Overview of Clan Wars

     Clan Wars is an exciting and intense feature of Clash of Clans, where your clan gets matched against another clan of relatively equal strength and size, and you compete to see which clan will be able to get the most stars from their attacks!


Rules and Requirements to Participate in Clan Wars

     Any clan can participate in clan wars provided they meet a few simple requirements.  First off, you must have at least 10 members in your clan in order to start a clan war as 10 versus 10 is the smallest size war currently available in the game.  If you have 10 or more members, there must be at least 10 of them willing to participate in clan wars.  If you find that you have less than 10 members willing to play in clan wars, you can override their "opt in/opt out" preference if needed.  Bear in mind that only the leader or co-leaders of the clan may start a clan war.  If you have more than 10 willing members, you will need to select a number in multiples of 5; either 15, 20, 25, etc., with the maximum number being 50 (this is also the maximum number of members allowed into a clan at a time).  Once you have your war roster chosen, tap the "Start War!" Button at the bottom right of the screen, and the system will begin searching for a clan of similar strength to match you with.  The matchmaking is based solely on the members participating in the war, not on your clan as a whole.  You will have the option to cancel the search any time, but once a match has been found there is no turning back!


How to Start a Clan War

     Your clan can join a war by tapping the War Button (the button with the crossed swords) on the lower left side of the screen.  You will then tap the "Start War!" Button in the center of the screen that pops up.  This will bring up a list of your clan members ranked in order of highest to lowest trophy count, with an icon that has a shield and crossed swords to the left of each member.  This shield will either be colored red or green, which indicates that member's desire, or lack thereof, to participate in clan wars (Red means they do not wish to participate or are "opted out", and green means they do wish to participate or are "opted in").  You will select members by tapping the button to the right of their name so that it says "In" and is colored green.  Once you have the appropriate number of members selected, the "Start War!" Button in the bottom right of the screen will change from grey to orange and you will be able to tap it to start the war search.  After the search has started, you can return to your village screen and you will be notified when an opponent has been found, there is no need to wait at the search screen.  Good luck!


Clan War Procedure

     Once an opponent has been found, the preparation day immediately begins.  Tapping the war button from your village screen will bring up the war map screen, where you will notice a countdown timer at the top of the screen counting down from 24 hours.  This screen also shows all the members of both clans that are participating in the war.  The map ranks each clan member based on their village strength, not their trophies!  The strongest player of each clan will appear at the top of the map and will be ranked number 1, with the next strongest member below them ranked number 2, and so on in that fashion.  During the prep day, your main focus will be donating defensive troops to all the members of the war and working on strategies for attacking each of the enemy bases.  You can donate troops to teammates by clicking on their TH in the war map, then donating the desired troops. Please note that this is the only way to donate defensive troops for war, if you donate troops through clan chat it will only be able to be used for attacking or defending that player's home base, not their war base.  Choose defensive troops wisely, they can mean the difference between winning and losing in a close war.
     Once the prep day has ended, war day immediately begins, and a new 24 hour timer begins counting down.  At this point, players from both clans can begin attacking one another, and no more changes can be made to war base layouts or defensive clan castle troops.  Now is the time to play out the strategies you created during prep day, and attempt to get 3-stars with your attacks.  Each player has 2 attacks to attempt to get as many stars as possible on the opposing clan members, therefore it is extremely important that each member use their attacks wisely and choose opponents they truly believe they can 3-star.  Failure to do this will almost certainly result in a loss, so each member should use the prep day to work out a strategy with the other clan members so that each member knows who to attack and how to attack them.  If all goes well, you will come out with a win and a nice chunk of loot for your efforts.
     The winner is the clan with the most stars at the end of the war day.  A newly added feature is the tiebreaker function.  In the event that both clans have the same number of stars when the war ends, the winner will be determined based on the average destruction of all attacks for each clan.  Because of this, it is important to never end a fight before all your troops are used and killed, because every building you destroy adds to the overall average destruction, and ending fights early could cause you to lose if it comes down to a tiebreaker.  So even if you are certain you will not get any more stars from an attack, you should not end it until every troop and spell has been exhausted and the game automatically ends the attack.
     Clan wars is one of the most enjoyable features of Clash of Clans, so make sure not to take the fun out of it by taking it too seriously.  I will be posting plenty more material about clan wars, so in the mean time have fun, and good luck!