Chimera Squad Equipment Analysis: Grenades

Like Ammo, I'm placing all grenades under one category because all grenades compete with each other. Also like Ammo, you acquire grenades in a variety of different ways; no Experimental Grenade equivalent exists in Chimera Squad.

Also note that Chimera Squad returns to Enemy Unknown-style explosive targeting, in terms of being able to radically change what a grenade hits by fiddling with where, exactly, it lands in a tile. Fortunately, unlike Enemy Unknown you get a completely accurate preview of what will be hit: the only way it might end up wrong is if the process of clicking causes your mouse to move before the click goes through. I'm... not a fan of this reversion overall, but it at least isn't particularly harmful?

Unlike the prior two games, tossing a grenade is literally a free action that can be done so long as the agent has at least one action point that can be spent on non-movement actions. (That is, Zephyr can't toss a grenade if her only action point is from Momentum, but your Shotgun-wielding agents can potentially toss a grenade while their only action point is Run And Gun-derived, even though in either case tossing the grenade doesn't actually use up the action point) This is, as I've alluded to a few times, part of a broader change to how Chimera Squad approaches activated Items: they're all free actions.

This is a surprising and nice little change. A common problem in turn-based games (And in plenty of real-time games, honestly) is that in cases where something only benefits you if you spend a turn/Time Units/whatever on it and is in direct competition with things that provide their benefits entirely passively, often stacking passive effects ends up dominating the gameplay, often while devs clearly expected the boring passive effects to be given much less priority by players than the Exciting Activated Effects. This tends to be particularly glaring as slots to install such benefits into go up; if you have 10 slots to put things into and expect to only act 5 times in a mission/match/whatever, then in a lot of designs you'll only be able to get use out of a maximum of 5 activated effects and really ought to put passives in the other 5 slots.

Which is a very relevant concern to Chimera Squad's design! Encounters are often designed so they can be completed before all your agents even get a turn, most missions are 1-2 Encounters, and most agents get 2 Utility Item slots, with Terminal and Patchwork getting up to 3 slots. It would've been so easy for the design to end up such that players regularly go in and have no opportunity to even use all the equipped active Items on every agent -indeed, even with active Items being completely free to activate, this isn't actually an uncommon scenario in the actual game!

I kind of doubt this 'activated Items are all free' logic will return in XCOM 3, mind, but it's promising that Chimera Squad seems to have recognized that this problem exists and been willing to experiment with a non-standard solution that breaks from the usual turn-based game design memes. I won't be surprised if XCOM 3 implements an entirely different non-standard solution to this problem -which would be nice, given this consideration was in fact part of why Ammo Items were so dominant in XCOM 2.

Frag Grenade

Does 3-4 damage in a 3x3 area, Shreds 1 Armor, and damages environmental objects. 10 tiles toss range.

Acquisition: Purchase from the Scavenger Market, or have it randomly offered as a mission reward.

Cost: Variable

Not your basic utility Item you have an unlimited supply of, and in fact it's possible to have a run never see a Frag Grenade at all. (If rather unlikely)

I approve from both a conceptual standpoint and a gameplay standpoint. Conceptually, you're supposed to be a kind of police force. Reclamation's job is to find poorly-understood technology and get it away from people who are liable to do terrible things with it, not to kill enemy combatants, and it would also be pretty eyebrow-raising if the game defaulted very heavily to you trashing the city you're supposed to be protecting in the process of dealing with hostiles.

Gameplay-wise, grenades being your default starting Item has always had some odd implications, and been in a bit of an awkward space where the game can assume you have access to grenades broadly but can't actually assume the player brought grenades into a given mission past the very early game; if soldiers simply had a grenade pocket innately, then eg XCOM 2 could've planned more heavily around the idea that the player always has access to at least some Shred, because it would've been true, even for learning players who wouldn't necessarily expect grenades to be really important to have on hand throughout the game. Chimera Squad making them more substantially optional is a sensible alternative design approach.

Anyway, mechanically the Frag Grenade is okay enough but surprisingly niche. Initially, you don't want to be grenade-killing people if you can avoid it because grenade kills can't result in Unconscious enemies and thus can't result in Intel, which is a resource you want as much as possible as fast as possible. The Shred is extremely narrow in its relevance, because Chimera Squad has one enemy in the entire game that inherently exceeds 2 Armor. (Unless you play on the highest difficulty, in which case one other enemy has 3 Armor) Where XCOM 2, as you climbed difficulties and added in DLC, got very fond of big walls of HP clad in 4+ Armor, Chimera Squad just... largely doesn't do this.

Similarly, the ability to smash Cover is erratic. Base XCOM 2 tried pretty hard to make almost all Cover destructible, and even War of the Chosen tried pretty hard to do the same (Albeit it was notably less successful at being consistent on this topic), but Chimera Squad's maps are much more prone to having assorted forms of indestructible Cover littering them.

The area-of-effect is also less than ideal; Chimera Squad lacks an equivalent to how XCOM 2's inactive pods would try to clump such they were all inside a 3x3 box, and enemies in Chimera Squad tend to be a bit spread out to start and not really change that as the fight goes on. As with 3x3 agent abilities I've covered previously, it's a bit uncommon for you to get a chance to catch even two enemies at once -you might catch one and break the Cover of another, but often that's as good as you'll get.

All of which means that, even though throwing it is literally free, it's easy, if you're thinking in XCOM 2 terms, to be perpetually waiting for A Good Opportunity and never actually end up tossing it at all as a result.

It's better to instead keep an eye out for opportunities to bring a target low enough to be finished by the agent holding it, and treat the area of effect aspect as a pleasant surprise if you end up able to leverage it; focus on it being free damage, not on it being area of effect damage.

Plasma Grenade

Does 4-5 damage in a 3x3 area, Shreds 1 Armor, and severely damages environmental objects. 10 tiles toss range.

Acquisition: Purchase from the Scavenger Market, or have it randomly offered as a mission reward.

Cost: 

I'm sorry, I can't help but see some weird airhorn or similar when I look at the Plasma Grenade.

Anyway, the Plasma Grenade is of course a direct upgrade over the Frag Grenade, and by extension all the stuff I said about using a Frag Grenade well applies to it as well. The contrast with XCOM 2 Plasma Grenades is even sharper than with the Frag Grenade comparison, actually, as Chimera Squad Plasma Grenades have the same 1 Shred as Frag Grenades, and the greater tendency for Cover to be indestructible makes its greater ability to smash terrain notably less impactful. In practice Plasma Grenades are a surprisingly small improvement over Frag Grenades, to the point I usually don't bother to buy a Plasma Grenade from the Scavenger Market. I'm willing to adjust mission priorities to get one as a reward in the early game, and if I have somebody still equipped with a Frag Grenade late in a run and happen to have a Plasma Grenade on offer at the Scavenger Market, then yeah sure I'll burn Intel on this pure upgrade at that point, but overall I actually tend to ignore Plasma Grenades in Chimera Squad. They just don't stand out much.

Flashbang Grenade

Applies Disorientation to all units in a 4x4 radius for 2? turns. 12 tile toss range.

Acquisition: Available from the beginning of the game.

Cost: 50

Where Flashbangs were pretty nice in base XCOM 2 and even in War of the Chosen I probably should use them more than I do, in Chimera Squad Flashbangs are pretty limited in their utility. Just as I covered with Burn when talking about Incendiary Rounds, the fact that Disorientation blocks various special abilities isn't actually that great a utility in Chimera Squad -a point exacerbated by Codices having switched from being a mandatory encounter at multiple points in the game to being limited to exactly one Investigation and uncommon even in said Investigation, when Codices are one of the best targets for Disorientation- and more generally how turns and missions work in Chimera Squad is a lot less favorable to Flashbangs.

In XCOM 2, Flashbangs were a very strong safety net for if you happened to pull two pods unexpectedly. Between their massive strike zone and generously broad mechanical effects, odds were good you could catch every enemy, and if you pulled two pods the odds were pretty solid at least one attacker missed as a result of the Disorientation, which was a far sight better than having a soldier take a shot on a target if there was no chance of it leading to a kill.

Whereas in Chimera Squad there simply isn't an equivalent to pulling multiple pods, and most of the time you can reasonably expect to have a 'rolling wave' of disabling and downing enemies such that few or no enemies get to actually act. (And often you can arrange it so the only enemies getting to act are ones who are unlikely to do anything productive with their turn, like melee-only enemies who can't reach any members of your squad) In conjunction with Flashbangs having a much smaller radius than in XCOM 2, Flashbangs just don't have the kinds of opportunity for high-value moments they had in XCOM 2.

The fact that Flashbangs can be tossed without spending an action point in theory helps prop them up, but since this is a general property of active Items and there are plenty of Items with more clearly useful effects this doesn't actually do much to help Flashbangs. You'd rather put some other Item into the slot, generally speaking.

If you do happen to get Flashbangs as mission loot -most Items can be rolled as mission loot, even if you have the innate ability to produce a given Item- and this happens early, I guess you might as well throw it on somebody, but honestly, it's unlikely to ever meaningfully benefit you even if you're specifically trying to aggressively watch for moments a Flashbang could be helpful in.

You might expect Flashbangs to retain utility for clearing Overwatch, but I'm not sure enemies in Chimera Squad have the AI to make use of standard Overwatch mechanics (Even though most enemies with firearms do have Overwatch as part of their list of options, where if you Puppeteer them you can make them Overwatch), and the special Overwatch actions they do make use of uniformly have a pretty tight radius centered on the unit. Unless you specifically want to melee a Shrike Hitman, Sacred Coil Ronin, Sacred Coil Turret, or Progeny Brute who was Alert or got a proper turn, their Overwatch effects are unlikely to matter to you... oh, and Turrets are immune to Flashbangs anyway, so it's just Hitmen, Ronin, and Brutes where Flashbanging to remove Overwatch might make sense. And even there, Overwatch in Chimera Squad retains the XCOM 2 dynamic that any damage removes it; just give Zephyr a Frag/Plasma Grenade if you're worried. So Overwatch really doesn't give Flashbangs a niche.

The fact that Flashbangs now have friendly fire is minor but just one more thing making them less appealing.

Smoke Grenade

Places Smoke randomly within a targeted 4x4 area, Shrouding all units inside for one round. 12 tile toss range.

Acquisition: Available from the beginning of the game.

Cost: 40

Smoke is mechanically a little better than in the previous two games, providing 25 Defense and 25 Dodge to all units inside the cloud. (This being the 'Shroud' status effect)

The Smoke Grenade itself, however, is... not very good. It benefits from being a completely free action to use in combat, where if you loot one early you should certainly equip it and keep an eye out for opportunities to take advantage, but I'm skeptical that it's actually worth buying.

The big problem with it is, much like with Flashbangs, Chimera Squad's new turn mechanics and general change in how missions work. In the prior two games, it was possible for circumstances to contrive such that you had multiple enemies alive and only one action left to protect the squad with, where tossing a Smoke Grenade was better overall protection than trying to shoot a single enemy. (Most obviously so if your last soldier simply couldn't finish off any currently-active enemies) Chimera Squad's system of constructing turn order to try to alternate between player turns and enemy turns doesn't provide an equivalent obvious use-case: you can always see which enemy is going to act next and try to kill, disable, distract, or delay them, and you can't necessarily be confident you'll keep your entire squad in the smoke cloud long enough to have a chance to benefit. (Unlike in the prior games, where if your squad is bunched up and largely out of action points, you can toss a Smoke Grenade with confidence it will apply throughout the enemy turn)

Also not helping is that Chimera Squad is really fond of more dangerous enemies having the ability to cause trouble for your squad without bothering with accuracy checks. The situations Smoke Grenade is most consistently helpful are basically always the easiest, safest ones, when you'd really rather be bringing something that helps in the harder situations.

The fact that the actual tiles hit are randomized, making it extra-unreliable, and that enemies can take advantage of your own smoke for protection... these don't help its case either.

Again: might as well equip it and try to use it if you loot it early.

But I've never bought it for any purpose except testing, because it's just... difficult to justify using.

Cease Fire Grenade

Disables all firearms in a nearly 6x6 radius (It's not a full square), demanding a reload to correct. 12 tile toss range.

Acquisition: Available from the beginning of the game.

Cost: 35

This, on the other hand, is a pretty great grenade.

Three big qualifiers to keep in mind: firstly, melee attacks are never affected by Cease Fire Grenades, making it pointless to toss them at dedicated melee enemies and questionable against ranged-capable enemies who have an innate melee attack. (eg Legionnaires) Secondly, a handful of ranged attackers ignore ammo as a mechanic and so ignore Cease Fire Grenades, such as Codices, Sacred Coil Turrets, and Sacred Coil Purifiers. Thirdly, all Pistol-wielding enemies are buggily unreliable about being affected, where tossing a Cease Fire Grenade will say their weapon is disabled, and sometimes they will in fact spend an action point on reloading, but other times they'll fire without needing to reload. I have never identified a rhyme or reason to this latter issue, so I personally just treat Cease Fire Grenades as useless against Pistol-wielding enemies, aside that if I can catch them alongside other enemies 'for free' I might as well.

All that said, Cease Fire Grenades are surprisingly strong when none of the above applies, in spite of the fact that reloading only uses one action point. Firstly, it can be combined with other tools -such as Verge's Stupor- to make even eating a single action point a more significant burden; if Stupor only rolls a 1-action-point Stun, a Cease Fire Grenade will ensure that enemy doesn't get to fire their weapon. Second, multiple enemies have AI considerations that, when you're aware of them, make the Cease Fire Grenade more effective of a disable than you might intuitively assume; Sacred Coil Androids, for example, are obsessed with initiating their self-destruct, and so tossing a Cease Fire Grenade at them will normally result in them initiating the self-destruct and then reloading their weapon, reliably wasting their turn.

Similarly, anytime you need to defend a VIP, a single enemy per Round is designated to target the VIP. Hitting such an enemy with a Cease Fire Grenade while ensuring they don't have a clean line of fire to the VIP from their current position will reliably ensure they're not doing anything concerning for a turn.

Also helping is that Cease Fire Grenades have a startlingly generous radius, where it's actually pretty regular to be able to hit at least three enemies with one toss, and it's not that shocking to get up to five. This gets lessened a bit in value by just how many enemies ignore Cease Fire Grenades, but it still means that even just tossing one at a cluster of enemies to limit their options without a clear plan in mind has surprisingly decent odds of resulting in one or more of the affected enemies not doing anything concerning.

Do note, however, that the series still does not provide any way to check the status of ammo on enemies. If you step away from the game and forget who all you targeted, there's absolutely no way to double-check after the fact; this also contributes to the issue with Pistol ammo bugginess, for that matter.

Also keep in mind that Cease Fire Grenades do in fact have friendly fire. It's not particularly hard to play such that this isn't an issue, but if you just blithely assume they don't have friendly fire you're going to be unpleasantly surprised.

Turncoat Grenade

Applies 'Berserk' status to all units in its 5x5 blast radius, causing them to immediately attempt to shoot one of their own allies. 5 tile toss range.

Acquisition: Complete Progeny Investigation, then complete Progeny Psi Grenades Assembly Project.

Cost: 90

Yes, the only visual difference between Cease Fire Grenades and Turncoat Grenades is where the brown ring gets placed. It's weird, and can result in errors when considering buying something, or potentially even when equipping something if you're paying more attention to the icons than to the drop-down list's words.

Mechanically, this is Verge's Battle Madness ability, but in grenade form. And with no Neural Network attached to it, including that unlike Battle Madness it will in fact affect enemies who are currently in Verge's Neural Network. Also, reminder that enemies who are out of ammo will reload if forced to Berserk; don't mindlessly try to combine a Turncoat Grenade with a Cease Fire Grenade.

Turncoat Grenade is a cool idea I want to like, but which in practice is surprisingly shaky, for many of the same reasons Battle Madness is often not ideal; melee-only enemies are prone to attacking your units when Berserked, you have no control over who affected enemies elect to target, etc. A further issue to the Turncoat Grenade in particular is that when multiple enemies are affected, they resolve their Berserking one at a time, with no attempt by the game to communicate ahead of time what the order will be; it's possible to catch four enemies with Turncoat Grenade and then have half its effect wasted because two of them fired on and killed the other two you affected before those enemies could play out their own Berserks.

Furthermore, Turncoat Grenades don't work on robots or enemies immune to mental effects, noticeably reducing their utility in the Sacred Coil Investigation... and since you normally won't get access to Turncoat Grenades until after you've completed the Progeny Investigation, that means it tends to only really get a chance to shine in the Gray Phoenix Investigation. You can get one as mission loot, so it's possible to get the chance to use it in the Progeny Investigation, but don't count on it.

It's not even particularly impressive in the Gray Phoenix Investigation; Gray Phoenix has multiple melee-only enemies, multiple enemies that have a firearm where their firearm is their least threatening tool, and no enemies Berserk really gets to excel.

I normally skip it entirely, to be honest.

It does at least have a fairly generous blast radius... this doesn't really compensate for its difficulties, though, and can in fact at times create difficulties, where eg you want to hit a specific enemy but can't do so without also hitting melee-only enemies who you don't want to hit.

Lift Grenade

Applies 'Lifted' status to all units in its 4x4 blast radius, negating Cover-provided Defense and Armor. 12 tile toss range.

Acquisition: Complete Progeny Investigation, then complete Progeny Psi Grenades Assembly Project.

Cost: 75

This is basically Verge's Levitation Breach action, or a Progeny Acolyte's Psionic Suplex minus the damage at the end, but applied en mass. The entirety of the effect is to take away Cover-provided protection from the victims until their next turn, allowing your soldiers to fire on them without worrying about (non-innate) Defense or High Cover's point of Armor. Just like Levitation, this does not provide the in-the-open crit bonus... not that crits are strong enough in Chimera Squad to care, mind.

Even more so than the Turncoat Grenade, this is hurt by being specifically rewarded by completing the Progeny Investigation. The Lift Grenade doesn't do anything to enemies that don't use Cover, and doesn't work on Cover-using enemies if they don't use one of the core human/Muton/Sectoid/Viper animation sets: for the Progeny, that just means Archons are immune. Sacred Coil and Gray Phoenix both have multiple units that don't use Cover (Faceless, Berserkers, Mecs, Turrets, Chryssalids...), and Sacred Coil has Andromedons as a Cover-using enemy that's immune by virtue of not using a standard animation set, frequently limiting the Lift Grenade's potential.

If you do loot one before/during the Progeny Investigation, it can be a very solid support tool, especially when combined with tools for getting more actions out of your squad to cram in more shots before the victims get a turn; the Progeny Investigation is pretty reliable about you getting opportunities to Lift multiple people.

But usually Lift Grenades are difficult to justify unlocking and buying, unfortunately.

It doesn't help that Blueblood and Androids are really the only agents who reliably, strongly appreciate the Lifted status; most agent special abilities bypass Cover in the first place one way or another, such as by not performing an accuracy check in the first place. The Lift Grenade would've been a lot more reliably useful in XCOM 2, where class abilities were much less prone to ignoring enemy Cover.

So for one thing if you really want to give the Lift Grenade an opportunity to shine, you should probably take Blueblood and whatever other agents you feel are next-most-shooting-focused. (Certainly not Zephyr)

Adhesion Grenade

Roots all enemies in a 4x4 radius for 1 turn, preventing them from moving conventionally. 12 tile toss range.

Acquisition: Randomly acquire as a mission reward.

Cost: N/A

The Adhesion Grenade is another interesting idea that in practice ends up a bit narrow, especially since it can only be acquired as a random mission reward and so it's entirely possible to just never loot one at all, or only loot one late in a run when you've already got your squad filled out and performing quite nicely where slotting it in means removing something you already know is a useful fit to your squad and all.

The big thing holding it back is the recurring point that Chimera Squad is very focused on disabling or downing enemies before they get turns at all. Rooting enemies is only useful if they even get a turn in the first place, which you should be endeavoring to largely not have happen. For 'standard' enemies who shoot at people, Rooting them is generally effectively a nebulous accuracy penalty, where it prevents them from getting a flank/moving to high ground -and since enemies don't get accuracy bonuses for getting closer, it isn't even necessarily doing that much! (If they couldn't flank or get to high ground anyway, it hasn't really done anything) And if they have any number of non-shooting actions they can use without much regard for position, Rooting can easily have done essentially nothing.

All this means that the main use-case for Adhesion Grenades is tossing them at dedicated melee enemies, where Rooting them is effectively a hard disable so long as you don't leave anybody adjacent to them. It's worth pointing out here that the Progeny doesn't have any dedicated melee units, making Adhesion Grenades difficult to justify even equipping during the Progeny Investigation unless you're just filling empty slots. Fortunately, Gray Phoenix and Sacred Coil both have multiple dedicated melee fighters, and Gray Phoenix also has some melee-capable units where their melee attack is overall more concerning than their ranged attack, so in both those Investigations Adhesion Grenades do actually have decent odds of doing something useful.

Also worth mentioning is that Shrike Necromancers summon a dedicated melee unit. This rarely is a reason to use an Adhesion Grenade as the summons aren't very dangerous and go away when their summoner goes down, but it's theoretically possible for you to be in a position where you can't take down the Necromancer, need their summons out of action for a turn, and happen to have somebody in reach to toss an Adhesion Grenade at them, and this can in fact potentially occur in any Investigation.

A final use-case is actually for protecting VIPs; having the designated attacker Rooted and without a clear line of fire on the VIP ensures the VIP won't be attacked just yet. It's not exactly the best at this job, but if you happen to have brought along an Adhesion Grenade anyway, it's an option to keep in mind.

The funny thing is that Adhesion Grenades would probably actually be a lot more reliably strong in XCOM 2. For example, Chimera Squad doesn't have situations equivalent to activating a full Chryssalid pod, which is a case where mass-immobilization would be effectively a mass-Stun. More subtly, Chimera Squad has notably reduced the peak (And average) danger level of melee enemies; in XCOM 2, multiple enemies had the Strength-on-Will test that could Disorient, Stun, or instantly knock Unconscious the victim, and those enemies mostly don't exist in Chimera Squad (eg Stun Lancers) and the ones that do exist are rare to see and/or unfond of using their melee attack. Similarly, Chryssalids no longer apply their special Poison to your agents, making it less important to prevent them from getting attacks in on your squad. Also similar is that Mutons in XCOM 2 could straight-up Execute anyone fool enough to be Stunned nearby them, and while there are multiple melee-capable Muton enemies none of them have access to a similarly threatening melee capability. So in XCOM 2, being able to immobilize enemies would entirely take away assorted very dangerous tools, even on enemies who aren't dedicated melee, in a way that simply isn't true in Chimera Squad itself. There is at least still a Viper who can Bind, but that's really about it.

Also subtle is the overall reduction in Mobility of enemies. I've referred to the point that in XCOM 2 'baseline' Mobility is 12 while in Chimera Squad 10 Mobility is 'baseline', and that's not just for player units, it's for enemy units as well; most enemies that aren't either dedicated melee or a Viper have 10 Mobility. And unlike XCOM 2, Chimera Squad isn't fond of having your difficulty setting modify Mobility; XCOM 2 has a notable number of enemies who gain some Mobility when making the jump from Regular to Commander, including several cases of this taking them above the 'baseline' of 12 Mobility. Chimera Squad having lowered Mobility overall means that your agents are less prone to getting flanked than your soldiers in XCOM 2 were, among other implications, and by extension it's less likely for immobilizing an enemy to be decisive in Chimera Squad in terms of preventing a flank or the like. It can still happen, but my point is this is another reason why Adhesion Grenades would probably be a lot more reliably solid if they'd existed in XCOM 2 rather than in Chimera Squad where they were actually introduced.

Among other points, all this means that if XCOM 3 brings back Adhesion Grenades, a very important question to their utility there will be whether XCOM 3 returns to XCOM 2's sensibilities about overall enemy Mobility standards and the danger presented by letting enemies close to melee, or if XCOM 3 takes a different tack.

Personally, I hope they do get brought back; they're a solid idea with interesting potential, just hampered by not fitting well to this game.

Gas Grenade

Does 2-3 damage in a 3x3 area, Shreds 1 Armor, Poisons all units in the area, and generates Poison clouds randomly within the blast radius. 10 tile toss range.

Acquisition: Complete Gray Phoenix Investigation, then complete Gray Phoenix Poison Gear Assembly Project.

Cost: 80

It should be pointed out that Sacred Coil has a lot of Poison-immune units and so the Gas Grenade loses a lot of value if your order is Progeny->Gray Phoenix->Sacred Coil. Just like in XCOM 2, it'll still do damage and Shred to units even if they're immune to Poison, but as I keep harping on Armor is a much less significant factor in Chimera Squad than in XCOM 2, and unlike XCOM 2 there is no Advanced Explosives Project to improve your Gas Grenades; the primary reason the 2-3 damage from a Gas Grenade isn't outright sad by the late game is because active Items are free to use. (Okay, and also Chimera Squad doesn't have HP go up as much in the late game as XCOM 2 does)

The clouds left behind are in a bit of a different place than in XCOM 2 in terms of implications. On the one hand, Chimera Squad's mission timeframes are pretty consistently shorter than XCOM 2's, where tossing a Gas Grenade immediately may mean the clouds are relevant for the entire Encounter because you clear it before the clouds have the opportunity to time out, and furthermore Chimera Squad's maps trending smaller means that making part of the map hazardous to enter is a greater portion of the map being affected than in XCOM 2. On the other hand, for many, many Encounters in Chimera Squad, there really isn't a reason to care about moving to or through an area; many Encounters are just 'down every enemy in the room', and many of the exceptions still don't have a specific travel destination. As such, where careless use of Gas Grenades in XCOM 2 could result in failing an objective (Or succeeding at the objective but at the cost of a soldier being injured by having travelled through the Poison clouds), in Chimera Squad much of the time the fact that you're making part of the map hazardous to enter is pretty irrelevant. This is further exacerbated by how much lesser the consequences of injury are; if an agent doesn't drop below 50% HP at any point in a mission, damage taken has zero effect on them, and even if they drop below 50% HP they only have a possibility of gaining a Scar as a result if they didn't enter Bleeding Mode outright. This is a big contrast with how in XCOM 2 any HP damage resulted in a soldier being out of action, risking them being unavailable for your next mission if it spawned soon enough. (Or you wanted to do it soon enough, in the case of missions like Avatar Project Facilities)

The overall result is that the cloud mechanic is much easier to ignore in Chimera Squad than in XCOM 2; you're a lot less likely to want to run through a now-dangerous area, and you can much more easily shrug and do it without worrying about consequences if the situation does come up.

It's too bad they're held back by weak damage and only maybe having one Investigation where mass-Poisoning is liable to be a thing you can realistically achieve. And even in the Progeny Investigation, a 3x3 radius is, as I keep harping on, actually pretty unreliable in Chimera Squad at letting you catch multiple targets.

I honestly tend to skip Gas Grenades in Chimera Squad, and when I've forced myself to give them more of a chance I've still tended to end up not using them much and also been pretty reliably disappointed when I do toss them.

Incendiary Grenade

Does 2-3 damage in a 3x3 area, Shreds 1 Armor, Burns all units in the area, and scattering burning tiles randomly inside the blast radius. 10 tile toss range.

Acquisition: Complete Sacred Coil Investigation, then complete Sacred Coil Fire Gear Assembly Project.

Cost: 80

Incendiary Grenades overlap notably with Gas Grenades in terms of things like 'blast radius is a little too small', 'damage doesn't hold up long-term', and 'clouds are pretty ignorable', but hold up a little better overall in practice simply because immunity to fire is uncommon in both the Progeny and Gray Phoenix Investigations. The only Investigation order that minimizes its opportunities to be useful is placing Sacred Coil last -and that primarily because you won't have time to complete the Assembly Project.

They're still not anywhere near as useful as they were in XCOM 2 (Certainly not as useful as they were in base XCOM 2), mind. Among other points, they don't benefit as much as Gas Grenades do from the reduced consequences for passing through a cloud; with Poison clouds, if the damage doesn't end up mattering and you don't perform Aim-using actions while Poisoned, then it didn't matter. With being set on fire, you're losing out on most special abilities, up to and including Subdue; compared to XCOM 2, losing access to special abilities is a lot more reliably limiting in Chimera Squad.

Also, it should be pointed out that fire 'clouds' still exist, but are... much less relevant in terms of terrain impact. First of all, fires no longer occur randomly on missed shots and whatnot; only the handful of mechanics that explicitly start fires (Like Incendiary Grenades themselves) can generate them. Second, as I've repeatedly noted Chimera Squad is much less consistent about terrain being destructible than XCOM 2, so terrain destruction is less relevant in general. Third is that fires in Chimera Squad don't crawl and spread anywhere near as much as in XCOM 2. As I never understood the underlying rules of fire spreading in the first place I couldn't begin to guess exactly what's changed to produce this result -it may simply be a side effect of there being less destructible terrain in general, for example- and furthermore fires are so rarely seen in real play I just have a tiny sample size. I don't think I've ever seen a fire spread at all in Chimera Squad, but I'm not sure, and even if I'm correct about this it's entirely possible that's not driven by any underlying changes to fire mechanics.

I have somewhat mixed feelings about fire 'clouds' barely mattering, as I did actually like XCOM 2 trying to model fire in a vaguely realistic way, but on the other hand it was very opaque and tended to feel effectively random in a bad way, particularly in the base game where you could have stuff happen like Cover collapsing unexpectedly at the end of your turn due to a fire you didn't even realize had ever started. There's also the narrative context stuff to consider -it's already a bit eyebrow-raising to have the Chimera Squad being allowed to solve problems with copious use of fire, it would be even worse if the mechanics were such that you would routinely substantially burn down buildings when doing so. As-is you can at least pretend these are somehow 'safe' fire grenades. (Or just ignore their narrative existence entirely, honestly)

Acid Grenade

Does 2-3 damage in a 3x3 area, Shreds 2 Armor, and applies Acid to all units in the area, as well as scattering Acid clouds randomly inside the blast radius. 10 tile toss range.

Acquisition: Randomly acquire as a mission reward.

Cost: N/A

Yes, the graphic is a recolored Plasma Grenade.

I'm honestly confused as to why Chimera Squad drew new icons for so many returning items. Part of the point of Chimera Squad is to be low-budget, and generally the existing graphic was fine. In several cases, they literally just drew a 2D version of the 3D render XCOM 2 used! It's just a strange decision chain.

In any event, the Acid Grenade is notably less impressive and essential than you might expect coming from XCOM 2 for the usual reasons; Armor is less widespread and all, so Shred is less important. Where Acid Grenades in XCOM 2 were very high-value to have online in time for the assorted 4+ Armor threats in the late game, in Chimera Squad this largely isn't a concern.

That said, the Acid Grenade is still probably overall the best of the three damage-and-cloud grenades. Acid immunity is flatly rarer than fire and Poison immunity, the 2 Shred is 'free', and Acid in Chimera Squad applies Ruptured the first time the status effect does damage, so an Acid Grenade can improve your damage output even against targets with zero Armor. Against the game's assorted boss enemies, that can be quite notable -conveniently, none of them are immune to Acid.

It thus works out okay that Acid Grenades can only be gotten as mission rewards, actually; they'd pretty heavily displace the other grenades if you could reliably buy them.

Shock Grenade

Stuns all units in a 4x4 radius for 1-2 action points. Robotic units additionally take 2 damage that ignores Armor. 12 tile toss range.

Acquisition: Randomly acquire as a mission reward.

Cost: N/A

The return of the EMP Grenade, but now its anti-robot capacity is a bonus, rather than (almost) the entire point of it.

This is one of the better loot-only Items, in fact. 4x4 is a large enough radius it's pretty common to be able to catch two enemies, and three isn't outlandish, and almost nothing is immune to Stun. Even if it only takes away one action point, this restricts their ability to act in ways that can be potentially quite significant, and it can be combined with other effects to potentially be functionally a full disable anyway. (eg a Cease Fire Grenade; having only one action point which has to be immediately spent on reloading is basically the same as a full Stun if the enemy only has shooting actions) It doesn't even really matter that the anti-robot damage almost never comes up outside the Sacred Coil Investigation; the Stun by itself is great, given you get to apply it without spending an action point at all. Notably, Stuns 'stack' fully; you could give Verge a Shock Grenade, have him use Stupor on a target, and if it rolls just a 1-action-point Stun then toss the Shock Grenade to ensure they will miss their entire next turn.

If a mission offers a Shock Grenade, I tend to go for it even if it means failing to deal with an Unrest problem or otherwise making a notable sacrifice. They're really good, and you can't count on getting one later.

Bubble Grenade

Puts all units in its 3x3 blast radius into Stasis for 1 of the user's turn's. 12 tile toss range.

Acquisition: Complete Sacred Coil Investigation, then complete Sacred Coil Equipment Assembly Project.

Cost: 75

Yeah, it's visually a slightly reskinned Shock Grenade. So slightly I was initially unsure, in-game, if they had different graphics at all.

Unlike the Shock Grenade, the Bubble Grenade is underwhelming. 3x3 is, as I keep pointing, not remotely reliable at hitting multiple enemies at once in Chimera Squad, and the enemy Stasis is most effective against -Ronin- is behind you once you have access to Bubble Grenades. (Ronin show up in the endgame, but barely) Against most enemies, the Bubble Grenade is essentially a much worse Shock Grenade, with its primary advantage being that you can reliably build Bubble Grenades, where Shock Grenades you just have to pray the game throws one your way.

If there were more enemies that gifted themselves or others turns, or if Ruler Reactions had returned, Bubble Grenades might've been pretty solid.

As-is, you should probably not bother.

You can use it defensively to shield allies, I guess? I'm struggling to imagine an actual use-case for this, but it is at least something a Shock Grenade doesn't clearly overlap with...

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Next time, we move on to what I call underarmor.

See you then.