Last night, a buddy and I were stuck on the team selection screen in Wardogs. Manticore (Green) and Valkyra (Red) were 100% full, but Lonestar (Blue) had plenty of vacancies. Yet, there we sat—locked in a stalemate with a dozen other players desperate to not join blue.

“Anything but blue,” we chanted, spamming left-click over Green and Red.

It is, for some reason, understood in Wardogs that Blue team kinda sucks. It seems like a silly claim to make in an FPS where teams are scrambled every match and everyone starts with the same exact resources, but Blue’s infamy began during Wardogs’ closed betas and has only cemented since launch. If you’re a Wardogs player, you immediately knew who this article was about.

“The battle before the battle,” reads one top-upvoted post on the Wardogs subreddit, depicting a team select screen with a sparse Blue roster. Another post renames each faction according to difficulty: “Easy” for Green, “Normal” for Red, and “NIGHTMARE MODE” for Blue.

Even the devs are acknowledging Lonestar’s bad rap.

“Lonestar actually did it,” Bulkhead co-founder Howard Phillpott posted on X today in response to a Lonestar win screen.

To a degree, the Blue team hate is a joke that the community and devs are having fun with. Most aren’t taking it super seriously, but some definitely are.

“They literally are the dumbest people on the planet,” wrote one aggrieved Redditor, citing counterproductive behavior on his Lonestar teams, like “using the respawn vehicle to just drive circles in the FOB, not realizing no one can spawn because they keep moving it.”

Last night was the first time I actively avoided Blue, which delayed me getting to play by a few minutes. In more extreme cases, an entire match can be delayed by folks dragging their feet with Lonestar.

“The server would boot up, the first 40 or so players would sort into teams, and then the match start would come to a complete halt as people refused to pick Blue,” recounted Reddit user PogoMarimo. “These would be 80+ pop servers and they would go 10 minutes without launching because not enough people were willing to pick Blue to get the match to the starting population needed.”

“I, of course, was one of those refusing to choose blue, because I had already done Blue duty twice that day and saw awful things happen. I’m not ashamed to admit it.”

Anecdotally, I have witnessed some truth to the Lonestar hate. Of the three matches I played last night, the two I played on Blue team were undeniable stomps—the sort of matches where Red and Green have sturdy FOBs and drill towers controlling the hot zone, while it took 45 minutes for our Blue base to construct a complete wall.

My last match of the night was on Red, and the difference was dramatic: Within 15 minutes, a squad of dedicated building specialists had constructed a super FOB with reinforced walls, barbed wire moats, enclosed sniper towers, mortar emplacements, and a maze of doors and alleys meant to deter infiltrators. Green had a similar setup on the other side of the map, while Blue was just sort of… there.

So if there is something about Blue, what is it, exactly?

One popular theory is that Lonestar is the worst team because it has fundamental disadvantages. The blue pants and patches that all members wear allegedly make them easier targets in forested areas. I think there’s some truth to this, especially the blue jeans of it all, but none of the factions camouflage particularly well out in the open (an intentional bit of design, I reckon). But perhaps Lonestar has it worse than the others.

The other theory is that Lonestar beginning in the southernmost corner of the map, while Manticore and Valkyra begin in the West and East, sets the Blue faction up for a two-front war. I think this could have some merit—it is notable that the headquarters aren’t lined up a perfect 120 degrees around the circumference of the zone, but it’s hard to say for sure if this actually translates to a Blue team sandwich with any consistency. This talking point is coming up enough that I expect Bulkhead will chime in someday soon with data that supports or disproves it.

Another, less talked about possibility, is that Blue team’s infamy is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Folks have one bad night with Lonestar and decide to believe the reputation, or hear it’s the team to avoid, or notice everyone else actively avoiding it, and you end up with a Blue team full of less experienced players. It’s a fascinating problem—if it even qualifies as one yet—unique to Wardogs’ three-team format. Maybe I should try to buck the trend and go Blue. At least I know there’s always a free seat.