My clan has usually done well at adapting quickly to game changes. Since we’re not so interested in CWL, I’m putting my thoughts here for everyone. This guide focuses especially on clan leadership and how to organise for CWL.
Note: this is written for clans with mixed TH, especially those that can’t field 15 TH12s. Parts of it will apply to the few clans of all TH12, but many parts won’t.
And: CWL is new and some things are still uncertain – these are indicated by comments or ? in [square brackets] below. This guide is for people trying to get ahead of the curve; I’ll update it as any details of CWL are clarified.
I'll be putting updates in orange as I go along. If you don't like lots of text,
Judo Sloth has a good intro of the basics of what CWL is. But without the detailed strategy discussion.
EDIT: clans finishing the glitched 12H+12H wars are reporting there is a 10* bonus added for winning the day war. And... that changes some of the logic below. I'll try and update later today
Rules Recap
First a quick recap of the rules:
- Each month there is a 48-hour opt-in window during which you can start CWL, but can’t start a regular war. (Events tab shows when this window starts). Starting CWL works like starting a normal war in terms of opt-ins and eligibility, except you can pick any number 15-50 – it doesn’t need to be a multiple of 5. At this point you are setting your weekly roster which cannot change during the week (even if they leave the clan). You can start any time during the 48-hour window, it doesn’t make any difference. (So it doesn’t matter if your regular clan war is still running when the advertised CWL time comes around)
- SC have changed their info: your clan cannot do regular war at the same time as league war. But individual players CAN leave the league clan, join another clan and start war or FW there during league week and do both by hopping back and forth. WARNING - regular matchups might be slow and bad if most clans are doing CWL
- The first time you do CWL you are put in 1 of 18 tiers based on the strength of the top 15 of your weekly roster. For all future weeks you stay in the tier, only moving up a tier if you finish in the top 2 (3 in bronze leagues) or down if you finish in the bottom 2
(Note this happens the first month your clan plays. If you don't play in month 1 you are placed by weight when you do first enter. And actually the first 3 tiers aren't filled in the first month. Clans can only reach them via promotion) - Once you start you are put in a group of 8 clans, and do 7 wars against them. This starts almost immediately (search times seem much like normal wars). Prep day 2 runs at the same time as battle day 1, so it takes 8 days in total.
- For each war you pick 15 people from the weekly roster to be in that war. That’s your war roster. Note that you can only select people who were put in the weekly roster at the start of the week – you can’t bring someone in from outside the clan part way through. During prep you can see your opponent's total weekly roster, but not who they have selected for the day.
- War works much like normal, except it is 1 attack per player. You get regular war loot for the attack and as usual it depends on whether you win or lose.
- At the end of the week the 8 clans are ranked by the total stars they got during the week [tie breaker?] to determine promotion and demotion.
- In addition to normal loot everyone gets “medals” (with medals you can buy shiny rewards, so you want these), which is the total of:
- An amount to everyone on the weekly roster, depending on how many wars you won. This include people who weren’t in any wars.
- An amount depending on the stars earned by the player. Note this will only go to people in the war roster, not to the weekly roster, because it is based on the stars they individually earn.
- Bonus medals which the leadership can allocate. The patch notes list the bonus size as "Tier Rewards" - 135 in the top tier down to 35 in bottom. You get this amount per win PLUS the guaranteed bonus column. So in the top tier the guaranteed bonus is 4. If you win 3 times, you get (4+3)*135 medals to hand out.
With 15 players in the clan, and if the bonus medals were split equally, the war win bonus is around 33% of the total reward; the stars about 54%; and the bonus medals about 13%. With more players in the week roster the wins become more important, since everyone gets those.
All the rewards increase for higher tiers. So good rewards don’t just come from wins – they come from managing to stay in a high tier.
Concepts
Understanding MM
The “MM” is leading to a lot of questions, since it’s so different to normal wars. The basic rule is simple:
there isn’t any matchmaking. It’s just like BhB multiplayer – stronger clans will end up in higher tiers. In fact your tier will mostly depend on the strength of the bases you bring. Skill will likely only add a couple of tiers at most.
The exception is the first week you play; then you are placed according to strength: specifically the top 15 of your
weekly roster. It doesn’t matter who you put in war in day 1; it matters who you included for the week overall. Adding extra low bases also has no effect.
Rewards
There is a subtle balance on rewards. The system is designed so that you get more rewards for being in higher tiers, to discourage clans trying to camp out low. However... quite a lot of the rewards (~40%) are dependant on day wins. So if you go too high and don't win many days you are losing out that way. There's a lot more analysis near the end of this post.
Offence & Defence
Initially SC announced that it was the clan with the most total stars that would win the league. For this high-offence bases can be an advantage - eg a defenceless TH11 compared to a TH10, since all the stars they gain on offence go to your clan, but any stars they give away are spread across the 7 other clans. Previously I had more information about that here.
But 2 things have come to light since, that weaken the advantage of offence. Firstly the rewards for day wins, above. But secondly the fact that there is a 10* bonus each day to the clan that wins the war. In a war with 15 attacks each side a difference of 2-5 stars might be normal. So the win bonus may be larger than any natural difference in stars between the clans.
Which means - much of the focus of the game is in fact on day wins rather than total stars and removes much of the advantage of high offence. Lopsided bases are not a disadvantage as long as their offence brings in as many stars as they give away on offence. However offence and defence have become more equal on importance again.
Planning
Picking the roster for the week
(See also the clan management section near the end for large clans)
The simple answer: in later weeks include everyone who wants to be in. You can decide later who actually gets to be in each war. From week 2 onwards you get the same opponents, no matter who you pick, so you may as well include them all. All players on the roster will get rewards,
so it’s worth including people even if they won’t war in week 2+.
Week 1: there is a slight difference in that the top 15 bases decide what league you start in. Include high bases, and you’ll start in a higher and harder league. Higher leagues get more rewards, so you get the most rewards by picking your strongest possible team. But you shouldn’t include high players in week 1 unless they can actually play, because they will count towards your matching.
If they push you up to a much higher tier, you will potentially lose each war, and so get less rewards. So in week 1 your top 15 should be the top 15 who can play most days during the week. And then you can include everyone below that whether they can actually war or not. This is only an issue in the first week.
However, if you do manage to launch yourself into a very high league, and a couple of people opt out for week 2, you might find yourself getting thumped. You’re maybe still better off
technically on rewards. But
emotionally this might not be much fun. So if you’re more interested in clan harmony than max rewards there is an argument for entering a
slightly lower roster in week 1 to leave some wiggle room and make it easier to win in week 2.
Picking the roster for each war
(This describes the optimum strategy for getting to a high tier. See also clan management section)
Again there’s a simple answer: pick your strongest bases, as long as you are sure they will attack, offence is more help than defence since total stars matters. You get the same opponent regardless, so stronger bases are always better. There are some details though: anyone who is flaky and might not attack is a serious disadvantage. A missed attack is likely to cost you 2*. Skill is less important. For example:
- Pick a clueless near max TH11 over a skilled near max TH10.
- Pick a TH10 over a TH11 if the TH11 has a 10% chance of missing their attack.
- A base with good offence and bad defence is preferable to bad offence and good defence, since total stars matter. However, given the 10-star daily win bonus it's best to concentrate on just winning.
- Probably pick a TH11 with one sleepy hero over a TH10 with heroes awake. A higher TH with a hero missing will usually still do more damage. BUT - this might not be popular with the lower players, so I'd consider clan harmony before suggesting this. But technically it should be the best strategy.
(I've removed the previous section here about preferring offence and defence as it's not very relevant in light of the daily win bonus)
tl;dr : pick your 15 bases with the highest offence. Mostly ignore defence and skill levels. But only pick people who are certain to attack – missed attacks are very bad now.
Warning on opt-ins for day 1: CWL uses the normal war opt-in setting. This is fine, except for day 1: if you use the opt-in for people to show they are happy to be in CWL, then everyone on the weekly roster will be opted in. But day 1 prep starts immediately, and you need to make any changes to the line-up soon. So if someone wants to be in the week, but can’t attack in Day 1, you need to switch them out during day 1 prep and be sure they will tell you. My suggested solution for week 2+ is to put the entire clan into the weekly roster, and then their opt-in shows you if they can attack in day 1. You just need to be careful in week 1 with high bases – you will probably need to talk to them individually to check their status.
The system also doesn't show the opt-ins when you are doing the daily selection. The only way to check is to go back out to the clan list. So overall, if your clan uses discord, you might want to set up a system on there for people to list which days they can do.
Addition (from skrags) - CWL is one war every day. Unless you're a very active leader you might want to consider organising at the start a rota of co-leaders who take turns to organise the individual wars, sort out the daily roster for any opt-outs, make sure war CC get filled etc, and maybe do the battle plan for their war. You'll be in prep and doing roster/CC for one war, while also fighting the previous war - it could get tiring if you do it all.
War Strategy
Being 1 attack per player changes the strategy quite a lot, at least for higher TH bases. It makes war more of a 2* war than existing wars. Going all out for a 3* and ending up with 1* hurts because no-one can clean.
Generally speaking you should only hit each target once. Even if an attack fails and gets 1*, it’s usually best to leave it. If an attack gets 0* then it’s worth rehitting that in preference to a stronger target. If an attack is 1*ed it
might be better to hit that than a target several TH higher. For example if you have a TH9 1* an enemy TH9, then a TH11 or 12 on your team
might be better cleaning for a guaranteed 2* gain than hitting a very strong TH11 or 12 that they are very unlikely to 3*. As a rule of thumb I would say only hit a 1* base if it’s a choice between that and a 0* base 2 TH higher – but of course it depends on the details.
Strategy note: most of the text below assumes you are fighting an opponent similar to yourself. If opponents are hugely different then there are too many possibilities to describe. In the first week of CWL your opponents may be similar. However from week 2 onwards you can expect to meet clans with wildly different line-ups to you (eg clans much stronger who got relegated because they are clueless). Very strong opponents are likely to be incompetent. Very weak opponents might be highly skilled. So you will need to improvise.
Update: it looks like even in week 1 you might see enemy rosters VERY different to yours; more on that below.
Battle plan
In regular wars the optimum strategy is more or less to start at the bottom. Your weakest attackers hit the weakest targets until they are 3*ed and work up. Any attacker who simply cannot 3* scouts very high or 2*s the top. Higher attackers clean up lower if needed, or if not, they continue working up the map.
With no cleaning it’s different. There’s no advantage your bottom guy trying their bottom base early, because no-one can clean. (Unless he gets 0*!). Instead the optimum strategy is probably to
plan from the
top:
- Look at the top enemy base, and find your weakest attacker who can reliably 2* it. If it’s a very anti-2 base you might need to use an attacker equal to the defender. But if the TH isn’t too well hidden you can usually 2* the TH above you, and 2* 2 TH above if they’ve got an anti-3 base.
- That attacker is allocated to attack that base. But there’s no need to actually wait for them to do so – even if they fail with a 0* you can’t attack the base again. So as soon as you’ve allocated the target you can move onwards…
- For the next few bases consider if you have a higher attacker who can reliably (like 90%+) 3* the base. It’s probably only dip attacks to be considered at the moment. If not, again pick the weakest player who can reliably 2* the base. And so on… This should be leaving you some high attackers left over who can dip downwards.
- Once you have strong enough attacks left to 3* most of the remaining bases then switch to 3* mode; your strongest attacker hits the strongest remaining target, aiming for 3*, and so on downwards. If you’ve got a very wide range of TH you might have some 2* targets mixed in lower; but for a small number of TH in war, you are trying to free up enough attacks to dip and 3* the entire bottom of the roster.
Throughout you should take skill and strategy preference into account. So you’ll need to adjust if a base is weak against an air attacks – you’d want an attacker who likes air attacks preferably. So you need to balance up several factors.
And for all attacks it doesn’t matter much which order people actually attack as you can’t clean. In theory, it’s best if the bottom attackers go first, even though you allocated attacks from the top down. That way if someone disconnects and gets 0* you can skip hitting the enemy #1 and just beat up the low 0* target for an easy 3. But this only really matters in case of a 0* and there won’t be many of them… So you want to save 1 or 2 big attacks to get easy hits low in case of disconnects or no-shows; but other than that the attack order doesn’t really matter.
Attack strategy - “2 stars wins wars”
Regular wars are based around 3*ing most enemy targets, with other players – including ones from a higher TH - cleaning up any failures. Wild swings for 3* on hard targets are rewarded in regular wars. To succeed in CWL you need to get your players to change their mind set.
It’s reliability that is rewarded in CWL. You must get at least 2* with every attack.
Low TH: for TH7 and below they can probably attack pretty much as normal as 3* can be near certain. This depends more on the players than the game – they are new to the game; it’s an auto-3 for a skilled player, but these players are learning. In theory go for 3* every time.
TH8 v TH8: In theory shoot for 3*, but be careful of hog attacks, for example which could be a 1*. So pick a 3* strategy that is sure of getting the TH.
TH9 v TH9: As above 3* is easy enough it’s realistic to shoot for it. Witch spam is probably safest – starting near the TH if it’s not central. Hog and loon based attacks do have the risk of going horribly wrong and getting 1*. They are fine, of course if the kill squad can take out the TH
TH10 v 10: This will be complicated. Due to rams in many regular wars the TH is outside, and the kill squad starts the opposite side (or even the entire army when spamming witches). This isn’t a good idea in CWL! TH10s will need to be very cautious going for the 3* unless they can be sure of picking off the TH. In many clan breakdowns it will make more sense for a TH10 to 2* a TH11 and a TH11 wipe out a TH10. But you may see more anti-2 bases; in which case it’s more feasible to get a slightly heavy KS to ram through to the TH and then you can hog the back, for example.
TH11 v TH11: The balance has changed here quite a bit in the update especially with the tornado trap, but also the eagle buff, so it’s hard to know yet what the balance is. If hitting an equal TH11, in many cases it’s going to be a 2* attempt. Which is why you should be switching, and TH11s trying to 2* up if possible, and TH12s clear TH11s.
TH12 v TH12: it sounds like defence had a big boost in the update, so this effectively looks like a 2* game only.
Note for TH10+ that getting 3* on bases equal to your own is now quite risky, and in many cases an attack might need to deliberately 2*. Which is why you shouldn’t be hitting your equal – use the strategy above to try to 2* high and then just bully low bases for 3*.
Base design
Bases that are best in regular wars are not necessarily ideal for CWL. In general the bases of your top TH or 2 need to be more anti-2 than in normal wars. And troll bases work much better.
TH9: These can afford to be pretty much unchanged. If an enemy TH9 gets a 2* on your TH9 that’s not a great result. The only exception is if TH9 is your top TH – then you want to stop a TH8 grabbing the 2*
TH10: If TH10 is your top TH, I would put the TH in the centre, assuming your base is near max. TH10s in enemy clans which are only TH10 and down are unlikely to have the experience to exploit this. If you have several TH11/12, then you can still make bases largely anti-3, since it’s not a great result for the enemy to 2* you. However there is one change: currently many TH10 anti-3 bases have the TH
totally exposed and a wizard can be used to snipe it. This is now a serious disadvantage – an enemy can do any 3* attack they like and use that wizard to ensure the 2*. Rather you need the TH to be somewhat protected by guns to give the opponent an awkward choice: do they use the ram on the opposite of the base to start the attack, and risk a 1*, or do they start on the TH side, which badly restricts how the ram can be used, making the 3* attack much weaker.
TH11: This is hard to say. If this is your top TH, you can probably go outright for anti-2 bases. If you have plenty of TH12s, it will depend how much the enemy can free up stronger attacks to hit them. As for TH10 you certainly don’t want the enemy to snipe the TH for free. Initially we will run anti-3 bases, but with the TH moved somewhat inside. Anti-2 ring bases are probably too risky – giving spammed bowitch too much chance of a triple; but against weaker opponents it might actually be worth it. Troll bases may work well: have the TH part way between centre and edge, and load up the area in front of it with every trap. (Have you seen how OP the tornado looks!)
TH12: This sounds like a 2* game at the moment, especially with no attacks to cover. The balance has changed a lot here, so this is hard to predict. But it looks like troll bases or fully anti-2 bases, even ring bases, are likely to be the way to go. This is especially true if you have plenty of TH11s: preventing enemy TH11s from hitting up may be essential.
Originally Posted by OnyxDS
Maybe more than once. I think with his Z (base amount of medals) he was thinking of the base number of bonuses and getting confused.
