General information | Resistance factions XCOM 2: War of the Chosen Game Guide

All 3 available resistance factions.

The War of the Chosen add-on introduces resistance factions to the game - groups of people that decided to take care of the alien invasion on their own (fighting between themselves at the same time). This implements various new mechanics into the game - access to unique character classes, additional missions that your soldiers can complete to acquire various resources and services, as well as resistance orders that gives the player more control over the gameplay.

There are three different resistance factions in the game - Reapers, Skirmishers and Templars. At first glance they are nearly identical - aside from the character classes they give the player access to - but the thing that distinguishes them are the Resistance Orders cards. Each of the faction allows the player to acquire one of many Resistance Orders cards - those can be then activated to acquire various bonuses. The cards differ greatly from one another and are divided into three groups, such as:

1. Reaper cards - cards from this group are used to speed up the actions of the player (allowing the player to instantaneously create experimental ammo or to increase the amount of available contacts) and offer various stealth-oriented gameplay bonuses (increasing the mobility of soldiers for the first two rounds if they are still concealed or a chance for a resistance soldier to join the mission and aid the player).
2. Skirmisher cards - they are used to weaken the aliens (decreasing the HACK resistance of mechanical units or removing one bar of the AVATAR Project at the start of each month), as well as to gain additional Intel (decreasing the prices on the Black Market or increasing the amount of Intel acquired from various activities).
3. Templar cards - they offer various bonuses for the soldiers (increasing the amount of experience points or ability points they gain, decreasing the duration of control impairing effects to 1 round) and cards improving activities in the base (all armor-related projects are completed instantly).

Resistance Order cards can be placed into special "sockets" - at the beginning of the game the player can only use 1 card at a time, but as the story progresses the number can be increased up to 9 cards. More info on that topic can be found in the "Resistance Order cards".

Aside from Resistance Orders and new character classes, each faction gives access to Covert Actions. Those are special missions that the player can complete by sending his/her soldiers on them. Completing each one of those takes from 4 to 10 days, during which the soldiers are unavailable. However, the trouble is well worth the effort, as most of those missions come with valuable rewards - additional soldiers, items and Resistance Order cards. This mechanic was thoroughly explained in "Covert Actions" chapter of this guide. In the following chapters you will find information about each new character class and hints about their skills, acquisition of new soldiers, as well as methods of improvement of the relations with each faction.