How clan wars works and initial strategies

I wrote this for my clan, but I might as well share it here also. All information below is based on various videos, officially confirmed stuff off the forums, and the clan wars FAQ. If there are any inaccuracies be sure to let me know. Also, I may have missed an edit here or there regarding my clan, so just ignore that stuff :)

FYI this was written with a farming clan in mind, so some of the strategies are more along those lines, but they can still be modified to apply to pushing clans (e.g. moving the storages around for a clan war base).

Anyway, enjoy!


HOW CLAN WARS WORKS / INITIAL STRATEGIES


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Ok so for those of you that are more visual, here's a good video breakdown of the different phases of clan wars. The only phases of clan wars you guys need to know about are the preparation day, war day and end of war loot gain.

PREP DAY: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zo6k...8TVyYoPf8eswPD
WAR DAY: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09kn...8TVyYoPf8eswPD
END OF WAR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cHa...8TVyYoPf8eswPD


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And here's my overall breakdown that includes some additional thoughts on strategy.

PREP DAY: Prep day starts once a match has been determined and is 24 hours long. During this phase, 3 things need to be done: 1) Donate troops to war castles. 2) Change base around if desired. 3) Scout out other clan's bases.

1) DONATE TROOPS TO WAR CASTLES. This works pretty much like normal clan donations, except that troops donated will only be used in defense of your base in any clan war attacks. Since people can't dump war castle troops once they have been donated, it's VERY important that you only donate what is asked for. I strongly suggest you arrange ahead of time with someone in normal clan chat troops that you want donated. Once your war castle is full, that's it, whatever is in there will help defend your base against all clan war attacks.

2) CHANGE BASE AROUND. At the end of the 24 hour prep day period, whatever configuration your base is in will be the base that is used during war day. As soon as the base is locked in, you can change your base back to your normal farming base. Unfortunately for international members, the end of the prep day period might fall during a time when you are sleeping and you might not want to leave your base in a vulnerable state before going to bed. There is unfortunately no workaround to save your base early right now, but I'll explain a strategy below that might help.

Clan wars is won by your clan earning more stars than the opponent clan. 1 star can be earned by destroying a TH. Another can be earned by destroying 50% of the base. Three stars will be earned only if the base is totaled.

You can see that due to the focus on stars, having your TH outside your base is not really a good thing in clan wars, but some bases as designed won't accommodate a TH. Another strange change to normal base design is that gold and elixir in storages will not be lootable in clan wars. Yes, you read that right, your actual gold and elixir is not vulnerable. What this means is that you are going to want to move your storages further towards the edge of your base to slow down attackers since storages have so many HP.

There are a few things you can do about this: 1) Completely redesign your base just for clan wars and swap it back after. 2) Design a base where you can easily swap the TH in and out of the center of the base. 3) Swap your TH in and your storages out to make your base a little less vulnerable.

Option 1 is obviously time consuming, and I don't really expect anyone to do this until supercell realizes they messed up and include a way to save a war base and a regular base in the base editor. Option 2 can work, but making a transformer base (base where you can swap the TH in and out easily) usually uses a few extra walls and will still require you to redesign your overall base, plus you are going to want to move your storages around anyway. I think Option 3 is the way to go for now.

Basically, I would swap out enough of your storages to open up a 4x4 space near the center of your base and put the TH there. If you don't have enough space due to walls, but your storages are close together, you should be able to move a minimal amount of walls around to create the space since the storages will no longer be there. As for your storages, they will make great HP sinks that slow down attacking troops so place them somewhere where they are in range of a bunch of defenses, but near the edge or just outside your base walls if you have no space inside. If you have any collectors inside your walls but no extra space, I'd swap them outside for your storages.

One other thing to note when changing your base around is that upgrading defenses actually will be fully functional during clan wars, so be sure to put them where you normally would want them to be even though they are upgrading.

2a) HOW TO MAKE YOUR BASE LESS VULNERABLE WHILE CHANGING IT AROUND
Ok so this is all well and good, but your base and loot will be ridiculously vulnerable while waiting for the prep day 24 period to end. To combat this, you have basically 2 options. 1) Change your base and stay online until your base locks in at the end of prep day and then switch it back after. 2) Time a shield that will not expire before you can log on again to change your base back.

Option 1 can work for those who are lucky to have the prep phase end at a convenient time, or who have no lives :) . Option 2 is really the only option for those who just can't stay on until the prep day ends. Unfortunately option 2 relies on someone attacking your wide open TH for trophies. Personally, for whatever reason, people don't attack me very often at all even though my TH is completely undefended. Putting enough decorations to show there are no traps around your TH and putting your BK and AQ to sleep when hoping for a shield should help though.

3) SCOUT OTHER CLAN'S BASES
Pretty self explanatory, although if they haven't changed their base around yet you won't get a ton of info beyond their more or less basic base layout. I'd probably just take a quick look to see who looks like a decent match as far as walls/defenses go.


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WAR DAY: Like the prep day, the war day lasts for 24hrs. During the war day phase, you basically have to attack 2 different opposing clan bases and try to earn as many stars against them as possible. There are some strategies on how to do this though.

As I mentioned before, the point of clan wars is to get as many stars as possible against the opponent clan. Opponent clan bases can be attacked as many times as there are clan members. However, each opponent base can count for at most 3 stars towards your total. The way it works is that whatever attack took the most amount of stars is the only attack that counts. So if a base has already been 3 starred, your clan gets no benefit if you attack it again. Ideally you are going to want to attack a base that hasn't been attacked yet or a base that only has 1 star against it that you are pretty sure you could 3 star.

As for your choice of bases, you are normally going to want to attack a base of similar strength to yours, because if all the super strong players attacked all the opponent clan's weak bases, there would be no weak bases left for the weaker players to attack. Strategically speaking, it would be best if people discussed beforehand who they were planning to attack, but that seems a little overboard for a farming clan. Supercell also automatically denotes a few recommended bases to attack during the war day, so you could just go with two of those if they haven't been attacked yet and you don't want to look around.

WAR DAY REPLAYS: During war day, all attacks are available for review by other clan members. If someone already attacked a base, check out the replay to see how the attack went and if you can find out where the traps were located and what kind of troops were in the clan castle.

WAR CASTLE/TRAPS: I mentioned before that war castle troops respawn after an attack, so even if a base was attacked and the CC troops killed, remember that they will be alive again when you attack. Same goes for any traps as they will be reloaded.

WAR DAY ARMIES: Your war day armies/spells are cooked up with your regular game barracks and elixir. Since you are using your regular barracks, if some of them are upgrading, it's going to take longer to cook your war army. BKs and AQs will be available during war day for attack no matter what. As for what kind of army to cook, serious war clan players are going to cook up expensive, long training armies to try to ensure a 3 star. Farming clans should probably plan on cooking cheaper, but fairly effective armies.

WAR BONUSES: If you gain any stars in your attacks, you will be awarded a personal war bonus. Your war bonus is the loot you will earn if your clan wins the overall clan war. If your clan loses war, the war bonus earned will be much less. I don't know exactly how much less, but from the youtube videos it seems like it will be in the neighborhood of 20%. If there is a tie between clans, apparently most of the bonus will still be earned.


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END OF CLAN WAR: After the 24hr war phase ends, your clan either wins and get a good amount of bonus loot or loses and gets a little as described above. Oddly, Any war loot won doesn't go straight to your regular storages, instead it goes to the little mini storages above the clan castle. In the regular game, if your clan castle is destroyed, you will lose a small percentage of the CC loot. Be aware, the amount of loot a CC can hold is limited, so you are going to want to spend it before finishing another clan war. I'm guessing any loot spent in game is taken out of the CC storages first, but I don't know for sure.

Lastly, attack replays will still be available after the clan war if you want to watch them for whatever reason.


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Hope this guide helps you guys.

Also, if you liked this guide and are looking for a clan, we have some openings. I post stuff like this as tips for our clan on a semi-regular basis. Here is the link to our clan thread. The title is a little misleading, as we now are a TH6-TH8 clan.