So, i have tested it out, and it actually works.
What is it?
If you time it right, if you are the last person to join a template, you can actually get a free win. I think to my suggestion. fizzer should make it random who gets the free win, instead of making it the last person.
Not technically it is a cheat code, but it might be used to give your clan a free win easily.
Post your opinions and/or suggestions here!

Edited 2/6/2022 04:08:41

That's not how it works.

The way matchmaking works is that it sorts all players by clan war rating (which is specific to a clan) and account ID. Then it pairs players (or teams) from highest to lowest CW rating s.t. two clanmates don't face each other. If it runs out of viable opponents, you get a voided match (i.e., no game). If you are the first player from your clan to get a voided match during that time slot, it becomes a free win.

Your testing worked not because you joined at the last second (this doesn't matter) but because your Clan's Clan War Rating is very low (-22.16, so you're ranked 523rd out of 566 clans). The matchmaker is going to run out of potential opponents almost every time before it reaches your clan. E.g., if a template has the following sign-ups:

- MASTER CLAN
- Python
- Python
- M'Hunters
- M'Hunters
- M'Hunters
- M'Hunters
- Discovery
- Discovery
- Discovery
- Flying Ostriches
- Flying Ostriches
it'll result in (MASTER, Python), (Python, M'Hunters), (M'Hunters, Discovery) * 3, and 2 voided games (1 free win) for Flying Ostriches, because you get last priority on matchmaking. Even though there's an even number (12) of sign-ups and it's possible to get 6 games, the matchmaking algorithm will only manage to pair 10 of the 12 sign-ups.

IOW, due to how CW matchmaking works, Clan Wars is going to often fail to find matches at your clan's average skill level. Your clan probably gets a lot of voided matches and free wins.

Edited 2/6/2022 05:29:08

l4v is wise.

Surely Fizzer would have checked?
I mean... think about it first then post (no hate, maybe it didnt cross ur brain)
Edit:All i was saying is if he suspected that to be the case, would it not be logical to reason that it was unlikely?

Edited 2/6/2022 05:27:37

Here's another fun example of how the matchmaking algorithm doesn't accomplish anything in particular, not even its stated goal of match quality. Suppose the sign-ups are:

- MASTER (elite)
- Python (elite)
- ONE! (elite)
- ONE! (elite)
- Kung Fu (very low-skill)
- Tranquility (very low-skill)
- Flying Ostriches (very low-skill)
- Flying Ostriches (very low-skill)
- Flying Ostriches (very low-skill)
- Raging Penguins (very low-skill)

Just looking at this, you could see that the ideal matchups would be (MASTER, ONE!), (Python, ONE!), (Kung Fu, Flying Ostriches), (Tranquility, Flying Ostriches), (Flying Ostriches, Raging Penguins). You get a bunch of high-parity matchups that way and get 5 games for 10 sign-ups which makes sense.

Here's what the actual algorithm would do:
(MASTER, Python) (ONE!, Kung Fu), (ONE!, Tranquility), (Flying Ostriches, Raging Penguins), 2 voided games for Flying Ostriches (no free wins)

So you get 4 games out of 10 sign-ups and the reason for making this sacrifice- match quality- clearly doesn't apply because the algorithm creates 2 ONE! vs. very-low-skill clan games.

This is a simplified adversarial example but we've already seen the failure modes it illustrates in real CW time slots. In fact, this is exploitable: if you play CW, you want to have your clan hop over to a template with the potential of a wide skill gap like in the above example, so you are more likely to get easy matches.... anyone seen a certain clan organically come across this exploit in the wild? The Clan Wars matchmaking algorithm is, in technical terms, garbage.

Edited 2/6/2022 05:43:29

So explain in a small earth slot with 26 participants, world league, with a score of 60-something, can have three members of us out of four which got voided.

Due to the low clan rating, your clan was considered last in the matchmaking. All the players were already matched with other players, so there were no opponents left for WORLD LEAGUE to play.

That resulted in 1 free win (or 1 game vs another low rated clan), and the rest of you got nothing (also no free win), because one of your clan members managed to get a game.

To clarify, 60 is still a low CW rating compared to the clans that actually participate. I wasn't able to find the time slot you're describing, 111, but if you link me to it I can walk you through why the matchmaking algorithm screwed you over.

Unfortunately, since 60-80 is actually an accurate representation of World League's skill level, your clan will keep drawing the short straw when it comes to matchmaking.

Oh, sorry, my bad. i didn’t realize, i thought you have to be last.

I was definetly not last in today's timeslots (yes! twice in a row!) to join
but I didn't get a game... Nor a free win becaues I was not the only one of my clan in that slot.

CW doesn't like me anymore...

F* it

The best way to get free wins:
(tried and tested)
1. Go for odd numbers. ALWAYS ODD NUMBERS, since they would cause free wins. You might have to hop between templates to bet for it.
2. The less opponents, the higher chance. Since it is still kinda RNG, 3 people (incl. yourself) has better free win chances than 5 people, which has better chances than 7, vice versa.
3. Again, avoid anyone in your own clan to play the same template as you. This is basic, but also means that the most hot scenarios might give free wins but they won't give YOU the free win.

unfortunately my clan has a low, but positive CW rating now, resulting in lower likelyhood of free wins - even when i am careful to join at the very last second and try to go for the templates with expected large skill gap and an EVEN (!) number of opponents lined up (since matches are in pairs of 2 ... so you want to join an EVEN number lineup ... to be the ODD one out).

Depending on how it goes i might have to resort to insta-surrender all my CW games for an entire season, to get clan rating into the cellar again for later CW season.

Actually all i want is 2 territories per CW season, for (small) rewards. And ideally a few good RT games against opponents at around my own skill level. I don't enjoy wins vs. players with (even) lower rating than myself and i also dislike losing vs. players at much higher ratings. Opponents around +/- 10% of my own qm rating would be ideal.

But like a lot of other things in this game, CW sucks and matching in general (qm) sucks as well.

Edited 2/28/2022 12:53:01

your clan is all your alts

I was reading this and I still don’t completely understand how the matchmaking works. Why does my clan have such a low rating and how can the rating be improved?

Did your clan lose a lot of games in prev CW seasons?

At one point while I was in Yolo, we had a negative CW rating, and it was brutal getting games for about 1 week until our rating started going up.

With a rating of 20, you are having similar issues.

TLAs CW rating is at 230+ tho, so i guess Leia just got really unlucky

I guess we lost a lot of games in the previous seasons. Didn’t seem like we did bad although in season 9 I won 1 out of 6 games and was booted from 3 of them cause I didn’t know what I was doing. Last season the clan did well since we got 11th and I personally had more wins than losses but I guess we are still not very good at clan wars overall.

@JK
All it takes it a horde of players in a given timeslot from a higher ranked clan (MH) to eat up all the available games, and there will sometimes just be nothing left for the lower rated folks.

@tomi
Quite possibly ... you inherit all the damage done in previous seasons, so from the first season FO participated, if there was a big losing streak(s), it may have tanked your CW rating. The news is that as long as you're winning games, it will go up and you'll eventually get out of limbo. And if you don't get games, at least a free win gives a marginal increase. I think it gives 1 rating point, so not much but better than 0 like it was when Yolo had this problem.

Leia's account is also relatively young for TLA (2020 after the big COVID spike in March), I'd bet, so she probably gets low priority on matchmaking within the clan.

Edited 2/28/2022 18:52:08