'Titanfall: Wingman' LTS Guide

With Titanfall's seventh update, Respawn's David-v-Goliath shooter has gained a new mode to usher out the dreadfully-designed Titan-free mode, "Pilot Skirmish". It's called Wingman LTS (that's "Last Titan Standing") and pits you with one other person for 2v2 Titan battles. The rules are identical to your traditional Last Titan Standing match, except now you only have one teammate, so watch their backs while they watch yours.

First rule of thumb: stick with your teammate. Just like regular matches of LTS, dividing your team across the map leaves your individual (or paired) Titans easy targets. Stick together to make sure that doesn't happen, because again, your teammate is all you're getting.

Second, build your Titan to support your wingman, as they should yours. Nothing says "I love you, bro" quite like chain-zapping both approaching Titans with a fully-charged arc cannon blast. Things like cluster missiles to shut off flanking routes or electric smoke to stall the enemy (or shake off one of the enemy Pilots if they choose to leave their Titan) will prove to be extremely useful too: Wingman LTS screenshotls. The vortex shield's ability to guard your front allows your buddy to sit behind you and charge up a plasma railgun blast for a hard-hitting critical hit.

Third, don't panic if you lose your wingman. Winning a Titan battle while outnumbered two-to-one is tricky, but not impossible. Use your map to your advantage, and make good on your ability to run away if necessary. Keep your shields up and deploy your tactical powers to lose pursuers, and don't forget to poke to keep their shields down. Remember: you don't get back armor on your Titan, but you do get back your shields.

Finally, choose a Titan for your role. An Atlas is good for a direct approach: hit your enemies where it hurts and duck into cover when you need to heal up. Shrug off pursuers with cluster missiles or electric smoke and get them off-guard with a 40mm cannon or single-fire rockets from the quad rocket launcher. The Stryder is better for mind-games, making your opponents waste their most powerful abilities while you dance around with your dash core and nail them with shocks from your arc cannon. Lastly, the Ogre is good for taking point and eating up all the damage your enemies dish out.

Now the fun part: burn cards. A good deck would be built around the loadout you're playing with, rather than additional options; if you're using electric smoke, don't take an amped vortex shield, take amped electric smoke. Strong burn cards include Packet Sniffer (and by extension, Echo Vision), Map Hack, Super Charger, and Turbo Engine. Amped Titan weaponry, tactical abilities, and ordnance are not cheap burn cards to replace, but if you can afford to use them, they are invaluable. Just remember: you don't lose your Pilot burn cards if your Titan is destroyed, so if you're using something like Echo Vision, eject if your Titan is about to be destroyed, rather than risk being terminated. It'll likely hurt your wingman's ability to perform in the round, but it's far better to hang onto powerful cards rather than lose them to a stupid flub.

There's a lot of things that can go wrong in a 2v2 mode. If just one person screws up in a round, you can throw off the course of the entire match. Thankfully, seeing as it's just a sized-down version of Last Titan Standing, you've got a lot more room for error than other modes would allow. You just need to stay careful, play smart, and have your wingman's back.

Rhys Egner is a writer for Front Towards Gamer from Seattle. He likes comics, hates crowds, and loves gaming of all kinds.