Alliance War Rules - Explained

Alliance War Rules Explained: Effects and Hero Recommendations

Each Alliance War activates one rule that changes which heroes may be more effective and your ultimate defense and attack strategy. Below is what each rule does and the hero types that tend to perform better or worse under it. Exact strength values vary by war, so this guide focuses on effects and hero fit rather than specific numbers.

Core Rotating Rules

Rush Attack — Mana speed for all heroes is set to Very Fast.

- More effective: Slow and Very Slow heroes (their long charge time disappears, so their oversized specials fire constantly); mana-control/mana-cut heroes; strong turn-one nukes and defense-downers.

- Less effective: Fast and Very Fast heroes lose their speed advantage; mana-generation buffers and heroes that need many turns to ramp up.

Bloody War — Healing, revival, and similar effects have no effect.

- More effective: Pure damage dealers, defense-down, attack buffers, riposte/counterattack, and damage-over-time heroes; minion-makers (minion HP is not healing).

- Less effective: Healers and heal-over-time heroes; revivers; lifesteal and self-heal builds.

Field Aid — Each defending hero recovers a share of their health each turn (a defender-friendly rule).

- More effective when attacking: Heavy burst/one-shot damage to kill before the heal ticks; strong defense-down plus high tile damage; mana control; fast-charging nukers.

- Less effective: Slow attrition and single-target chip damage, which the healing outpaces. On defense, tanky and healing-heavy teams benefit greatly.

Arrow Barrage — Periodic damage to all attacking heroes based on their current health.

- More effective: High-HP, high-defense, tanky heroes; healers to undo the chip; heroes with damage shields.

- Less effective: Low-HP glass-cannon snipers and sorcerers who get whittled into one-shot range.

Other Rules in the Rotation

Mana Storm — Periodically grants mana to every attacking and defending hero.

- More effective: Slower heroes (the free mana helps them charge); mana-control heroes to disrupt the now faster-charging defenders.

- Less effective: Mana-starvation strategies; fast heroes gain comparatively little.

Clover Field — Every hero has a chance to be "Lucky" and cast its Special Skill several times in a row.

- More effective: Heroes with high-impact specials (big nukes, strong heals, heavy debuffs).

- Less effective: Heroes with weak specials; the proc is random and unreliable.

War Equalizer — On activation, removes all status effects and stacks (including ghost forms) from all heroes. It does not remove interminable effects.

- More effective: Burst and direct-damage heroes whose value is instantaneous; fast re-casters who can reapply buffs and ailments after each wipe.

- Less effective: Heroes that ramp via stacking buffs/debuffs, damage-over-time, and sustained control (taunt, riposte).

Undead Horde — All heroes gain a Skeleton Minion that inherits a share of the owner's attack and HP.

- More effective: Minion-synergy heroes (Mighty Pet family, minion buffers and consumers) and heroes that benefit from a free HP buffer.

- Less effective: Anti-minion and minion-removal heroes (the minions help both sides).

Elemental Charge (element) — All heroes of the named element gain bonus status effects for that war.

- More effective: Stacking the boosted color (mono or heavy of that element) on offense and defense.

- Less effective: Off-color heroes gain nothing from the rule.

Tile Enhancement (element) — Defenders' shields of the named element become enhanced, hitting with more attack.

- More effective: Heroes of that element, whose tiles hit harder — favor that color.

- Less effective: Other colors do not benefit from the enhanced tiles.

Skyfire — Assist Dragons are enabled; each can be used once when attacking, and chaining them stacks bigger damage, healing, and spirit bonuses.

- More effective: Teams built to chain dragons and element-matched dragons. This is more about dragon sequencing than hero type.

Attack Boost — On activation, applies an attack-buff status effect.

- More effective: Hard-hitting attackers and snipers that capitalize on the extra attack.