State of The Clan - Summary and Actions
Nearly one year ago, on Saturday, the 2nd Day of August, 2014 C.E., Reddit Omicron embarked on a journey that would lead us to become one of the best war clans in the RCS. On that journey, we walked through many valleys together that held heartbreaking losses and prompted difficult kicks. Today, we find ourselves in a valley seemingly deeper than we have ever walked through before. But we know what it will take to climb out of this valley because we have been on the mountain-top. We know what it takes to compete at our best in clan wars.
We have tasted the sweetness of a 20 win streak and have basked in the glory of 5 perfect wars. We celebrated victory over many other 3* focused clans such as Reddit Demons, Reddit Lithium, Cryptic, and others. Our prowess in battle has been praised, emulated, and feared by both friend and foe. It truly has been an incredible year.
I for one will not stand by and watch our clan struggle to claw out of the valley of defeat. The view from the mountain-top is unparalleled and worth every bit of work it takes to get there and stay there. In your responses to the clan survey, it is obvious to me that you all love this clan as much as I do and are just as committed to its continued success. To that end, we are revitalizing some rules and operational procedures for war from our clans past, highlighting available resources, and setting some expectations regarding communication channels.
###War
The most overwhelming feedback from the clan survey by far was that we need to be more active in planning our attacks. While groupme has been a helpful platform for quick communication in our clan, many of you identified the issues with regards to using it to plan attacks. With us bouncing from clashcaller (CC) to clash.tools (CT) to clan war tracker (CWT) it has made sense to keep planning in GM but we agree with you that CWT is the best platform overall and we will be using it for the forseeable future. This leads well into the first change we are making to war:
- Calling Targets
In the past year, we have used google drive, the subreddit, clan chat, groupme, clash caller, clash.tools and now clanwartracker to reserve targets and strategize during war. Coordinating and strategizing war attacks is a critical component to any competitive clan war. Currently, bases remain taken for hours before attacks are planned and executed, causing players to hold attacks until late into the war for cleanup efforts. Furthermore, attack plans sometimes get lost in groupme and not only do players not get enough feedback but these plans are also not readily available for players doing cleanup attacks.
Because of these issues, we will be making several changes to war coordination:
- All calls will now use ¼ flex timers meaning prep day calls last 6 hours and any calls made on battle day will be for ¼ of the remaining time in war.
This will ensure that bases can be hit early and often and will help smooth out planning cleanup in the second half of war. You should still tag the person in groupme as a courtesy if you plan to take their expired call … they might be about to attack! Once a call is expired, do not be afraid to call it and attack. It is critical that we cultivate the attack early and often mentality in order to compete at a high level in clan wars.
- In order to call a base, you must attach a visual plan and/or comment to your call that outlines a detailed strategy for your attack on the base. This attachment should be done directly on the platform we are using to call bases, currently clanwartracker.com (CWT).
This ensures that all members are planning appropriately for their attacks and makes it easier for any attacker to review all the information about a specific base. As a side benefit, this should prevent members from holding bases hostage until they come up with a plan and/or yoloing the base right as their call runs out. We are aware of the compression issues with some images uploaded to CWT and do have a direct line to the devs as we helped alpha test their platform. They have been extremely responsive in dealing with issues and we expect that to continue.
- Immediately after calling a base, you must then go and comment on someone else’s attack plan on CWT. Try to comment on one that hasn’t received any feedback yet and feel free to provide your thoughts on more than one.
Planning raids and providing feedback on others’ plans will not only be a huge help to them but will also greatly help you in your development as raider and base builder. It is impossible to deny the correlation between the success of our best players and their dedication to carefully planning raids using all the tools at their disposal. This will also help us to more consistently catch simple things like known internet bases, optimal attack angles, lure/anchor tricks, etc.
- Timing of first war attacks
Since the rebirth of our clan, we have expected members to use their first attack by the 12 hours remaining mark in war. Furthermore, we have encouraged attacking early and often for all clan members, especially if you are in the bottom half of the war map. Our war rules have long stated this as an operational procedure for our wars, but this has neither been followed nor enforced. As a result, we have struggled to plan cleanup efforts in recent clan wars and had moments of panic when there were minutes left in clan wars and members had not attacked while others were standing by to maximize stars. Several of you identified this as an issue in the clan survey and we agree and will be observing the following moving forward:
Starting with the next war, strikes will be given to players that do not use their first attack in the first 12 hours. Furthermore, strikes will be given to TH8s who do not use BOTH their attacks in the first 16 hours. As we face more difficult opponents whether planned or unplanned, it is CRITICAL that our top 10 know where they should focus with their second attacks. Cleanup is exponentially more difficult to plan the more of our low attacks are left.
I know that many of you have been in the clan since before we became a war clan and this may seem overly strict. I would ask that you give it a try before condemning it. There will of course be occasional exceptions, and as always we just ask that you communicate clearly with LT if there is a time when you’ll need to attack late in the war. However, if you find that attacking early in the war is a persistent challenge, I will assist you in gaining entry to a less war-focused RCS. Getting our attacks in ASAP from the bottom up is absolutely the most efficient way to run a war and we cannot afford to do anything less if we are to compete with other war clans of similar composition.
- Performance Monitoring
We used to track player performance in a very detailed way using clashcaller’s scoring system and a pretty complex spreadsheet. We stopped doing this as it wasn’t providing any reasonable value when we were absolutely crushing everyone in our path. Since our loss to Holder Clashers, we have again begun tracking detailed statistics from member attacks. Moving forward, this data will be tracked in clanwartracker. You can see the data being tracked in CWT on the members page.
Many of you felt that we should be taking action on poor performers and we agree. We will be taking action on the data across these past 4 wars and sending players who are performing poorly to Reddit Bootcamp to work on their 3* strategies. For those of you who are not aware, Reddit Bootcamp is used to vet incoming applicants’ abilities in war and has just recently been made available as a training grounds for anyone in the RCS. The maximum amount of time a player can remain in bootcamp is 2 weeks … a copious amount of time for basically any serious clasher to get their crap straight. Since the RCS does not allow feeder clans or sister clans, this is our best option for giving struggling members a place to work on attacks.
Several other clans have sent members here to train and the clan wars constantly so it is an excellent place to work on your attacks and as a side benefit you get to interact with players that very well may be your future clanmates. Currently, Omicron is officially represented by myself, dohpaz, waXed, and Ben in bootcamp and there is an official bootcamp GM for all members that you can join to share strategies and talk with others in the clan.
###Resources
In the clan survey, many of you mentioned that you were looking for resources to help you succeed in wars. I wanted to highlight some of the ones that are in place and ask that you point out deficiencies in the comments. Several of you thought it would be cool to have a private sub for this, but I see no issue with resources being public and discussion happening in groupme. If you disagree, please let me know. I do have a private sub set up for the clan but we have never used it. The main place I will be linking is our subreddit wiki. I realize some of the content may be a bit dated … if you see things that need to be updated, let us know! Its a ton of work to run the clan and while building out the wiki was a huge effort, maintaining it is something that has diminishing returns if nobody is referring to it.
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Voice planning / discussion via teamspeak server : thumper.de:9988 (tag any LT for PW to Omicron’s room)
I have been toying with the idea of creating some videos focused on attack mechanics … I need to verify that they don’t already exist … then I will make them. Basically walking through the mechanics of a raid opener one step at a time. I have already done this on numerous youtube videos and livestreams, but it seems many of you feel it would be helpful for these things to be broken down in a general sense.
Also, if you’d like your attack reviewed specifically on the stream, just let me know. You can show up and ask and I will happily review your raid. You can also hop on teamspeak anytime and we can talk 1:1 about what went wrong or what you could do better. Teamspeak is free on desktop, $5 on iOS, and $3 on android. You should stop making excuses and get it. Talking with your clanmates on voice WILL make you better. On battle day evenings we usually have at least half a dozen people if not more all talking and planning in TS. We have milk and cookies and Saturday is karaoke night. Join the party.
###Communication
Many of you felt the communication has been a bit sporadic lately and tough to keep up with what is going on. I take full responsibility for that and apologize to you. We will do better.
- Clan Mails - Primary Means for Announcements
From here on out, we will send a clan mail anytime there is something of importance to announce. If it is too large or complex to say in the clan mail, that clan mail will direct you to visit the subreddit where we will post details.
- Groupme - Individual Communication and Arranged War Schedule
When we have a planned matchup coming, I will post it as an event in groupme. Once the roster is finalized, I will put the list of players who will be in that war in the description of the event. Everything I said in my previous post about arranged matchups still applies, but instead of 3 per season we are going to plan 1-2 per season. To be clear, this means out of 6 wars, a maximum of 2 would be planned syncs. We are also going to improve the logistics of getting players to the right clan by kicking from Omicron and then directly inviting to the clan that will be running a side war. We will rely on all of you to be looking at the groupme calendar to know when arranged matchups are and not be surprised if you’re kicked and then invited to a side war. Everyone should be playing on a daily basis and have access to groupme on their mobile device so if you don’t know what’s going on, it will be on you!
- Clanwartracker - Planning and Opt Outs
You can now show your opt out status on CWT along with a reason for your opt out. This is simpler than using the subreddit and since we are committed to CWT as a platform, managing as much as we can there just makes sense.
Also, I wanted to clarify that nearly all of your planning should be done on CWT. Of course you might talk in GM or TS while you’re in the initial planning stages deciding on the army to use, which side to attack from, etc … but once you’ve got a rough plan figured out you should put it in CWT and allow people to talk there. This will ensure your plan doesn’t get lost in GM and will also help everyone to more clear review people’s plans. This doesn’t mean you can’t talk to people in any other avenue about your plan … just make sure that the outcome of your discussion makes its way into CWT so that we can avoid repeating mistakes and optimize our communication collectively regarding our plans.
Posted Jul 11, 2015, 8:39 PM UTC · edited