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Introduction
Hello, GrandWiz here bringing you another classic deck.
This is one of the oldest decks in the game. It is still viable and very effective against deck that does not focus air. I have been playing in Classic Challenges and learned a thing or two about this deck.
It is a beatdown deck, so there is not a lot of micro involved. If you are not confident in pulling units around, kiting and stuff like that, definitely check this deck out.
Deck Information[]
- Deck Created by: GrandWiz05
- Minimum Recommended King Level: 6
- Maximum Recommended King Level: 13
- Arena Required: Rascal's Hideout (Wrong?)
- Average Elixir Cost: 4.1 (Wrong?)
- More Statistics: Go to Deck Builder
Card Roles[]
- Lava Hound: Your main tank and win condition. As the ONLY flying tank in the game, it requires specific air counters to be taken out effectively.
- Balloon: One of the most infamous win conditions. A single hit from a Balloon means half their Tower is gone, as well as any squishy units around it’s death bomb.
- Mega Minion: A very solid support unit found in many beatdown decks. He is quite literally a flying mini P.E.K.K.A.
- Minions: Your air swarm. They move fast, deal high damage and do not die to Zap, meaning they are somewhat reliable on defence. May also bait out Arrows for Lava pups.
- Guards: Your ground swarm, and your only ground troop in this deck. Having Shields means that they are somewhat spell resistance, only dying to Arrows and Poison, which also baits them for Lava pups.
- Arrows: Your swarm removal. Takes out the likes of Minions, Minion Horde, Dart Goblin and Firecracker.
- Lightning: Your heavy removal. Removes any air targeting units such as Wizard or Musketeer, as well as most buildings such as Tesla. Reset and severely cripple Inferno tower, letting your Hound and support troops takes it out easily.
- Tombstone: Your building. Good as a passive defence building and also offers a little bit of offensive value, if it is same lane with your Hound as Skeletons can build up.
Understanding the concept of Beatdown[]
Lavaloon is a traditional Beatdown deck that focuses on aerial assult. A Lava Hound + Balloon push itself is 12 elixir, while they are a deadly combo that can take out a Tower easily, they both target buildings, meaning they are defenceless against troops attacking them.
With the needs of supporting spells and units, You need a massive positive elixir trade in order to get enough elixir. Much like any other Beatdown deck does, you will often have to sacrifice Tower health or even the whole Tower to get that lead.
Let me give you an analogy. You’ve just invested a Lava Hound at the back because you have a 3 elixir lead. They attack with a Hog Rider + Ice Golem push to punish your investment. How would you respond?
A. Lighting the Ice-Golem Hog for a even trade and take a bit of damage on your Tower
B. Deploy Mega Minion/Minions on the combo to take them out
C. Use Guards/Tombstone to defend and take severe Tower damage
D. Ignore the Tower and deploy units behind your Lava Hound
E. Wait for 2 more elixir then attack with Balloon at the bridge, in front of your Lava Hound
Decide in 3 seconds.
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Which one did you choose?
E is the worst option. As an investment deck, you will never want to play the punish game as your troops lack the speed to do so. By the time Balloon crosses the river, your opponent would have already regenerated enough elixir to defend your lone Balloon, and his left over troops will take care of the Lava Hound as well.
B is almost just as bad. By using both of your solid support units on their punish play, you fall right into their trap and with your support and tank split, they can take out both with ease.
A is not a great option because Lightning is your only tool to deal with high DPS ranged units on their side of the board. Without it, your opponent‘s range unit can sit back and DPS down your Lava Hound. You’re also sacrificing your lead by doing this.
C and D are the correct calls. Slightly defending and making sure your Tower doesn’t die completely is a secure play and still ensures your lead. Completely ignoring the push gives you a even bigger lead, but requires you to take out their Tower in return with your huge push, therefore higher risk but with the 9 elixir lead you get it shouldn’t be an issue.
This, is the difficulty in Beatdown play-style. The player needs to make decisions quickly against their opponent’s move, and it might not always be the best answer.
Basic placements[]
Now you know that getting a elixir lead is important, let’s talk about how.
While investing a Lava Hound at the start of the game does work out sometimes, it is a risky play and you risk being punished in the other lane immediately.
The perfect starting hand is Lava Hound, Tombstone or Guards and Mega Minion. With these, you can defend most pushes in the game, and also match their investment with a Hound if they choose to.
Tombstone placement[]
Picture 1: Tombstone placement (can shift right one tile if you prefer right lane) shown in the black square
A safe starting play would be placing your Tombstone in this placement. This placement can pull all ground building targeting units in, and they cannot bypass it no matter what.
The only building targeting units that can bypass this placement are air units like Balloon or Skeleton Barrel in the opposite lane. If they play these at the start of the game to bypass your Tombstone, it comes to your starting hand again. If it is a lone Balloon, Minions or Mega Minion will counter it. If they follow with air targeting troops, Lightning will counter both the Balloon and the troop. It is unlikely but if you don’t have any of those, sacrifice the Tower and invest Lava Hound in the same lane to counter push later.
Tombstone allows you to bank up elixir in form of a building, pass the play to your opponents and prevent less committed punishments.
Picture 2: Tombstone placement if they have ranged units
If your opponent has a ranged unit such as Musketeer, they can place it in the middle of the river and take out your Tombstone. To avoid this, deploy Tombstone in this location instead. If they are using units with even further range, such as a Dart Goblin, you will have to move it down one more tile.
Keep in mind this placement cannot pull Hog Rider or Ram Rider deployed in the red tile.
Lava Hound placement[]
Picture 3: Different placement for Lava Hound in different situations
Blue tile is the investment placement. This gives your Lava Hound the most time to travel from the bottom of your board to the river, so more elixir is gained along the way. This placement also avoids the Hound being pulled into the two Tower zone.
Red tile is another investment placement. This is not recommended unless they have no building, because if they have one your Hound will be pulled into the two Tower zone. It is useful when you want to separate your Balloon and Hound. When your Hound crossed the river you place Balloon at the purple tile. This is mainly used against splash units such as Wizard or Executioner.
Purple tile is the counter push placement. If you’ve just defended with Mega Minions or Minions and their remaining health is healthy (does not die to spell), you can deploy a Hound to tank for them and use their remaining value.
Unlike Giant, Lava Hound itself does very little DPS so punishing with it is never a good option.
Balloon placement[]
Picture 4: Placement for Balloon
The placement of a lone Balloon is similar to the Lava Hound. Purple tile is the standard punish/support placement. If your opponent has no air counters in hand, a Balloon in this position will reach the Tower fastest. It is also a good position to follow up a healthy Hound that already reached the Tower.
Blue tile is the bypass placement. This position ensure the Balloon is as close to the edge of the arena as possible, thus bypassing all buildings that is at least 1 tile to the opposite lane.
Red tile is when you don’t have Lava Hound in cycle, but you want to start your investment because you just have a lead. Make sure Hound is the next card in cycle when you do this, so you can deploy Hound in front of the Balloon.
These are the only three cards that have specific placements. Others are not so strict on placement.
Advance technique[]
If your opponent has any buildings, they can pull a Balloon even in the bypass placement by placing the building at the river and one tile to the Balloon’s attacking side. The Balloon will seems like it is going to the Tower and suddenly do a sharp turn and go for the building instead. This is not good for you, because the Balloon will travel so much farther.
The technique to bypass this placement is through utilizing unit collision. If you invested your Hound at the back, as it travels next to the bypass placement, deploy your Balloon. It will be squeezed even more towards the edge of the arena, because the Hound is occupying half the tile. This way, the Balloon can no longer be pulled by such building placement and will go straight for the Princess Tower.
Other air units like Minions and Mega Minion can also do this. This is a important technique to know if you want to win more matchups with buildings.
Push Combo[]
Lava Hound + Balloon[]
As the deck intended, this is the Classic push that will break through some of the most solid defense. Having a 3000+ health air tank in front of a 1500+ health air punishment is very threatening, and only Inferno units have enough DPS to kill this combo before they reach the Tower.
The reason this combo is so effective is because these two units act as tank for each other. Lava Hound tanks for the Balloon to preserve its health, and the Balloon will tank for the Lava Pups when the Hound dies, which are a weaker version of Minion Horde.
This combo is expensive, and requires support from spells against specific counter. Lightning is absolutely required to get through an Inferno Tower, and Arrows are required to get through a Minion Horde. This is why sometimes you might have to ignore punishes, otherwise you might not have enough elixir for spells and wasted 12 elixir.
Lava Hound + Minions[]
This push is fast and threatening. It is especially good when they don’t have spells that can take out Minions, namely Zap. This is why knowing your opponents deck and cycle is important, as sometime this push is even more effective.
Lava Hound + Mega Minion[]
Similar to the last combo but this one is unlikely to be removed by a spell. Mega Minion is very slow however, so high DPS splashers might still take him out when targeting the Hound.
Balloon + Minions[]
This is more of a punishing combo. When your opponent just spent all their air defense troops and spells on your Hound or something else, this combo can take their Tower in the blink of an eye.
Spell Priority[]
You have two powerful removal spells. With their high cost, you must ensure you hit the right target with it, or it might cause you the game because as a heavy deck, you do not have a lot of chance to perform a Lavaloon push.
Arrows[]
Top Priority: Minion Horde, Bats, Minions
High Priority: Dart Goblin, Rascal Girls, Archers, Firecracker
Low Priority: Goblin Gang, Spear Goblins, Princess
Lightning[]
Top Priority: Hunter, Inferno Tower, Tesla, Inferno Dragon, Electro Wizard, Wizard
High Priority: Musketeer, Mega Minion, Ice Wizard, Executioner, Dart Goblin, Firecracker, any buildings
Low Priority: Baby Dragon, Princess
As you can see, most high Priority targets have high DPS. Get them out of the way and your push will have a much easier time breaking through.
Game Plan[]
Single elixir time (3:00 to 1:01)[]
Unless you have an extremely good starting hand for aggression and not so good for defending such as Lava Hound, Balloon, Arrows and Lightning, you should not be investing a Hound at the start of the game.
Always be passive and wait for their first move. You have to be patient, because even waiting until double elixir time is not an issue. If you really want to play something, Tombstone at the center, Guards/ Minions at the back and Arrows on their Tower are the only three starting plays you might make, sometimes don’t even cycle Arrows because they might be running Log bait.
Lavaloon cycles very slowly, therefore it is very important to have the right card cycle for defending (Tombstone, Guards, Mega Minions, Minions) and offending (Lava Hound, Balloon, Spells).
You should figure out a few important things in this time. What deck are they running? How many air counters do they have? Are their air counters removable? With these information in mind, you can play this deck much more efficiently.
Remember, the price of needing less micro, is needing more macro. This mean you need to be counting elixir, remembering card cycle and predicting their action. You need the have control over the game. These skills are absolutely necessary if you want to be successful with this deck.
Double elixir time (1:00 to 1:01 in overtime)[]
Now is the time when you can go in with big Lavaloon pushes. With much more elixir to spare, you can support your push with Lightning and Arrows, and the difficulty of them defending with be exponentially higher.
If they have already taken a Tower in single elixir time, they might try to push for your King Tower as they cannot defend your pushes effectively. Always have Tombstone and Guards ready, and don’t over support your Lavaloon push. Is Lava Hound and Balloon enough to take down their Tower? Then there is no need to follow up with Mega Minion.
You can also start to use Lighting on less valuable troops as long as you can clip the Tower.
Triple elixir time (1:00 in overtime to Tiebreaker)[]
Very unlikely to happen, but you should have an edge since Lightning is only weaker than Rocket in terms of spell cycling.
Substitution[]
Like any other deck, some cards are better off being substituted out as the meta changes.
Fireball: Substitutes Lightning. Fireball performs better on defense; it is cheaper, can damage more than 3 targets and have a knock back effect. Paired with Zap, Fireball can still remove Glass Cannons with 6 elixir (now that Archer Queen is a thing you'll have to take that into consideration as well). Lightning is better against buildings, but Fireball is definitely a good substitution.
Zap: Substitutes Arrows. With Zap, not only do you have a cheaper removal against Bats, you also have a cheaper reset tool for Inferno units besides Lightning. Paired with Fireball.
Barbarians: Substitutes Guards. One of my most hated cards, but even I cannot deny how good it fits in Lavaloon. As a Fireball bait card, they will tear any ground pushes apart in seconds, because not only do they have high combined DPS, they are a swarm as well so unlike P.E.K.K.A., where she will have trouble against pushes consisting of multiple targets (Elixir Golem, Royal Hogs). If they Fireball them, your Lavaloon combo is even harder to stop, because a Lavaloon push sped up by minions is much more threatening.
Skeleton Dragons: Fireball is very common in this meta, and Skeleton Dragons are no longer so dominant, but they are still a considerable substitution for Mega Minion.
Miner: Another famous combo with Hound is Lava Miner. Not only does Miner tank for the Pups, it also gives you the option to punish with Miner Balloon. It does sacrifice some of your defense, but gives you a lot more choices in how you can push, and Miner is good at killing ranged DPS too. Substitute Tombstone. Lightning should be substituted by Poison or Fireball if you do decided to substitute Miner in, as well as Zap for Arrows.
Baby Dragon: Just like Baby Dragon in Golem, Baby Dragon in Hound decks is more than viable. You can substitute Minions for a more reliable push with Hound. It does sacrifice a lot of DPS. However, Baby Dragon can still push the Balloon and Hound to the Tower faster.
Inferno Dragon: Substitute Mega Minion. Inferno Dragon has a similar job, which is a spell resistance air single targeting DPS. It is weak to units and spells with stun effect. Despite that, Inferno Dragon is still a huge threat once locked onto Tower, especially behind a Hound because of its high health and strong 1 on 1 interaction.
Matchups[]
2.6 Hog Cycle[]
Difficulty: 2/10
It’s free real estate. I’ve never lost to a 2.6 Hog even once when playing Lavaloon.
The reason this matchup is so easy is because neither does Hog Cycle have enough air defense to defend a Lavaloon push, nor do their troops have enough push power to go for a 3 Crowns win. Guards alone is enough for defending a Hog Rider and Ice Golem push.
All you have to do is wait until you get a lead, invest Hound, ignore their punishes, and overwhelm them by force. Tower trading is always advantageous for you. You may even go for the 3 Crown if they overcommit on punishing plays. Just make sure you have enough elixir for a spell once you get the Lavaloon combo, and it shouldn’t be an issue breaking through. Your Priority will be to remove the Cannon or the Musketeer with Lightning. Without either of them, they will not have enough time or DPS to take down your push.
2.9 X-Bow Cycle[]
Difficulty: 3/10
You don’t have much to block X-Bow. In return, both Tesla and Archers are removable by your spells.
What this means is that they cannot defend you push at all during double elixir. Much like Hog Cycle, it is practically impossible for an X-Bow deck to get 3 Crowns.
A skilled X-Bow player will go same lane as your Hound, so the X-Bow can tank it while Archers or Tesla DPS your push down, as well as doing damage with the X-Bow because it does not target air.
Always trade the tower in the opposite lane if you have the chance. If an X-Bow player has lost one Tower, they basically never have the chance to connect with an X-Bow in your pocket, as you can Balloon right on top of it. Lightning the X-Bow in a Clutch if you have no other option. It will still do severe damage to your Tower, but won’t take it out if your Tower is full health.
Just make sure you have enough elixir for spell once you get the Lavaloon combo, and it shouldn’t be an issue breaking through. Your Priority will be to remove Tesla, as Archers do not have too much DPS.
Classic Log Bait[]
Difficulty: 8/10
While their only real air DPS is Inferno Tower or Tesla, the Princess denies your Minions and Rocket will kill your Balloon in a clutch if you are about to break through.
You have a few options. Do a Hound push without Balloon to bait our their Inferno Tower, then push in with Balloon. Again, you have to ensure they don’t have Rocket or don’t have enough elixir for it. You will have to make the decision — Arrows on their Princess or on their Goblin Barrel.
Unlike Hog Cycle or X-Bow, Log bait can still defend relatively well after one Tower is down. They can still threaten your second Tower if your Arrows are out of hand, as a Knight + Goblin Gang or Goblin Barrel push in your pocket is quite deadly when you are low on elixir.
You have to be in control. If you lose your tower because of their plays, you are very likely to lose. Spell cycle is not a good option, as Lightning does less damage than a Rocket and they have a way faster cycle. Not an impossible matchup, but a hard one to say the least.
P.E.K.K.A. Bridge Spam[]
Difficulty: 4/10
Similar to X-Bow, both Electro Wizard and Minions can be removed by Lightning. Unlike X-Bow, your opponent can actually 3 Crown you if you don’t have enough elixir for defense.
Your Priority is to play a complete Lavaloon combo, then remove their Minions with Arrows. Electro Wizard does not do enough damage to kill Hound, especially when the damage is divided by Balloon because of his split attack.
They will attempt to punish you when you play Hound, but Tower trading is never a concern for you. Just make sure you don’t get three crowned and you’re all good. Always save Mega Minion on defense, as they have no way of removing it beside using both Poison and Zap on it. Save Guards for Bandit or P.E.K.K.A., and ALWAYS save Tombstone for Battle Ram.
You can win in only 2 push. First, take their Princess Tower down. Next, take down their King Tower. All you have to do is survive their desperate attempt to 3 Crown, while they throw everything at you.
As a Bridge Spam main myself, I can tell you: as long as you don’t mess up and get 3 Crowned, this matchup is impossible to lose.
Graveyard[]
Difficulty: 6/10
There is always one key thing when you are against any Graveyard deck: Always Tower Trade when you have the chance to do so.
Graveyards are not too threatening in a two Tower game. The hard thing about this matchup however, is how to get into the Tower trade position in the first place. Graveyard decks have very solid defense, including air defense of course. Ice Wizard + Baby Dragon + Building is almost always Guaranteed, as well as a Tornado to boot.
If you can’t break through during single elixir time, you probably won’t have a chance in double elixir time either. This is when Tower trading is important. You have to give them a chance that seems good. For example, when a heathy Knight or Baby Dragon is getting close to the river, invest a Hound at the back in the opposite lane.
It is very likely for them to Graveyard with the troop that is about to cross the bridge. Block them at the bridge so that they can’t tank for the Graveyard. Do not overcommit on defense. Your goal is to lure them into trading the Tower with you, not to defend perfectly. Balloon to follow up the Hound, but slightly space them out so they won’t get splashed by the Ice Wizard. Lightning if they have Ice Wizard and their building. It is best to do this when they don’t have Baby Dragon in hand, and it doesn’t die to Lightning.
Quite a polarizing matchup in short. Either you win 2-1, or you lose 0-1. Always take the chance when you have it.
Final Words[]
This is a very good deck if you want to get better at macro plays, understand more about the fundamentals of the game and destroy cheese decks that don’t run enough air defense. Also a great deck to play if you hate Firecracker (I sure do).
This guide does not teach you everything. Every player has their own way to play a deck, so if you want to understand it better, definitely give it a go in Classic Challenges or watch other people playing it on YouTube or TV Royale.
History[]
2016
- The Lava Hound Balloon deck could be created from as early as Mega Minion's release, which happened on 19/9/2016.
2018
- On 8/6/2018, the Lava Hound Balloon deck was featured in the Archetype Challenge as a Classic Deck.
- On 20/6/2018, the Lava Hound Balloon deck was renamed to LavaLoon. The LavaLoon deck was featured in the Classic Decks.
2019
- On 3/6/2019, the LavaLoon deck was removed from the Classic Decks.