Matter of opinion. Hansel makes more on eb's, and can hit atk builds. Pure spy cant be hit by atk builds, really only used for war and farming.
Hansel gives more plunder but harder to stay dtw against attacks. PS can just bank all gold and not dtw. Also, they don't need allies or pots so they are generally a war build. You cannot lose anything. It's pointless to go Hansel if you don't have allies. Hansel is more rewarding but harder to war with. PS is a lazy mans build, easy to do damage with and take no damage.
If a pure spy would to steal a hansel then the hansel could just attack him..and a hansel is harder to pin..
Hansels in my oppinon are better since they are much harder to pin, in wars it just requires more activity
Should I have a pure spy or hansel build? Hansel and pure spies are equally strategic, when hansel, you can't be hit if troops and spies are below 20% (except for scouts), whereas pure spy can't be attacked or stolen from when it has 0 gold out (again it can be scouted), however, one disadvantage of pure spy, is the simple fact that If you have sdps, in one night they can be burnt up, pure spies are never dtw to assassinations, therefore pots can be endlessly burnt. So if you are a hansel that regularly converts to pure spy every night, in theory you should drop sdps and bank in spy att or att pots (that's simply my opinion), since the new update dropping allies is useless as you receive 4.5% back from it. So have someone hire it, then bank. As for having no sdps, when your a hansel you can self pin and simply bank any money taken from the enemy in spy att or att pots, plus over night the enemy can endlessly steal from you whilst troops are above 20%, however that basically leaves you wide open for a strip. So therefore the pure spy build becomes a good choice, however when actively warring hansel is a superior build to pure spy, so there's no real answer to which is a better build IMO, they're equally effective in war. And u can't be called a coward for playing the game how u want, and/or strategically to fit how u play. Now then, stronger hansels with big bfa, are not only tough to strip (due to the amount of allies), but tough to play against. Larger hansels with large spy att/def, are typically harder to pin, but add sdps and it becomes even harder. One thing most hansels have nowadays is a few towers. Towers are very effective against strips depending on how many you have. For example, if you have 20 T4 towers. That's around 1.85 mil spy defence. But, towers do not fluctuate with spies themselves, thus proving very useful for hansels with large bfa. Pure spies do not require towers as there are no allies to strip, so theoretically nothing of value to defend against, therefore useless, true they still add defence but if you aren't active and have 1 or more people attempting to 0 you, they will 0 you eventually, so no point in having towers as pure spy. For strips, hansels and pure spies are one in the same, they both have 75% spies, (pure spy 100%)(obviously) so therefore equally effective during a strip. However one trick I learnt was, to leave a land open when I was pure spy, and when running a full bar of steals on a target strip, to build a stable on the empty land so I was dtw for attacks. It works, and if your in an OSW then you should protect the money you take, then bank and get rid of the stable. Mith is highly useful for hansels, not so much pure spies. I think someone told me once that both spy spells add 1.1mil to spy attack and defence. Not sure if that's right or not. But it seems like an accurate guess? Mith isn't as useful for pure spies as as I stated earlier pure spies can be assassinated endlessly, so unless the spy xtals or builds a stable, mith is nearly useless. I see some posts about what hansels are "truly for". Ok hansels are not truly for anything technically, it's just a build that is used by players to fit their play style, nothing more, but it is more effective to strip farm, and farm players, as is pure spy. There is no right or wrong build on this game, this thread is about Hansel and pure spy, but again, out of those two there isn't a right or wrong build. Players that say hansels that leak are nubs, that's only true if you mean during a system war, otherwise they aren't nubs, as a hansel leaking during OSW means nothing but an easy way for the enemy side to make money. If I'm wrong on anything feel free to correct me, I'm trying to build the perfect spy build post. ༩4Dྀ།ཾ0AཻངT།ཾVཛཉུ།ཾ0H4zོAྀ༩Dི