At the end of PH8, it became nigh impossible to stop a 1* attack to a high end army, and this is the strategy I came up with, that was doing pretty well at the end. A good player still will manage a 2* attack, but it helps prevent the easy solution of just spreading guns/HG around everywhere to snipe off 50%. I present to you Collector Flowers First I want to break down why this is important, and how/why it works in the situations its designed for: To get a 1* victory, 50%, with 75 troops, you need to average .67% per troop. A collector is .71% in PH8, which means sniping one with a single gunner puts you ahead of the average, and getting 2 with a single slot is a big swing when trying to keep things under 50%. Collectors aren't very much percent individually, but they add up to a lot; each set adds up to 5%, for 10% total if they take all the collectors, which in most designs was very easily taken. Gun Towers, during PH8, did very little damage while a WD was around, but without a WD, would easily take out small groups of gunners. By making a flower of collectors around a GT, one of two things happens. Either the attacker has to waste a WD there, or three brutes/juggs to protect the gunners, making the collectors take much more than 1 slot per .67% destruction, and also significantly weakening the main attack force (plus also probably being funneled into the GP blast zone if done well) OR The attacker completely skips the collectors, at least until they secure the PH, meaning 10% of your base is safe and 1* is significantly harder, and also some of your loot is protected. (I did the same strategy near the end with a bigger flower with 3 GT and the stores, and it took a ton of troops to destroy - so if they want your loot and that 20%, they lose a ton of power off their main force, which was usually enough to keep the other buildings safe from 1*. This also freed up space to defend other buildings. Collectors are not effective walls/shields for the base perimeter. They distract troops a bit, but I found this was the best use of them. This is not a good strategy if you're still coming up with a design to protect PH. But if you're getting a lot of 1* losses, this will act as a kind of sieve in your defense log: either they get 2* and take the PH, or you win. You'll lose to percentage a lot less often, and you can defend your key buildings that much better. In PH9, it might not be as effective to waste GT on them as the damage boost on GT makes them more effective against WD troops, but the same strategy could be applied to the long range PH cannons.
Thanks for this @Skye i enjoy reading all your posts on strategy/tactics/layouts. I appreciate you sharing them with others.
