Best Defending Clan Castle Troops (Clan War & Home Village) – 2026

Which troops are the best for defense in a Clan Castle? That’s a very common question and there are many different opinions. I will show you in this dedicated post which Troops work best in your Clan Castle for defending your base during Clan War and also for your Home Village.

In the first section of this guide, I will give you some info on how to build your defending Clan Castle setup and in the second part you find my favorite setups ranked by effectiveness.

Best Clan Castle Troop In Clash of Clans (Ranking)

Here are some setups that have worked really well and I update them with every balancing update.

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Difference Of Clan Castle Troops in Clan War VS. Home Village

You might be thinking why a dedicated post for defending Troops in Clan War is necessary.
There are some circumstances in Clan War that require variations in order to have the best Troops in the War Castle:

1. Lack of surprise – your enemy will know after 2-3 replays what’s inside your Clan Castle without having to make a first attack
2. Your enemy is better prepared for the attack in general (we don’t want that!)

The taste of surprise in Clan War

I personally see a huge difference – and also disadvantage – in Clan War. Your enemy knows what’s coming out of the Clan Castle because he only has to watch replays of the base being attacked by his other clanmates.

My advice is to avoid filling all Clan Castles with more or less the same setup. Bring in some surprises by filling the War Castles with different combinations of Troops you find below.

Imagine an attacker hitting base #10 and has just seen that base #9 had Wizards in the Clan Castle, but you have put a Dragon in #10. I think you get my point, right?

With all the troops available, there are endless possibilities to combine them, but the right approach is always combining them right against the setup your base will have to defend.

A good defensive CC setup will always consist of:

• A base troop (with much housing space)
• Variety troops (to make it hard to counter one troop kind)
• Fill troops (to use all the housing space in your Clan Castle available)

Here are the ground rules you should always keep in mind when requesting troops:

NEVER only have one single kind of troops in your Clan Castle! This will make it a lot easier to take them out, especially when the attacker is prepared.

Prevent having many low-hitpoint troops like Archers, Minions etc. – most attackers carry a Poison Spell and wipe them out easily. They are a great support and fill troop, but no more.

It’s not all about the damage! Golems & Lava Hounds deal no damage but keep a Queen busy or deal additional damage when getting destroyed.

Mix air & ground to make it harder for the attacker to deal with your defending troops 🙂

Best Troops To Choose

Now I want to show you the useful troops that you can use for the three categories I showed above.

Base Troop

Good base troops are

• Golem
• Lava Hound
• Dragon
• Electric Dragon!

because they are not really affected by a Poison Spell and the Pups confuse the Queen during a Queen Charge and the Golem deals the same damage as a Giant Bomb when it gets destroyed. Time is always a big enemy of your attacker and they will keep his troops busy for some time 🙂

I don’t recommend using Giants (they will suffer more damage from a Poison Spell & any splash damage) or PEKKA (the hit speed is so slow, she gets killed before dealing damage 3 times)

Electro Dragons are a great defending troop, as it can charge its strong lightning attack until attacking troops will target it – and the damage can take away a lot of hitpoints, even from a maxed Hero! Even after dying, the death lightning will deal great damage to the attacking troops 🙂

Variety Troop

The best options here are troops that deal ranged damage. I prefer

• Witches (because the Skeletons keep attacking troops busy)
• Bowlers as they also can hit troops behind tanks

You can take multiple of them in your CC with great results.

Here are troops that you should only have one single of inside your CC:

• Baby Dragon with the splash damage and raged when no other air troop is in the CC
• Valkyrie because when she hits it deals amazing damage
• Balloon (so slow and predictable that a group of them always goes down in Poison Spell)
• Wizard

Miners or Hog Rider are no good choice in your Clan Castle from my experience.

Filling Troops

Now you probably have some housing space left that you should fill, I recommend using:

• Minions (if you do NOT have a Baby Dragon to not remove the raged bonus)
• Archers

Barbarians are too slow and die off too fast and Goblins are so fast they will reach the target first and get killed without dealing any damage at all.

Wrapping it up

You see there are different combinations to use and mixing them up will really help you. You will save yourself some Stars and make your attacker use more troops than originally planned.