Mistakes every beginner do during war attacks

 How to fix these small mistakes that can lead to failure cascades. A failure cascade occurs when one (often small) mistake causes a chain reaction of events that results in a raid failure. Our performance in the scrim was not up to Omega standards. Let’s focus on these small things that make the difference between elite and average

.

Fresh Attacks without Poison

All Town Hall 9 fresh attacks need to include the Poison Spells. Yes, many TH9s use Clan Lava Hound which make the Poison Spells ineffective but Poison is still useful for:

1. Dealing with the Lava Pups.
2. Slowing down hero DPS and dealing with backside Skeletons
3. Dealing with Poisonable enemy Clan troops like Wizards or Witches.

If you are on fresh hit duty, always include a Poison Spell unless you get specific permission otherwise from a member of the War Team.

King Deployment Timing

For most Town Hall 9 attacks, the Barbarian King is intended to take out the enemy Archer Queen and then act as additional KillSquad(KS) DPS (damage per sec) and tankage for the Archer Queen. However, he cannot do this unless the attacking Golems gain aggro from the defenses and the enemy Clan troops. Because Golems move slowly from defense to defense, you need to wait and delay the Barbarian King until the Clan Castle troops have been pulled by the Golems. This will extend the life of the BK and allow him to target the Archer Queen and then last longer into the raid. This is vital to ensuring that your Kill Squad is as effective as possible.

Archer Queen Drop Timing

In the scrim, many attacks dropped Golems and then Wizards and then waited quite a while to deploy the Archer Queen. This is inefficient because Wizards alone take too long to clear the trash which causes your Golems to stay under fire from the exterior defenses much longer than necessary. Instead, drop your Golems, then flanking Wizards, and then your Archer Queen in the middle as quickly as possible. Your Archer Queen should be protected by the Golems and will help clear the exterior trash buildings very quickly. Your Golems have a set amount of HP so the faster you clear the outside, the faster you can make your entry to the base, and the longer / farther your Golems will last into the base.

Tunnel Vision with Deployment

When you begin your deployment phase of the attack, it’s important to have a plan but you also need to be able to adjust mid-raid as well. Suppose your plan is to drop five different groups of four hogs throughout the base. However, upon deploying your first squad, two teslas pop up. Strong attackers will have the presence of mind to immediately reinforce that area with either additional hogs or use a heal spell earlier than initially planned.

Another example is planning to adjust to how your Kill Squad moves throughout the core. Let’s say you are attacking a base with two known Double Giant Bomb locations and you intend for your KS to get to both. You need to be able to adjust your plan so as to alter your deployment from one side to the other if your KS takes out one Double Giant Bomb but not the other. This skill comes with practice and proper planning. Note that proper planning INCLUDES “if this goes wrong, I’ll do this.” Look at what could go wrong and have an idea of how you will react. That’s where our top tier attackers separate themselves.

Funneling Wizards

If we had 10 gems for every royal that walked in our scrim, we’d all be max TH11 with 40/40. Seriously, this is very basic but it is incredibly important aspect of attacks that we screwed up again and again.

When you deploy your Golems, you need to wait just a split second for defenses to target them and then deploy your Wizards on the OUTSIDE of the Golems. So many attacks deployed Wizards directly behind the Golems. This is problematic because it creates a very narrow funnel and will often lead to royals targeting the next closest exterior building when deployed. That causes the royals to walk along the outside and your raid to end in shame and misery.

Instead, you want to deploy your Wizards behind and to the outside of the Golems. See the screenshot below from Drago’s first attack. Drago is very good at creating wide funnels. Note that he has two Golems beating on the mortar and has three ATs and a cannon targeting the two Golems. He then deploys his four Wizards to the outside of the Golems so as to create a very wide funnel. This prevents your royals from walking along the edge of the base once deployed.

Hog Deployment & Using the Ring

When you deploy hogs, you will almost always want to create a wedge in the base first using the KS. As your KS penetrates to the core of the base, they will remove the defenses in that area (hopefully also removing the Archer Queen and a Double Giant Bomb) and create a void of defenses from the outside to the core. Imagine it as an entire pizza with a slice removed. When you deploy your hogs, you want to do so adjacent to the area the KS just removed. This will cause your hogs to wrap around the remainder of the base and stay grouped together. Hogs which are grouped together take down defenses faster and allow your heals to be more efficient.

Another note on hogs: hogs work best when they overwhelm defenses with their DPS. As such, always err on the side of more DPS at the beginning of the hog deployment phase. Try to deploy more than 3-4 hogs on the first few defenses. Nothing wrecks a hog raid faster than an unexpected spring trap or tesla causing the first defenses targeted to remain standing. When you start your hogs, use bigger groups at first so they can power through the first layer of defenses. As they work around the ring, you can then deploy smaller packs of 2-3 on isolated defenses that are distracted & shooting at the main group. This method of front loading your hog deployment creates momentum that overwhelms the defenses and still utilizes your hogs very efficiently.

The key takeaway for using hogs is to use the KS to remove defenses in such a way that the hogs will stay together in a pack and avoid not only Double Giant Bombs / Archer Queen but also defenses that will potentially split the hog pack into smaller groups that will stutter on defenses and make you split your heals inefficiently. Furthermore, your KS doesn’t actually need to trip the GB / Double Giant Bomb as long as it removes the defenses that cause the hogs to path over the GB / Double Giant Bomb.

Wizards in the Kill Squad

Similar to the funneling comments, this was another MAJOR issue in our attacks. Golems do crap DPS. Golems do crap DPS. Golems do crap DPS. Got it? Good! Heroes only target one thing at a time. As such, your KS must have more than just Golems and heroesif you want it to be as efficient as possible. You need Wizards as well.

Let me put it this way: a max TH9 (level 30) Archer Queen does 327 damage per second. One lvl 5 Wizard does 170 damage per second. That means that two lvl 5 Wizards do more damage per second than a max TH9 Archer Queen! Let that sink in for a moment. Yes, Archer Queens shoot faster and farther than Wizards and are better at eliminating enemy troops due to rate of fire. Your Archer Queen also has an ability which your Wizards obviously lack. However, Wizards are instrumental in taking down trash buildings and defensive structures. See this picture below :

Here’s how to help get more Wizards to the core:

1. Set a wide funnel efficiently (see above re Funneling Wizzies)
2. Bring more Wizards. 2 additional Wizards in the KS are often worth more than 2 additional hogs. I saw so many attacks start with 6-7 Wizards. 4-5 were used for the funnel and then the rest were saved for cleanup but none actually made it into the core behind the Golems. Take more Wizards! Drop 2 hogs for 2 more Wizards. There’s nothing wrong with only taking 20-22 hogs if your KS takes out ⅓ of the base.
3. Drop 2 delayed Wizards at the same time as your BK. This will help ensure that they follow him into the core and help deal with the CC troops and core buildings.

Poison Placement

A Poison spells is very, very useful because it slows enemy troop attack speeds and does accelerating damage over time. A good poison placement has two features: 1) the enemy troops must move through it to get to your troops and 2) the enemy troops will stay in the poison long enough to kill them.

In our scrim, there were many, many instances of poisons not being placed until the CC troops were already actively firing at our attacking troops. There were also instances of the poison spell being dropped on enemy CC troops that were moving to Golems in motion which then pulled them out of the range of the spell. Take a look at the example below:

In this attack, hogs are moving to the tesla and are being chased by skellies. The cc troops are also exiting the CC and coming towards the hogs. Wigg very calmly drops the poison just south of the tesla where it will a) catch the skellies once the hogs stop on the tesla and b) slow down the CC troops heading towards his hogs. This is a perfect example of leading your poison spell to where the enemy troops will be and making them walk through the spell before attacking you.

Patience on the Kill Squad

This is part of creating a funnel but deserves its own section. If you are taking 2 or more Golems and you enter from a side of the base which doesn’t have much DPS, you can wait a bit for your funnel to develop before employing your WBs or jump / Earthquake.

Golem Range & Initial Deployment

Golems will retarget a new defense if a) the defense they are targeting is destroyed or b) if a wall is opened close enough to them that they can now reach a defense within 7 tiles via an opening. 

Hogs and Heals

This tip is going to be base-specific and will rEarthquakeuire you to understand the context of when you need to deploy heals throughout a base. This also depends on how many heals you take for a hog raid. If you have 3 heals, you can obviously use them more often / earlier than if you have only 2 heals.

In general, if you have a large group of hogs (10 or more) and they are only being targeted by 1 defense at a time, you won’t need to use your heals. Even if you lose one or two hogs progressing through 3-4 defenses around the ring, it is usually better to wait to use your heal where it is needed.

Heals are most needed in the following scenarios:

1. On a high HP defense surrounded by high DPS defenses such as an X-bow surrounded by Teslas
2. On a high HP defense near a Wizard tower which does splash damage to all your hogs
3. Much like poison placements though, you want to lead your hogs just a bit and place your heal spell so as to maximize the amount of time your hogs will be in the spell’s range. If your hogs are approaching three clumped up defensive structures, drop your heal in the middle of the three structures so that your hogs will be in the heal the entire time they work on the three structures.

See the following attack as an example. The attacker started the raid with two heal spells. He then deployed his hogs from the NW and knew his hogs needed to path all the way around the base to the SE(south East) side. However, he deployed the hogs in three large groups. These hogs were able to work through the Tesla, two Cannons, two ATs, AD, X-bow, and Wizard tower before the heal was truly needed. 

This is the same attack about 30 seconds later when the first heal was deployed. Note that there is still a very large group of hogs remaining. These hogs will now progress through the mortar, cannon, AS (air sweeper), GB spot (between the Mortar & Wizard tower), the AD, and the Wizard tower with no loss of life and the attacker has a backup heal as needed.

Note: being so patient with heals is only recommended when you have a good scout on the base and can predict when your hogs will encounter traps such as GBs and Teslas. Otherwise, use your Healing Spells in strategic places as noted above in the three scenarios which need heals.

Jump Spells Vs. Earthquake

Another issue we saw on the War Team was confusion over when to use a Jump Spell versus 4 Earthquakes. Jump spells are useful when you only need to open a certain path for a limited period of time such as a suicide king into the Archer Queen compartment. Jump spells can cover 7 tiles and have a bit of leniency in the sense that if the edge of the jump spell touches a wall, the troops can usually jump that wall. The benefit of the Jump Spell over the Earthquake is that one Jump Spell only costs two spell slots whereas the Earthquake (to remove Walls) costs four spell slots.

Earthquake spells (“Earthquake”) cover 8 tiles and cost four spell slots if you want to remove walls. However, the biggest benefit of the Earthquake over the Jump Spell is that the walls are removed permanently. This can be very useful against newer meta bases with larger compartments because it allows the KS (especially the Archer Queen) not to get ‘landlocked’ in one compartment. Instead, the Archer Queen can clean one compartment and then move to next even 45 or 60 seconds later. Earthquake plus Wallbreakers can open several layers of the base and allow a stoned KS (Killing Squad) to decimate the base’s core.

Also Read:

• Upgrade priority focusing on wars
• Optimized clan war match making in upcoming upgrade