Voxhorde defense guide: guards, traps, stances and gates

Posting guards

1. Open the Defense tab. Your keep is in the middle with a gatehouse on each road.
2. Drag zombies from the reserve tray onto a gate, or between gates.
3. Tap Balance to spread guards toward any road with an incoming army.
4. Every change saves itself. Everything not posted stays at the keep as the reserve and joins when attackers reach the keep gate.

Raids leave from your reserve first. If your reserve runs short, posted guards are thinned in proportion, so leave a reserve if you raid a lot.

A card at the top of the tab weighs your zombies against the biggest threat in sight: a raid or wild horde closing on the village, or the largest blood moon wave from 12 hours before the moon rises. It turns red when they outnumber you and advises twice the attackers. Tap Bind zombies to go straight to the Binding Pit, or Show on map to see the raid or horde itself: the map opens on it, ringed, with its road to your village and a countdown to your gate. A red badge on the Defense tab counts armies closing in, and it pulses while you can't hold them.

Raiders can now split up: one village can be hit up two or three roads at once, each attack in turn. If one breaks through, the village is shielded and the attacks behind it turn back; while you hold, the next meets what the last one left. When your Watchtower spots more than one army, the Defense tab lists each road and when it lands, so post guards and decoys where the first blow falls.

Barricades and road gates

A breach wrecks that side's barricade and road gate for 30 minutes. Repair is automatic, or instant with gold.

Towers and vision

You watch 6 cells around you, plus 2 per finished Watchtower, up to 16. Marches inside your watch show their heading; if one is getting closer, the threat banner says so, though never whether it's coming for you. Tap the warning to open the map on that army. Towers fire on attackers, and Defense research adds 15 % damage per level.

Scouting: see it coming

Every raid or wild horde aimed at you shows up in time to prepare. The warning comes 5 minutes before it lands, plus 5 minutes per level of your best Watchtower and 5 per level of Scouting research, up to 60 minutes. Before that you only know something is closing. A level 1 Watchtower tells you the road and a rough size, level 3 adds the exact size and what they are (Runners, Brutes, Shamblers), and level 5 adds their traits, like Climbing.

Tap the warning or the threat card's Prepare to open Prepare defense: a countdown to your gate, what the scouts saw, and advice such as "Runners incoming on East: place Spikes, set a spike trap, sally out the gate". Apply does all of it in one tap, and moves guards to that road.

Gate orders: stances, emplacements and traps

Each road holds one emplacement, built with a Watchtower. The right one makes its attackers take ×2 damage on that road; any other still adds ×1.15. Tar also slows Brutes. Emplacements stay until you swap them.

Traps unlock at Watchtower level 2, up to 2 per road. A spike trap tears into Runners the moment they arrive, a tar pit burns and holds Brutes, and a lure leads the whole attack to another road you pick. Each fires once and must be rebuilt. Trap and emplacement prices grow with your village's production, so they stay a real cost.

Every gate has a stance. Hold is the default: the gate and walls take 20 % less from Brutes. Sally out sends the guards and the reserve charging: 40 % more damage, 80 % more against Runners, but they take more hits. Fall back keeps that road's guards at the keep and raiders carry off 40 % less (60 % less against Climbers), but the gate takes more damage.

After a fight, History and the Defense tab report what your setup did, for example: They came through East · Spike trap killed 4 · Spikes countered them · Sally out lost 3 guards.

Decoys

Every challenge you complete earns a decoy: a straw dummy for your defense. That counts every order mini-game (build, upgrade, expand, fortify, research, bind), the Daily Challenge, revenge runs and skip-ahead tests, plus the first three paid Training Yard runs per game each day and the extra paid runs Practice Tickets buy. A failed run earns nothing, and a new village earns none until Decoys unlock at strength 360 (or its Trial is passed). You can hold at most half your horde in decoys (a horde of 20 holds 10).

Post decoys under Decoys on the Defense tab with the -/+ chips for each gate. They stand on the road in front of the gatehouse with 1 hp and 1 attack, and raiders always strike the nearest thing, so each decoy costs an attacker a blow and a few steps before it reaches your real guards, and the attacker that tears one down stands still for 2 seconds. Decoys never hold a gate on their own, and the ones that fall are gone for good. Decoys on other roads stay where they are.

Protect your stock

Raiders take 30 % of what's above your protected stock: 100 per material, plus 150 per Warehouse and 100 with a fortified keep. The Warehouse's Strongroom path doubles it. Hold a resource tile to see how much is safe.

Questions players ask