Practice with Your War Armies, and Other Advice

We had a solid victory last week, but we are still making a lot of mistakes in war, and getting 0 or 1 star much more often than we should. All of us have room for improvement, so here are a few tips we've come up with to help us get better in war. 

PRACTICE WITH YOUR WAR ARMIES!

A big part of the problem that we seem to be having is that a lot of us use completely different armies in war than we do for regular raids. In order to get not just comfortable, but good with the armies you use in war, you actually have to practice with them, so we’d really like to see everyone doing at least one full on attack with a war army each week, and posting it for feedback, particularly if you're having trouble getting stars in war battles. 

You may be tempted to skimp on spells when you do this to save loot—don’t. Using your entire war army, including spells, is the only way to practice spell timing and placement, and to truly know exactly how much damage you would have done.

Going hand in hand with this is our next bit of advice:

DON’T FARM ALL THE TIME

Cheap armies may cut down the time between raids and allow you to get loot faster (though really not that much faster), but it’s not good practice for war. Not only is your army not built for getting stars, but if you’re keeping your trophies lower than the average player on your level, you’re not going up against the sorts of bases you’re going to have to attack in war most of the time.

Now, for more specific things that we have noticed that should help people improve their war attacks:

DON’T USE LIGHTNING SPELLS IN WAR. EVER!!!

At this stage of the game, there really is NO army composition or situation where it makes sense to bring any lightning spells at all into war. None.

Even a high level lightning spell doesn’t usually kill high level wizards completely, especially if you are trying to kill them on the move in the middle of a battle. And lightning spells do almost nothing to a dragon, so it’s really not a very effective method of killing clan castle troops. The other main use--taking out air defense with a lightning spell prior to a dragon raid, isn’t very effective either--it takes 3 just to take out one air defense that’s level 4 or higher, so you’re much better off bringing rage and/or healing spells.

DON’T MAKE HALF DRAGON ARMIES!!!

We saw a lot of this in the last war--people using anywhere between one and six dragons. Sometimes one or two dragons can be helpful, but typically it’s a bad idea. You’re generally better off with an army of all dragons, or none at all.

If you are using a ground army, you may consider bringing 1-3 dragons for support. If you happen to find a base where one quadrant has no air defense, you might be able to drop your dragons there, and come in from another side with your ground army, and hopefully take out additional air defense before your ground army meets up with your dragons. The problem with this, however, is that 1) dragons are slow 2) they take up a lot of space and 3) this makes it very difficult to maximize the use of your spells. Not to mention that bases like this aren’t very easy to find. For these reasons, you’re generally better off bringing a couple extra giants and a couple extra wizards, or even a PEKKA, rather than a dragon.

On the other side, if you’re making an army of mostly dragons, the allure of bringing archers/wizards to deal with the clan castle, or perhaps some hogs to take out air defense is understandable, but you’re generally better off just going with all dragons. Since dragons go after the nearest target, clan castle troops aren’t generally much of a problem, and will get killed before they do much damage, particularly if you put a rage spell on your dragons when they get near. As for the hogs, it’s a matter of how quickly you can get to the air defense…4 (or 5 if you use the clan castle) hogs aren’t going to live that long, and you don’t really want to waste a spell on them, so you’re generally probably better just going with dragons. The one possible exception is if you wanted to bring 10 or 20 minions (keeping it all air usually makes sense, though archers and wizards may work too), not so much for the clan castle, but to clear buildings on the outer edge of the base and help direct your dragons toward the middle.

40 ARCHERS and/or BARBARIANS IS TOO MANY!!!

In almost every case, if you have a total of more than 40 archers and barbarians, you probably have too many. It should go without saying that goblins are not for war, but you really want a minimal number of tier 1 troops. They can be useful for taking out the clan castle, but other than that they’re mostly a distraction for the defense so your wizards or other troops can live longer.

BEWARE OF INFERNO TOWERS!

We generally need our town hall 10s to be able to attack other town hall 10s, which usually means going up against inferno towers.

Really, there’s not a whole lot you can do against an inferno tower aside from using freeze spells, so if you don’t have them, you shouldn’t really even be looking at bases with them (and especially not 2 of them), unless the base is poorly laid out and the rest of the defense is relatively low level. If you have freeze spells, you probably want to bring anywhere between 1 and 3 depending on the base. It’s also a good idea to check and see if the inferno towers are set on single or multiple targets, as this may affect your decision.

For inferno towers set to single target in particular, your other option is a golem or two to soak up defense, with wizards, witches, valks, and/or PEKKAs behind to do the damage. A freeze spell will still be helpful, but a rage spell can also help you take out the inferno tower before it does too much damage.