War Debriefing - August 24th, 2014

First off... GREAT JOB!  This was a fun war for once.  We came out swinging, and truth be told, I feel we knocked them out in the first round.  3 STAR attacks beginning the war from Spartian, Strong, Voodoo, Ltdan2g7, Antilles, Earl, and Brett right off the bat set us up good for the rest of the war because we weren't having to waste a lot of other attacks down in the lower rankings.  If you got a 3 star attack this war, bravo!  You were the reason we won.

MVP of this war goes to spartian.  Nice 6 star job this war.  Not only were you the first attack and got us off on the right foot, but you made sure we didn't have any mop up work with either one of your attacks.  Well done!

Honourable mention goes to Strong and Voodoo.  Your 6 star efforts were crucial as well.  Spartian went up 2 ranks for one of his attacks, and that is why he got the slight edge.  Both of your efforts were very instrumental to our success and I don't want to diminish that.

Couple notes:

Review your attacks.  See what you did wrong.  If you can't figure it out, ask one of the council members or one of the people who had a lot of success.  We saw a few instances where people fed their troops to clan castle troops.  I'm not going to call anybody out on this, but we preach it after every war.  There is no rush to these attacks.  Use what the generals have said in past wars.  And like I said, review your attacks and learn from them.

Also, I wanted to point out something as well... With about 6 hours to go, we pretty much knew we had this war in hand.  And then a lot of people were going more for the loot bonuses than getting us some more stars. Now, I can't fault you for this, because I can't control who you attack, but I want you to keep something in mind...  The only reason that you may have been in a position to do that, is because of the hard work and efforts of others before you.  Guys like I listed above you got us off to a fast start.  They could have attacked harder targets and got better bonuses for themselves with only one star attacks, but they attacked people at their level and got the clan a lot of hard earned stars.  Weather we are up 20 or down 2, I think we owe it to all the people in the clan, especially the ones that fought early and built up our stars, to try and better our total score on every attack.  Especially for the people ranked in the top 10 or 15.  People did their job down low to make sure "we" don't have to clean up after them, let's make sure that we don't profit off their hard work.  We win as a team, and we loose as a team!

Finally, if you are ranked 25-30... it is in your best interest to attack as early in the war as possible.  Your targets will dry up very fast if you don't.  Please make sure to get your attacks in early if you are in these positions.  It helps the generals formulate a plan of attack for the rest of the war.

Great job again guys... let's do it again this weekend!

Frosty

War Debriefing

From the desk of General Straw....

Another war, another close one, yet another loss.  This last war was just draining.  We started off horribly slow and then made a contest out of it.  The result was the same.

Luring Troops Out:

To beat the dead horse another time.  Unless you are doing an all dragon attack, you pretty much have to lure out the clan castle troops AND KILL THEM or you won't get 3 stars.  It's as easy as that.  There's really no exceptions unless you have significantly overpowered troops.  This includes when doing wizards, giants, balloons or anything.  The first two attacks reiterated that but plenty of others followed suit.  Please read the past half dozen recaps for tricks on how to actually lure them and kill them.  Note, making a circle or moon around them is necessary as dragons, wizards or balloons do splash damage and will destroy you when your troops are stacked.  Not luring clan castle troops out correctly will more than likely result in a temporary boot from the clan going forward.  It will serve as a warning to remind you to do this and then if it continues to happen the boot will lose temporary and become permanent.  I hate this as I'm friends with everyone in the clan but I hate losing and wake up calls are needed.

The Cost Of Warring

Wars are expensive.  I lost 1 million this war and it sucks.  My townhall is a day away from finishing and I really could've used that money to buy a new DE drill.  We don't really war to earn a profit but when you do win it definitely helps you recoup the costs.  We war as it provides another fun aspect to the game and it should unite the clan with a common goal.  Everyone needs to be putting their best troops forward to help shoulder the cost of the wars.  When we win wars, we all have a chance to at least make some gold and DE profits.  If you don't have a viable strategy for how you're going to attack, use dragons.  They are simple, they are easy, and they usually always 2 or 3 star everyone.

Requesting Troops:

First things first.  Request troops for war.  I saw a few attacks where people went in without help.  Next, when you are requesting troops for wars.  Ask for the best troops possible.  I saw many times people saying anything or level 4 troops.  This is war, at the bottom levels some level 6 giants or level 5 wizards can destroy nearly half of your opponents base by themselves.  Find the troops that work best for your strategy and ask for high level troops.  The people who are able to donate those high level troops are here for you and want to help you out.  This is soo simple that if I see it next time, you're going to get called out on it.

Getting the 3 stars.  It is soo important for the bottom 50% of our enemy clan to be 3 starred.  These are the must haves to have any shot at winning a war.   It will be impossible to win a war without the 45-60 stars of the bottom people being 3 starred.  This needs to also occur from our bottom 60% of people.  The reasoning is, you need to let the top ten to fifteen people go out and attempt to get 1-2 stars on their top 10 people.  The top 10 people are impossible to fully roll, it just cannot happen, but we cannot just rely upon the bottom stars either.  So we need to have the bottom clean up what they can to allow the top half to their work.  This is why its very important to try and attack within your range for your first attack and then to understand where the clan is for the second attack.  If other clan mates are struggling, we'll need help dropping down and picking up those stars.  Additionally, if you couldn't get 3 stars during your first attack, you really need to look at moving down and finding someone who hasn't been 3 starred yet that is lower.  Unless you just really messed up, or have a drastically better strategy, the ordering system is fairly accurate and as you move up, the defenses are going to harder.  

Spells:

Be sure to place your spell in the correct spot.  This means ensuring you're getting the corner of your current troops while leading them to their next few locations.  Additionally, make sure you're actually healing/raging troops that matter.  I've seen a rage be performed on just a few archers.  Really? A few archers, how does that help?  The rage needs should be used to eliminate clan castle troops that have been drawn out or should be used when you have a sizable quantity of troops ready to inflict maximum damage.  

Participation:

Everyone needs to use all of their attacks.  As evident by last weeks war.  If you don't fully participate in the war, you won't remain in the clan.  The clan is planning on downsizing, we need to get rid of 3 people which is going to be rough.  Show you want to be here by doing amazing donations, by showing you've learned how to war and that you want to participate.  

Dibs:

My final note is on dibs.  If you call dibs on someone, you really have to be ready to attack that person.  We've previously said 3 hours but I would like to shorten it to 1 hour.  Additionally, you need to have an attack in mind.  I wish I had recorded statistics on the dibs from last time.  I know that of the many dibs called, most were done right away and I'm appreciative of that.  However, of the dib calls, many did not earn 3 stars.  Thanks to those that did.  I remember Antilles had an amazing attack on 21 that I didn't think he could do, but the others I remember that Brett, Spartian, Baby were not able to 3 star their dib attacks.  Most of those just ran out of time but its part of understanding a strategy to ensure you don't allow quantity of archers to be eaten by a mortar.  

War MVP August 17th, 2014

Congratulations to Aubullah Muaddi and Voodoo for being this wars co-MVP's.  Both of you got 6 stars right around your level. 

I also wanted to give shout outs to the following:  sparx, medooley, Antillies, and papaturkey for your 6 star efforts as well. 

You guys all did great!

Quick War Observation

Now I am not sure if Straw will hit this in his notes or not, so i figured i would share one of my own observations reguarding the war.  

If you have dragons, USE THEM!!!!!!!!!!  If you are attacking on your level, it's almost everytime a guaranteed 2 stars. If you have lvl 3 dragons and use them, you shold have no less than 4 stars. And if you are lucky enough to have lvl 4 dragons, then there should be no reason you arent using them and getting the clan 6 stars EVERY WAR!!!!!

I am guilty of trying other things, but from this point forward I will only be using Dragons for war. If you have them, pair them with rage spells, and get the clan some stars. 

Congrats Papaturkey

Way to go on getting 5,000 donations in a season!  Now give the rest of us a chance :-). Seriously, way to go!

Clan Donations During Wars not counted... Official Statment

I know we have talked about this is the past, but for any questions as to "why don't I get credit for my donations in War Castles?" Here is why...

Troop donations made in Clan Wars will not count toward the Friend In Need achievement (or yield XP). There are a number of reasons for this which I will explain right here:
 
We’d like to make sure your clan mates donate Clan War troops for a single purpose: to win the War. We want Clashers to be motivated by the cause, and not for gems and achievements, as we believe not doing so would encourage people to donate troops that nobody needs. We’re not saying that every player would donate troops without consideration (most Clashers are loyal) but many would give away the cheapest troops available (like Goblins) simply to climb the achievement ladder.
Now that you can drop unwanted Clan Troops, this would be far too easy to exploit, especially given that there in Clan Wars, there is no cool down period between donations.
 
Again, most Clashers honor sportsmanlike behavior, but there are players who make the most of loopholes. We don’t want fair players to feel like they’re getting the raw end of the deal. We believe this to be a reasonable resolution.

War Debriefing - August 10th, 2014

From the desk of General Papaturkey....

What a horrible ending to a not so great war.  We should have won that one...though it still would have been close.  It was bound to happen eventually.  We are not perfect, well some of us aren't.  This time we got an enemy clan that new what they were doing.  We had good effort and good participation as always but we just came up short.  Good job Everyone!

First I want to make this point.  No 1 person wins or loses a war.  This is a joint effort from all clan members.  If 1 person doen't attack, yes it hurts the chances of winning and it makes things more challenging.  If 1 person attacks but only sends in a few troops, again it doesn't lose the war for us.  Even if 1 person attacks and gets no new stars or for that matter gets no stars at all we didn't lose because of that person.  WE lost the war.  As a clan WE failed to win.  It is that simple.  We can all run around saying if they would have done this or that, or papa why did you waste that rage spell on the lower half of the village, or Frosty why did you even try to get a star off of their number 7 when we had stars below that had not been captuered, or really Abdullah you came all the way down to their number 22 and got 0%.  Point being this: Every war has at least 30 clan member as a team if I fail, we fail; and if we fail, I fail.  We just had a lot of mistakes and misfortune in this particular war.  Again no single person wins or loses a war.

Second point I want to make has to do with "Dibs" attacks.  This will never work if you aren't ready as soon as the war starts.  For instance Antilles called dibs on #19...Wally either missed the mail about dibs on 19, disregarded the mail on dibs, or accidently attacked the wrong number.  So now #19 was attacked...Butters gets on and want to attack #19 realizing that it had a dibs call but sees that it was not Antilles that made the attack inquires about his option to attack.  He was told to hold fast and wait to see what Antilles does.  Meanwhile Medooley arrives and sees the same #19. a dibs attack, has been attacked but no stars were produced. He attacks then to clean it up gaining all 3 stars.  A short time later Antilles shows with his army and plan of attack at hand only to find that his "dibs" has been 3 starred and not only that it was attacked twice.  At whos feet do we lay the fault or the errors here?  Wally for attacking a "dibs" attack...(could have been an accident); Medooley for 3 starring a "dibs attack that was not his dibs...(hard to fault someone for 3 staring); Antilles for not attacking right away...(he runs on canadian time so you never know when he will show up).  I hear in the back some one yell "BLAME THEM ALL!"  No one is to blame.  It just didn work like we had hoped that it would.  This area of "dibs" attacks will have to have some bugs worked out, so in the meantime please give all "Dibs" attacks a 3 hr window before you go pouncing, double check who actually attacked and then check with the war general if you still have questions,  and last but not least get your "Dibs" done right away for the rest of those waiting to clean up your mess.  ;)

Third thing is war village set-up.  Medooley pointed this out and I want to bring it up again for those of you that missed it.  We need our villages spread out but not to the corners where they enemy can draw our Clan Castle troops to for a killing.  If you have buildings out in the corners pull them in so that when they are killing your CC troops you are at least picking off 1 or 2 archers or wizards with you own towers.  I understand your thinking that if they are way out there then they have to take more time to go get those last few building.  A few archers or mortar tubes killing their CC assasins is far better than a builders hut in the corner.  Spread you village out far enought that they have a hard time geting the CC tropps out of the CC but not to far that they can then lure them out of distance for you to help protect you CC troops with back-up fire.

Fourh thing I wanted to address is the question "When should I attack?"  This question does not have 1 simple answer but it does have a few principles that apply to everyone.  To address this we must first remember that STARS only win or lose a war.  Now for those of us at the bottom your chioce of opponents is quite a bit slimmer than the options that Oli or Frosty or CZ have.  Since STARS are all that matter in a war we need to be diligent in making sure that we have all the stars on as many players as possible.  If you are at the bottom...Daggz this week it was you.  Are you going to get three stars on your equal or the enemies above you???  Maybe is the corect answer.  We sure hope so, but if in fact you are unable to 3 star the bottom to opponents then another clan member needs to attack those opponents and get those missed stars.   So the answer to the question is a seris of questions...Am I at the bottom?  If I wait does that mean that those above me are waiting for me to see if they need to clean up what i was unable to get?  Will my waiting cause me to not have anyone left to attack that I can 3 star?  Simply put:  If you are in the bottom half of the clan please get your attacks in as soon as you can.  There is a team effort here and your part is to do what you can as quickly as you can so that alternative plans can be made.  

Lastly I want to talk again about CC troops.  This war we feed more troops to lvl 4 dragons and lvl 6 wizards than any other 2 wars combined.  Time after time while watching the replays (yes Strong I watch them all) the Clan castle never fully emptied, or an attempt was never made to clean it out.  I was amazed at how frequently this happened and to whom it happened to.  This was not isolated to the new members or the members that seem always to have this problem but it was across the board.  (exlcuding all dragon attacks, where drawing out the CC troops is a waste of time)  There were a few great examples of drawing out CC troops from this war though that I wanted to bring to light.  I am not going to point them all out but just a few.  Watch Hak's attack against Mano Deco @ 2hr and 5mins until the war ended...just watch how Hak drew them out...then grouped together and then finished them off.  Another one to watch is Oli's attack against Leo @ 15hrs and 7min until the war ended...hog rider in to draw out cc troops...drawn out and away...grouped...killed....then the best part of the whole thing...1 hog rider back in to make sure that the CC actually cleared....go thing that Oli checked too because sure enough out came some minions and a lvl 6 archer...also drawn away and killed....Oli I really enjoyed watching that.

In closing I want to say that again I have enjoyed watching you all play this game.  Being apart of this clan is and continues to be fun for me and my wife...(she is always saying how she like you guys and gals).  Put this loss behind us and lets win the next one!  hihi David Vance you always suprise me!

War MVP for August 10th, 2014

VooDoo... Great job with your attacks!  You and MeDooley are this week's MVP. dooley had a great second attack that gave us hope there at the end, but it was just too much to overcome!  Congrats to both VooDoo and Dooley for your efforts!

For Daggz

Here is a pretty good Town Hall 5 base I found.  Dude spends way too much time with the decorations.  You DO NOT NEED THEM.  But it's a good way to do things, and where to place traps and stuff.

War debriefing: August 3rd, 2014

What a great war and an awesome 3peat.  I hope we can keep the streak going.  I was nervous after it first selected that team but we not only found a way to win, but to pretty much dominate them.  While doing this writeup for the first time I had a billion thoughts running through my head.  I love winning in wars, I definitely watch as many live matches as possible and think in my head about how their strategy's are great or how I think I could do the attack better.  I realize not everyone is as active as I am though, and I'm actually okay with that.  

As much as I'm getting tired of constantly doing the same raid to earn some sweet loots, I love clash of clans and I love this clan.  CoC provides me a method to keep in touch with multiple friends that have moved to different states, it provides water cooler talk at the office and at lunch, and will soon provide great tour guides when I do some international traveling. :-)  It supplies me with hours of entertainment reading the chats, doing raids (even though I'm starting to hate them) and then wondering when I'm going to pass Faulty and Sparx (you both should know I'm gunning for you).  Everyone doesn't have as much invested or the same passion and that's perfectly fine.  I don't think I'd really want to change that about them as this clan just seems to be clicking right now.

Onward to the war.  I cannot say this enough, awesome victory.  We struck first, we knocked them back onto their heals and they couldn't recover.  We had great participation as we used 59 of our 60 total attacks. They were a tough opponent who had really really good bases.   We got slightly lucky that they were horribly attackers as our overall number of stars was down.  The past few 5 wars with the same number of people we were averaging 76.2 stars and this war we fell to 70.  It just speaks to the difficulty of their bases.  We actually left 4 stars on their bottom 10 where the past 3 wars we hadn't left any on the bottom 10.

First, the most obvious thing that's been brought up many times before but I'll beat the dead horse.  You need to eliminate the clan castle troops.  Even if they don't have a dragon in there and just have wizards or archers, those troops will still eat your giants alive if you do not kill them.  Most of the time its quite easy to eliminate these troops as well.  The best way is to click scout on your opponent, click on their clan castle and see the radius that the clan castle shows.  If you can get a troop inside of that radius, the clan castle troops will start to come out.  Be sure you watch how many do come out as you may be required to get more troops in the radius to get them all out.  Then simply lure them away to the corner of the map where the fewest of their towers will attack you.  Use a slew of archers or wizards to dispose of whatever comes out and you're ready to execute your gameplan.  As a caveat, if you are doing an all dragon attack, saving one rage potion for when your dragons face their clan castle troops is known to work best.

Next, I noticed on a couple of attacks the poor use of spells.  Be sure when using a healing or a rage spell to lead your troops.  It's best to find the radius where they currently are and where they will be moving to so that you can maximize its efficiency.  The outer ring of the spell should just be touching where they currently are.   She was able to keep nearly all of her hogs alive as she perfectly placed her 3 healing spells. While I'm discussing spells, be sure to couple the spells that work best with your attack.  If you are using hog riders, healing spells will be the best pairing spell.  If you are doing all dragons, rage is going to work best for you.  Practicing during the week the various combinations is obviously the best way to figure out what works best for you.  Final note is that I'm not sure how much value the lightning spell holds in the wars, just about every clan castle we've encountered in the past month has had dragons or wizards in there.  One single lightning spell cannot kill either of those troops.  1 lightning spell will also not deal significant enough of damage to any single tower.  Just my thoughts.

Hog riders have been nerfed a little bit by big bombs.  If you happen to notice big empty gaps where a big bomb can be on the outside.  Sacrificing just one hog rider to trip the bomb is much much better than having 30 of them go up in the blast.   If you're looking for examples of how to do this efficiently, check out Cz's attacks this past war.

Finally, my thoughts on dibs.  I really wish we had the ability to do some kind of sticky forum thread that would be at the bottom of some frequently viewed page.  I believe that just keeping a list works but I know its possible I may have missed one.  Be sure when you do call dibs that you still try and do your attack as early as possible.  Not everyone reads the clan mail and not everyone is active as you may be.  I'm wondering if maybe we should keep a list on the page or possibly even get a Google+ page.  Things to think about and chime in if you have better ideas.

I feel I could ramble on for another hour and have many more topics but want to leave topics for next go round.

Straw

If you want to play COC on your computer

Papturkey sent me this link on how to set it up where you can play COC on your computer rather than your portable device.  I think there are a few guys in the clan using it...

http://www.reddit.com/r/ClashOfClans/comments/1qbolr/tutorial_on_how_to_play_clash_of_clans_on_pc_or/

Keep in mind that I don't know anything about this, so if you have questions, ask one of the people in the clan that are using it.  You are using this at your own risk.

War MVP - August 3rd, 2014

Straw will be writing up the debriefing that I will post soon...

But I wanted to take care of the MVP for this last war... DV+ Junior... CONGRATS!  6 Star and most of all, 8 defenses and they only took 1 star.  Great job!