Builder Base Strategy and BH10 Base Design
Builder Base is a different game wearing the same art. The attacker brings one army, the fight runs in two stages, and your defending heroes are the Battle Machine and the Battle Copter rather than the Home Village roster. A base copied from Home Village thinking will lose on shape alone.
What Builder Hall 10 gives you
Builder Hall 10 arrived on 15 May 2023 with Builder Base 2.0 and it is still the highest Builder Hall in the game. As of the August 2026 update Supercell has said there is no major Builder Base content planned, so this is the ceiling to design against, not a waypoint.
What is new at this level is short: the Builder X-Bow, and a sixth Mine. Everything else is upgrade levels. That is the key planning fact, because it means your defensive edge at Builder Hall 10 comes almost entirely from where things sit.
Your full defence set at Builder Hall 10
| Building | Count |
|---|---|
| Cannon | 3 |
| Archer Tower | 3 |
| Double Cannon | 3 |
| Hidden Tesla | 3 |
| Firecrackers | 5 |
| Crusher | 2 |
| Multi Mortar | 1 |
| Roaster | 1 |
| Giant Cannon | 1 |
| Mega Tesla | 1 |
| Lava Launcher | 1 |
| Air Bombs | 1 |
| Guard Post | 1 |
| O.T.T.O’s Outpost | 1 |
| Builder X-Bow | 1 |
| Walls | 180 |
Traps: 5 Push Traps, 6 Spring Traps, 6 Mines and 4 Mega Mines.
Most of these reach level 10 at Builder Hall 10. The Builder X-Bow is the exception, capping at level 5, so do not expect it to carry a side on raw damage. It earns its place by covering a lane the rest of your defence cannot reach, especially against air.
The Guard Post does not shoot. It releases defending troops, and the game counts it against your defence quota, so treat it as a defence with a delay rather than as a support building.
Two stages, one base
An attack runs in two stages with a single army, and your base is judged across both of them. The most common way a Builder Hall 10 base fails is not that it collapses immediately, but that it defends the first stage well and then hands over the rest for free.
So the design test is not “does this stop the opening”, it is “after a normal opening, is what remains still expensive?” Look at your last few defence logs, note what was left standing when the first stage ended, and ask whether that remainder could hold anything.
Where things go
Builder Hall toward the back. It is worth a large chunk of percentage by itself, so it should sit away from the most open approach rather than in the geometric middle. Centred means reachable from four sides. Backed means the attacker has to commit to one side and walk the length of your base to get there.
Battle Machine one wall layer out from the Builder Hall. Close enough to defend it, far enough forward that it meets the attack before the hall is already burning. The Battle Copter, which you unlock at Builder Hall 8, gives you a second defending hero to cover the opposite half.
Three compartments, highest value innermost. At Builder Hall 10 you have 180 wall pieces, which is enough for three real compartments and not enough for six. Put the Builder Hall, Mega Tesla, Giant Cannon and Lava Launcher deepest, the mid tier defences in the middle ring, and the collectors, storages, Clock Tower and Gem Mine on the outside where they buy time.
Anti air spread and protected. Firecrackers are your dedicated air answer and you get five of them. Spread them so no two die to the same push, and keep them inside the wall line. If the Battle Copter keeps finding a safe side against you, that is the side your Builder X-Bow should be covering in air mode.
Crushers on the corridors, not the corners. Two Crushers only pay for themselves where ground troops have to walk past them. A Crusher in a corner is a building with hitpoints.
Trap placement that actually pays
- Push Traps are worth more than their damage, because pushing a pack off its path resets pathing and buys every nearby defence extra seconds. Put them on the entry corridors between compartments.
- Mega Mines belong where tanky troops bunch, usually just inside the first wall break rather than on the wall itself.
- Spring Traps and Mines work best in the gaps between defences that sit close together, which is where cleanup troops run.
- Do not ring the outside with traps. An attack that has not committed yet is an attack your traps waste themselves on.
Common Builder Base mistakes
- Copying a Home Village shape, with the hall dead centre and everything symmetrical.
- Leaving a soft quadrant because one side has three defences and another has one.
- Stacking the Mega Tesla, the Giant Cannon and the Lava Launcher in one compartment, so a single successful push takes all three.
- Putting the Battle Machine so deep that it only activates after the fight is decided.
- Building for one attack style. Witch based pushes, air pushes and ground pushes all want different weaknesses, and you only get one layout, so aim for no obvious weakness rather than one perfect answer.
Where to go next
Browse BH10 layouts for full bases, or the BH10 anti Witch set if that is the attack costing you trophies. Lower halls have their own hubs, including BH9 and BH8. Every layout page shows the full base picture to rebuild in your in game Layout Editor. The finder filters across both villages.
Home Village work is a separate discipline. If you are also pushing there, start with the Town Hall 18 upgrade guide or the Town Hall 16 upgrade guide.