Hog Rider. Mortar. Elite Barbarians – 12 Wins in Grand Challenge

What’s up guys, Corrosive Logic is back with another deck! This time I’m going to breakdown an extremely off-meta deck, I mean you don’t exactly see a deck with Elite Barbarians, Hog, and Mortar every day!

So I picked up this deck when I was playing Golem in a GC, and some random guy just absolutely kicked my ass with this deck.

He was actually playing with a Musketeer, so perhaps you could say that I made this variation with the Electro Wizard 😉.

This off meta deck is amazing against some of the meta decks, also because of how unexpected Elite Barbarians are. My 12 win Grand Challenge happened just before the Elite Barbarian nerf, but I tried it again after the nerf and got 9 wins, so this deck is still easily viable!

Hog Rider. Mortar. Elite Barbarians

I also made a video of a 12 win Grand Challenge run using this deck so check it out below!

Card Overview and Replacements

Mortar – Your first win condition, it can also be used on defense

Hog Rider – Your Second win condition

Elite Barbarian – Your power card, great at taking out any ground troops, it’s also lethal if you have an Elixir advantage

Minion Horde – Your second power card, in the current meta, Lightning and Poison are the too most popular heavy spells. Lightning can’t counter Horde, if they use their Poison on something else, then this card instantly becomes more powerful.

Skeleton Army – A card with unreal DPS for shredding tanks and taking out support units.

Electro Wizard – The best support unit and the best legendary card in the game right now. Also this deck needs some more ranged/air targeting cards

Zap/Log – Work really well in conjunction with Elite Barbarians, Hog Rider, and Minion Horde when you want to take out those swarm troops, reset the Inferno Tower, and Zap their Electro Wizard for your Horde to take out.

The Mortar and Hog are irreplaceable. Elite Barbarians have no other card that can perform as they do, but if you really don’t like them maybe try Bandit, Lumberjack, Mini P.E.K.K.A, or Barbarians. Minion Horde is not replaceable.

Skeleton Army can be replaced with Goblin Gang. Both are good cards but better in different situations, Goblin Gang more viable on offense, but I feel that skarmy does a lot better against the popular 3 musky players. (Btw this deck wrecks 3 Musketeers, I’ll say more about that below). I would really try and keep the Zap and Log, but use Arrows for The Log if you don’t have it.

General Gameplan

This deck is very simple to use once you follow a few simple principles. More than likely your first play is going to be offensive. Never play your Elite Barbarians or Minion Horde at the start. If you have the Mortar in your starting hand, definitely play it at 10 Elixir.

Basically this deck has very high DPS cards, and your aim is to continuously pressure your opponent. If you gain a slight Elixir lead in double Elixir time, it’s very easy for you to aggressively assault your opponent using your heavy troops.

For example a very simple Hog + Minion Horde push can’t be stopped easily if your opponent has no Fireball/Poison/Arrows in cycle. Their best shot is to use something like Baby Dragon or Electro Wizard to stop my Horde first, but if you Zap that splash troop your Minion Horde should kill it quickly enough.

There’s so much more to say about how to play this deck but I think the best way to illustrate each scenario is to describe your situations against different deck archetypes.

Matchups

This deck is extremely strong against Golem and Musketeer. It is also very good against Miner control and bait decks as their Inferno Tower performs terribly against this deck.

The only tough matchup for this deck is Graveyard, as they can Poison your Skarmy/Electro/Wizard.

Golem

If you have the Mortar in your starting hand, definitely play it at 10 Elixir.

If they play a Golem to block the Mortar shots, you can play the Hog in the other lane while they have little to no Elixir. Also they would have had to play their Golem in front of their Tower, so they won’t be able to support it if they use anything at all to kill my Hog. Countering the Golem will then be an easy job using any of your 3 high DPS cards.

That’s pretty much what you do against the popular Golem beatdown deck.

They have no other ground tanks so they are resorted to playing the Golem to defend the Mortar.

Also since the popular Golem deck only has the Electro Wizard and Skeletons as the other ground units, your Elite Barbarians bridge rush immediately becomes viable. If they play Golem at the back, you can play Elite Barbarians at the bridge, then Log their Ewiz and Zap their Skeletons (if you can’t hit them with Log, or vice versa) then your Ebarbs will have a clear way to the Tower since the rest of their cards are air troops.

When defending against Golem I highly recommend dealing with the support units before the Golem!

3 Musketeers

A lot of popular 3 Musketeer decks don’t have a heavy spell, they only carry Zap or Log. This immediately makes your Minion Horde so powerful. Everytime they pump up you can deal so much damage with this deck with a number of different troop combinations.

When they split their 3 Musketeers you should have plenty of tools to counter them. Once they cross the bridge you have cards like Elite Barbarians, Minion Horde, skeleton Army, Log and Electro Wizard that can completely shut them down. Make sure you vary the way you counter them each time so that you can’t be predicted with spells.

Once you have a Tower lead, placing your Mortar in the centre is so good, specially if they play all 3 muskies on the same side. 2 Mortar shots + Log can take out a Musketeer comfortably.

Inferno Tower (Miner Control and Bait)

So now I’m going to explain how to play against the Inferno Tower.

Once they thrown their Miner at your Tower or use a Goblin Barrel, you pretty much know that they also have the Inferno Tower. Ideally your opponent doesn’t know that you have the Hog yet, so what you can do is to place the Mortar on its own. If they place something like Goblin Gang you can use spell or Ewiz etc. However if they use the Inferno Tower you can gain 1 Elixir, and also play your Hog on the other side with Zap ready for their Gang/skarmy.

The Inferno is really no good against this deck. If you catch them using Poison/Arrows offensively, you can play Hog then Minion Horde in the middle on their Inferno Tower. You can even just play Elite Barbarians + Hog and take out an Inferno Tower with the help of a Zap!

When defending Miner control you really want to have your Elite Barbarians to counter the Miner, as they can’t be poisoned. However you should definitely change it up with skeleton Army or Electro Wizard sometimes in order to keep your opponent guessing.

When defending a Hog Rider you can place the Mortar beside the river to pull the Hog and also lock onto your opponents crown Tower.

Lavahound

This is probably the second hardest matchup for this deck, after Graveyard.

The fact that many Hound players these days are bringing Arrows, don’t help your Minion Horde at all. Nonetheless it can be beat, and let me explain how I go about it.

The moment they play the Hound at the back, you go aggressive with a Hog, Elite Barbarian, or Mortar….or a combination of those cards. They won’t have much Elixir so have Zap/Log ready for their Goblin Gang/Skarmy. If they use Mega Minion/Baby Dragon then will deal a ton of damage. If they use Minions then be smarter and throw your Electro Wizard into your push next time.

Don’t use the Minion Horde on their hound unless they don’t have Arrows or it’s out of cycle. Instead save it for their Balloon when it comes. The first time they will probably be too slow to react and your Horde will take out the Balloon. The second time, you need to wait for them to play their prediction Arrows before you use it, or use a Hog on the other lane to distract them and play the Minion Horde on the Balloon. Remember you can always use the Mortar to pull their troops and also lock onto their Tower!

Graveyard

I guess we’re saving the worst for last. This deck doesn’t have great Graveyard counters, if they don’t have a Poison in cycle or the Elixir for it then obviously Minion Horde and skarmy will shut it down. But if they do, you’re going to have to use Elite Barbarians and Electro Wizard. If you can stop their tank from crossing the bridge, defending GY is a lot easier using your crown Tower.

I generally try and stop them from having the Elixir to use Poison, with lots of pressure. You might think the Meta Bowler Graveyard deck is great at countering this deck, but I’ve actually beat it a couple of times by going aggressive on the opposite lane of the Bowler.

Conclusion

Overall this weird off-meta deck wrecks lots of players because of how unexpected it is! It would be great if you could check out my youtube video as it will encourage me to continue putting my time and effort into these guides!

Thank you.