Alliance wars are epic battles that take place between two alliances. These battles add a significant amount of strategic possibility, as they require alliances to work together to construct a strong defensive team for their opponents to face and organize the usual attacking teams. Alliances will then fight through the maps their opponents constructed to obtain victory!
What Is an Alliance War Rating?
War rating represents how well your alliance has performed in alliance wars. It is used to match your alliance with opponents of a similar rating. The search will expand to include other ratings if no such opponent exists.
Victory increases your war rating, while defeat will cause it to decrease. The alliance that has earned the highest score during the battle will be victorious, earning better rewards and increasing their war rating.
You may earn points in the following ways:
- Defeating the boss in your battlegroup.
- Traveling through nodes on the map.
- Defeating an enemy attacker with your placed defenders, up to a maximum of 240 points per Champion (see the Nodes section below for more information).
- Having undefeated defenders on your map.
- Having unique Champions in battlegroups (see the Defender Diversity section below for more information).
How Do I Participate in an Alliance War?
To participate in alliance wars, you will need to:
- Be part of an alliance of five members or more.
- Be at least level 17.
- Join the alliance before enlistment begins.
Note: If enlistment has already occurred, and the matchmaking phase is still active, an officer can un-enlist and re-enlist so new members may join the alliance war.
Only alliance leaders and officers can participate in and manage alliance wars. However, as a member, you can view the status of alliance wars in the GENERAL tab of your alliance and the fight loading screen.
We review three main phases in alliance wars in this article: the matchmaking, placement, and attack phase.
Note that once alliance war matchmaking has begun, your alliance cannot change its battleground selection, so double-check your choice!
How Do I Change the Number of Battlegroups?
Once enlisted in an Alliance War, they can select between one and three Battlegroups.
Summoners can change the number of Battlegroups enlisted in an Alliance War by tapping on the "NEXT WAR" tab on the Alliance Wars page on the fight screen.
Matchmaking Phase
Only the leadership of your alliance can join the alliance wars and look for an opponent. They can choose between one, two, or three battlegroups to be included in that particular war. The more battlegroups, the more players that can participate.
As you increase the number of battlegroups, the rewards will improve.
How Long Will It Take to Find an Opponent?
Matchmaking is not instant and can take up to four hours as it first tries to match your alliance with an opponent of equal or similar strength. The process will emphasize your alliance's war rating above all else. If such an alliance cannot be found, the search will begin to expand until it pulls from all alliances currently waiting on a match, which includes the possibility of being paired with an alliance that is vastly stronger or weaker than yours.
If the system takes a while to find an opponent, you can leave the menu and continue with your game. The search will be running in the background.
Placement Phase
This phase is all about strategizing with your alliance to determine where to place Champions. Work with your alliance to choose the most efficient strategy and join one of the available battlegroups to place your Champions. You have 24 hours to do this once the matchmaking phase ends and an opponent is found.
Each battlegroup can contain a maximum of 10 players. Players competing in alliance wars can place five defending Champions on the board and use three attacking Champions to fight through the opponent’s map.
But beware! The Champions you choose during this phase will be locked into the war and will be unusable:
- During the attack phase of the current war.
- In alliance quests.
- In story & event quests, once the attack phase has begun.
Persistent Placement
The Persistent Placement Phase Board, found in the War Room, allows your Defense to persist in war after war.
Spend less time wrangling in Defenders from other Alliance members and more time thinking about how to deal with the Attack Phase!
In addition, your Defenders will no longer be locked to Alliance Wars outside of an active war.
If you need to change your defender placement, tap the green button beside the Place Hero Button on the War Room page.
Persistent Placement allows you to play Champions on all three map difficulties.
Defender Diversity Points
Defender diversity points are awarded to alliances for bringing in unique Champions as defenders. You will be awarded 30 points for each unique Champion your alliance places as a defender. Defender diversity is specific to battlegroups, so you may include duplicate Champions while still earning points so long as they are in different battlegroups. Alliances can earn an additional 4,500 points per alliance war using a fully diverse roster.
Champions of the same name but different tiers count as one Champion. For example, a 4-star Hulk and a 5-star Hulk both count as the Hulk and are not unique.
Nodes
Remember that nodes like the linked, local, and global nodes can be used to your advantage. They grant powerful buffs, and 150 points per node are awarded for node exploration.
Attack bonus: Each node that can have a defender placed on it will begin with 240 bonus points available to the attacking team. However, each time one of the attacking alliance's Champions is lost to that node, those bonus points decrease by 80 points. In other words, if the defender defeats three opponents, that node is no longer worth any attack bonus.
Make sure that you check out the available nodes on the map. Each node on the map has a unique number that helps you coordinate with your alliance on where to place your Champions.
To place a Champion, tap on the Champion you want to place and then tap on the node you want it to appear on. You may only place Champions on empty nodes.
The node in the picture above is a hidden node. This means your opponents will not see some of the Champion’s information.
You can change the position of your Champions while the placement phase is active. An alliance’s leader can swap any of the Champions placed on the board by the alliance members.
Attack Phase
The attack phase lasts 24 hours. In this phase, alliance members will try to earn as many points as possible. When a war finishes, each defender remaining on the map will award their alliance with 250 bonus points, with a maximum of 37,500 points available from defenders remaining at the beginning of an alliance war, assuming 50 defenders have been placed in each battlegroup.
When you enter the board, you will begin with three out of five total war energy. This should give you and your alliance time to strategize based on the layout of your opponents. Every tile on the board will require one war energy to travel.
There are no consumable items to restore energy. You must wait for the cooldown period.
Portals
Portals allow players to move around the map more freely. Portals can allow you to move away from a node or path you were unprepared for. You can also use them to move and help alliance members struggling to clear nodes.
Consumables
While alliance consumables may be used during these battles, a total of 15 consumables can be used per alliance war. Any variation of health potions and revives can be used, but only up to the cap of 15.
Remember to take linked nodes into account to help your alliance defeat other Champions on different paths.
End of the Map
Once your alliance clears the final tile of the map, your defending and attacking Champions will be released and will be usable in all game modes.
What Happens if Our Opponent Finishes Their Board First?
Your alliance’s progress in the war will be unaffected.
Skirmish Rewards
After completing an alliance war, you will receive an in-game mail message that includes the stats for all of your alliance members with their performance in that war and some Gold for each kill earned by an attacker or defender!
Season Rewards
A season is a 4-week-long event where alliances compete for season points by winning wars against other alliances of similar tiers. At the end of a particular war season, the alliances and their eligible members receive rewards based on their tier and total points for that season.
Off-Season War-Rating Changes
Alliances may see changes to their war rating outside of alliance war seasons. Here are some examples:
- An alliance in tiers 1-5 could match with a tier 6+ alliance and fight on the tier 6+ map, causing a war-rating change despite the tier 1-5 off-season lock. This is because war-rating changes are currently tied to map tiers rather than individual alliance tiers.
- It is possible for an alliance in the lower ranks of tier 5 to be pushed out by a tier 6 alliance whose rating has increased enough to surpass them.
- Alliances in tiers 1-4 can also be pushed down to a lower bracket if an alliance in a tier below them wins a battle against a tier 6+ alliance. The alliance that won the battle would increase their war ratings and surpass those alliances. This is similar to the previous example, but instead of a tier 6 alliance moving an alliance out of tier 5, in this example a tier 4 alliance moves another alliance out of tier 3.
- The total number of alliances may change at the end of an alliance war season or during the off-season due to the creation of new alliances or the disbanding of existing ones. This can alter war rating tiers for some alliances.