Wardogs made me realize I want base building in my Battlefield

• Feature
• Opinion

There’s nothing quite as thrilling as blasting your way into an enemy-made base in Wardogs.

Sam Chandler September 7, 2026 9:00 AM Bulkhead 2

The Wardogs Closed Beta 2 weekend shut its doors on Sunday, putting a temporary end to the fun everyone has been having. Between now and when Wardogs hits early access at the end of the week, all I’ll be able to think about is how Bulkhead has nailed a military simulation genre mash-up.

For those greenhorns still in training, Wardogs pits three teams of 33 players against one another in a King of the Hill style game mode across a gargantuan map. If your team has more players inside the control zone, you take control and earn a point every 10 seconds. But within the control zone is a roaming hot zone, where one soldier counts as two. Do you dogpile the hot zone and take the risk of being constantly on the move, or do you focus on the other supplementary objective: towers.

Dotted around each map are towers that a team can control. By securing a tower, you learn one digit in a code. Acquire all digits, punch in the code in any tower, and you’ll draw the hot zone directly to you.

This is where Bulkhead has injected its genius into the design. Instead of just fighting as infantry, air, or armor, players can set up a forward operating base (FOB) and begin building a fortress. Create a wall of Hesco barriers, reinforce it with steel gates, use barbed wire to create choke points, and if you’ve upgraded your support class enough, begin building anti-air or mortars.

But supplies are limited, and in order to keep building, you’ll need allies to cart in resources from your headquarters on the fringe of the map. While cars can have crates loaded into the back, the real logistics winners are the choppers. The best games I had during the Wardogs closed beta weekend were when my team had a convoy of helicopters ferrying supplies to the frontline, dropping off ammo, meds, and materials to keep reinforcing the FOB.

Spending time building a base during a match of Wardogs felt like I was playing a completely different game. I was still fighting infantry that tried to take our tower, but the majority of my effort was spent fortifying the position so that my team’s APC spawn point could be safely housed inside the control zone.

Beneath these ways of engaging with Wardogs is the money earning system. Every single action you do in this game rewards you with cash, which you’ll use to purchase gear at your headquarters. Those helicopter pilots that dropped in the supplies had to buy them from base, and then the players inside the FOB had to buy them from the pilot. But building the base earns players enough cash to offset the cost and then some. The player that spent 10 minutes driving the APC into the control zone for players to use as a spawn point will earn money and XP every time someone uses it. To that end, Bulkhead has ensured that it’s not just the player with the most kills that’s earning money and making progress.

But flip the script, and as an infantry looking to run and gun, assaulting an enemy’s base is thrilling. My squad loaded into a chopper, and during the 30 second flight to the zone, we discussed our plan of taking down the enemy FOB. As we got close, the air filled with burning rounds as the AA gun atop the tower fired on our chopper. We jumped, ripped our parachutes as close to the ground as we dared, and rushed the gates.

The enemy had built multiple layers of defences we needed to blast through. I used my improved explosive device to destroy one gate while my squad mate used his on the inner wall. We hugged the wall to avoid the rain of fire from our enemy perched up high and then sprinted through the yard until we were under the tower. Our fight up the tower was similarly intense, as the enemy had reinforced the inside with sandbags and barbed wire.

More allies joined our fight, and we were soon the proud owners of a new fortified position. The AA guns were ours. Anyone who poked their head up on the roof would be deafened as the whirling of the twin Gatling guns shredded enemy choppers looking to reclaim their territory. We were buzzing with adrenaline from our victory and soon enough we turned our eye toward the hot zone.

Wardogs manages to nail a similar sentiment that Chief Operating Officer Bill Lavoy wrote about in his Battlefield 6 review. Any player, no matter their skill level, can engage with Wardogs in a way that is rewarding for them. Whether you’re netting kills in the hot zone, fortifying a base, using binoculars to mark enemies, flying supplies or allies to the zone, or any other way to support your troops, you’re making progress and having a blast.

Wardogs enters early access on September 10, and between now and then, I’ll be thinking about how I want to make my next base. Do I make a maze? Do I layer barbed wire between each layer of wall? Should the mortar be on the roof or tucked into a corner on the ground? I look forward to tinkering with the base almost as much as I look forward to assaulting my enemy’s creations.

Shacknews staff does not use generative artificial intelligence (AI) in their content. Shacknews strictly prohibits the use of its content for AI training or to generate text, including text in the style or format used for this publication. Shacknews reserves all rights to this work.

Sam Chandler Head of Guides

Hailing from the land down under, Sam Chandler brings a bit of the southern hemisphere flair to his work. After bouncing round a few universities, securing a bachelor degree, and entering the video game industry, he's found his new family here at Shacknews as Head of Guides. There's nothing he loves more than crafting a guide that will help someone. If you need help with a guide, or notice something not quite right, you can message him on X: @SamuelChandler 

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