Your First Gun in WARDOGS: What to Buy With the Starting $10,000

Every WARDOGS account starts with $10,000 and a vendor that does not give refunds. Your gun is a thing you own and a thing you can lose, so the first purchase is a real decision rather than a formality, and it is the one most new players get wrong in the same direction: they spend too much, too early.

You are not unarmed

The Bushmaster M17S is recorded at Free by all three of the databases we read, and one of them calls it the free recruit rifle outright. It hits for 28 a round at 700 rounds per minute, which is 4 shots on an unarmoured 100 HP target and about 257ms if every one connects. Bushmaster M17S sits at B on our list, placed by 5 of 5 sources.

Two other rifles carry the same recorded damage and rate of fire, the A-91 and the KH-2002, and both are recorded free as well. Worth being precise about the evidence there: only one source records a price for either, against three for the Bushmaster, so treat those two as less firmly established than the recruit rifle even though the figures line up.

What the free rifles give up is reach. All three are recorded at 300m effective, which is the shortest of any assault rifle on the shelf. That is the actual cost of carrying one, and on a large map it is a real one.

The $600 question

The T-21 is recorded at $600. It matches the free rifles' damage exactly at 28, so the same 4 shots to a kill, but it fires at 750 rounds per minute against their 700, and reaches 550m against 300m.

That is nearly double the effective range for six percent of your starting bank. T-21 sits at A on our list, placed by 5 of 5 sources, and the free rifles sit below it. If you buy one gun on day one, buy this one.

The whole shelf, cheapest first

Here is every assault rifle with its recorded figures and our shots to kill beside it. Read the price column as a percentage of the $10,000 you started with.

Assault Rifle	Price	Damage	RPM	Shots	Tier
Bushmaster M17S	Free	28	700	4	B
A-91	Free	28	700	4	B
KH-2002	Free	28	700	4	B
T-21	$600	28	750	4	A
AK74	$1,600	26	650	4	C
Galil	$2,200	28	650	4	B
M4	$2,800	28	800	4	A
FAL	$6,500	60	650	2	S

The jump from the T-21 to the AK74 costs more than two and a half times as much for a lower recorded damage figure and a slower rate of fire, which is why that row is where most first-week regret lives. The M4 at $2,800 is a genuine upgrade on rate of fire and M4 sits at A on our list, placed by 5 of 5 sources, but it is 28 percent of your starting cash in one object that a stray tank shell can take from you.

Buy a sidearm before you buy a better rifle

Pistols are where the cheap value is. The GGX 17 is recorded at $200, two percent of your bank. The GGX 18 at $800 fires at 1,200 rounds per minute, which is the highest recorded figure of any weapon on the roster, and GGX 18 sits at B on our list, placed by 4 of 5 sources.

Pistol	Price	Damage	RPM	Shots	Tier
GGX 17	$200	22	600	5	D
Judge	$250	-	200	-	D
M1911	$300	30	430	4	F
GGX 18	$800	22	1200	5	B
Deagle	$900	49	267	3	C

Note the M1911 row. It carries the second highest recorded damage in the class and M1911 sits at F on our list, placed by 4 of 5 sources, which is a good reminder that a damage number by itself does not decide anything.

A sensible opening loadout

The T-21 at $600 plus the GGX 18 at $800 is a complete kit for under fifteen percent of your starting cash, leaving enough to replace both several times over while you learn the maps. That margin is the point. A player who can afford to lose a fight plays differently from one who cannot, and in this game the difference shows.

Quick answers

What is the free gun in WARDOGS? The Bushmaster M17S, recorded at $0 by every database we read and described as the free recruit rifle. Two other assault rifles are recorded free by a single source.

How much money do you start with in WARDOGS? $10,000, per Bulkhead's own Steam page. It does not reset between matches, and neither do your losses.

What is the best cheap gun in WARDOGS? On recorded figures the T-21 at $600, for matching the free rifles' damage with a higher rate of fire and far more effective range.

Community-recorded from Closed Alpha and Closed Beta vendor screens, cross-checked across independent databases. Bulkhead publishes no official weapon figures, and Early Access can retune any of them. Tier placements are read live from our own list, which is built from 5 attributed published rankings rather than from telemetry, so they move as that list does. Statistical data is based on external APIs and publicly available information. It may differ from official data.