Town Hall 9 Archer Queen Compartments - April 2017
The Archer Queen (AQ) is a key piece of a base. She needs to be protected but she also protects your base. The most common troops in three star attacks are hogs and loons - defense targeting troops. These troops will run past the AQ to destroy defensive buildings. If unkilled, the AQ can quickly shoot down hogs and loons and ruin an attack. Therefore, she should be near defenses so that she can protect them from these defensive targeting troops. This makes her a primary objective when building a base. Attackers will usually look to kill her first with what is known as a Kill Squad. Therefore, it's also important to protect her so that the kill squad fails or the attacker needs to invest so many resources in killing the AQ and does not have enough left for the rest of the base.
Two Classes of Compartments
In the current meta there are two classes of AQ compartments. There is the exposed compartment which means it is possible for the enemy do kill the AQ with just heroes and the unexposed or protected compartment where the attacker will need a kill squad. This differs from previous metas where you just post a some different screenshots of AQ compartments and be done. Now the AQ compartment is tied to the layout concept of the whole base and not just a stand alone part of the base.
Exposed AQ
The exposed AQ was not a big deal until the TH9 laloon meta of the Dec. 2016 update. After the update, laloon ruled the meta. If you have an exposed AQ and your base does not compensate, it is easy defeated by penta and quad laloon. It additionally opens up the base to a mass hog attack though not as popular. If the base has an exposed AQ, the rest of the base needs to compensate for the exposed AQ to defend Quadlaloon, which in my opinion, is the strongest TH9 attack right now and PowerBang agrees.
An AQ will jump over walls that are less than three tiles away from her. Assuming the BK is at the corner of the base, she will not jump over the South West wall and the South East wall. However an enemy AQ can kill the defending AQ because she will target outside the walls and draw aggression from the enemy AQ.
The main ways the base compensates an exposed AQ is with Storages, Traps, and CC. In the above photo, the Barbarian King acts as a defense. He will aggro the enemy BK and AQ before they target the defending AQ. He also acts an HP buffer like storages to delay the enemy and give time for the defenses to kill the enemy heroes.
The main ways the base compensates an exposed AQ is with Storages, Traps, and CC. In the above photo, the Barbarian King acts as a defense. He will aggro the enemy BK and AQ before they target the defending AQ. He also acts an HP buffer like storages to delay the enemy and give time for the defenses to kill the enemy heroes.
Storages with teslas behind them can also protect an AQ. The high DPS of the teslas can kill the enemy heroes before they kill your AQ. Since teslas are a trap, even the threat of teslas can dissuade an attacker from trying a hero swap to help defend a fresh attack.
An offset/exposed CC can also protect an exposed AQ. Good choices include a hound which will greatly delay an enemy AQ giving defenses time to kill her or many small troops that can overwhelm Heroes but are easily killable with a poison.
An offset/exposed CC can also protect an exposed AQ. Good choices include a hound which will greatly delay an enemy AQ giving defenses time to kill her or many small troops that can overwhelm Heroes but are easily killable with a poison.
Protected AQ
A protected AQ is one where they attacker cannot do a simple hero swap to kill her. This means her range does not extend pass the walls so the attacker must enter the base to kill her.
You can also do a combination of protected and exposed which will influence the design of the rest of the base.
Protect her backside
Basebuilders often defend the base from the point of attack the AQ from the shortest distance from the outside. Attackers know this as well and will often attack adjacent to the AQ or traverse the base with a big kill squad to kill the AQ. It is important that your AQ Compartments take this into consideration.
In this design, the AQ will jump into the compartments adjacent to the compartment containing her platform. The builder needs to be aware of this and take the proper precautions to protect her.
Using a large queen compartment will prevent her from jumping outside the compartment and can protect her from all angles and can force a jump if the attacker wishes to kill her with melee troops.
Bonus: defending Skeleton Spells
An effective way to achieve an AQ kill is with skeletons often under rage. A few ways to defend is are with defenses. Point defenses and the AQ will be overwhelmed but wizard towers, mortars, and bomb towers can help kill skeletons with their splash damage. The best is a bomb tower. A wizard tower can lock onto nearby loons or lava hounds and prevent it from killing the skeletons. The fire rate of a mortar can also be too slow to prevent her death. The bomb tower is usually able to keep up with the spawn rate and is the best defense to defend the AQ against skeleton spells. The Barbarian King can also be an effective defense from skeletons. He can draw the aggression of the skeletons and distract them from the AQ and prevent her death. See the above photo for an example.
Other defensive traps
In general, it is not advisable to put other traps such as giant bombs, spring traps, air traps, etc. in or near the Queen compartment. A kill squad often enters the compartment and trigger the traps with golems to little effect or destroy the defenses and prevent other troops from pathing in range of the traps. There may be situations where you do want traps such as Black air mines to kill dragons but generally, traps are better used in other parts of the base.