Reaper Guide — Update 2's New Unit and Why It Fell Flat

What the Reaper is

Reaper is one of two units added in Update 2, alongside the Rapier. It is a 2-star special unit, and the creator verdict after testing is unusually blunt: it is one of the weakest units in the game.

That is worth stating plainly because summons are the scarce resource in Command An Army, and this is a page whose most useful advice is “do not spend them here.”

Why it does not work

The problem is not a number that could be patched. It is a design mismatch.

Reaper is built for one-on-one duels. Command An Army is an army-versus-army game — creators describe the core loop as team-vs-team pushes into capture points. A unit whose value is winning a solo fight does not have a job in that structure. One tier list put it memorably: it is an army game, not a one-on-one game.

It loses to archers it cannot reach. The same weakness every melee unit has, without the durability of a shield or the speed of a Lancer to survive the approach. In a meta where Flame Archer is S tier, that is close to fatal — the most common damage source in the game beats it for free.

It costs stars for nothing. At 2 stars it is not cheap in budget terms, and the star limit means every weak unit you field is a star not spent on the unit that would have won the fight.

What to do instead

If you want a damage unit, the tier list is unambiguous: Berserker and Samurai at 4 stars, Flame Archer at 3. If you want something cheap that holds a line while your carry works, the Shieldman line starts at 1 star.

If you are specifically interested in what Update 2 added, the Rapier is the more interesting of the two new units — a 2-star that evolves into a Rapier Knight with a parry, which is a genuinely new defensive mechanic rather than a duelist in an army game. The Update 2 guide covers it.

A note on new-unit hype

Reaper is a useful case study for how to read this game’s patch notes, because it shows the difference between new and good.

Update 2 was a mode patch — Ranked and Guilds — with two units attached. Creators expect the next update to be unit-focused, and that is when the meta will actually move. A new unit in a mode patch is a bonus, not a balance event, and the two are worth judging separately.

The best units tier list is rebuilt whenever the meta moves, which in practice means the 1.5-style balance patches rather than the mode patches.

Where it sits

Reaper is C tier on the best units tier list as of September 2026. For the counter system that explains why a melee duelist struggles, see the unit counters guide; for the units actually worth your summons, the Archer line and Berserker are the two highest-value targets.