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Welcome to part two of our interview with NightmareGuild! Here the leader delves even deeper into his war clan's highly-specialized approach, and shares strong opinions about the state of the game. Check out part one of the interview here.

With 'Clan Masters', our goal is to get personal - with the top performing clans in CoC! Each edition we an interview a highly successful clan to reveal their unique personalities, tactics, motivations and opinions on the game. For information on our criteria and how to get your own clan interviewed, please click here.

Our questions were answered by Draconia, the clan leader.





11. What upfront steps do your leaders take to ensure that your clan will win the war?

#1- You take the average weight of the top 5 players – add 10k to 20k to that weight and make sure that you have at least TEN attacks that can 3 star at those numbers. This ensures that the top of your wars will always be perfect.

Note: To learn about the aforementioned war weights, check out this post on the Supercell forums (created by clan leader Draconia).

#2- You make sure that your top defenders have the ability to repel the standard army levels that their account brings to war; you must have at least two good defenders up top that can prevent the enemy from getting every star on the map. They must have Anti Hog, Anti Gowipe and Anti Air bases on standby to switch up as needed depending on the war match.

#2a- Every base in your clan should be defending against mirrors, unless they are defenseless. Everyone should have uniquely designed anti lurable castles and hard bases for their level.

#3- You must know the skill of your clan. You must know that the players you bring have 3 star capabilities. You must expect any and all new players to bring ZERO stars. Ensure that you have enough attacks by proven 3 star players in your clan to not only cover all the new people, but also to cover for 5 to 10 mistakes by your trusted players. You want to have at least 15 to 30% more attacks available than needed to ensure your clan scores every star on the map.

#4- Force all players in war to use a hybrid .5 upgrade plan, being weight conscious as they carefully pick and choose upgrades for their base that will most benefit their defense in war. One defense upgrade per war – no faster. Nobody should ever ‘max everything’ at every level. That advice is almost as bad as a poorly rushed base. Both will make your wars abnormally difficult to win.

12. Describe the range of account types that you employ to win wars.

A football team cannot win a game if you have your entire team made up of one type of player. In Clash, you need to employ a full spread of account types if you truly want to win every war. You need the heavy defenders on top to keep your enemy from landing a perfect, you need some hybrids under that with insane attack power to clear the enemy’s top bases with ease, you should employ a handful of minimax players to give the enemy’s middle players a hard time, [and] you can use a defenseless/hybrid Trap base (bought all hidden traps but looks like easy pickings with only one level 1 cannon) to waste a few of the low level players' attacks. And you should use a few 100% pure defenseless accounts on bottom – preferably with TH6 or stronger attack power and skill – to help give your clan an advantage on top.

If you don’t have a bunch of 10 month old accounts which were specifically designed to do these things, then at the least you could pack the bottom 15 spots of your 50x50 war with a bunch of brand new TH3 players.

Many Fair Play clans like doing ‘arranged wars’. These type of matches only work with standard ‘max everything’ accounts – and only when both clans have identical town hall and weight levels. These types of wars are relatively fair – and very hard. I personally prefer low weight / high attack power hybrids. Some call them RUSHED - I call them a guaranteed easy war that we will be sure to win.

Defenseless town hall 3s are the most common trick used in war. Many high level war clans will use 10 to 15 of them EVERY war – not only to fill spaces so they can do larger wars, but also to ensure that their clan gets a mismatch (their top [players] being stronger so they can win easily).

I prefer to use high attack power accounts with low TH4 or 5 weight. It is very near impossible in the current state of the game to build a defenseless account beyond town hall 8. Earning large amounts of money – when you instantly and continuously lose it nonstop from the moment you log out (you can never get a shield) really ruins the defenseless accounts' chances to save up. (Supercell did this on purpose because they don’t want people using these accounts). But I assure you: once you reach TH9 with a 30 slot castle and king / queen, you will finally start getting a shield.

MiniMax bases are very viable; building only 1 or 2 of every defense to keep weight low so that you can add Xbows, Infernos and Eagles WAS an amazing trick to keep low town hall 7 mirrors while being able to defend against TH8 and 9 attackers and have [a] full town hall 10 attack power at your disposal. You would always get a shield, always defend in war, and always be able to attack much higher than [your] mirror. These accounts are in the crosshairs of Supercell, and every update the developers try to do more to punish these players. They are still viable in war; just not as epic as they once were.

Hybrid accounts – designed with enough abnormally low level defenses to have un-lurable castles, and attack power three town halls stronger than their war weight are my favorite accounts. These will defend against mirrors and attack much higher up on the map; truly the best possible type of account that anyone can build at the moment to still slide under Supercell's ‘radar’ and still have epic performance in war.

13. What are your opinions about the game's current features and functionality? Is there anything you’d like changed, added, or removed?

I liked the game MUCH more when I first started playing it 15 months ago. I have hated almost every change they have made since then. They are constantly making the game more difficult to progress and more complicated to understand. If I just started playing this game today, I would quit by tomorrow. I’m invested in a few accounts and am suffering through the game; as it stands, the only reason I’m still playing is for clan war. I truly dislike every other aspect of the game: farming, gathering resources, trophies… I really have zero interest in that stuff.





I’m highly aggravated by the horribly poor development given to this game. This game is lacking in every way possible. The developers have simply RULED OUT plenty of great ideas that would improve game play with no valid reason. I fear I could type a ten thousand line article of all the things missing from this game – and tomorrow I would think of ten more things…





#1 – The mentality of the developers. PLAY THE GAME – THE WAY WE WANT YOU TO PLAY IT – OR WE WILL PUNISH YOU! (specifically going out of their way to ruin defenseless accounts – to punish the minimax players who would keep low weight and get Infernos while matching up against TH7s – all the things they have done to punish engineered accounts.

#2 – The killing of the economy. Before TH11, things were great. I could easily bring in 200k [dark elixir] per week [while] casually playing on my TWO big accounts (keeping heroes upgrading full time). Now with the town hall snipes gone, [there are] no easy shields. Being forced out of the game every 4 hours to get a mandatory ‘proper’ defense (aka lose a crap ton of money) – plus the diminished league bonuses that used to provide such a great reason to be up in Crystal to Masters… so many things have really just made it THAT MUCH harder to turn a profit. Progression is 80% harder… where my heroes used to go up nonstop, now they go up once every 2 or 3 weeks. There is just NO easy money anywhere in the game, unless you click NEXT about 150 times… then eventually you will find a dead base (they aren’t HIDDEN… they are just BURIED so far down that you never see them anymore, especially if you're TH11).

#3 – In game clan recruiting is so bad – it’s the worst thing ever in any game I have ever seen.

a: Prevent players from being allowed to enter unless they can SPEAK YOUR LANGUAGE.

b: How about ‘Average stars per attack' (in clan war) for a statistic? Or instead of just showing how many war stars they have, also show how many stars they COULD HAVE HAD after it?

c: How about ‘How many clan war attacks have you skipped since you started playing? I would set this at about 5. Anyone who skipped more than 5 attacks in their life… has no business being in my clan. I have 20 accounts – have been in countless wars… I’ve missed THREE attacks in 15 months.

d: Let our clan have a home made CAPCHA/password where we can ask any question we want. If the person requesting admission knows the answer, they get in. In my case it would say, ‘Go to my website- read my rules – tell me RULE #1!’

#4: Being able to cancel new buildings. This is how I have tested the weights of so many things. If Supercell refuses to let us cancel new buildings then they should post the actual in game mathematical numbers to go along with all the things you can build so players like myself – who want to engineer a special low weight base – can pick and choose (wisely) with more than just guesswork. SO WHAT if people would ‘rent’ defenses… I Personally RENTED infernos and Xbows multiple times. I spent a fortune / threw away tons of gold doing that… AND ONCE IT WON THE WAR FOR US BY A SMALL PERCENTAGE OF A TIE… so it was a very solid war strategy to buy and cancel things. I can’t imagine too many players being willing to spend TEN million gold ‘renting ‘ a pair of Infernos [and] losing 50% when they sell it back.

Clan war match making [removal of 35 and 45 member wars]... 35 and 45 were the most common options for our clans. Being able to quickly move a couple players around to get the numbers right wasn’t so hard. Now, needing to find NINE players so that ONE doesn’t have to get opted out… that stinks.





14. Do you have a message you'd like to send to other clans? To potential recruits? To anyone else in the Clash community?

Be unique; specialize, merge into a family – make a bigger network… work with each other. Have a simple set of clear cut rules that everyone follows.





Note: Quoted stats are current as of the interview date.





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