2021 troops in review

Ah, yes. Another year has passed, hurrah!

Which 2021 troops have earned a permanent place in your teams?

I do mean ‘permanent’, not ‘if it’s green-blue generator Beast-Elves from Whitehelm tower week and a leap year, I’ll be using that one for sure!’


For me it’s:

01 Jan 21 - The Scourge of Honor
Decent alternative to Phoenicia, doesn’t require as much setup and is pretty solid at clearing the Adventure Board and Daily Dungeon tasks.


05 Feb 21 - Ironhawk
Vault Event bread and butter troop if you’re going for keys.


12 Feb 21 - Ogress
A useful bounty troop?? Also surprisingly solid on GW defense.


05 Mar 21 - The Archdeva
Pretty niche, but has earned its place in one of my GW teams.


15 Aug 21 - Leonis Tower
Even more niche. I’d never play this actively, but the tower’s one of the strongest options on defence in my opinion.


22 Nov 21 - Centuragon
Out of all of 2021’s troops, I think Centuragon is the most fun. Zuul’Turagon is my favourite team at the moment. It even got me to farm E12 for a while.


Honorable mention:

18 Oct 21 - Baldr
Definitely a lot of potential here, but I feel like he’s a sleeper troop, still waiting for another troop to complement him.


I’m getting the release dates from GoWDB, I’m not sure if they’re always 100% accurate.

My teams' other troops
28 Oct 14   Alchemist
28 Oct 14   Crimson Bat
08 Dec 15   Thrall
28 Feb 16   Mercy
08 Mar 16   Dust Devil
08 May 16   Sacrificial Priest
14 Aug 17   Forest Troll
09 Oct 17   King Silenus
02 Feb 18   Voice of Orpheus
16 Feb 18   Yao Guai
19 Feb 18   Divine Ishbaala
20 Feb 18   Zuul'Goth
11 May 18   Sister Superior
02 Jul 18   Scurvy Seadog
03 Aug 18   Arachnaean Weaver
24 Aug 18   Wrath
14 Sep 18   Grave Seer
29 Oct 18   Gimlet Stormbrew
02 Nov 18   The Possessed King
17 Dec 18   Leprechaun
11 Feb 19   Moon Rabbit
11 Feb 19   Qilin
07 Mar 19   Astral Spirit
07 Mar 19   Apothecary
07 Mar 19   Pharos-Ra
07 Mar 19   Stonehammer
17 May 19   Drowned Sailor
17 May 19   The Maraji Queen
03 Jun 19   Obsidius
01 Jul 19   Daughter of Ice
04 Jul 19   King Gobtruffle
09 Sep 19   Lamashtu
04 Oct 19   The Gray King
14 Oct 19   Moonsinger
13 Jan 20   First Mate Axelubber
17 Feb 20   Malcandessa
27 Mar 20   Queen Beetrix
03 Apr 20   Mistralus
13 Apr 20   Child of Summer
05 Jun 20   Sycorax
31 Oct 20   The Ghost Queen
14 Dec 20   Herald of Damnation
8 Likes

Good list, sadly not more troops out of the 100 or so that got released last year.

1 Like

I use this guy with The Emperor for a nice stat boost :slight_smile:

I also have a team with Archproxy Yvendra that I use occasionally when I’m in an explody mood :sweat_smile:

Other than that, nothing notable. With over 1000 troops in the game already, that’s not surprising.

For anyone else who wants to check out the list of 2021 troops: Troop Table - Gems of War Database

3 Likes

1- Centuragon :1st_place_medal:
2- Scourge :2nd_place_medal:
3- Ironhawk :3rd_place_medal:

1- Ironhawk
2- Ironhawk
3- Ironhawk

My permanent team to farm verses in 2021.

2 Likes

Thanks for the GoWdb link.

I mutated it a bit and added some comments to the Mythics.

Yvendra

Useful in skull teams, made unplayable, or at best risky by doomskull bugs.

Released Broken
Astral Mother

Not as useful as Astral Spirit, rendered more difficult to use due to heroic gems if not keeping turn. See Gray King.
Dao

Used on GW defence, but in player hands, difficult to use.
Dark Smith Drenza

Not crafted
Flaming Oni

Just started some use of it with Phoenicia for vault clearing quickly (extra damage from all burn)

Should do minor scatter damage.
Fountain of Stars

May have potential, 15% bless should be at least 33% with the introduction of Elementalist. High mana cost, odd colour conversion.
Hatir & Skroll

Nice troops with Impervious – see all Skrolls. Usable in GW, 3 colours.
Hatir Ascendant

See above
Huanglong

Potentially interesting troop - used it a fair bit with Venoxia and Dragonguard to scale Venoxia, which says enough really. Could be improved with more % chance to go again and bless more.
Ironhawk

Bugged with submerge. Awesome for E1 with multiples.
Kalika

Meh – hopeless.
Leonis Tower

Good for Wars, can be buffed while others do their thing, but generally does not fit in with any kind of fast playing.
Mithrilion

Hopeless, faced it in GW, it doesn’t work guys…Just an irritable troop for E12 slowing down play.

Quetzalma

I like this troop, it can work with Shahbanu and co, but it is so prone to passing the turn even with 20 yellow on the board, that it’s not really viable anywhere except for a change of pace E12 with accelerators. Can work with twin empowereds but is still unreliable.
Skroll Reborn

See above
The Archdeva

1 cast only, can be used with skull teams or quick fill
The Archduke

Potential – but generally is too slow to be of value. Needs magic boosts, so the Star being yellow is a reasonable candidate. Does well in Delves.
The Scourge of Honor

Decent troop, usable for farming teams. Curse is nice. Third trait is not too bad.
Tihamata

Not enough damage, can work with destroy/exploders and Centuragon, but other troops do it better.
Ullor

Decent troop on Def, kind of drags you into a new level of turgidness for offence, so better used on D.
Vernalis

Can work with scaling Venoxia for example, plus the FF is useful.

M/C/Marilith/Venoxia/Vernalis isn’t too bad.

As for decent none mythic troops

1 Baldr
2 Centuragon
3 Tannenbaum

Honourable mentions (if not uniquely useful, can be situationally)
2nd Claw Anhur
Servant of the Dao
Some of the Tarot cards

Hall of Shame

Willy the Anchor
Wereverine
Werebat
Wererat and Co
The Great Wyrm (for the 50% Dragon start removal)

The Glutmaw, Gorbil and Drowned Sailor ‘Nailed on Fellowship of Shame’

Consort of Darkness - the new champion with it’s 100% AI slay rate…

2 Likes

I like Baldr as part of an all-Blue/all-Giant team. And there are enough useful Blue Giants that it doesn’t feel like a chore to put together such a team with sub-optimal units.

Mind you, I tend to use that team during Stormheim weeks. And maybe I’d use it during other weeks where Giants get the 10% benefit. But it’s reasonably quick and efficient for clearing Adventure Board and Daily Dungeon.

But my not using it otherwise, including Guild Wars? It’s not because I find flaws with the Baldr team I’ve described above, but because I’m running a Blue Goblin team these days that I like. (Even though I’ve now swapped out Hero classes on it, from Thief to Elementalist.)

Still stunned, less than 10 troops managed it to the list. That tells it all. You does simply not get a bigger wake up call than this.

2 Likes

Flaming Oni I think should be on the list. I use it a lot with Fireblade class + Leprechaun to make very fast explore 12 team

Nobody else likes Bile Blackheart, but I enjoy using him quite a bit.

Also, was Auspecia a 2021 troop? Not a big secret that I find her a lot of fun to use.

1 Like

They’re good troops, but I don’t see how they’d fit into teams for regular play outside of very specific events?

I use this Auspecia team a lot for Explore 12. Might not be the very fastest, but it’s fun and satisfying. Can also use Sir Quentin Hadley instead of Yvendra, but then you don’t get UBER DOOMSKULLS!! :laughing:

[1257,6938,7082,6863,3062,2,2,3,2,3,1,1,14030]

Whoops, here’s a BB team too, also good for E12 fun:

[7120,6146,1375,7082,3063,3,2,1,3,1,3,3,14004]

2 Likes

soon it’ll be three! or only one!

Especially if a whole bunch of players cry every time we get something actually useable like centuragon or the elementalist class. Some people just never want the meta to change I suppose.

4 Likes