Castle Clash HBM Design

HBM A Through N

You can beat HBM A through N using a center base design with two entrances and army camps at the four corners. Although 6 hero bases are helpful, 5 good heroes can beat all of these levels. For HBM I and J, load your army camps with tons of guardians so that Spirit Mage's proc hits the guardians instead of your heroes and base. Good center base designs can be found with any web search.

A good base design has 4 towers and walls that cause the enemy waves to walk around the walls in an attempt to reach your towers. They will ignore your heroes until the tower is destroyed. If you design things well, the majority of your heroes will converge upon each wave and destroy them before they destroy a tower, or at least kill most of the wave before they destroy a tower. Upon destroying the tower, they will target your nearest hero, which is most likely a melee hero. If your only melee hero is pd, this means pd is at risk, so please be aware of the danger.

Use Arrow Towers!

At this stage, you are unlikely to be strong enough to make useful use of magic towers. Arrow towers are more durable and will help kill the enemy heroes.

HBM K through S

A corner base is definitely best for HBM O through S, but it works just fine starting with wave K. I'm sure you can find corner base examples online, but I'd like to share my specific design along with some (hopefully) very useful comments that may aid your decisions. My goal is to provide enough useful comments to work with your specific set of heroes. I am assuming you don't have 100% of the heroes. If you do, you probably don't need my help anyway!

Notice This First

Notice the strategic bump out where base #1 is shifted to the right. This is the signature difference between my design and most designs you will likely find on the web. Assuming that your towers near your bases are destroyed by the end of the 2nd or 3rd wave, waves 4 and 5 will likely target the hero at base #1 (instead of heroes #2 and #3). If the hero at base #1 is your best ranged tank, you will do well. All non-flying heroes will be forced to walk around the walls in their attempt to reach hero #1. They will ignore all of your other heroes (therefore they get pummeled by your other heroes) unless hero #1 is defeated. Just make sure hero #1 cannot possibly jump over walls to the northeast or northwest. If he's a flying hero (like Vlad), you can get away with a much smaller base (lower town hall level) because jumping over walls won't be a concern.

Hero Placement

Base #Suggested HeroExplanation
1 Ghoulem or Vlad
else your best ranged tank (even Reaper or Druid)		 This must be your most durable hero, and he must have a ranged attack. If not a flying hero, make sure he cannot possibly jump over the northeast or northwest walls.
2 Pumpkin Duke
else Cupid or literally any other hero		 Absolutely the best place to place pumpkin duke. Anything else is a compromise. Due to base #1's placement, this hero will usually fight without being targeted by enemy mobs. The exception is when a tower is destroyed. At that moment, pd might become vulnerable, but hopefully you are strong enough to survive that event.
3 Skull Knight or Dread Drake
else any solid melee hero		 Due to base #1's placement, this hero will usually fight without being targeted by enemy mobs.
4 Ranged Attacker
else a great melee tank, such as Dread Drake.		 If enemies attack from the South and your buildings to the South are already destroyed, this hero will be targeted. A ranged attacker won't jump over the walls, causing most of the mob to walk around the walls. This is why a ranged attacker is preferred. If you have Ghoulem at base #1, consider placing Vlad here. Also, Aries has very long range, so Aries is the most likely hero to not jump over the south wall.
5 Cupid
else any good hero, possibly Siren		 This hero is unlikely to be targeted by enemy mobs. Cupid is the clear choice, but absent that, you can pick literally anybody.
6 Ranged Attacker
 If you have a low town hall level (16 or less), ideally choose a flying hero (same for base #1). Personally, I use Santa in this spot.

Design Details

Very Few Buildings Inside

Whenever a mob kills a building, it immediately targets whatever is nearest. Usually this means the mob will focus on one of your melee heroes. If you add a bunch of buildings further out, the effect is that you are less likely to fight as a big pack and you are more likely to lose a hero early. Most players just cram as many buildings as they can because they don't understand the algorithms.

A few buildings at the very bottom

These buildings at the bottom have the potential to never be targeted. This is good if your problem is losing all of your buildings. To add resilience, make at least 2 of these magic towers. If you want, use 3 magic towers at the bottom.

Specific Strategy for Waves O through Q

Equip multiple heroes with slowdown crests and/or use Siren. When the boss arrives, he will usually target hero #1 and try to walk around the walls. If you slow him down enough, he will walk so slowly that you can defeat him before he manages to attack anybody! You can even use Ice Demon and be very successful. This approach can help with waves K-N as well, by the way, but generally players only hit a wall when they attempt O, P, and Q. R and beyond behaves differently because instead of a boss, you get a flying demon, which of course won't be affected by your walls.

Hero Bombs Help Too
If you place hero bombs near your hero bases, it may be the case that a few hero bombs will survive until the 5th wave. If you get lucky, perhaps your heroes will all be dead, but a leftover hero bomb might be just enough to take out the boss, allowing you to win. This works more often than you might expect!

HBM T

I claim no particular expertise with HBM T because I only beat it after I was insanely powerful. I used double-evolved DD, Ghoulem, and Santa, and single-evolved PD, Cupid, and SK. I felt that my luck in the past was bad with a corner base, so based on somebody else's video, I tried a side base.

This was my side base that beat HBM T. Using my souped up heroes, I beat it on the first try.

Due to Castle Clash upgrade bugs, my corner base was lost, so I don't know if I could've beat it using my corner base and my team. Given that I beat it with this side base, I didn't bother recreating my corner base.

The difference between side base vs corner base comes down to how the final dragons converge upon your base. It *might* be the case that a side base gives you a better chance at not losing all of your buildings because the dragon procs hit your base differently. In all of my previous corner base attempts at T (my team was not as strong at the time), I kept losing all of buildings because the dragon procs always hit my remaining buildings. In my winning round of T, I won with more than 1 building standing.

My Biggest Advice for T

If you keep losing all of your buildings, the truth is, you might not be strong enough. Just sweep S while you get stronger. If you are blessed with endgame talents, like 5/8 wargod or better, you can beat this sooner rather than later. Use evolved Vlad if you have one available, because that will help immensely. I beat T without Vlad, and I feel that I could've won sooner if I had a good one. My hero base level was 23 when I beat T. If you have endgame talents, maybe you can win much sooner.