All these changes are good for the game
There have been multiple game changing items released so far in the sneak peaks and I think, when you look at all of them so far, it ios absolutely fantastic for the game.
So we lose the ability to view war bases on prep day, I think that basically renders prep day obsolete now but that is just because I usually have war donation troops ready and all clan castles filled within the 1st hour of finding our opponent, but lets take a look at some of the changes(recent and upcoming) and see how they coexist:
Troop/spell training time reduction allows us to train our armies much faster than before, so removing the ability to view the enemy war base on prep day is not really that big a deal IMO.
Level 14 cannon(and hopefully more defensive upgrades to come) is helpful for defenses, but not nearly enough to offset these changes.
The new skeleton dark spell is amazing to get that last builders hut, possibly lure cc, distract some defenses, heck, this spell is just awesome for all aspects of the game.
The new clone spell is another amazing spell, which could be extremely useful for the entire game, assuming we get more spell slots that is.
New Hounds and balloon level will now allow air attacks to actually be used again, and be viable at TH11(which they were basically non-existent)
The ability to donate spells and troops right from queue is LONG OVERDUE. How many times has a clan mate asked for a certain troop or spell that you can easily make, or might even have trained already, but lack the camp space as your war army is taking it all up, so you can't donate it. This is just awesome.
The rumor mill is claiming we will see at least 1, and more likely 2 new elixir troops. If this is true, we will have a totally different attacking landscape. It is sorely needed.
I am noticing more and more players have been adapting their bases to avoid getting 3 starred by mass valk attacks, they have been accomplishing this by placing building a space out from their core, so your valk armies run around it and won't actually go to the core due to their AI. Its awesome to watch(even when it happens to me), or by putting Golems in their clan castles so the inexperienced player will not realize his valk army is about to lose 90% of their life when the Golem explodes. These tactics work, and cause serious problems for valk armies in war where a 1 or no star attack can and will cost you or win you a war.
even if these are the ONLY changes, we will still see many folks at the higher level transition from mass valk to LaLoon attacks, but we will still only see 2 types of attacks primarily , unless of-course more stuff comes out to help which I suspect it will, but at least we will see SOMETHING different.
I can't wait to see more sneak peaks as this update is really looking MUCH MUCH bigger than I anticipated. My only question now is how many gems to I buy to get up to speed the moment the update hits. 100 dollars worth, or 200? These changes seem very wide ranging and time consuming...unless ofcourse you plan on gemming everything...like me.
I guess I will spend the weekend farming up all my resources, and preload 14k gems to my account. I am excited!