Hog Rider

 

Having tamed the fierce leaping hog, the Hog Rider punishes those who hide behind their puny walls! Fueled by Dark Elixir, these warriors have never known defeat!

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SUMMARY

• The Hog Rider is a rugged, dark-skinned man with a mohawk, riding a large hog. He is bare-chested, wearing only a brown leather loincloth, a red belt and a pair of leather sandals. He has two large golden wristbands and a gold earring. His weapon of choice is a large warhammer.
• His mount is a large boar/hog, about half its rider's height; the Hog Rider holds a brown leather bridle which is looped around the boar's tusks.
• Because of his mount, the Hog Rider can jump over Walls, giving the user a great advantage over the enemy base.
• Hog Riders prioritize defensive structures above all other targets, and will bypass all other types of enemy buildings and troops while any defenses remain on the battlefield. This is true even if they are under attack by enemy Clan Castle troops, heroes or Skeleton Trap skeletons. Note that like all troops that prioritize defenses, Hog Riders do not consider the Clan Castle to be a defense regardless of whether or not it contains enemy troops, but do consider the defending Grand Warden and the level 12 Town Hall (if its Giga Tesla has been triggered) to be defensive buildings. Once all defenses are destroyed, Hog Riders become like any other troop with no preferred target; they will attack the nearest building to them regardless of type, and will turn and attack enemy units if they become aware of any nearby.

OFFENSIVE STRATEGY

• He can be used to jump over any level Walls, rendering them ineffective against Hog Riders. Note that while this allows Hog Riders free access to what lies behind the wall, it does not open up gaps for other troops to move through. If the Hog Riders need the support of other ground troops, you will still need to deploy Wall Breakers, a Jump Spell or Earthquake Spells in order to assist them.
• The Hog Rider could potentially be used in an extremely effective fashion similar to Barbarians, i.e. a "Hog Rider Rush", without requiring any Wall Breakers to break Walls. However, this would likely be a poor tradeoff of resources, as a large raid of Hog Riders would cost a significant amount of Dark Elixir.
• Hog Riders are quite capable of acting as distracting troops like Giants; they have nearly as much health as a similar-level Giant, move twice as quickly and do considerably more damage.
• They work well with the Healing Spell when you group several of them together.
• A good tactic for using Healing Spells is to place them strategically on a cluster of defenses (at least about 3 or more) and also deploy them shortly before the Hog Riders arrive in the area, i.e. deploy them ahead of the Hog Riders. This is so that the Hog Riders get the most out of the Healing Spell, and destroy the defenses without losing too much HP.
• Spots where a Giant Bomb or a pair of Giant Bombs may be lurking should be given special attention when deploying Healing Spells. Hogs of the same level as the Giant Bomb will survive a single Giant Bomb, but they're helpless against a pair of Giant Bombs even with a Healing Spell. Heal them after they've went through a Giant Bomb blast.
• The Hog Rider is the one of the best troop types for drawing out Clan Castle troops, as it can avoid Walls to penetrate deep enough to reach centrally-placed Clan Castles (and enough health to not die before it gets there). Deploy one or a few to trigger the Clan Castle troops, then lure the reinforcement troops to the corner side, and deploy multiple Archers or Wizards to slaughter them, and then deploy the remainder of your Hog Riders. This strategy is especially effective during Clan War raids. However, skeletons from the Skeleton Trap and Heroes can also easily kill the Hog Riders, as they can only target defenses, so make sure to have some troops that target anything.
• Hog Riders are helpless against airborne enemy Clan Castle troops, especially Dragons. Most mass Hog Rider strategies in Clan Wars require that the Clan Castle troops be killed first by luring. Bring other troops in addition to Hog Riders, such as Wizards, to deal with enemy Clan Castle troops and do clean up.
• Poison Spells can be used to kill almost any enemy Clan Castle troop, but beware as the troops will attempt to flee the poison. If the Poison Spells are decently leveled and you effectively keep the Clan Castle troops from escaping the Poison spell with distracting troops, they can eliminate almost any troop.
• A Poison Spell can be used to dispense of those pesky skeletons risen from the Skeleton Traps and even the lower health Clan Castle troops (such as Archers and Wizards).
• With multiple Poison Spells, it is possible to eliminate troops with higher health, especially Dragons. Just be sure to drop each Poison Spell only after the previous one has worn off.
• Time is also a factor to consider. With only 3 minutes in an attack, it is essential to make sure that this whole process, and the remainder of the attack is done as quickly as possible to avoid running out of time.

DEFENSIVE STRATEGY

• Defending against Hog Riders is tricky, as their ability to bypass Walls renders them irrelevant. However, the fact that they can jump over walls and attack defenses means that they may leave behind their ground support (such as Barbarians, etc.), as they will not be able to follow. This will allow your interior defenses to concentrate on the Hog Riders.
• Another way to defend against Hog Riders is to exploit the fact that they will attack the closest defensive building. You can arrange your base in such a way so that you have high-powered defenses on the inside and lower-powered defense on the outside, with a layer of resources in between. That way, the Hogs will (in theory) complete a loop around your base before being able to attack your interior defenses (Inferno Towers, X-Bows, etc.), by which time they should have all been killed by the interior defenses.
• You can place Spring Traps in between Defensive Buildings to take out a few Hog Riders at a time; good usage of multiple Spring Traps can severely hinder a Hog Rider rush.
• Hog Riders can be easily killed using "forced pathing". Forced pathing is a strategy that manipulates the Hog Rider AI and make them go to at least 2 Defenses that cannot be prevented by surgical dropping or side clearing. Placing a set of Giant Bombs in between the two can most certainly guarantee you a defensive win.
• Clan Castle troops, Heroes, and Skeleton Traps set to Ground Mode can be an annoyance to mass Hog Rider raids, as Hog Riders will not attack them unless all defensive buildings have been destroyed. Make sure to centralize them if you want to beat Hog Riders.
• In Clan Wars, Dragons are excellent troops to place in Clan Castles against Hog Riders, especially for Town Halls 8 and 9. They have high HP, meaning they won't die easily, and can kill mass quantities of Hog Riders swiftly if not properly lured. Most mass Hog Rider strategies require that the enemy Clan Castle troops be killed first, so if the attacker lures out a Dragon, but fails to kill it, then a 3-star win is next to impossible, much less a 1-star win via destroying 50% of the buildings.
• Multi-target Inferno Towers can be a severe hindrance to Hog Riders, having high HP to take several hits from Hog Riders, while hitting large groups of them.
• Although the Hog Rider is certainly not a liability on defense, the fact that all defensive troops are unimpeded by walls negates the primary advantage of the Hog Rider. As of the 30 Jul 2013 update, they take up the same amount of housing space (5) as Giants but are much faster and do considerably more damage. They are also much less susceptible to Lightning Spell attacks than troops with small hitpoints, so they may be a good alternative for the Clan Castle if your clanmates don't mind donating Dark Elixir Troops.

UPGRADE DIFFERENCES

• The Hog Rider undergoes significant visual changes at levels 5, 6 and 7.
• Initially, the Hog Rider is a dark-skinned man with a black mohawk and beard. He also has a gold earring in his right ear and sports two heavy golden wristbands, a red belt, and a brown loincloth. The Hog Rider's hammer has two brass bands.
• At level 3, his hammer increases in size and turns black. The brass bands on the hammer's head disappear, and the hammer head goes further down onto the stick, creating a button looking object on the top of the hammer head.
• At level 5, his mohawk turns from black to orange, making it similar to that of a level 5 Goblin.
• At level 6, his hammer gains three large, golden spikes.
• At level 7, the edges of his hammer starts to glow red, and he gains a brown headband, but reverts to a black mohawk.
• At level 8, his hammer is now mostly golden. His hog also gains a headband.

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TRIVIA

• Though the Hog Rider appears in many ways to be a mounted Barbarian, unlike it, the Hog Rider's teeth appear to be in perfect condition.
• In the Clan Wars commercial, if you look carefully, you can see a gold tooth.
• When there are no defenses left and the Hog Riders are attacking a building, they will not switch to target Heroes nor Troops until they have destroyed the building.
• At its initial release, Hog Riders did not have any preferred target. They also take up 6 housing spaces.
• He has more than a passing resemblance to "Mr. T", an American actor.
• He was added in the 12 Mar 2013 update. On 27 Aug 2013 his training time was reduced from 5 minutes to 2, and he was given a preferred target (defenses).
• As of the 3 July 2014 update, Giant Bombs did 1.5X damage to Hog Riders.
• As part of the Friendly wars update, Hog Riders no longer receive 1.5X damage from Giant Bombs.
• You can have a maximum of 56 Hog Riders at one time in a complete set of fully upgraded Army Camps. This number increases to 64 if you include the 8 that can fit into a fully upgraded Clan Castle. On the battlefield, you can clone an additional 18 Hog Riders with three fully upgraded Clone Spells.
• Hog Riders have the most legs of any troop with a total of six (including the man and hog).
• The phrase "Did somebody say Hog Rider?" comes from the Clash of Clans TV commercial.
• This phrase originates from a popular meme, the "Did somebody say ___?" meme.