Upgrading to TH9 and 10 - the .5 Strategy and Avoiding a Disadvantage in War

One of the most exciting things about upgrading your town hall is that you now have all these new things to build and upgrade, but if you're concerned with how your base affects your clan's war match-ups, take a minute to read this .5 strategy guide.

What is a .5 strategy? 

Because defense is weighed much more heavily than offense in the war matching system, players who have just upgraded their town halls and were following what otherwise would have been a sensible upgrade plan were becoming more of a liability than an asset to their clans. Their shiny new xbows and infernos were matching them against other players with similar defenses, but with significantly more developed offenses, so while they may only have been capable of getting 1 or 2 stars against their mirrors, their mirrors were getting 2 or 3 stars on them.

This led to the advent of the .5 strategy, where players put off building most of their new defenses until they've had a chance to get their offense up to speed. Depending on how far you take it, this strategy can help give your clan an advantage in war, though mostly it's about not putting yourself or your clan at a disadvantage.

Prioritizing Gold Builds

1. Don't build (most of) your new defenses right away. 

Xbows and inferno towers are hard to resist, but they also have the biggest impact on your war matchups, and will almost certainly get you matched against a base stronger than yours if you build them right away. After that, wizard towers and mortars are most heavily weighted, then archer towers, teslas, and cannons.

Air defense, sweepers, traps, bombs, and walls carry relatively little weight, so this is where you start. Your first priority with gold should be to build these and get them up to the level of your other defenses. As a new TH9, the 4th air d and extra air mines will make it virtually impossible for anyone with level 3 dragons to 3 star, and the extra giant bomb makes hog attacks more difficult as well.

2. Clan Castle and Skeleton Traps

Many players underestimate the value of the Clan Castle and put it off for far too long. In reality, it should basically be the first thing you do, as it gives you added offense and defense, as well as added loot storage. Just think of all the attacks you've done that end in 47 or 97%, where 5 extra spots could have easily been an extra star. At TH9, you also get an extra level on your skeleton traps, and it's worth it to max them early on. The affect on war weight is minimal, and they can really slow down hogs, or waste time during a GoWiPe attack, and keep your defenses up longer.

3. E Storage (TH9) and Collector (TH10)

This is barely worth mentioning, but when you have builders free and nothing else to do, these are relatively cheap and quick, so get them out of the way.

4. Level 8 Walls

It's understandable if you didn't do level 8 walls before moving to TH9--walls are boring and expensive, and worse, causes many TH8s to sit around with full elixir storages and nothing to spend it on. If you haven't done at least 40 or 50 level 8 walls before going to TH9 though (or at least 100 before TH10), now is a good time to dump some gold into your walls. Not only will it make you less of a target while you're trying to save large amounts of E and DE, you'll thank yourself later when you finish your E upgrades well before your gold upgrades are done, and have nothing to do with your E but build level 9+ walls.

5. Neglected defenses

If there are any major defenses you didn't max at the previous TH, now is the time to do them.

6. New Archer Tower and Cannon (TH10) or Tesla (TH9) vs Upgrading Existing Teslas

Because the gap between TH9 and 10 is so large, many people will tell you that 9.5s can get away with building their new archer tower and cannon without getting matched against full TH10s. It can be done, particularly if you have existing defenses like wizard towers or xbows that weren't maxed at the previous TH, but it doesn't really work at TH9, and even at TH10, building a new defense has a much greater weight--even if that defense is low level--than upgrading an existing one. So at this point, if you're looking to milk the .5 strategy a bit longer, the best way to build up your defense without affecting your war weight too much is to upgrade your teslas. After that, archer towers would be the next logical step.

7. When to Build the Rest of Your New Defenses

Generally, if your mirror in war is consistently the same TH as you with all their defenses built, then it's time to build the rest of your defenses. Don't base it on just 1 or 2 wars though, as you can easily get matched against clans with numerous rushed bases, and a mirror that has all their defenses but has a significantly rushed base is not a good indicator.

Prioritizing Elixir and DE

1. Lab, Spell Factory, Camps, Archer Queen

The spell factory and army camps are the obvious place to start when trying to improve your offense. And if you finished all the major lab upgrades at the previous TH, you'll want to upgrade the lab right away as well. At TH9 you'll also want to buy your Queen.

2. Start with a DE Lab Upgrade?!

At TH10 this is pretty much a no-brainer since you don't have a brand new Queen whose ability you need to unlock, and the army camps are much more expensive. As a brand new TH10, your first goal should be to make sure you can smash pretty much any TH9 with relative ease, and the quickest and cheapest way to do this is to upgrade your hounds to max. If you didn't do your haste at least to level 2 (that's a TH9 upgrade), this might be a good place to start too, and will allow you to move back your lab upgrade. After hounds, you'll want to do golems, or if you aren't experienced with air attacks, still have level 1 hounds, or need to take on TH10s with infernos sooner rather than later, you may decide golems are the place to start.

At TH9 it's much more of a trade-off since it means your Queen will be without her ability for a couple weeks longer than she would otherwise, but the sacrifice can be worthwhile. Starting with hogs in your lab will keep it busy and free up elixir for camps, and maybe even drill upgrades, and max hogs are a good TH9 starter army that can help you 3 star many low to mid level TH9s.

3. Lab Priorities at TH9

Keeping your lab busy is a priority, and in the early stages of TH9 in particular, it can be tricky balancing hero upgrades, elixir builds, and lab work.

If you plan to upgrade your queen to level 5 straight away, you'll want to start with 1 or 2 regular e upgrades. Balloons are the biggest upgrade you can do for war, but they cost 6m, and unless you plan to raid with them, you'll only use the occasionally as a support troop until you unlock hounds.

It may be beneficial then to start with somewhat cheaper options so you have more elixir to spend outside the lab. The jump spell is quick and cheap, and the extra time helps a lot. The heal spell isn't that cheap, but if you plan on relying heavily on hogs early on, it's not a bad place to start. Other relatively inexpensive options include healers and barbs, though you won't be using them for war (at least not any time soon). You could also go the other direction and start with dragons, but even level 4 dragons aren't a particularly reliable war army against most TH9s.

Once your Queen is at level 5, if you haven't done hogs, you'll probably want to start there. Minions are also cheap and useful for raiding, but golems are a big part of many war armies. Doing these early on will also free up elixir to upgrade your drills, which will speed up your progress in the long run.

As far as raiding troops go, giants will give you the biggest bang for your buck if you use them. Barbs are probably second, as their increased hitpoints make a bigger difference than the stat increase to archers. Archers come next, then healers.

4. Upgrade Drills, Storage (TH9) and Mine (TH10) 

At TH10 in particular, since the early levels of the drill are significantly cheaper than the camps, you may decide to build your new drill and upgrade it to level 3, 4, or even 5 before upgrading your camps, particularly if you still have relatively low heroes or DE lab upgrades you skipped at TH9 and want to go back to. Even at TH9 though, it's helpful to upgrade these sooner rather than later.

5. Unlocking Witches 

Witches are a big deal at TH9, and many players want to get them as soon as possible. The problem, however, is that unlocking witches will affect your war weight more than anything except building xbows, so if you're trying to milk the .5 strategy, you'll want to put off unlocking witches as long as possible, because once you do, it will probably be time to build the rest of your defenses.

6. Unlocking and Upgrading Haste and Hounds

Once you get witches, you're probably at the full TH9 stage, which means you want to get to work on those high level TH9 armies. If you upgraded golems to level 3 or 4 while at the 8.5 stage, you may want to upgrade witches first. Otherwise, the fastest way to TH9 army that can 3 star higher level TH9s is to get max balloons, unlock and upgrade hounds, and unlock haste. Upgrading haste is somewhat less important but also useful.

7. Lab Priorities at TH10

Golems and hounds are a fairly obvious top 2 choices. After this, if you want to keep the lab busy while you finish your camps and drill, you'll have minions and dark spells to choose from. If you are partial to air attacks, look at doing haste. If you're more of a ground person, upgrade earthquake or poison.

As far as regular E upgrades go, it's a tough decision, but you're basically looking at PEKKA, Giants, Wizards, and Wallbreakers. Wallbreakers are a good first choice if you see lots of bases with level 9+ walls. If you still use PEKKA at TH9, you may want to start there, and they're also good against TH10s with infernos on multi. Giants aren't typically used against TH9s in war, but they're great for raiding, and you may find yourself putting some in your TH10 army, particularly if you're going up against infernos set on single. Wizards are probably the last of the four you'd want to do due to their relatively small stat increase.

Freeze upgrades are of course critical against higher level TH10s, but these will affect your war weight more than anything other than building infernos, so you'll want to hold off on these until your mirror in war is regularly a TH10 and/or you're getting ready to build your infernos. Once your infernos are building though, you should plan to do 2 or 3 consecutive freeze upgrades.

8. Hero Upgrades

When you first get to TH9 and buy your Queen, you can choose to upgrade her to level 5 immediately, or leave her at level 1 while you get max hogs, then do her to level 5. After this, you mostly want to prioritize DE troops over hero upgrades, particularly golems, witches, and hounds. After both heroes are at 10, you'll want to do 5 levels of one, then 5 of the other, as they really only get a significant boost every 5 levels.