Town Hall 8 Farming Guide: Surviving a Town Hall 9 Attack

[DokuganR]

You forgot the most important part- fully expose your TH and surround it with decorations. That, arguably, is your best 'defense' against TH9s. I was still getting crushed as a fully max TH8- design matters little.

Anti-Giant/ring layouts also are rendered useless against them. Giants take out the ring of defenses and the barch/hero component goes into the base. If there's ATs and point defense in the core, barch will wipe out the inside. If there's a high splash concentration, the heroes will wipe out the inside. TH8 isn't big enough to support a high DPS core while maintaining a full outer ring.

[Stephenwolf]

Raid to objectives. Don't carry around full storages. TH on outside if you're in a higher league. Disincentivize the attacker.

[ekin90]

Another thing, make a base that centralized your clan castle aren't easy to lure. Then request max loons as cc troops to defend your base, this will kills those group of level 6 giants. Really worked well for me at least.

[SinOfDusk]

In my experience of gibarching TH8 and TH9s using lvl 6 troops, TH8 has completely no chance at all against a proficient attacker. 12 giants, 12 wb, lvl 15+ AQ would wreck every single TH8 base made in existence. The only way a good attacker to fail is that the attacker did a major mistake, which is independent of the base layout nor defense levels.

Here's my tips: (I'm just rephrasing the most important things in the OP)
1) keep your loot low, always.
2) TH outside
3) farm in sessions

This applies to every single TH except for TH10. That's why the game is broken, because every single defense is useless until infernos. But then when you do get infernos, nothing can touch you anymore (if you're farming)

[TRWBL]

If th8's didn't trap their th's so much but that's fantasy land...

[RedditInvictus]

How to stop a th9 from taking your loot as TH8:

-Max your base, skulls and defenses
-Leave th outside
...

Oh wait! you can't stop a th9 to take your loot regardless of your base design or your progress, sorry but if a th8 offers me 1.5K DE or more I am gonna steal it even without heroes, just Gibarch and one heal.

[F34R991]

Well written guide! It will certainly help TH8's defend against inexperienced to advanced GiBarchers sitting on TH9.
Although if an expert GiBarcher attacks them, not even a good funnel will stop them. But that will happen once in a blue moon