What is the skull and sickles icon in Warzone? Squad wipe streaks explained

The race to the highest squad wipe streak starts in season two.

Enemy troops in different outfits battle in Call of Duty's Warzone.
Image via Activision

There are plenty of high-stakes challenges Call of Duty players can undertake, but Warzone season two introduces a new way for the game’s best to really test themselves with the introduction of squad wipe streaks.

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Content creators and players in the Warzone community love finding new ways to one-up each other. Warzone 2 embraced that competitive spirit by introducing the Champions Quest contract, which made it possible to get a nuke and end the match early.

Players made it their personal mission to get as many nukes in a row as possible and find new and creative ways to pull off the feat. MW3’s iteration of Warzone brought the Champions Quest contract back, and squad wipe streaks were created for season twp with that same competitive mindset.

What are squad wipe streaks in Warzone?

An operator in neon-like paint defends a bombsite from enemies in Warzone.
A new evolution of the nuke. Image via Activision

New to season two, squad wipe streaks track the number of squad wipes you achieve back-to-back within a set period of time. In the top right of the screen during a Warzone match, next to the remaining teams, players, and your kills, the skull and sickles icon keeps count of your squad wipe streaks total.

Here is the simple three-step process for the new challenge.

  1. Fully eliminate one team.
  2. A countdown bar will appear in the top right, and the squad has 90 seconds to eliminate the next team.
  3. If you can eliminate the next team before the clock expires, the streak continues.

After each squad wipe, a white flare shoots up from the last enemy player and is visible for 10 seconds for opposing teams to see.

Squad wipes are tracked per match, and players can look best at their personal best streak. There will be a calling card and emblem rewards for reaching squad wipe milestones in season two and beyond—but chaining together multiple squad wipes isn’t an easy task as teams will assuredly be geared up and ready to fight the moment you wrap up the first set of kills.

Be aware of your surroundings when you start up your streak and watch the area around you when that flare goes up, otherwise you might just become part of someone else’s own squad wipe streak.

Author
Image of Ryan Lemay
Ryan Lemay
Ryan graduated from Ithaca College in 2021 with a sports media degree and a journalism minor. He gained experience as a writer with the Morning Times newspaper and then Dexerto as a games writer. He mainly writes about first-person shooters, including Call of Duty and Battlefield, but he is also a big FIFA fan. You can contact him at ryanlemay@dotesports.com.