Winning Indi Wars with Spy-Heavy Rosters

With season 5 being all Indi, I hear lots of people complaining about spies, hansels, and ps1 builds. While a vital asset for primals and Osw, most people have concluded they are a burden rather than an asset to the indi team, and the one with the fewest will win.

I, however, managed to buck this trend in a recent indi war I wc'd , so I thought I'd share what happened and how we won.


War Indi, 25-man roster random, 10 spy builds versus 4.

First of all, this was not just a slight imbalance, not a 3 spies versus 4 scenario, we had 10 spy builds to their 4. Moreover, our cr 1,3,4,6,7 were all spy builds, while their first ps was cr2. I find when you have an extreme imbalance of spies, the disadvantage can become an asset if you know how to adjust your strategy.

The first thing I did was look at what their weaknesses were. The enemy had huge attack stats and decent adt, but one build had no sdt and two others only had about 1.5 M sdt and 3 m total spy def power. Another 8 attack builds had sdt well under 10 mil. My spies could tear them apart as long as they were up and not koed. I decided my best strategy would be to have most of my spies xstal early and through that gain control.

Opening

I like teams, so I made the following teams and strategy:

Tank Team A (cr2,5,8,10) assasin 12, SB 19, skim 12,then 17
The enemies cr 12 had a 37m/39m/2.5m/2.5m stat line. His spies were a joke and I figured I didnt need to waste my spy builds on him. They could get him low and then have an easy skim.

Tank Team B (cr12-15) SB 2,13 skim 17
(had these four sturdy attack builds take on their big spy and then skim a build weak in adt)

Tank Team C (cr16 down) SB 11,13 skim 4,5,22
(my spies were planning to unleash hell on the enemies cr 4,5, 22 so I wanted my weaker attack builds ready to pick up the pieces they would first pin the second biggest spy.)

All Tank teams were to tank as best they could but SKO at 40%.

Spy Team A (cr 1,3,7) assassin 3,4 dump spies, xstal up, and tank spies at 75%

(I figured the enemy would sb these big spies to zero, but I needed them up to maintain control. Therefore they would xstal early, then concentrate on repins. My enemy did not have the spy power to ko them twice quickly, so they might as well spy skim.)

Spy Team B (cr11,18) assasin 5,22
(the enemies cr 22 was a joke, so I thought they could easily assasin him from half troops after dealing with cr5. Unlike Spy team A, they would not xstal up. Instead I would use their enemy on the enemy cr1,2 when they xstalled later in the game. I also felt the enemy didn't have the spy power to take them down at the start anyway.)

Hansel team (cr 6,9,17,20) dump on 1, assasin 5, 22, xstal up, dump on 3 and tank spies at 75%
(This team ranged from a ps1, to a hybrid with 10mil attack stats. I figured the enemy would try to plunder these builds early, so I wanted their attacks out of the way early, hopefully the four of them could do good damage to the enemy cr1,3 and then help out with repins later.)

In short, I needed to gain control, so I was going to have 8 of my 10 spy builds xstal up in the first ten minutes. Being a random war and we had a good tracker, I hoped we could Ko away any plunder advantage they got at the start, overtake them, then stretch our lead. The two spies who did not xstal would wait for their cr1 to xstal up, and hopefully limit his damage.

THE WAR

:50 we are losing by 6B

They had a lead but not much. Their cr4, an EB build with almost no adt/sdt had xstalled early, and dove, taking about 7B plunder that I feel we will get most back. Not an opening target, their ps cr 19 assassined me (I was cr4) so I switched on to him. But the damage was done and I was Koed early.

Our Hansels did great. They koed both cr1 and 3. Overal we had more builds up and high (including several spies) and that gave us control.

:40 We are losing by 4B

Thier ps 19 had xstalled up, but we were able to contain it and take back some of the plunder. We were hit and miss in getting the light green, but the strategy seemed to be working. Moreover, we were tanking well, few of us were koed, and our xstal deficit had decreased from 8 to 6.

:30 We are losing by about 1B

We got some Ko as our tracker was doing a good job. Being almost even, I told my clan we would xstal early, take a lead, and hope we can sko well. Before that, there was evidence that cr1 had xstalled, so I had my spy team B xstal up to deal with it.

:25 we lead by 19 B

It was time to kick butt. I told my Tank Team C to plunder, xstal up, and plunder again. I wanted to take out my easy targets from the enemy xstals and so they won't have any easy plunder target. Tank team B dumped at :28 and xstaled up, hoping to catch any counter xstal. They would xstal up and tank a bit if they could. Finally, my Tank team A xstalled up and tanked at :25. Job was to focus on repins after Teams B and C were done. The enemy did counter xstal but not completely, since some didn't have targets to sko on.

:15 We lead by 17B
We kept a good lead. Although some of us had to sko, many of us were still up. I told my lows to try and sko at :16, but those high in troops keep on repins until there was a reason not to.

:5 We lead by 10B

The Enemy kept some xstals until the :6 minute mark. I was a bit surprised they waited so long. I counted about 4 xstals from upper clan ranks of 4,5, 9 and 17. Their bigs had already used their xstals long ago. I was at about 60% when this happened. I dumped on 5, but he got koed before I could finish. I dumped on my spies on another, but he also got koed. We ate their xstals well. I finished the War one hit away from being Koed (whew! )

End We win by 8B
Thier counter xstal took some plunder, but not enough to bridge the gap. We still had enough builds up who could handle it. In this way I could win convincingly using a very spy-heavy roster.

Conclusion
Not saying it works every time, but it worked for us because 1) The enemy had terrible SDT, and 2)the enemy WC didn't use his xstals very effectively. Given our huge number of spy builds, I was able to get Kos the same way hansels do in primal wars . Their cr 4, for example, who had 7B at :50, ended up with only 2.5B plunder.

This may not have been the perfect strategy, but it was a strategy that worked. Please comment on what you would have done differently, and suggest ways the tank team could have won.

Cheers.

Frog

PS: Thanks to all of those who helped to get me and Ashes's forum ban lifted. Special thanks goes to Cloud and Moose.

 

I agree, and tanks have disadvantages to hansels with war/build mechanics. A tank can't attack a hansel if gold is 0rd.

Only time I see spy builds being a burden would be adv war styles, other than that you'd want spy heavy for classic and random for war control purposes[/quote]

Lots of tanks have hybrid mecs and can hit Hansels. Just going around Kaw you see a lot of talk of people hating on their spy members. What's the first thing ppl say when they give up a lot of plunder? "a spy must have leaked"

 

Not sure what you mean by "don't especially down".

 

@kyle

I don't war in your bracket much. As you say, I had fewer tanks, but they were solid, and my enemy, although more tanks, only had a few builds over 10 m sdt.

I think a spy heavy team combined with tower light tanks would be hard to war with.