WARDOGS weapons

33 weapons, recorded first-hand in the Closed Alpha. Bulkhead itself has named only four publicly, and did it sideways: the Supporter Edition includes camos for an A-91, a Bushmaster and a KH-2002, plus a Littlebird helicopter. No stat sheet and no price has ever been released.

Two limits on that number. This is the alpha roster, not the shipping game — Bulkhead has confirmed 37 weapons at Early Access launch against the 33 here. And it is not necessarily every weapon in the alpha: only one faction was playable, so faction-gated vendor stock is still possible.

The part that decides everything else is how paying for a weapon works.

Every weapon is a purchase, and the money is real

You get $10,000 once, per account — not per match. Cash carries between matches, and what you lose stays lost. You buy a kit before each life, so your role is decided by what you can afford at that moment rather than by a class you picked in a menu.

This inverts the usual question. In most shooters, "best gun" means highest damage for the time it takes to kill. Here a weapon that wins fights but costs a third of your remaining balance can still be the wrong buy, because losing it twice puts you on a sidearm for the rest of the night.

Income comes from teamplay rather than kills alone — reviving, transporting squadmates, spotting and holding objectives all pay. A player who never tops the scoreboard can be the richest one in the lobby, and therefore the best equipped.

The weapon is also only the entry fee. Ammunition is bought separately, by calibre — $10 a box at the cheap end and $250 at the top, a spread wider than the gap between most of the rifles that fire it. A cheap gun on an expensive calibre is not a cheap loadout.

What actually makes a weapon good here

This catalogue ranks on cost efficiency rather than raw stats. Three things decide it:

• Cost per life. A weapon is only as good as your willingness to lose it. The relevant figure is what it costs as a share of what you actually hold.
• What it replaces. If a mid-price rifle does most of what the expensive one does, the expensive one has to justify the gap in cash, not in damage numbers.
• What it opens up. Launchers are the clearest case — helicopters, tanks and artillery are all purchasable from their own vendor, so anti-vehicle capability is not a niche pick, it is the answer to somebody else's large purchase.

The marketing six, and the vendor seven

Bulkhead has publicly described six categories — assault rifles, SMGs, LMGs, sniper rifles, sidearms and launchers. The alpha vendor does not sort weapons that way. Its primary-weapon tabs are assault rifle, SMG, shotgun, LMG, marksman rifle, sniper and bows: seven, with shotguns, marksman rifles and bows getting their own tabs that the marketing six never mentioned. Sidearms are an equipment slot rather than a tab, and launchers have no tab of their own.

The six below are still the studio's own framing, and what each is for in a 2 × 2 km Control Zone with 100 players across three teams:

Whether the shipped game keeps the alpha's seven tabs or returns to this six is still open.

WARDOGS uses real-world ballistics with bullet drop and travel time, so range matters more than it does in an arcade shooter — a weapon that is cheap and accurate at 200 m is a different proposition from one that is cheap and accurate at 50 m.

What is still unknown

Nobody has published these, and we have not recorded them either:

• Any official name or price from Bulkhead, for any weapon
• Whether attachments are bought separately, and what they cost
• What a revive, a transport run or an objective tick actually pays
• Whether weapons are faction-restricted across LONESTAR, VALKYRA and MANTICORE

This roster was recorded during the Closed Alpha and held back until Bulkhead lifted its content embargo on 11 August 2026 — the terms are here, and our methodology page sets out what we publish, what we hold, and how the renders were produced.