Our Clan's Attacking Ability and Why We Lost

I have always been wanting to find out our clan's attacking ability comparing to the clans we lost to so I can see rooms for improvement for our clan. I have always thought it was because our lacking ability to three star max TH9. Well, my 2 week long data gathering and final analysis told a pretty different story. Check this out:

The data I gathered are from our past 4 war TH9/10 performance comparing to the two clans we lost to.

Data Finding facts:
1. Our TH10's bit lacking 2 starring max TH10 comparing to their equal opponents. So TH10 guys, weight is on you again
2. Our TH10 is much better off dealing with mid level TH10. Hence, maybe TH9.5 can really help
3. Our TH9 can't three star max TH9. Opponent clans can't either, but they do a bit better than us. Overall, we had TH10's help so it came out to be a wash in the max TH9 category
4. Our TH9's ability to three star mid lvl TH9 is pretty good, but still missing more than opponents.
5. TH9 three star overwhelmingly come from hybrid. It's the future. No doubt about it.
6. We faced way more max TH9 than our own, which cost us the wars.

My Conclusion
Although our TH9's ability to three star is still slightly below the opponent clans, but we had TH10's help and Gowipe/Gowiwi did get us some three star as well, overall, we hit better on TH9 as a clan. So why did we lose? Here are the two reasons

1. We were way outmatched on base strength. We had to face 52% max TH9 vs 42% enemy had to face. As the probability to three star a TH9 greatly increases when base strength drops, that gave enemy clans much better advantage to take us out
2. TH10's ability to two star max TH10 still needs polishing. 

What's NEXT??
1. Maybe we should upgrade to max TH9

So I have advised the TH9 to slow down on defense upgrades. Now I am thinking, man.. I am WRONG!! Maybe we SHOULD just go max like these clans that beat us so we outmatch everybody else! Your thoughts are welcome.

2. When facing 68K or above TH9 bases, prob should just stick with Gowiwi to get 2 star until u are good enough. 

War Chart #5: 100% outmatched and my thoughts on TH .5

BADLY Outmatched
This is by far the worst match we have experienced ever since I started charting war weights. We were 100% outmatched on every base except 2 equal bases. How is that even a match?? And -56000 deficit on overall clan weight on a 25 base war is very significant. I think the programmers at Supercell needs to write an IF statement that :

If (outmatched base percent > 50%) then           DO NOT MATCH

My thoughts on .5 Base
After charting 5 wars, here is my thoughts on .5 base scenario
1. The value .5 base brings is obviously the offensive power is greater than it's defense. Overall, it brings down the clan weight.
2. I noticed that the Match will permit +/-2 TH level. Meaning, if we have 5 TH10, then the match can pare you up with 7 TH10 but a bit weaker. So if you had 5 legit TH10 and 2 TH9.5, we could have 9 legit TH10 in opponent clan, which is twice a much as our own. If your TH9.5 has the offense ability to two star their TH10, then it's prob not a big deal, but if not, you are stretching your legit TH10 real thin
3. It's a toss if they match you a TH10 with TH9.5 or max TH9 to your TH9.5. There is no rule, all random.

So with the above observation, given that our TH9.5 do have pretty good offense ability, I would advise not to upgrade to legit TH10.

TH8.5 is a different story. It's very hard to survive as a TH8.5 in the farming world. You can never save loot. Per my own experience, as soon as I built xbows, people stop wiping me 100%. So for your own benefits, I think TH8.5 should just go to a weaker TH9 while max out your troops.

More Thoughts on War Weight
The matchup system is severely flawed. I am hugely disappointed after looking at our last a few war data. When we outmatch opponent on base weight, we dominate, when they outmatch majority of our war bases, we struggle. So it kinda of diminishes this war game to  chances unless the clan overall knows how to take down bases regardless how maxed they are. Until then, there is only one rule :

My win/loss is determined by the probability to outmatch my opponent

Conclusion
To win wars these days, your only way to outplay the matching game is to be able to three star max TH9 and 2 star any TH10.. Same old same old right??

War Chart #4 - Mansoura And the Flaws of Clan War Matchmaking

So this war, we got totally outmatched on our top 14 bases, then Supercell compensated us by throwing in lowly TH7/8. How is that even a good algorithm for war matching??? I have charted 4 wars so far, this is 2nd time. That's 50%!

I also read on Reddit, that they will try to keep the overall clan war weight similar, within 50k. But not necessarily match you horizontally. TH levels are also 2 off in a lot of cases. Meaning, if you have 6 TH10, you can matched with 8. If you have 2 TH9.5, you are totally screwed cuz you can have 4 more TH10 than your own.

Here is this war's chart. Again, our TH9 having trouble with 68K above and needing TH10 help.

War Weight Charting 3 : vs Lebnese

So Chad brought up an interesting observation. So if TH9.5 don't work anymore, why we got matched with such easier top bases? Let's take a look at this chart and I have a few observations

1) It's true our top 3 bases totally destroyed their weights. So we didn't pair with max TH10 with lvl 40 heroes.
2) Our TH9.5 completely got destroyed with Thad down 11000 points and Alex down by 12000
3) They also have 9 legit TH10 vs our 5. That's nearly HALF more TH10 bases
4) Overall if you look at just the TH10 weights, we outmatch them by 22000 points, they beat us by whopping 39000 points!!!!
5) Same thing for our TH8.5. Both syd and Sif got screwed by 9000 points.
6) They made us our number (somewhat) by giving us easier TH8, TH7. Wow we got robbed!!!

From our attacking perspective, same old same old. Our TH9 struggle on anything above 67000,68000. Good job to Mike Hawk,only one three a max TH9

So let's keep observing for two more wars.

War Match Charting #2 - Fuerza Blowout Win

We did 67 vs 51. 89.64% destruction. TH10 didn't miss a beat. Two starred every equal opponent and three starred top TH9. As you can tell from this matching chart, they were 72% outmatched, similar to our situation in the previous war. We should be really prod that we didn't get wiped like this..

This war also indicated the same thing as our last war: Our TH9's ability to three star is somewhat capped at 67K weight. That's near max TH9. Once it gets maxed out, we start to have trouble three starring. So if we can up our game to be able to three star 68K bases without TH10's help, we will be in golden shape.

Th10 did awesome!!

More on how to three star popular Internet bases

Just bookmarking this page. You can find a ton of videos and maps on this site to show you how to three star a lot of popular Internet bases from TH8 to TH10. Yep, TH10 included too!!

Three Star Internet Bases

Supercell Still Does Unfair War Matches

Especially if you have TH 0.5, these will absolutely wreck your match now. I am pretty sure Supercell closed the gap. The last war we faced was very unfairly matched. From War weight perspective, we were 44000 points outmatched. From base perspective, 2/3 of opponents bases are stronger than our equal. This is totally unfair. I hope Supercell will rather search longer and find a closer match.

Sweet Spot of an Archer Queen Upgrade level

This is a very interesting graph to show. The question is what level of AQ upgrade give you the best ROI? (Return of Investment). Although we all know each upgrade gives her a bit more HP and a bit more DPS, but how does that translate to destroy defenses.

In this simulation, the person used typical TH10 defenses as benchmark and calculated how many shots would AQ fire to wipe all of them per level. You can see once she hits level 20, her ability of destruction drastically increases. The sweetest upgrades are between level 10 -15 and 20 - 25 where she reduced number of shots by the largest margin. Then it slows down. Once you pass 30, upgrades between 30 - 35 really sux. You are not getting much unless you go all the way to 36. And there is really no point upgrading between 36-40

Squatting Bear invented Hybrid Attack

Wow.. Baby Bear is the inventor of hybrid guys!!! While he was still a baby bear, he used the giants and hog combo and prob three starred his opponents every time!!! Here is an ancient video from 2 years ago. Think i was eating sushi and recorded using my iPad on top of my ancient iPhone 4

Funneling 101 and TH10 raids

In Clash, there is really only one rule. It's called "Distance Calculation". Your troops are gonna go to the nearest building or nearest defense. If you can manage where they are going, your 95% there. So, funneling is a huge part of a successful raid. The idea is to take out some building structures before hand so your main squad can go where you want them to go per the "distance" rule.

Funneling is very crucial to your kill squad's success so they go exactly where you want them to go to take out CC, AQ, designate bombs or kill AD depending on what your objective is, Funneling is even more crucial to TH10 raids success. Because on TH10, every sub second counts, the longer your troops stay in the wrong spot without taking stuff down, the slimmer the chance you reach TH or 50% or both. On TH10, your number 1 object is to get the golems tanking you to the core as fast as you could manage while covering grounds.. 

Now I am going to show you 2 videos on funneling and 1 video on TH10 raids. The first is made from the replays from our last war. I will show you why Poker's raid failed on 4 but Muzi succeeded. Then I will do an analysis on Bear's raid on 3, showing you his thinking process, why he ditched freeze and why this raid was such a massive success

Now onto the more technical details on funneling.
Unfortunately the examples are shown with TH9 raids, but it's the same concept



Now, onto TH10 raids. 

For TH10, especially when you are dealing with max defenses, you need to have a very detailed plan. What you want to take out first, what's next. And that varies by map. TH10 raids are the hardest because I still believe the troop strength is owerpowered by max defenses.There is not a lot of rooms for error, hence funneling is huge so with very limited resources you have, they can still get the job done by going down the right path.

I have seen many failed Gowi raids on TH10 is cuz your golems went sideways and left your troops and heroes behind taking on fire. They just can't sustain that for too long. The raids fail cuz you didn't funnel correctly.

There is no one or two strategies for TH10, every map requires a different way of thinking/planning. But I think here are the core questions you must ask before planning out a good raid.
1) If you are doing Gowiwi ground, how do you get your tanks to the core while still covering 50% ground?? How will you ensure your golems will not leave your heroes and wiz hanging??
2) If you are doing air, how many ADs can u take out before sending in Laloons?? Can I kill queen and CC??

Watch this TH10 episode and focus on the thinking process of each successful raid. Every raid's every step has it's purpose, whether it's taking out ADs by kill squad or AQ walk taking down defenses. Nothing is random. In order to carry out every step of the plan, you have to funnel so no Oops moment. TH10 can't afford "Oops" and that's really the key to TH10 success.

How to become Elder and Coleader

Officers are earned, shouldn't be given. So I have spelled out the clear rules how you can become elder and Co in the clan and how to maintain your title once you earned it.

I will not make any changes to the existing titles until the end of this current season, which is Dec 5. So you have 25 days to catch up if your number is low. 

Here it is :

Office Promotion Demotion guidelines

Dansk mini war

Here is the reason why you shouldn't be copying bases from the Internet. Cuz there are millions of videos showing you how to three star them. A huge chunk of this coming war's TH9's are using popular internet bases. So I am going to list them here with the videos to show you how to three star them

#2 PCB - popular Chinese base. It's not exact same configuration, but close enough with some variation. Check out the Golaloon version, it's very close to our war's #2 base. Make sure you go from the queen side.

Howiwi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99pAwxpcuuM

GoLaloon: http://youtu.be/sOUFhxhAS6Y

#3 and #6 are The Kardashians. There are so many ways to three star this ancient base

Gohowiwi 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IWZy4eOXuM

Gohowiwi 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJswRlCG-cI

Gohowiwi 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-ubXTFl24A

Gowipe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-ubXTFl24A

Howiwi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR37TKl2g-w

GoLaloon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUzUkkNxQeQ

#5 The Giza

Holowiwi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY-l75iDGVU

Holowiwi 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir0YgLBvId8

Holowiwi 3 (with commentary): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEi7279G6hE

#7 can be Gowiwi three starred
#8 is too weak so just trash it with whatever lol

Top War Clans and Our Stats

Interestingly enough, seems Supercell has opened up API access to pull data out?? This site has a lot of clan's war stats in their database, including ours!!!!! I didn't even track how many we won/loss/tie since inception but here it is.

You can see all the top war clans here :
Top War clans Global

How To Design an Anti 3 Base

In this post, I am not going to list the bases for you to copy. I want everyone to be able to tweak their own and make it anti 3. So understanding the concept is more important.

How to make an anti GoHo map
You want to have a base that you don't want to GoHo it yourself. What makes it hard to Goho?

1. It makes my head spin when trying to guess where the DGBs are. Too many empty 2x4 spots by defenses.
2. Even if I locate the potential DGBs,it's pain in the ass to send in the kill squad to cover it.
3. Queen is too far from CC or potential DGBs, making kill squad's job real hard
4. CC is hard to lure and far away from queen. Has to cost me more to lure and redirect CC

In the following example(Don't copy it. It's 9.5), the map has FIVE legit DGB locations spread across the map with CC and queen deep in the base. It makes the raid real hard to pin point where your kill squad's entry point is gonna be. It will still be three starred by GoHo but will take a couple of tries by the enemy clan ASSUMING they know what they are doing.

How to make an anti Golaloon base

Golaloon is all about ADs and WT positions. And Queen of course. You want a base that is 

1. really tough to reach the ADs while all four ADs are covering all your defenses. All ADs are positioned and protected by other defenses so loons will have to zig zag to get to them.
2. Wiz Towers are not right by ADs so WTs won't be zapping at hounds all the time, but targeting at the loons
3. Queen is not directly under AD so lava pups can't kill her easily
4. Kill squad has a hard time achieving the objective with queen CC deep inside of the base with so many high HP storage protection. 

Let's take a look at this same map again. See my white pen highlighting the looning paths, they will just dance around ADs and will take a while to reach ADs while hounds are taking huge hits by lvl 7.  Also, queen isn't under AD, so you will have to take out queen by kill squad. But kill squad is blocked by high HP storage. WTs will zap at your loons, cuz they are not in AD (hound) ranges. I personally would not raid this map with Golaloon. It's just way too much headache to deal with it. 

I encourage everyone to think about how to tweak your own base and make it unique and hard to three star by using the above concepts. Good luck!!

Arranged War experiment

update: Both clans hit the search buttons the same time and took 30-45 seconds and paired with someone else. Oh bummer!!!! I think the reason is because a) we are lvl 8 clan, Anita is lvl 2 b) 10 base war is just small to create a difference. There are many other clans will have the same stats as ours. Not enough base to create variation.So i think you need minimum 25 bases closely matched to be able to match with each other. 

Just for fun, we will do an arranged war with Anita's crew. I also get a chance to test out the theory of war weights, arranging war with specific clan, etc.

So here are the war weights. If you are picked from Coaches to war with them, it's purely based on your war weight. The theory is trying to stay as close as possible horizontally and vertically. There will be 1 TH10, 7 TH9, 2 TH8, No .5 bases

Golaloon Step by Step guide and OneHive tutorial video

Golaloon in my opinion is harder to pull off from execution perspective but it's a more powerful attacking method than GoHo.

There are a few things that can wreck your Golaloon raids if you don't take them into considerations:

1. AQ and CC : AQ is like another air defense. Deadly to your loons. CC can kill your raids really fast. 
2. Wiz Towers: the danger of wiz tower is that your loons will often clump together and one Wiz Tower can zap all of them away in a few seconds. 
3. You can't take on a base with 4  lvl 7 ADs all alive. You must manage to kill at least one of the 4. 

Scouting:

1. You want to look for a base with easier accessible ADs. If they are on the outter edge and far apart from each other, bingo you got a good base to work with. If they are all centrally located, it could work pretty well too but you must know how to time loons and lavas so your lavas don't hang out by themselves for too long. 
2. Can your kill squad kill AQ, CC and one AD all together? If not, move on, find another map.

Planning your attack

1. Obviously, your kill squad's job is to eliminate AQ, CC and one or two ADs. Think about what's the most efficient way to get that job done. You might need to quake open the base up so your kill squad can get in there faster. 
2. Once that portion of the base is under fire by your kill squad, think about your direction of attack by your Laloon troops. You need to pick a direction, either counterclock or clockwise to release your Laloon troops. We will talk more about that in the execution section. but for now, you need to pick a direction. 

Execution

Laloon execution is much much harder than Hogging. This video goes into details about execution. I listed some most important aspects of the execution for your reference. 

1. Because Laloons are more powerful than your hogs and your kill squad doesn't have to cover as much ground as GoHo does, I usually use 2 golem kill squad to just target at AQ, CC and one AD. 
2. As your kill squad pushes in, don't wait too long to start your Laloon portion because loons can distract the defenses nearby and ease the fire on your kill squad. I will drop Laloon as soon as CC is down and one AD is dead
3. You must pick a direction and do surgical deployment. Mass dropping loons will NEVER work. One loon's attacking power is massive so you don't really need a lot per defense target. I usually drop just 1 for archer tower, 2 for WT and 1 for any ground defense. You also want to start dropping 2 lavas coming in from different angels to absorb all traps. Timing between Lava and loons matter also. You don't want your lavas to hang out there for too long since they are much faster than loons. 
4. So as you rotate through the map, you drop more loons right next to the defenses and drop last lava as the rest of the Laloon travel towards the last defense. rage as needed.
5. Do not let the loons clump together near WTs. That will get your loons killed really fast, hence why we must do surgical deployment. The loons tend to travel towards the nearest defense and sometimes all of them will do that, which causing them to clump together. You must have a plan to counter that scenario by taking out the defenses that will attract them to travel towards wrong directions. 

Troop Comps

I use the following troop comp as TH9

1 CC golem

1 golem 30

3 lavals 90 (sometimes you can get away with 2, but I use 3 for maps with lvl 7 ADs and if I can only take out 1 AD)

15 loons 75

6 wiz      24

1 archer  1

Spells: 1 jump 3 rage or 1 rage 4 haste, or 4 quake 2 rage or 1 rage 2 haste.. Depending on the map. 

How to GoHo on TH9 and OneHive war recap repost

Check out a dedicated GoHo guide. I personally had huge success with GoHo. I am also going to layout the steps when you are planning a GoHo raid

When Scouting, answer these questions:
1. Where is AQ
2. Where is CC
3. What are the possible DGB locations. This is the trickiest part. Some maps have more than 4,5 possibilities. You will just have to put down your bets. If you bet right, you got the raid, if you bet wrong, pray.
Then answer this question: Can my kill squad get rid of 1,2 and partial 3? If you answer yes, then this is the right map. If you are not sure, pick a different map. Some maps have CC far from queen. That's not a problem, just lure it out and attract it towards your kill squad.It adds cost so do decide if it's worth it or not.

Planning attack:
1. Your objective is to use your kill squad to take out AQ, CC and set off as many bombs as possible. If you can't set off bombs, take out the defenses by the bombs so your hogs will be less likely to go there. That bomb will be compromised. So you need to decide a point of entrance for your kill squad

2. Use quake or jump for your kill squad? how will u get into the area to accomplish the above objective? Decide your pathing for your kill squad. If kill squad fails the objective to set off bombs/kill AQ/kill CC, then your raid will fail.

3. Now decide your pathing for your hogs. You should definitely do surgical deployment. I usually start dropping hogs near the kill squad after the kill squad take care of CC. 2-3 per defense or 4 if two defenses are together. Drop a giant ahead of hog for distraction if needed

Troop composition
CC golem
2 golems 60
4 wbs 8
10 wiz 40
22 hogs
2 archers 2

Spells:
Either 4 quakes 2 heal 1 poision or
1 jump or 2 jumps rest heal and a poision

Execution

1.Funnel so your kill squad goes into center. Since I always use 3 golems for my kill squad, I drop 1 golem on the right side of my entry point and follow by 1-2 wiz to take out the structures. Same thing for the other side of the entry point. Then I drop CC max golem in center follow by wbs. Once wall is down, I then drop rest wiz (save 2), King. Once they are marching in, I drop queen last so she hangs back.
2. Drop hogs per defense,heal where the potential bombs will be. put heal down just a hair before hogs get there.

Now watch this video, it really does a good job explaining the ins and outs. 

If you are TH10 and TH9, check out this video. So many awesome 3 star attacks. It has an AQ walk on TH10

How to AQ Walk and hog max TH9

check it out, pretty cool stuff. The guy goes into details about the thinking process, which I think is more important than watching a particular raid. Then you can apply the concept to different maps and raids.

The objective of AQ Walk is to take out as many defenses as possible while eliminating some pathing threat to the hogs (e.g. prevent hogs from going into DGB areas). You want to pick the map that has defenses within AQ’s reach but ADs are out of reach so they can’t harm healers. Spacing between the single target defense is a huge concern because your AQ can’t take 2+ single target at once while still taking splash defense’s hit. Last but not least, you need to know how to funnel. So your AQ walks towards certain direction. Once she meets up with your kill squad, she needs to go into the core with your kill squad.

This video is well worth your time. I highly recommend all players to watch it 

Video collection shows you EXACTLY how to three star most common TH9

Every TH9 player should keep this doc close. It has a list of the most commonly used TH9 maps and how to three star them in youtube videos. Definitely use it as your war reference guys!!!
video collection to three star most common TH9 maps

How the new war matchmaking works and how to arrange war with a specific clan

Sorry about the long topic. We will explain two things in one post since they are related.

How new war matchup works
So each player in your clan carries a war weight. It's the available gold or elixir loot your EQUAL TH opponent can get from you. So in the following example, Bear weights 92K. Since the guy attacked him is also a TH10, there is no adjustment.

But if you look at Seb's, the available gold loot shows 63900. But the guy attacked him is TH10, so you need to add 10%, which is 7000 to his loot number. So 63900 + 7000 is roughly 70K, which is Seb's war weight.

After you obtain war weight for each player in your clan, you add all of them together and that's your clan war weight. 

What Supercell does is trying to find you a match that is close enough vertically and horizontally. Vertically means your total player war weight , aka , clan weight should be as close as possible. If no opponent is close to your clan weight while you are searching, you wait until you find one. They are also trying to match you horizontally, meaning our #3 Bear should get somebody who weights around 92K  and our #7 Seb should get someone who weights 70K ish. But this is where things can get tricky. Although Supercell TRIES to match you equally, sometimes, it doesn't happen. And you can tell when the war match is off a bit. Usually is when the opponent has bunch of rushed TH10 and since we have a lot of solid TH9, we get screwed. Cuz doesn't matter how you slice dice it, a max TH9 trying to take on just 1 inferno is tough. 

How to arrange a war with a specific clan

This has been done many times successfully, especially among the elite war clans. I know OneHive and Kara Heroes just did one on Oct 23. Reddit does that a lot. This is what you need to do to have an arranged war:

1. Know your player weight and clan weight. 
2. Work with your opponent's leader to balance out the weight vertically and horizontally yourself. So let's say we will do a 20 player war, it's better to pick equal amount of TH10, 9 and 8's with similar defenses. Then you find your player weight and add them together and try to stay within 100 points. 
3. You hit the button the same time. You will get matched unless someone identical to you is searching the same time, which is quite unlikely since you planned it out to be in such a small +/-margin, you should be matched. 

What contributes most to war weight

So the next question is .. does TH9.5 and TH8.5 make sense. Generally speaking, if the players are NOT adding any defenses but obtaining higher TH troops, then it is worth doing it. For example, I am TH9.5. I have 5 spells going on 230 troop space. My weight is 70K, lower than Seb's. So upgrading just a TH didn't seem to do any damage. 

I also saw some KC's players weight just 72K with max TH9 and lvl 30 heroes vs a 71K TH9 player with equal defenses but just lvl 16 heroes. That tells you heroes don't weight much in comparison to defenses. 

Then you look at infernos. Poker in our clan has war weight 86K, his defense is half TH9 half TH10, but he has infernos. That is 14K more than our max TH9!!! That tells you infernos weight a TON!!!! So is XBOW. Our Th8 player weights 48K vs TH9 are at least 64K. 

So defenses add weight, offense, not so much.