Hog Rider vs Miner vs Valkyrie: Which Ground Army Should You Learn?
Updated: 16 September 2026 · Goblins Farm
These three define the main ground options for most of the mid game, and they fail in completely different ways. Choosing between them is less about which is strongest and more about which failure you are willing to plan around.
The short version
- Hog Rider — 5 housing space, unlocks at Town Hall 7, Dark Barracks. Jumps walls, targets defences. Dies to traps and splash.
- Miner — 6 housing space, unlocks at Town Hall 10, Barracks. Travels underground, ignores walls, targets whatever is nearest. Dies to sustained splash over the surface.
- Valkyrie — 8 housing space, unlocks at Town Hall 8, Dark Barracks. Walks, needs walls opened, hits everything around her. Dies to single-target defences and bad pathing.
All three are ground-only, so all three lose to a defending Clan Castle you did not lure.
The one that ignores your base layout
The Hog Rider's defining property is that walls do nothing to him. Compartmentalisation — the main defensive tool against ground armies — is simply not in play. He goes over, and he goes at defences, which means he takes the shortest path between the things that are shooting him.
That predictability is also the counter. Because his route between defences is knowable, bases are built to put giant bombs exactly where a grouped hog wave will be. Hogs do not lose to walls; they lose to traps and to splash damage, and the difference between a hog player who three-stars and one who does not is almost entirely spreading the deployment and carrying the right healing.
The one that ignores your base layout differently
Miners also ignore walls, by going underneath rather than over. The important difference is targeting: hogs go for defences, miners go for what is near them. That makes miners less predictable and far harder to trap — they surface in places a base designer cannot reliably anticipate — but it also means they will happily spend time on buildings that were not shooting at anything.
The second difference is economic, and it gets overlooked. Miners are trained in the Barracks and researched with elixir; Hog Riders and Valkyries come from the Dark Barracks and their research costs dark elixir. Given that dark elixir is the resource gating your heroes, an army researched on elixir is quietly cheaper to keep current. If you are choosing what to commit the laboratory to and your heroes are behind, that is a real argument for miners.
The one that needs you to do the work
The Valkyrie is the most conditional of the three. She does not jump or tunnel, so she needs walls opened and a funnel built for her. In exchange she clears compartments faster than either of the others once she is inside one, because her damage hits everything around her rather than one target at a time.
At 8 housing space she is also the most expensive of the three per unit, so a Valkyrie army is a smaller army, which makes each deployment decision matter more.
Practical read: Valkyries reward players who have already learned funnelling, and punish players who have not. Hogs and miners are more forgiving of a sloppy funnel because they do not follow the ground path.
Which should you actually research?
Pick by which problem you would rather solve:
- You want the fastest route to reliable three-stars in war and you will practise trap-avoidance. Hog Riders.
- Your heroes are behind and you want an army that does not compete with them for dark elixir. Miners.
- You already funnel well and want raw clearing power inside the base. Valkyries.
Whichever you pick, pick one. The laboratory runs a single upgrade at a time, and spreading research across three ground armies gives you three under-levelled ones. Across a whole account that is years of research time; across a Town Hall it is the difference between an army that works and one that nearly does.
Frequently asked
Are Hog Riders or Miners better?
Neither is strictly better. Hog Riders target defences and are faster at ending an attack, but they are predictable and die to well-placed traps. Miners are harder to trap because their targeting is less predictable, and they are researched with elixir rather than dark elixir, which leaves your dark elixir free for heroes.
Do walls stop Hog Riders or Miners?
No. Hog Riders jump over walls and Miners travel underneath them, so wall compartments do very little against either. Valkyries are the only one of the three that walks, so she needs walls opened first.
How much housing space do they use?
Hog Rider 5, Miner 6, Valkyrie 8. The Valkyrie being the largest means a Valkyrie army is a smaller army, so each deployment decision carries more weight.
Which one is cheapest to keep researched?
The Miner. It is trained in the Barracks and researched with elixir, while the Hog Rider and Valkyrie come from the Dark Barracks and cost dark elixir to research — the same resource your heroes need.
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