UD Raiders - January 20th, 2015

Here is the list for this week's mid-week UD Raiders War.

Generals:
Antilles - Confirmed
Frosty61 - Confirmed
Papaturkey - Confirmed
Mamaturkey - Confirmed

Invitee's:
David Vance - Confirmed
Strong - Confirmed
Whiteshadow - Confirmed
TigerLynx - Confirmed
Howitzer - Confirmed
chilly - Confirmed
Grege - Confirmed
Gamecock Pokey - Confirmed
Teke - Confirmed
TJ - Declined
     - Logan - Confirmed
Sid - Confirmed


Alternates:  Daggz, spartian

UD Raiders War - 01/13/2015

First off guys, GREAT WAR last week.  It's time for our next mid-week UD Raiders War.

This week's generals for the war will be the following...

1.  Antilles - Confirmed
2. Mamaturkey - Confirmed
3. Bjohnson350! - Confirmed
4. Sparx - Confirmed

Joining them, are the following.  We need to know ASAP if you will be going or not.  We have others that want too, and if you can't we'd like to get some of the alternates in...

5. Chilly - Confirmed
6. Tigerlynx - Confirmed
7. Ltdan2g7 - Confirmed
8. Wally  - Confirmed
9. Butters81  - Confirmed
10. Spartian  -Delcined
               - SUB IN - Daggz25  - Confirmed
11. dbag   - Confirmed
12. Hannibal - Confirmed
13. gamecock pokey -Delcined
               - SUB IN - Schnack1982  - Confirmed
14. Hagrid - Confirmed
15. Grege22y  -Delcined
               - SUB IN - Psychs, MW NWOP - Confirmed

Alts: whiteshadow

If you aren't chosen this week, I know they will be warring in Clan "off in thewoods" so if you want the war practice, you are more than welcome to head over there if you like.

Then we'll see everybody back here by Friday for our next war.  We will be starting 2 hours earlier from now on.

Enter UD Raiders

All, I have an important announcement to make! We would like to introduce the UD Raiders! This will be a clan that will take 15 members and war once a week on Tuesday nights. The war will end Thursday night and the members will return to UD before the start of war on Friday night. Therefore, the people who play in UD Raiders will war twice for that week. Here are the details of UD Raiders.

• Will raid with 15 members: 3 leaders and 12 others.
• War will start Tuesday night (10 CST)
• Participation is stricter than the main war. Not only are both attacks required, but it is expected you will give your all despite the score and will be willing to discuss strategy before and after attacks. We want this to become better at war!

If being in this war interests you, then post in the comments below. For at least this first war, we will select the 12 members going. How we continue to select each week is still being defined, but be sure that there will be a rotation and if you are interested you will get to participate.

Remember, while we hope to win and make loot, loot is not the primary intention of this. It is to get better at war! It is the hope that this will benefit the main clan's war.

Please note all of this is subject to change as we work out the kinks. Hope to see many of you in Raiders!

GoWiPe Tutorial

Hey guys! As our clan continues to level from our great farming skills, more and more of us are hitting TH9+. Now, I still firmly believe that against TH8s and lower, dragons/hogs are your best options. However, as many of us are finding out, both of those do not really work well against TH9s and above. So different strategies are needed! Today, I’d like to talk about one of those: GoWiPe!

GoWiPe is so named because of its unit composition: Golems, Wizards, and Pekkas. There are many minor variants to it, but those are the primary units. GoWiPe is a 3 star strategy against TH8s (and lower) and TH9s with weak walls. Note that, due to its lack of mobility, you cannot count on getting 3 stars with GoWiPe against tough TH9s and TH10s. Those require even more advanced strategies that we can talk about when we are comfortably 2-starring these tough bases.

The purpose of a GoWiPe is to get your wizards, pekkas, and possibly heroes into the core. The high level strategy for this is:

1. Deploy golems to absorb front-line enemy fire
2. Clear trash with wizards behind golems in order to create funnel
3. Open path to core with wbs/jump spells
4. Send pekkas and additional wizards to core
5. Profit

Let’s talk about each point individually.

Step 1: Golem Deployment

First, let’s talk about golems. Golem damage is TERRIBLE. Their purpose is NOT to destroy defenses (like giants). They tank, and that is it. Do not use a rage spell to rage a golem. It’s like taping a knife to a tortoise: still not very dangerous. The golem is a sponge. If you finish a battle with a golem with a lot of life left, you either used it wrong or didn’t need one. Their 30 space is completely wasted if they don’t absorb a lot of damage. Wizards do 18 times more damage for the space! Don't waste spells on golems. If they die, they did their job!

Anyway, golem deployment is critical. Most commonly you will bring 2 golems. Sometimes 1 will work, sometimes you might need 3 (rare). The point is drop them so that you draw enough fire that wizards can clear the buildings you need behind them in order to create a funnel.

Look in the image I attached. All the space between the two cannons is safe to drop wizards. 

Sometimes to create a funnel, you only need a single golem. Look at a screencap from a GoWiPe I did this past war:

That single golem was enough to draw fire from all nearby defenses, and the base lent itself to a natural funnel.

Step 2: Create a Funnel

I’ll briefly define funnel here in case anyone is confused. A funnel is to direct your troops where you want them to go (the core!). Wizard/pekka/heros target the nearest structure. So your goal is to clear enough stuff out wide, so that when you deploy those units, going towards the core is the closest structure. You do not want them wandering around the edge of the base. As you can see in the above screenshot, I dropped a few wiz on either side of the golem. These left a line of structures in the direction I wanted the troops to go. Right after that shot, I dropped the pekkas, as the nearest structures were going to be that army camp, then the cannon/archer tower, THEN the AQ altar. Therefore, the pekkas would be funneled towards the core.

In the above screenshot, the guy has dropped enough wiz to quickly clear all the structures behind his golems, and has done it wide enough that pekkas will head into the compartments instead of wandering around the base. Without those golems drawing fire, those wizards would be dead well before they completed their job.

Step 3: Create Path to Core

This step will vary depending on the base layout. It might require wallbreakers, a jump spell, or both. Most generally, there will be 3 levels of walls to get to the core. My preferred method is to break the first level with wallbreakers, then once your troops have gone through that break, use a jump spell to clear the final layer or two.

I

n the above screenshot, you case see that after I funneled my pekkas to the corner where I wanted them to proceed to the core, I dropped my jump spell. A jump spell can actually cover 2 wall levels if they walls are 3 spots apart like they are here. So this actually provided a path straight into the core for me. I could have likely used wallbreakers to pretty easily break into the core on this base, but I’m terrible with wallbreakers and wanted to be sure, so I used a jump. If you don’t use a jump, you can bring an extra rage.

Note: This is more advanced that we need to get here, but realize that against tougher bases, you will actually use wallbreakers to get into the core and a jump to get OUT of the core in order to help facilitate the 3 star.

Step 4: Get To Da Core!

So if you did the previous 3 steps correctly, this should be pretty simple. Get your troops into the core, and rage them to demolish the core defenses and the TH!

That is all the steps to a GoWiPe. I know this has been long, but let’s talk about a couple more topics real quick.

CC: To lure or not to lure

With the CC, you have 3 options. Lure and kill it, don’t lure and lightning them when they group up to attack you, and don’t lure and rage your troops into them. They all have pros and cons. If you lure them, you are wasting a LOT of time and GoWiPe attacks are slow. Very real danger you will run out of time if going for the 3 star. Also, if you don’t lure, the CC troops tend to help pull your troops into the core. However, if you time things wrong, the CC troops can devastate your wiz and pekkas. I did not lure either of my attacks this war. I instead hit my troops with a rage and a heal and it worked well. Do what you are most comfortable with, but have a plan!

If you DO lure, try and pull the CC troops to where you plan to start the GoWiPe, so you can put to use the surviving troops of the CC kill. Witches are amazing at taking out the enemy CC (with some wiz backup)!

Spells

There is a lot of flexibility here. You definitely want at least 2 rage. Whether the rest are heals, jumps, or rage are up to you and the base you select.

That’s all I got! If you made it all the way through, I commend you. Please let me know if you have any feedback or questions.

New War General/Co-Leader

Please join me in congratulating Antilles on his promotion to War General.  It's been a long time coming,  He has been a huge help in wars lately and does a lot of homework to help the clan out.  Glad to have him aboard!

Dragon Attack 101

From the desk of guest contributer Antillies:

Hey all, how are you doing? Now, we are primarily a dragon attack clan and I think we are ready to start really adding some next level strategy to our war attacks. I think with some tweaking of our strategies, the TH7 and TH8s can add a lot more stars, freeing up the big dogs to get more up top.

I realize some of you may know all of this, but I’m hoping this will be helpful to many! So without further ado, here is the example base I’d like to work with.

How would you attack it? I think this is representative of a TH8 base that often gives us trouble (imagine those as level 6 ADs if you want, it makes no difference). What if I told you…. I think a TH7 could 3 star this! :D

Here’s what we are going to do. First, army composition. What I would do is take 10 barbs, 10 archers, 9 dragons. Then, some of Frosty’s sweet sweet level 5 hogs in the CC. I’d take 2 rage and 1 heal spells.

Next, drop 5 barbs and 5 archers at the two Xs.

Why? Because, as we know, dragons are silly creatures. They will attack the nearest building. But they are fat, and ranged, and the nearest building isn’t always easy to pick out, so we aren’t going to give them any chance. We break the circle at those Xs by taking out the collector and barracks/huts.

Now, drop a dragon at each of those army camps near the Xs. They will destroy the camps and then move toward each other. Now, drop your remaining dragons in a line between these two camps. Because of your previous efforts, all of them will move over the walls and start terrorizing the base.

Now, I think many of you would have done something similar to this. At this point, the attack is up to the CoC gods and we hope they hit the ADs. However, instead, now we go really next level.

After a few seconds, your line of dragons will have destroyed the front line of the base, and all the defenses Xed out here should be destroyed:

Now, right where that Dark Barracks use to be? Drop dem hogs!!! Where will they go? Right into the core! (as those ADs/mortars are now their closest target. You might want to check for bombs/springs with BK first!) As they go speeding towards your enemy’s demise, drop a rage and a heal in the core and watch those level 5s wipe out everything in the core. You can even drop a rage in between them so they (and the dragons) get there faster. Poof! All ADs down. Dragons dominate. The end.

This sort of strategy is applicable to many bases similar to this. Note that sometimes instead of hogs you can use balloons. Or maybe, if you are sure you can get your dragons to 2 of the ADs quickly, you triple lightning the 3rd? Or maybe 5 hogs in the CC isn't quite enough so you add 2-4 of your own. Lots of ways to go about it! Thanks for reading, and I hope someone found this a little helpful.

War Debriefing - September 14th, 2014

What a tough war.  We put up a respectable 82 stars.  This appears to be average for us, (81, 82, 84 and 85 stars on our last wars with 35).  They put up an even more impressive 88 stars.  What's even more crazy, they did it with an amazing ground and pound attack.  They put two stars on our #1 with an impressive giants and wizards attack and our #3 with a sweet GoWiPe (Golems, Wizards and Pekka) attack.  I missed the attack on #2 and regretfully replays are no longer available.  I could've swore they were available until Wednesday in the past.  Maybe it has something to do with the update.

So what does it all mean, Basil?  It means that we faced an amazing team that knew exactly what they needed to do to get the win.  2 of their first 3 attacks were against our top 3 and 5 of their first 8 attacks were against the top 5.  They amazing got turned out 11 stars against our top 5.  Typically our top 3 are never attacked during a war, let alone yield a star.  Their is no shame in our performance, we were just beat by an unbelievable team and we couldn't be the giant slayers 3x in a row.  

Onto our side, we rarely ever attack their top 3.  I think this is potentially our best room for improvement.  We only left 1 star on their bottom 20.  The past couple weeks I've been working on some more advanced attack techniques and trying to perfect the GoWiPe attack.  I think others around the top have also been trying to do this as well.  I think we need to push ourselves to go against their top players and earn stars on them.  In order to do that though, we need to allow the top 10 the freedom to attack their best and not need to perform any cleanup stars.  Antilles pointed out a reddit article from another clan's war notes, that I believe holds tons of merit for the bottom 20 people in the clan.  "Use first attack for three stars When possible, use your first attack for a reasonable 3-star attempt of a base at your Town Hall level. Your base rank, and the base rank of the opponent, is irrelevant. Three stars win wars and prevent redundant attacks, even if you are attacking down. A 2-star attempt on a base someone else will 3-star is a wasted attack. If it is an easy war, 3-star a base that has already been 3’d for practice. TH7/8 should NOT attack above their TH level until all bases of similar TH level are 3-starred. TH9 attack strategies are difficult. If you are a mid/late TH9, you should be able to pick an early/mid TH9 to 3-star. If you are an earlier TH9, your attack progression should be: (1) 3-star an easy TH9, (2) ask what highly-ranked TH9s cannot be 3-starred, and 2-star those, or (3) cleanup TH8 3-stars at end of war."

As Sparx pointed out earlier during the war, all dragon attacks have a ceiling, once your opponents reach TH9 levels and have 4 levels 5+s air defense the dragons will not get 3 stars and will struggle to even get 2 stars.  Against a TH10 opponent, they more than likely won't even get a star.  I think I saw an attack attempt of ours using all dragons against a TH10 that didn't yield a star.  

Just my random thoughts and observations from the war.

General Straw