Long War Studios, creators of the much acclaimed Long War mod for XCOM: Enemy Unknown, have joined forces with Firaxis once again in an effort to create 5 new mods for XCOM 2, none of which appear to be a Long War equivalent, much to my disappointment.

The first of the five planned mods has released today for free, and it features a bunch of new options with which you can tweak your playthrough, things such as messing around with the damage variation of weapons, squad size, soldier stats, and so forth. Beyond that you can look forward to new aliens, perks, and naturally, a whole bunch of new weapons to toy around with.

The Long War Toolbox mod is currently available on the Steam Workshop, and it brings with it support for squads of up to 12 soldiers, an option to randomize the initial stats of your fresh recruits, an option to randomize level-up stats, the 'red fog' malady that reduces your soldier's stats if they took too many hits to the noggin during a mission, the ability to better control camera rotation, and finally, the option to go full on casino mode with freely adjustable damage ranges on weapons. 

As for the other four mods, their features aren't set in stone just yet, but Firaxis did provide a brief snippet on what we can expect to see in the near future:

"The second mod will be the 'Perk Pack' mod, with new soldier classes and dozens of new soldier abilities for players to create additional classes of their own. The 'Laser Pack' mod is the third mod and will be a new weapon tier coming out the same day as the 'Perk Pack'. The fourth mod that will be coming to XCOM 2 is the 'Alien Pack' mod and will add 10 new alien enemies. The fifth and last mod from the Long War Studios team is still in the works and we’ll be sharing more details soon."

While I doubt we'll ever witness an 'official' Long War mod in XCOM 2, there is still no reason to be sad about that as the Long War team is busy making their own turn-based strategy, Terra Invicta.

Its currently in pre-Kickstarter development, so there unfortunately isn't much information to share just yet, but you can keep an eye on it over at the official website.