Top 100 War Results
War Ended January 22, 2023
War Effect: Attack Boost #1
Skip way down if you want the war stuff.
I haven’t changed alliances very often in my E&P life. But after tracking and writing about the Top100 alliances for two years, I decided it was time to go visiting.
I spent seven months last year in eight different alliances, ranging from two weeks to two months each. Three alliances were ranked #80 to #120, one was around #40, and the other four Top 10. Seven were English speaking, one was not.
For those interested in my experience, specifically the similarities and differences between the Top 100 alliances (and in general), here you go.
In game chat: First, and a bit surprisingly, what jumped out to me as having the most impact on how I viewed each alliance was the frequency of in game chat. At one extreme, a few alliances would hit the 50 message limit very quickly. Keeping up wasn’t possible unless you checked in every few hours, if not every few minutes. Great for those looking for immediate conversations.
At the other extreme, a couple of alliances had relatively little chat. Pretty easy to catch up on chats for that day, but not a great fit for those looking for frequent in game conversations. However, one of those alliances merc’d a lot, and in game chat was mostly a spam of members coming and going. They made up for it with a ton of chat outside the game. The other alliance just had a lot of non-talkers.
Most alliances were in between. Checking in 2 to 3 times a day was usually enough to keep up, with occasional exceptions of message spam depending if the chatty members got going or not.
Titans: Laugh or cry, members overhitting titans was the single most common similarity among the alliances. It’s amazing how often I saw “oops, I had a cascade” on a third flag when they were already close to the cap. Alliances had limits ranging from 160K to 200K, usually coupled with a time limit (e.g., don’t kill until X hours remaining). Most tigthtened down on rare titans, with a few putting some sort of reward / punishment system in place for rares.
That being said, there was one alliance that didn’t seem to have a limit, at least not one that was ever clear to me. But they merc’d a lot and didn’t seem too concerned about loot restrictions. Their main titan rule was don’t kill until everyone had hit. In contrast, another heavy merc’ing alliance calculated to the minute the “don’t kill by” time for each titan in order minimize loot restrictions.
So bottom line, I experienced titan overhitters across the Top 100 range, from #3 to #120.
Wars: I could write a book on this, but I’ll try to keep it short.
Within the Top 100 there is a wide range of player benches, and even within each alliance there is a noticable range. The difference as you move up the alliance ranks is that range within the alliance shrinks.
The most common war strategy was clean your own with soft kills for phase I and FFA after the mid-point.
But a few alliances still employed two waves then FFA, usually against equal opponents. That maximizes kills of weaker teams, but with a trade-off of less time available for FFA.
One alliance was unique in two ways. They went with a quick reset followed by soft kills to start the war, and instead of a clean your own they use a flag allocation system (i.e., a designated number of oneshots / cleans for each member based on prior war history).
To state the obvious, the higher the alliance’s rank, the greater the overall spend among members. But for those thinking about joining a Top 100 alliance, there are members within the Top 100 who are now spending little to nothing. Continuing to spend isn’t necessary to securing or keeping a spot on a Top 100 alliance, especially further down the ranks.
To oversimplify, four things matter for war as you move up the ranks. Troops, heroes, attack team composition, and tile play.
Troops and heroes equate to time and (mostly) money. No avoiding that. Alliances get pickier the more competitive / higher ranked they are. Level 23+ troops are generally needed to get into a lower ranked alliance, while multiple sets of 29 troops (including mana troops) needed as your move up the ranks. Lower ranked alliances are less likely to look at rosters, while higher ranked alliances will scrutinize rosters for troops and specific heroes before extending an invite.
Attack team composition - Game knowledge and practice. A huge difference between the top players in the game (regardless of their alliance rank) and everyone else is how much time they spend practicing. Often times they are testing synergies among heroes, but also perfecting attack teams against specific defenses (i.e., M&M & WP). Practice matters.
Tile play - I can’t overemphasize the importance of this. I spent time with and fighting against the very top alliances. I learned two things. First, I’m not that good. Average, if I’m generous. Second, tile play matters just as much (and arguably more so) than heroes and troops. If you think RNG determines the outcome of a match, top alliances aren’t going to be a good fit for you. And yes, that includes Rush wars.
The best advice I walked away with is to study the opening board. Closely. Consider every possible move and the likely follow-up move. How do I increase the odds to turn around a poor board, to upgrade a marginal board, and how not to mess up a great opening board? If you move within the first 30 seconds, there’s a good chance you overlooked something. Record your match even if you’re not going to share the video. It forces you to slow down a bit.
And finally, be thoughtful on all moves. Even the best players in the game miss moves that are obvious when reviewing videos. But the best players minimize those oversights. Fight the urge to move too quickly during the match when the board is extremely favorable or unfavorable.
Money (i.e., troops and heroes) will get you into a higher ranked alliance, but it’s your tile play that will keep you there.
War rooms on Line for two opponents to share war hit videos was somewhat common at the Top 20 level, but rare below that.
Last comments. The non-English speaking alliance I was in was a great experience. Most of their chat was on Telegram, which has an in-app translator that greatly helped being a part of the alliance. And I learned how to translate in-game chat using screenshots.
For those thinking of joining an alliance that speaks a different language, my advice is to give it a try. It is more work, some things simply don’t translate well, but it’s a very unique way to experience other cultures within the game. And it can provide a few laughs along the way (I kept wondering why my foreign alliance kept talking about “slippers.”) That being said, foreign alliances aren’t for everyone given the extra effort it takes to translate, and even then not fully understand some conversations.
Now for that war stuff…
95 wars were reported, including 46 of the Top 50 and 91 of the Top 100.
Average score was 6,841, pretty close to the two Attack Boost wars from the last cycle of 6,842 and 6,823.
Here is the average by war effect, by rank Tier. To no surprise, Rush is by far the lowest scoring war effect at 6,045, followed by Arrow Barrage at 6,575. What is suprising is that the other three war effects (Attack Boost, Equalizer, and Undead Horde) have nearly the same averages. That differs from the prior two years where there was a bit of a difference between averages. We’ll see where that stand after another cycle.
This war #2 7DD defeated #4 Агрессивные by 837, while #5 The Avengers grabbed a 452 point victory over #3 GD.
These two alliances match up about once a month, with each war hard fought.
Going into this war, The Avengers dropped to #5 due to their win against GD on Dec. 15 dropping outside the ranking period coupled with Агрессивные’s win against The Avengers on December 29.
Six wars were won by the lower ranked alliance, and of those one was an upset win. #83 HARDCORE defeated #66 Jericho’s Revival by 268 points.
Three alliances performed well against stronger opponents. #29 Ukraine Love nearly pulled off an upset win against a Top 10 alliance, coming within 40 of defeating #9 Quantum Knights.
#60 7 ГНОМОВ fell by 256 to #30 굿길드, while #97 Malice in Blunderland needed 241 more points to defeat #58 Helios.
In a great matchup between two equals, #24 NEMEZISS defeated #21 Seven Days Hunting by 98, while a bit further down the ranks in another close war was #74 die Auserwahlten pulling out a 38 point win against unranked Gulf Hawks.
Another notable war was unranked Palm-Fiction (excess wars below 30) defeating #11 Wolves of the North).
And finally, unranked Jo Seon scored a massive 8,619 points against unranked Glory to Ukraine. I’m not sure what defense GTU ran, but it was as much of a mismatch as you could expect. Jo Seon is a Top 10 alliance if they fought at 100, while GTU is well outside the Top 100. So while it’s an attention grabbing score, I won’t be including it in “official” war stats. Jo Seon’s 8,619 points was the second highest recorded score, behind infernales’ (also not counted) 8,706 against Warriors of the North’s whimsical Christmas defense.
War recap: