Alternative Option #1. Dragon/Archer – A Cheaper 3 Star Attack
Recommended Army Composition:
7-8x Dragon, 40-60 Archers
Heroes: Barbarian King, as high as level as possible
Spells: 3x Lightning Spells
Clan Castle Units: Archers
When to Use and Success Rates: Good choice for your second attack if your Clan is active.
Use on a maxed-out TH7 player to get an easy 3 stars.
If you need to 3star a maxed out TH7 player, you do not need to spend all those resources on a full Dragon army. You can save about 100,000 elixir by using cheaper spells (Lightning Spells) and just 7 Dragons instead of 10. Instead of full Dragons, a Dragon and Archer hybrid army will suffice for a high-end Town Hall 7 opponent.
If you have level 2+ Dragons, you only need 7 Dragons; if you have level 1 Dragons, you should make 8 Dragons total. As you get comfortable using the build, you may be able to drop the Dragon count even lower.
The strategy is very simple: use all 3 Lightning Spells on the most central enemy Air Defense tower. This will destroy it outright. Lure out Clan Castle units and then kill them with your Archers. From here, use your Archers and Barbarian King to pick off perimeter structures. Once you have cleared out some of the perimeter structures, drop your Dragons in such a way that they will head towards the final enemy Air Defense sooner than later.
Alternative Option #2. Barcher – A Cheap 2 Star Attack
Recommended Army Composition:
80x Barbarian, 100x Archer, 10x Wall Breaker
Heroes: Barbarian King, as high as level as possible
Spells: 2x Rage Spell + 1x Healing Spell
Clan Castle Units: 1x Dragon (if possible); otherwise Archers or Wizards are fine.
When to Use and Expected Success: Useful for getting 2-stars against high TH7s in a war where your clan is either far ahead or far behind. Can 3-star lower TH7s and TH6s (no Wall Breakers required against TH6). If your clan is very inactive and you have no chance of winning, it can be a good way to get a small reward and work towards Clan War achievements.
This is hardly a go to strategy, but useful in certain situations. A simple Barbarian, Archer, and Wall Breaker army is typically strong enough to 3-star weak TH7s and 2-star higher TH7s (or even low TH8s).
Lure out Clan Castle units as a priority and kill them in a safe spot. Then, use your Archers and a few Barbarians to take out perimeter structures. Drop your Barbarian King as a distraction, using a Rage Spell. Use a few waves of Wall Breakers to break deep into the enemy’s base (dropping 6 of 10 will be fine), then flood in with Barbarians and Archers.
Use the healing spell near your Barbarian King and Barbarian clusters to help them stay alive while you take down AoE towers. Use another Rage Spell once you get deep into the base and drop your remaining Wall Breakers.
Slowly drop wave after wave of Archers; do not drop too many at once as you do not want Mortars to wipe them all out in a big clump. Once the last Mortar is down, you can flood in with your Archers.
The goal is to core towards the Town Hall and take it out, netting you 2 stars. This strategy will work against any TH7 and even some TH8s, particularly if you get good at using it. The resource cost is low, so you will actually net a resource gain even if you lose the war.
Why would you want to use this? If your clan is very active, then odds are you will just need to 2 or 3-star a similarly-leveled opponent (using the Dragon strategy) and then are best off getting 3 stars against a low-level opponent.
This strategy is perfect for that second attack. Alternatively, if you are losing a war by many stars and have no chance of winning, this is a good way to get a little resource reward and work towards the Clan War achievements without needing to spend a ton of resources on Dragons.
Alternative Option #3. Hog Riders – An Expensive 3 Star Attack
Recommended Army Composition:
34x Hog Rider, 30x Archer
Heroes: Barbarian King, as high as level as possible
Spells: 3x Healing Spell
Clan Castle Units: 5x Hog Rider (if possible); alternatively Archers
When to Use / Expected Success: Preferably never; but can 3-star any Town Hall 8 player and some TH9s.
The most effective army composition at Town Hall 8 for pure power is an attack force that consists largely of Hog Riders. Hog Riders move quickly, jump over walls, target defenses, and deal a lot of damage. As a result, it does not take a large Hog Rider army much time at all to clear all the defensive structures of a TH8 player, at which point clearing the rest of the base becomes trivial.
There is a strategy to using Hog Riders. If you simply place all 34 Hog Riders at once and do little else, you likely will not have a lot of success. Instead, you will want to first lure out Clan Castle units. Even if the enemy’s Clan Castle is placed centrally, there should be a spot where a Hog Rider can hop over the wall and trigger the Clan Castle units.
Once the Clan Castle units are triggered, you should be able to then lure and clear them with your Archers. I would recommend using 30 Archers in order to ensure that you can finish off whatever is inside the Clan Castle.
Next up, find the place you want to attack. The biggest threat to the Hog Rider is not any tower in particular but rather Giant Bombs. Look for gaps where Giant Bombs might be. Try to avoid those and instead attack near an area where it is unlikely that you will trigger any Giant Bombs, at least for some time.
You should drop 15-20 Hog Riders as your first attack. Once some of your Hog Riders start dropping into orange health, drop your first healing spell. Try to place the Healing Spell with your Hog’s pathing in mind in order to increase its uptime. Drop the second Healing Spell as soon as your Hog Riders start getting low on health again.
After your first set of Hogs gets wiped or thins out, you can drop the rest of your Hog Riders, attacking from another part of the enemy’s base near where the remaining towers are located. By splitting your Hog Riders into two attacks, you limit the potential to get your troops wiped by a double stacked Giant Bomb. Use your final healing spell as necessary on whichever pack of Hog Riders needs it the most.
If you have a Clan Castle full of Hog Riders, you can drop that as well as soon as it is needed. Just 5 Hog Riders can handle 2 Cannons or 2 Archer Towers, so having this small third pack is useful should your first two packs of Hog Riders get caught in enemy traps.
Once all the enemy defensive towers are down, drop your Barbarian King to help clean up the remaining structures. Your Hogs should do most of the damage, but Hog Riders do occasionally get taken out by traps. The Barbarian King has no chance of dying to bombs, so it is good to save the Barbarian King for the very end.
This strategy results in an easy 3-star against even fully-maxed TH8 players. It also can 3-star some TH9 players if controlled properly and if your Hog Riders are upgraded beyond level 1.
Why I Recommend Avoiding Hog Riders
Despite the effectiveness of Hog Riders and their relative ease of use, I would strongly recommend not using these troops. While they work well, their cost is astronomical. An army of 34 level 1 Hog Riders costs 1,340 Dark Elixir (if they were level 3, it would cost 1,768 dark elixir).
At Town Hall 8, the typical war reward for an enemy you could 3-star with Hog Riders would be 275-400 Dark Elixir. Given that Dark Elixir is by far the tightest resource at TH8 and is the resource really want to focus on saving, it makes no sense to spend 1,500 Dark Elixir on Hog Riders to win 300 in a Clan War battle.
The only situation in which I would recommend using Hog Riders in a war battle would be if there was almost no time left in the Clan War, your clan was down 2 stars, you had one attack left, and there was a maxed enemy TH8 that had all 3 stars available. Other than a scenario where you could single handedly win your clan a war, I cannot imagine using Hog Riders in a Clan War fight at Town Hall 8.