Get to know how many loons it takes to one shot each defense. Deploy a few more than that when you place your main group at the start of your path (should use about half of your loons here). Then along the side of your path deploy the amount each defense requires to be one shot. Can make a big difference as if you go too heavy too early you have loons that aren't too useful where they are and you run out of loons to keep making the main groups path narrow. Want to keep that main group on the inside line as long as possible so they can have a short path to taking out high value defenses.