BattleGodX's Guide to Base Designing

Alright, so you don't want to you use a war base on this site and want to make your own? In order for it to be approved by me or a War Co-Leader, it needs to meet certain criteria that make it great. Here are some general guidelines to follow in order to get your base approved....

1) Base Symmetry - In multiplayer, a good base defend equally well on all sides to protect your loot. In clan wars, however, the ultimate goal of your base is to prevent a 3-star. Each side of your base should be different to keep your opponent guessing. Asymmetrical base designs can be extremely efficient in preventing 3-stars because they can force an opponent into attacking a particular side. Good anti 3-star war bases create a strong side and a weak side, so that by the time the enemy gets through the weak side, the troops are too weak to defeat the strong side.

1) Hog trap(s) - A hog trap is two giant bombs placed between two adjacent defenses. The best hog traps are those located in one of the inner layers of the base, where they cannot be triggered prematurely by expert hoggers. If your hog trap is very close to the outside, you might want to consider placing spring traps near them outside the walls to prevent pre-triggering. Other ways to prevent hoggers 3-starring your base include setting your skeleton traps to ground and layering spring traps between defenses.

Example:

2) Defense configuration - For base symmetry, the rule of thumb is to form lines with two-building defenses (such as X-Bows at Th9), triangles with all 3-building defenses (such as air defenses at TH8) and squares with all 4-building defenses (wizard towers at TH9). Make sure all your shapes are centered around the Town Hall!

I. Tesla placement - Teslas are the bane of PEKKAS (they do double damage to them!). With this in mind, it is best to place all teslas inside or very near the core of your base. Some base designers like to place all their teslas surrounding their Town Hall to act as a shield.

II. Air defense placement - With a few exceptions, none or your air defenses should be found either in your core or within the outer layer of your base. This is because lava hounds go directly for air defenses and can lead a swarm of balloons into your core to wreak havoc on your base. However, you still want to make sure all of your air defenses are in range of the core and your Town Hall. NEVER put more than one air defense in the same compartment.

III. Air sweeper placement - Keep your air sweeper near the core (well-protected), and point it towards key defenses! Generally, you should point your air sweeper towards at least one air defense to prevent lavaloonion or dragons from 3-starring your base.

3) Regular building configuration - When I say regular buildings I mean those that are not defenses. These buildings can serve a variety of purposes in your base design, but you should make sure every building has a purpose. Some designers use buildings as distractions to lead enemy attackers away from the base, and some base designs, such as Ataraxia (TH8) are extremely efficient in doing so. As a rule of thumb, make sure all buildings are in range of your defenses. Storages can serve as tanks, so consider placing them in range of splash defenses. NEVER put your builder huts in a corner if your CC is lurable! It is much more worth it to prevent attackers from easily luring your clan castle troops to a corner and destroying them.

3) Trap configuration - The general rule here is spread out your traps evenly throughout the base to support your defense buildings. With this said, there are places to put traps that complement the behaviors of different troops.

I. Dark air mines - There should be one dark air mine next to every air defense. When defending against air attacks, your most important assets are your air defenses. It's only natural to protect your air defenses with your most powerful air trap.

II. Skeleton traps - I prefer to place both skeleton traps set to GROUND in the core. Though skeleton traps set to air may distract dragons for a fraction of second during battle, dragons' splash damage can destroy entire group of skeletons in one shot. Skeleton traps set to ground in the core, however, can wreak havoc on slow, single-target ground troops such as PEKKAS (wizards are not as likely to survive long enough to make it to the core).

III. Spring traps - You can be very crafty with spring traps. If you have an easily pre-triggerable hog trap near the outside of the base, you can use spring traps to prevent hogs from getting inside and messing up the trap. The basic placement for spring traps, however, is in between defensive structures. This way, hogs or giants who target defenses end up flying into the air. Another way to use spring traps is to place them right outside critical wall junctions on the outside of your base to prevent wallbreakers from breaking in.

3) Hero placement - Heroes are essential for defending against all types of armies. If a hero attacks one member of an attacker's army, the attacker's entire army is drawn towards that hero, which can potentially save your Town Hall. The rule of thumb is to place both your heroes either inside the core next to your Town Hall or directly outside the core. Make sure the heroes are well protected. If you had to chooes one, protect the Archer Queen!

4) Spacing - If you want your base to be as effective as possible in defending against hog riders and other attack strategies, you want to keep attackers guessing on the locations of your teslas, hog traps, and spring traps. Therefore, it is wise to spread your base a bit so that there are many possible locations for teslas and hog traps. Be careful, however, to not create a "Spread Base" layout. Spread bases are extremely bad against ground attacks, and should not be used. Make sure all spaces in your base make sense!

5) The Core - The core of your base is a compartment which the rest of your base is built off of and surrounds. It should contain the Town Hall (obviously), the Clan Castle, skeleton traps, heroes (if possible), and your teslas (if possible). As I said before, it should not contain any of your air defenses! Some designers like making the Clan Castle more centralized than the Town Hall to make luring "impossible." This is fine, though I prefer having the Town Hall centralized instead to promote base symmetry.

General Features of Specialized Bases:

Anti-GOWIPE (and its variations):

- All teslas in or near core

- Heroes (especially Archer Queen) well protected in or near core

- Skeleton traps set to GROUND in core

- Many compartments!

- Many ground traps (giant bombs especially) in core

Anti-Hog:

- Defense ring (if possible)

- Many empty spaces

- HOG TRAPS

- Centralized CC

- Archer queen well-protected in/near core

- Skeleton traps set to GROUND

Anti-Drag:

- Air defenses spread out (NOT IN SAME COMPARTMENT) in range of core

- Dark air mines near air defenses

- Many distractor buildings

Anti-Lavaloonion:

- Air defenses deep in base (randomly spread, with some overlapping each other)

- Dark mines near air defenses

- Archer Queen in/near core (far away from air defenses)

- Centralized CC (drag is very effective against lavaloonion)

- X-bows set to air

Once you have perfected your base design, show me and I may post it on the clan website!