Battle Brothers: a Comprehensive Guide

Hello everyone! Battle Brothers is finally approaching full release and with the beta patch out the game caught my interest again after a long break. What disappointed me the most is that a lot of information about the game is very outdated. So, after playing campaigns on normal, veteran and (currently day 149) on expert I decided to dedicate some time to share my thoughts on game mechanics, weapons, strategy etc.

Tutorial, Early game & Ambitions

What the game is about?

You are placed in charge of a mercenary company on the brink of collapse as your first task is to finish a fight against a local brigand leader Hoggart the Weasel. After a pyrrhic victory over this bandit group you are going to be presented with a short and well made tutorial which will help you understand some basics of the game.

After the tutorial, you are free to do whatever you want on the global map. So, that brings us to a logical question: what should you do to make a powerful and prosperous mercenary group?

Early game:

In the early game (roughly first 50-60 days) you have 3 major tasks to do:

-Build up your roster to at least 12 men and level up those that show potential, so you can take on more serious contracts.
-Upgrade them with decent equipment (I say have 80-110 armor rating for everyone and at least tier 2 weapons).
-Get to “professional ” renown so you can start taking contracts from noble houses (which are more difficult but also much more profitable).

The game will help you accomplish those tasks via “ambitions” mechanic.

-Ambitions
Eventually after the tutorial you will receive an event where you can set a goal for your company to achieve. Currently those goals have no time limit but cancelling them will have negative effects on your company. Complete them and you will receive bonuses (which usually include renown, mood increase and occasionally some equipment or upgrades).

Ambitions will scale in difficulty as you get stronger, early game ambitions include:
-Get the amount of mercs you got to 12 men
-Get some money for a battle standard (Give it to battle brother with highest resolve)
-Get a sergeant (a brother with “rally the troops” perk. Take note that you usually want your standard bearer to have this perk)
-Get a caravan cart so you can keep more gear in inventory (if you’re a loot hoarder like me, take it, otherwise a waste of money)
-Visit every village, castle and city on the map (which you have to do sooner or later so this one is entirely optional).
-Get “professional” renown.



An example of an ambition event late in the game.

How to earn money: Trade, Contracts & Loot

-Trade. A feature that is overlooked by new players this is a great way to earn some money without fighting at all. First you have to find a settlement that is producing trade goods like wood, amber, gems etc. Buy 1 resource and check out towns nearby (big settlements should be your priority) to see if you can sell it with profit. If you think you can sell it at a higher price in another city, check it out. Finding profitable trade routes which can bring the most gold with least effort (by “effort” I mean walking distance) is the key here. After you find a good place to sell your goods, start purchasing and selling as much as you can and after a while you will see how profitable it can be.



Here's an example of how this looks in the menu.

-Clearing locations and selling loot. This is a great way to earn cash too. During the course of the game you will find yourself constantly selling extra weapons and equipment you got from enemies and currently don’t need. I recommend repairing it before selling as you can get much more money this way. Not all equipment is worth repairing (like tier 1 weapons – don’t bother about them) but for example orc weapons certainly are. Also when clearing locations (especially those that are far from civilization) you might find a lot of special loot (like old gold coins and silverware) which can be sold for a nice amount of money.
-Doing contracts. That’s what you gonna do for most of the time until the very late game when you got so much money it becomes unnecessary. Early in the game you gotta do contracts in order to get to “professional” renown so you can start working on noble houses. So, while noble contracts are locked, you should venture to villages and cities in order to get a job. There are several types of contracts you can get from neutral factions:

-Deliver a package to another village. One of the easiest quests but usually brings you the least money. Your pay depends on the amount of walking you must do. In most cases it’s a peaceful mission but there are events where your package gets stolen and you have to clear bandit location to get it back and there’s also an event where you meet with another mercenary group that wants this package (at least it was in earlier versions). Oh yeah, and there’s also a fun event where you can open the package and fight a bunch of enemies (The only time I got this I faced 8 ancient auxiliaries).
-Caravan guard. Again usually a peaceful event where the amount of money you get depends on the amount of travelling you gotta do. This time travelling to location is automatic and you also do not use food (presumably using caravan supplies). The dangers are the attacks of roaming parties if your band is weak and you might get a rare event where the army of a local lord claims caravan goods to be stolen from them. You can try to fight 20-25 men or abandon your contract.
-Protect the village from raiding parties. You have to wait around a village a bit until you receive an event that tells the raiding party is arriving. Then it spawns a group of enemies near you. Orcs, humans, goblins – it can be anything, really. Early In the game you get only humans but the difficulty scales the more you play. If I’m not mistaken, in some cases a couple of villagers will offer to join your party and if you accept you can either arm them with melee or ranged weapons. They are useless either way though.
-Return a valuable item. The village chief asks you to return a treasure that was stolen from him. Thief party is usually not that big (the largest I’ve seen was 12 men) but I assume the difficulty scales here too. After you defeat enemy party you can receive an event where you meet the guy who hired those thieves and he’s gonna offer you money from the item you need to return. Sometimes the sum is bigger than the contract offer, sometimes its not.
-Deal with beasts killing villagers. In most cases you have to deal with direwolves here but sometimes they can be bandits in disguise (can there also be ghouls? I’m not sure). Early game this might be very difficult.
-Clear bandit/undead location. Whether it’s bandits ambushing trade caravans, stuff happening at the cemetery or a relic in a tomb not so far from the village, this is the most difficult contract you might get. The pay can vary greatly and sometimes after seeing the amount and difficulty of enemies you might decide it’s not worth it.
When you get enough renown to start working on nobles you should switch to doing their contracts if you feel ready. Remember that these jobs are much more difficult and a 1-skull contract from a noble house is not the same as 1-skull contract you get from a neutral faction. You get much more money though (which also scales with renown).

There are several contracts you might get:

-Patrol the roads. The easiest one probably where you have to move to 2 locations killing anyone hostile on the way and then return to the starting city. I recommend taking money per head you return with and target easy roaming parties (like bandit thugs). You can get a nice sum of money that way with minimum effort (this contract is time consuming though).
-Go to a village and kill a roaming party harassing it. Relatively straightforward job but the difficulty is higher than with the one you get from village itself. Usually you should prepare to deal with greenskins here.
-Raid and destroy a farm in a village or town. Never accepted this contract but I believe here you might face village militia if you try to destroy their property.
-Clear hostile location. Again, very straightforward job. Usually its orcs so the difficulty might be very high here.
-Guard an envoy. The most peaceful mission out of all of those. Got it a couple of times, had no fights or any other difficulties at all. I believe there’s an event where a group of mercs is hired to assassinate the envoy and you have to protect him but I never got it myself.

Endgame Crises

Currently in the game there are 3 types of “Greater evil” chain of events. Usually you get your first one by day 80 and after beating first one in 40-50 days you get another. In options you can only choose the first one you get so if you plan to play a long campaign eventually you have to face all 3 of those. There's also an option now to completely skip those endgame events. There’s a special ambition to take when each crisis starts which will show your progress towards winning.

-Greenskin invasion: Goblins and Orcs unite under the same banner and aim to destroy the world of man. And it turns out only your small band can stop it. The frequency of greenskin raids on human settlements intensifies greatly and they have mixed parties now so you have to deal with both strong orcs and cunning goblins. You get several types of new contracts and for the duration of the event you gonna get only those (from nobles, at least):

-Clear an orc camp. Same as clearing location but the difficulty is much higher. Expect a lot of orcs, many orc warriors and sometimes a warlord too.
-Save prisoners. After a battle orcs took some of the surviving humans to their camp. First you have to check out the battle site where you gonna have a relatively easy fight with orc looters. Then you gotta follow enemy tracks which will lead you to their location. Clear it and free the prisoners and then return to the lord.
-Hunt down an orc warlord. Here you have to find and kill and orc warlord operating in the region. To lure him out you should clear orc locations and kill their roaming armies. After that you have to face orc warlord and his personal bodyguard (around 20 orcs). After winning each fight against orcs you gonna get an event telling you of your progress. I had to fight 5 times before the warlord decided to come out. This contract is time consuming and in my opinion not really worth the effort.
-Lift a siege. This contract is the most difficult one. Greenskins are about to take a human city and you have to defeat them before they capture it. To help you out the lord sends you there with his own army (20-30 men). Once you reach your destination, you split your forces and now you’re free to engage. There are usually around 60-70 greenskins in several armies attacking the settlement. In order to make the contract much easier, stick around your allies and help them to defeat enemy armies one by one. In some stacks there are siege engines that you must destroy too. They do not attack so that’s the easiest part. Also, you might find yourself in a situation where you have to face some of the remaining greenskins alone (for example, in a previous fight your allies lost all their troops but there’s one more army remaining). Their army composition is usually orcs as melee troops and goblin ambushers as ranged with roughly 50/50 split.

After fulfilling some contracts and killing a lot of greenskins the invasion gonna end. Orcs and goblins are going to be hostile to each other again and you will receive a special event about the end of this war.

The noble war:

-At some point in the game you will start receiving messages about noble houses getting disgrunted with each other and soon after that an all-out war between human faction will break out. This is the easiest crisis in my opinion since you can choose to ignore it completely. So, if you're new to this game and want to try out endgame events, I recommend this one first.
At one point you gonna be either asked by a noble to join their house or you can do it yourself by attacking those houses you don't like and thus siding with one house. Remember that the moment you sign a special contract/attack another noble house army, you are cut off from that part of the map and can only use your faction' settlements to rest and resupply.

Special contracts:

-Raid your enemy's land: you are tasked to go to another house territory and destroy three random locations (like harbors or wheat fields). There's also another task to eliminate any roaming enemy party but this one is entirely optional. Destroy those three buildings in 5 days and then return to get the money. Each building is going to be protected either by militia (around 25-30 poorly armed units), mercenaries (these guys are tough - expect a lot of overwhelm and throwing weapons) or local lord's army (the most difficult one probably - arbalesters, sergeants, knights, footmen and billmen - up to 25 units). Overall, a pretty good contract to earn a lot of money (and get tons of loot).
-Participate in a big battle. You are asked to join an army camp which is preparing for a decisive battle against enemy house. Before the battle itself you might have to do some menial tasks: chase the enemy scouts, get supplies from local peasants or to deal with deserters (you can try to either convince them to join the army back or kill them - doesn't matter). The battle itself can be very difficult - you can face up to 45 enemies in total and your allies come in smaller numbers. Also (I think it's scripted) there's always a group of enemies coming from the flank of your main formation (up to 8 units). Is this contract worth it? In my opinion, not really, but, since the enemy usually has a knight (or a couple of them) leading the army, you can easily get several unique swords doing those contracts.

(Some people reported that there's also a siege contract where you help taking the opponents city or village. Personally I've never seen this one. To test things out I reloaded the same save game made a day before new contract appears 10 times and all I got was raiding, battle and basic (clear greenskin location, patrol the roads etc.) contracts.

After around 50-60 days the noble war will end with a white peace treaty. I'm not sure if it's possible to help your allies capture the whole map and then unite the world of man.

The undead scourge:

-Coming soon. From what I understand this one is considered to be the most difficult as normal undead and ancient dead unite their forces.

Your battle brothers: my take on combat roles and levelling them up

Please take note that Battle Brothers is a game that has many viable strategies concerning the development of your mercs and overall game plan and, while my approach may not be the best one, I found that it serves me well on any difficulty and up until now I never had any serious problems with it. For all my campaigns I used a simple, yet effective build with 5 linemen, 2 damage dealers, 1 sergeant, 3 ranged units and the last spot was dedicated to experimental builds (or in some cases a 6th lineman).

Concerning Student/Gifted perks: Community is currently split on those two: some people take them all the time, others consider them a waste. Im my opinion, Student in its current form has no drawbacks, since it gives you +20% experience gain until level 11 and then an extra perk point. If you plan to keep your recruit, you should take this perk to level him up faster. As for Gifted perk I'm not so sure. Yes, you get to level up your stats with best rolls but is it really worth the perk point?

Linemen

Those are your “tanks”, their purpose on the battlefield is to protect your more valuable troops while at the same time engaging the enemy on the frontline. If you can’t avoid getting damage from your enemy, those guys are your first candidates to take it. They should be equipped with heavy armor, shield and a 1-handed weapon.
What stats to take on a level-up? Melee skill (up to 75-80, my experience tells me you don’t need more than that on this guy, since even 70 allows for reliable hits in battle), melee defense (this one is unlimited – the more the merrier), fatigue (again, the more the merrier, you should aim for 60 with all the gear as a minimum here but at least 70 is recommended) and health (70 is a minimum for a lineman but more is welcome). If you get good rolls (+4 or +5), get resolve (which is really important against enemies like geists, from my experience 50 is a bare minimum) or ranged defense (for better protection against archers but in most cases you should rely on your shield and armor). Also, if you want to use throwing weapons as a ranged secondary with these guys, you should try to get their ranged skill to at least 40.

What about perks?

Mandatory:

-Shield Expert – since you’re going to be using it all the time, it’s a straight buff
-Battle Forged + Brawny – again, since you’re aiming at using heavy armor, best two perks to have here
-Rotation* – most likely the best perk if you want to improve your mobility and survivability. You can move your wounded troops away from the frontline and instantly replace them with fresh ones, you can use it on allied troops too (when in big battle), so you can engage the enemy and all sorts of other shenanigans.
-Recover – this build takes a lot of fatigue penalties so I frequently find myself using this skill in long fights (with 20 or more opponents) and frankly can’t imagine this build being viable without this perk.
*Rotation vs Footwork: footwork is also very useful skill as it allows you to disengage your enemy without relying on your battle brothers being around. However, in lineman’s case you’re supposed to use them in formation and break your frontline only if your enemy is weak enough. Also, unlike damage dealers they are not that good on their own and need constant support from your backline troops. That is also an issue here: when in formation, frequently you will find yourself in a situation when you need to move your guy out to save him/free an engagement spot for another guy (which, for example, has a war hammer and is better for breaking heavy armor) and you can’t use footwork because your backline is filled with supporting troops. You can always take both but from my personal experience rotation is much better in this case.

Recommended:

-Quick Hands – your linemen might find themselves in situations where they need to switch for certain weapons (for example after a turn of using throwing weapons to pelt the enemy the surviving ones engage you in melee – this skill allows to switch for your primary weapon without using any action points, so you can do 2 attacks or 1 attack and a shieldwall) or their shield got destroyed and they need to use their extra one (and later in the game you should consider giving them 2 if fatigue allows).
-Steel Brow – since your guys gonna take a lot of blows, some of them might land on your head. Take it if you want to leave nothing to chance and increase their chance of survival even further but when you get some heavy helmets (200 and more), this perk becomes somewhat more secondary than primary choice.
-Weapon proficiency: Later in the game, when you acquire some top-tier weapons you want to dedicate your lineman to be specialists in them, since every one of those perks the fatigue cost of skills of respective weapons by 25% while also giving small bonuses to said skills. I say, important to take but not mandatory as you might find your linemen frequently switching between various weapons to adapt to battle situation.

Mixed feelings:

-Bags & Belts – used to be great when it completely nullified the fatigue penalty for extra stuff but now I’m considering it mediocre. The problem is, you gonna need a lot of fatigue to carry all the extra weapons and shields around. Still testing it, I would say right now that you should take it but after I use it a little bit more I will post here the results.
-Fearsome – even though the perk is pretty good, I’m not exactly sure if it’s useful. Undead are immune to fear so that completely negates its usefulness if, for example, you want to go for undead scourge endgame scenario (more on that later). Its main purpose is to constantly trigger morale checks against armored targets, so it’s great against orcs and some humans.
-Colossus/Nine Lives – I put these two here together because their only purpose is to improve the surviving chances of your lineman when his armor gets destroyed and when he’s in such bad shape, I simply recommend rotating him out and moving him to back rows of your troops. Usually units without armor do not live very long, especially later in the game. Might be useful, but is completely optional.
-Indomitable – might look great at first glance but in reality gives you questionable benefits. Yes, immunity to knock back is good against orc warriors but you can negate their ability to push you back with careful placement of your troops. Also, you can play around this ability by placing traps in your formation so that they get surrounded and taken out in one turn. 50% damage reduction is great but you trade fatigue and action points (in some cases completely wasting a turn on it), so I would say it’s only useful when your lineman gets ganged up. And since you’re supposed to use him in formation and rotate your guys is case of emergency I say it’s not recommended.

Damage Dealer

This unit role is to, well, kill stuff (with two-hander or in some cases polearm). They should use weapons that allow you to deal the most damage to as many enemies as possible in one turn. So naturally, greatswords and greataxes are top tier equipment for them, with greatswords currently being the meta (since they’re much more versatile).

In my build I use those guys to protect the flanks of your linemen formation. Using area attacks and powerful one-target strikes you should easily eliminate both swarms of lightly-armored enemies and high-value targets that try to flank your formation (orc warriors, for example). When you deal with the initial wave of opponents and your position is secured, you should move this guy forward to engage remaining enemies. As a general rule, use him more aggressively the more levels and better equipment he gains.

Level-ups: fatigue is a priority one, then melee skill (80-90 is recommended so you can reliably hit with your area attacks), health and melee defense (no limit here). As I said before, bravery should be increased on any character if you get good rolls.

Perks:

Mandatory:

-Backstabber + Berserk + Killing Frenzy – those three skills aim at increasing your offensive capabilities as much as possible. Get one kill with your linemen providing that hit chance bonus, get +AP, hit again with increased damage. Next turn do the same. A must have here.
-Recover – in battle you gonna use a lot of fatigue for those area attacks and 2-handers usually have very fatiguing basic attacks too.
-Weapon mastery – Axe or Sword – depends on your personal preference, both are good since you gonna use much less fatigue. You should choose only one though.
-Brawny + Battle-Forged – as in linemen’s case, those skills improve your survivability and since you have no shield and use heavy armor, it’s a must.

Recommended:

-Underdog – helps you survive waves of enemies by making it harder to hit you while you’re getting encircled. Very good.
-Reach advantage – Great defensive skill but you gotta be careful when picking it and watch your base defense.
-Overwhelm – good skill which makes you harder to hit and it also stacks. Works only with high initiative and does not apply to characters with "turn done" status, so be careful when assigning this perk to a guy in heavy armor.

Mixed feelings:

-Head Hunter – at first I thought this skill is very good but now I’m not so sure. Hitting the head for that crit is always nice but is it really necessary to use a perk point for only 10% increase? On the other hand, If you gonna use berserk chain, this skill is a must have.
-Footwork – might be useful to avoid getting ganged-up but it really depends on how you use your guy. As I said, I use all my units defensively and only advance when I need to finish remaining enemies. Also, in many cases you want to be surrounded by opponents for those axe or greatsword swings.

Support and Experimental builds

Support:

By support characters I mean mostly archers and sergeants. First of all, I strongly recommend making your archer a hybrid unit which is good with both melee and ranged weapons (where to set a priority is entirely up to you and depends on situation in the game and the opponents you’re facing the most). Sergeant build is similar to damage dealer but since he’s most likely your standard bearer, give him “rally the troops” and “polearm mastery” perks. While sergeant is supposed to keep your guys fighting by keeping their morale at steady and help with his “pike” attacks, your archers task is to help your linemen deal with those enemies that attack you head on and to eliminate high-value targets that are either approaching your position or sitting far back (like necromancers, for example). When there’s no good target to shoot at – switch to melee and help your linemen. When you switch to melee, your guys kinda turn into damage dealers. For melee weapon I recommend trying long axes – you can get them from brigand raiders quite early in the game and you can use them to split shields – great against ancient undead and some humans.

Level-ups: Fatigue (aim at having 80-90 with all equipment), ranged skill (I would say, 70-75 for crossbowmen and 90 for archers), melee skill (not really a priority here, around 65 should be fine. You usually can do fine even with lower number), initiative (100 is great so they can reliably start first against most opponents, aim for this number even if you can’t reach it). Health I would say is an optional pick (my crossbowman has weakened hearth and is still kicking ass).

Perks:

Mandatory:

-Bullseye/Head Hunter/Berserk – all those skills improve your potential as both ranged and melee unit significantly. Not much to say here.
-Bow/Crossbow mastery and Polearm/Axe mastery – I think you should take both melee and ranged mastery here since you gonna frequently switch between weapons in a dynamic fight. Gives a straight buff to your skills, so pretty good.
-Footwork – every time you face orcs or numerically superior enemy you will find yourself in a situation where your frontline got penetrated or you got some enemies on your flanks trying to engage your support troops. Use footwork, move out of opponent’s reach and strike with your 2-tile melee weapon. One of the best picks here in my opinion.

Recommended:

-Quick Hands – Since as I said, you gonna switch your weapons frequently – take this skill. Not always necessary but improves your capabilities significantly.
-Steel Brow – If you plan to use heavy armor on your archers later in the game to improve their chances of surviving enemy marksmen shots, you gonna face a problem that you cannot use any headgear better than closed mail coif since you gonna lose vision. Personally, I think this skills gonna save you many times but maybe taking like -1 or -2 vision helmets and use only crossbows is also viable strategy.

Mixed Feelings:

-Fast adaptation – some people say this skill is bad, some say it’s good. I’m on neither side. Early game, while you have bad ranged skill, it’s good, it’s even great. Later, when you reach high levels, this skill starts to feel more and more useless. You get a stacking increase in hit chance until you actually hit the opponent. Considering you might have mediocre melee skills on your archers if you prioritize ranged weapons and vise-versa it helps sometimes when you can afford not to hit your target once or twice. Also, it’s somewhat useful if you spam quick shots with your bowmen.
-Killing Frenzy – a couple of times my archer killed 3 enemies in 1 turn landing 3 successful quick shots (getting extra AP from berserk). And while I can certainly say killing frenzy helped me here, overall I feel it’s not that significant. But, if you have to switch to melee – that’s another point entirely. When I’m writing all those good points about this skill, I’m thinking: “Why do I have mixed feelings about this one”. I just feel like this skill does not belong in this build and maybe it was better to go for recovery instead.

Experimental builds:

I consider “experimental” those builds that do not work reliably. Duelists, Nimble builds, Riposte swordsmen. Most of these rely on light armor and dodge but the problem with dodge is: even if you have the same melee defense as a gheist, someday you might get hit by a lucky orc warrior or bandit raider. And your light armor won’t save you. My opinion is that in order to make those builds work you gotta try them out in late game, when you have money to waste. Sellsword or swordmaster is recommended background for those builds, as they both usually have a good starting melee defense and melee skill. Currently I’m working on a sword/dagger duelist and I’ll post results once I get at least one character to max level and use him in combat long enough to form an opinion. I'm not saying they can't work, they certainly can if you get a guy with right stats and perks but I don't like leaving my defenses to a roll of a dice.

Weapons

Here I would like to present you my opinion on some weapons that are in the game. I haven't tried all of them yet and gonna update this guide once I do.

All weapons are separated by tiers and for most of them there are 3. Example is:

Knife-Dagger-Roundel Dagger

Each tier is a straight upgrade of a lower one and there’s no reason to use lower tier weapons when you get your hands on a better one. I’ll post my opinion about the weapons I used frequently here:

Let’s start with daggers: it’s a very niche weapon. It’s primary use is to spam skill that ignores enemy armor completely but has a -15% hit chance. A very high melee skill is required to use it effectively but when used correctly you can easily kill even the strongest opponents. I use daggers in midgame to obtain some high level armor and helmets from bandit leaders and I must say I really love this weapon.

Swords: Great against elusive opponents since basic slash gives you +10% hit chance and with mastery you can make a viable riposte build. But I believe for each hit you dodge you gain some fatigue now so I’m not sure if you should dedicate that much into swordsmen. Overall, good weapon for your low melee skill guys, great against unarmored opponents.

Spears: Just as swords, a very useful tool against opponents with high melee defense. But spears also allow you to use a special skill called "spearwall”. If opponent tries to enter your zone of control with spearwall on, he triggers a free attack. On a hit, your opponent is pushed back to the tile he tried to advance to you from. Against zombies and ghouls and in some cases direwolwes this weapon can be amazing and there are even dedicated spear builds. Personally I don’t use them that often (maybe because I fight with orcs too much) but they’re great.

Axes: During the course of campaigns I played I found myself sticking to this weapon from early game all the way up until late game. This weapon is your jack-of-all-trades: it has reasonable damage, it is decent against armor, it can destroy shields if necessary. But for that versatility you pay with fatigue, especially on high-tier variants.

Hammers: This is your primary tool to deal with armored opponents because of the special attack that is devastating against armor. Even low-tier variants are good and late game you should dedicate some guys to use this weapon as a primary against all these orc warriors and knights.

Maces: This weapon is great for fatiguing your opponents and it is your weapon of choice if you want to use stun ability. Since you can even stun the undead, it’s a fun weapon to use.

Flails: Not only there’s an extra chance to hit the head but you also get the special attack that only targets the head (which is fatiguing though). An interesting weapon for sure and is reliable on all stages of the game. Mastery perk makes it ignore the bonus of shields which makes this weapon amazing. And, of course, there’s the berserk chain – one of the most interesting 2-handed weapons to use.

Cleavers: Not only you get the highest damage potential with cleavers (especially with orc ones) but there’s also an additional bleeding damage applied over turns. Plus you get a special decapitation attack which is great against zombies. This is one of my favorite weapons.

2-handed weapons:

Greatswords: Right now they dominate in the game, mainly because you get three types of attacks: a normal single-target, an attack that targets the target next to you and the target behind your enemy and a sweeping attack that can hit up to 3 opponents. Some people even make entire companies armed with this weapon.

Greataxes: If you compare a Man Splitter (orc greataxe and that is the weapon you should aim for if you go for those) to a Greatsword, you get better damage and better effectiveness against armor. But its rounds swing is difficult to use and is unreliable. And as I mentioned before, long axes are one of the best (if not the best) 2-tile weapons.

2h Hammers: Haven’t tried them yet but I once fought against an opponent who had a hedge knight in his group armed with this weapon. It has some amazing damage potential and is devastating to armor. A solid choice if you wish to go for it.

Polearms: Here it’s mainly a rivalry between a pike and a billhook. Even though pike has less damage it’s secondary ability – repel – is much better.

Ranged weapons: Bows are great against unarmored targets and are great to spam arrows, crossbows are for armored opponents. I think you should get at least two archers in your group and use one with bow and one with crossbow, since the latter gets less range but is easier to use. Top-tier weapons allow you to deal with any threat (and special goblin crossbow called spiked impaler can push your enemies back on a hit).

Combat: usable items and a battle example

Usable items in battle:

Wardogs: their main purpose in the game is to stop retreating enemies from leaving combat since the speed with which wardogs can cover ground is about the same as for direwolves, so they can easily catch up with retreating humans, orcs or goblins. They will lock your fleeing opponent in combat so in order to retreat further your enemy must avoid a free attack from the dog. This allows you to catch up with your enemy with your main units and finish him off. You can also use them to distract your enemy from your mercs (usually AI attacks a target with the least melee defense, armor and health so a wardog can make your opponent waste an entire turn on it instead of attacking your guys who might be injured and need to disengage. This tactic is especially effective against undead who have only 1 attack per turn. You can buy two types of dogs: with or without body armor but both types are great for their price and I recommend to use them.

Falcons: this bird gives you a lot of extra vision for 1 turn (12 tiles in each direction). It also can discover hidded units. This is the best reconnaissance unit in the game and, even though it costs a lot, you cannot lose it to enemy attacks (unlike wardogs). A must-have for every mercenary group.


Here's an example of me using a falcon. I discovered all enemies this way and now know their positions and strength.

Goblin poison: A single-use item you can loot from goblin ambushers. By spending AP all your weapons are poisoned now for several turns. If your enemy is hit with poisoned weapons, he gains an AP penalty and pealty to vision. Not very useful in my opinion as you have to spend a turn poisoning your weapons first and my motto is: concentrate on killing your enemy and not on weakening him.



Bandages: a single-use item which can stop your mercs from receiving bleeding damage. In my group I have 4-5 brothers carrying those in combat. Using a bandage on a severely injured and bleeding battle brother can save him his life. But remember that you spend almost all your turn on it and both of you (in case you use a bandage to patch up another brother, not the merc who has it) cannot be engaged in melee combat.

Strange mushrooms: the most interesting single-use item, it gives you a lot of extra damage but lowers your melee and range defense significantly. You can loot those from orc berserkers. I give it to my damage dealers in case they need to eliminate a high-value target in 1 turn. Again, you gotta spend a turn consuming those first. It can be very useful but you should be careful when to use it.



Now let's analyse one engagament I had with enemy army during Noble war. I will use this battle as an example to give some tactical advice for the build I presented earlier in this guide.



As you can see, it's the first round and my enemy has an initiative advantage over me. He used his wardogs in frontal assault against my formation which is the worst way to use them but it's gonna leave my guys with extra fatigue when his footmen gonna engage me. Red circles represend high-value targets: an enemy sergeant (he's got high melee defense, nimble perk and damage bonus from double grip) and two zweihanders (damage dealers) with greatswords. Those three units should be a priority one for my archers. Since they have a lot of armor, my task here is to wound them (and, if possible, kill at least one with focus fire) and switch next round to targets that can deal a lot of damage but are not protected so well (and those are enemy billmen and standard bearer in blue circles). Also, take note that I used my falcon to scout the aren (that's why I see so much territory now).



Turn 2. I easily dispatched enemy wardogs (except one) and now my enemy attacks me in melee. Since enemy sergeant reached the left flank (and even injured my dueslist) I have no clear shot on him and I switched my archers (yellow support line) to focus fire on a severely injured zweihander and billmen. As you can see, one is already down and zweihander not gonna survive next turn. I moved my damage dealers in first row to help secure the main line and so they can use their berserk (kill one target, use extra AP to hit another).



Turn 3. As you can see, enemy zweihander managed to survive and engage me in melee and now threatens my badly injured duelist with his area attack. This attack from the other zweihander managed to injure my crossbowman but in return I quickly killed the opponent. Now my task is to deal with the difficult situation on left flank and in order to distract the enemy I'm gonna release a wardog. One of my archers switched to melee to help against footmen but my other two still gonna focus enemy billmen.



Turn 4. Wardog did its job - it distracted enemy zweihander and gave me time to kill him. Also, my damage dealer killed the sergeant so now I can disengage with my wounded duelist and keep him away from combat. My linemen and damage dealers on right flank managed to wound some enemy footmen and I will continue to focus them to finish them off.



Turn 5. Most of the enemies are dead and now my damage dealer on left flank is engaging the last one. Unfortunately, I lost my wardog - but it distracted enemy footman with morningstar, which has a stun attack (he could've stunned my damage dealer which potentially can be very dangerous but he focused on a wardog so I killed him). My linemen broke through enemy footmen and now attack enemy backline. The only remaining footman who is not engaged by any of my troops might soon retreat. Also, one of my damage dealers got injured, so as in duelist' case I'm retreating him.



Turn 6. The only remaining footman is trying to escape. I'm gonna release a second wardog (yellow arrow) to chase him so my damage dealers can catch up with him and finish him off.



Victory!

Exploits & Conclusion

Here I’m going to post some exploits I found in the game.

Retreat exploit:

How to clear any location without losing any men? It’s easy actually ;)



As you can see, this is a pretty difficult location to take out. In fact, for my group it's nearly impossible to do so without losing most of my men.

Attack the location and then retreat to the edges of the map. Lightly armored troops will come to you first. Kill them and then instantly hit retreat button in the menu. You got no losses and injuries but your enemy lost their troops permanently.

Repeat it several times, killing your targets one by one and retreating when it gets hot.



This orc warrior decided to push through my formation on the flank. Turns out this was a bad idea.



Keep doing that until your enemy becomes manageable and finish him off ;)



How to deal with difficult roaming parties?

There are two options here: close distance with them so they lock on you and try to lead them either to an enemy location (like undead tomb in greenskin case) or to an allied armies that are frequently patrolling the roads between towns. In friendly army case they gonna engage your enemy and you just need to help them out. In case of locations lead your, for example, orc opponent to an undead location. Stay on top of location but do not attack it. When orcs finally catch up with you and attack you, they (and you) gonna face the undead also, so it's a 3-way battle! When the fight starts, retreat a bit to let both hostile parties engage each other and then finish off the remaining enemies.

Thank you for reading this guide! I am happy to listen to all reasonable critique and advice and will dedicate time in the future to keep this guide up to date. I'm not a pro at this game and still learning and I haven't covered all the possible topics but I feel like this guide will be of help to new players, especially when the game is released.

[Widderreiter]

wheres the pic from brah

[COMBATWA4LES]

lol whats that picture from?

[Swisscheese[CH]]

nice !

[Knatternick]

Ok, und nun der Guide bitte noch auf Deutsch. Danke!

[Abdullah]

Good guide; but who should you pick to a two-handed killing machine?

[𝕮𝖗𝖚𝖓𝖐...]

Do you think anticipation is not necessary for archers?

[Lampros]

Please update - soon! ;)

[Cinnamon]

@-MGX-Rifter Yeah, looks like he did. Didn't even try to hide it. Well, I don't know why people steal the work of others for something so pathetic as likes (i guess?).

The guide is a bit out of date and I still haven't finished the Undead section. Unfortunately I've been very busy lately and don't know when I'm gonna finish it. I'm still moderating the guide from time to time though, so, if you have any questions, feel free to ask them here - I'll try to answer them to the best of my ability ;)

[Rifter]

Going by comment dates, since I'm on my phone and steam mobile app doesn't show guide publishing dates, it looks like "Weapons Guide Battle Brothers" By GrimyGamer straight ripped your Weapons section.

[Sir Ordy]

This was a fantastic guild thank you for your time on it.. I learn so much, its simple and to the point.. Now to the BATTLES!!! Thanks man ;)