Best Squad Leader in MENACE — Complete Guide & Analysis

It took me about 40 hours of playtime across three campaigns before I stopped asking "which Squad Leader is best" and started asking the right question instead: what does this leader want to do?

The game doesn't tell you. The stat screen shows numbers. The perk tree shows nodes. But the gap between "Darby has High Value Targets" and "Darby is a ghost who can solo enemy backlines with a suppressed rifle" is about 30 hours wide. This guide exists to close that gap.

The Star Rating Trap

Before diving into individual leaders, a word about the ⭐ system. The game uses 1-3 stars to indicate base supply cost, squaddie tax, and promotion cost factor. Higher stars cost more. That's it. Higher stars are not "better" — they're just more expensive and usually come with higher base stats.

A 1★ Jean Sy with Economics 101 can enable builds that a 3★ Darby simply cannot afford. A 2★ Pike with This Is My Rifle halves your squad weapon budget. The star system is a resource constraint, not a quality rating. Once I internalized that, squad building became a completely different game.

Supply costs by star level (from the official wiki, updated June 2026):

Star	Leader Base Cost	Tax per Squaddie	Promotion Cost Factor
1★	0	6	0.8×
2★	10	13	1.0×
3★	30	22	1.3×

A full 8-man squad under a 3★ leader costs 206 supply before equipment. The same squad under a 1★ costs 48. That 158-supply difference buys a lot of armor and special weapons. Keep that in mind every time you're tempted to default to Darby.

The 3★ Leaders

Darby — The Ghost

Darby is the leader everyone starts with and most people never replace. Her innate, High Value Targets, disables enemy special weapons on hit — including vehicle-mounted guns. I didn't realize how strong this was until I watched an enemy tank sit silently for an entire turn because Darby had tagged it with a suppressed DMR from 12 tiles away.

Her real strength isn't the innate. It's Covert Ops (+2 concealment) combined with Commando, Ambush, and Vanguard Deployment. This perk path turns her into a deep-strike operator who doesn't need the rest of the squad to function. I've run her as a 3-man recon team, a 9-man stealth rifle squad, and everything in between.

The invisible Darby build: Covert Ops → Scout → Ambush → Vanguard Deployment → Commando. Give her a suppressed rifle, concealment armor, and 2-3 squaddies. She'll spot everything, kill priority targets, and never get shot back.

Darby's weakness: She's expensive. 30 base cost + 22 per squaddie. A full 8-man squad costs 206 supply before you even look at weapons. If your mission budget is tight, you need a good reason to field her at full strength.

Kody Greifinger — The Alpha Strike

Kody's innate, Guerilla, gives a massive accuracy and damage bonus against targets above 80% HP. Combined with Assassin (bonus damage to isolated targets) and Tankbuster, he deletes things. I watched him one-shot a medium mech with an AMR on turn one. The mech never got to act.

Kody rewards patience. Assassin requires target isolation, but the range is more forgiving than the tooltip suggests. Wait for enemies to shuffle slightly out of formation, then cash in. Recovery lets him shed suppression on kills, which makes him self-sustaining in extended firefights. Deploy Decoy is deceptively strong — the AI loves shooting at it, and those wasted enemy turns add up fast.

Anti-materiel Kody: Athletics → Vanguard Deployment → Tankbuster → Assassin. Run him lean with 2 squaddies and concealment armor. Give him your best anti-armor weapon and point him at the biggest thing on the map.

Achilleas Kainoo — The Centerpiece (Pilot)

Achilleas is the most expensive pilot in the game (70 base cost) and absolutely worth it if you build around him. His innate, Spartan Duty, grants increasing AP as his vehicle takes damage. Shield Wall caps incoming damage per hit, letting you deliberately ride the threshold.

He's not a set-and-forget pilot. You need to invest in his vehicle, pick the right weapons, and accept that he'll eat 15-20% of your total mission supply budget. But a properly built Achilleas in a Medium Walker with twin autocannons and ceramic plating is a mobile fortress that nothing short of concentrated AT fire can stop.

The 2★ Workhorses

Edwin Pike — The Force Multiplier

Pike doesn't kill things. Pike makes other people kill things better. His innate, Taking Command, converts 60 of his own AP into 40 AP for another leader at long range. He's a walking AP battery.

Command: Rally clears suppression. Call Out Target marks enemies for +20% accuracy and enables ATGM locks. Inspiring Presence stacks mass accuracy and discipline buffs. On defensive missions, Pike turns an average squad into a kill team.

And he can still fight. This Is My Rifle halves squad weapon supply cost. Firing Line reduces per-shot AP. Give him 8 squaddies with long-range rifles and he's a legitimate rifle squad while buffing everyone else.

The budget Pike build: Pike + 2 squaddies + cheap carbines + no armor = ~70 supply total. He exists to generate AP for your damage dealers. He doesn't need to shoot. He just needs to stay alive and pass AP.

Jacques Vamplew — The Distraction

Vamplew wants to be shot. His innate stacks when he's targeted, cashing out for 60 bonus AP. Taunt increases his threat level. Flamboyant gives -30% armor supply cost. Disdain makes him ignore squaddie deaths.

Heavy armor is mandatory. Once stacked, Full Send enables absurd turns with special weapons. I've watched Vamplew eat three squads' worth of fire, taunt a fourth, then unload a grenade launcher twice in one turn.

Vamplew weakness: He needs a medic nearby. He will take damage. That's the point. But if you can't stabilize him when things go wrong, he goes from "distraction" to "casualty" fast.

Charles Lim — The Aggressor

Lim wants to be moving, shooting, and never stopping. Run & Gun, Counterstrike, Blaze of Glory, and Berserk all reward close-range aggression. His innate, Aspiring, reduces promotion cost by 30%, which means faster perk stacking.

He's one of the best CQB leaders. SMGs, shotguns, ARC rifles. Mobile Infantry lets him operate out of vehicles for a completely different playstyle.

Lim feels bad if you play him cautiously. He needs to commit. Once you accept that, he's consistently strong.

Fedor "The Yaz" Yazhov — The Punisher

Yaz is Lim without the safety net. His innate, No Mercy, gives massive accuracy and damage against wavering or fleeing enemies. Fearsome doubles morale damage. He doesn't just kill enemies — he breaks them.

Pair Yaz with suppression sources (flashbangs, Disruptive Fire, machine guns). Once enemies start wavering, Yaz cleans up. His CQB perks overlap with Lim's, but he trades Blaze of Glory for raw brutality.

The 1★ Economies

Jean Sy — The Quartermaster

Jean Sy is the reason I stopped defaulting to 3★ leaders. Her innate, Economics 101, gives -15% total squad supply cost. That's not "-15% on weapons" or "-15% on armor" — it's 15% off everything. Leader cost, squaddie tax, weapons, armor, accessories. The entire squad.

A 300-supply squad under anyone else costs 255 under Jean. That's a free accessory. Or a better armor. Or room for an extra squaddie. Over a 5-mission operation, that adds up to thousands of supply saved.

Trinketing, Scavenger, and Resourceful keep her relevant beyond the discount. Load her with accessories and utility items and let your other leaders do the shooting. She's not flashy. She's efficient. In a game where supply is the binding constraint on everything you do, efficiency wins campaigns.

Marta Carda — The Late Bloomer

Carda starts slow and scales hard. Her innate, Out of the Craters, ramps stats over consecutive turns, which matches most mission pacing. Her growth potential (9) is the highest among all squad leaders.

Share the Load doubles special ammo. Team Spirit provides a global team buff. She struggles in the first 3-4 turns but becomes a powerhouse by the mid-game. If your missions tend to run long, Carda outperforms leaders with better stat sheets.

J.G. Wetteroth — The Bug Hunter

Wett has one exceptional stat (75 Weapon Skill) and everything else is mediocre. But his innate, Big Game Hunter, makes him the best anti-alien leader in the game. Give him a Crowbar, DMR, or sniper rifle and point him at bugs.

He requires investment and specific builds to shine, but his damage output against alien factions rivals 3★ leaders. Don't bring him against Pirates. He'll underperform.

What Actually Matters When Choosing

After 40 hours, my decision tree looks like this:

1. What's the mission supply cap? If it's tight (<1500), start with 1★ leaders and work up.
2. What faction am I fighting? Pirates = bring suppression (Sachin, Yaz). Aliens = bring raw damage (Wett, Kody). Rogue Army = bring anti-armor (Kody, Achilleas).
3. What does my team need? If I already have two damage dealers, I add Pike or Jean. If I need a tank, Vamplew. If I need recon, Darby or Carda.
4. What's my total supply budget for this operation? Multiply each leader's projected cost by the number of missions. Jean's 15% discount might save 500+ supply over an operation.

There's a free Squad Builder tool I put together that handles all the supply math automatically — select a leader, pick equipment, and it spits out the total cost with all passive discounts applied. I built it after spending way too many evenings with a calculator and the wiki open in another tab. It's not pretty, but it's accurate (formulas verified against the official wiki's worked examples).

The Pilot Question

Pilots operate under different rules. They don't have squaddies — they have vehicles. Supply costs are chassis + weapons + accessories, no per-entity scaling. This makes pilots surprisingly economical for the firepower they bring.

Pilot	Star	Base Cost	Best Role
Achilleas Kainoo	3★	70	Main battle tank / Walker
Renu Rewa	2★	30	Aggressive hit-and-run
Gabriel Exconde	2★	30	Battle taxi + mobile cover
Garry Boganwright	1★	10	Budget fire support
Ivory Isom	1★	10	Heavy vehicle specialist
Roisin Murdock	2★	30	Economic vehicle operator

A 1★ Bog in a Light Troop Carrier with a single autocannon costs about 300 supply and provides mobile fire support for an entire mission. Compare that to a fully-equipped 3★ Darby squad at 500+. The value proposition is real.

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I'm still discovering new combinations after 40 hours, and the game is in Early Access — new leaders, balance changes, and perks will shift the meta. If you find a build that works well (or one that completely fails), I'd love to hear about it. Drop a comment or find me on the MENACE Discord.