Should I put my Air Defenses in the middle of the base?

Deep, but not stacked. Every Air Defense should sit inside the walls with other buildings in front of it, and no two should share a compartment. A pair in one compartment is the single mistake Electro Dragon chain damage is best at punishing.

Which way should the Air Sweepers point?

At the two widest open faces of your base, the sides an attacker can actually line a pack up against. Two sweepers cannot cover four sides, so pick the two that a scout would choose and accept that the other two are covered by defences instead.

Does the Dragon Duke ignore my traps now?

No. His trap damage reduction was cut from 50 percent to 40 percent on 26 May 2026 and again to 20 percent on 14 July 2026, so Seeking Air Mines and Air Bombs hurt him again. Place them on the lane he will fly, not next to the Town Hall.

What is the fastest fix if I keep losing to air?

Move one Air Defense out of the core cluster into the compartment that covers your weakest face, then move a Seeking Air Mine behind it. Most air losses come from two Air Defenses dying to the same spell or the same chain.

Is an anti-air base different from an anti-3-star base?

Yes. Anti-air work is about spacing and coverage on the two open faces. Anti-3-star work is about making the last 20 percent expensive. A good war base does both, but if you are losing only to air, fix spacing first.

Defending Electro Dragons and the Dragon Duke

Air attacks at the top of the game do not fail because a defence outdamages them. They fail because the pack has to keep flying while a defence is still shooting. Everything below is about buying those extra seconds.

What chain damage actually punishes

An Electro Dragon hits a building, and the hit jumps to nearby buildings behind it. The practical result is that anything you group together dies together. Two Air Defenses in the same compartment are not two Air Defenses, they are one target with extra hitpoints.

The same logic applies to the Hydra style pushes that dominate at Town Hall 15 and up, where Electro Dragons and Electro Titans arrive as one wall of chain damage with Dragons cleaning up behind them. The counter is spacing, not thickness.

Three rules cover most of it:

Never place two Air Defenses in the same compartment.
Leave a gap between high value defences so the chain has nothing to jump to.
Avoid straight lines of buildings, which let a chain run the length of a compartment and also feed hero equipment like the Giant Arrow.

Air Defenses: how many you have and where they go

You get your fourth Air Defense at Town Hall 9 and the count does not change again. That is four buildings covering four sides, which is exactly why placement matters more than level.

Town Hall	Air Defenses	Air Defense max level	Air Sweepers
14	4	12	2
15	4	13	2
16	4	14	2
17	4	15	2
18	4	16	2

Push each one at least one compartment inside the wall line. An Air Defense on the outer ring is a free zap target, and a zapped Air Defense opens a lane before the attack even starts. Bury them behind other buildings so an attacker has to spend troops, not just spells, to reach them.

Then check the diagonals. Stand back from your base and pick the two faces with the most open ground. Those are the sides a pack will enter from, and each one needs an Air Defense that can shoot into the approach rather than only into the middle.

Sweepers cover two sides, so choose them

You have two Air Sweepers from Town Hall 9, both maxing at level 7 from Town Hall 11. A sweeper aimed at a corner nobody attacks is a wasted building.

Point them at the two realistic entry faces. If your base is asymmetric, and it should be, one face is usually obviously softer. Cover it. The push it delays is the one you were going to lose to anyway.

Air traps belong on the lane, not on the Town Hall

Seeking Air Mines are the highest value air traps you own, and you get more of them as you climb: 8 pieces at Town Hall 14 through 16, and 9 from Town Hall 17. Air Bombs sit at 7 pieces from Town Hall 14 and rise to 8 at Town Hall 18.

Place them like this:

Keep Seeking Air Mines off the first ring so they hit the pack after it commits, not while it is still hovering outside.
Put them behind the Air Defenses, on the side the Balloons or Dragons will arrive from.
Do not put a Seeking Air Mine next to an Air Defense. The spell that removes one exposes the other.
Keep the mines apart. Two mines in one spot kill one unit; two mines spread across a lane break a stack.

Air Bombs work best clustered where the pack bunches up, which is usually the second compartment on the approach rather than the wall line.

The Dragon Duke, and why crowding him is a defence

The Dragon Duke arrived on 1 March 2026 and unlocks at Hero Hall 9, which is a Town Hall 15 building level. His cap climbs with your Town Hall.

Town Hall	Dragon Duke max level
15	10
16	15
17	20
18	25

His passive, Royal Rampage, roughly triples his damage while no friendly flying units are near him. That is the defensive lever. A base that forces the air stack to clump together, by leaving only one sensible entry corridor into a compartment, drags the Duke’s own Dragons in close and switches his damage bonus off. A base with two wide, separate air lanes lets the attacker fly him solo down one of them at full power.

So the anti-Duke shape is narrow, not open. Compartment edges that pinch the approach are working for you here even though they do nothing against ground troops.

His trap resistance has also been cut twice. Supercell reduced it from 50 percent to 40 percent on 26 May 2026 and again to 20 percent on 14 July 2026. Seeking Air Mines on his lane are worth placing again.

What this looks like by Town Hall

Town Hall 11 to 14. Mass Dragons, Zap Dragons and Electro Dragon spam are the whole threat. Spread the four Air Defenses, keep them off the edge, and make sure no pair can be removed with one set of Lightning and Earthquake Spells. Browse TH12 layouts or the TH14 anti Electro Dragon set for shapes that already do this.

Town Hall 15 and 16. Spell Towers arrive at Town Hall 15, two of them. A Poison Spell Tower near the core is the cheapest answer to a Balloon or bat cleanup that survives the Air Defenses. See TH16 layouts and the TH16 upgrade guide.

Town Hall 17 and 18. The Firespitter, two of them from Town Hall 17, is a fast aimed defence that answers air well when it has line of sight into an open face. At Town Hall 18 the Super Wizard Towers chain to as many as 15 targets, which makes them the best single answer to a clumped air stack. Put one where troops have to gather, not on an edge where it dies early. The TH18 anti Hydra set and TH18 war layouts are built around this.

Check your own base in five minutes

Open your layout and answer these:

Can I draw a straight line through two Air Defenses? If yes, move one.
Is any Air Defense reachable by a Queen walk on its own? If yes, move it deeper.
Do both sweepers point at faces an attacker would actually use?
Is every Seeking Air Mine at least two compartments from the wall line?
If I flew a lone hero down my softest face, would anything splash him?

If you would rather start from a base that already passes, every layout page here shows the full base picture to rebuild in your in game Layout Editor, and the finder filters by the strategy a base is built against.

Air is only half the problem at the top end. The ground half is covered in defending Root Riders and RC walks, and the spacing rules both rely on are in base design principles.