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Tactical Breach Wizardspresents a mixture of XCOM and Into The Breach that is challenging but satisfying to master. Almost every enemy in the game will kill you with a single attack, and you’re constantly outnumbered. Despite this every battle can be won with style and panache, including a couple of deliberately unfair ones.
Mastering the game is a matter of understanding how to slot your different tools together until your enemies are shooting each other more than they are you. Knocking enemies through windows will often be your go-to technique, and the tactical layer offers a great variety of delivery mechanisms.
Focus On What Is About To Kill You
You’ll almost always be facing down more enemies than you can remove in a single turn, but thankfully, the majority can be safely ignored. Most tracking enemies can beleft for last if you’re safely behind cover. Warlocks and grenadiers have large-area attacks thatcan be entirely ignored as long as you’re able to keep moving.
This applies even towards the late-game enemies: You’ll often findheavy gunners standing next to stun barrels or exposed electronics, giving you two turns to deal with them, while Mortars take two shots to kill you outside custom difficulties. You want to deal with most enemies in the following order:
Most Spells Don’t Cost Actions
Outside of the basic attacks each character has,most abilities don’t require the use of your one action per turn. Pretty much every spell that consumes mana or has limited charges has no action cost and can be woven into a turn where you’re just short of the damage you need to down an enemy.
On top of this, you can take most actions in any order you please.Attacks are never turn-ending, so you can shoot and move in whichever order works best.
The early game example you’ll be given is Jen’s Gale Grenade. These can knock an enemy into an environmental damage source or give an ally an extra tile of movement to line up their abilities. Later on, you’ll have at least two abilities per character with no action cost but either limited charges or a mana requirement.
The only ability that properly stops you from taking other actions is Zan’s Predictive Shot. He becomes locked into place until it activates and prevents his Supportive Fire passive from triggering. You’re often best only locking in Predictive Shot when about to end your turn or if you can push someone into it.
One late-game puzzle level you will actively want to avoid activating Zan’s Supportive Fire. Predictive Shot can be used here toprevent him from acting out of turn.
Don’t Aim For Perfect Clears On Every Mission
A lot of games will emphasize their bonus goals as challenges intended to test veteran players. In this case, it’s not just a measure of your mastery but also your unlocks.Some optional objectives will not be possible unless you have specific skill upgrades available later in the game.
A good example of this is mission objectives that require you to use spells in a certain way.
When replaying content, you can alsochoose any combination of wizards for the mission, including clones of the same character.Any speed-based mission is trivialised by a team of Jens and Dalls.
Prioritise Blocking Reinforcements
Many maps have more reinforcement doors than you have wizards. To avoid being overrun you want tofocus on getting someone in position to close those doors. Broom Breach and Refreshing Jolt are your best tools for quickly crossing the mapuntil you have access to upgraded teleport spells. If Jen goes down closing a door with 10 enemies behind it, that’s often better than crawling slowly to the door and losing two people along the way.
Zan’s Useful Fiction upgrade lets his clones interact with objects. This lets them not only draw fire but also participate in hacking turrets and blocking doors. Depending on your difficulty settings, this can also refund the mana cost.
Control Enemy Attack Lines
Enemies will change their attack targets depending on how you move and the actions you take. Distance isn’t the only factor they care about, as crouching behind cover will encourage enemies who still have a line of sight to shoot you.
The most important point to remember is that trackingenemies won’t change the target once the foresight phase ends. If all enemies are targeting the same ally, you only ever have to worry about one person getting shot. This is especially useful if that target is Zan’s clone, or in the range of Banks' necromancy.
Use abilities like Transference only after you know exactly how the enemy is going to act on a turn. It’s a free action and can be taken even after using all other moves for the turn, so there’s rarely harm in waiting. Abilities that confuse enemies to attack each other don’t guarantee your safety; they’ll typically prioritise the nearest targets, forcing you to give them a healthy distance.
Enemies on overwatch behave differently to enemies with tracking shots. They’ll fire the instant anything enters their threatened area, letting youshove people in front of them for easy knockouts.
Lines Of Sight Block (Almost) Everything
Enemies can’t shoot what they can’t see.Pretty much any barrier above waist height will completely block attacks in both directions.This will be highlighted by yellow aim lines that stop at the barrier. In the early game, this normally boils down to using The Refreshing Jolt ability of Jen to walk out of cover, shoot an enemy, and then return to a hidden position. If the enemy doesn’t have an easy way of breaking through, you can whittle them down with low risk.
The character who makes the most use of sight lines is Dall. Her charge and swap both let her reposition across long distances to break sight with aggressive enemies, and herRiot Block can be upgraded to block enemy vision. This is especially useful against the Chapel Shepards, who attack in response to their allies being hit: Raise the block directly in front of them and then sweep their flock out from under them.
Check The Order Enemies Will Act In
Hovering your mouse over the end turn button will highlight the order enemies will act. Early on this isn’t important but the moment you unlock your third-party member it becomes a vital technique. The Transference ability is very dependent on the order enemies will attack;you can block two instances of damage if the first attack is redirected to knock out a second attacker.
Non-human entities like turrets and grenades will typically act first, followed by enemies with magically augmented speed.
Dreams Act As Extended Tutorials
The Dream levels are a great way of testing your skills, but they don’t offer any concrete upgrades to your character. They’re still great fun and an easy way to gain Confidence for unlocking outfits.
Most dream levels are designed around a teachable lessonyou’ll be able to use in campaign missions, such as tricking snipers into shooting each other, or chaining movement skills together to rush objectives. If you struggle to complete a specific dream goal, leave it for later. The game has no miss-able achievements and you’re able to come back to them with a different loadout of upgrades.
Some dreams will contain enemies that haven’t yet appeared in the campaign, but not any that would spoil the plot.
Look For Infinite Loops
Once you have a few upgrades, you’ll find abilities that can refund their cost in mana or actions if you meet certain conditions.If you’re able to get two of these that meet each other’s refund conditions, you’ll be able to use them infinitely.
The most reliable examples are Impaling Vines with the Quicksprout upgrade and False Prophet with the Persistent Delusion upgrade. Quicksprout resets the action cost of impaling vines if an ally is targeted. Persistent Delusion refunds False Prophet’s mana cost if the clone dies.
These let you infinitely kill your own clones to activate other side effects:
Persistent Delusion (which is the basis for most infinite loops in the game)can also be paired with Rampage 2 and Genius Grant. Quicksprout can also be paired with Rampage 2, swinging Dall about like a yo-yo.
