Board Thread:Game Discussions/@comment-99.251.228.11-20140514002322/@comment-23870891-20140514071943

The phrase all is fair in love and war comes to mind.

And you also need to consider it is not like these guilds are only winning by virtue of stripping, the core members spend 1600 gems per war minimum and many well exceed that.

Members of the BTNO family also minimize stripping, preferring to brute force their way to the top (more fun that way). I think they will strip to help weaker members of the family push into higher brackets (top 50 or top 25), but they are rarely (if ever) on the beneficial end of of such strips.

A final note, I have heard it is possible to reach top 25 using only free energy, but you need a full, active, high level guild to do so if possible.