Index:
1- Intro
2- General guidelines
3- Army composition
4- Using your army
5- Army variations
6- Closing


1- Intro
First of all, this is my first guide, and english is not my primary language. Having that out of the way, I’ve been playing Clash of Clans for about a year (if you know how to find out, please tell me), I’m level 90, about a month into Town Hall 9 after almost-fully upgrading my TH8.

The objective of this guide is to teach TH7+ players how to best farm resources, in the most effective way possible.

Why the name is “Rule of Twelve”? Well, I like to have my troops on multiples of 12, so I can divide them evenly among 3 or 4 barracks and think less about it and more about other stuff. I also like to have all the remaining times on the barracks nicely close (1 sec apart). Call me crazy, but you do it too.


2- General guidelines
First, these are a compilation of general advice on farming I learned throughout my experience in the game.

a- Keep your Town Hall out. This has been stressed out millions of times, but I just can’t leave this out. Unless you want to be the on the top-hundred players (which is something I don’t really care about), there is no point in keeping it in. Even so, the amount of trophies you lose when the Town Hall is sniped is so small, you can make it back easily later on.

b- Avoid accumulating too much of more than one resource at a time. One kind of full storages already make you a potential target; more than one kind will more than double the chance you are targeted by a player seeking resources, as opposed to a player seeking trophies. Even if a player seeking just the resource you are hoarding finds your village, it is less likely you’ll be targeted if you have nothing else to be stolen.

c- First thing to build/upgrade when you upgrade you town hall: your army. Period. Upgrade your camps, laboratory and barracks as soon as possible. Fully focus on elixir. Build and upgrade defences as much as you need to expend gold (see guideline b), but focus on gold only after fully upgrading your army. Why? One of the reasons is getting used to your new army composition and power as soon as possible. One may argue that one or other composition is better, but nothing beats a composition you are REALLY used to. The more you use your BAM, GoWiPe, Baloonion, etc., the more effective it will be.

d- Revenge as much as possible. This gives you more time to plan your attack, allows you to wait to attack when the storages/collectors are full, and generally give you more freedom on choosing your target. Some of the best loots I got were from Town Hall Snipers. Yes, it seems pretty evil to do a full raid on someone who took 1k of each resource and gave you a 12-hour shield, but trust me, it is very profitable, and the guilt goes away quickly. Also, always revenge dark-elixir-zappers. Those are the worst.



2- Army composition
Basically, you’ll be using Giants, Archers, Wall Breakers, Goblins and some Barbarians. Here is the breakdown:

a- Giants: these are the meat shields. About 12 of them are enough. No more than 16, no less than 8. 12 works the best for me, and I’ll explain why not 20, trust me.

b- Archers: the main damage is done by these ladies. Get as much as you can.

c- Wall Breakers: again, about 12 of them. Why so much? If you are raiding with ground troops (except for Hog Riders), walls are your main enemy. The faster you demolish them, the faster you get to the loot. These dead guys are your best wingmen.

d- Goblins: lots of them. More than 40, no more than 50-something. They are a key troop on speeding up the looting process when attacking active villages, and excellent on raiding those sweet abandoned villages. They can also act as temporary distractions.

e- Barbarians: they are average meat shields, average damagers, and extremely cheap. They get mowed if used as front men. But put 20 of them around the Barbarian King, activate the Iron Fist and you get a free, walking Fury spell that can eat walls and demolish defences and storages really fast. But don’t get masses of them: they are here just for some cheap assistance.

For spells, I usually have one Fury and the rest Heal. Lightning can be useful for Clan Castle troops, but there are better and cheaper ways to dispose of them. And, if having 12 Wall Breakers isn’t enough, it is not a Jump Spell that will help…

For clan castle troops, try to get troops that you have not upgraded yet, or that your clanmantes have higher level but don’t care about giving them. I usually ask for barbarians and archers, but hardly use them.

This is a generalist army. It doesn’t excel on just one type of village, but, assuming you maxed your camps and troops for your TH, it can easily get almost all the loot on villages below your TH, and get 2 out of 3 storages of the chosen type on TH8/ early TH9. I’m still working with this composition for TH9, but I’m feeling very confident that it will get me through most of my farming stages.


3- Using your army
To get the most of this, you must choose a trophy range that suits your needs. I’ve been farming on Gold 3-2 on TH9, Silver 1-Gold 3 was very productive while I was on TH8, and Silver 3-1 was great for TH7. Using this composition will get you 2 stars most of the time. To better manage your trophies, try to do a Goblin raid from time to time. That is, find an abandoned village with at least half your army cost lying around on collectors, and release your goblins. This will get you a nice profit (40 goblins = 4000 elixir, getting 80k out of this is excellent!), will lower your trophies back to your range (less severe attacks, easier villages to raid), and you’ll get back to action in less than 10 minutes.

Now, for the bigger raids: first, since this composition is made to be cheap and profitable, try to find a village with at least 66% more elixir than you used for your army, double is better. The loot must be accessible: two full storages, one on each side of the village? Count as two thirds of the total. Three storages? Same thing, go for two, be happy if you get the third. All storages right in the middle? This is your lucky day, count it as yours already.

Before releasing the first troop, decide from which side you’ll invade. Most guides say: get the side with the least defences, or with defences being upgraded. I say: this is stupid. Think about it: you are raiding a village with 3 Wizard Towers, two on one side, one on the other. You attack the side with one. You manage to get your troops to destroy that one, and send your goblins to get the loot in the middle. Oh, wait, there are TWO WIZARD TOWERS vaporizing your goblins from across the walls! And now, your giants are weakened and your archers got distracted with that one stubborn canon shooting them one by one aaaaaand your troops are gone. Now imagine you made the opposite choice: your giants distracted two wizard towers, the archers shot them down, and the remaining one is being upgraded. Your troops have free reign over the loot in the middle, no mass damage. Your weakened giants won’t get much far, but you already got what you wanted. Isn’t this better?

Here are the steps to the attack:

1- First thing: check for clan castle troops. If there are archers (only), attract them to a corner and group some archers there. Barbarians too? Same thing. Wizards? Attract to the corner and carefully put some archers on the four sides, this will negate the area effect. Send a barbarian or two, too. Oh no, there is a DRAGON in the clan castle! No worries. Attract to a building away from the defences with a lone barbarian. Surround the dragon with archers and keep feeding him barbarians (or one giant)! The dragon will keep burning barbarians and leave your archers alone to kill it. If there are giants in the clan castle, ignore them.

2- clear undefended buildings. This isn’t about getting the star for 50% destruction. This is about not delaying your archers to help the giants, and not letting your heroes wander around the village destroying collectors and barracks, when they could be demolishing defences and storages. The only things that need distractions are the defences, not your troops. Clear the path!

3- spread most of your giants on the side you want to attack. Yes, I said SPREAD. Like butter. They are there to take hits and distract defences. Putting all of them together is useless because the mass shooters will negate their high hitpoint advantage, and they are too weak to destroy the defences by themselves. At level 5, they do 31dps, and each archer does 20dps. You’ll have about 5 archers for every giant, do the math. Save 2 or 3 of them for later.

4- if there are still buildings out there, send a few archers to begin clearing them while the towers are distracted. This is done quickly after you send the giants, and must be done quickly before the next step.

5- the first wave of wall breakers. Send them in pairs, about half a second apart. Your giants are gathering around corners, trying to beat walls (hint: they can’t). Open at least two breaches to let the big guys in. Watch out for mortar fire, time the Wall Breakers accordingly.

6- big wave of archers! Spread them like the giants, the defences will be already distracted and will mostly ignore them. The buildings outside will be down, or at least half damaged (remember second and fourth steps?), so the archers will head straight to the defences and other buildings close to the giants. As with the giants, save some 10-12 for later.

7- at this point, if you have heroes, send them together behind the archers. Check where the Barbarian King is going and send the barbarians his way. If the giants are badly beaten, throw a healing spell on them.

8- check the progress of your attack. Giants beating a wall? Send wall breakers. Archers attacking collectors or storages inside the walls? Send wall breakers and a few goblins. Collectors or storages behind defences, on the same enclosure? Send goblins, they’ll distract the defences and get some loot already. Send the remaining giants too, the first wave should be pretty bad at this point. If there are unprotected collectors outside, send the archers.

9- when the troops open the way to a central point in the village, with lots of defences or storages, activate the Iron Fist and/or send the goblins to do their dirty job. Don’t forget about the Wall Breakers if needed. If the defences around the central storages are still strong, you can combine one Heal and one Fury spell there, they’ll make a mass of goblins unstoppable. For a few seconds, but enough to get the loot.

10- at this point, just watch the mayhem. Use spells as needed, but only if you think you’ll profit more than their cost (remember, they are expensive and take too much time to make). If you got the loot and your heroes start getting beaten, don’t be afraid to finish the battle earlier, this means your heroes will be sleeping less and be ready for battle sooner.

This is the tl;dr version:
1- clear CC troops
2- clear outside buldings
3- spread giants
4- a few archers
5- wall breakers
6- a lot of archers
7- heroes
8, 9, 10 - manage the mayhem and send goblins & wall breakers to help



4- Army variations

Default TH7: 12 giants, 12 wall breakers, 0-12 barbarians, 40-48 goblins, 60+ archers
Default TH8: same as TH7, but have more barbarians for the King
Default TH9: 12 giants, 12 wall breakers, 12-24 barbarians, 48-52 goblins, 64+ archers

Heavy damage: replace the goblins with wizards. You can raid with that too, but it takes more time and is more expensive. I’ve seen an army with 12 giants/wall breakers/wizards, the rest archers, all level 4, 3-star a mid-level TH8. I’ve succesfully used this on Clan Wars too, it is cheap and almost guaranteed to 3-star an enemy 1 TH below yours, 2-star same TH.

Healer: no, no, no, NO. Healers are very inneficient at healing, are extremely fragile, they limit the villages you end up attacking (no AD, or AD close to the edge, or AD upgrading…) and have a very stupid AI. Also, they take too much time to make and occupy too much space. Nowadays I use them only to donate to clanmates that ask for it. I also kick those clanmates, they were asking for it.

More giants: also no. If you send them all, you are trying to make them damagers (they aren’t), and they’ll tend to gather too much and get on the way of Wizard Towers and Mortars; if you send waves of them, they are too slow to catch up to the guys at the front, and tend to wander around too.

No giants (a.k.a. BAG): I used this a lot too, but in the end the giants are more efficient as meat shields than the barbarians. Use this to do EXTREMELY cheap raids. The best way to use this is to put each troop on one barrack and keep the queue full, this will give you around 72 barbarians, 56 archers, 48 goblins and 12 wall breakers for a 200-space army. Instead of using one wave of giants, keep sending a wave of barbarians, followed by a wave of archers and some wall breakers. When you get to the loot, send a wave of goblins along.


5- Closing
Thank you for reading this guide. I made it specially for you, really. I’ll gladly accept intelligent feedback. If you have dumb feedback (yuu guids suxxxx), please read it aloud before sending it.