Guide to Meat Shields

A lot of questions have been thrown around lately about Meat Shields and I wanted to make sure I got the best answer for you all by asking some top players. I went to seek advice from one of the top 3 power level Alliances in this game (who are remaining anonymous) and found out some Super Valuable details for you guys. I don't joke around on this blog, only legit stuff here 😉

This advice comes from people who have $$$, fight A LOT, and win almost every single KvK. They primarily do only T3/T4 Rallies.

Here's a graveyard because if you do this right you can eat the enemy's hero *smiley evil face*.

The Best Troop Tier For Meat Shields

"Meat Shields" are a small amount of low Tier Troops that are used as a buffer when being attacked. Meat Shields save your highest Tier Troops by dieing in their place.

The graph below uses a dollar value to quantify the Resources required to make each Tier of Troops. T2 is the most cost effective Meat Shield (kill rates are not included).

People with T4s will often still use T3s as Meat Shields though because they have a higher kill rate. If they used T2s they would lose too many too easily. But, for most of us who only have enough money to build T3s, T2s are most effective.

Don't forget Meat Shields, they are clutch! Just don't make too many so that you don't have Hospital space for your T3s when you get hit by a big.

If you and your Alliance Members are not at same Power level as these guys don't worry, just keep the same ratios of Troops and scale down the Tiers if you need to.

Most Unknown Fact About Meat Shields

Lower tier soldiers die first most of the time. I would say that 90% of GOW players don’t realize one very important element:

If you get his once and lose all of your T3, your T4 will go to the hospital first. If you get hit and you have leftover T3, than only T3 will go to the hospital.

For example, if you have 2mil T3 and 4mil T4, and you get rallied by 3mil T4 Troops. It’s likely that they will kill all of your 2mil T3 and some of your T4. If that’s the case, all of your T3 will die and your T4 will go to the hospital.

Rules For Attack Rally Meat Shields

1. 13-20% T3 Strategic Troops per person. So for a 375k T4 March, each person includes 50-75k T3 Strategic Meat Shields. In fact, they told me they don't even train normal Troops anymore, they train all Strategic Troops because they are more powerful than normal Troops in all the battle scenarios they have tested (a post on this coming soon). If someone sends normal T3 Troops in a Rally, they cancel and start over. That's how much they think Strategic Troops make a difference.
2. They use Meat Shields for 3 obvious reasons: They protect the T4 from dying, they give less points in KvKs, and they are cheaper to replace than T4s.
3. They do not use T2 Meat Shields because they are too weak to attack enemies over 100-300mil  power.

Rules For Low Power (100-120mil) Trap Account Meat Shields

1. Train 2-3mil Strategic T1, they get Hospitalized first and the event points are super low. If the Stronghold has enough Strategic T3s (an exact number was not given, I suspect between 500k-1mil) then very few T3s will die after the T1 are killed.
2. Pump with 40-50mil of each resource before the KvK so they can instant train the T1s before the next Rally or March hits them.
3. Have the rest of the alliance reinforce the Stronghold with T4s. The T4s shouldn't be harmed at all.
4. Have the Hero Gear set to Research (while online) and switch to Attack/Defense gear just before the 5 min Rally hits.

Update

This content is a bit outdated as you may have noticed, although the same concept and strategy still applies at a larger scale. To understand the most recent requirements for Meat Shields visit the pages below!

Build A Trap With $100 | How To Build A Great Rally Trap

Please leave any Meat Shield questions in the comments!

Enjoy!

Navi

Partially contributed by Party Pat