Minion Horde

“Six fast, unarmored flying attackers. Three's a crowd, six is a horde!”

Summary

The Minion Horde is unlocked from the P.E.K.K.A's Playhouse (Arena 4).
It spawns six single-target, short-ranged, flying Minions with low hitpoints and moderate damage.
A Minion Horde card costs 5 Elixir to deploy.

Strategy

The Minion Horde is mainly used to defend against tower-targeting troops or tanks like the Giant or the Golem, but beware of splash damage like the Wizard or Arrows.
They may be strong, but they cannot stop some troops from damaging the player's tower since they are air troops. For example, they can take out Giant Skeleton or Prince, but while they are at it, the target can often reach the Arena Tower, dealing massive death damage or a powerful hit respectively. The player should keep that in mind and use troops such as Goblins or Skeletons to distract such troops while the Minions take them out.
The Minion Horde can be used effectively to support higher hitpoints troops, such as Giants, eliminating any opposing ground troops and distractions for the high hitpoints troops.
If the opponent is low on Elixir and Zaps incoming Minions, a Freeze cast on the tower can effectively help the Minions to make short work of the Tower.
The Minion Horde can be directly countered by Arrows, eliminating the entire horde of Minions for a 2 Elixir advantage.
- In the event that Arrows are not in the player's deck, other area damage spells like the Fireball can be used to effectively take out the Minions instead, though for a reduced Elixir advantage.
- The Zap is a cheaper alternative, causing each Minion to be eliminated in one hit by the Arena Towers and completely eliminating them if the Zap is 2 or more levels higher than the Minion Horde.
The Wizard is useful as a counter to the horde. He can kill Minions up to 3 levels higher than him with one shot.
The Witch also works, as with the help of the towers she can kill Minion Hordes in just a few hits, and just 3 by herself. Due to her distracting spawned Skeletons, the horde typically cannot do major damage to her, and she can continue to be part of an offensive push.
The Executioner is another great counter, due to his large AoE and damage. A level 4 Executioner can bring even level 13 Minion Hordes down to the point where an Arena Tower can defeat them in one hit.

History

Minion Horde was added with Clash Royale's soft launch on 4/1/16.
On 3/5/16, the May 2016 Update fixed the "range bug" and decreased the Minion Horde's range to 2 (from 2.5) but their effective range is unchanged.

Trivia

The description is a reference to the popular saying "two's company, three's a crowd".
The Minions in the card picture of Minion Horde are paler in skin color compared to the regular Minions, most likely due to the lighting of the area they are in. They also appear to be wearing pale reddish-purple fingerless gloves, as opposed to the indigo gloves worn by the regular Minions. However, the Minions of Minion Horde are visually identical to the regular Minions in battle.
The Minions on the card appear to have purple eyes despite the fact that their eyes are red in battle.
The Minions appear to have an underbite.
The Minion Horde is one of the highest damage per second cards in the game. A lone Level 13 Minion does 123 damage per second, but you have to multiply that by 6 for the Minion Horde, for a total of 738 damage per second overall. This figure is surpassed only by one other troop card, the Skeleton Army (1,372 damage per second total at max level, but more vulnerable and cheaper).