spencer23$ has posted his latest troll base video, well worth watching for the entertainment value. Remember, always attack troll bases from the opposite side unless you can seriously overpower the defender.

For anyone who has made the slog up to TH9 or TH10 you will know how much commitment you need to get there. It’s not easy and requires a huge amount of dedication to clashing. I suspect most people quit the game somewhere in TH8 once the loot demands get too much for a casual gamer.

However I think our clan has enough committed players to move up from our mass of TH7/8 players, and more importantly we need a reasonable distribution of THs at the higher levels. We only have three TH10s and I (and I suspect Chris) will go straight to TH11. Mark will stay at TH10 for a while and James will get there in next couple of weeks; but we have a problem at TH9; Liam is solid TH9 (and a few weeks off TH10), Joe has just upgraded, but we need more TH9s. Jammy, Seb and Jamie are on the cusp and I think they all should move up now. I’m excluding the rushed players in this comment because I don’t rate their bases as realistic for their TH level.

We’ve not had a good time recently with our wars losses, five in a row, most by only a single star. However the clan has been performing well but we’ve had a few mismatches. In our main war this week we looked to be the weaker clan but we nailed our attacks and got the win by a clear margin. Our Tuesday war team also had a win so we are at two in a row, let’s hope it continues.

I was pleased that I got my attacks together in this war, getting a marginal two star on their #2 followed up by a solid two star 70% on their #1 at the end of the war. In TH10 land Chris lost his internet connection so was unable to do his final attack but Mark delivered massively with six stars.

Another great video by spencer23$, here he finds out what happens if you try some viewer suggestion war attacks. What about 275 goblins plus heal spells, or what about just PEKKAs and 9 healers. Watch to find out !

A great video by spencer23$, leader of Lost Phoenix, showing some of the most common ways to fail attacks. The wall breaker failure resonates with me, I’ve made this mistake so many times in wars when trying to do new styles of attacks. We all know about the hog army versus air CC troops and have seen it over and over again. Watch and learn and try not to do the same !

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.

No that wasn’t a misprint in the title, this was quite frankly the most snore inducing war we’ve been in yet. Now I know dragon armies are effective at TH7/8; but really, every single attack on us was a dragon army, every one of their clan castles had a dragon in it. It’s such a low skill way of winning, but I guess if that’s how a clan want to play it then so be it. But is it fun ?

Not for us it wouldn’t be with our wide range of attack strategies. I hope we meet this clan again in a few months once they are out of their TH8 comfort zone.

After a solid couple of war wins this week we finally made it to a level 5 clan. That’s great news because our junior wars will now receive better donations, due to the new +l level clan perk, without having to rely on our TH9/10 players.

At a co-leader meeting on Sunday evening we discussed the option of running a third war per week, and this was agreed for a two week trial period. To lighten the burden on our existing war leaders we appointed two new leaders for this war. Our new weekly war agenda is as follows :

• Friday 7:30pm – senior war featuring our TH9 and TH10 players, normally 15v15. War leader is me !
• Sunday 7:30-8:00pm – junior war 1 capped at TH8 or maybe TH9, normally 10v10. War leader is Jamie assisted by Omer.
• Tuesday 7:30-8:00pm – junior war 2 capped at TH8 or maybe TH9, normally 10v10. War leader is Joe assisted by Jammy.

Having the extra war will certainly help us gain clan XP and will allow more people to learn to lead wars which is a good organisational skill to pick-up. Let’s keep up the great win ratio everyone.

The mid-week war team played awesomely well this week. We opened with the full shock and awe of three star wins on the opposition’s top two bases and several other three star wins lower down. After a couple of poor one star attacks by our opponents I suspect they realised they were on to a hiding to nothing and gave in, hence the low number of their attacks. All we really had to play for was our first ever perfect war score, but it wasn’t to be due to some golems that went off track on our final attack. But twenty-nine out of thirty stars is a phenomenal result and we are now only a couple of hundred XP off being a level 5 clan !

After having little success with mass witches in war (I blame my baby heroes : AQ25 / BK 24) it’s interesting to see this new video from spencer23$. He showcases Glider from Lost Phoenix getting three stars on max defence bases using derivatives of the mass witch attack against some of the most popular high level base designs. I particularly liked the immortal AQ version and it shows you don’t need 17+ witches so extra golems can be used. The only question left; should I try this in war ?