Apprentice Warden

__NOEDITSECTION__
"Despite his grand ambitions, Apprentice Warden is still just a student. Supports troops with his magical Life Aura and less-magical slingshot."
----
Level 1
Level 2
Level 3
Level 4
==Summary==
*The Apprentice Warden is a Dark Elixir Troop, unlocked when the Dark Barracks is upgraded to level 10 (this requires Town Hall level 13).
*The Apprentice Warden supports other troops with his own Life Aura, which is similar to the Grand Warden's Life Aura generated by a Life Gem, in that it provides a health bonus to units standing in a radius around him. Although the percentage increase of this Life Aura is much lower than that of the Grand Warden's, there is no limit to the amount of HP that can be gained from it.
**The Life Aura can affect almost all other units, both ground and air, and including Heroes and Siege Machines. The only unaffected unit is the Apprentice Warden generating the aura. If two or more Apprentice Wardens are close enough, they can buff each other with their Life Auras.
*
*The Apprentice Warden's AI is similar to that of the Grand Warden's; although he has no preferred target on paper, he will prefer to follow other nearby troops (provided they are large enough in number) and attack whatever they are attacking.
*The Apprentice Warden is unable to fly, unlike the Grand Warden. However, he is still capable of passing over just like the Grand Warden in ground mode.
*Aside from his Life Aura, the Apprentice Warden deals moderately low damage per second with his slingshot, which can target both ground and air units from a considerable range.
==Strategies==
===Offensive Strategy===
*The Apprentice Warden's aura does not stack with the Grand Warden's Life Aura, or with auras from other Apprentice Wardens. The strongest aura will take priority; for lower health troops this will be the Grand Warden's, while for higher-health troops the Apprentice Warden's aura is actually more powerful because of its uncapped health bonus.
**Assuming that the Grand Warden's Life Gem and the Apprentice Warden are at max level, if a troop has 2789 health or more, it will benefit more from the Apprentice Warden's aura than it would from the Grand Warden's aura. Otherwise, it would be better to use the Grand Warden for the same purpose of boosting health.
*The Apprentice Warden should be used in areas where there is no Grand Warden for support.
**Alternatively, he can be used for funneling or a kill squad, however, the Grand Warden should still be used in the center of the base for his Eternal Tome ability because of the Spell Towers and the Death Bomb of the Town Hall.
**He can also be used with the Grand Warden if the Grand Warden is not using the Life Gem equipment.
**Note that the Apprentice Warden doesn't follow troops all the time, so some basic funneling might be needed for the Warden to go with your main attacking force. If not done, it could potentially ruin your attack.
*He is also useful in supporting the Archer Queen as they both have the same range (5 tiles).
**Aside from supporting the Archer Queen, he also is great at supporting high-health troops, since there is no HP cap, and the extra HP will really benefit the high HP troops and other heroes. However, unlike the Grand Warden's life aura, he doesn't work very well with medium and small troops, due to the small HP increase.
*With comparable range and hitpoints (at lower levels) to the Archer Queen, he may be paired with Healers in an Apprentice Walk/Charge; his low damage output, however, makes this strategy most effective at lower Town Hall levels (around levels 6-8, as a Clan Castle troop).
**Like the Grand Warden, his AI can be exploited to funnel him in a certain direction, by deploying troops to the desired target.
*Since the Apprentice Warden can boost the health of Siege Machines by a significant amount (much more than the Grand Warden can), pairing him with the Log Launcher or Flame Flinger can significantly boost their lifetimes because their HP decay is fixed. However, since both these Siege Machines move very slowly, it is possible for the Apprentice Warden to overtake them, and either move his aura away from them, or get exposed to defenses and be destroyed prematurely.
**If you are planning to destroy the Siege Machines prematurely, than there is no point to bring an Apprentice Warden along.
*He should always be protected, since he has low HP for his housing space, and the mediocre damage definitely makes him a bad attacker by himself.
===Defensive Strategy===
*As a defending Clan Castle troop, he can be useful to support tank CC troops as his aura can boost health without a cap; similarly he is also useful in boosting heroes in the center of the base. It should be noted that the Life Aura will not take effect on buildings, which includes the defending Grand Warden.
**Because of the non-stacking of the Life Auras, it is impractical to place two Apprentice Wardens in the same Clan Castle complement.
***However, as of the Town Hall 16 update, the defending Grand Warden doesn't equip Hero Equipment, making the defensive Apprentice Warden the only way to have the Life Aura to boost tanky troops.
==Upgrade Differences==
*At level 1, the Apprentice Warden appears to be a young man that resembles the Grand Warden. He has a brown (possibly leather) belt with a small bag next to it. His outfit is purple and white with a purple and white cape. He carries a tall staff looking slingshot, and has a purple hat with a brown stripe.
*At level 2, the Apprentice Warden gets a somewhat looking purple Capital Gold Badge with a grey outline. His cape, outfit and hat stay the same colour, but the hat gains a feather.
*At level 3, the outfit colour has changed from purple and white to a dark purple and white. The Capital Gold badge remains the same and so does the feather on the hat. The hat and cape also changed to their respective colours. The stripe on the hat has changed to a dark purple.
*At level 4, his hat's dark purple stripe has changed to a golden stripe. The Capital Gold badge is now more vibrant, and has a golden outline to it.
==Statistics==
Preferred Target	Attack Type 	 	Movement Speed	Attack Speed	Dark Barracks Level Required	Range 	Aura Range
Any 	Single Target (Ground & Air)	20	20 	0.9s 	10 	5 tiles	7 tiles
Training Time of Apprentice Wardens	Training Time of Apprentice Wardens
Dark Barracks available 	Dark Barracks upgrading
4m 	8m
Level	Damage per Second	Damage per Hit	Aura HP Increase	Hitpoints	Research Cost	Research Time	Laboratory Level Required
1 	170 	153 	20% 	1,500 	N/A 	N/A 	N/A
2 	185 	166.5 	22% 	1,650 	180,000 	9d 	11
3 	200 	180 	24% 	1,800 	270,000 	12d 	12
4 	215 	193.5 	26% 	1,950 	320,000 	14d 	13
==History==
Patch 	Type 	Description
June 12, 2023 	Update 	Added the Apprentice Warden at Town Hall 13 with 4 levels.
December 12, 2023	Update 	Fixed a bug where Apprentice Wardens' Life Auras did not work on each other.
March 26, 2024 	Balance Changes	Reduced the Life Aura's hitpoint increase by 4% at all levels.
==Gallery==
File:Apprentice Warden.jpg
File:Static-assets-upload16367993664338633556.webp
==Trivia==
*Despite the Grand Warden being an Elixir Hero, the Apprentice Warden is classed as a Dark Elixir troop.
Category:Troops
Category:Ground Troops
Category:Dark Elixir Troops
Category:Home Village