How To Spot A Landmine or Trap Account

Trap accounts are the sneakiest play style in Game of War. They are all about creating the perception that your Stronghold is weak, when in reality it's very strong.

This post was originally published in December 2014 and has been completely revamped and updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

What Traps Are

A "landmine", "trap account", "rally trap", "anvil", or "bomb" is a low power account that is specifically build to look weak but is actually very strong. Not only that but trap accounts can be cheaper to build up than other types.

The "Red Flags" of A Trap

From my experience a lot of rally leaders or players in general forget to check whether or not an account is a landmine. They simply think, "oh this person is below 50-100mil power, I could probably solo him, or Rally him". <<<That's how you lose Troops in a blink of an eye.

A friend of mine recently made a good point to me, no matter how much you read these articles, making the right decision in the heat of the battle can be hard. I'm sure most people have hit a landmine and lost a lot of Troops at this point. So, I hope you can think a little more clearly next time you are in battle by remembering these tips.

1. High Kill Count

Look for a high kill count in relation to power; like someone around 50mil power who has 5mil kills. Don't touch that person. There is a guy in my kingdom who is 40-45 mil power and has 20 mil kills... If someone has a legit account where they just attack without baiting, they will have no where near 5 mil kills, more like a million. Of course there can always be new Trap accounts that someone has been building up, and those are impossible to spot.

2. Tons of Hospitalized Troops

Someone with tons of Hospitalized troops and very little deaths can mean they have tons of Hospitals and just bait people to hit them while healing between attacks.

3. High Amount of Defenses Won

In general it would be very risky to attack someone with lots of Defense wins. This another indicator that your enemy may be a landmine.

4. High Amount of Traps Lost

Although a bait doesn't need Traps to be successful, they often do use Traps and stack Trap Gear Boosts. Someone with a lot of Traps lost could mean they are a landmine. In the picture below the guy actually hasn't lost many Traps.

5. Better Hero Gear or Miscellaneous Gear

As a general rule of thumb if their Hero is better than yours, you probably shouldn't attack even though you can win sometimes because you have Boosts on or better Gems. For landmine accounts you want to check to see if the enemy's Gear is set up for Trap Boost, Defense Boosts, and Health boosts. If they are stacking those Boosts it would not be a good idea to Attack. Use the Hero Gear Tool to look up the enemy's Gear.

Disclaimer: My Alliance didn't know for sure that this was a landmine account.

Some reasons this Hero looked fishy to us is because we thought there is no way that a 660 mil power player had this terrible of Gear. Either this guy had really good Gems in this Gear or he was planning on switching gear at the last second before our Rally would hit him.

6. Change in Alliance Helps Means They are Online

Watch the enemy's Alliance Helps count. If they are online they will most likely be clicking the Help button.

7. Graveyard Full of High Level Heroes

The account’s graveyard is a great indicator. When the list of executed heroes is composed of a good number of level 60/VIP18 heroes, you got yourself a trap account. Plus it also let’s you know that they’re likely maximizing their altar boosts on their hero skills tree, especially if the executions are recent, which makes it that more difficult to break their defenses. - Tony

8. Change in Loyalty Points Means They are Online

"Helps are great to monitor sleepers but most know not to hit it…..opening gifts and doing daily/alliance quests will increase loyalty…dead give away for traps and bigs who are trying to look like sleepers but are actually online waiting to pop cores and eat your rally." - Jeff Lebel