Miner

Lore & Background

In the war-torn villages of the Clash of Clans world, every army needs a specialist. Where the Barbarian charges in roaring and the Archer picks off targets from a safe distance, the Miner does something quieter and more deliberate: it gets on its hands and knees, shoves a pickaxe into the dirt, and simply disappears beneath the surface. The other troops grumble about the mess it leaves behind, but nobody can argue with the results. Miners are said to have been recruited from the village's old tunnel-digging guild, a group of sturdy, dirt-streaked workers who once maintained the drainage channels beneath the Town Hall. They never cared for glory or battlecries. Give them a target and a deadline, and they will deliver. Their underground phase is a blur of scraping stone and packed earth, and when they finally crack through the surface at their destination, they are already mid-swing, pickaxe raised, ready to turn a neatly built wall into rubble. The Barbarian King's adjutants note that Miners are remarkably single-minded. They do not chase, do not taunt, do not get lured by shiny objects. A Miner that has locked onto a building will chew through it with the same grim patience it brought to digging its original tunnel. It is, in the words of one village scribe, 'the most boring and most effective soldier in the army.'

In Their Own Story

The dust had barely settled from the last volley of arrows when Kael crouched at the edge of the crater, pickaxe resting on his shoulder. Around him, the village was a tangle of splintered wood and scorched thatch. Somewhere past the broken palisade, a two-story watchtower still stood, its arrow slits dark and waiting. He didn't run. Running was for Barbarians, all bellow and brawn. Kael knelt, drove the flat of his pickaxe into the packed earth, and pushed. The ground gave way in a soft, sucking collapse, and he dropped into the dark. For a long, quiet moment there was nothing but the scrape of iron on stone and the distant, muffled thud of a Golem's boots above. He could feel the vibrations travel through the rock—steady, heavy, alive. Then he saw the light. A thin seam of daylight through the floorboards. He braced, heaved, and the planks shattered upward in a spray of splinters. Kael stood in the watchtower, dusting dirt from his knees, and raised his pickaxe. The tower shuddered. Then it fell.

Reader's Guide

It then surfaces at the nearest building and attacks it exclusively—never engaging troops or switching targets. Best pairings: Witches (skeletons distract defenses while Miners finish buildings), Golems (tank the perimeter so Miners can dig safely), Balloons (air pressure keeps ground defenses busy while Miners pop up on key structures), and Dragons (aerial cover for the dig phase). Drop them when: You want guaranteed damage on a specific building (Town Hall, storage, or a stubborn defense) without wasting your main army on it. In a 2-Miner + Witch strategy, drop the Miners on opposite sides of the base to split the defense, then let Witches and their skeletons mop up. In a full-army push, tuck a small squad of Miners behind your Golem wall to finish off the Town Hall while the rest of the army is occupied. Avoid dropping them in the open center of a base where they surface too early and get shredded before they can chip through walls. Tip: Pair with a Lure or a small distraction troop to keep Air Defenses pointed elsewhere, since Miners do not target Air Defense themselves but will be shot by it once they surface.

Did You Know?

• While underground during its digging phase, the Miner is completely invulnerable to every form of attack, including air troops, spells, and defensive structures.
• Miners exclusively target buildings and will never engage or be distracted by enemy troops, making them one of the most predictable units in the game.
• The Miner was introduced as a Town Hall 10 troop, filling a niche between the heavy-hitting Golems and the fast, fragile Archers.
• A Miner's target is locked at the moment it surfaces; it will not switch to a different building even if its original target is destroyed mid-fight.