Hidonfly's Strategy Guide/Clan Wars

Welcome to my guide on how to win clan wars!
This will be a guide focusing mostly on tips and tricks to increase your chances of winning a clan war
== Prologue ==
We have a lot to get through so lets get right to it with some of the more basic parts of clan wars.
First, you need to be in a clan (duh...) but more importantly, in an active clan with a good amount of people who use at least 1 of their clan war attacks.
I recommend a clan with at least 20 people but no more than 35, this is due to the fact that the more people, the more chances your opponent has to get stars.
Second, Clan war searching, the system is made to pair up clans with similar stats, but after a while it will resort to giving you whatever other clan it can find. Try to restart the clan war search if its taking longer than five minutes, otherwise one of the two clans at war will have an advantage and one will have a disadvantage.
This concludes the prologue section.
== Defense ==
Probably one of my favorite parts of CoC is defending. There is never a perfect combination for defense, but you can almost always find something you like.
In terms of clan war defense the first major thing entire clans screw up on, is not giving CC troops for defense on prep day. CC troops are the deciding factor between a 50% 2 star and a 49% fail. I think Valkyries are one of the best defense troops there is, high damage, high HP, and fits in even level 1 clan castles. I don't like having a dragon because, like pekkas, dragons are slow and take up a very high amount of clan castle space. They also have a low attack speed which makes them vulnerable to tier 1 troops and mid level wizards. That means it is a waste of time and elixir to donate them to defend. They are more suitable for attacking.
Next, never be Afraid to try new war bases, i don't like using popular bases because they become really common and people quickly find the weakness. I always create my own base designs and have fun while doing it! 
One of the major components of base designs are the storages, a lot of people don't realize, but in clan war storages are about as useful as a collector. they only take up random space that could be used for a defensive building. You can also use high health buildings like storages to serve as meatshields for your important defences.
Try maxing out your splash damage first and see if that helps!
== Attacking ==
Attacking really requires high amounts of skill patience and fine tuning of your skills.
By the time you reach Th 7 you have to make a decision between attacking on air or on the ground. It is possible to learn both, but requires insane patience and devotion. I myself am mostly a ground attacker although balloons can be very deadly combined with rage spells as their slowness is their only downside.
First, the very first thing about attacking in a clan war is finding out if the opponent has any troops in his or her clan castle.This allows you to plan out if you are going to have to lure the enemy CC troops or not. If the enemy has no CC troops, then it's your lucky day ( or the clan is inactive or not a war clan). If the enemy does, there are 3 ways to deal with it. 
# The Clan Castle is on the outside- Simply place a cheap troops ( barbarian) in the CC radius until all the troops are out. Then bring then to a corner with more barbs/archers. Proceed to terminate the troops by placing archers in a circle, get some barbarian meatshields, and maybe some wizards. Afterward, attack as normal.
# The Clan Castle is in the middle- use a high health troop ( Giants or Hog Riders) to lure out troops. Hog Riders are used if the CC radius is behind a layer of wall. If the CC radius is outside the first layer of wall, then use 1 or 2 giants. After all the CC troops are out... Destroy them ( as mentioned above). 
# The Clan Castle is anywhere- the most stupidest way of all is to use 5 lighting spells and destroy the CC at the beginning of the raid / attack provided the spells can do enough damage. ( it gets the LOL's coming) that's a plus...right? Ok.. I was joking.... You can just use 1 lightning spell to destroy a whole CC full of low health troops, if they are clumped and all out of the CC! ( duh.....)
What about high health troops? Well, they usually can only attack 1 unit at a time ( except dragons) so use barbarians as a distraction and place 2 or 3 wizards. ( works for high health ground troops only) for dragons, place some archers directly under the dragon while having some wizards blast at it from long range. The goal is to keep the dragon from targeting the wizards so they have a chance at killing the beast.
Second, always have your own CC troops, it helps a lot if you can even get 5 extra wizards to fight for you, they help you go from a 1 star to a 3 star.
Always max out your troops before you go up in town hall so you won't be far behind, it's sad seeing a Th 6 with level 1 troops.
Spells, for lower level players use whatever you can get, but if you have unlocked heal spells i suggest you use 2 heal spells for all raids. At higher town hall levels you need to plan accordingly and get the correct number of spells
This concludes the attacking section.
Thanks for taking the time to read my guide over clan wars, hopefully you learned a thing or two while reading, Good Luck!