Now that we have three wars per week all run by different people, with others waiting to take over, I thought I’d put together a guide on running a successful war. Given that I’ve been running them from when clan wars first started I hope I have an idea what I’m doing.

There are really just three things you need to do; there’s no right or wrong here but being organised is absolutely necessary. But the key thing is communication, as you’ll see…

Donation Strategy

Our war leaders decide what will go in the defensive clan castles and it’s important that only the right troops go in there. As a general rule the highest level troops possible should be used. The easiest way to do this is if the war leaders donate everything themselves, that’s the strategy I use in my war, but it’s not the only way. As long as the strategy has been communicated (use clan mail) to the players also with high level troops then everything should be fine. I like to fill the clan castles within minutes of the war starting so any new players in the clan don’t mess things up. Joe/Jammy take a more laid back approach. Whatever works, but make sure the clan knows what your strategy is. People will help but they need to know what to donate.

Attack Strategy

You’ll see lot of advice on various web-sites telling you the best way to organise your attacks, but ignore all that, use what’s best for your team. You should know the players in the clan by now and know their strengths and weaknesses. A lot of clans use “attack your opposite” on your first attacks, which works for some clans. Another strategy is zonal attacking where, for example the top five players only attack their top five, the next five only attack their next five. This is different to “attack your opposite” and might work well for big clans. I use a different approach; 3 star wins are what matters so don’t be concerned about the top third of bases, just make sure we take three stars off most of the bottom two thirds on the first attack round. Our top players have two attacks each so can hit more bases near the top anyway. Whatever strategy you use, and the ones listed above aren’t the only ones, make sure you communicate it to the team so everyone knows what they are doing.

Clean-up Strategy

The really important thing here is that the war leaders are online for the last hour or two of the war. Here you are trying to engineer the win so need to direct the attacks we have left. If you can’t be there make sure you let the clan know in plenty of time so one of our other co-leaders can step in to cover you. Again communication is the key. There are a lot of subtle calculations that happen in this phase; you need to guess what the opposition might attack, how many stars they can take from us, whether they have inactive players and more. Then do the same for our clan which will help you work out who you want our clan to attack. Some wars are already won or lost before this point but the majority can go down to the last few minutes. As the war leader you should be online and ready to donate troops for the last few attacks and hopefully steer the clan to victory. If you’ve had a good run of three star wins on the first pass then you can direct the lower level players to just attack for loot, but only do this if they can’t possibly get another star.

Summary

I hope this guide has been useful and it gives you a few more ideas on how to lead your wars. As I said at the start there is no right or wrong, but make sure you communicate the strategy. The critical times to be online are after you start the war so the donation strategy is sorted, and then for the last hour or two. Attack strategy can be communicated any time during preparation day but just make sure you do communicate it until everyone knows what to do in your particular war. Here’s hoping we keep up our successful war win rate.