Concord Crew Builder guide: Best teams, bonuses, backups, and variants explained

Concord sets itself apart from other hero shooters with its Crew system, which lets you customize your own personal lineup of Freegunners for each game mode. The default Crew works well enough in most scenarios, but to really master Concord’s more competitive game modes, you’ll need to fine-tune your team composition to get Crew Bonuses and other advantages.

What is a Crew in Concord?

A Crew is a lineup of characters that you can choose from when playing Concord. From level one, everyone has access to the default Crew consisting of the base game Freegunners in Concord. The default Crew is comprised of 12 default members and four backups, but you don’t have to worry about their designations at this point.

You unlock the Crew Builder at level six, letting you develop your own custom lineups tailored to different game modes and playstyles. The Crew Builder system will only get more complex as new Freegunners and Variants are added to Concord in future updates, but it’s pretty simple at launch.

Concord Crew Builder Explained

The Crew Builder adds another layer of strategy to Freegunner selection and team compositions before matches even begin. You can add any Concord characters to your Crew, but all custom Crews must meet the following criteria:

• 12 total Crew Members
• At least 5 unique Freegunners
• No more than 3 identical Variants

You should stack your Crew with the characters that you want to play, and you should ideally strive to have characters that fill each of Concord’s six roles so you can take advantage of Crew Bonuses during matches.

How Crew Bonuses work in Concord

Crew Bonuses are special buffs applied to all of your characters. To activate a Crew Bonus, all you have to do is select a character with a certain role. After you play that character, their role’s Crew Bonus will permanently activate and be applied to any characters that you switch to in future rounds.

For example, Lennox is a Warden and the Warden Crew Bonus buffs overall weapon range. If you pick Lennox, the Warden Crew Bonus will be activated for the rest of the match and any characters that you play will have increased weapon range as a result. This applies to all Concord game modes (both respawn and no respawn modes), so switching characters often is a winning strategy.

You can stack all six Crew Bonuses at once as long as you switch to the right characters.

• Ranger: Improved Weapon Recoil
• Warden: Longer Weapon Range
• Haunt: Improved Mobility
• Breacher: Faster Dodge Cooldown
• Anchor: Increased Healing Received
• Tactician: Faster Reload Speed

It’s a good idea to pick characters in a certain order so that Freegunners deeper in your lineup can take advantage of Crew Bonuses to make them more versatile in combat. For example, try picking a Tactician to gain a buff to reload speed before swapping to someone like Emari, who benefits greatly from faster reloads.

What are Variants in Concord?

You may find yourself wondering how you could possibly miss any of the six Crew Bonuses with a roster of 12 characters. That’s where Variants come in.

As you level up in Concord, you’ll unlock Variants of each Freegunner. Freegunner Variants have unique Combat Traits (passive perks). That’s the only difference between them. Their weapons, abilities, and stats remain the same.

Different Variants are identified with different Roman numerals in your Crew lineup, and you can see their abilities next to those numerals. For example, Lennox I has the Dodge Reload Combat Trait, which reloads his equipped weapon after dodging. Lennox II has Extended Mag instead, which provides extra ammo for both of his guns.

Since Variants technically count as different characters, you can use them to bypass the duplicate cap when building a Crew. You can have three copies of Lennox I plus three copies of Lennox II to equal six copies of Lennox on your team, for better or worse.

This is especially helpful for competitive modes with Freegunner lockout, which prevents you from choosing the same character after winning a round. If you have multiple copies of Lennox I, you can use him again after winning a round. Once you run out of Lennox I copies, you can just start using Lennox II as long as you don’t mind the different Combat Traits.

What are Backups in Concord?

In addition to your Crew, you’ll also have access to four Backup characters when playing Concord. These are bonus Freegunners that are chosen semi-randomly based on these factors.

• Slot 1: Newest Freegunner available
• Slot 2: Prioritizes missing roles in your Crew
• Slot 3: Prioritizes missing roles in your Crew
• Slot 4: Prioritizes missing Variants in your Crew

You shouldn’t rely on Backup characters when designing a custom Crew, but they can be a huge help if you find yourself in a situation where your lineup is getting countered hard by the enemy team.

Best Crew Lineups in Concord

The best Crews in Concord are tailored specifically to specific game modes, which is why the game gives you multiple Crew slots to build several different teams with.

Respawn Modes (Brawl)

Since modes like Brawl do not feature Freegunner lockouts, you don’t have to worry about stacking duplicates of your favorite characters. This is the best Concord Crew for Brawl and other respawn modes.

• Emari
• Star Child
• Bazz
• It-Z
• Duchess
• Jabali
• Teo
• Daw
• Lark
• Haymar
• Lennox
• Vale

This team lineup skips 1-0FF, Daveers, Roka, and Kyps because they fall a bit short of the rest of the roster when it comes to fragging. They’re still great Freegunners, they’re just a bit more situational than the rest. You can pick them up as Backups in matches though!

No Respawn Modes (Rivalry)

Rivalry and other competitive modes in Concord feature Freegunner lockouts, so you’ll need to include duplicates of certain top-tier characters to ensure that you can use them for multiple rounds. This is the best Concord Crew lineup for Rivalry.

1. 1-0FF
2. Emari
3. Daveers
4. Duchess
5. Jabali
6. It-Z
7. Haymar
8. Vale
9. Daw
10. Daw
11. Lark
12. Lark

This team composition prioritizes utility and strategy to clear rooms, make space, and ultimately win no respawn rounds. It includes duplicates of Daw and Lark, who are exceptionally strong support units that can still frag. Daw, in particular, will drive your enemies crazy with his Healing Pads and Safety Dome. Plus, Lark’s Spore Seeds can become a real problem for your enemies if you can plant enough of them.

This team composition also includes more situational characters like 1-0FF, who really exists just to counter projectile-heavy team compositions and heavily trapped rooms with his vacuum. Most importantly, however, this team composition grants you access to all six Crew Bonuses.