Viking Vengeance
Alliance defense PvE event — sequential Viking waves hit your members and your Alliance HQ. Coordination decides the outcome, not raw power.
Viking Vengeance is an alliance defense PvE event. A sequence of AI Viking waves attacks alliance members’ cities, with a few waves singling out online players and a couple landing on the Alliance HQ itself. There is no rival alliance — the enemy is the event.
The defining insight, and the one most external guides bury: this is a coordination event, not a power event. The single biggest lever on your personal score isn’t your hero roster or your troop tier. It’s whether your alliance pre-stages reinforcements so the right defenders survive the waves they’re targeted in. A coordinated mid-power alliance out-scores a stronger one that improvises every wave.
The core play in one sentence: every online member empties their own city and fills another member’s garrison with their troops, prioritizing the alliance’s strongest online members first, then weaker online members, then offline members. Kills inside any city score for that city’s owner regardless of who killed them, so funneling reinforcements into the strongest hosts multiplies the alliance’s total score.
How a run plays out
Alliance leadership (R4 or higher) starts the event and picks the difficulty tier. From there the run is a sequence of timed waves against alliance cities:
| Wave type | Who it targets |
|---|---|
| Standard waves | Every alliance member |
| Online-only waves | Only members who are logged in when the wave fires |
| HQ waves | The Alliance HQ |
A wave is “cleared” for a defender when a sufficient fraction of the incoming attackers are killed — defenders plus any reinforcing troops inside the city all contribute. Fail too many waves in a row and the Vikings stop attacking your city for the rest of the run; you’re out of the personal-score race, though your city can still host reinforcements and earn points that way.
The event scales in difficulty — leadership picks the tier when starting the run, and higher tiers throw exponentially larger waves at you. Whether the top tiers gate exclusive rewards is unclear from outside the game; what is clear is that pushing a tier your alliance can’t actually defend wastes the run.
The two things shields and healing get wrong
Two F2P-instinct moves actively hurt your score in this event. Both come from applying normal anti-PvP behavior to a mechanic that doesn’t follow the normal rules:
- Peace shields do not block Viking waves. A shielded city takes the attack anyway. The shield is wasted and your troops in the city fight — and often die — anyway. This is the most common single mistake new participants make.
- Healed troops auto-return to your city and engage the next incoming wave. That’s bad: those troops then steal kills from the reinforcing allies you want to be scoring points for you. Don’t heal mid-run unless you can immediately re-march the healed troops back out.
The garrison-filling cascade
This is the core play for every member, F2P or spender. Two parts to it: empty your own city, and route the troops you sent out into the right ally’s garrison.
Empty your own city
Before the run starts:
- Send your hard-hitting troops out — pre-positioned at the city you’ll reinforce, or out gathering with a recall ready
- Leave a thin garrison and your strongest defensive heroes at home in the Guard Station; they buff any incoming reinforcements that route to you without stealing many kills yourself
- Don’t extinguish the fire if your city does fall — it costs gems for zero benefit, and a “burning” city can still host reinforcements and accumulate points that way
The logic: kills inside your city score for you (the host) regardless of whose troops did the killing, and the reinforcing player scores their own kill points in parallel. An empty city full of reinforcements out-scores a stuffed city defending solo.
Who to reinforce, in priority order
Where your troops actually go matters as much as getting them out. The cascade:
- Stronger online members first. Their troop tier and hero stats convert your reinforcements into more kills per soldier sent than a weaker city does. This is where most of the alliance’s points are scored
- Weaker online members second. Once the strongest online cities are stacked, route the remainder to weaker online cities so they survive their targeted waves and stay in the personal-score race
- Offline members last. Offline players are skipped entirely on online-only waves, so reinforcing them during those waves earns nothing. On standard waves, offline cities still score for the host — but the per-march return is lower than reinforcing an active online member
If you have a march in flight when reinforcement priorities shift mid-run, recall and re-route. The default mistake is to set a target before the run and keep feeding it after the strongest cities are already saturated.
Alliance coordination before the run
Most of the game is played before the first wave fires. R4/R5 calls to make:
- Pin the priority reinforcement order — the strongest online cities that everyone routes to first, then the next tier, then offline. Members re-check the list at every wave so a member logging out or in shifts where their troops go next
- Assign HQ rally leaders ahead of the HQ waves; those waves give a longer interval to heal and rally, but only if someone’s ready to lead
- Call out who’s at risk of elimination as the run progresses, so reinforcement priority shifts toward members still in the race
- Confirm who will be online for the online-only waves — reinforcing offline players during those waves generates nothing
TL;DR
- This is a coordination event. Your individual power matters less than whether you execute the garrison-filling cascade
- No shields, no healing during the run. Both will cost you score; shields do nothing and healed troops steal kills from your reinforcers
- Send your strong troops out before the run starts and fill the strongest online member’s garrison first, then weaker online members, then offline last
- Garrison archers and your strongest defensive heroes at home to buff incoming reinforcements
- During online-only waves, only route reinforcements to confirmed-online members; offline cities aren’t attacked on those waves and earn you nothing
What to do before the run
Spend the half-hour before start on three things:
- Read the R4/R5 call. Find out who the anchor defenders are and which way reinforcements are routing
- Empty your city. March infantry and cavalry out — pre-staged at the strongest online member you’ll reinforce, or out gathering with a recall ready
- Set your garrison. Three strongest defensive heroes in the Guard Station, archers home
During the run
- Follow the priority order. On every wave, fill the strongest online member’s garrison first, then weaker online, then offline. Kills inside any reinforced city score for you regardless of who killed them
- On online-only waves, only reinforce members you can confirm are logged in. Reinforcing an offline player during these waves is dead time
- On HQ waves, follow the assigned rally lead — these are the longer-interval waves and there’s time to heal and rebuild a march if you got hit prior
- Don’t heal mid-run unless you can re-march the healed troops out before the next wave timer fires. Otherwise they return home and steal reinforcer kills
- Don’t extinguish the fire if you’re knocked out of personal scoring — keep hosting reinforcements
Where F2P actually competes
The structural reason this event is friendly to F2P: the empty-city pattern caps spender advantage. A heavy spender who leaves a city full of high-tier troops home is making the same mistake as a TC 25 player who does it — both are stealing kills from their reinforcers. Execution closes most of the gap.
Pre-event prep matters more than spend. Pack purchases will not save a run you didn’t position for.
TL;DR
- Coordination event — the garrison-filling cascade applies to you the same as everyone else. A wallet doesn’t bypass it
- Don’t shield, don’t heal mid-run. Shields do not block Viking waves; healed troops auto-return and steal kills from your reinforcers
- The biggest spender lever is being one of the strongest online members. Your city becomes the alliance’s top-priority reinforcement target, and the incoming reinforcements convert into more kills in your hands than anywhere else
- Gem refills on healing or fire-extinguish are net-negative spends here
- Event-specific packs are limited value compared to per-stage packs in other events; the per-point return on most pack contents is low
Where spend actually helps
The genuine spender advantages in this event are narrow:
- Higher troop tiers and a deeper roster mean more parallel reinforcement marches in flight at once. Three marches reinforcing in parallel score three times what one does
- Premium defensive heroes in your Guard Station buff incoming reinforcements more effectively, which lifts the score of every ally who reinforces you. This is the closest thing to a multiplier the event offers
- Being designated an anchor is where pack value lands — the more reinforcement traffic you absorb, the more your hero and troop investment compounds across the run
If your alliance hasn’t named you an anchor, your spend isn’t doing event work. Lobby for the role before the run starts.
Where spend doesn’t move the needle
- Gem refills on healing during the run actively cost you score, because the healed troops come home and steal reinforcer kills
- Extinguishing fire after a failed defense costs gems for zero point benefit
- Same-day pack purchases for troop training or speedups don’t convert to event points the way they do in stage-based events — there’s no “training day” multiplier to land them on
- Higher difficulty tiers are an alliance-leadership call, not a spend call. Pushing a tier the alliance can’t defend wastes the run
The anchor question
The structural reality of this event is that one or two anchor accounts per alliance soak the bulk of the reinforcement traffic and post the top personal scores. If you’re spending, position to be one of them: maintain the highest troop tier you can run in volume, slot premium defensive heroes in the Guard Station, and make sure R4/R5 know to route to you on your targeted waves.
If your alliance has stronger anchor candidates than you, switch role to a high-volume reinforcer. Multiple parallel marches into a well-set anchor still score well — better than playing solo anchor in a city that won’t hold.
Common mistakes
- Using a peace shield. Shields do not block Viking attacks. You’ll lose troops anyway and score nothing — the worst possible outcome
- Healing during the run. Returned troops engage the next wave and steal kills from reinforcing allies. Bank healing for after the run ends
- Not reinforcing allies. The reinforcement score stream is larger than the defense score stream for most participants. Sitting in your own city the whole run undersells your score
- Leaving a stuffed city behind. Home troops engage first and steal kills from any reinforcers who arrive. Empty the city before the run starts
- Ignoring R4/R5 calls on anchors and routing. Picking your own reinforcement targets, instead of routing where leadership says, fragments the alliance’s score
- Reinforcing offline members during online-only waves. Offline targets aren’t attacked on those waves, so reinforcements score nothing — wasted march time
- Extinguishing the fire after a knockout. Gems for nothing; a burning city can still host reinforcements and score that way