Getting Started with Warhounds

Warhounds is a single-player turn-based tactics game on Steam (released August 11, 2026, app 3929470). You command a stylish mercenary company in an alternate-future Africa beyond 2035, bouncing between lethal contracts and a mobile headquarters. This getting-started guide is for your first sessions: pick a difficulty you can finish, learn why ballistics punish lazy positioning, and leave each map with a roster that can still walk into medical.

Watch the official gameplay trailer embedded above for tone and pacing, then treat the steps below as your real checklist. For deeper systems, jump to Ballistics Combat, Base Management, Early Campaign, and Controls from the Guides Hub.

What kind of game this is

Expect XCOM-like mission structure with Jagged Alliance personality: named operators, high lethality, and consequences that follow you home. Missions are designed to land around 25–40 minutes. There is no multiplayer—your tactics, budget, and faction choices are entirely solo. The selling point is honest shooting: no point-blank misses from fake RNG, real projectile paths, destructible cover, vertical maps, and cone overwatch instead of abstract tile magic.

If you came from percentage-based tactics, unlearn the habit of taking “95%” shots while standing in the open. In Warhounds you win by shaping lines of fire, breaking or bypassing cover, and ending turns where enemy cones cannot erase your veterans.

Warhounds Official Gameplay Trailer

First-hour checklist

1. Set difficulty to something you will actually finish. Brutal settings teach hard lessons, but a revolving door of dead recruits also starves the base layer.
2. Finish the onboarding encounters with patience. Learn camera height, cover outlines, and overwatch cones before you invent hero plays.
3. Open Controls or the in-game Options remapper and confirm camera, rotate, and end-turn bindings feel natural.
4. Deploy a mixed four-person idea even if the story offers training wheels: someone who can close (Assault), someone who can tool the map (Specialist), and at least one long-lane threat (Sniper or Machine Gunner).
5. After the first real contract, visit medical and finances before shopping vanity gear. Injured stars waiting in bunks are a silent campaign loss.

Classes and how to think about them

Warhounds fields five classes. You do not need a perfect meta on day one, but you do need roles:

• Assault — Closes distance, finishes wounded targets, and exploits the rule that point-blank fire is trustworthy. Keep them off open lanes until the last dash.
• Specialist — Brings drones, combat scanners, smoke, and optical camo. Specialists make information and denial; they are how you stop walking into cone overwatch blind.
• Sniper — Owns elevation and long sightlines. Pair with teammates who break cover so the sniper is not staring at intact hardpoints all mission.
• Machine Gunner — Writes denial cones. Place them where approaches funnel. Their value is often the shots enemies never take.
• Grenadier — Deletes or softens destructible cover when ballistics alone bounce off. Save explosives for problems positioning cannot solve cheaply.

Early on, prefer flexible kits over min-max fantasy. A Specialist with smoke can save more campaigns than a second sniper who never gets a clean angle.

Combat habits that keep mercs alive

Read Ballistics Combat in full before your third mission. The short version:

• Preview the shot. Distance, elevation, and intervening props matter more than vibes.
• Respect burst penalties. Later rounds in a burst carry growing accuracy costs even when the first round is clean.
• Remember missed bullets continue. A “miss” can still punish someone standing behind the intended target—or your own operator if geometry is cursed.
• Treat cover as temporary. If it can be destroyed, plan the turn after it vanishes.
• Place cone overwatch with intention. Facing and width beat “end turn somewhere safe.”

High lethality means one greedy activation can force an extract. Play for the objective clock inside that 25–40 minute design window, not for clearing every side room.

The base loop between missions

Between contracts you run logistics: recruit personalities, buy equipment, manage money, restock medical supplies, gather intel, court factions, and sometimes run covert ops. Base Management unpacks priorities. For getting started, follow a simple order: stabilize wounded veterans, refill the tools that keep people alive (smoke, meds, scanners), then spend leftover budget on weapons that fix a concrete gap you felt on the last map.

Faction reputation is not flavor text. Allies change which contracts, gear, and support options appear. Early choices should favor reliable access over meme alignments you saw in a trailer.

Difficulty, pace, and expectations

Warhounds lets you tune how punishing the campaign feels. A lighter run still teaches ballistics and base pressure; a harsher run demands cleaner cones and stricter extract discipline. Because the game is single-player only, pick the pace that keeps you learning. The Guides Hub exists so you can deepen one system at a time instead of rage-reloading the whole campaign.

When you feel comfortable moving, shooting, and ending turns without UI friction, shift into Early Campaign for contract selection and roster rotation advice.

Common day-one mistakes

• Buying a trophy rifle while two operators sit injured.
• Ending turns inside obvious machine-gun cones “just for this one shot.”
• Ignoring elevation because the objective marker is on the ground floor.
• Treating Grenadier explosives as openers instead of cover solvers.
• Assuming Steam Workshop or multiplayer friends will bail you out—this release is solo.

What to read next

Return to the Guides Hub whenever you need the full map of tutorials. Dive into Ballistics Combat if shots feel unfair, Base Management if the war chest collapses, and Controls if camera work is eating your decision time. Your first clean extract with everyone walking is the real tutorial completion screen.

Keep the first week of the campaign boring in the best way: mixed classes, short decisive missions, and a medical bay that is never an afterthought. Flashy heroics can wait until your ballistics reads and base ledger both look healthy.