Strategy Guides/War Council Formations

War is a feature that can be found in the Battle Page. The recent Arena used this system as its format. Please visit the War and War Council page for some basic info about it. This guide will give some pointers about different formations you can use that could give you a leg-up in war and claim a victory against an otherwise superior opponent.

If you want to include your war strategy/formation, please feel free to add to this guide.

Formations
For easier referrence, I will use the epics Xira and Azriel to represent your top 2 generals, Kataan and Arielle as your 3rd and 4th best generals and Strider and Penelope as your 5th and 6th best generals/weakest council members.

Default Formation This is the default formation that the game provides you with. When your council is reset unceremoniously by the game, it reverts to this formation. Your strongest generals are arranged from left to right (West Rampart to East Rampart) with your character occupying the Main Gate. You can win wars with this formation, especially if you have great gear and are lucky to have them neatly distributed key positions, but it is recommended to use a different council configuration so you have better control on your strategy.

The more points, the better This is probably the most common council configuration you will encounter. The player is at the main gate, the two strongest generals at the towers, the next two strongest at the ramparts and the weakest of the 6 at the Archer Wall and Armory. The goal of this formation is to get as many points as possible, not yielding anything to the enemy. This is a good set-up in case your character loses to the opponent's character at the main gate. Your two strongest generals would hopefully make that up by taking the towers to get the advantage back (6-5). This is also good for those with few top equipment in their arsenal. They can concentrate them onto fewer positions with more points instead of thinning them out.

Conquer the Ramparts not the Towers The idea here is that since you only need 9 points to win the war, if you can take the main gate, you only need 4 more points to clear. Instead of going toe-to-toe with the enemy's best generals against yours at the tower, you will focus your attention on the ramparts and hopefully encounter their 3rd/4th best generals giving you the advantage. Winning the two ramparts and the main gate is enough for 9 points giving you the war victory. You have the option of placing your weakest council members at the towers, totally abandoning them or placing your 3rd best or even your 4th best general there for insurance in case you lose the main gate.

Assault the East This is the counter to the annoying council reset and player impulse to place their #1 and #3 generals at the west". When you assign your war council, you set them from left (west) to right (east) because that's the order the game asks the player to assign their council.  Because of this, most players will put their #3 general at the West Rampart and #1 at the Mage Tower.  With their impulse and this formation, your best general will face their 2nd best, hopefully giving you a slight advantage or decrease your disadvantage depending on your generals.  You can choose to totally leave out the west or leave a good general at that side's rampart for insurance.  This is also a good counter to the formation below.

Hollow Gate Use this formation if you have not-so good attack/defense stats and/or you know that you cannot beat your opponent at the main gate face-off. By placing yourself at a 3-point position, you will cut your loss from 5 to 2. The Mage Tower is the ideal spot to place yourself in as we are expecting the player impulse as stated in the formation above. It is almost imperative to win the other Tower in the east to claim the advantage back, 6-5. If you don't, you will give up 8 points and you must take all the remaining spots to win. It's not impossible but considering you can't really control where your equipment will end up, it will be hard to distribute them enough to win the remaining 5 positions.

Generals
Active General

The recommended active general is the one who boosts your War Council's stats. There are three generals with such abilites:
 * Sofira: +5 Attack to your entire War Council for the next 5 attacks; 8-hour cooldown


 * Adriana: -3 Defense to your opponent's War Council


 * Hyperion: +2 Attack to your entire War Council

Sofira is the best but she has a cooldown which means you can only use her ability for a limited time. Plus, she is a Rare chance at the Oblivion chest. If you have no problem with burning FP and/or get lucky, great! If not, don't worry as she's not truly a must-have. Adriana is a monthly general which means she costs favor points as well but you are guaranteed to get her. Hyperion is an alchemy general and the weakest of the 3. He is the free alternative of players who don't want to use FP. Note that his ingredients are also good war council equipment.

Council Members

Generals with high stats are your ideal War Council members. Epic generals from treasure chests are the best ones you can get. Other chest generals who are Rare or Uncommon sometimes have good stats as well. But they cost Favor Points and you may still not obtain them after numerous tries. If you have them, great! If not and don't want to gamble your hard earned FP, you have options elsewhere.

Monthly Generals - If you want guaranteed returns for your FP
 * Kataan - 22/22
 * Solara - 20/22
 * Godric - 20/20
 * Scarlett - 20/20
 * Suri - 21/19
 * Adriana - 19/21
 * Kaylen - 19/21

Free Generals - If you really don't want to spend FP
 * Keira - 18/26
 * Serene - 23/16
 * Cartigan - 20/18
 * Darius - 19/19
 * Chase - 20/16
 * Hyperion - 18/18
 * Leon Ironhart - 16/20
 * Araxis - 17/19

Creating Medius is generally not recommended as his recipe requires strong equipment that are essential for your council set-up. There is more war benefit in keeping 3 Genesis Swords (20/30) and 3 Frost Bolts (12/25) that using them to get him (17/17).

The developers tweeted that equipment associated with generals helps them in all aspects of the game. However, they also followed it up by saying that some generals have non-working equipment. They did not say which generals have working equips and which ones have disabled ones. So, we won't take general equipment into consideration for now.

Equipment
The more top equipment you have, the better you will be at War. Generals give you an advantage but it is equipment that makes the difference. Please refer to the Equipment page to know which are the best equipment and where to obtain them. Remember that you can only take 3 copies of an equipment with you in war. So please don't go crazy and get 7+ Transcendences because you can only take 3.

Unfortunately, you can't choose where your equipment will go. It is randomly assigned to your council members as you assign them. They stay with the generals until you re-assign them however, so you can still have some sort of control on how they will be distributed. After assigning your council, War someone in the battle page or use Tactics in War of the Red Plains (party health/green bar must be 90% filled or more to see everyone's equipment). Click View More to see your equipment distribution. If it is not optimal to your strategy, re-assign your council and try again. Keep doing this until the distribution is accpetable.

Note that this is only for your offensive distribution. You cannot see your defensive distribution unless someone attacks you and tells it to you.