Tactical Breach Wizards: Useful Guide for New Players

Ability: each playable character has access to up to five unique abilities unlocked by progressing through the story. Most of them deal damage or apply some status to their target. Their use may be limited by a maximum number of uses per turn or per encounter, a cost in action point or in mana.
Abilities can be upgraded by spending perk points in-between missions. Additionally, each character can received a unique ‘innate upgrade’ by completing their anxiety dream over the course of the campaign.

Action point: a currency required for most abilities, but typically limited to a single point per character per turn. Some situational abilities don’t use action points. Note that Zan’s Time Boost grants an action point to an ally, which can be extremely handy.

Mana: a currency gained by sealing doors, grabbing intel and using laptops. Required for some abilities such as Jen’s Chain Bolt, Zan’s Time Boost and Dall’s Swap. Reset to a single point per character at the start of each level.

Move: each of your characters can make a single move per turn, up to 5 squares. Moving can be done before, between or after using any ability. Jen’s Gale Grenade has an upgrade which refreshes the Move of an ally. There are other abilities which increase your mobility, such as Jen’s Broom Breach and or Dall’s Charge and Swap.

Damage: removes health points from the target. At zero health, the target is knocked out and can no longer participate in the encounter, unless they’re resurrected.
-> The counter to damage is armour. A target with armour ignores incoming direct damage by a number of points equals to their armour value. Note that armour doesn’t reduce damage caused by knockback.

Knockback: pushes the target away from the attacker by 1 square per knockback value. If the target hits a wall, they take the remaining knockback as damage. Highly useful to push enemies through a window for an instakill, deal armour-penetrating damage, against another target to damage both, or into an overwatch area, or into the line of sight of an enemy.
-> The counter to knockback is stability. A target with stability ignores incoming knockback by a number of points equals to their stability value.

1. Victory: on most levels, victory only requires a single team mate standing. It doesn’t matter if any of your other team mates are KO, hurt or poisoned: damage and statuses don’t carry over to the next level.
2. Offense is the best defense: strive to dispatch as many enemies as possible on every turn, because dead men don’t shoot back. Hiding behind cover isn’t a tactic, only a last resort trick if you have to end a turn in the line of sight of a survivor.
3. Friendly fire: most if not all abilities can also be used on allies! Friendly knockback can push a team mate to a more advantageous position.
4. Intelligence: whenever you encounter a new type of enemy, make sure to read their description, understand how they work, and adapt your plan accordingly
5. Tanks: enemies with high armour and/or health can tank an inordinate amount of pure damage attacks. A smart use of knockback can result in an instakill through defenestration. If there isn’t any window nearby, slam them against a wall, or combine poison and stunning to dispatch them.
6. Levelling up: when spending perk points, look for upgrades wich allow a second use of the ability, such as Jen’s +1 use per encounter upgrade to Gale Grenade, Dall’s Rampage upgrade to Charge, Zan’s Supportive Fire upgrade to 3 Bolt Burst and his Conviction upgrade to Predictive Bolt. The more often you use an ability, the better bang for your buck!

Zan is a former Navy Seer for the DSR state. He has some unfinished business with Liv Kennedy, a former DSR Navy black ops chronomancer, who’s now working for Reactor, a private military company.

3 Bolt Burst (1 action): Zan deals 1 damage and 1 knockback to a target
– Upgrade: +1 damage
– Upgrade: Supportive Fire: one per turn, when a teammate uses their standard attack, take a free shot at the same target. The standard attack is the first ability listed below Move.
– Innate upgrade: +3 knockback

Predictive Bolt (1 use per turn): Zan sets up an overwatch zone in a straight line. The first enemy who enters it, in your turn or theirs, takes 4 damage.
– Upgrade: +1 damage
– Upgrade: Validation: if the shot fires on your turn, gain +1 mana.
– Upgrade: Conviction: if the shot fires on your turn and knocks someone out, it can be used again this turn.

Time Boost (1 mana): Zan grants 1 action point to a friendly target
– Upgrade: Time Bomb: boosts all targets in a one tile radius of the impact, except for Zan

False Prophet (1 mana): Zan sends out a dummy which will expire at the end of the Foresee phase. Enemies will target the dummy unless they see a better option.
– Upgrade: Hurtful Lie: the prophet fires Zan’s 3 Bolt Burst at a nearby target before expiring
– Upgrade: Persistent Delusion: if the prophet dies before expiring, your mana is refunded
– Upgrade: Useful Fiction: the prophet interracts with anything it can before expiring

Jen is a freelance storm witch and provisional private investigator. Always on the lookout for a new ‘case’, she has recently witnessed the murder of Jirin Wexler, an enforcer for the Druid Mafia. Jen has made a personal nemesis in the force: sergeant Steve Clark, traffic warlock.

Static Blast (1 action): Jen deals 2 knockback to a target. Tip: don’t mislead by its icon, this ability can be used from range.
– Upgrade: Point Blank: +2 knocback if used in melee
– Upgrade: Refreshing Jolt: once per turn, refreshes Jen’s move after firing

Chain Bolt (1 action, 1 mana): Jen hits 2 targets with 2 knockback each. Tip: any hit after the first can be applied to Jen herself, a convenient way to push her to a good spot.
– Upgrade: +1 Target: you can now hit up to three targets
– Upgrade: Conduits: chaining through friendlies, including yourself, refreshes the action cost once per turn
– Upgrade: Strong Finish: adds +2 knockback to the final target
– Innate Upgrade: Superchain: can chain through twice as many targets if you have 2 mana to spend

Broom Breach (2 uses per encounter): Jen jumps though an adjacent window and re-enters the level from any other window, as long as the space is clear
– Upgrade: Force Entry: If someone pushable blocks the re-entry, enter anyway and push the target for 3 knockback

Gale Grenade (1 use per encounter): an area-of-effect attack that deals 1 knockback to the 8 adjacent squares
– Upgrade: +1 use per encounter
– Upgrade: Second Wind: refreshes the move of any friendly target in the blast
– Upgrade: Storm Grenade: if thrown directly on the enemy, deals 2 damage