Trench Raiding Guide

A primer dedicated to perfecting the art of attacking enemy positions.

Introduction

I decided to make this guide as an attempt to educate people on how they can take trench raiding from an action of brute force, to one that is calculated and deliberate. Trench raiding was a natural response to the stagnating front lines of The Great War and in a game like Verdun it is no surprise that history has lessons to impart.

If you have any questions/comments/etc. or would like an extra person on your Friends list for Verdun, feel free to add me. I will try to update this guide with any critique I receive, with pertinent game updates, or any new raiding methods I encounter.


***I am hoping to update this for Tannenberg within the coming months.***

The Art of Aggression

Make no mistake, aggression is the key to successful raiding operations. You will not take ground sitting in your own trench or crouched at the bottom of a crater in no man's land. The only way to advance is to assault, capture, and hold the enemy's fortified positions. A large amount of the work involved in a proper raid is centered around simply getting to the enemy position intact, but even a well-organized assault will fail if it is unable to clear the wire, get into the trench, and cause serious chaos and destruction.

A concerted effort to take a heavily defended position requires a quick change in mentality from the cautious and deliberate advance into position, then shifting to the reckless and violent aspect necessary to clear out dug-in defenders. With practice and teamwork, you can get this process down to a rhythm and find at least marginal success in your attack. I say marginal because Verdun indiscriminately kills the player like few other games - even when executed to perfection, the stray artillery shell can ruin all in an instant.

Overall the key is to remain aggressive and objective-oriented. Your KDR will likely not be all that impressive as a trench raider. It's a messy business and the first few into the trench may take a few or several with them, but they rarely last. This is why it is important to compress as much violence as possible into as short a time period as possible, more on this in later sections but creating chaos is the key - turn into a whirling dervish of pistol rounds, trench knives, and grenades.

The Approach

Getting into a position that allows a proper trench attack is a huge difficulty. Crossing no man's land, even when the terrain provides generous cover, is usually costly. Failure to take a defensive line is typically due to the failure of the attackers to get into position - or to do so with sufficient numbers. There are a few key points that need to be addressed to overcome this failing.

Spacing is extremely important during an approach. Clustered troops are easier targets for artillery and grenades, and are easier for the enemy to track and fire on. Four people in one crater can all be suppressed by the same machine gun. This is bad practice. Advance by bounds, and focus on short, quick movements from cover to cover. When you leave a piece of cover to advance, you should already know where you're heading. It's very helpful to have a good knowledge of the map to make this easier. Canadian trench raiders would actually construct replica sections of the enemy trenches they were planning to raid so they would have a thorough mental picture of their objectives before ever going over the top. The nature of Verdun allows players to do the same as you are fighting over the same pieces of terrain each time.

An additional aspect of an approach is to avoid being seen if possible. This may mean taking a long or indirect path, or spending a lot of time prone - but know that there is a huge pay-off.

The basic rule of defensive operations is that if you try to defend the enemy everywhere, you will be able to defend nowhere. In less poetic terms, this means that an enemy that is spread out along an entire defensive position is very susceptible to an attack that is concentrated and focuses on achieving local superiority. Local superiority is the goal of your assault. If the defenders spot incoming attackers, they will stack that section of a trench and saturate the area with indirect fire and grenades. The less they know about your presence, the harder you will hit them. We're not here to test our skills in a rifle duel - we're here to take ground.

The Pause

If your squad has managed to reach the enemy lines and are now waiting for the moment to go over the bags and conduct the assault in earnest, a lot of the hard work is now done but this is also where many people make a mistake of being too hasty. It's the job of the NCO to try and stay alive and allow reinforcements to spawn on his position at this point. Before the squad begins the assault, they need to be at full strength. It is worth waiting the X number of seconds to conduct the raid.

When you have a full squad in position, it is again the job of the NCO to signal the assault. This is easily done with the NCO's left-click ability which produces audio and visual queues to the squad that make for an excellent way to synchronize the attack. When the NCO blows the whistle, everyone that can tosses grenades, switches to pistols/blades/clubs/etc. and goes over the bags. The NCO should probably go over last. If the attack is successful, he will allow the inevitable casualties to spawn on his position.

The grenades are a very important part of this procedure. They provide an excellent way to "recon" what is in the trench you are attacking without actually risking looking over. They are also a great way to soften up the target.

To quickly touch on multiple squads performing an assault - this will be hard to coordinate unless you are in a large group of players. That being said, I have managed to organize this a handful of times, and each time it has resulted in a quick acquisition of the position. Casualties are less and the capture timer goes down before you even realize it. Force multipliers are just as applicable in Verdun, and 8 raiders as opposed to 4 produces exponentially violent results. As an aside, two squads in a raid is almost always more than enough to get the job done if casualties are kept low. Your teammates that are less aggressive still contribute with suppressing fire and acting as one more direction that the enemy is pulled in - the more things you can force your opponent to juggle the more likely that he will drop something.

Over The Bags

There's not a great deal to be written here. This is the point where it comes down to old fashioned close quarters combat. Pistols and automatic weapons will be very useful, as will grenades and blades/clubs. Everything will boil down to how much damage your raiders can do, and how quickly they can do it. Slowly wearing the enemy down as they respond to your attack is not as effective as dropping a lot of them as quickly as possible. The capture timer is influenced by the numbers on both sides. The more enemy bodies you can get out of the trench, the faster that timer will count down to a capture.

On maps where visibility is hampered (Champagne being the worse) take a quick look at your minimap before the assault. Try to build a quick picture in your head of where friendlies are, so if you jump into a particularly shadowy section, you won't need to worry about making that split-second identification of friend or foe.

A more advanced trick for a raiding party is the use of a blocking section. In actual practice this consisted of machine guns providing supporting fire and small groups of soldiers that would actually deploy wire or other obstacles in the enemy trench to prevent reinforcements from moving laterally to the aid of their victimized comrades. As of yet there are no user-deployed obstacles but a machine gun deployed in a position to fire along the length of the trench (enfilading fire) can cut-off the section of the trench you are attacking from support. Even if the gunner is taken out early on, every person he can take down is one less problem for the main party.

Chemical Warfare

A special note on smoke and gas: Do not underestimate the ability of either to aid in your assault. You can use them to screen off the area of trench you're attacking - either called in along the defensive line or just behind your target to make it difficult for recently-spawned reinforcements to fire at you. If you're confident in your raider's ability to handle themselves at extremely close ranges, you can place them directly on your target and leave the rest to chance.

With gas especially, put your gas masks on in advance and go over the top right as the gas is dispersing. Catching the enemy while they're donning their own masks is an excellent moment to strike. Also, Entente squads should consider this more often. The German gas mask obscures vision much more than the ones used by Entente soldiers and visibility is a huge advantage in a gas cloud.

Words To Live (Or Die) By

These are just some quick maxims and observations that might serve as helpful reminders and tips.
• Stand behind the man with the flamethrower.
  
  
• The enemy is often most vulnerable when you have just repelled his attack and he is retreating to his lines. Pursue.
  
  
• Stay spaced out and make the enemy work for those artillery/grenade kills.
  
  
• Keep an eye on your minimap.
  
  
• A machine gun placed at the top of a firing step will attract a sniper's bullet. A machine gun placed laterally in a trench can be the deciding factor in an attack or defense.
  
  
• Be more patient than the enemy, it drives them mad.
  
  
• Feelings of moustache or fancy hat envy are perfectly natural.
  
  
• If you died with grenades still in your bomb bag, you died poorly.
  
  
• Be generous with artillery. Remind the enemy they are playing a game set in WWI.
  
  
• Stand behind the man with the flamethrower.

Get Immersed!

Verdun is a game that heavily relies on it's setting. Take some time to learn about The Great War and you'll probably find yourself being able to appreciate the game more than you already have. Here are just a few quick links to start you off:

The Great War YouTube Channel

The July Crisis[en.wikipedia.org]

WWI Atlas[commons.wikimedia.org]

WWI Artillery Pieces[www.militaryfactory.com]

Holger Herwig's The Marne[www.amazon.com]

[lukejack0104]

Great guide!

[Tractics]

good guide

[Sergei_ami]

Simple Summary of Guide: Plan-Imaginate enemy area - attack - attack -- sneak -- attack -- pause defensive mode-- arty-arty-mustard gas- smoke - rush into enemy trench -- defense -- repeat again until match end :-)

[Papa Dangles]

Wonderful guide! Thank you

[Hans Strudel]

I do think it would be useful to put in a section for bunkers, like on Ypres (are there any other maps with bunkers?) as these are brutally difficult to assault without close coordination, gas, and for Central Powers, the wex. Great guide though :D (I'd be willing to help contribute anything I can, including being the guinea pig)

[Zr0]

Fantastic guide, very interesting

[Battlechief]

I will say, wonderful guide, even with a hint of humor, important key points are here..

[Gavin The War Criminal]

Great Guide!

[andre]

honestly I didnt really like the ending to sicario like the rest of the movie felt like it was building up to something dramatic or even tragic happening but instead its this dude going in there and killing a bunch of children like jesus it was pretty bad ass ill give it that but like come on i want to see the main character get murdered or something ya know? play with my emotions a bit more, but the ending part after that where he puts the gun to her and makes her sign the contract actually was pretty good, that whole sequence after he leaves the building too helped a lot i think, so all in all i rate Sicario 4/5 stars.

[Shello]

This made me laugh more than a few times, and I'm a huge fan of the World Wars, so it was awesome to see a guide that practiced actual tactics! Thanks man! One of the best guides in ANY game I've seen. Read every single word