Bradders’ guide to Town 
Hall 10 base building 
 

 
   
 Contents 
Contents 2 

Introduction 4 
CWL TH10 Tier Calculator 4 
MLCW TH10 Tier splitting 4 

Overview 5 

Mandatory 6 
Traps 6 
Spring Traps 6 
Skeleton Traps 6 
Small Bombs 7 
Giant Bombs 8 
Air bombs 8 
Seeking Air Mines 9 
Defences and Heroes 9 
Clan Castle 10 
Cannons 10 
Archer Towers 10 
Wizard Towers 10 
Bomb Towers 11 
Mortars 11 
Hidden teslas 12 
X-bows 12 
Air Defences 12 
Air Sweepers 12 
Inferno Towers 13 
Barbarian King 13 
Archer Queen 14 
Trash 14 
Summary 15 
Brandon’s TH9 Base building Guide 15 
Snow’s TH9 Base Building Guide 15 
Marco’s BB Guide (TH9) 15 

Optional 16 
Traps 16 
Skeleton traps 16 
Spring Traps 16 
Small Bombs 17 
 Giant Bombs 17 
Air bombs 18 
Seeking Air Mines 18 
Defences and heroes 19 
Cannons 19 
Archer Towers 19 
Wizard Towers 19 
Bomb Towers 19 
Mortars 20 
Hidden teslas 20 
X-bows 21 
Air Defences 21 
Air Sweepers 21 
Inferno Towers 22 
Barbarian King 22 
Archer Queen 22 
Trash 23 
Summary 23 
Creative Freedom 23 

High/Low Tiers 24 

Clan Castle troops 24 

Central CC 24 
Offset CC 24 

Lurable CC 25 

My Builds 26 

Live Build 27 

The Idea 27 

Conclusion 45 
 
 
   
Introduction 
 
The purpose of this guide is to give you up and coming base builders a useful 
tool to aid you in your building of ​anti-3​ town hall 10s. The guides set out in 
this document are just that, guides, they are not must do’s and every builder 
should have his or her own creative freedom, it should shine through in your 
builds. There are some mandatory building and trap placements however. 
 
In the realm of the elite, it is common knowledge that the glory is to be had at 
town hall 10. You ​can​ build a base that goes undefeated and that star can be 
the difference between victory and defeat, it often is. 
 
Throughout this guide I will cover the mandatory placements, the optional 
placements, the creative freedom required, as well as give a brief description 
of how I go about my builds. 
 
It is important to note that there are 2 types of anti 3 town hall 10 base design. 
Both are similar but there are discrete differences you should be aware of. 
● Low Tier (likely to be 10v10 attempted) 
● High Tier (likely to be 11v10 attempted) 
There are many ways to look at what is low and what is high tier but the 2 
most common are: 

CWL TH10 Tier Calculator 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Kkaj6b6Jho474JXDJeGkIW2XAD95cpk
rxi6pYycRemo/edit?usp=sharing 
Please go to File>>Make a Copy before filling in any values in this calculator. 
This is deprecated, qs about cwl tiers can be asked on bb server. 
 

MLCW TH10 Tier splitting 

MLCW has a much more simple splitting of town hall 10s, those ≤86k and those 
≥87k. If you don’t know what this means then you’re reading the wrong guide, 
son, and you should follow this link: ​http://bfy.tw/E7nI  
 
This should be considered when base building. 
 
After reading this, you will be better armed to go and create those 
unbreakable bases. 
   
Overview 
 
Gone are the days of spread out bases. Current meta requires you to build a 
compact base that has lots of defences targeting incoming enemy troops at the 
same time. This way you’ll eat up incoming attacks and leave the attacker 
wondering... ​Where did my troops go? 
 
The base should make lalo pathing difficult as well as ground troop pathing 
without giving up the triple to dragons with easily snipe-able air defences 
(single target infernos will halt dragon attacks). 
 
One of the most common mistakes that even the more experienced builders do 
is allow a base to be fully connected by 2 jump spells and so it should be 
incorporated into any build that the double jump doesn’t allow attackers to 
connect all of the compartments within a base. 
 
 
   
Mandatory 
 
If you haven’t already guessed it, these are the things that are absolutely 
compulsory in every single build that you do. They are the basics and so in this 
section a lot of the material is lifted from various th9 guides. Post update the 
biggest change to th10 meta follows th9 meta, do not have a defenceless core 
because hogs are back in business, in a big way! 
 

Traps 
These are unknown on the fresh hit, that makes them important!!!! Often in 
elite competition the first hit is a fresh 10v10 or 11v10 if the th9s haven’t 
cleared well enough to scout. So the attacker is already making guesses as to 
where your traps are, ​don’t help him or her out by making it obvious! 

Spring Traps 
 
As explained in various th9 guides spring traps should be placed within the 1 
tile spacing between defensive buildings. There’s no other way to say this, look 
here’s a picture: 

 
The 2 crosses will work against troop movements, but only in one direction 
and nobody liked One Direction. 
Skeleton Traps 
Have them on ground, the threat from hogs is so great that ground skelly traps 
are necessary to cause the attack to be forced to carry a spare poison. 

Small Bombs 
Individual​ small bombs should be placed 1 tile away from the wall purposely 
to thwart the wall breaker. ​In the latest update small bombs were buffed to take 
out the same level wall breaker as the bomb itself​. The 1 tile distance means that 
the bomb is triggered and explodes before the kamikaze nutcase wall breakers 
do, job successful. Small bombs right up against the wall do not explode quick 
enough to stop the wall breaker blowing a hole in that beautiful wall line. Note 
that wall breakers run between buildings not through them! 

 
2 tiles away from the wall will kill raged wall breakers: 

Giant Bombs 
Doubling up giant bombs used to be the thing to do but the meta has changed. 
These want to be well spread out, this way hog attackers can’t use 1 heal spell 
to deal with multiple giant bombs. Spread out giant bombs also mean that an 
incoming kill squad is more likely to get caught by at least 1 giant bomb (if 
you’re smart about it you can guarantee this). Some of my bases designed to 
defend the dip have 4 out of 5 giant bombs outside the exterior of the walls. 

Air bombs 
Do not place these next to air defences. Their purpose is to take out loons not 
hounds. So just don’t do it. 
  

Seeking Air Mines 

Do place these near air defences, they’re supposed to take out hounds not 
loons. So go ahead, do it. If you can place these outside of the wall layer it also 
helps to prevent queen walks but don’t go mad with it as interior SAM’s break 
drags, it’s trade off. 

 
 

 
Defences and Heroes 
Now the buildings that the fresh hitter can see. 
 

Clan Castle 
Placed this here because it does have a range. The clan castle shouldn’t be 
lurable, make the attacker spend at least 15 troop space if they want to lure the 
clan castle troops, don’t just give them away. 

Cannons 
Place these amongst your air defences so that you get good ground cover to go 
with your air cover. 

Archer Towers 
Place these amongst your Wizard Towers so that you maintain good point 
defence air cover along with your wizardry splash damaging defences. 

Wizard Towers 
DO NOT​ place these so as air defences are within their range, a wizard tower 
targeting a hound is bad news. 
  

Bomb Towers 
Do not place these toward the exterior of a base… ​If a queen can snipe this 
building from outside the base then you can sure as hell guarantee that 
the attacker is looking at an easy way to trigger this bomb consequence 
free. 

 
See here how they protect the queen from a raged skelly spell kill. The queen 
targets the hound and the bomb towers protect the queen while she reks. 

Mortars 
Literally the most useless defence in war play, something had to be. Use these 
to make funneling awkward. 
Hidden teslas 
I’ve included these here though I suppose they could have been a trap. They’re 
important, especially for that fresh hit. Use them to make funneling awkward, 
or pathing awkward. 

X-bows 
Generally there’s a bit of a mix when it comes to xbows, the only mandatory 
thing is that you don’t rek yourself by having them set to ground. 

Air Defences 
As a group, the mandatory thing to do with Air Defences is ​not ​allow all four of 
them to be walked or sniped, if you do this you open yourself up to a drag hit 
of some variation unless your infernos are on single. 

Air Sweepers 
These must ​not ​be placed in such a way that they push healers out of the 
base… All that does is make the queen walk last longer. 
  

Inferno Towers ​(Post update change) 

The mandatory thing to do with Inferno Towers is ​do​ have them set to 
multi-target. NOT ANY MORE! You can have single inferno’s now! 

 
If your infernos are on multi do not let them be sniped by a queen walk and 
make queen charging a multi inferno difficult. 

Barbarian King 
Excellent defender against hogs, so don’t allow the attacker to swap him for 
their king. 
 
Archer Queen 
She’s an absolute beast, protect her. This is mandatory. Not optional. Do not 
expose her. ​Do not give her away cheaply. 

Trash 
I’m not going to cover every single trash building, the mandatory thing to do 
here is not have high hit point trash buildings to be used as an anchor point 
for incoming kill squads. The other mandatory point is to not place trash 
buildings in such a way that bowler bounces can be achieved on defensive 
buildings. 
 
That means place your trash at least 3 tiles away from the nearest defensive 
building if it has higher hit points than that defensive building! I realise this 
cannot always be achieved for trash within the interior but it is a must for the 
exterior. That means 2 tiles from the wall usually, ​2 tiles! ​This way you can 
hide tesla locations. 

 
 
The Town Hall, it’s a 4x4 tile space gold storage. Don’t put it in the core. It can 
be inside the wall layer if it makes a good deadzone but generally the town 
hall needs to be on the exterior of the base. ​The Town Hall is TRASH! 
  

Summary 
This guide covers mandatory features that I am assuming you have some 
knowledge of first. Should you not, you should check out these TH9 guides: 
 

Brandon’s TH9 Base building Guide 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IzyeX4w-Ufff4H99aYG3agTm2LjHI0y-rAx
f9RDLr2A/edit?usp=sharing 
 

Snow’s TH9 Base Building Guide 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/10b5BBVvxe3RhApUNTJsK92YYUbzo6iFM
WL-IObVYnSg/edit?usp=sharing 
 

Marco’s BB Guide (TH9) 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1S7j-StYH9CEB5KefO_-f7r0qtKnOTm5no61
VwkIRLm4/edit?usp=sharing 
 
These guides are all very well thought out and and include a lot more pictures 
than mine. 

   
Optional 
This is where some of that creative freedom starts to creep in and where the 
fun begins… 
 

Traps 
Now this is where the real thought comes in. anybody can throw defences 
together but if you step back and have an actual thought about the opponent’s 
likely attack style and execution of said attack, you ​can ​break him or her. 

Skeleton traps 
Place these within range of splash damage as miners’ AI will target skellies 
over any other structure so Miners will literally stand their swinging a spade 
at this tiny little skelly while the Inferno of your choice melts them, wizard 
towers also like to rek Miners while they swing at skellies (If your infernos are 
on single, skellies are less useful next to them). 

Spring Traps 
Ok so these bad boys are the best way to thwart hogs, if I’m a hog attacker 
what are my key objectives before I send in the hogs? The obvious ones don’t 
matter (queen, cc, an inferno etc.). Wizard Towers, Hogs are weak to wizard 
towers, so if I can, I will try to pick up wizard towers with my kill squad or 
queen walk. If it isn’t obvious yet, what I’m saying is, spring traps aren’t 
necessarily best placed at the feat of wizard towers as skilled hog attackers 
will try to avoid as many wiz towers as possible. Now there are obviously 
exceptions but it’s a lot easier to smash your hogs through 4 air defences than 
it is wiz towers… Do you see where I’m going yet? place them at the feet of air 
defences! 

Small Bombs 
There isn’t much option with these, they either go in a combo to defend 
witches (explained in th9 guides) or they go 1 tile away from the wall you 
expect wall breakers to attempt to break. 

Giant Bombs 
Covered in mandatory section as well as th9 guides. I like to have 3 outside the 
base usually. Maybe more to defend the th11’s maybe less to defend other 
th10’s. No doubles though. Spread these out so a heal spell cannot cover 
multiple bombs (including your bomb towers). 
Air bombs 
These work well next to or near your wizard towers as well as next to or near 
inferno towers. Don’t stack them though. And again, this is where you need to 
look at your base design so far and have a real think about where the loons 
will be bunched up, because that’s where you need these. (Don’t put air bombs 
next to single inferno towers) 

Seeking Air Mines 

These are almost the exact opposite of normal air mines. You want them in the 
paths of hounds and or healers on queen walks. Again, have a look at your 
base, where would you send your hounds in? If you can place these in the path 
of queen walks too that works as a buy one get one free, kinda. 

 
Defences and heroes 
Now the buildings that the fresh hitter ​can​ see. 
 

Cannons 
Usually these are all inside the exterior wall layer, they offer very good ground 
point defence, they can end a queen walk prematurely or at least force spell 
use. A very underrated defence. They don’t provide air cover so let’s have a 
think about what these need coupling with… Air Defences!  

Archer Towers 
Of the 7 that you have, at least 6 of these are usually placed away from air 
defences as they are another form of point air defence. They’re a very versatile 
and are usually accompanied by wizard towers on one side of or in one corner 
of the base if your wiz towers are diagonally placed. 

Wizard Towers 
These can all be placed reasonably close together but not so close together that 
one heal covers them all as a loon or hog attacker will get incredible value. 
Again place these away from your air defences and place them in the paths 
where loons and hogs are likely to bunch up. 

Bomb Towers 
So we’ve discovered these should be fairly centrally placed, at least out of 
reach of a queen walk but where? The easy answer is, these should be placed 
in such a way that they protect the queen from a skeleton spell kill while she 
stands shooting at a hound. Bomb Towers don’t target air troops so they are 
great for wasting those skellies (This is why wizard towers aren’t as prepared 
for the same job). 
  

Mortars 
Still useless at defending, but they can be used cleverly to cause hogs and loons 
to leave the interior of the base causing valuable time to be lost. 

Hidden teslas 
Say no to tesla farms, say yes to placing these 2 tiles away from a mortar as 
explained in depth in the th9 guides. Do include the small bomb and giant 
bomb combo of course! It is also a good idea to use these to again force loons 
or hogs to leave the interior of the base and waste time hunting a single tesla 
placed outside the base. 

 
X-bows 
These can be placed centrally or slightly less centrally, don’t allow them to be 
queen walked though and generally speaking it’s bad form to have 2 in the 
same compartment; that’s an advertisement for buy one get one free to me. 
There are exceptions to this of course. 

Air Defences 
Make awkward lalo pathing for air defences, if you make a square out of your 
air defences be prepared to watch the house of cards fall. However having all 
4 in a slight curve or line on one side of the base or diagonally through the 
base means hounds have nowhere to go when the air defences are dealt with 
causing loons to bunch and die. Having air defences reasonably close also 
means that the incoming hounds are targeted by more than one air defence, 
they go double time on that poor houndy. 

Air Sweepers 
There’s a little ambiguity with air defences, you want them centrally placed 
yes. Point them toward your wiz towers to defend the drags while they get 
taken out by the remaining air defences or point them toward your air 
defences to slow the incoming loons down while your wiz towers and archers 
deal with that surviving hound. This is probably the most thought you’ll have 
to give when it comes to designing a new meta base around your idea. One 
each way works quite well unless you are certain of the incoming attacks. 
Inferno Towers 
Inferno Towers are also a thought provoking structure but are often placed 
quite early in the build so maybe less so than sweepers. 
 
Infernos want to be placed so that a jump does not connect the two 
compartments that withhold them, ​unless​, they are on adjacent sides of the 
base. Having infernos on adjacent sides of the base will help with defending 
miner attacks as it makes pathing more awkward and unpredictable. 
 
Protect your infernos, they’ll protect you. Don’t allow them to be bowler 
skipped on from any direction if possible, inferno islands aren’t mandatory 
anymore but these have high hp and are worth holding onto as they can often 
be the difference between 99 and triple.  
 
Generally speaking inferno towers closer to the exterior want to be on single 
to put the attack off using a queen walk or a queen charge. Infernos in the 
centre of the base want to be on multi because they still rinse bowler kill 
squads. 
 
I now opt to have 1 inferno centrally placed on multi with another inferno 
closer to the exterior on single. I place a couple of seeking air mines exterior to 
the base on the opposite side to the single inferno still considering lalo pathing 
to help prevent successful queen charges. 
 
This is not mandatory you can still have a successful base that has double 
multi or double single inferno towers, their placement needs to be thought 
about still and inferno islands are still useful, if you can split the pathing of 
hogs around a multi inferno then a heal spell must be used here… this is why 
you should not placed giant bombs inside inferno islands as they get healed 
over anyway. 

Barbarian King 
Can be used to protect your queen or can be away from your queen in the 
likely path of hogs. You’ll be bored of reading this soon but do please have a 
think about your design and place your king where he will be needed, 
protecting your queen or smashing hogs, both work. 

Archer Queen 
It’s a safe bet to place your queen centrally, it often works well, protect her 
and she can end any style of attack that the attacker has in their locker. 
  

Trash 
You should always consider hit points of trash and place accordingly as 
outlined in the mandatory section. You can use high hit point trash to protect 
your infernos, this is a common thing to see in new meta base designs at town 
hall 10 but do remember the 3 tile rule between infernos and other structures, 
this isn’t mandatory either. 

Summary 
There are still a lot of things that are your choice, the main one being the 
actual shape and design of the base… you just have to encompass everything 
you’ve read up to this point. 

Creative Freedom 
It’s your base, your design, your baby. Use what you know to create a badass 
base. If you follow this guide you’ll have created a new meta format base that 
may be able to withhold multiple times in the highest level of competition. 
 
 
 
   
High/Low Tiers 
At Town Hall 10, there are different goals from builds. Generally speaking elite 
clans will target the lower tier 10s for 10v10 triples and as the defences are 
simply weaker in some cases the defences are at max th9 level. The higher tier 
10s will be targeted by 11s. it’s likely that a lot of these attacks will be fresh 
hits.  
 
It is your job to know about all of the current meta successful attack styles at 
10v10 and 11v10 dip. If you know about these styles then it can greatly help 
when creating that unique bitch of a base. 
 
Low tier 10s, for example, might include a centrally placed air defence to help 
protect against the 10v10 queen walk dragon attack that is becoming quite 
popular at the top level. Higher tier 10s probably already have enough 
firepower to stop drags without the need of a centrally placed air defence. 
 
Thanks to the Grand Warden you can most of the time expect the kill squad, 
part of the 11v10 dip, to shred whichever part of the base it enters and expect 
a deep push so putting giant bombs here when the attacker will likely pop the 
GW ability is kinda pointless, maybe think about shutting down his back end 
hogs or loons or stop those witches round the sides. This way the main bulk of 
the army will have to double back somewhere causing loss in time and often 
troops. 
 
Clan Castle troops 

Central CC 
If you think your base is weak to miners ​only,​ you may consider having a 
golem in your CC, this is the quickest way to see off miners but it does little 
else against other attack styles. 
Generally centralised cc’s have lalo in them to slow down heavy kill-squads 
while the queen hits the hound instead of defences. 

Offset CC 
Offset cc’s may include 3 valks and a baby dragon in order to wreck a queen 
walk if that’s what you think is the likely attack on your base. 
If you think you’re going to get 11v10 dipped, using 2 witches and a babyd is a 
great way to slow down the drag-clone attacks we see so often. 
Lurable CC 
You’re an idiot, why did I bother writing this (could become a thing at some 
point soon).   
My Builds 
As explained in other guides and here. You need to find your thing. It will 
come to you. 
 
When starting a build I usually get the idea for a feature in the build, one that I 
may have seen work well somewhere else like a dead zone that troops avoided 
costing time or something similar to this. I will then create the desired feature 
and fit the current meta base around that feature. I cannot say much more 
than that without physically showing you a build... and well they’re for me 
and mine so won’t be displayed here.  
 
I finish off by getting it critiqued by at least 3 of my most trusted builders (in 
clan) and then get it friendly challenged by players with talent and by multiple 
attacks starting with the ones it looks weak to. 
 
 
   
Live Build  
(NEW LIVE BUILD COMING SOON TO COVER POST DEC 2017 UPDATE - lol how 
old is this) 
Here I will show a build from start to finish, the way I do it. Obviously I’m not 
going to give away my best work but this section should give you a good 
starting point of the steps I follow when building a base. 
 

The Idea 
Ok so I’ve gone fairly basic with this, my idea for this build was that we’ve all 
seen the basic 9x9 grid bases at th9, well can we make one work at th10, let’s 
find out… 
I start by using random 3x3 buildings to help make sure I get the compartment 
sizes correct (this is just a useful tip): 

 
 
Here’s the grid: 
I thought the grid looked quite boring so I skewed it a little bit like this:

I now remove the buildings I used to get the correct compartment sizes and 
am now left with a nice canvas: 
First things first, infernos. I’ve placed one in here and decided to shrink the 
compartment ever so slightly as I didn’t want to have to use too many wall bits 
padding out the dead space:

I place the second inferno adjacently, this is mainly to make pathing more 
difficult, note the distance between the infernos, a heal spell won’t work 
between them or will be of less use anyway:
I now place my queen, quite centrally but I don’t want a small kill squad to try 
and get both infernos and my queen in one move:

I decided on this base that I want a centrally placed air defence, this then leads 
to bomb tower placement, neither can be walked and both protect my queen 
but aren’t in the same compartment: 
I can then go about placing the rest of my walls, I’ve padded out the inferno 
corner to make both infernos less accessible (I’ve also added internal walls to 
create compartments for 2 structures:

I then place the remaining air defences in such a way that lalo pathing is 
difficult, here I have 3 that aren’t directly targetable, I’ve also placed the first 
x-bow, again, not directly targetable (air defence placement meant that one of 
my bomb towers has been moved):
and now the other 2 xbows, again, can’t be queenwalked:

Clan castle fits in centrally (this means I will be looking to have lalo for 
defence as I plan to make miners not an option). Now that air defences are in 
place, I can throw down my wiz towers, they’re all externally placed to 
prevent bitch attacks and are all out of range of air defences:
Now I’ve thrown in a couple of cannons near air defences and storages to 
protect infernos (note the amount of tiles between the infernos and any other 
structure, they won’t be bowler bounced!):

placed a gold storage between the 2 xbows at 10 o’clock, this will help to slow 
down incoming attacks, particularly good at slowing down miners and 
protects the queen a little bit: 
placed a couple of archer towers in now, the base is starting to take shape (also 
added a gold storage at 10 o’clock to the base, this has been done to create a 
dead zone, hopefully splitting troops like hogs/loons):

I’ve placed the town hall inside on this one, it could have gone outside but I’ve 
used it to create a deadzone, it’s high hp protects the inferno near it too:
Sweepers placed and pointing into each other so as not to push healers away 
from defences: 

Now I can start placing external defences like mortars and teslas (see here 
how I’ve made a ring around the th of defences to make pathing awkward):
filled in dead zones at infernos:

more externally placed defensive structures placed to make hogs leave the 
base and also placed to make gols walk around corners rather than toward the 
base:
Giant bombs dropping in externally:

High health trash placed at corners to make funneling trickier:

a view of 12 o’clock:

started to protect my mortars (no bowler bounces):

adding low hit point trash along straight lines like the army camps at 7:30:
small bombs now placed between buildings where I think a queen charge 
might be attempted:

basically all the trash is placed now:

spring traps have now been placed away from infernos in the likely path of 
hogs:
Here I’ve placed a seeking air mine almost in each corner, (stop walks and 
charges, I placed one centrally for drags):

Air bombs have been placed near splash damage and I’ve placed them in 
places that I don’t think the attacker will fly hounds over (don’t want a hound 
to soak these up):
placing the final bits of trash in corners to spread the base out further:
Here is the final build (anddddd fresh dip tripled rip the base-building dream):

 
 
 
   
Conclusion 
 
A lot of this may seem very vague but it isn’t intended to be, I’d like it to be 
seen as inspiration for those undefeatable bases that end up being called “that 
wanky internet base” when the meta changes again next year.  
 
I’m always reachable on Discord at: ​@bradders#8451 
 
There’s no way I’ve managed to cover everything here so when the questions 
start rolling in I will update this guide accordingly. 
 
Version:3.0  
Updated: 05/02/2018 (That’s right I’m in the UK) 
 
Thanks for reading this far, I hope it helps.