Once you get past the initial phase of Clash of Clans, you'll find yourself in the late stages of town hall 6 and into town hall 7. Where you used to be able to just wait out new upgrades, at this point, raiding becomes a more important part of your strategy for gaining resources. This area of the game tends to lead to a lot of issues for people. If you've found yourself stuck around town hall 6 and town hall 7, where all your raids seem to be unprofitable or you're losing constantly, this is the guide for you.
The goal of this strategy, Clan Wars, and alternative strategies
The strategy I outline in this guide is a good strategy for occasional raiding, and for when you're doing clan wars. If you're familiar with CoC raiding, this is a variant of the "Giant/Healer" strategy. The goal here is to maintain/grow trophies and to get some decent resources without a lot of grinding.
Remember that in clan wars, the only thing that counts is stars. Some of the alternative strategies are more focused on farming resources and trophies are a secondary concern. However, in clan wars, it's stars or nothing!
There are a couple of alternative strategies:
- Build Barbarians & Archers, with the goal of taking out full collectors placed outside people's bases. This strategy is called BARCH and can be run reasonably quickly due to the low training time and training cost. You'll end up searching out bases where walls aren't protecting collectors and then raiding those collectors only.
- Once you have the Dark Barracks and can gain Dark Elixir more easily, you can start training Barbarians, Archers, and Minions. This strategy is called BAM and is extremely effective at taking out collectors and the occasional storage within a base, due to the Minions ability to fly.
These strategies are better for farming resources if you've got a lot of time for raiding.
Another strategy that used to be popular is the goblin rush. Similar to the BARCH strategy, goblins will very rapidly deplete full collectors. However, goblins are very susceptible to mortar and wizard tower fire, and thus you need someone with many full collectors unprotected by their major defenses. Thus, it's a bit weaker than some of the other strategies.
What troops should I train at town hall 6 or town hall 7?
This is the question everyone asks whenever they're stuck around this area. At this point, you've got:
- Barracks around level 6-9, which gives you access to balloons, wizards, healers, and dragons, respectively
- Army camp size between 160 and 200 or so
- Most of your troops around level 3, but moving towards troop level 4
- Spell Factory level 2-4 or so
It can be difficult to determine what mix of troops you should train at this point. My strategy generally entails:
- 15-20 Giants. If you're closer to 200 army camp size, take closer to 20.
- 6-8 Wall Breakers. If they're level 3 or level 4, this should be enough.
- Maybe 1-2 Healers, if you have them and you've powered them up
- A few Goblins (say, 10 or so)
- The rest Archers
For your spells, I like to take almost exclusively Lightning. You can also get Healing and Rage around this area, but I find Lightning to be the best balance of elixir to usefulness. Healing is another popular choice, however. It can keep your Giants going longer, which can be useful in situations where it takes longer to take down the major defenses.
Picking Raid Targets
My clan-brother-from-another-mother EBongo put together some good tips in his 5 quick tips for CoC farming guide, so I suggest you read that as well if you haven't already.
It pays to be picky. I suggest starting with your revenge log, and look for people who raided you with troops whose level are at yours or below. Especially if they did a poor job or dropped a lot of troops but didn't take very much, chances are their base layout is going to be pretty poor. If you don't have any suitable revenge targets, be prepared to skip a lot of potential fights before you find one you like.
When I'm picking a target, I like to look for the following:
- Do they have enough resources? Just dropping 20 level 4 Giants costs you 40,000 elixir. If you use 8 level 3 Wall Breakers, that's another 16,000 elixir. If you add a couple of Lightning spells, that's another 35-40,000 elixir. If you need all of these things to take a base, you've got to make at least 100,000 to 120,000 elixir to make a profit.
- How hard will it be to take down their heavy defenses? For the most part, around this level you're looking at 3 mortars and 2 wizard towers, plus perhaps a hidden tesla and their clan castle. Are all of these things in the same set of walls? Once the walls breached, can you take them all out quickly, or are there a lot of other targets in the way?
- How high-level are their walls? Until you get level 4 or level 5 wall breakers, it's going to be hard to bust through walls levels 6 (light purple crystal) and higher. This means you're looking for a lot of level 5 (golden stone) or level 4 (square gray stone) walls.
- Where are their resources? People who play often will tend to have their resources concentrated in their storage bins, while people who are mostly idle will tend to keep it in their collectors. Learn to recognize what a full collector and storage area looks like, so you can tell if the resources are easy to grab or not.
It may take a long time to find an appropriate target. If you find yourself just completely unable to find a suitable target, it might be a good idea to gain or lose some trophies. In theory, losing trophies should put you up against weaker opponents for less resources. But in practice, many people stay at very low trophies intentionally to avoid getting matched up against opponents at their strength level. So, you might have to experiment a bit in order to find a trophy range with people who make good targets.
Battle Strategy
The overall battle strategy is as follows:
- We want the Giants to eliminate the mortars and wizard towers quickly. They will decimate the archers and goblins if left unchecked. The Giants will also tend to target defenses and have high HP, which makes them the best units to send in against them.
- Wall Breakers will shorten the amount of time Giants spend wailing on walls, which increases their effectiveness at taking down the enemy defenses.
- The Archers are there to lay waste to other buildings and take resources. Since they hang back from the fighting, defensive structures will tend not to target them unless they get away from the main Giant force.
- Healers (if you have them) should follow the Giants and keep them alive for as long as possible.
With that in mind, start by dropping a couple of Giants near the weakest/closest wall near the mortars and wizard towers. Let these Giants get to the wall, and then drop some wall breakers. Two Level 3 wall breakers should be able to bust through a level 5 "gold stone" wall. Lower level walls take just a single level 3 wall breaker to bust.
Once the Giants have made it past the wall, drop all your giants to follow the first two. If you have healers, now's a good time to drop them to chase the Giants.
As soon as this is done, most of the defenses in the area will target the Giants. Now is the time to drop Archers behind the Giants. They will not prioritize the defensive towers, so it will take them a little while to get past the outer buildings. However, they will dish out damage quickly. Drop the Archers in small groups, so that in case they trigger a trap, few of them will be lost.
Once the defenses are mostly down or distracted, you can drop a few Goblins in to mop up the leftover resources.
If things are starting to go pear-shaped, and there's still a lot of resources left to grab, you might consider using your spells. With the Giants in a massive group, a Healing spell will do well. If there are a couple of Mortars or Wizard Towers in a clump, dropping a Lightning spell can soften them up or remove them from play.