Introduction

The purpose of this guide is to give you up and coming base builders a useful tool to aid you in your building of anti-3 town hall 10s. The guides set out in this document are just that, guides, they are not must do’s and every builder should have his or her own creative freedom, it should shine through in your builds, however there are some mandatory building and trap placements .

Throughout this guide I will cover the mandatory placements, the optional placements, the creative freedom required, as well as give a brief description of how I go about my builds.

This guide is written for Players that have all of the defensive buildings in place at town hall 10 with the intention of defending 10v10 attempts. If you get beaten by a player with a warden do not feel disappointed in yourself or your build. After reading this, you will be better armed to go and create those unbreakable bases.

Overview

Current meta requires you to build a compact base that has lots of defences targeting incoming enemy troops at the same time. This way you’ll eat up incoming attacks and leave the attacker wondering… Where did my troops go?

The base should make lalo pathing as well as ground troop pathing difficult without giving up the triple to dragons with easily snipe-able air defences (single target infernos will halt dragon attacks).

Mandatory

If you haven’t already guessed it, there are the things that are absolutely compulsory in every single build that you do. They are the basics and so in this section a lot of the material is lifted from various th9 guides. Post update the biggest change to th10 meta follows th9 meta, do not have a defenceless core because hogs are back in business, in a big way!

Traps

These are unknown on the fresh hit, that makes them important!!!! Often in elite competition the first hit is a fresh 10v10 or 11v10 if the th9s haven’t cleared well enough to scout. So the attacker is already making guesses as to where your traps are, don’t help him or her out by making it obvious!

Spring Traps

As explained in various th9 guides spring traps should be placed within the 1 tile spacing between defensive buildings. There’s no other way to say this, look here’s a picture:

The 2 crosses will work against troop movements, but only in one direction and nobody liked One Direction.

Skeleton Traps

Have them away from your queen.

Small Bombs

Individual small bombs should be placed 1 tile away from the wall purposely to thwart the wall breaker. In the latest update small bombs were buffed to take out the same level wall breaker as the bomb itself. The 2 tile distance means that the bomb is triggered and explodes before the kamikaze nutcase wall breakers do, job successful. Small bombs right up against the wall do not explode quick enough to stop the wall breaker blowing a hole in that beautiful wall line. Note that wall breakers run between buildings not through them!

Two tiles away from the wall will kill raged wall breakers:

Giant Bombs

Doubling up giant bombs used to be the thing to do but the meta has changed. These want to be well spread out, this way hog attackers can’t use 1 heal spell to deal with multiple giant bombs. Spread out giant bombs also mean that an incoming kill squad is more likely to get caught by at least 1 giant bomb (if you’re smart about it you can guarantee this). Some of my bases designed to defend the dip have 4 out of 5 giant bombs outside the exterior of the walls.

Air bombs

Do not place these next to air defences. Their purpose is to take out loons not hounds. So just don’t do it.

Seeking Air Mines

Do place these near air defences, they’re supposed to take out hounds not loons. So go ahead, do it. If you can place these outside of the wall layer it also helps to prevent queen walks but don’t go mad with it as interior SAM’s break drags, it’s a trade off.

Defences and Heroes

Now the buildings that the fresh hitter can see.

Clan Castle

Placed this here because it does have a range. The clan castle shouldn’t be lurable, make the attacker spend at least 15 troop space if they want to lure the clan castle troops, don’t just give them away.

Cannons

Place these amongst your air defences so that you get good ground cover to go with your air cover.

Archer Towers

Place these amongst your Wizard Towers so that you maintain good point defence air cover along with your wizardry splash damaging defences. Remember you need air targeting splash covering the entire base.

Wizard Towers

DO NOT place these so as air defences are within their range, a wizard tower targeting a hound is bad news.

Bomb Towers

Do not place these toward the exterior of a base… If a queen can snipe this building from outside the base then you can sure as hell guarantee that the attacker is looking at an easy way to trigger this bomb consequence free.

See here how they protect the queen from a raged skelly spell kill. The queen targets the hound and the bomb towers protect the queen while she reks.

Mortars

Literally the most useless defence in war play, something had to be. Use these to make funneling awkward.

Hidden teslas

I’ve included these here though I suppose they could have been a trap. They’re important, especially for that fresh hit. Use them to make funneling awkward, or pathing awkward. Remember, troll teslas work.

X-bows

Generally there’s a bit of a mix when it comes to xbows, the only mandatory thing is that you don’t rek yourself by having them walkable by a queen.

Air Defences

As a group, the mandatory thing to do with Air Defences is not allow all four of them to be walked or sniped, if you do this you open yourself up to a drag hit of some variation.

Air Sweepers

These must not be placed in such a way that they push healers out of the base… All that does is make the queen walk last longer, unless you can place in such a way the it means the queen is under too much dps while the healers are being pushed away.

Inferno Towers

The mandatory thing to do with Inferno Towers is do have them set to multi-target.

If your infernos are on multi do not let them be sniped by a queen walk and make queen charging a multi inferno difficult.

Barbarian King

Excellent defender against hogs, so don’t allow the attacker to swap him for their king in an easy funnel situation.

Archer Queen

She’s an absolute beast, protect her. This is mandatory. Not optional. Do not expose her. Do not give her away cheaply.

Trash

I’m not going to cover every single trash building, the mandatory thing to do here is not have high hit point trash buildings to be used as an anchor point for incoming kill squads. The other mandatory point is to not place trash buildings in such a way that bowler bounces can be achieved on defensive buildings.

That means place your trash at least 3 tiles away from the nearest defensive building if it has higher hit points than that defensive building! I realise this cannot always be achieved for trash within the interior but it is a must for the exterior. That means 2 tiles from the wall usually, 2 tiles! This way you can hide tesla locations. OR directly next to the wall in order to make the funnel difficult but never 1 tile away at th10 as this is useless. Double up the trash layer in areas you want to stop the funnel happening, look at hit points of buildings to make sure the inner trash cannot be dropped with a bowler bounce from the outer trash building

The Town Hall, it’s a 4×4 tile space gold storage. Don’t put it in the core. The Town Hall is TRASH! The town hall should also make a triangle shape with your inferno towers, generally having a straight line or near straight line go through your TH and 2 infernos opens you up to large KS type hits (mass pekka, frozen witch)

Summary

This guide covers mandatory features that I am assuming you have some knowledge of first.

Optional

This is where some of that creative freedom starts to creep in and where the fun begins…

Traps

Now this is where the real thought comes in. anybody can throw defences together but if you step back and have an actual thought about the opponent’s likely attack style and execution of said attack, you can break him or her.

Skeleton traps

Place these within range of splash damage as miners’ AI will target skellies over any other structure so Miners will literally stand their swinging a spade at this tiny little skelly while the Inferno of your choice melts them, wizard towers also like to rek Miners while they swing at skellies.

Spring Traps

Ok so these bad boys are the best way to thwart hogs, if I’m a hog attacker what are my key objectives before I send in the hogs? The obvious ones don’t matter (queen, cc, an inferno etc.). Wizard Towers, Hogs are weak to wizard towers, so if I can, I will try to pick up wizard towers with my kill squad or queen walk. If it isn’t obvious yet, what I’m saying is, spring traps aren’t necessarily best placed at the feat of wizard towers as skilled hog attackers will try to avoid as many wiz towers as possible. Now there are obviously exceptions but it’s a lot easier to smash your hogs through 4 air defences than it is wiz towers… Do you see where I’m going yet? place them at the feet of air defences! And always between 2 buildings as mentioned above. Preferably away from your queen, hog hotters have to grab ypur queen before they send hogs in, so don’t put springs in the path of the ks or qc.

Small Bombs

There isn’t much option with these, they either go in a combo to defend witches (explained in th9 guides) or they go 1 tile away from the wall you expect wall breakers to attempt to break.

Giant Bombs

Covered in mandatory section as well as th9 guides. I like to have 3 outside the base usually. No doubles though. Spread these out so a heal spell cannot cover multiple bombs (including your bomb towers).

Air bombs

These work well next to or near your wizard towers as well as next to or near inferno towers. Don’t stack them though. And again, this is where you need to look at your base design so far and have a real think about where the loons will be bunched up, because that’s where you need these.

Seeking Air Mines

These are almost the exact opposite of air bombs. You want them in the paths of hounds and or healers on queen walks as well as incoming blimp/ss. Again, have a look at your base, where would you send your hounds in? If you can place these in the path of queen walks too that works as a buy one get one free, kinda.

Defences and heroes

Now the buildings that the fresh hitter can see.

Cannons

Usually these are all inside the exterior wall layer, they offer very good ground point defence, they can end a queen walk prematurely or at least force spell use. A very underrated defence. They don’t provide air cover so let’s have a think about what these need coupling with… Air Defences!

Archer Towers

Of the 7 that you have, at least 6 of these are usually placed away from air defences as they are another form of point air defence. They’re a very versatile and are usually accompanied by wizard towers, but again keep in mind that you want all of the base protected by air splash to combat bats.

Wizard Towers

These can all be placed reasonably close together but not so close together that one heal covers them all as a loon or hog attacker will get incredible value, and again remember they need to protect the whole base from bats, only Wiz towers and Inferno towers on multi can do this. Again place these away from your air defences and place them in the paths where loons and hogs are likely to bunch up.

Bomb Towers

So we’ve discovered these should be fairly centrally placed, at least out of reach of a queen walk but where? The easy answer is, these should be placed in such a way that they protect the queen from a skeleton spell kill while she stands shooting at a hound. Bomb Towers don’t target air troops so they are great for wasting those skellies (This is why wizard towers aren’t as prepared for the same job).

Mortars

Still useless at defending, but they can be used cleverly to cause hogs and loons to leave the interior of the base causing valuable time to be lost.

Hidden teslas

Say no to tesla farms (unless they affect funneling/pathing), say yes to placing these 2 tiles away from a mortar as explained in depth in the th9 guides. Do include the small bomb and giant bomb combo of course! It is also a good idea to use these to again force loons or hogs to leave the interior of the base and waste time hunting a single tesla placed outside the base.

X-bows

These can be placed centrally or slightly less centrally, don’t allow them to be queen walked though and generally speaking it’s bad form to have 2 in the same compartment; that’s an advertisement for buy one get one free to me. There are exceptions to this of course.

Air Defences

Make awkward lalo pathing for air defences, if you make a square out of your air defences be prepared to watch the house of cards fall. However having all 4 in a slight curve or line on one side of the base or diagonally through the base means hounds have nowhere to go when the air defences are dealt with causing loons to bunch and die. Having air defences reasonably close also means that the incoming hounds are targeted by more than one air defence, they go double time on that poor houndy. Making a “rocket shape from air defences also works quite well”.

Air Sweepers

I’d always have these pointing away from each, I’d have one covering the queen from an incoming blimp and one facing opposite to stop incoming queen charges/siege slammers.

Inferno Towers

Inferno Towers are also a thought provoking structure but are often placed quite early in the build so maybe less so than sweepers.

Infernos want to be placed so that a jump does not connect the two compartments that withhold them, unless, they are on adjacent sides of the base. Having infernos on adjacent sides of the base will help with defending miner attacks as it makes pathing more awkward and unpredictable.

Protect your infernos, they’ll protect you. Don’t allow them to be bowler skipped on from any direction if possible, inferno islands aren’t mandatory anymore but these have high hp and are worth holding onto as they can often be the difference between 99 and triple.

Inferno Islands are in again, use them, make pathing awkward remember to cover all the base with air targeting splash.

Barbarian King

Can be used to protect your queen or can be away from your queen in the likely path of hogs. You’ll be bored of reading this soon but do please have a think about your design and place your king where he will be needed, protecting your queen or smashing hogs, both work.

Archer Queen

It’s a safe bet to place your queen centrally, it often works well, protect her and she can end any style of attack that the attacker has in their locker.

Trash

You should always consider hit points of trash and place accordingly as outlined in the mandatory section. You can use high hit point trash to protect your infernos, this is a common thing to see in new meta base designs at town hall 10 but do remember the 3 tile rule between infernos and other structures, this isn’t mandatory either.

Summary

There are still a lot of things that are your choice, the main one being the actual shape and design of the base… you just have to encompass everything you’ve read up to this point.

Creative Freedom

It’s your base, your design, your baby. Use what you know to create a badass base. If you follow this guide you’ll have created a new meta format base (July 2019) that may be able to withhold multiple times in the highest level of competition.

Clan Castle troops

Central CC

If you think your base is weak to miners only, you may consider having a golem in your CC, this is the quickest way to see off miners but it does little else against other attack styles.

Generally centralised cc’s have lalo in them to slow down heavy kill-squads while the queen hits the hound instead of defences.

If the kill squad is coming through the queen before cc then I would opt for a damage cc variation. Otherwise central CC’s want a hound/loon combo (ONLY).

Offset CC

Offset cc’s may include 3 valks and a baby dragon in order to wreck a queen walk if that’s what you think is the likely attack on your base.

If you think you’re going to get 11v10 dipped, using 2 witches and a babyd is a great way to slow down the edrag-clone attacks we see so often.

Lurable CC

You’re an idiot, why did I bother writing this (could become a thing at some point soon- bradders 2017) – this never became a thing – bradders 2019.

My Builds

As explained in other guides and here. You need to find your thing. It will come to you.

When starting a build I usually get the idea for a feature in the build, one that I may have seen work well somewhere else like a dead zone that troops avoided costing time or something similar to this. I will then create the desired feature and fit the current meta base around that feature. I cannot say much more than that without physically showing you a build… and well they’re for me and mine so won’t be displayed here.

I finish off by getting it critiqued by at least 3 of my most trusted builders (in clan) and then get it friendly challenged by players with talent and by multiple attacks starting with the ones it looks weak to.

Live Build

I built the base below in 2017 and if you follow it through to the end I explain how it can be easily adapted to work in July 2019.

Here I will show a build from start to finish, the way I do it. Obviously I’m not going to give away my best work but this section should give you a good starting point of the steps I follow when building a base.

The Idea

Ok so I’ve gone fairly basic with this, my idea for this build was that we’ve all seen the basic 9×9 grid bases at th9, well can we make one work at th10, let’s find out…

(looking back at this in 2019 I would try to make 6 oclock harder to funnel now, expecting the town hall would have been placed at 9 o’clock.)

Conclusion

A lot of this may seem very vague but it isn’t intended to be, I’d like it to be seen as inspiration for those undefeatable bases that end up being called “that wanky internet base” when the meta changes again next year.

Catch my live build streams on https://twitch.tv/ogbradders for more tips and tricks. I’m always reachable on Discord at: @bradders#8451

There’s no way I’ve managed to cover everything here so when the questions start rolling in I will update this guide accordingly.

Version: 4.0

Last Updated: 28/06/2019 (That’s right I’m in the UK)

Thanks for reading this far, I hope it helps!

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