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Force Push & Overwatch Squad Build

Stop waiting for enemies to walk into your reaction cone — push them into it.

Confirmed
Confidence
Confirmed
Verified
4 August 2026
Version
pre-release (no retail build)

Build summary

Players who want to control when reaction shots happen instead of hoping the enemy cooperates.

Campaign phase
early
Difficulty
Standard, permadeath enabled
Game version
pre-release (no retail build)
Strong against
entrenched enemies, advancing enemies

Loadout

The four bays

Weapon choices are role-based. No weapon statistics have been published, so treat them as starting points rather than optimised picks.

  1. Bay 1

    Tel-Rea Vokoss

    Assaultpistol

    Force Push pushes enemies and can remove them from cover. Built as an Assault she can reach the target that needs moving.

  2. Bay 2

    Kabb Uppercut

    Heavyrepeater

    The second confirmed displacement tool. Two push effects mean the plan survives one of them being out of position — or one Operator being permanently lost.

  3. Bay 3

    Custom Operator

    Sharpshooterlongarm

    The reaction cone. A ranged Operator holding Overwatch is what turns a push into damage.

  4. Bay 4

    Hawks

    Scoutrifle

    Required in story missions. His AP support is what lets an Operator move and still have the points to invest in Overwatch — the single tightest AP constraint in this squad.

Reasoning

Why it works

Mechanic by mechanic. Anything stated as confirmed traces to a source listed at the bottom of this page.

  • Overwatch is a directional cone that triggers when enemies move or act — confirmed.
  • Force Push pushes enemies and can remove them from cover, and Uppercut knocks an enemy out of cover — both confirmed.
  • Moving an enemy is 'moving', which is what a reaction cone triggers on. Displacement therefore converts Overwatch from a passive bet into a turn you can plan.
  • The same push does double duty: it strips the cover bonus that reduces hit chance, and it delivers the target to the cone.
  • More AP invested can increase the number of reaction shots, so an Operator that has not moved gets a stronger cone.

Execution

Example opening turn

An AP and Advantage plan. Costs are unpublished, so the order matters more than the exact budget.

  1. Step 1

    Turn 1 — Sharpshooter: set Overwatch first, before spending AP on anything else, so the maximum number of points goes into the cone. This ends that Operator's turn.

  2. Step 2

    Turn 1 — Hawks: reposition, and hold Advantage in reserve rather than spending it.

  3. Step 3

    Turn 1 — Tel-Rea Vokoss: move into range and Force Push a target out of cover and into the cone's arc.

  4. Step 4

    Turn 1 — Kabb Uppercut: use Uppercut on a second target if one is in reach, or hold the frontline.

  5. Step 5

    Between turns: the pushed enemies trigger the reaction shots.

Strengths

  • Every mechanic in the chain is officially confirmed — only the combination is untested.
  • Acts on the enemy's turn as well as your own, effectively increasing the squad's action count.
  • Displacement doubles as anti-cover, solving two problems with one ability.
  • Two independent push sources give redundancy against permadeath.

Weaknesses

  • Using Overwatch ends the Operator's turn, so the squad gives up damage now for damage later.
  • The cone's angle and range are unpublished, so how precisely a push must be aimed is unknown.
  • Heavily reliant on stationary positioning, which is poor on timed objectives.
  • Both displacement sources are authored Operators — permadeath on both removes the build's core.

Alternatives

Safer and more aggressive versions

Including what to do when an authored Operator in this squad is permanently lost.

Safer
Replace Kabb Uppercut with a Medic. You drop to one displacement source but gain the Injury prevention that a stationary squad taking return fire actually needs.
More aggressive
Replace Hawks-as-Scout with a Soldier build. Explosives remove cover outright instead of pushing enemies out of it — though this is only possible in skirmish missions, since Hawks is required for story missions.
If both displacement Operators are lost
Concussion Grenades are officially named as a Utility, but no source confirms they displace. Do not plan around it until confirmed.

How this will be verified

Re-test in the retail build, recording version, platform and difficulty, then update the status label from theorycraft to tested. Specifically: confirm that an enemy moved by Force Push or Uppercut actually triggers an Overwatch cone, and record the cone's angle and range.

Mechanics this build depends on

Other builds

Sources