This week only we’re getting a special prototype troop in Heavy Choppers. Previously, Heavy Choppers were exclusive to Warships but now it’s been made available to the normal base. After my initial playthrough with them, I must admit that this troop possibly is the best troop I have yet played with in this game.
Heavy Choppers are like some of the larger troops in that you can have at maximum 2 per Landing Craft if you have the space and take a minimal of 8 GBE to deploy. They have an incredible amount of health, more than Mechs but less than Scorchers. Damage-wise, they do more than Heavies but less than Mechs while they can target from long distances and fly quite fast.
But the main keys to Heavy Choppers are their ability to continuously spawn Heavies every 5 seconds up to a maximum of 10 per I believe. Also, to add to their tanky value is that they cannot be targeted by many defenses, including Grapplers and Shock Launchers. Their incredible health along with the ability to bypass a variety of defenses, some of which normally would destroy land based troops with large amounts of health, make this troop very hard to near impossible to defend against.
For myself, I’ve paired up Heavy Choppers with Bombardiers, doing a 4/4 load out along with Dr Kavan for healing (mostly for my Bombardiers). The idea is to first land your Heavy Choppers to start spawning Heavies. Your Heavies can then be used as sacrificial lambs for most mines. Then once any beached defenses are gone, you want to launch Bombardiers with Dr Kavan immediately.
I like to use Dr Kavan’s Crystal Critters for the extra healing. I mean in reality, any Hero can work with Heavy Choppers but I find that Dr Kavan might be the best here since you want to keep your Bombardiers alive. If there are no beached defenses, you can do a quick, mass deploy but run the risk of having your Bombardiers get overwhelmed by long ranged attacks before your Heavy Choppers can spawn enough Heavies to start soaking up damage.
Now, I suppose you can also use all Heavy Choppers, which should make the Hero spot more versatile. Or perhaps you can use Sgt. Brick with Battle Orders to quickly overrun a base. The idea here is that you’re depending on the Heavy Choppers’ high health to avoid getting destroyed by hard hitting single target type defenses, thus possibly depending more on Medkits for healing rather than Kavan.
The only issue I’ve encountered thus far was more with my Bombardiers getting disintegrated by a Lazor Beam prototype defense as a result of my carelessness. I think with some better positioning I could have avoided the troop loss.
Either way, the Heavy Chopper has quickly become my favorite troop type. I managed to do a full map clear today and there wasn’t any base type that really intimidated me. The only defenses you need to watch out for a Doom Cannons, Shock Blasters and Boom Cannons. But with enough Heavies, you should be able to handle these as well. Crazy resource bases that were filled from the beach all the way didn’t stand a chance. Definitely, one of the most satisfying troops I’ve played with, beating out both Critter Cannons and Rain Makers by a long shot. A shame that these aren’t permanent troops just because it would be nice to have something different to upgrade.