I have posted more than once discouraging the use of indiscriminate colour stacking. Colour stacking helped me a lot when I was in the mid-game with a limited selection of heroes, often fighting opponents who were stronger than me. It was a great way to increase the variance of my damage and collect unlikely wins. I lost a fair number of raids when my missing colour turned up heavy, but that was a reasonable price to pay because I would probably have lost them anyway.
In the late game things changed. With a dozen or so fully ascended 5* heroes, pretty much all the 4* heroes and five good 4* troops, it was always possible to construct a rainbow team with the appropriate complementary specials to defeat a raid opponent - not with certainty, but with near certainty. Colour stacking made the wins easier, when they came, but the increased chance of losing because of bad boards seemed to be a poor trade off.
So when raiding to fill my raid chests in the late game I have always used a rainbow team to minimise losses, which has worked out just swimmingly. Between chests I mess about and try things - all sorts of colour stacks and weird hero combinations. (That’s not optimal behaviour now that winning a raid generates recruits, but I’m less concerned about optimising my game play than I was a year ago.)
Here’s my confession: one simple and obvious little 2 stack has been so much fun and has generated so little grief that I’ve started using it to fill my raid chests. I run Zim and Azlar together and (usually) omit yellow.
Part of this may just be that I want to use Zim (because she is cool), and she is a synergistic hero who is designed to be part of a red stack. She’s fun and effective as part of a rainbow team, but the little red health boost increases Azlar’s durability to make him even more dangerous than he is as a solo red.
And I’ve been sucked in by the easy wins. If Zim goes off early then a decent red cascade will do terrible damage and Azlar’s special will mop up the survivors, with a second blast from Zim available if necessary (she charges fast). It’s fun. It’s just fun.
I lose some raids when yellow turns up heavy. If I was raiding rainbow I might win a better percentage. But I’ve been seduced by how painless this team often makes things and I find myself willing to sacrifice some efficiency.
My rational consideration of the pros and cons of colour stacking remains unchanged, but from this point forward whenever I criticise its use for filling raid chests, readers should know that I do so as a hypocrite.
TL/DR - I now can’t resist running 2:1:1:1 when filling my raid chests. The fun outweighs the cost.
(I am also experimenting with leaving that stack in place for my defence. Over the last few weeks it seems to have held my trophies at the same level as my best rainbow option: maybe even a little better. Up is down and down is up.)
