War attacks and team duels
From the Polandball Go Wiki
A war attack is one duel between a team you pick and one enemy squad. You send 1 to 5 of your balls, and they fight every defender in that squad that is still standing. Whatever damage you do stays done. The next attacker to hit the same squad finds the defenders exactly as you left them.
This has been the rule since attacks opened on October 10, 2026, the war week labeled Oct 8. Before that, wars used a different system, described at the end of this page.
1 Picking the attackers#
Each ball attacks at most once per war, and a ball sitting on defense can't attack at all. That makes every attacker a spent resource. Sending five balls at a squad that two could have finished leaves three fewer for the rest of the day, and sending one weak ball at a fresh squad of strong defenders wastes it.
The defending side's squads hold five balls each. The first two seats are visible before you attack; seats 3 to 5 are hidden until an attack reveals them. Defenders are always played by the game's bot, the same one that plays PvP defense.
Your team is drawn from your lineup as it stood at the roster lock. A ball you leveled on Friday fights at its Thursday-night strength.
2 How the duel runs#
The fight uses the same round-based engine as PvP. Each round, the active ball on each side chooses a move:
- Attack, the normal hit, typed by the ball's primary typing.
- Block, which stops an Attack completely and earns Momentum. A ball can't Block twice in a row.
- Swap, which brings another of your balls in.
- Weapon, a bigger hit typed by the item's resonance. Each ball has two Weapon charges per duel and they never come back. A Weapon that hits a Block still does half its damage (Guard Break).
When a ball is KO'd, the next one comes in without costing a turn. Defenders are fought in seat order. The details of damage, Protection and Speed are on the duel engine page.
3 What is different from PvP#
A PvP duel ends at three KOs or after 24 rounds. A war attack ends differently.
- The attacker needs a full wipe. The squad is cleared only when its last defender is KO'd.
- The round cap is 40. If the attacker hasn't finished the squad by then, the attack ends and every surviving defender keeps the HP it has left.
- HP carries over between attacks. A defender that ends one attack at 1,050 of its 7,804 HP starts the next attack at 1,050.
- Results are per defender. The game records, for each defender, whether it was KO'd or how much HP it kept.
Because damage persists, a strong squad can be beaten in stages. A first attack might KO two defenders and leave a third badly hurt, and a second, cheaper attack finishes the job.
Whether a damaged defender's Protection (its one-time shield) comes back between attacks is not known. The 4.3.3 patch notes said shields regenerate, but nothing in the recorded war results has confirmed it either way.
4 Items in war duels#
Items work in a war duel only through their two numbers. The item's attack powers the Weapon move, and its defense adds to the ball's Protection. Bonus effects such as execute, double damage, extra hits or unexhaust never apply in a war duel. Those effects are for raids only. An item with a strong effect and small numbers is a poor war item, however good it is in a dungeon. See Items, tiers and resonance.
5 Sizing the attack#
Real wars set the scale: top alliances field defenders around 9,000 CP holding Shadowscript-class items, and a 6,000 CP ball will not solo two of them. Plan against the real CPs and items on the board, not against the hope that a weaker team will get lucky.
A few habits follow from the rules:
- Send the fewest balls that can finish the squad. Each ball standing at the clear is worth 2 extra points, and the balls you don't send can attack elsewhere.
- Take the first hit on a fresh squad seriously. The first attack on a squad pays 5 points per KO and 45 for a clear. Every later attack pays 2 and 15.
- Finish hurt squads. A squad left with one defender at low HP is a cheap clear for a smaller team, and the clear can open the next row.
- Don't put every strong ball on defense. Strong squads at home do nothing to break the other side's best squads.
The scoring is laid out in full in War scoring and the war ladder.
6 The old system: one-hit series#
Through the war week labeled Oct 1, 2026, an attack was a five-match series fought slot by slot. Your first ball met the squad's first defender, your second met the second, and so on. Each match was a single hit decided by effective CP: the ball's CP plus its item bonus, raised by a type boost or cut by resistance. To take the squad you had to win all five. A 3–2 result was a defeat.
The 4.3.3 patch notes said wars would use duels too, but a recording of a real attack on October 3, 2026 showed the one-hit series still in use. The switch to team duels came with the attacks of October 10. Any advice that talks about winning a squad "5–0", lining up slots or comparing effective CP comes from the old system and no longer applies.
See also Alliance wars and PvP leagues.