Minions are a 2 housing space areal troops with relatively

low Hit points and extremely high damage for their size at

57 DPS for maxed Minions. They are the 1st troop made in

your Dark Barracks and take a small amount of Dark Elixir

to train each unit. They are useful troops in a number of

areas both in single formation as snipers of trash buildings

along the outskirts of the village and in large numbers as

they battle Clan Castle Dragons or Rage through the core of

a village wiping out the Dark Elixer Storage.

       As we all know big things will come in small

packages in the Clash world. The Minion is a

perfect example of this. They have an attack

speed of 1 second so they will beat most troops

to the punch (especially those that can actually

attack a Minion like the Dragon or Wizard..

Ground troops can not reach the airborne critters)

which makes them very useful in the Defensive

Clan Castle. We at Damage Inc. have seen many

clans use swarms of Minions in their Defensive war Clan Castle with great success, especially against the Govape attack that is typically light on air defending troops. 15 Maxed Minions do over 850 DPS combined and will really rain on your Valkyrie parade if you are not extremely careful. If you are fighting against a clan that seems to be in love with the Minion in their war CC make sure you bring a Poison Spell to every war raid to help even the odds. Minions are also great troops to surround those powerful Clan Castle Dragons. You can surround the dragon with 10-12 Minions (and as long as you do not group them to closely)and they will chop down the big fire breathing Dino-Birds.

       Minions can be used as your primary Dark Elixir harvester all the way up to TH8. In TH9 the X-bows have proven to be too much and in TH10 the Inferno Towers on top of the X-bows make quick work of the little blue devils. BUT, in TH8 and below your Minions can be used, along with one good spell placement, to empty out the core of any base of all of their Dark Elixer. There is a trick to it though.. due to the red Air Bombs (the Minions greatest weakness) you need to take several precautions with your Minions. Air Bombs do splash damage and Minions have a tendency to group together close enough for the red balloons to have a deadly impact on their welfare. To avoid loosing all of your Minions and coming out of the raid empty handed follow these few simple steps. 1st clear out all of the structures along the walls that you want the minions to fly over on their way to the DE in the core of the base. 2nd use Wall Breakers and your Hero(s) to punch through the walls on the ground to punch through the outer walls on the ground and draw all of the fire from the surrounding turrets. 3rd once you are satisfied with your clean out and you think you have a direct path to the core drop 1 minion…  Watch where it goes and if it pulls any traps out in its travels. Quite often it will take a lot of patience and about 7-8 Minions before they lock in to the core of the base. Once they have targeted the core, on or near the Dark Elixer storage drop one more Minion just to make sure there is not one last Air Mine dug in deep along that route. Then send 10-15 Minions in all at once and drop a Rage Spell on them as soon as they reach the core of the base. If everything went as planned your investment of 20 Minions should pay off with 90-100% of the available Dark Elixir held in that particular village. At approx. 50 Dark Elixir for 20 +/-  Minions look for ( by using the "NEXT" button a lot) Bases that have between 1,000-2,000 in Dark Elixer available on them and with a little practice you should be able to farm 10-50K in DE in a couple of short hours of Minion farming. ** for the record I suggest using 15-16 Giants and 10-12 Wizards along with the 20 Minions on these Dark Elixir farming raids for the best results.

       Defending against Minions should not be that difficult once you use them enough to know their biggest weakness.. Air Bombs. Place a Red Balloon next to as many storage Buildings as possible and make sure you have at least one next to your Dark Elixir Storage.

       Minions become extremely expensive to upgrade as you get close to maxing them out. They top out at 140,000 Dark Elixir to max out at lvl 7. Why so much? The most obvious answer is always because they are worth it but MANY players are not utilizing the Minions to their potential. Diverse armies that contain 6-7 different troops will be the design pattern of the future of Clash of Clans and with this in mind there should be 2-5 Minions somewhere in that configuration. They can be used to pick up the 50% in many cases, just give yourself and extra couple of seconds when you are scouting the base before the raid to locate any potential unprotected buildings that are easily sniped out by Minions. They are also great filler troops to add to your raiding party as the defending Clan Castle troops come charging out of the Clan Castle. Most advanced players that do not pull the Clan Castle troops out before the raid begins will use a Rage Spell to assist their troops power their way through the opposing troops, once that Rage is dropped compliment it with 4-5 Minions to give your troops the boost they need to survive that conflict with minimum casualties to your own troops.

       Whatever you do, DO NOT leave your Minions sitting in your Dark Barracks at level one. Upgrade then as soon as you can and start taking advantage of their low cost, High speed, DPS and high success rate in any of a number of practical applications. They are also 1/3 of the mighty Laloonion (Lava Hound/ Balloon/ Minion) attack, bringing up the rear of that attack and raking in all of the loot! So, practice with the Minions, Build more and practice again. Repeat this over and over till you have got them down, and once you do, you will have a little blue secret weapon!