Today, I had a very interesting experience where another player attacked me roughly 3 times with troops and maybe a dozen times total (not sure if he was cheating and/or scouting me out). At any rate, his actual attacks failed every single time. Though lower level than me, I could tell that even if he was closer, he would have a very difficult time. Why? One word: The Grappler.
The three times this particular player attacked me, he employed warriors and tmeds. His warriors were probably around level 13 while his tanks were around level 8. But the way I have my Grappler positioned along with a few key defenses, it simply lays waste to T-Meds. I have my Shock Launcher positioned behind my HQ with my three Boom Cannons in a triangle near my Grappler. There are a few other key defenses, but with the Grappler’s radius, it pretty much will snatch up anything the moment people start nearing the beach line. With the four major defenses surrounding the Grappler, few opponents stand a chance.
Now, ever since swapping over to the Grappler, I’ve had no one successfully assault me. Prior to this, most of my opposition was primarily T-Meds or Grank-Meds. Occasionally, I would see Hooka combos but those were far and few in between. I doubt that Hooka would fair much better at this level.
So what makes the Grappler such a great defense at this level? The biggest thing is that it has a whopping 25k health. Even without Ice, that’s a tremendous amount to take down. Most bases will center their Grapplers inside of a high powered defensive cocoon. Pretty much you have to either shock around those defenses or take out the hardest hitting ones. In most cases, the GBE requirements to make this work out simply are too high.
In the case of T-Med, your GBE already will be fairly high. So you’ll be wasting too much trying to take down at least 5 major defenses, not even including cannons and sniper towers. Against Warriors, I found myself a bit shocked since my defenses against Warriors aren’t that great. However, it’s a situation where you need to maintain your shocks on defenses, otherwise your Warriors get picked off slowly.
The only combo I think that can fend against a Grappler is RZM at this level. RZM and Cryo might have some chance but the speed of Cryos would probably get them eliminated fast if the player fails to neutralize the Grappler somehow. With straight RZM though, the sheer numbers will overrun the Grappler’s slow, methodical picking off of troops. However, I feel that most people end up switching to Warriors or Tanks at the mid level for the most part and fail in leveling up their Riflemen. You’re already overly vested into 2-3 main troops so swapping over a lower level troop type seems counterproductive and ill-advised, especially if your goal is to defeat that one base. It’s simply better just to skip or reroll that base at this level.
For myself, I’ve found Grapplers a nightmare to deal with, even against pre-17 HQ setups. Just the amount of damage you need to do at this level leaves you with very little GBE. So whenever I see a base with a Grappler, I’ll just reroll it if the opportunity presents itself.
One thing I will say is that once I get enough materials on my lower account, I’m definitely going to create a Grappler, especially when I get upgrades like armories and troops in my sights. Even with three Boom Cannons and a Shock Launcher, the lack of a prototype defense is not significant enough to deter hungry opponents.
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