Dead Ahead: Zombie Warfare.

Team Powers: Builders

Dead Ahead: Zombie Warfare.

Samuel Mejia

The Builders are a team that focuses mainly on bringing out more survivors and damaging the barricade. Three out of 5 of their entire units in their team are actually skins of units who aren’t originally in the Builder faction. As seen below, Pepper becomes Carpenter Pepper, Light Soldier becomes Handyman, and SWAT becomes Foreman:

The Builders are a team of carpenters and construction workers, those being Builder, Carpenter Pepper, Handyman, Builder Abby, and Foreman.

The bonus that’s provided with 2 Builder units in your loadout is when a Builder unit is summoned, there’s a 10% chance a random extra Builder will be sent out right after them. Any of the units available in the synergy can be sent out, including ones the player hasn’t obtained or put in their current deck. Stats and abilities of the extra Builder unit are equal to the versions the player owns; otherwise, the level 0 base stats are used. At 3, once a unique builder is spawned for the 3rd time it will spawn a random unit with a Builder skin, the same restrictions to stats applies as the first bonus. At 5 it gives the passive effect of all units in the loadout being able to deal double damage to the barricade.

Builder is a damager and decently capable, he has high health and decent melee damage for a damager, his Courage cost, movement speed, and his preparation time are average. His melee attacks are slow but his critical hits come out fast. He also possess bullet resistance at 90%, additionally his critical hits knock enemies back. At level 13 his special ability is to deal double damage to the barricade, this can stack with the 5 unit builder bonus for quad damage, this allows him to make quick work of the barricade. When he dies he turns into a zombie with the same name, it also possess the same bullet resistance. Builder and Light Soldier will be your main melee units in this team, with the exception of Builder Abby.

Carpenter Pepper (Pepper) is a support unit, is usually meant to add additional extra damage while helping with a special ability. Her health and bullet damage are low in comparison to other ranged units, however her Courage cost and preparation time are a okay enough trade off, considering Builder Abby’s cooldown and cost, Carpenter Pepper is going to be your main ranged unit, additionally she also boasts a high movement speed. She can fire 10 shots before having performing a quick reloading animation, if they are approached rapidly by a fast enemy or while they are reloading they will sometimes perform a kick that does low damage, but knocks the enemy back and can potentially do a critical hit. Another perk she has is that when any enemy gets too close or tries to land a melee attack on her, she has a chance to perform a backward dodge roll that covers a far distance, if there is a fire pool behind her, Carpenter Pepper will still roll into it, causing her to take fire damage. However despite this these two perks give her a longer lifespan than most other ranged units. At level 13 her special ability allows her to Inspire all units on the field when she comes out of the bus, this ability is not unlike Cap’s Inspire ability, it helps to extend her role as a support unit even further, and bringing them up to Cap, though this doesn’t save her from being a generally weak ranged unit.

Handyman (Light Solder) is another damager, with similar health and damage to Builder, identical movement speed, with only a second difference in preparation time and 5 Courage cost difference. Handyman possesses identical bullet resistance as well, making this team generally excel against Marauders, as well Handyman also is immune to poison damage, and therefore the poison status effect is useless against him. Undocumented in the game is that he has knockback resistance and fear resistance. At level 13 his special ability, it gives him the ability to knock the enemy back as well as allowing him to increase his knockback distance by 0.1 for each 60 points of Charisma. With his initial stats of 300, he is guaranteed to have increased his knockback distance by 0.5.

Builder Abby is a particularly unique units with a special built in mechanic, she starts off coming out of the bus with a minigun, shooting at a high rate of fire and dealing large amounts of damage in quick bursts, making her suitable for taking on large hoards of enemies, after firing for 5 seconds she will drop her minigun and pulls out a hammer, and then proceeds to act as a normal melee unit. She is classified as a damager, yet her stats are unusually low, and possesses the lowest melee damage and health out of all melee untis, her melee attacks are slow, and generally her main use is in her gun phase, because thanks to her high rate of fire, she can still deal a lot of damage to bullet resistant units. If shes attacked while she is firing she will immediately drop her minigun and pull out her hammer instead, at level 13 her special ability ensures she continues firing even if attacked. If she dies she turns into her namesake zombie Abby, who pounces at backline ranged units to attack them, whats ironic about this is that her damage per second and health as a zombie are drastically higher.

Foreman (SWAT) is a shooter, they are useful with crowd control due to their high rate of fire, and has a chance to set enemies on fire with their bullets, additionally they also have bullet resistance at 90%, as well as poison resistance. They fire in 3-round bursts up to 4 times before reloading. Additionally they possess the perk of not turning into a zombie when they die. Their special ability at level 13 increases their ranged damage is by 25 for each 90 points of Charisma they have. In rainy weather Foreman’s incendiary rounds will not ignite enemies. They have near minute preparation time, as well as a Courage cost similar to Light Soldier’s at 30. Foreman as a whole also possesses poor accuracy, requiring the use of his whole magazine to output effective damage.

Generally due to the high costs that are all around, with the lowest being 25 for Carpenter Pepper and Builder, I suggest taking the Generator in your 6th slot.