How to Build a War Base the Right Way
-Sun Tzu
So you want to build a custom base, huh? Good! Like everything else in Clash there are efficient and effective methods to make the best possible base. This primer will help you to utilize these elements and help your creations to hold up in war.
To better break down the utility of the different facets of base design, I have separated this primer by different attack archetype.
Part 1: Hog Variant Defensive Strategies
As the best 3* attack in the game for TH 8 and 9, I will start by addressing how to protect your based from getting hogged to smithereens.
Double. Big. Bomb. Spots
Having double big bombs spots completely neuters the single most secure attack at TH 8 and 9. Since all the best clans will always look to hog a base first, it is MANDATORY that you put double big bomb spots in your war base. Anyone who does not have double big bomb spots by the time war day starts will lose eligibility and have to gain reentry to the war roster.
Not only should you have double big bomb spots, but you should have fake spots as well. Ideally, each war base should have four potential big bomb spots, not including your tesla spots. These should each be legitimate spots in which hogs would successfully be forced to path through. Here are some examples below.
This strategy attempts to be more dangerous against Wizard based attacks while maintaining a certain level of difficulty for hog based attacks. Note: this method should be employed far less than a simple two double big bomb spot method.
Each one of you should be able to put at LEAST 6 for TH9, or 5 for TH 8, double big bomb spots that are all pretty much equally hard to disarm or path around. Two of these spots will be used for teslas most likely, but I'll come back to that in a later section. The remaining two spots are fakes used as a psychological tactic to panic the attacker by making him or her do their cold blooded attack or drop their heals in the wrong place, rendering the rest of their attack incapable of getting the 3* or even the 2* on your base.
Think that's too hard to do? I thought you might say that, so I made a base that has not 4, not 5, not 6, but 18 double big bomb spots and it's not even unusable. In fact, it's not even bad. Here it is.
Now I will explain some of the mechanics of pathing and why Mephistopheles and myself are so particular about the building arrangements around the double big bomb spots. You always have to consider the fact that hogs could be coming in from any angle. Simply putting a double big bomb between two defenses will not always be a successful trap if a third cofounding defense poses as a potential distraction. I will explain in more detail down below.
So do not use either of these as your big bomb spots.
Let's say the hogs come in from North-northeast (NNE), or 30 degrees, towards the wizard tower. The group would stop at the very top corner of the wizard tower, then, since the tesla is marginally closer to the hogs due to their angle of entry, the hogs will go directly West (270 degrees) towards the tesla thereby only setting off the top big bomb. Only after the tesla is destroyed will they turn to the archer tower and set off the second big bomb. Yes, there is a possibility the hogs will split and the two factions will each trigger a big bomb, but the splash damage from one big bomb won't reach the other faction of hogs due to the very small range; and therefore, even though both big bombs were set off simultaneously, each individual blast is not enough on its own to kill the group of hogs.
You're relying on luck, so don't use this type of set up for your big bomb spots either.
Again, you'll be relying on luck so also don't use this method.
A good exercise after you've finished your base and put in your double big bomb spots is to start at an outside layer defense and follow a path as if you were a hog. Do this from several different angles and start points. Do your paths cross through the double big bomb spots? If no, you should rearrange your base until almost all of the paths lead into the bomb spots.
Spring Traps
Spring Traps are the next most important defense against Hog Riders. Theoretically from a math perspective, any hog raid should be completely defensible with four individual big bombs and a series of spring traps. If correctly used and made unavoidable--both spring traps and big bombs--hog raids don't stand a chance. However due to the inherent high variability of the game, this method is not really practical and therefore we make you use double big bomb spots.
A double big bomb spot might immediately end a hog raid, but a series of unavoidable spring traps like this one will debilitate the attack power significantly and will also cause a loss. After all, heal spells can't stop spring traps. Each spring trap can take out three troops, so if all six of your spring traps are unavoidable, that's a maximum of 18 hogs; and with a typical hog raid never using more than 34 hogs that means over half of the attack force was taken out by spring traps alone. Side note: this is also quality giant protection for some rogue variants attacks like HGH or GoGiWiWi.
That pretty much raps in up for Hog Rider defensive tactics. Remember, a well placed double big bomb spot that can't be pre-triggered and a handful of unavoidable spring traps will ruin even the best attempts at a hog raid. Put in the spots like I asked and you will completely shut off the most consistent attack in the game and force your attacker to use a more complex and less consistent attack. If we all do this, we win wars.
As most of you are aware, GoWi variant attacks are the most prolific and commonly used attacks in the upper echelons of clash of clans. In addition, it is also considered the favorite of Supercell since there have been very few nerfs to this attack style, and most of them specifically targeted Pekkas.
So a little background on all GoWi attacks. As the name suggests, the meat and potatoes of this attack is comprised of Golems and then Wizards. Let me reiterate--the Wizards are the MOST IMPORTANT UNIT in these attacks. No matter how cool or awesome in their powers the several other support units are, they are not more important than the wizards. As such, you should always build your base to keep this in mind by considering the following points:
1) Distract the Golems so that the damage troops (Wizards, Pekkas, Witches) run out of cover
2) Occupy the Wizards by utilizing storages in key points throughout the base
3) Trap the Carry units (Pekkas, Witches)
You will accomplish these three goals by using walls to divert troops and disrupt funneling. "Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy," -Sun Tzu. Don't let their attack go as planned--disrupt and disperse with the following tactics.
There's really no excuse to have one of these in your base. If they destroy that one wall in the center, the attacking troops open up three compartments. THREE COMPARTMENTS from just one wall. That's an unacceptable advantage to give your attacker.
The T-Joint, while not the most optimal, should be your most used intersection mostly due to the limited number of walls. T-Joints only open up into two sections which helps to hamper the movement of attacking troops.
The power V is one of the most useful redirection methods in all of base structuring. They are most useful when placed just outside of the core of your base so that the chance wall breakers will target and/or destroy part of it is very small.
Power V's create a buffer area where attacking troops have nothing to target, but well placed defenses, particularly teslas, will still be able to target the troops on the other side.
Wall breakers, however, will tend to not bust these open since wall breaker AI targets walls with buildings right behind them. Although these still work best near the core of your base.
This is very similar to the Power V and serves largely the same purpose. It creates a buffer zone and will redirect troops around itself because there is nothing for troops to target inside it. And just like with the Power V, wall breakers will generally avoid the Power I since there are no buildings directly behind the walls.
Box Wall formations are the single most effective wall intersection. Box walls force attacking troops to destroy one wall to open up only one compartment. It also is a good method of trapping golems and heroes by having them lock onto one compartment, and then distracting them with possible options inside the box. Open boxes are especially good at absorbing splash damage from wall breakers and still only opening up one compartment.
The closed box is has the same functionality of the open box, without the wall breaker nullification. A wall breaker will bust a closed box in half, so it's important to put these near the inside of your base. Just outside the inner core is a great place for closed boxes. Due to limited number of walls, the closed box is the single most useful wall formation in all of war base designing. You probably will only have the resources for two or three Power formations, but a well designed base could have four to eight box formations with over half of them being closed boxes.
Remember, box formations force troops to open up only one compartment at a time by destroying one wall per compartment. It creates funneling problems and often causes heroes to make bad targeting decisions. If you put box wall formations just outside the core of your base, that gives your core defenses (x-bows, teslas, etc.) the opportunity to continuously ping heroes, pekkas, golems, etc.
So here's an example bottom half of a base and let's assume troops are approaching from only the Southeast or Southwest.
Difference:
1) Open box on the outside, closed boxes inside
-->Swapping the open box outside protects your base from splash damage
-->It also gave me room to put spring traps between the cannons and the wizard tower
2) Moved Archer Tower
-->Moving the Archers Towers down one square makes it a much higher probability that hogs will path from the Archer Tower to the Air Defense instead of going right to the X-Bow
3) Total Walls
--> Base on the left: 130 walls used
--> Base on the right: 129 walls used
So the moral of the story is that even I can take my own advice. That about wraps it up for ground attacks. Remember, use these tactics to help redirect troops to certain choke points in your base that you create with specialized wall formations. Now mix those tactics with the hog tactics and your base will be formidable against any ground based attack even from the best of attackers. "The clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy’s will to be imposed on him,"– Sun Tzu. Remember, make them play your game. Get them out of their plan and you will win.
So now that we've accounted for all major ground attacks, let's turn our attention to the skies. How to defend air attacks. As many of you know, Air Attacks died on April 30th, 2015--the day Supercell introduced the Air Sweeper. However, do not underestimate the strength of air attacks. You still should plan your base as if you expect to get LaLooned every war and not give your opponent any easy stars.
Air Defenses
There are a few rules regarding Air Defenses and Air Sweepers that should always be followed, and mostly they just have to do with what not to put your Air Defenses next to. So I'll just go through them one by one in a picture afterwards for visual examples.
1) Do Not put Air Defenses too close together
2) Make sure the Air Defenses cover all defenses
3) Do Not put your Air Defense right next to or in front of your Archer Queen
4) Do Not put your Air Sweeper directly next to an Air Defense or your Archer Queen or too close to the outside of the base
5) You should angle your Air Sweepers so that their target areas create a large square. In other words, they should be anti-parallel
Not a rule but one more note: I have had great success by using a parallelogram or rhombus pattern in laying out my air defenses. See below.
Besides that, what else is wrong with this example base's air defense set up? Let's go through point by point.
1)Air defenses are too close together!
-->This makes the base weak against a shattered LaLoon from either the left or right side. Notice how he attempted to put a lot of box walls together, but it just ended up creating a great location for a jump spell that goes directly into the core. A shattered attack here could potentially take out three Air defenses, but at the very least it is realistic to think a shattered attack could take out either the purple circle or the blue circle depending on which side they attack from.
-->This also makes the base weak to regular LaLoon attacks from the south because the Lava Hounds will go directly to the core, soaking up damage from both X-bows, both southern Wizard towers, and both southern Archer towers. Which would give the Balloons free roam to trounce the whole southern half of the base and then they would path directly to both Air Defenses and take both out in quick succession which is very bad. You never want to let multiple Air Defenses be taken out at the same time.
-->When the Wizard towers are too close to the Air defense, they will end up targeting the Lava Hound when they should be hitting the pack of balloons. Remember, Wizard towers do the highest total damage output against balloons because of their splash damage, but for the same reason are extremely weak to Lava Hounds.
-->Now obviously this example base is not completed, however the point remains: a cold blooded strike team could take out the queen and then that Air defense very easily. The base doesn't make the pathing very hard at all and the heroes and wizards would take them both out easily. If your Air Defenses are not close to the Archer Queen, you make your attacker's cold blooded attack that much weaker and increase the variability of the attack strategy which reduces the overall effectiveness of the attack.
If you follow those guidelines, your base should be generally safe from Air attacks, provided your air turrets are sufficiently leveled. Remember, the key with all air defensive turrets is the spread them out so the attacking air troops are pinged for the longest possible time and hopefully path to all the ground defenses first. If you can do that and position your air sweepers the right way, your base will be greatly defensible against all air attacks.
Now comes the most important but hopefully also the most intuitive part. Turret placement is a huge deal--the single most important element of base design. Without it, none of the rest of this entire guide will be of any use. That being said, wall design and layout is probably the hardest creative element, so don't be discouraged! You just have to follow a few simple rules:
1) Use splash damage to protect point damage
2) Cannons outside, Archer Towers inside
3) Use either Wizard towers or X-Bows to protect mortars
4) Do Not put too many of the same turret near each other
5) Use storages in key points to distract attacking troops
Most everyone in the clan is pretty good about this part so I won't go too much in detail here. Just remember to use the aspects from the previous sections of this guide in combination with your turret layout. So if you have power V's or open boxes around the core of your base, consider putting mortars near the outside of your base so that when the attacking troops get to the middle with a jump spell or whatever and they are struggling to get out the mortars will pound into the core. Likewise consider putting your wizard towers in the second row from the outside of your base so that when they attack golems at the very beginning of the attack, their splash damage also hits wallbreakers.
There are many tricks like this and they are all incredibly situational. So do your best to make sure all the elements of your base are working in harmony, and if you've done it correctly, your base will be stronger than just the mere sum of its parts. So get out their and design a new base that will really make any opponent scratch his head and wonder how he would even attempt to 3 star it.
Good luck, and as always, stay spooky skeletons!
-Skeletor