What do you get when you cross the legendary Ice Wizard from the far north with the legendary Guy Fieri from California?
What amazing skill could possibly come from combining the skills of a chef with magic?
Archery, duh.
This guide is written on Reddit by AveragePichu, who gave me permission to repost.
3 Stunning Decks for Magic Archer
In the fusion process, Guy lost his cooking aptitude, but he’s a mean shot, capable of chipping towers from across the bridge, sniping anything silly enough to stand in the same arena, and baiting Fireballs or Poison to allow your Zappies or Graveyard free reign – he knows how to take one for the team.
Of course, without something to take advantage of a baited heavy spell, he dies in vain, letting your own towers get chipped for free.
Never let him die for nothing; If you want to use Magic Archer, you’d better have some other cards with the same weaknesses.
There’s really not much more than that for your basic gameplan with Magic Archer.
Sure, you need to practice your placements, as his splash range is tiny but one shot can hit a lot of things.
They’re situation specific, though for some basic ones, I’d suggest seeing Orange Juice’s tips on placements (the end of this post).
One note about the example with taking down a Giant push while chipping: it’s worth dropping him there was just about anything at all.
Uncountered, he’ll kill an Ice Golem and deal ~1200 tower damage for -2, and against troops that can fight back, it’s worth supporting him with Skeletons or an Ice Golem to kill a Knight or Musketeer for the same -2 while dealing the same ~1200 tower damage.
Unless you’re low on elixir, it’s almost always worth it to get three Rockets of damage for two thirds of the cost.
I have constructed and tested one Magic Archer deck for each of the main archetypes.
These are, of course, just examples, and you can make your Magic Archer deck in whatever way you want. I find it easier to explain a card’s role if there’s a deck with it.
Beatdown-control hybrid
There may be several control cards, but there are plenty of cards to get together a push the opponent cannot stop.
The defensive cards do a great job of snowballing, and the tower is often taken in one push, though there are plenty of chip options if your opponent has Poison.
Magic Archer’s main role here is as a heavy spell bait.
The reason why he’s ideal instead of Zappies is that there’s little use for splitting them in this deck, but he does pair well with Graveyard when your intent is to get chip damage – they can’t Poison both, they can’t Fireball both Wizards, and unlike other Fireball baits, he’s excellent at dealing chip damage.
As far as defensive value, the tiny AoE compares to Flying Machine’s extra damage fairly evenly, but his chip damage capability beats out Flying Machine’s DPS in a Graveyard deck.
You’d use him in this deck the same way you’d use a Flying Machine.
Control (Tempo)
In a tempo deck, while his usual chipping remains the same, his tiny area of effect is excellent for clearing the swarms usually used to stop a Battle Ram or Bandit.
Either something connects on at least one side, or you get chip damage through a tank to the tower.
You’ll never want to play Magic Archer behind the king, as Zappies are there to bait Fireball or Poison for a better trade without being able to be ignored.
Play Magic Archer reactively or predictively, but never just put him down because you have ten elixir when you have Zappies.
Magic Archer has a much larger role in Mortar decks, as Mortar gets damage when defenses get too close, and Magic Archer gets damage when things are far from the Mortar.
With Tornado being able to reposition troops, there is no way for your opponent to prevent all damage except for Fireball, and you have bait for that.
All you need in order to win is to defend while spamming Mortar.
I’ve had only one near-loss with that deck, and I misplayed multiple times against bridge spam.
As for counterplay to Magic Archer, if you don’t have a heavy spell, you’ll have a tough time removing him.
You’ll want to adjust your placements to try to prevent Magic Archer from chipping, but if there’s a Magic Archer behind a building targeter and you don’t have a building, or if the Magic Archer user carries Tornado, you can’t avoid the chip damage.
Either save your heavy spell for Magic Archer and only Magic Archer, or deal more damage on the counterpush.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9ecTCMiJVA
There’s really not a lot of tips one can give on Magic Archer; he mostly comes down to your placements.
Sorry for being repetitive, but hopefully you learned something.
Just know that if you’re interested in trying him, you oughtn’t give up if he doesn’t work out very well in your first week.
-AveragePichu
