GoWiPe Guide

*Please note; this isn't my best effort at writing...It is a quick first pass - I may come back and edit / clean up some of the text later.*

GoWipe is a smash-mouth attack strategy. To get the most out of it you need to be focused on unleashing everything relatively quickly and then helping your troops along with spells. Walk through these steps in your mind before the attack and practice - it is important that they happen quickly and in sequence in order to have the best chance to get three stars with a GoWiPe attack. A GoWipe will achieve an easy two stars on a difficult opponent but it's difficult to consistently achieve three stars. Do not get caught stopping to think between the drops of your first phase of Golems, wizards, walbreakers, and rage. The timing of the initial punch is very important to making as much damage as possible. Here's how I approach this attack:

**Overall Attack Scheme**
If nothing was random, the Golem and wizards would be a great team alone and this would just be a GoWi attack. The Golem has a huge ability to resist damage but has practically no offense. The wizard has big offense but can't withstand hardly any damage. Golems walk (slowly) up to defensive units and Wizards normally stand back a bit....they are a terrific team. You wouldn't need anything else but sometimes (well...almost always) things don't go as planned and you need some built in flexibility. The Pekka offers that flexibility because it has relatively high levels of both offense and defense so if either the Golems or wizards struggle, fail, or get killed off early, the Pekkas can pitch in and help from either aspect to secure a successful attack. Essentially, the Pekkas are insurance to the dynamite duo of the Golem and Wizard.  The next logical question would then be "so why not just run all Pekkas if they can do both?".  The truth is that the Pekkas have a serious weakness against teslas and they lack some of the more logical routing AI that the Wizard and Golems are better at.  Pekkas tend to get really dumb, clump together (which slows their effectiveness as a whole), and chase outside perimeter targets.  They don't fare so well when used in a big group. One of the harder aspects to this attack is to keep the Pekkas going in the right directions.

**Troop Composition**
I have 220 troop allotments available. I carry 2 golems, 8 wallbreakers (enough to get through two or three stages of walls), 3 Pekkas, and then as many wizards as I can fit. Top it off with an archer or two if you land on an uneven number. Since I've upgraded to max witches, I have started to carry two max witches that will get dropped last and perform fast cleanup and/or some last minute emergency protection for a wizard or two (the skeletons tend to surround them and take the damage).

Regardless of your troop carrying capacity, you will need a certain minimum of particular troops. At any level of troop count, I recommend a minimum of 2 golems, 8 wallbreakers, and a maximum of 3 pekkas.  Pekkas tend to clump and travel together and do as much damage combined as one pekka could do alone.  With more than 3 pekkas, you increase the chance that some of them will clump up reducing their effectiveness.  You might as well bring more wizards.  Fill in the rest of your troop space with as many wizards as possible and augment with a couple of witches (no less than 2) if you have them available...I might not even recommend the addition of the witches unless you can get max witches either - but you may want to try it if a L1 witch is all you have.

**Spells:**
There are really only two spells to consider to augment the GoWiPe attack.  Heal and Rage.  The strategic weakness of this attack is that it can be slow developing meaning your troops have to withstand elongated fire and the slow speed of the attack puts you at risk of running out of time before you can clear the base.  Heal and rage help to manage these two weaknesses by overcoming some of the damage through healing and accelerating the attack with rage.  I carry one heal and the rest rage spells.

I use the first rage to accelerate troops into the base and create a cone of damage at the point of penetration.  Having a cone of damage here helps focus pekkas and other troops toward the center of the base.  Otherwise they get distracted and start wandering around the perimeter.  I use my one heal spell when my troops encounter the CC troops shortly after entering the base (more on that later).  That heal also helps recharge the troops after the initial push and while they are still pretty clumped together - a lot of troops benefit from that heal spell here.  I then drop rage spells at strategic positions to accelerate and strengthen troops into strong defenses.  I'm not sold on carrying more than one heal although I do see others do it successfully.   I believe the rage is more valuable to get those hard to kill targets dealt with quickly before they deal too much damage but I'm not going to argue with success.  However, if you find yourself running out of time with your GoWiPe attacks I would definitely not carry more than one heal spell.

**Scout the Base:**
Understanding the weaknesses of the GoWiPe is important here. Long range weapons are one of the more threatening defenses to deal with on this attack because you can end up with your softer troops flanked and shredded by the long range weapons if your attack goes off center. Look at where the archer towers are (particularly if they are high level) and have a plan to keep the Xbows off your delicate troops. I usually try to attack on the side where I can get to the most archer towers quickly. If there are XBows, I try to stage the attack where the Xbows are equidistant from the point my troops are going to get through the walls. I may plan a light second stage of the attack holding back a couple of troops, or use my Heros in some particular way, to deal with the enemy's Hero, Xbows, or some other strong defensive unit. I also try to not launch my attack in very close proximity to the CC...more on that in the next section.  Also consider the wall geometry when planning the attack.  You want something wide and flat so your Golems will approach it and mostly stay put while your second wave of wizards does their thing.  Once the WBs punch a hole in the wall, you need the Golems (at least one, preferably two) to turn and enter that hole ahead of your wizards.  If you are attacking a wall that has a lot of in/out features, the Golems may not funnel into the wall breaker's hole.  Choose long flat walls if possible.  If the base has a wide rounded corner, those seem to work really well for attacks because the troops naturally want to funnel into that {edit; I might just take that "rounded corner" comment back...I just totally failed at an attack I tried there because I couldn't control the entry point well).  Definitely avoid attacking sharp 90 degree corners because your troops will not funnel well and will likely split up and engage too many defensive units at once.

**The Clan Castle Troops**
I will consider the placement of my attack to the clan castle but I never try to draw troops, kill troops, and then attack the base when attacking with GoWiPe. This wastes a LOT of time in an already time-challenged attack and just isn't necessary if you get good penetration with your first wave and use your spells effectively. I stick with the smash-mouth concept and power into the base with as much strength and speed as possible. I do consider where my attack is in relation to the clan castle, however. I try to launch my attack where there is some distance just so I have time to get my Wizards through their first level of destruction before they encounter the CC troops. If the CC troops reach your Golems at full strength before the wizards have arrived, your attack will likely be over before it begins. Do not launch the attack in very close proximity to the enemy's CC!

Here's the base we are going to study:
[https://flickr/p/rM4539
]
The archer towers are pretty spread out here and I'm going to need to get to those XBows as fast as possible.  They're not symmetrically placed either but I can approach them somewhat equidistantly if I attack from the North East or the South West walls.  If I attack from the NW or SE, it will be a long time before my troops reach one of the two Xbows and it will do a lot of damage to my troops.  Looking at the two attack options, I see more resource stores on the NE side - those have higher DP and take a while to destroy - it's also slightly further away from one of the Xbows.  I decided to attack on the flat SW side here.

**Staging the Attack**
Golems are moving shields - they can take a ton of damage but they do very little damage in return. Fortunately for us, the defenses love shooting at them but they have to get there before other troops do.  Once a defensive unit is locked onto a particular troop unit, it will not refocus on anything else until that unit is either out of range or dead.  This is an important thing to remember because if you place your Golems well and give the defense just a few seconds to lock onto them, your wizards can run around naked destroying stuff in the first wave with total aplomb.

I've placed my two Golems spread out along this wall so they are within range of as many defensive units as possible.

[https://flic.kr/p/rv1SNM

]Once the first defensive units have started firing at the Golems, I immediately go to my wave of wizards.  You need to get a good number or wizards spread out here because the Golems will be taking heavy fire and will not last forever.  You need a solid punch with the wizards here.  Your golems will live much longer through the entire attack if you can get the engaged defenses destroyed quickly.  Don't get shy with the wizards...drop them all and drop the fast letting them get to work.  If the base has buildings that wrap around the sides of the outside walls, you might consider dropping an extra wizard, or hero, on each of the corners to clear out those structures with some speed to ensure that troops (particularly the subsequent Pekkas) don't get distracted and travel around the outside perimeter of the base.  I didn't really have to worry about that here so I went with a solid straight line of Wizards behind the Golems.

[1]

Wallbreaker time! I quickly deploy all of my wall breakers and hope they will penetrate through the second wall. A rage spell really makes them more effective and, if you place the rage well, it will accelerate all of the other troops through the hole into the base blasting a hole of destruction moving them toward the center of the base.  The rage spell can even make your wallbreakers outrun a giant bomb should they encounter one just inside the base.  Place the wallbreakers far enough away from the wall to give yourself a little time to get to the rage spell right as they get to the first wall.  Note how I get the rage spell down just as the first wall breakers are doing their thing and how it's placed ahead of the troop path so they stay in the rage zone deep into the base.  The wallbreakers performed perfectly here and raged right to the second interior wall and blew it open as well.

[https://flic.kr/p/rPkCig
]

[2]

The Golems and wizards all went immediately for the new hole beautifully here and I went right to stage 2 and started dropping the pekkas so they would enter that rage spell.

[https://flic.kr/p/rwKBuE

]I followed that with the witches and my CC pekka (Eng has stronger Pekkas than I do so I carry one of his Pekkas instead of wizards in my CC.  You want three total Pekkas however you distribute them).  Notice now that the enemy's CC troops have been triggered.  He has max loons in there - no problem, I'll drop a heal on the wizards as they reach them.

[https://flic.kr/p/rM3E5j

]Heal dropped...thankfully one of the Golems and a couple Pekkas have moved very quickly in that rage and stayed in front of the bulk of the wizards.  The balloons are focusing on the Golems and Pekkas while the Wizards take them down.  The witches are starting to do their thing providing a lot of distraction for the defense with a mess of skeletons.

[3]

Now, my heros.  I had intended to drop them on the South East perimeter to get the enemy's hero and hopefully distract that second, further in, Xbow for a little bit.  Unfortunately my Hero's didn't stay in range of the Xbow for long but it did make some difference.  The Archer Queen made short work of the Enemy's Barbarian King while he focused on my Barbarian King.  My Archer Queen eventually got taken out by one of the cannons on that wall but she kept the cannon's focus away from the troops that were attacking the Xbow - that was effective.  The Barbarian King made his way through the original wall opening and started helping out on the interior.

[4]

[5]

Now, back to my troops - I've got one spell left and an Xbow still standing.  Let's get that second Xbow FAST.  I dropped another rage spell to accelerate a pekka and a couple of wizards into that Xbow and they got it quickly.  Oh, and hey!...the Town Hall has already been destroyed...good so far.  Now it's time to worry whether or not I have enough troops remaining to clean up the rest of this base.

[6]

The Golems are spent now but the Pekkas have taken over the tank role and are running ahead of the last few wizards and witches while the last few defenses are taken out.  Looking good.  I just realized at this point that I still had two wizards left in my queue so I dropped them on the builder's huts.

[https://flic.kr/p/qSnCEU

]This base was skadooshed easily with time to spare.

[7]