Star Wars Zero Company is finally out August 27, 2026, on XBOX Series X|S. This tactics game set during the Clone Wars is the debut from Bit Reactor, which was founded by veteran developers from XCOM, XCOM 2, and Marvel’s Midnight Suns explicitly to build upon the foundation of their exceptional previous work in the genre.

Their fantastic, story-forward use of the beloved Star Wars setting will likely bring in a lot of players that are new to tactics games, which is great! The game’s four difficulty settings should provide a great onramp for players of any skill and experience. At any time between missions, you can change the difficulty in the menu if you want more or less challenge as you go.

Based on my roughly 30 hours with the game so far and years of enjoying the devs’ previous work and other tactics games, I’ve assembled the following 7 general gameplay tips to help tactics genre Padawans that want to focus on their training and challenge themselves.

Fit Check

Before you go out, give your squad a once-over in the prep screen, including checking their weapon mods, utility items, and spending any extra focus points they may have. A well-timed utility item or the edge from a weapon mod can make the difference in a tough battle, so it’s always worth making sure everyone is properly equipped. Especially early on when you don’t have much gear, you’ll likely be shifting your best equipment around between different operators as you field different teams. Relatedly, if you’re inclined to hoard limited-use items, remember that utility items like grenades and health packs are refreshed at the start of every battle (even when you have multiple battles in sequence as part of a larger story mission), so try and use every item every time. If you find yourself repeatedly without opportunities to use something, mix it up and try bringing something else.

Also, unless you are playing the “no backsies” Beskar mode that does not allow loading previous saves, you might want to save before going into an important battle. The game autosaves on the first round, so you can always start a disastrous battle over in the worst case, but the next nearest autosave is at the start of the cycle, so you might have to redo some plot and admin if you realize in the field that you made a mistake in your loadout.

Consider All Your Options

Rather than taking each character’s actions all in one go like the enemy AI does, remember that you can interleave individual action points between characters, and should often be doing so to get the most out of each turn. On any given turn, you should be clicking around between your whole squad and considering all the options available to you before committing to any actions. Remember to factor in spots where you can move as well, noting the preview of new to-hit percentages above enemies’ heads when you hover over a spot. Consider things like the biggest threats currently on the board, enemies you can eliminate entirely, and how you can get the most value out of all your operators’ turns.

Action Economy Is King

Speaking of playing for value, one standout theme that makes Star Wars Zero Company play distinctly from its predecessors in the tactics space is the emphasis on various ways of generating additional action points above and beyond the 3 per turn that everyone starts with: At baseline, every turn one of your operators can call for a free assist; then various abilities (like Hawks’ Pico-5 ability and Astromechs’ Built-in Comlink and Coordinated Support) grant additional actions to teammates directly; Kabb’s eponymous Uppercut refunds all of the spent actions if he takes an enemy out with it; etc. The limit of 3 action points per turn only applies to how many they can hold at any given moment, and some of the most satisfying and effective turns involve combining abilities so one or more of your characters take many more than 3 points worth of actions.

Use Your Advantage

It can be tempting to sit on your Advantage points until you really need to use a big, expensive ability to get out of a jam, like having Tricks’ rocket blast apart that freshly deployed pod of battle droids on your flank before they spread out and become a problem. Just as often, though, you can avoid getting into tight situations in the first place by being aggressive and using Advantage frequently. It tops off at 10, so any damage that you do above and beyond that before spending Advantage is leaving money on the table.

Gravity Is Your Most Powerful Ally

Whether from a concussion grenade, a force push or Kabb’s uppercut, many different abilities can shove enemies around the map, so pay special mind to those. Because this is Star Wars, a lot of the maps feature bottomless voids and catwalks girded by flimsy guardrails. It doesn’t matter how much health an enemy has when they’re falling off the edge of a cloud city – even if they somehow survive, they’re no longer your problem. The iconic rolling droideka bots are one of the first enemies introduced with a shield and a big health pool, which can be a real pain to grind down the honest way. Save yourself a lot of hassle by taking advantage of any opportunity to use the map and eliminate problem enemies in one fell swoop.

Plan Your Exit

While some missions involve defeating every enemy on the map, many others require getting your whole team to an extraction zone, with new threats appearing until you do. Keep this in mind, because you don’t want to get caught out barely finishing an objective and then overwhelmed trying to make it back across the whole map as more droids drop in. The mission ends the moment your whole squad is in the zone, with no need to hold for a turn or anything. Often encounters will end with the whole team ignoring the remaining enemies and running full tilt to the exit. Cly the Mandalorian is great for hitting objectives like consoles or crates because her jetpack gives her enormous range to hop around the map, so it can save a lot of stress to have the rest of the team preemptively make their way to the extraction while Cly takes the objective and jets over to catch up after.

Experiment Freely

Remember that in the armory and personnel pages back at the Den, you can freely change the specializations, talents, weapons and focus point distributions of almost all of your characters (excluding the talents of authored characters and unique specializations like Astromech or Jedi Padawan). Don’t feel committed to your initial decisions or the way characters are built when they join you, and don’t let yourself be paralyzed by choice when presented with options, like the point in the story when you unlock a second specialization for everyone. If you find you’re not using someone’s abilities much in combat, try a different specialization. There is a really wide space of potential ways to play, so try out different builds and team compositions as you get to know the game better, because there is very little opportunity cost to most of your character choices, and it’s rewarding to find new ways to combine them.

Star Wars Zero Company is available on August 27, 2026 for XBOX Series X|S.