Call of Duty: Vanguard's alpha is officially live for PlayStation users, which features the recently announced Champion Hill mode. Here we provide some tips for winning Vanguard's new competitive mode that feels like a mashup of Gunfight and battle royale, with teams competing in a series of 2v2 rounds to be the last team standing.
Your duo only gets 12 combined lives in the Champion Hill arena, so every life and every dollar earned counts. Here are some tips to help you become Champion of the Hill.
Equip The Right Weapons
All squads start with the same loadout of a pistol and submachine gun, but you'll want to upgrade the right weapons for your best chance of success in Champion Hill.
Make sure that you have your pistol out when buying a new weapon from the Buy Station, as a weapon purchase will swap out whatever gun you're holding. Presumably, you'd want the submachine gun over the pistol, but just make sure to hold the right weapon when approaching the Buy Station.
Best Things To Buy
Champion Hill's Buy Station feature lets you spend the cash you earn on better gear, and you'll want to make the most of your money. The number one thing you want to spend your cash on is weapon upgrades. Invest in your gun. Assault rifles like the BAR and STG44 are great choices to grab early on and upgrade with your cash. You can keep upgrading your weapon with up to 10 attachments.
Armor plates are also something to consider in early rounds. A good weapon and armor plates will be most beneficial, so you can stay alive and earn more cash for perks and streaks in later rounds.
After you have the essentials, you can use a later Buy round to consider something like a Spy Plane to reveal enemy positions on the minimap, or maybe purchase the Ghost perk to keep you off your opponent's radar. High Alert will likely be one of the most beneficial perks, as it alerts you when enemies outside of your view see you.
Extra Life Tokens
Each map also has one extra life token that spawns once per round. The tokens always spawn in the same location for each map, and it's worth learning the location of each one. The player who picks it up will an earn an extra life; if your squad is already maxed out on lives, you get $750 cash instead. It's worth getting a line of sight on the token straight away to either wait and bait your opponent out, or quickly claim it for your team.
Here are the token locations for each map:
- Airstrip's token is the only one of the four that doesn't spawn at the center of the map. It can be found on the shorter of the two lookout towers on the airstrip. You have to use the ladder to reach the token, making it a very risky venture.
- Courtyard's token is between the two central buildings at the map’s center.
- Market's token is very exposed and sitting right on the market’s central platform.
- Trainyard's token sits in an oval-shaped structure of sandbags and wooden boards at the map’s center.
Learn The Maps
You'll be playing these four maps a lot, and you'll want to learn all the important lines of sight. Call of Duty: Vanguard features some destructible cover, and it will be important to know where these places are on each map. The parts that can be destroyed all seem to look like thin wooden boards, making them distinguishable enough to spot. You can either shoot through the cover or completely demolish it for a better angle on your opponents.
This feels especially important when playing Courtyard, which is a map that features a plethora of destructible wooden walls. It's easy to get trapped and wallbanged at the start of a round here, so I think it's really important to get out of the spawn quick, and start shooting through the wooden walls to create a better line of sight.
Communication
Communication should be a no-brainer, but we're listing this because these 60-second rounds move quickly, and you'll want to communicate enemy positions with your teammate to ensure you keep control of the match and don't sacrifice too many lives.
Vanguard's Champion Hill is even more intense and strategic than Call of Duty's 2v2 Gunfight tournament, given the respawns and Buy feature. These tips will hopefully help you become a champion.
This PlayStation-exclusive alpha will run until August 29. A second alpha will occur for preorder members on all platforms who can play September 16-17. Then from September 18-20, everyone can play, regardless of platform or preorder status. Vanguard's standard multiplayer beta will arrive next month, and Call of Duty: Vanguard launches on November 5.
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