Let's fix TW Sandbagging....

The guilds who are sandbagging have plenty of players, they just restrict numbers who can join. EA don't seem to realise that they are screwing guilds who encourage participation. It's a bit rough that some players are denied putting in defensive teams because sandbaggers are twisting the rules.

One person claims there is a "ranking system."  I sure don't know of any such ranking system in TW.  Our guild has faced a number of much stronger guilds with a lot more active GP recently.

TW needs a whole overhaul.  

TW takes too much time commitment in a short duration of overall time and the rewards are not worth the effort unless in a top tier guild building towards maxing the raid. 
I used to love the challenge but it became much more of hassle.  I don’t want to plan my evenings around a game. I changed to a guild that has TW completely optional now and enjoy my free time. 

Thanks for all these tipps, Rius. Some of which we are already using. I strongly hope CG will rework TW still this year. At least the reward system has to be reworked and adapted to modern times.

First have a minimum participation 200 banners defence and similar on offence. Anyone under this has way too much left on the bench.

Then structure defence according to match up, hard work for a TW officer but if your TW officer believes in sandbagging it’s over before it starts as everyone needs to show up believing it’s worth the effort. I have seen this when I was an officer in a previous guild, our TW officer claimed it sandbagging and disappeared for the duration so hardly anyone showed up. We lost due to activity, our opposition barely made it through our defences but was top late to rally the guild. 

Morgoth had a good suggestion. If you have 50 teams with limited counter or just one good counter and they only have 35 players put them all down with similar teams requiring the same counter to exhaust there options and eek out their GL’s on teams that don’t really need it.

Datacrons limit counters so you should be going for appropriate datacrons on def and off. The first 3 zones should all have high level datacrons.

Have the guild comfortable with off-meta counters and knowledgeable on all counter's for typical defences. Some of my guilds had discord tabs for go to counters to help players stretch their rosters and clear walls quickly and efficiently.

Some times it works to have dummy walls up front, fairly strong but not as strong as the zones behind. A guild who ‘thinks’ you are weaker may try to go through both sides and get stuck.

Focus down one side so you get to the back wall as it’s worth more points and TW zones are usually front heavy.

If you get stuck in a wall… experiment so you figure out something that works next time. If you see gaps raise it to the guild to see if anyone wants to work investing into their plans. For example ships is a a weak spot for a lot of 300M guilds. But if some players focus on learning off meta counters or unlocking more Levi’s then it can boost holds or speed up clearing zones.

Invest in TW omicrons that are impactful. Fulcrum can rip apart starkiller walls even with its current datacron. Geo’s and Sep can be annoying back walls with their omicron and a decent datacron.

I am not opposed to them looking at the matchup algorithm again, as I agree more often than not the match up is wonky, but in a 580M guild with optional participation we have just as many when we are out matched as we out match. We have a healthy win rate because we have been successful against some bigger guilds. That is why I strongly oppose it being sandbagging.

I have been in 300M guilds pushing for 50 members for droid brains it is painful. More so I know the issue to recruit and get 50 active members who are available every TW. Since there are other ways to earn droid brains, I would rather go for activity over forcing everyone to sign up any day. The larger guilds will certainly not alter this until there’s better reward tiers to chase at least above the 380M.

Yep. I totally agree.

For context, I’ve only ever been in 2 guilds, both of which have been somewhere around 100th-150th globally in terms of total GP. Both guilds had TW as an optional signup. Previous guild were quite TW focused, current guild is not really TW focused. 

TW as it stands has 2 main issues, that are interconnected: 

• low participation heavily affects matchmaking
• low rewards heavily affect participation 

The matchmaking is truly awful. For our guild, I would estimate 40% of our matchups are completely in our opponent’s favour, 40% are completely in our favour which leaves 20% where the war could go either way. This is a sorry state of affairs, and makes TW a boring and predictable game mode for us. 

This thread has been quite refreshing when it comes to talking about participation. There’s been so many threads in the past that want to punish guilds that don’t enforce 50/50 TW signup, despite the fact that many of those guilds would enjoy TW far more if they let some members take a TW off from time to time. 

One of the best ways the devs can increase participation (which would in turn improve matchmaking) is to put otherwise difficult to obtain rewards in newly devised reward brackets. When Droid Brains were first added, guilds around 100th in total GP needed all their members to sign up to qualify for droid brains in their rewards. But those reward brackets haven’t been touched since, and many long-time players have a large stockpile of droid brains so don’t feel compelled to sign up. 

Stick omicrons and crystals in reworked reward brackets and participation will soon improve! 

I see most of the top guilds complaining about the TW system as well, so it's not just complaints from smaller guilds facing high end guilds with less than 50/50 signed up.
My old guild used to have a real issue that lots of people signed up, set (maybe) their defense, sometimes just a few squads and then screwed over the rest of the guild by not showing up for offense.
My current guild have a pretty well enforced "show up if you sign up" rule which do mean we rarely see 50/50 wars, however we do see that everyone who signs up sets their defense and engage in attacks. It also means that we see wars where our opponent are pretty outmatched, particularly if they signed up 50/50 and have 10 members not putting in any effort.

My advice, if you are the guild with more signed up, is to adapt your defense. E.g. if you would usually set a zone of JMK another zone of Leia, one with Jabba etc. but have 5 more members than you need squads, then take all the strong squads left over and stick them in a spillover zone.
This will in effect be pretty similar to forcing the "sandbagging" guild to set more teams, as you can set all your meta squads down, and force the other guild to use secondary counters for those squads set by your "extra" teammates.
I do get that if the match is very lopsided this might not help you win, e.g. if opponent have many more Ahsokas or similar than you do, however it is something that should be able to at least balance the scales somewhat. And something I only see a few guilds do.

TW has been untouched since several years. 380mio gp for the highest rewards tier? That's ridiculous in the meantime, when there are thousands of guilds out there with far much than that. Check swgoh.gg, if you like. TB with RotE and raids keep all the guilds busy and are up-to-date. TW has been neglected way to long. I'm not blaming guilds for exploiting a non-up-to-date game system. I'm blaming the developers for doing nothing about a principle game mode since years.

Alright, and what strategy would you propose to our guild, when me meet an "easy" oppenent like the one discribed above? They got all the latest squads, which we can't have. Sorry, but your arguments are nothing but finding excuses for exploits which are definitely happening and need to be addressed. The highest reward tier in TW is now 4 (or 5?) years old. THIS needs to changed to a up-to-date level.