In our Clash of Clans guide to raiding, we'll cover strategies for getting the most out of your troops when you're on the offensive. This is the third part to our Clash of Clans beginner's guide series! Now that we've covered basic resource management and defensive strategies in Clash of Clans, it's time to turn the tables and get out there and steal other people's junk!
Raising an Army
Once you've built the Barracks, you can train units. Units you train are sent to your Army Camps. The more Army Camps you have, and the more they are upgraded, the more units you can have for a single raid.
The Barracks has its own training queue that is separate from the Army Camp capacity. Thus, you can queue up units to train even after you've hit your maximum in the Army Camp. This has two benefits:
- Any Elixir you spend filling your Barracks training queues is off-limits for attackers. It's a safe place to store resources!
- If you are off raiding and you use up troops, any queued units that were blocked because your Army Camps were full will begin to train. Thus, having several Barracks with queued units means you can reduce the time you have to wait between raids.
Learning to Raid
The first thing you should do when learning how to effectively raid is play the Clash of Clans single player campaign. The point of the campaign is to teach you how to raid effectively. If you haven't started it, play it a bit! There's no need to 3-star everything early on, as your resources are probably going to be limited. Once you've stolen the resources and gotten one star on a particular level, I'd suggest moving on to the next one.
Once you've picked a single-player level or attacked someone, it's time to deploy your troops. Once you pick a troop type, just tap or hold anywhere to deploy. What you deploy when and where makes a big difference, though. Here are some Clash of Clans raiding tips to get you started:
- Defenses will tend to pick a single unit and attack it until it is destroyed. Thus, drop some "tank" units like Giants first, and then you can deploy the weaker Archers behind them.
- Watch out for traps - if there's an obvious hole in a wall, for instance, chances are there's something lurking there. Send a single unit in to trigger the trap, and then you can send in your main force behind it.
- Like I mentioned in the guide to defenses, some units will prioritize a particular type of structure. Goblins, for instance, are crazy for loot. If you can make a hole for them, they will single-mindedly loot everything in sight, which is good for your final resource totals!
Pro Tip It's tempting to just dump all your troops on the enemy and watch them lay waste, but remember that there's a maximum amount of loot you can get from any particular attack or single player level. Any troops you deploy are used up, whether they survive or not. Think about how much loot you're raiding versus the cost of the troops to deploy!
Picking Targets
Our resident Clash of Clans raiding expert EBongo said in his Top 10 best kept secrets in Clash of Clans article that "Revenge is a dish best served often." So true! Check your "Defense Log" and see who has attacked you - these guys are ripe for the picking.
There's a few ways you can use the info in your Defense Log to your advantage:
- If you see someone just dropped a single, cheap troop on your base, they looked at your defense and said "lol, nope" so they yielded to you immediately. They lost trophies by not paying the gold cost to skip, though. Thus, they're probably farming for resources and are phat with the lewt of many easy victories.
- If they lost to you even though they made an effort, chances are they're not particularly good at the game, so they're probably going to be easier to raid.
- If you see just a single hero attacked and the battle was over quickly, chances are they yielded to drop trophies and get into a lower rank for easier resource raiding. These guys are probably heavily fortified.
- The Defense Log also shows if they're in a clan - being in a clan gives you the chance for extra defensive troops.
- When attempting revenge, you have longer to plan your assault, so you can make a more informed decision about how to assault.
The tl;dr is that revenge gives you many advantages when raiding, so use them!
In-Depth Raiding Guides
If you need more help with raiding in Clash of Clans, we have a number of useful resources.
EBongo put together a quick tips guide that lists our best quick strategies for improving your raid yields. You can read his 5 quick tips for Clash of Clans raiding guide to learn more.
If you're getting into the late stages of Town Hall 6 and into Town Hall 7 through early Town Hall 8, you'll need to adopt some advanced strategies for raiding to stay profitable. I put together an guide for gold and elixir raiding around Town Hall 7 that you might find interesting.
If you're having trouble winning trophies or helping your clan win Clan Wars, you'll want to focus on a more heavy-duty set of troops for training. I have another guide for raiding for stars and trophies that will help you and your clan clean up!