Attacking on Your Level - The Key to Winning Clan Wars

Last week we suffered our first defeat in 9 weeks, at least partly because a number of players attacked too low. If we are going to win clan wars against other active clans, and particularly ones that present tough match-ups, we need to make sure we're maximizing the number of stars we can get by being strategic about who is attacking who.

Going too high or too low can both present problems--too high, and you may get 0 or 1 stars on a map that a stronger player can get 2 or 3 stars on, so you're essentially wasting your battle; too low, and you may get 3 stars, but it does not help the clan if it was on a base that a weaker player could have also 3-starred, since it will now force our weaker players to go higher, where they are less likely to be able to contribute.

The general rule, then, is that you want to attack players that are no more than 3-4 experience levels above or below you. Usually, this means they'll be the same town hall, though not always, and should also be relatively close to your position on the war map (you can see players' experience level by looking at the enemy clan list).  This, of course, isn't always possible for the few players at the very top and bottom, who may not have much of a choice but to go outside that range. If you've gemmed a bunch of troops, you may also be lower on the map for defense, and in experience level, but have a better army than some of the players above you, in which case it is also acceptable go a little higher.

There is more on this, along with strategies for building armies, attacking, using spells, etc. in the War Strategy Guide and the blog posts below, but here are some additional guidelines:

1. Ignore the Recommended Target - it's often not a good gauge of who you should go after to help maximize the number of stars for the clan.

2. Let the highest and lowest players go first if you can - this can be difficult to coordinate in a large clan, but if you're thinking about going a little low, try to wait until the players below you have gone to see if they can take out those lower bases. Similarly, if you're looking at going high, it is best to wait for the higher players, since allowing the higher players to take out the higher bases will free you up to go slightly lower, and possibly get more stars.

3. Avoid using goblins, or too many giants - You're not going after resources, you're trying to get the Town Hall and at least 50% of the camp, so you don't want goblins because they won't attack the Town Hall until all the resources building are destroyed, and you don't want too many giants because they are slow, tend to die banging themselves against walls before they can take out all the defense, and won't leave you with enough troops that will go after the nearest target or take out the Town Hall. Even your main troop is hogs, balloons, or dragons, you're going to want archers, minions, and or wizards to deal with the Clan Castle, and as a backup contingent to clean up, since balloons and dragons are pretty slow.

4. Make sure to account for the enemy clan castle - it will be full of good troops. There are 3 general strategies for dealing with enemy clan castle troops, which can be found in this post.

5. Use a full compliment of spells. We generally recommend some combination of healing and/or rage spells only.