General Priciples of Mass Hogging

Mass hogging is a technique that requires a "general feel" for how to do it and can be hard for beginners to master. Once done a few times, the feel for mass hogging starts to be acquired and becomes effective.

Some principles to keep in mind when your a beginner:
 * 1) Not all bases will be 3 starred with the first hog attack, it may take a few to find all the giant bombs (GB's) and get the heal pattern correct.
 * 2) Always lure and kill cc troops. Poison is best left to help hogs against skeletons, rather than the kill squad (if possible).
 * 3) Kill the CC troops on the general side you are entering with hogs. This helps protect the kill squad and allows them to help with clean up.
 * 4) Pick some general good spots for heals that cover most of the base, cover many defenses and cover ALL of the spaces for GB's that a hog will path over (see below). These spots may adjust according to the tides of war but it is easier to keep heals in front of the hogs if you know the general location that you want to heal (especially with a split group of hogs).
 * 5) Empty spaces near wizard towers can be very dangerous because of possible bomb splash and wizard tower splash damage.
 * 6) Empty spaces away from defenses that the hogs will not path over can be ignored.
 * 7) Once you know your heal spots, pick an entry point that has some distance to the first heal (maybe the least covered part of the base). Hogs are very effective going in and last a long time, they will need healed a little later rather than sooner and can go through several defenses on their own.
 * 8) Do not enter too close to a potential GB space. Pre-trigger those spaces as much as possible.
 * 9) Try and find a weakness in the base that gives a horseshoe of defenses (as opposed to a circle). This allows the hogs to go in one path for easy healing. If possible, destroy 1 defense with a giant and a few hogs to create a horseshoe.

There are many little tricks to mass hogging. If a GB can be pre-triggered (or a space scouted) with a single hog, it can prevent a heal from needing to be in an awkward position. Conversely, if a defense can be destroyed that will cause mass hogs to path over potential DGB spaces, it is a good trade for 3-4 hogs.

Links
Step 1: The approach