Do not judge the matchup from one building. Look through all three Primitive Strongholds and the Empowered Stronghold.
← Winter Siege overview1Open every Stronghold 2Read the garrisons 3Count the work 4Trace the routes 5Publish the Day 6 plan
Winter Siege Expansion · Scouting
Day 5: your defense is locked. Now go snoop through theirs.
Scouting is the planning phase between Preparation and Battle. You cannot rearrange your own squads now and you cannot attack yet. What you can do is inspect the enemy garrisons, understand the routes through their Strongholds, and decide where your alliance will spend its limited attacks on Day 6.
I opened Scouting. What am I doing?
Five jobs. No rearranging your defense.
Enemy squads show their heroes, troop formation, and squad power during Scouting. Their detailed combat stats are not shown yet.
Look at how many defending squads are actually sitting in each Primitive Stronghold, not just the biggest power number you see.
The Empowered Stronghold is behind the Primitive Strongholds. You must completely clear a connected Primitive Stronghold before that route opens deeper into the enemy side.
Choose the opening Stronghold and target order before Battle begins so members are not spending limited attempts wherever they feel like clicking.
What Scouting shows you
You get a preview, not their entire account.
During Scouting you can open enemy Strongholds and inspect their garrison lists. For individual squads, the useful visible pieces are the heroes, troop formation, and squad power. Detailed combat stats are not exposed during Scouting, so power is a clue—not a complete prediction of who beats whom.
Heroes
See which three heroes the defender locked into that squad. This helps you spot where the enemy concentrated stronger hero setups.
Formation
See the troop mix they registered. That matters more than treating the displayed power number as the whole story.
Squad power
Useful for comparing defenders and Strongholds, but do not mistake it for a full combat report. The hidden stats become clearer once Battle reports exist.
Routes are the whole damn point
Half-clearing three Strongholds opens nothing.
You cannot jump straight to every building on the enemy side. The three Primitive Strongholds form the front. A deeper connected Stronghold stays locked until every defending squad in the Stronghold blocking that route has been eliminated.
Primitive Stronghold → completely eliminate every garrison squad → connected route opens → attack deeper Stronghold.
One defender with Hearts remaining is enough to keep that route closed. This is why spreading attacks across all three fronts can burn a pile of attempts without actually advancing anywhere.
What counts as the easier route?
Do not just find the smallest power number and yell “THAT ONE.”
The opening target should be judged as a whole Stronghold. A route with several individually weak defenders can still consume more alliance attacks than a shorter garrison with a few stronger squads. Scouting is where leadership compares the amount of work required to actually clear the building.
Look at the whole garrison
How many squads are there? Where are the strongest defenders? Which squad is the Warden? How ugly are the formations? You are trying to estimate the cost of clearing the entire Stronghold.
Remember the destination
The Primitive Stronghold is not necessarily the prize. It may be the door to the high-value Empowered Stronghold behind it. Think in routes, not isolated buildings.
One weird edge case
An empty Stronghold does not stay empty.
If the enemy left a Stronghold with no garrisoned squads, the game automatically generates one squad when Scouting begins. So an undefended building is easier, but it is not simply a free empty tile you walk through.
The mistake we are trying to prevent
Sixty people choosing sixty targets.
Defenders do not give up their Stars because somebody annoyed them once. Their Hearts have to be removed and the squad has to be eliminated. If everybody starts chipping away at different defenders, the alliance can spend a ridiculous number of limited attacks while removing very few Stars and opening no route.
Day 5 decides the route. Day 6 follows the call.
R4 / R5 scouting room
Leave Day 5 with an actual attack order.
✓ All three Primitive Strongholds inspected
✓ Empowered Stronghold inspected
✓ Garrison counts compared
✓ Strong defenders and Wardens identified
✓ Opening route chosen
✓ First targets called before Battle
This does not mean the plan can never change. Battle reports will give you information Scouting hides, and the enemy may be tougher or softer than the preview suggests. The point is to start coordinated instead of learning the map by wasting attacks.
Next expansion
Day 6: Hearts, Morale, breakers and finishers.
Now that we know where we are attacking, the next piece is how to actually kill a defending squad without feeding it random attacks. That is where Morale finally becomes strategy instead of a weird number on the overview page.