Squad has two teams and Hell Let Loose has two teams. WARDOGS has three, and on almost every server one of them is losing. It is blue. Players joke about it and Reddit made a highlight reel of it, and now the studio has said it too.
This piece covers what Bulkhead has actually said, what the two maps show when you measure them, the other reasons players give, and how blue squads still manage to win.
| At a glance | |
|---|---|
| Which team loses most | Blue (LONESTAR), by Bulkhead's own account |
| Which team wins most | Green (MANTICORE), with red (VALKYRA) close behind |
| Fix announced | None as of 26 September 2026 |
| What we measured | Spawn heights, tower heights and distances on Bakurani and Ozeti |
| Status | Reported: the CEO's words, read on X and Reddit, plus player claims and our own terrain figures |
Blue loses the most, and Bulkhead says so
On 17 September Joe Brammer, Bulkhead's CEO, answered a player on X who had asked about balance: "We definitely have a balancing issue, But it's green team who win most of the time, green and red are fairly even.. and that's been the same way since pre-alpha. But blue getting destroyed is definitely a problem with mixed reasons."
Three things in that reply matter. It confirms the ranking players had already worked out. It says the gap is old, dating back to before the alpha. And it says the cause is not one thing. That last part is the interesting one, because it means no single tweak will fix it.
The community got there first. One of the most upvoted posts on r/WarDogs this month, "When you are in Blue Team", is a highlight reel of blue players falling apart, and it sat on 9,016 upvotes when we checked. When a screenshot of Brammer's reply went up three days later, it drew another 3,301.
The map starts blue lower and further uphill
Blue spawns in the south on both current maps. Red spawns in the east, green in the west. That matches what GameRant and players describe, and it is what our map data shows. PCGamesN reported Brammer pointing to blue's nearest towers sitting on lower ground.
That is a claim you can test, so we tested it. Towers are the fixed objectives a team builds its base at and uses to pull the Hot Zone towards itself, so the towers nearest your spawn are effectively your home ground. We took the spawn and tower positions on the map and read the terrain height under each one, using the same height data as our artillery calculator.
| Ozeti | Blue (LONESTAR) | Red (VALKYRA) | Green (MANTICORE) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nearest tower | Tower 2 | Tower 3 | Tower 1 |
| Its height against the highest tower (Tower 4) | 38 m lower — the lowest tower on the map | 22 m lower | 24 m lower |
| Straight-line distance, spawn to the tower cluster | 3.7 km | 3.8 km | 4.0 km |
On Ozeti the claim holds up. Blue's closest tower is the lowest one on the map, 38 m below the highest. Tower 4 is the high ground, and it sits closer to red and green than to blue.
| Bakurani | Blue (LONESTAR) | Red (VALKYRA) | Green (MANTICORE) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nearest two towers | Towers 5 and 1 | Towers 4 and 5 | Towers 3 and 2 |
| Their height against the highest tower (Tower 4) | 9 m and 12 m lower | Tower 4 itself | 10 m and 12 m lower |
| Uphill climbed on a straight line to the tower cluster | 161 m, the most | 140 m | 63 m |
| Spawn height against blue's | — | 8 m lower | 107 m higher |
Bakurani is less clear-cut. Blue's nearest towers are low, but so are green's, and only red starts next to the high tower. The difference there is the route in. Blue's line to the towers climbs the most, and green starts more than 100 m above both other teams and runs downhill into the fight.
Two things this does not show. Distance is not the problem: all three spawns sit between 3.7 and 4.1 km from the tower cluster on both maps. And none of this proves the terrain causes the gap. Green starting highest on both maps and winning most is a pattern worth noticing, not a proof.
The other "mixed reasons" players give
Brammer did not list the rest. These are the ones players give most on r/WarDogs and Steam, and none of them is confirmed.
Who ends up on blue. On a busy server, players who know the reputation race for red and green, and blue fills with whoever is left: newer players, late joiners, people who did not know. A team that expects to lose plays like it, and the reputation keeps itself going. One Japanese player tallying their own matches on X counted blue, red and green wins at roughly 1:2:2.
The uniform. A 575-point reply under the Brammer screenshot asked for "fixing the bright blue uniform". Players say green's kit blends into vegetation and red's darker armour is harder to pick out.
Two teams, one target. With three teams, the two strongest can both find blue the easiest points. Players describe red and green pushing blue together, which leaves blue fighting on two fronts from the south.
What Bulkhead has, and hasn't, done about it
Nothing yet. Neither the Season 1 changelog nor patch 0.11 mentions team balance. PCGamesN reported that Brammer ruled out randomising team spawns between matches, which was the most-upvoted fix suggested in the Reddit thread under his reply, at 682 points.
His other contribution was a joke. A screenshot of a post by him telling players to click blue the moment they join a server reached r/WarDogs on 22 September, and the sub took it as the studio's balance plan. The top reply, at 1,014 points: "So this is how the developers are trying to balance the teams. Interesting method."
Season 2 starts on 15 October. Bulkhead has not said whether it changes spawns, towers or maps, so for now blue plays on the ground it has.
How to win on blue
Blue does win. Players on r/WarDogs post win streaks and comebacks, including one who held green to 98 points before blue took the match. The wins have the same shape.
Stay in one big squad. "One coordinated large squad far outclasses two disjointed teams," as one reply put it. Blue's problem is usually that it arrives in pieces. A full squad that moves together takes a tower that five scattered players cannot.
Take the Hot Zone as a group. It is worth double points and double cash. Walking in two at a time feeds kills to the other teams. Walking in as a squad holds it.
Build the FOB and defend it. A lost base means a long walk from the south. Put the effort into a FOB that lasts, and keep someone on repairs.
Play the long game with cash. Losing teams spend down. A cheaper loadout that you can afford to lose five times beats one expensive kit you lose once.
Coordination fixes more of blue's problems than any loadout does.
Getting your friends onto blue with you
This is blue's hidden advantage. It usually has space, so a whole group can get in together. One r/WarDogs community says that when six or more of them play, they just join blue for that reason.
There is no party system yet. Brammer explained why on r/WarDogs: Bulkhead ran out of time before Early Access, and with consoles coming it wants a system that works everywhere. In the same reply: "a little known fact is if you join via Steam it will usually put you on the same team and in a squad together."
- One friend joins the server and picks blue on the faction select screen.
- Everyone else opens their Steam friends list, right-clicks that friend and chooses Join Game.
It works best when the first friend has already deployed and the team has room. More on picking a side is on the factions page.
