placement the more you build and test bases, but every base will need to be tested.

Giant bombs. Super important, but how many should be ground and how many should be air? Where should you place them? For the first question, it depends on the base but generally you can start with 2 ground and 2 air or 3 ground and 1 air. If we think about the most common strategies, those being Cart, Baby drag, and ground/Pekka attacks, ground bombs hit ⅔ of the most common strategies while air bombs only hit ⅓. Therefore ground bombs are generally more effective than air bombs for a base. However, this is really only true if you can actually defend against an air attack. If you have a lot of ground defenses and are lacking in air defense, you might need to set all of your bombs to air mode to pick up the slack.

As for the placement of the bombs, it will again depend on the base but there are some general patterns that you can use to help you get started. As a general rule, you will almost always want the bombs to be in between other buildings rather than outside of these buildings to maximize the chance they get hit. If you can, it is normally a good idea to place at least one large bomb in the middle of your base. Troops generally will group up in the middle of the base, especially ground troops, and if your bomb can hit multiple targets, your bomb value gets multiplied by 2x or 3x or however many targets you hit.

The next good place to put large ground bombs is near the edge of your base near Archer Towers. This is good for several reasons. For one, it helps against archer attacks. Fewer archers for the attacker could mean that a cart could fail to get value. Another reason is for when a cart tries to 1v1 an archer tower. Carts can out-damage an archer tower before getting killed, but not if the cart hits a giant bomb. Giant bombs near the edge of archer towers can also kill bombers, especially later into the attack when the bombers have taken lava launcher damage and are alone taking out random walls. Lastly, this placement of bombs can also help damage carts. If carts happen to get value on other parts of your base and are doing cleanup, a giant bomb near an outside archer tower can damage the carts.

The last major tricks for large ground bombs are placing one near a Tesla and placing two bombs together in a random spot in the base. For the Tesla trick, you would do this to trap a cannon cart. Carts can 1v1 teslas just like archer towers, but they can’t if hit by a giant bomb. For the double bomb trick, you would do this if you are struggling to stop cannon carts on your base. Your push traps and other counters just aren’t working consistently, so instead of trying to stop the cart initially, you let the attacker get the cart value they want, but later on their cart(s) are going to die due to the unexpected double bomb placement.

For large air bombs, you will want to place them near your major air defenses to give those defenses the best chance at surviving. If you don't know which one to choose, I recommend starting with your Air Bombs defense and seeing how it does. You can also put a large air bomb near a lowered archer tower to help get the last bit of HP on a baby dragon.

To counter dropship minion attacks, you will want large air bombs to hit the minions and not be triggered by the dropships. Dropships target defenses and minions target everything including trash buildings, so to counter this attack you can put large air bombs between the trash buildings and defenses or between the trash buildings. The idea is that the dropships will attack the inside defenses of the base and the minions will eventually move out to the side towards the trash buildings where they die to a large air bomb. If you have attackers taking a common approach with dropship minions, you will want to aim for the air bombs to trigger near the middle of the attack rather than the very beginning (if you try and catch minions too early then there is a good chance that dropships will pre-trigger the bombs).

If you get really annoyed by a battle copter always coming from the same direction, you could put all of your bombs and Teslas in that direction. This is high-risk high-reward, and it should really only be used at the top level of play because at that level you can be confident that you will match against certain people and you might be able to predict what those people do.

Testing

Testing is one of the most important things that you can do. You MUST test a base before it can be considered good. You will also want good attackers to try out your base. For this, you will likely want to join a high-level clan (like Midnite Bash or other top clans) with active people who are both good at attacking and are active enough to do friendly challenges. Many top clans will have feeder clans if your trophy level isn’t high enough to join.

For test coverage, you will want people to cover at least the three major attacks, those being a ground/Pekka attack, an air attack, and some mixture of carts. If you get people to attack with these three and your base doesn’t have any glaring weaknesses, you probably have a good base.

When you have someone attack your newly designed base, watch the replay and analyze where you could place traps to ruin their attack. Maybe an air troop just barely survived and an extra air bomb would have prevented a defense from going down. Maybe there is a common approach with ground attacks and you need to catch a giant with push traps. Maybe there is a defense that would be better placed if it moved just one tile to the side. Analyze your replays and see where you could better defend. After doing friendly challenges, you will want to run the base on the ladder for a bit and make adjustments from the ladder attacks.

Tips

Tips for new/non-maxed players

How to get more out of your defenses

For new players and non-maxed players, you will need to get more out of your defenses than maxed players. Some of the popular bases might not work as well for you simply because these bases are designed with max defenses in mind. You are at a large disadvantage if you aren’t maxed, and to make up for this disadvantage you should create bases that get more out of the defenses than usual. If you can, try and use more lowered archer towers than you see in top bases. Also, create more compartments. While you might see top bases getting away with as little as 4 compartments, as a non-maxed player you will want to create many compartments so that ground attacks have a lower chance of success. There are cons to running many compartments, those normally being some form of arch-cart, but as a non-maxed player you will likely not be top 100 or 200 and will rarely see really strong, skilled attacks. You might also want to create channels for ground troops to path into and you will likely want a central Mega Tesla to help with both ground and air attacks. Here is an example of a first stage that I have been using on one of my non-maxed accounts:

Base link: https://link.clashofclans.com/en?action=OpenLayout&id=TH10%3ABB2%3AAAAABgAAAAKPpwP0VRfk69XnGbBelP05

You will notice that there are many compartments, I use 2 lowered archer towers, and there is a channel for ground troops to go through. I wouldn’t use this base on my main account (for reasons I will get into later), but we can at least start with what is good with the base and why it is good for my defensive level. We can start with how the base defends against ground. Often when people are attacking the base effectively with ground they will either enter from the 12 o’clock side near the Giant Cannon or will come from the 4 o’clock side near the ground xbow. In both cases, I will often have troops wrap around at least one of the lowered archer towers. The central Mega Tesla also tends to get a lot of value. No matter where the troops enter, they will almost always spend time near the Mega Tesla because there are a lot of high HP defenses (crushers, air bombs, xbow) near it. The multiple compartments also mean that ground troops will likely have to go through multiple walls to reach defenses.

For air defense, this base is a bit weaker to air than it is to ground. There are some high hp buildings near my archer towers which makes it so that a baby dragon will go down early (this is why the storages are adjacent to the lowered archer towers and why I have traps there). The Mega Tesla and Air Bombs defense both have high HP buildings near them as well, so air troops will likely take extra hits from these defenses. There is also some decent air coverage from the north side of the base.

For cart coverage, the ground Xbow and Lava Launcher both cover a large portion of the base. The Archer Tower and Giant Cannon up north also cover a lot. There is a cart weakness at the Roaster, but after getting the roaster the cart will most likely hit my push trap and die. The Air Bombs defense technically isn’t covered by the lava launcher, but the angle that you would have to approach with a cart is very, very difficult. You would have to clear out the archer tower and funnel the cart down to the air bombs. Time, pathing, and troop count are a large issue there.  

There are a lot of things going for this base, and it has probably gotten me more trophies than most people would with my level of defenses (My defenses on my second stage are roughly level 4-6 🙁), but it is not impossible to beat by any means. Even though my defenses might get more value than they typically would on a normal base, a lot of times it just isn’t enough. The maxed troops just have so much health and damage that a large portion of the time they get through the first stage with one or two troops and then the second stage is a breeze (I’m working on upgrading my second stage defenses at the moment). That being said, the base still holds out a good portion of the time and that is really all that I can ask from it with its current defensive levels.

Now as for why I wouldn’t want to run this base at the top level, there are some key weaknesses that top players will exploit (and have exploited when I tested with them). One of the key weaknesses is the exposed roaster. One cart can snipe that building, take out some trash, and then just sit until the attack is over. Another main weakness is the air coverage at the 4 o’clock side. While it might generally cover for baby dragons, the battle copter can use its ability on the lowered archer tower, essentially take out that section of the base for free, and then the attacker has the rest of their air troops to take out the rest of the base. There is also some nice electrofire wizard value on some of the storages. Almost all top players will see the battle copter weakness, while only some will see or use the electrofire and cart value. Regardless, the base won’t be very good at a high level of play.

Upgrade defenses intelligently

If you are not maxed, you will want to upgrade your defenses in the most effective way possible to ensure that you have the best chance at defending.

Starting with the priority of defenses, all major defenses should probably be upgraded first. Your Mega Tesla and Roaster are both high priority because they are both high-damage and hit both ground and air. Many of the other major defenses will come next. After that will likely be your double cannons, archer towers, and teslas. Some of your low-priority defenses are the crushers and cannons. Don’t completely neglect these defenses, but upgrading these will have less of an impact than the others.

You should also consider the time that it takes to upgrade defenses. Lower-level upgrades take less time than higher-level upgrades and therefore you should probably upgrade your lower-level defenses first. For example, if you were to upgrade a high-level Air Bombs defense it could take over a week to get one level. However, with that same amount of time, you could upgrade several lower-level firecrackers. The time it takes to upgrade defenses increases dramatically around the max BH 9-10 levels, so it makes sense to try and get your defenses maxed to some of the lower BH levels.

Another note about time- It makes sense to use magic books and hammers on the later upgrades, especially on your major defenses. Some of the major defenses can take 10-14 days and that is a long time when you only have two builders. If you were to compare it to the home village, using a book or hammer on a 10-14 day defense in the Builder Base is almost equivalent to using 3 books/hammers on 3 10-14 day upgrades in the home village because you are speeding up the construction of half of your builders. You could factor in the time speed-ups that you get from the Clock Tower to say that you are getting less than 3x value from books and hammers, but it is still comparable. Plus there isn’t as much to upgrade in the Builder Base compared to the home village so magic items get you closer to max in the BH vs the main village. In conclusion, you get a lot of value from books and hammers in Builder Base 2.0.

Lastly, if you are trying to optimize your upgrades, you should consider HP breakpoints when upgrading defenses. This means learning how much damage the major troops do per hit/ability and upgrading accordingly. For example, at the time of writing this Pekkas deal 1008 damage per hit and have an ability that deals 1500 damage. If your cannons are at a low level, it makes sense to at least level them up to where they don’t get one-shot by Pekkas (level 6 at 1050 hp). You can do this for many other defenses too. Another example is the Archer Tower. The upgrade from level 7-> 8 gets their hp from 1250 to 1450. That isn’t much of a breakpoint because they still go down to two hits from a Pekka, one Pekka ability, and still survive a baby drag ability (1100 damage). The archer towers get more damage from level 7->8 but they aren’t going to survive much longer than at level 7. However, the upgrade from 8->9 has their hp going from 1450 to 1650, meaning that they now can survive one Pekka ability. This means that it makes sense to rush your archer towers from level 7 to level 9, as there isn’t much value gained at level 8. All of these numbers could change with future balance changes, but the takeaway (if you want to optimize your upgrades) is to know the key HP breakpoints and upgrade your defenses accordingly.

Should you rush or not?

The short answer that you see everywhere is yes, you should rush in Builder Base. And I agree with this statement, it makes the most sense to rush the Builder Base. HOWEVER, before I get into why you should definitely rush, I want to mention why you might not want to rush.

For context, I have three accounts. I have one account that was max Builder Hall 9 when Builder Base 2.0 was released, one that was barely BH 6, and I started a new account when BB 2.0 was released. I used my max BH 9 account competitively, I rushed my BH 6 account all the way to BH 10 as soon as possible, and I half-maxed half-rushed my new account.

Out of my three accounts, I’ve definitely had the most fun with my main, competitive account. That’s natural, but I also had a head start with that account. The main thing that I want to point out is that out of my two other accounts, the one that I was half-rushing half-maxing was more fun to play. My defenses were at a higher level on average when compared to the purely rushed account and it felt like my defenses did more. When you rush all the way to Builder Hall 10, your defenses are going to be at a low level for a long time just because there are a lot more defenses at BH 10 vs the other BH levels. For my rushed account, I would watch replays and say to myself “Yeah well if my defenses didn’t suck and were at a reasonable level I actually would have had him there” and that wasn’t exactly fun. In terms of offense, you do get held back a little bit if you don’t rush but for me that was a good thing. I would constantly go against near-max bases with level 16 troops and it would feel good taking down bases that I know I probably shouldn’t be able to beat. In contrast, with the rushed account I had maxed out troops and if I didn’t 6-star I felt like I had failed badly.

All that being said, I actually found that semi-rushing was much more fun than hard-rushing. For me, I upgraded all of my defenses at each BH to a reasonable level from BH 1-4 and nearly maxed BH 5. I then jumped from BH 5 to BH 8 and sat there for a while. I am now planning on going from BH 8 to BH 10. If I were to start over with a new account, I would probably do this form of rushing again.

So why should you rush? The short answer is that (numbers-wise) you gain a lot from rushing and there are no negative effects from rushing. In the home village, you get penalized for rushing your town hall because the game actively lowers the amount of loot you can get from attacking lower town halls. This doesn’t exist in the Builder Base. By rushing, you get access to stronger troops and defenses sooner, and because the amount of loot you get is tied to your trophy level you also get more loot faster. Better offense + better defense means more trophies which means more loot. Simple as that.

If you rush all the way to BH 10 you also get access to many of the base links that people will put online. There are many more base links for BH 10 vs all of the other BHs combined.

There is also the time factor. If you want to get to max as soon as possible, rushing is definitely the way to go. You get the most value out of magic books and hammers from the later upgrades which you can only access at BH 9 and 10. You also get access to higher Clock Tower levels. On top of that, you get more loot from attacking/defending and from star bonuses when you rush (because you’re at a higher trophy level), so the time you spend attacking is likely lower.

For all these reasons, yeah you should probably rush. My personal recommendation is that you only semi-rush though.

Which troops should you upgrade? Which strategies should you use?

This one is pretty easy for me. My answer is carts and baby dragons, but there is also a thought path of Bombers + Pekkas. I will explain.

First we should discuss the early game though. Initially, you will probably want to upgrade everything so you can get a feel for the game. There isn’t a ton to upgrade at this point either. For me, I prioritized archers and then upgraded what was reasonable at the time. In the early game, I would look for good archer value and then sweep the rest with giants/barbarians. If the air defenses were exposed I could snipe them with archers and then use minions to clean up. Honestly, in the early game just find what works for you and have fun.

Once you get to the higher builder halls and begin to rush or semi-rush, it will make sense to prioritize upgrading only a few troops. I recommend baby dragons and carts for a few reasons. For one, you can consistently take out bases with only baby drags. This army composition has only one troop and you get access to the troop relatively early, meaning that you can invest in this army early and it doesn’t cost much elixir compared to army compositions that use two or more troops. This is ideal for rushers because it will cost a lot of elixir to upgrade troops as their levels get higher. I include carts in my recommendation because using Carts early on in your progression will make you a better player in the long run. Carts + Baby Drags can consistently take out nearly every base under 5600 trophies and will take you a very long way.

The other path that some people choose is to upgrade Pekkas and Bombers. For people that really just want free loot and don’t actually want to play the game, Pekkas allow players to place 6 Pekkas down, force quit the Clash of Clans app, and then enjoy quick and easy loot. Clash of clans will instantly complete the attack in the background which will give the attackers the loot they were looking for. This strategy won’t ever get past 3 stars, but it is fast.

Realistically, for Pekkas to be viable they need support from bombers, so you will need to upgrade Pekkas and bombers concurrently. The Pekka and Bomber strategy can also improve you as a player in the long run. Ground attacks are very viable at high trophy levels, though you will normally see an extra giant thrown in the army composition which adds another troop to upgrade.

Both the Pekka ground attack and Baby Dragon attack are both really good attacks to use and they are attacks that you can use all the way to the pro scene. I personally recommend the Cart + Baby Dragon attack because you will get more practice picking apart bases and you can transition into arch-cart attacks, but either of the paths is good.

To sum up upgrade priority, do either

Baby Dragon -> Cart -> Archer

Or

Pekka -> Bomber -> Giant

And as a side note on upgrading heroes, please don’t neglect the battle copter. For me, it is by far the most powerful hero in the game and I see it neglected so often by non-maxed players. It can take out entire sections of a base for free. It is actually so strong and the range + healing from the ability makes it last incredibly long. It only gets better with higher levels.

Additional/Miscellaneous Tips

Here is a BH 5 link that I created when I was grinding BH 5: https://link.clashofclans.com/en?action=OpenLayout&id=TH5%3ABB2%3AAAAAJwAAAAIxGLvDd9guqWil8gvWUffZ

For BH 8:

https://link.clashofclans.com/en?action=OpenLayout&id=TH8%3ABB2%3AAAAAJwAAAAJDdkBxEyJ2_rRxzy8I0Qe2

For most of the early game and until you into the later stages of the game, you will want most or all of your large bombs to be set to ground and most of your small bombs set to air. Ground troops are more common early in the game and the small bombs are more effective against mass minions and night witches.

Tips for top players

These or going to be tips for some of the top players. Some of these tips are meant for only the top 50 players because these players will often match up against the same people over and over, essentially creating 1v1s.

Rotate your bases

Do you have a base that is defending well? Great! Stop using it. Seriously. If attackers have not figured out how to take out your base, don’t give them the time to figure it out. You might be able to get some good defenses, but eventually they will find a good strategy and your base will get taken down. Also, if opponents really can’t figure your base out and don’t find a good strategy, there is a large chance that they will copy your base by hand and then everyone will use your base until everyone figures out how to take it down (it sucks that people do this but it happens). This can be prevented by changing your base, especially when your base is doing well. Let opponents forget where your traps are. Don’t burn your own base.

Don’t attack too often

Similar to the previous tip, you don’t want attackers to figure out your base. The more you attack, the more people will see and attempt your base. You are also at a higher risk of your bases being hand-copied the more you attack. Additionally, if you attack too frequently certain players will learn how to bait and trap you. When I pushed to the number one spot I actually didn’t play more than 6-8 ranked matches a day and just practiced with friendly challenges within my clan. You can definitely do more attacks than that, but doing 30+ attacks every day probably isn’t doing you much good. Sometimes less is more, don’t attack too often.

Get sleep

I swear I am a different player when I don’t get sleep. I go from getting 6 stars most of the time to getting mostly two stars. It’s bad. There’s a ton of research showing that sleep improves performance everywhere, and I can attest that this has been very true for me and my attacks in Clash of Clans. Do yourself a favor and get good sleep when you are planning on being competitive.

Attack at the right time

Similar to the “Get sleep” tip, to give yourself the best chance at success you will want to attack when you are fully awake. This means not attacking first thing in the morning and not attacking late at night. I am super guilty of doing both, but if you want to be the most optimal you should only attack in the middle of the day. Man, I wish I followed my own advice.

As a side note, you can also time your attacks so that you match up against certain people. There are going to be people that you match up good and bad against. If you can find a daily time when you can mostly attack into good matchups, this will also boost your rank.

Change your traps

I don’t know why but I’m pretty sure that there are a good amount of players that are scared to change their traps. They are intimidated by base building and think that the base link they are using is set in stone and that moving traps is forbidden. No. Wrong. If an opponent is consistently using the same strategy you should move your traps to try and stop them. The best players in the world are often the ones that are the best at changing their traps.

Counter/Bait your opponents with base choice/design

Knowing your opponents and countering them is one of the key qualities of a really strong player. Some of the best players in the world will choose and design their bases depending on who they match up against. For example, if an opponent almost exclusively uses air attacks it makes sense to choose (or design) a base that is very good against air troops. While you can change your traps to help against the air attacks, changing your entire base to counter opponents is arguably more effective.

Here is another example. At the top level you will see many pro players using the cart, barbarian/archer, and baby dragon army composition. These players will use their barbarians or archers to test for traps and take out or distract cart-targeting defenses and then will use their carts to take out major air defenses. After clearing out major portions of the base with their carts, baby dragons and the Battle Copter sweep out the rest of the base. This is a really difficult strategy to trap against and whether or not this strategy works is mostly base-dependent. Stopping the carts purely with traps is going to be very difficult because the attacker uses small troops to pre-trigger the traps. While you can see some success by trying to trap these approaches, with the right placement of test barbarians/archers your traps will likely see very little value. Additionally, trying to trap this approach specifically will weaken your base against other attacks, so it generally isn’t worth it. Instead, you have a much better chance of defending against attackers that use this cart strategy by changing to a new base, ideally one that has a lava launcher that covers most or all of the major air defenses.

Example breakdowns of good/popular bases

Here I will break down two bases, one that I made and used for end-of-season (eos) pushing and one that was once very popular with top players. I will also discuss the strengths and weaknesses in each base.

We will start with one of my bases which has a lot of interesting things going on:

Base #1, one of my EOS bases

Base Link: https://link.clashofclans.com/en?action=OpenLayout&id=TH10%3ABB2%3AAAAAWwAAAAGObb293PwaSHWPjNnxy7ic

First Stage

Fundamental Breakdown

There is some really unique stuff going on in this base (like the open wall space, for example), but first I want to talk about the fundamentals that are going on with this base and how it follows most of the design tips and tricks that I showed earlier in this document.

For one, we have a strong lava launcher compartment. It is strong against both ground and air. The Air Bombs defense is not completely covered by the lava launcher but I have a push trap covering the angle that you would need to approach to take out the Air Bombs with a cart. This compartment is solid. You will also see that all of my cart-targeting defenses are away from the lava launcher. This increases the bases’ resistance to cart attacks.

Speaking of cart attacks, you will also notice that there are two large ground bombs near the archer towers. It is actually fairly common for people to try and 1v1 my archer towers on this base, especially the archer tower at 9 o’clock and the ground bombs prevent this from happening. These bombs are excellent for other reasons as well. It is pretty common to see these bombs take out a low-hp Pekka, a Bomber, or even a Cart that was used elsewhere and is trying to wrap around the base. These ground bombs are very well placed, get triggered often, and normally get a lot of value.

You can observe that I do have a two-tile gap between defenses and walls in certain sections of the base (near the archer towers). This helps prevent archer value and chain value from the battle machine as well as providing space for my ground bombs.

Looking at air defenses, you can see that most of my major air defenses are separated by a four-tile gap. This reduces the amount of value baby dragons can get on the base. The only two major air defenses that are not separated by this gap are the Xbow and the Roaster, but these two are sufficiently separated from the other major air defenses, those being the Air Bombs and the Mega Tesla.

Now looking at the trash buildings, you will notice that a good portion of them are separated from the walls. This is fundamentally good. The Clock Tower and Lab, however, are not separated from the defenses. This makes the base a little bit more susceptible to chain value but I am trading that for more defensive coverage of these trash buildings. I am also using the storages on the inside of this base, using them as extra hp for the Air Bombs defense and other defenses.

While not a fundamental, another one of the interesting things that I do with this base is using the Barbarian Statue (the decoration at 6 o’clock) to influence troop pathing. That Barbarian Statue is very important and does not exist if you copy the base link. You will have to put it there yourself. The main point of the statue is to influence carts to go into my push trap. I don’t have many spare push traps on this base, so instead of using two push traps to cover all of the angles that carts could attack my Air Bombs defense at, I am using a wall and the Barb Statue to cover the space that an extra push trap would cover. Carts will normally walk around the Barb statue into my push trap.

 The Open Wall

So what is going on with that open wall on the south side of the base? The main idea is to mess with the troop AI and their pathing. When I was designing this base I remembered how common it was back in Builder Base 1.0 for the Battle Machine/Pekkas to take a weird path into the base skipping some buildings and walking straight into danger. I wanted to create something similar in Builder Base 2.0. First, let's understand why troops would skip buildings in the first place and then we can discuss how this base tries to exploit that.

Generally, all of the troops in the game (in every game mode) have a “Rule of three” for choosing the next building to attack. This means that when choosing their next target they look at the nearest three options and choose the one that they can reach the fastest. This normally is good enough for most troops to do the things that you would expect them to do. However, things get a bit weird when you add open spaces in wall segments.

Imagine that you are a Pekka that is located at the red X. You just took out the army camp and you are looking at what you want to attack next. You calculate that the three nearest targets are the archer tower, the double cannon, and the Elixir Storage. Both the archer tower and the double cannon are protected by walls and you can walk unimpeded to the Elixir Storage so you choose to do that. You then take a path around the short strip of walls, get hit by the crusher, and promptly die due to too much damage from the rest of the defenses. This is what I am trying to accomplish in my base.

Now, looking at my base I want you to imagine that you are either a Pekka or a Battle Machine that has wrapped around the outside of the base, cleared out the trash buildings marked with black, and are now standing at one of the red X’s after taking out either the Battle Machine post or the army camp. What is your next target? For the left X, it is most likely the gold storage because the closest three targets are the archer tower, firecracker, and gold storage and the gold storage can be reached the fastest. For the right X, it is either the air bombs or the elixir storage because the archer tower is the third target and the troop AI won’t want to go through a wall if it doesn’t have to. In both cases of a troop at a red X the troop paths to a building that is next to the crusher but not the crusher directly, thus allowing the crusher to deal tons of damage to the troop as it tries to take out a storage. That’s the idea anyway.

There are ways to reset the troop AI so that it does not walk past the crusher. Using any ability will reset the troop AI so that it can target the crusher instead of a storage. However, this means that the opponent has to use an ability. In the case of Pekkas, if the Pekkas already used their ability then they are screwed. In the case of the Battle Machine, the Battle Machine might want to continue charging its ability but instead have to use it early. Either way, I am creating a real threat with the open wall.

The open wall can also influence giant pathing. If an opponent places a giant at the blue X, then the nearest three buildings are the crusher, the air bombs, and the archer tower. In this case, the giant will path to the crusher which normally the attacker did not intend. Additionally, if the giant is placed a little more north than the blue X then the giant could even path to the Air Bombs and get hit by the crusher (I have actually seen this happen when using the base competitively).

Lastly, this open wall also lets troops leave the base and potentially wrap around the lowered archer tower. One of the most effective ground approaches on this base comes from about 10 o’clock. When this ground approach fails it is normally because the troops didn’t reach the lava launcher compartment, many troops pathed to the southern compartment and then exited that compartment via the hole in the wall and then took a ton of damage from the Roaster and lowered archer tower.

While you certainly do not have to include this weird open wall idea to your bases (nearly every professional base does not have this), I did want to highlight the open wall because 1) it is actually quite effective on this base, 2) discussing the open wall leads to a deeper understanding of troop AI, and 3) it is interesting and different and might inspire you to try new things.

Traps

Now I will discuss the trap placement on the base. I have already explained the large ground bombs and the southern push trap so that just leaves the other two push traps, the air bombs, and the tesla. Starting with the push traps, these other two push traps are in place to try and catch bombers. The most effective ground attacks on this base occur from about 10 o’clock and I try to undermine this attack with push traps. If I catch a bomber with a push trap early in the attack then the lava launcher compartment probably won’t be open and has a good chance to do a ton of damage to ground troops and will likely lead to a defense.  

Coming from an attacking perspective, sometimes people will get greedy and only bring one bomber and will try and use a bomber ability on the northernmost army camp to open up all compartments except the lava launcher compartment (though with enough time the bomber ability will recharge and open up this compartment as well). My northernmost push trap will normally catch opponents who try to do this. Also, I will sometimes move a push trap to a place near the Mega Tesla compartment to try and catch a giant.

Now to the air bombs. When I was originally creating the base I intentionally created a hole in the center for large bombs to be placed. However, I found through testing that these bombs either did not get triggered enough or rarely got the value that I was looking for so I moved my bombs elsewhere. The large air bombs were placed where they are to help prevent my air defenses from going down. Testing showed that these were some of the most effective spots on the base for these bombs to be placed.

Last is the tesla. The Tesla is a high DPS defense and benefits a lot from being close to high HP buildings. This placement is good in general, but it also adds a lot of firepower in this base whenever air troops are approaching from the North East. Baby Dragons will often not get the value that the attacker was looking for and dropships will normally stall on the tesla when their intended target is the Xbow.

Strengths and Weaknesses

This first stage is really solid. It is solid against ground, really solid against air, and has good coverage against carts. The traps tend to get a ton of value and the base as a whole is just really good. While all attacks have a chance to take down the base, this base makes it really hard to do so. Especially with extra troops alive. That being said, I have seen some attacks that work well and there are weaknesses in the base.

The first major weakness is the chain value that electrofire wizards can get. Whenever this base got stolen and I matched up against my stolen base on the ladder, I was actually very confident and excited to attack my own base. I love getting to use electrofire wizards when I can get a lot of value with them. They are just fun. On this base there are roughly three spots where electrofire wizards can get value: the Lab, the Clock Tower, and the elixir storage near the Air Bombs defense. If placed correctly, these wizards either won’t get attacked by a defense or will only be targeted by the lava launcher which won’t be fast enough to take down the wizards before they get a ton of value. After using the wizards you can use troops of your choice to try and take down the base.

The electrofire wizards aren’t perfect, however. As a defender you can trap against them. You can move your tesla to cover certain efire wizard entries and you can move your push traps if you can confidently catch a wizard that was placed down south. There are ways to counter the efire wizards, but it is rare that someone would be trying to do so. If you are matching up against someone who is using this approach, you can always move your traps.

As mentioned before, this base is somewhat weak to ground attacks from the North West. While I do have push traps to try and to weaken this approach, there is still a decent success rate for ground troops approaching from this side.

Lastly, I have seen 2-cart 4-baby dragon or 3-cart 3-baby dragon army compositions do well on this base. It is very rare that people do this, but it can be very effective. As a defender, I can always move my traps to defend this approach if needed.

Overall, I really like this base. Most of the time it will force people to do creative attacks and those creative attacks can be trapped. There are some instances where certain people just “get” the base and can consistently 6-star it, but it is actually pretty rare. Especially because the second stage is incredibly strong. When people do end up 6-starring the base, I will just switch to a different base and I encourage you to switch as well.

Second Stage

This is a very strong second stage. It is very good and I have personally seen plenty of pros have enough leftover troops from the first stage to guarantee a 6-star on most second stages, but instead this second stage manages to hold.

Fundamental Breakdown  

I think that one of the biggest strengths of this second stage is how well it handles cannon carts. There is not a lot of value that carts can get on the base and a lot of that is due to some of the fundamentals that I listed earlier in the guide.

For one, there are large strips of walls that limit the cart pathing. This combined with the multi-mortar makes it so that all of the space from 12 o’clock to 6 o’clock is pretty much covered against carts. Additionally, the cannons on the base are close enough to the edge that many of the cart placements from 6 to 12 o’clock are covered as well. On top of that, there is also the guard post and Otto’s Outpost from 6-12 which prevents cart value there too. It is very difficult to get meaningful cart value on the base.

You will also see that there is a central double cannon that is in its own compartment and is near Otto’s outpost. This defense will get a lot of value.

Additionally, many of the firecrackers are adjacent to high HP buildings. Not all of them are (which is a slight weakness in the base), but half of them are next to high HP buildings which is good.

Lastly, while you can’t see it in the photo, there is a building at each corner of the base. This helps to try and make opponents time fail which tends to happen frequently on this base.

Traps

There aren’t a lot of traps in this stage compared to the first stage, but I will still explain what is here.

Starting with the push traps, I had originally thought that it was good to have a push trap on either side of the long, external wall. I eventually found out that the push trap that I had put up north was not very effective because it was rare that people would place cannon carts up there. If they did put a cannon cart up north it was normally paired with barbarians to take out the guard post troops and the barbarians could take out my push trap. I moved that northern push trap near the other push trap because that is where I would see most of the cannon cart placements. After taking out the cannon and surrounding buildings, most people will let their cannon carts go to the nearby elixir collector which then gets sprung by my push trap.

As for the teslas, the wall structure of this base and the cannon placement already cover cannon carts really well so there is no need to try and counter carts more with the teslas. Instead, I include them near the core of the base to try and get as much defensive value as possible from them.

Lastly, there are the spring traps. One of the most common ways to use archers on the base is to use them to scout for traps and to take out the corner buildings. While I can’t do much about the corner buildings, I can try and catch the archers with spring traps after they are finished with the corner buildings. I also use some spring traps to cover the push traps in the case that opponents try to trigger them with archers.

Strengths and Weaknesses

As I stated earlier this second stage is incredible against carts. They tend to get very little value and if they do get value the attacker has to work really hard for it. This base is also good against ground attacks but there is a trick to beating the base with ground. Against air, this base is also really good. However, the same as ground, there is a trick to beating the base with air.

Now going into weaknesses, we can start with how to beat the base with ground. This is normally only successful by using an early giant ability either near Otto’s Outpost or the Crusher. Assuming the attacker has a Battle Machine and some extra ground troops, the giant needs to tank long enough for the rest of the troops to make a reasonable punch into the base. Ideally, you would have an extra bomber or a cannon cart or two to be able to take out the double cannon. All other ground approaches into the base generally fail. One thing to note about this approach is that it still is not entirely free. Even if you get all of the defenses down you could be at risk of time failing on the corner buildings. You will normally need at least two troops alive after taking out all of the defenses to have enough firepower to take out the rest of the base in time.

Now to take out this base with air you will normally see successful attacks approach from 3 o’clock. The firecrackers near 3 to 5 o’clock aren’t covered by high HP buildings and two of them can get splashed by one baby dragon ability. If the attacker is able to concentrate the fire of the remaining firecrackers/teslas to only one baby dragon per defense, the attack will generally go through. Again, it isn’t a guaranteed 6-star but it is definitely strong against this base. You could swap out the southernmost Tesla with the southernmost firecracker to help spread out the firecrackers, but that is up to you.  

Overall this second stage is incredibly strong and I have seen pros fail to 6-star even when they had a really good first stage. This stage is incredibly annoying to go against which is why I rank it as one of my top second stages.

Base #2, a popular base made by Fabielicious

Base link:

https://link.clashofclans.com/en?action=OpenLayout&id=TH10%3ABB2%3AAAAAWwAAAAGObcdSquLNjgNwA0NKca4q

First Stage

Fundamental Breakdown

Now that I have discussed all of the fundamentals at least twice in this guide, I will just make a checklist for fundamentals and only comment when needed. For this base:

• Lava launcher compartment: Check

• Note that the main thing that we are looking for is good cart coverage of major defenses and that the compartment has a good cover of air and ground.

• Two tile wall spacing: Check

• There are not many of these two-tile gaps because walls are being used elsewhere, but these gaps do exist on the base. Not having more of these spacings is a weakness for this base.

• Cart-Targeting defenses away from Lava Launcher: Check
• Major air defenses separated by a 4-tile gap: Check

• The air Xbow is not separated from the others but the Mega Tesla, Air Bombs Defense, and Roaster are all appropriately separated from one another. Having one major air defense that is not separated from the others is fairly standard.

• Trash being a tile or two away from the walls: Check
• High HP buildings being near the edge of the base and being covered by long-range defenses: Check
• Extra walls outside of Mega Tesla: Check

Traps

The traps on the base link are good but not incredible. There is some coverage everywhere and these traps will normally get triggered. The trap placement is definitely good, but at the top level, you will hardly ever see these traps in their default location. The reason this base became incredibly popular is because it offers a lot of variations in the traps. There are three teslas and plenty of bombs and there are plenty of reasonable locations to place these traps on the base. For the top players, when you are regularly facing off against the same opponents it makes sense to use a lot of hidden traps and to specifically trap against certain players. If you choose to use this base you can move these traps as needed.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Any good or popular base will be strong against air attacks, ground attacks, and cart attacks and this is true for this base. There are a lot of compartments which makes this base strong against ground attacks. There is good spacing of air defenses which makes the base strong against air attacks. Additionally, there is good cart coverage around the whole base and with three teslas you could have many variations within this base. This base was popular for a reason (it’s good).

As for weaknesses, the largest weakness is archers. They can go ham on this base. Archers are so strong I’ve even seen an all-archer attack work on this base (though I don’t recommend attempting that). There are not a lot of spaces in the base that archers cannot reach. Using roughly half of your camps for archers/carts to take out trash and key defenses and then using the rest of your army camps to finish the rest of the base is normally a really strong approach on this base. This approach normally will account for all of the random Tesla placements as well.

Sometimes you will see defenders move their Lab, Clock Tower, and BH one tile closer to the wall. If they do that you can get some good electrofire wizard value on the base.

Other than that there aren’t many other glaring weaknesses. You will need to have a good attack to take out the first stage.

Second Stage

Fundamental Breakdown

• Firecrackers adjacent to high HP buildings: Check
• Central double cannon near defense troops: Check
• Large strips of walls to limit cart value: Check
• Cannons near the edge of the base to limit cart placement: Fail

• This is a key weakness in the base. Carts can get a large amount of value from most of the corners of the base.

• Trash buildings at corners of the base: Check

Traps

There are not many traps in this stage because most of them are being used in the first stage. There is the push trap which could catch a cart coming from the south. This is nicely covered by some spring traps that are likely to catch a small troop that was either used to test for push traps or had just taken out the building at the southern corner. The two bombs on the east corner are there to help against a cart that tries to take down the guard post troops. All of these traps make sense but you could argue that the push trap does not need to be covered by all 6 spring traps. There are probably slightly better places for the spring traps but moving these would not increase the overall defensive ability of the base by much.

Strengths and Weaknesses

This second stage is good against what I like to call “ooga booga” attacks (cave-man brain spam attacks). The base is solid against ground and air spam. If the attacker does not have any creativity in their attack, this base will have a good chance at holding. However, there are some key cart weaknesses.

Cannon carts have a field day with this second stage. There aren’t many push traps to worry about and there are not many cart-targeting defenses. You can use any troop or hero to help take out the multi-mortar and then there aren’t any defenses that can take out carts. You can also use carts on the North and East corners along with either barbarians or archers to test for traps and help take out guard post units and then the carts are completely out of danger. There are a lot of places where you can place carts and there are not a lot of counters for them on this second stage.

This second stage is decent but there are better second stages out there. You can feel free to try out a different second stage or design your own on this base. It is up to you and you can determine yourself if creating a different second stage is worth it.

Bonus Base #3, another one of my strong EOS bases

Base link: https://link.clashofclans.com/en?action=OpenLayout&id=TH10%3ABB2%3AAAAAWwAAAAGPctGtCjxLwBjVwg4XueeO

So far I have shown two bases, one that has a weird second stage and one that has a more standard second stage with Otto’s Outpost in the middle of the base. I wanted to showcase one more base that is a bit more standard but has Otto’s outpost on the outside of the base. Because I want to highlight the second stage here, I will keep the breakdown of the first stage brief.

First Stage

The first stage is incredibly strong and I have seen so many pros consistently fail on this base. Starting with air coverage, this base is solid against air with most defenses being able to hit air troops. I specifically chose to use teslas, archer towers, and the firecracker (instead of crushers, for example) to help against air troops. With air coverage being mostly covered, this allows me to focus all of my traps for ground troops. The double large bombs in the center of the base tend to get a TON of value. They will often hit at least 2-3 ground troops. Additionally, the push traps at roughly 1 o’clock, combined with the teslas, often makes it so that ground troops wrap around the base and don’t get the entry that the attacker was looking for. If the attacker uses ground troops anywhere on the south side of the base, the teslas tend to get a ton of value on the back end as well while the Pekka’s attack walls and the high HP buildings near the teslas. The cannon cart coverage on the base is good but not amazing.

Overall, this is a very strong first stage. It follows all of the fundamentals and has great coverage against ground and air attacks. There will always be shifts in the meta and there will always be attackers that can take the base down, but overall this base is really, really good.

Second Stage

Overview

Now onto the second stage, the one I wanted to highlight. While this stage does have something interesting going on with the open wall near the crusher, this general configuration for a second stage is more standard and is going to defend well against most attacks.

Fundamental Breakdown

• Firecrackers adjacent to high HP buildings: Check

• This is really easy to design on this stage because there are four major high HP buildings (2 storages and 2 crushers) and there are 4 firecrackers.

• Central double cannon near defense troops: Check

• This double cannon is near both Otto’s Outpost and the Guard Post troops. You can be sure that it will be damaging ground troops for a long time.

• Large strips of walls to limit cart value: Fail

• This is not a huge deal because the multi-mortar is well placed. If cannon carts are used, they won’t get a lot of value before running into the multi-mortar and there is good cart coverage elsewhere in the base.

• Cannons near the edge of the base to limit cart placement: Check
• Trash buildings at corners of the base: Check

Strengths and Weaknesses

This second stage is solid. There aren’t really any major tricks that I have seen to help better take down this second stage. If the opponents crushed the first stage then they have a good chance to take down this one. If they didn’t take down the first stage with many spare troops, then this second stage will be nearly impossible to take down. It’s just a good second stage.

If we look at air coverage, the stage has good air coverage throughout the base. There are not many clear air weaknesses.

Looking at ground coverage, there are many compartments that are going to make it difficult for ground attacks. Additionally, the Southeast trash buildings are sufficiently far enough away to ensure that bomber bounces are not able to reach the double cannon compartment. Even if the troops do path to the double cannon compartment, there is a good chance that they will try and walk out of the compartment to either the Otto’s Outpost or to the crusher.  It is common for people to try and put their Battle Machine on the East corner building, but the Battle Machine will path to the Otto’s Outpost and get wrecked by the double cannon.

Last is cart coverage. The Otto’s Outpost, Guard Post troops, and the Westernmost cannon provide cart coverage from the Northwest side. There is also a tesla to help prevent cart value from the Western corner. The Southernmost cannon provides some coverage on the Southwest. The multi-mortar provides decent coverage on East side of the base. Carts can get some buildings from the Southern and Eastern corners but they don’t get much value before running into the multi-mortar. This was a concession I was willing to make. The multi-mortar is also 3 tiles away from a wall which makes it so that cannon carts cannot shoot it over the wall without the carts being in mortar mode. Additionally, if a cart is able to take out the tesla on the West corner with support from small troops, the cart will also have to deal with the time factor of the elixir storage, crusher, Guard Post troops, and possibly the town hall.

Overall, this base is just good. There are no major weaknesses. It might be slightly weak to air because I use a lot of air-targeting defenses in the first stage, but in general the base will defend very well.

Individual Troop Breakdown

Ok so I originally was going to do a deep breakdown of every troop and defense in the game BUT this guide is already really long so I think I will just keep it brief. I did state earlier in the guide that I would include a cannon cart section, so that will be included here. If I feel inspired I could always add more sections, but I think there is already enough in this guide at the moment.

Also, any numbers or damage values that are listed here could be slightly inaccurate as future updates and balance changes could affect these values.

Notable numbers

Pekka damage per strike: 1008

Pekka ability: 1500

Baby Drag ability: 1100

Small bomb: 206

Large bomb: 620

Mega Telsa Damage per hit: 896

Cannon Carts

Link to coc website: https://coc.guide/troop/moving-cannon

Description: 

Cannon carts are some of the highest-skill troops in the game. A lot of planning has to go into using carts and the troop is normally very vulnerable. However, as a trade-off, the cannon cart is also one of the strongest troops in the game. If left unchecked or not countered in a base cannon carts can create a free 6-star for you or your opponents.

Commonly Paired with:

Archers

Barbarians

Baby Dragons

Notable HP breakpoints:

2 large bombs (+ 1 small bomb depending on balance changes)

Different use cases/strategies: 

First Stage:

Cannon carts are perfect for taking out trash buildings and sniping off key defenses. Often when using carts on a first stage you should likely either go with a full arch-cart composition (normally on island-type bases) or use carts and baby dragons. When using arch-cart, the idea is to take out all of the trash buildings near archer towers or the giant cannon and then finish off these cart-targeting defenses with archers. Assuming the lava launcher has either been dealt with or is not really protecting much, your carts can then take out the rest of the base.

For the cart-baby dragon attack, there are two common armies. One is 1-3 carts and 3-5 baby dragons and the other is 1-2 carts, 1 camp of archers or barbarians, and 3-4 baby dragons. For the first strategy, the main idea is to take out trash buildings and maybe a defense or two with the carts and then have the baby dragons get massive value at the core of the base. Depending on how many carts you brought, you can also focus these baby dragons onto the cart-targeting defenses.

For the composition that includes archers/barbarians, the main idea is to take out trash buildings near an archer tower or giant cannon, take out or distract the cart-targeting defense with archers/barbarians, and then try and take out a major air defense that the cart-targeting defense was protecting. This should weaken the base and make it so that your air troops can clean up the rest of the base. Having the archers/barbarians in this composition is not only important for sniping a cart-targeting defense, but they can also help test for traps or prevent a time fail if needed.

You can use carts effectively with ground armies or with other troops as well, but it is less common. Bonus points if you are getting more creative with your carts than what is listed above.

Second Stage:

Cannon carts really shine in the second stage. A lot of times it is worth it to bring a cannon cart on the first stage (even if it doesn’t get a lot of value) so that you can have an extra cannon cart on the second stage (assuming you actually get to the second stage). There is often very little to take out carts on the second stage. A common strategy is to use two carts and one camp of barbarians or archers to take out the majority of the base. The carts will take out most of the base and the barbs/archers will test for traps/teslas and can help take out guard post troops and corner buildings. Lastly, your hero can help against the multi-mortar and take out Otto’s Outpost for the win.

Another way to use carts in the second stage is to snipe off important buildings and then let air or ground troops do the rest of the work on the base. For example, you could use a cart or two to take out several firecrackers and then have air troops sweep the rest of the base. Similarly, with ground attacks, you can try to take out some ground-targeting defenses with the carts and then have your other ground troops sweep out the rest of the base.  

Defensive Counter:

Earlier in the guide I stated that you could counter carts by using walls, the edge of the map, the lava launcher, archer towers, the giant cannon, high HP buildings, and traps. Here I will go a bit more in depth.

Starting with walls, you can use walls to limit the amount of value that carts can get. By placing walls roughly 7 tiles away from a defense you can ensure that carts cannot reach the defense that you are trying to protect.

You can also use the edge of the map to limit cart placement. The edge of the map is the border on which cannon carts can be placed. If you move your entire base to the edge and ensure that you have long-range defenses covering the edge of the map you can eliminate places where carts can be placed without taking damage.

You will also want to spread out your cart-targeting defenses away from the lava launcher so that you have a large amount of cart coverage and cover all angles that carts could get value.

One other counter against carts that I don’t see many people consider is the time factor. If you place several high HP buildings near one side of the base, that side will be undesirable to approach with a single cart. Attackers could always bring more than one cart, but if they do then they are missing an extra army camp that could be used for a stronger push into the core of the base.

Lastly is traps. Your main traps against carts will be push traps, large bombs, and teslas. Starting with push traps, you will want to either place these where carts commonly are placed or where carts commonly path. Placing a push trap where carts are normally placed is natural. You can take out a cart early in the attack and that cart gets no value. The other way to trap against carts is to place a push trap where you think that a cart might travel after taking out several targets. For example, a cart might be able to take out a section of your base and then will want to rotate around the walls to other defenses/buildings. A good place to place a push trap could then be along the wall. You would do this “delayed push-trap” strategy if there are too many places where attackers can place their carts. Instead of trying to guess where the attackers' carts will be placed you can cover many placements by putting the trap where the carts will go in the future (see example image below)

Conclusion

Hey, I hope this guide helped you in some kind of way. Maybe you are new to competitive base building and got a ton of information (maybe too much) from this guide. Or maybe you are a pro player who just wanted to see how top bases are made. You could even be someone who isn’t passionate about the builder base and is just interested in how the pros are thinking. There are a million different kinds of people who could be looking at this guide, but if you found this guide to be helpful and/or informative, please add a comment on Reddit to let me know that you got something from my efforts.