| All About Attacking with Lava Hounds and Balloons: A Completely Comprehensive Guide to Everything Lalo (Th9-Th14) Posted: 02 Jun 2021 08:45 AM PDT  | Intro: The Lalo attack, consisting primarily of lava hounds followed by balloons, is one of the strongest attacks in the game at every level once the lava hound is unlocked at th9, but it is also one of the most difficult to master and use effectively and consistently. Points of Emphasis/TLDR: - Have a plan to deal with enemy AQ, RC and CC troops
- create good pathing with lalo deployment
- get cleanup out fast
- avoid sweepers when possible
- PRACTICE, focus on improving every attack, not immediate results
Contents: - The Basics: The Opener, The Lalo, Pathing, Deployment, Spell Usage
- Town Hall 9 Lalo
- Town Hall 10 Lalo
- Town Hall 11 Lalo
- Town Hall 12 Lalo
- Town Hall 13 Lalo
- Town Hall 14 Lalo
- Note: In order to avoid being repetitive, the tips for each town hall build off of the previous ones. Even if you have passed a lower town hall, I would recommend reading the the lower town halls to not miss something that is built off of later.
- Tips to Defend Lalo
- Conclusions
The Basics - The Opener: A Lalo attack consists of multiple phases, with the Lalo part of the attack being the last phase. The first phase (or two at later town halls) is all about destroying key targets (enemy heroes, clan castle troops, and key defenses) in the defending base and creating good pathing for your loons to travel throughout the base. The phase(s) of the attack that occur before the lava hounds and balloons are deployed will often be referred to as a opener throughout this post. An opener can consist of one or multiple of the following: queen charge, blizzard, electrone, sui heroes/killsquad, zapping a key defensive spot, a yeti bomb, skelly donut and more. - A queen charge refers to an attacker complementing their archer queen with 4-5 healers (depending on town hall level) and sending her into the enemy base to achieve certain goals. When queen charging an important consideration to be made are the amount of damage the queen will have to face, and therefore the amount of rage, freeze and invisibility spells that may have to be used during it. Make sure to bring loons to test for traps for the healers so the queen charge is able to maintain maximum strength, because fewer healers leads to more damage on the queen. Another consideration is the range of the queen and what she will be able to destroy from where she is charged. The easiest way to talk about her range is with a picture.
https://preview.redd.it/04964npnmr271.jpg?width=2224&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f1f5dd630591f6f68dd5c706cb79184b1ca0b446 - In the above picture, if the queen is in the compartment containing the queen altar, the only buildings she will be able to reach are the cannon and bomb tower, marked with green. She is unable any of the reach the buildings marked with red. Because such a significant amount of your army is taken up by healers, the lalo portion of the attack will, by nature be smaller, so you must get enough value with the queen to justify that investment.
- A blizzard is a battle blimp with super wizards inside that, upon being dropped into the enemy base, are raged and made invisible. Important considers to be made are making sure the blimp has a safe landing area, what the super wizards can target from that area, what they can chain to, and how to get the blimp to the landing area. Super wizards are moderately fragile and can die if they hit enough traps. Having lighter troops such as archers, barbs or gobs in the blimp to come out before the super wizards and pre-trigger traps can be very useful. Super wizards have a range of two tiles so you must consider what buildings they can hit from where the blimp is dropped.
https://preview.redd.it/dry3cjygqr271.jpg?width=2224&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6d62d577ea249f0ff62488de75ee0433a0383069 - Super wizards in the compartment containing the archer queen altar will be able to hit the eagle, scattershot and xbow, marked in green, but will be unable to hit the town hall or inferno tower, marked with red. Just because super wizards can't directly hit something, doesn't necessarily mean it will not be destroyed, as super wizards attack can chain 40% of their damage to up to 10 targets. That chain can reach something that is one tile away in any direction from a building they are targeting. When choosing a landing spot for the blimp, you must think about how you will get the blimp to that spot. Two seeking air mines (SAMs) will kill a blimp which can lead to it being dropped prematurely. When sending a blimp deeper into a base, a hound can often be justified provided it allows good tanking and covers similar ground as the blimp in order to test for SAMs. For a blimp that doesn't go as far into a base, a couple balloons will often suffice in getting the blimp where it needs to be. Sweepers will disrupt a blimps travel so you must either avoid or freeze them so your blimp gets where it needs safely. The tornado trap can also disrupt a blimp, but there is no reliable way to avoid it so you should hope to not hit it. This is not meant to be a formulaic method for getting your blimp where it needs to be and is more a general instruction. You should instead practice blizzard yourself to be able to properly analyze a base and how to get a blimp to a desired spot. Make sure to practice invisibility timing as well, so you are able to maximize each invisibility spell, without ever allowing the wizards to reappear and get killed before you are done with the blizzard.
- An electrone is a battle blimp or a stone slammer in rarer cases that is filled with an electro dragon and balloons that are raged and cloned at a key point within the base. An electrone doesn't need to be dropped in such a specific location as a blimp as air troops can travel over walls, but still be sure to test for traps ahead of the blimp and be wary of air sweepers.
- Sui heroes/a killsquad/hero dive refers to an attacker sending their heroes into the base with some, but limited troop support. Sometimes this will be as small as a sui with almost exclusively the attackers heroes, while other times it will be heavier and include things like a golem and/or a log launcher. The most used spells for these types of openers are invisibility, jump rage, and freeze spells.
- Zapping a key defensive spot is using lightning spells to remove parts of the defending base. Deciding whether or not to zap something relies on how that area being removed affects your opener and lalo, as well as considering what else you would be able to get with the zap spells. When figuring out how many zaps to use, I recommend the site: Zapquake Clash of Clans Calculator - Zapquaker to determine how many to use. For determining the range of zaps and whether or not you will be able to hit certain targets, I would recommend consulting this post: [GUIDE] The exact range of lightning spell : ClashOfClans (reddit.com) .
- A yeti bomb is a battle blimp containing yetis inside being dropped on a certain spot in the base and often being raged. A yeti bomb can be a very effective tool for creating a funnel, luring enemy cc troops, and destroying key targets. Deciding whether or not to rage them depends on how much damage you wish them to do, how much damage they are encountering and whether or not you want them to engage an enemy hero. As always with a blimp, make sure to test for traps, but also consider the ranges of enemy heroes as they might draw the yetis away from the target you want the yetis to go after if you are not careful.
- A skelly donut is the use of skeleton spells and invisibility spells, to take out key defenses, oftentimes scattershot(s) and the clan castle. It can be complemented with rage spells, for the skellies to do more damage, and an earthquake spell, to do the last bit of damage if the donut doesn't completely destroy something. This is very precise, so make sure you are very careful and warmup before using it.
The Basics - The Lalo: After one has completed their opener, it is time to begin the Lalo phase of their attack. The Lalo begins with a lava hound being placed in a tanking position to cover the defenses of the bases and groups of balloons behind the tanking hound. The loons should be placed 3-5 per defense. As the loons move through the base add an additional hound to tank and more loons to keep supporting your main pack. While this is happening, make sure to deploy minions to begin cleaning up the base, haste spells on the balloons in more concentrated parts of the base and to get rid of key defenses, and freeze spells on key defenses. At th11 and up you will often want your Grand Warden in air mode to follow the balloons to give them more health and allow them invincibility under the eternal tome. The Basics - Pathing: Before starting a lalo you need to make sure that their is pathing present so the loons will travel in one direction (clockwise or counterclockwise), and not split and go all over the place. The opener serves this purpose of creating pathing. Lava Hounds exclusively target air defenses until all air defenses are destroyed, when they will target the closest remaining defense. Balloons target the closest defense. It is of vital importance to consider this and how these troops will path throughout the base when planning an attack and when executing an attack. When deploying a lava hound, drop it from an angle that will tank as many defenses as possible. When deploying groups of loons, drop them in a manner that will allow the balloons to quickly and efficiently move from defense to defense minimizing total loons travel time and make sure defenses are not skipped. https://preview.redd.it/0rm1mzn2ir271.jpg?width=2224&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2b4e28e3c3735027dd043181da6ca58c5e358f9b In the above image, assume an opener has destroyed the defending clan castle troops and the area marked out in black. When starting a Lalo, deploy a hound like the green arrow shows and not how the red arrow shows. The green circles show defenses that a hound dropped from the green direction will spend time tanking and the red circles show defenses a hound dropped from the red direction will spend time tanking. Time a lava hound spends tanking defenses is time that those balloons are not being damaged which is exactly what you want to happen. This hound placement also results in the hound covering a greater area of the base which increases the likelihood of it triggering a red bomb, which are largely inconsequential when they hit hound, but are very damaging to loons. https://preview.redd.it/fq6s1lkwir271.jpg?width=2224&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ff63bb2252ddfbcf883ed2f5d82dd2785ca335c6 The above image shows how to deploy loons to ensure a defense is not skipped. Dropping individual, targeted groups of loons at each of the locations marked in green will lead to them following the green arrows and quickly destroying the xbow. Dropping all the loons in one spot, such as at the red location will not reliably allow them to path to the xbow and allows the xbow to get more shots off against your army. In this specific example it may not be the difference in a three star and not a three star, but in other situations, it absolutely may be. If that xbow was instead of multi-target inferno tower, the attacker could lose a decent percentage of their balloons early and not have enough to power through the backend of the base. Also notice how all the loons will travel clockwise around the base because of the path of defenses throughout the base and not be split and go clockwise and counterclockwise. The Basics - Deployment When deploying the Lalo portion of the attack you must be quick and precise. Immediately, after dropping the hound in an ideal tanking location, you want to use multiple fingers to tap 3-5 times to deploy individual groups of loons targeting specific. As soon as the first group of loons are down, make sure to drop a few minions behind. This process of hound immediately followed by groups of loons and then minions right after will be repeated a few times throughout the attack. If you are th11 or higher, you will almost always be including your warden behind your loons in one of those sets of groups. All while the lalo is being deployed, you still must keep an eye on what you have already deployed and be ready to use spells as necessary. The Basics - Spell Usage For the lalo portion of an attack, the spells that you will use are most frequently going to be haste spells and freeze spells, with rage being the third most common and heal and skeleton spells being used after those, but often only with very specific purposes. - Haste spells are best used on concentrations of multiple defenses on multiple groups of loons or on a large group of loons, in order to maximize the speed gained. Haste is also great to use when the loons are invincible from the warden tome, to get the most out of the ability.
- Freeze spells are used to freeze what can do the most damage to your loons. Scattershots, multi-infernos, the eagle, the town-hall (at th12+), sweepers and backend wizard towers and backend air defenses are generally what you should use them on. Make sure to maximize the value of each freeze by freezing as much as possible with each one. For determining freeze spell range I recommend this reddit post: [STRATEGY] Freeze spell effective range : ClashOfClans (reddit.com) .
- Rage spells are sometimes used in a Lalo but take the backseat to haste spells. Balloons already have high damage, so they often won't need the damage increase from a rage spell to destroy defenses, and a haste spell gives a larger speed increase. Rage spells can still be used effectively though. They will be used in a similar manner to haste spells. A common time to use a rage for a lalo is when doing a queen charge lalo and you have a rage spell leftover from the queen charge. In general for queen charge lalo, rage spells are better to bring for the simple fact that they are more versatile and can be used during the queen charge or during the lalo compared to haste spells which can only be used effectively during the lalo.
- Skeleton spells are sometimes used during a lalo portion to kill an enemy hero, often combined with a rage. In addition to killing and distracting the enemy hero, the skeleton spell can also sometimes distract other defenses for you.
- Heal spells are also a very niche spell when used in a lalo. They are really only ever used when there is a heavy backend, or multi inferno that loons cannot be easily pathed to.
Town Hall 9: - At town hall 9 the two key targets for your opener are the defending archer queen and the defending clan castle troops. The potential openers to do so are queen charges, zaps and kill squads.
- For a queen charge the level or one's queen is a vital consideration when planning an attack. Queens below level 20 often won't be able to do enough damage fast enough to justify the investment a queen charge. Once a queen is higher level, it can be funneled into a base and supported with healers. At th9, 4 healers will be sufficient for your queen charges. It is important to start the lalo at the right time, too early and the queen charge won't have gotten enough value, but too late the the queen charge will have fizzled out and she might have died.
- A frequent Lalo variant at th9 is zap lalo. Zap out the enemy archer queen, then lure the cc and created pathing with your heroes. From there lalo the rest of the base.
- In a kill squad lalo you will want to kill the same two key targets, and how hard they are to get depends on how many troops and spells you invest into the killsquad. If the enemy archer queen is in the edge of the base, you can lure the cc and kill the queen and cc with just your heroes. If the enemy queen is deep in base, you may need a golem and a jump spell to reach her.
- When deploying a lalo at th9, 3 loons per defense should be absolutely sufficient.
Town Hall 10: - At town hall 10, there is a knew huge threat to a lalo, which is multi target infernos. Because of that, the key targets are now the enemy cc troops, enemy queen and multi infernos. Therefore they must be taken into consideration when deciding on an opener. The same thing that are done at th9 can be done at th10, but you also have the ability to receive a siege machine in your clan castle now which allows for more variants as well.
- Electrone lalo can be very strong at th10. Most frequently, the target of the electrone portion will be the enemy queen and whatever other buildings are near her. Then the electrone either kills the cc or it lures it and you kill it with heroes. If the enemy queen is exposed you can electrone another part of the base and kill the queen with your own heroes.
- Another way to utilize siege machines in a lalo is with a stone slammer. The slammer can often be used in place of a group of loons when deploying a lalo. At th10, your slammer should either be all loons to help carry through the base, or something to kill the enemy queen like a drag, inferno drag or edrag if she is left up when starting the lalo portion.
- Wall wreckers and log launchers can be used in a killsquad to get further in base and get more value out of them.
- Queen charge lalo is also still very strong, but be wary of single-target infernos during your charge. They don't offer much in defending balloons, but single infernos can stop a queen charge right in its tracks. 4 healers will often still be enough, but you may need 5 when charging into a heavy damage area.
- At th10 and like th9, 3 loons per defense should be sufficient when deploying a lalo.
Town Hall 11: - There are two big differences from th10 to th11, the grand warden and the eagle artillery. The warden, once upgraded, provides a substantial offensive boost. It will be used in air mode almost every attack, except in very rare occurrences when you want to the killsquad to get a ton of value. The eagle has the potential to wreck attacks, but it will lock onto hounds before loons so if you deal with it quickly you should be okay. Leaving the eagle up late can be risky, because it is a lot of damage the continually be hitting your army, deal with it early if you can. Key targets are now the enemy queen, cc troops, multi infernos and the eagle artillery.
- Siege machines can be used the same way as at th10, but also with the added ability to do both electrones and blizzards with the blimp, because invisibility spells have been unlocked.
- When using zaps, you may have to get multiple key targets or you might not have enough spells for the rest of the base, but that will depend on your plan for the rest of the base.
- When queen charging, an additional point of concern is the eagle. It has the potential to severely damage or kill healers or provide a bunch of extra damage onto the queen. A simple way to avoid worrying about it, is to kill the eagle before it activates. At th11 and later, you will want 5 healers for your queen charges. The addition of super troops at th11 is most impactful for lalo in a queen charge. Super wallbreakers are a game changer and allows much more reliability in breaking into the base and sneaky goblins can be very good for funneling a queen in.
- Sneaky goblins also allow you to punish defenders who have very exposed clan castles and use 6-8 sneaky gobs to destroy it before the clan castle troops come out.
- Three loons per defense will often be enough when deploying the lalo at town hall 11, but you may want to go a little heavier into the eagle or multi infernos as they are high HP structures that cannot afford to be left up.
Town Hall 12 - Town hall 12 is the first town hall that attacks. It is dangerous at all levels, but becomes very concerning once upgraded to level 5. The giga bomb has the potential to completely destroy armies, so if left up for the lalo portion, you must save the warden ability for it. The town hall and new inferno are both new key targets. Having a plan for the town hall becomes just as important as the enemy queen and clan castle troops. You can kill it with on opener, save the warden ability for the town hall blast, or blimp out the town hall during the lalo.
- There are multiple types of blimps that can be used to destroy the town hall. There is a yeti blimp, which is a combination of yetis and sneaky goblins, a safety blimp, which is just all sneaky gobs and a blimp consisted of a drag/loons or all loons. A yeti blimp and a blimp containing loons will need a rage to destroy the town hall, but can get additional value in buildings nearby.
- When attacking a level 5 town hall and saving the warden ability for it, use the ability right before the town hall is destroyed to ensure the bomb won't damage your troops.
- The ice hound is unlocked at th12, and can be very strong. It drops a freeze spell when it dies, so when using it make sure the air defense you have it target is nearby a key target such as a multi inferno so it will freeze that too. Because you are sacrificing two extra loons when bringing an ice hound, you want to ensure you get value from the freeze because otherwise it might not be worth it to bring an ice hound.
- At th12, blizzards start to really outclass electrone as electrone will often require more spells for a similar amount of value. The yeti bomb also really starts to become a thing as starting at th12, you can now take two yetis in the clan castle.
- Unlocking headhunters (hh) at th12 gives you an additional way to deal with the enemy queen. You can send two of them in with the lalo and under tome they will kill the queen. Make sure to drop them slightly separately so if one hits a spring trap, they both don't get sprung. If there is not many ground targeted defenses by the queen you can sometimes get away with not using the tome for the hh on the queen kill. A final consideration is the location of the enemy king because if nearby the queen he may tank the hh for her, allowing the tome to wear off and the hh to die before the queen does. When encountering the enemy king with a sui or queen charge you may want to bring an additional headhunter to get through him faster and maximize the value of that opener.
- Queen charge lalo, zap lalo, and sui/kill squad lalo are all still viable at th12.
- In addition to use sneaky gobs to kill exposed clan castles like at th11, you can also use them to destroy exposed town halls, sometimes with the help of an invisibility spell
- Like town hall 11, 3 loons per defense should normally suffice, but going a little heavier in the loon deployment may sometimes be a good idea going into higher HP defenses.
Town Hall 13 - With town hall 13 comes the additions of the royal champion (RC) and the scattershots. The giga bomb from the town hall now also has a slowing down effect.
- The scattershots and the defensive royal champion are all additional key targets.
- The RC is very diverse as an attacking unit for lalo and can be used in a multitude of ways. It can be sent in as part of an opener or sent in with the lalo. When using it in the opener, you can use the rc just to sui a certain part of the base by itself, such as a scattershot or multi inferno, or you can send it in with barb king and archer queen as they are sui-ing. Invisibility spells combine very well with the RC when it is in a sui. You can also combine zap(s) and a quake with the RC in an opener to RC trick key targets. An RC trick is when you funnel the RC's ability to target specific defenses that are partially damaged by zap(s) and a quake to finish them off. At th13, one zap and one quake is enough to kill an inferno when combined with the RC ability.
- Scattershots can be a huge detriment to ballons so try to do whatever possible to mitigate their damage to your loons. There are multiple ways to do this, such as having a hound tank their shots, freezing them up, killing them with an opener, or using the warden ability through them.
- When lalo-ing through the town hall, in addition to making sure the warden ability is saved for the town hall bomb, you should also now haste out of it as well because of the slowing effect it has.
- Defensively the RC is another air targeting hero and therefore something that you must have a plan for. Obviously, you can kill the RC in the opener and not have to worry about her in the lalo but that not always the best option on every base. Like with the archer queen, you can kill the RC with hh during the lalo or with a drag in a stone slammer. You don't necessarily have to, but I would recommend dealing with at least one of the queen or RC before starting the lalo portion of your attack.
- Three loons per defense and like th11 and th12, go a little heavier if you are about to encounter higher HP defenses
Town Hall 14: - Town hall 14 adds the defensive builders huts, hero pets and the poison bomb to the game
- The defensive builder huts do not effective lalo very much and are more or just a bit of nuisance. Since they do however, heal damaged buildings, it advisable to go a little heavier with the loons deployment when loons are encountering them to make sure nothing it left alive to be healed back up
- The pets can be very useful and there is a few different pet combinations to use. For any type of lalo you will want the owl paired with the warden because that maximizes the value of the owl. The LASSI will be paired with the RC in all lalo attacks as well just because they have such good synergy. For queen charge lalo, you will want the unicorn with the queen and the yak with the barb king. For a more sui style lalo, the unicorn and yak can be switched between king and queen but that is up to you. It can be nice to have the unicorn healing up the queen if a defense targets her over the queen, but the yaks ability to destroy walls works a little better with the queen from my experience because it begins breaking them as the queen shoots over them. Play around with both the unicorn and yak with the queen and king in sui style lalos to find out what you like best.
The town hall poison is a huge detriment to loons. Whenever possible, try to get rid of it before you lalo, or avoid having your loons travel over it. There are multiple ways to kill it, all discussed in more detail previously, such as blimps, blizzards, suis, queen charges, etc. If you do lalo through the town hall, make sure there are no defenses still alive right next to it or otherwise the loons will get stuck in the poison while attacking those defenses. Make sure freeze the town hall on approach and to save the warden ability for the very last second to minimize potential time in poison. Haste the loons to get them away from the town hall as fast as possible. Tips to Defend Against Lalo: This section will be less specific ways and more general advice on defending lalo. - Don't have wizard towers and scattershots cover air defenses when possible so they will target loons instead of hounds.
- Dont have red air bombs in travel path of straight lines between air defenses because then hounds will trigger them not loons. SAMs by the base of air defenses will quickly kills hounds allowing defenses to damage loons faster.
- Value spread is very important to minimize the value of blizzards and of each individual freeze and haste spell.
- Have the CC, archer queen and if you have one RC separated from one another, so an attacker has to work hard to kill them all.
- Have your infernos on multi-target mode
- Create difficult pathing to key defense(s), so that defense has more time to do damage, or is left up if the attacker does not account for the difficult pathing
General Takeaways/Discussion: - Practice makes perfect. Don't expect immediate results. Focus on improving something with each attack you do. Watch your replays and find out what you did wrong to not make the same mistakes twice. FCs with your clanmates will be the best way to practice as you will be able to correct mistakes you made and attack the same base multiple times.
- Try to avoid sweepers with lalo. I didn't speak about them much so far, but sweepers allow the defenses to have extra time to destroy your troops as well as increase the chances of time failing.
- Don't waste time. Once one portion of an attack is over immediately move onto the next phase. At later town halls with more and more phases, you may start one phase before the previous is completely over (such as starting lalo before heroes die in a blizzard into a sui into a lalo). In addition to not wasting time, start cleanup early.
- If you have any questions please go ahead and ask I will be more than willing to answer anything in the comments.
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