Tank color coordination - important, but how important?

#1

There is a widely known tactic for alliance wars - tank color coordination. Sharing tank color throughout the whole alliance has many advantages, opponent will be quickly run of strong colors in the first few rounds etc.

Okay. Let’s assume we have an alliance with a set color of tank (indeed we have such an alliance, with blue tanks). Five top players (out of 24 total) have defense teams in 3400-3700 range. If we agree to switch tank color to yellow, they are able to field defense teams in 3700-4000 range. Would it be useful or harmful to the alliance? Should they keep blue tanks at all costs, or there is a thin border, beyond which there is a good move to switch a team for the stronger one? And if this border exists, where is it?

#2

It’s a very difficult question to quantify.

We’ve always done some kind of tank or tank and flank strategy at Guardians Reborn and we do ok.

That being said, Nocturnal Winds just pick their best teams and beat us convincingly.

@Duaneski @johnNW why don’t you use colour coded tanks?

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#3

The VERY FIRST thing that needs to be said in response to ‘beat us in this one particular war’ is:

  • the boards rule.

In any given war, a team can win or lose based upon the boards. We all want to believe that strategy matters, but we can agree that the boards are incredibly important.

At NW we have a few theories on war, and one of them is that there IS an advantage to having a raid team that’s strong versus the Tank… HOWEVER… we don’t KNOW that this is as important as ’ having your BEST raid defense team ’ on the board.

We have tried color coordinating tanks. And in fact are currently rolling with Red tanks… but we have had a lot of success with ‘best’ team strategy and that’s still what we might go back to.

At the end of the day, intelligently and effectively using your attack flags is probably more important than setting defense teams. And getting good boards goes a long way towards determining how well the attack flags are used.

Hope that provides some insight into our rationale … at any rate it sounds like you guys would be well served to go to yellow tanks if it’s gonna buff your defense strength by 300~ (That’s to OP, of course :slight_smile: )

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#4

I have been having conversations with our alliance about this topic. Most of our members have 4000+ defense teams in our war roster, but my question is:

  1. Is it better for everyone to put up their best tank (Kunchen/Guin/Boss Wolf/ect…) or is it better to have 1/2 the alliance put up a good tank (Guin) - and have the other 1/2 put up mediocre tanks like Joon?

I see value in color coordination - but if you can get a bunch of strong (diverse color tank) teams that will require more than 1 flag to take down - you are still succeeding – right? My argument has been that even though we are color coordinated - we still have a bunch of teams that don’t require a lot of stacking as the tank isn’t going to be hard to take out.

There isn’t much data we can find on this topic - and since you can never see what team attacked you and how the board worked out - I suspect we will never get a good answer. I think everyone does it because logically it makes sense that people may stack against you and then run out of the strong color. But I have had lots of luck stacking a neutral color (Blue against Yellow Tank) – and as long as the boards don’t suck – it didn’t matter that I didn’t have a strong color against the tank.

I look forward to thoughts from others on this topic.

I agree with @Duaneski that it will largely depend on what board you get though.

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#5

I strongly believe that free will and freedom to choose best team you can put together is better for the war morale than using mediocre tank just because all the others are doing the same thing.

It’s rare to see an alliance where everyone has same colour top tank. There might be 1/4 Guineveres but at least as many Li Xius and Chaos.

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#6

Yes - we end up having about 4-5 4* tanks because members don’t have a 5* in the chosen tank color. Now that we talk of moving to a new color tank (Purple) - members that have strong yellow (Guin) aren’t happy.

I fell like I am in agreement with you @Aunty - let people chose their best team.

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#7

I do think it helps, but not sure how much. I am a bigger proponent of the alliance having a set of colors for flank, tank and flank. At the very high end, it likely doesn’t matter, since the teams have so much depth and power anyway. However, in the mid-high level, teams are good but don’t have as much depth. It’s a great way to force them to use up their preferred heroes early. At the very least it may require some of their stronger teams to focus on clearing holes instead of going for 6 1-shots.

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#8

It absolutely matters at the high end. My alliance (7DF) is moving towards a completely standardized, identical defensive team. But this is a luxury of a top-10 alliance with deep benches.

My advice for mid-tier alliances: coordinate but don’t create easy targets. In the hypothetical of 50/50 Guins and Joons, joon is such a bad tank that I wouldn’t bother bringing purple at all, just saving those all for the Guin attacks.

The first step is figuring out what color is best for your alliance. Survey everyone—what are your best tanks in each color? (7DF has a Google Docs spreadsheet where we keep info about our rosters current.) you might find out that Blue is the right color with Richard, Thorne, Aegir and Frida tanks. Or maybe red, with Ares, Evelyn, Azlar, and Anzogh tanks.

Second, figure out what to do about the (hopefully few) allies without a plausible tank in that color. Two plausible options (among many) could be:

  • Run the best available matched-color tank
  • Run two of the team’s chosen tank color, each flanking a good tank. Ideally you’d set a tank that calls for a color that is weak against the chosen color. Example: your alliance is running red tanks, but Joe doesn’t have a good red tank. Instead Joe runs Boldtusk and Scarlett flanking a blue, say, Richard. If attackers stack green to kill Richard, they’re then stuck with weak tile damage against both flanks. Sure, they could run a blue stack, but they want to use blue attackers against all your other allies.
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#9

I have to admit that I am not surprised by your opinions, because I agree with you :slight_smile:. Nevertheless I have also to confess (based on my own experience) that tank color coordination could be a very effective tactic. I think (remember: it’s a pure speculation, without any proof) it depends on two things:

  • the boards (just as @Duaneski said)
  • the powerlevel.

If I remember correctly, some time ago our alliance many times had a hard time against alliances with all the tanks in the same color. But it was the age, when most of us had one, maybe two rainbow 4* teams. As I believe, our alliance is pretty good at wars, so most of the time our opponents are much stronger than us (at least on paper). Therefore we had to face 4*, sometimes 5* tanks. After the first, or second wave of attacks we had to deal with then using our 3* and it was really hard, when all tanks were coordinated.

Right now, when we have five, six, or seven full developed rainbow 4* and 5* teams, the problem doesn’t exist anymore. As one of my fellows said, we didn’t see any significant difference in a war against coordinated tanks or not. Just like @MidnightOil said, as long as the board isn’t mediocre, I don’t need to stack strong color. With the neutral or, even better, fine board, I can take what’s mine even with the neutral color.

So, considering the fact that out opponents are usually stronger than us and they also have deep rosters, tank color coordination isn’t so important anymore, and the better idea would be just to field the best defense teams we can.

Does what I say have any sense, or am I just babbling? :slight_smile:

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#10

I would say there’s not a sure answer here.
That teams can be harder to defeat and worth more points, but at the other end your weakest teams more easy to wipe out.

You really just need to try a couple of times and see.

#11

There is WAY more yellow KILLERS than blue killers

#12

I agree with this, if everyone in the alliance has a big bench it’s less of an issue, but on young alliances it can be a real downer when you’re told the tank color is blue and your best choice for that spot is Grimm or Gunnar :stuck_out_tongue:

We’ve tried it before at TWISTED Hurricanes and got crushed for 5 consecutive wars. We went back to just choosing our best heroes, occasionally we give advice to each other on synergy for heroes but aside from that we find it’s less stressful for everyone, and it ends up working better.

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#13

What 5 heroes are you standardizing on? I like this idea, although my alliance doesn’t have nearly the depth for this.

#14

I would agree with that. I had a hard time last war against blue tank.

#15

Center 3 are Zeline, Kunchen. gravemaker. yellow and blue sniper of your choice left and right, ideally Poseidon and Alasie.

#16

top 100 alliances pretty much have coordinated tanks for war.

#17

It’s harder to do in low to mid level alliances, but it’s also more effective because your opponent generally has less bench strength to counter it. When your last two or three flags are down to mostly green heroes against red tanks …

#18

We will run all strong teams vs. color tank to not create a weakness in any team. The tank is just another hero on the board to kill it’s nothing special. Color tanks don’t really affect us that much we just build to the team we go against. I think running color tanks is overrated. Winning wars is more team communication, strategy and choosing the right team and luck of the boards. Getting all your team in tune is key!!

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#19

@kikyo

Food for thought

#20

Our group stuck with best team for a long time. Our earliest attempt at coordinating tanks observably raised our opponents scores (keep records!) So we went back to best team. As time went on and we became stronger with deeper benches, we encountered more and more opponents with coordinating tanks. Early in that “stage” we found them easy to beat (too many weak tanks) but as we and our opponents got stronger we started meeting opponents that were difficult to beat because of good coordinated tank strategies.
We now run same coloured tanks and observations suggest that this is working for us NOW in this stage of our development. Experiment, observe and communicate.

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