The Three Factions
OVERVIEW
The three sides in WARDOGS have names, identities and colours, and the publisher gave all three on 18 February 2026 in a question-and-answer post on the game’s own store feed. LONESTAR, in blue, is described as the heavy-hitters of the Western paramilitary world. VALKYRA, in red, is described as aiming to return the Soviet People’s Republic to greatness. MANTICORE, in green, is described as the Kingdom of Persia’s shadow army out of Tehran. The post ends that section by asking who the reader will fight for. We read the announcement at the source on 4 September 2026.
HISTORY
It is worth saying plainly that this page exists because we got it wrong. Until 4 September 2026 our entry on three-team warfare told readers that the three sides had never been identified by the publisher, and that we would not repeat the faction names circulating on fan sites. The names had been published for six and a half months, in the studio’s own words, on a channel we were not watching. The colours line up with what the official screenshots show — soldiers in green, red and tan armbands, and three matching counters on the scoreboard — so the visual evidence had been sitting next to the text evidence the whole time.
WHAT IT CHANGES IN PRACTICE
What a player can use today is the shape rather than the detail. Three named sides with distinct real-world inspirations tell you the game is not a two-sided conflict wearing different shirts, and the identities are specific enough to suggest the studio intends them to look and sound different. There is one piece of corroboration worth reporting, because it comes from outside the publisher’s own words. The closed-beta build we installed on 4 September 2026 keeps its video files outside the encrypted archives, and three of them are named for the three factions — one file each for LONESTAR, VALKYRA and MANTICORE, of roughly the same size, each with a matching small asset beside it, all six sitting in the video folder. The file names begin with the word endgame and carry a marker meaning work in progress. What that establishes is narrow and worth stating exactly: the three published names are treated as three separate things in the software, and material for each was being made when this build was cut. It does not establish what the videos show, whether they are used, or whether they ship. We have not decoded them. What matters far more in practice is the thing that has not been published: as of 4 September 2026 no official source states that the factions differ in anything mechanical. No statement exists about different weapons, different vehicles, different abilities or different costs. Every faction description published so far is narrative.
WHAT PLAYERS GET WRONG
The mistake, and it is being made all over the internet already, is treating the three identities as three balance profiles. Nothing published supports that, and in a game where every player buys from the same list at every life, a mechanical split would be a major design statement the studio has not made. The second mistake is choosing a side for its story before knowing whether you can choose at all: no official source states how players are assigned to factions, whether a squad stays together, or whether a preference can be set. Both questions become answerable on 10 September 2026. Our entry on three-team warfare covers what is established about how three sides change a fight.
Early Access makes the game itself citable. We will re-check this entry against the game, confirm or correct what it says, and update the checked date. If anything here turns out to be wrong, this page will say so — and say when we learned it.
THIS ENTRY WAS LAST CHECKED 4 SEPTEMBER 2026 · NEXT RE-CHECK 10 SEP, 2026
