I know you are all probably a lot better then my friends, but I am going to post a short guide on my favorite strategy just in case.

Supressing and Flanking

Throughout history this strategy has been used as one of the most effective ways to take out your enemy. It is really pretty simple, one man (or team) shoots off supressing fire at the enemy, keeping them behind their cover, and another man (or team) gets behind, or on the side of the enemy and takes them out. While this seems pretty easy, there are many ways you could mess this up, or just do a bad job at it. So here are my thoughts on each of the two jobs.

Supressing

This is an extremely important part of the strategy, and if the supressing team does a bad job they will get their Flanking team killed. One of the best ways to supress an enemy, is to fire at him relentlessly, even when they are behind cover, as long as you keep shooting, the enemy will most likely be too scared to come out. So if you are going to be doing the supressing, make sure you have a good ammount of ammo and a good AEG or automatic gas gun. An extremely important part of supressing the enemy is to know when to stop, if you keep the enemy behind their cover too long, they might move around and find your Flanking team, so remember to stop shooting once your flanking team is behind the enemy. I know this kinda contradicts what I said earlier about continuous fire, but it is an important part of the job, so I will risk sounding stupid to get the idea across. One of the best ways to keep the enemy supressed is a grenade, tossing a grenade will keep the enemy behind cover for sure, and will provide a great distraction for your flanking team.

Last Resort: if you see your flanking team has been spotted by the enemy, and is being fired at, MOVE IN! The enemy cant fire at both of you, so as long as you are not outnumbered, run towards the enemy with your guns blazing and hope for the best.

Flanking

In order to be a succesfull flanker, you will need to be silent and invisible until you strike. You need to make sure the enemy doesnt even suspect you are there. As a flanker, you will be moving in on the enemy to make the kill, the best way to do this is wait until the enemy is behind their cover, and then quickly run to the side and find new cover. Keep running from cover to cover towards your enemy when they cant see you, and they will never know what hits them. Once you are behind, or right next to, your enemy, make sure you aim perfectly, and then let out a stream of bullets. The more bullets fired, the better, unless you are perfect and can take the enemy out with 1 shot. The main thing you should be focusing on is speed and stealth, if your supressing team runs out of bb's before you are in position, you may be spotted and killed. This is a hard job, so it is not recommended for newbs.

Last Resort: If you are spotted by the enemy, just take cover and give some returning fire, in this instance, you will need to lure the enemy out from their cover, so the supressing team will be able to run up and take them out quickly.

Well, thats pretty much the basics to suprresing and flanking tactics, I'm guessing you all already know this, but better to be safe then sorry.

Note: If you are playing in big teams, you can have two of each team, two supressing teams (set up next to eachother, but not too close) and two flanking teams (each one should take one side I.e. team 1 goes left, team 2 goes right)

Now get out there and flank your enemy!

I edited the title and some of your post but overall a great post!! I didn't need to correct your spelling YES!!! lol well done.. Good post!

Excellent tips, make sure that the flanking team can move BOTH quickly and quietly. me and my friends use this a lot and it gets smashed most of the time by someone moving and making a lot of noise. then you smash th OpFor

What I also find to be a valuable piece of equipment on the field is a good FRS radio with an ear bud. The field I play at every Sunday has this as a part of their mandatory equipment for the field.

The other field I play at once every month or so doesn't. So this past weekend myself and my cousin where the only people on the field that had a radio, and can you say "owned"?

Every time I wanted to move and get behind the enemy, I would radio him to give me some covering fire. With the enemy focused on him shooting, and my ability to time it perfectly with the radio, I was able to get 40 feet behind them, and they didn't have a clue. 3 Kills at once.

Communication is key.

very good article

just because you have radios doesn't mean you will take out the enemy though, you need quardination between team members...and some luck...

Your completely right about the flanking team. They must utilize the element of surprise and "shock & awe" force to significantly do damage to the opposing force. And it is almost a mindset, I AM THE , and go kick some

Speed is very important. Which is part of the reason I've been doing some PT in the mornings, 3 miles a day minimum. Whew, am whipping back into shape.

The suppressing force has to give hell to the opposing force, fire fire fire, light em up!

if you need any more info on supressing and flanking tactics, get Brothers In Arms for the Xbox or PS2, the whole game is based around those tactics, so I learnt pretty quick.

You brought up a good point with radios, but they would only really be used on a much larger scale. I usually see flanking in small teams, where all you really need to do is give an order or flash a hand signal and then both teams know what to do. With larger teams, it would still be flanking, but it wouldnt be the same kind of thing as if you had smaller teams. With larger teams it would just become a fight with one enemy squashed between the two teams, which is always good, but not as amazingly efficient as flanking in small teams against a small ammount of enemies.

"Those who dare wins." SAS Motto.

The problem is many players aren't willing to run, nor flank.

Why?

Because of the lack of team cohension. If the hits the fan, the team has to remember what it is doing, suppressing fire, and to hold the position, I've seen teams fall apart, because they fail to hold the position, rally point at a wrong spot. The opposing force launches a counter attack, the flanking force doesn't move due to lack of suppressing fire, and everything just falls apart.

Having a video game as a platform for development of tactics, makes me crack up..., it works only to a certain extent

A few good things to pick up from my side of the fence:
Shift fire/lift fire: When the flanking team gets within close range of the onjective, the team leaser calls for a SHIFT FIRE - This is when all the suppressors shift their fire away from the objective to the side opposite the flanking team. This allows the sound of gunfire to keep the enemy scared while minimizing the chances for blue-on-blue. LIFT FIRE is to be called when the flanking force is inside the objective area. The suppressive team then switches to semiauto (In RL) and engages individual targets after identifying them as threats.
After the flanking team has cleared through the objective, the squad rallys on the flankers near the objective (but not in it for fear of booby traps, which is usually a moot point in airsoft) and pulls a 360 degree perimiter. SL takes a report of liquids (water), ammo, casualties and equipment (LACE report), calls up the chain and moves out. There is a very specific series of events in a chain that have to go down to get around or through an obstacle. The best way to take out hardened positions is with air and indirect fire, but until we star having A10s dropping 20MM plastic, we have to do it old school.

Good tip! I been shot by friendlys because of trying to flank while friendlies provide suppressive fire.

My one friend has a sister that goes to Westpoint, and he said they do a lot of America's Army. Supposedly she sits in a room with all these computers and everyone has headsets. I've only played a cupla times, so I havent had any of these westpoint cadets rip me a new one, but he plays every day and told me he got torn up by a squad. Now I dunno if this just for fun on there free time, or if this is part of their training, but im just throwin it out there.

I just stopped playing Brothers In Arms, and that game emphasizes flanking and teamwork. Pretty good game. Everyone should try it out.

Well, a game will only be good simulator if it takes in things like whether, and stamina of the player (I hate when you can do nothing but run all day long in those games) actual ammunition capabilities (it gets really heavy, really fast) and actively simulate adrenaline and things of that nature. And the bigest of all is the fact that any bullet wound that isn't stopped be a vest will more than likely kill you, if not take you completley out of action. IE leg shots and mid arm shots.

Until then it really won't mirror anything real. Those type of games, the ones that are so real, are always really hard and will never be popular. So that is the only role it can play is a simulator.

It's my first post so I want to say hello to everyone:)

In real life, it's said that 1 bullet in radius of within 1 m from the enemy per 1 second is enough to successfully lay a suppressing fire. Of course in ASG the radius can be a bit lower and number of bullets per second can be a bit higher but you don't need continous fire to surpress "enemy".

Nice Forum. I was just wondering
if their should be a sniper in the flanking team
so that he could find a good spot on a tree and
take down the opponent from above. Cause when
experiaced players find out that they are getting sniped
they start to panic and get confused! They also may scatter.
when they scatter it will be easyer bait for the other flankers.
It also gives the suppressors a chance to close up.

Flanking only works on a team in a bunker or that stays together. A team out on patrol, should spread out. A classic newbie mistake is to flock together. You only want to do that in a bunker with protection on all sides....otherwise you WILL get flanked.

Teams moving forward, should spread themselves out so that they are just within eyesight of each other and move slowwwwwwwlllly. If you are trying to hold a position, and you don't have a bunker, you should still spread out....to avoid being flanked. By staying within eyesight you will keep track of your teammates. By spreading out you will make it suicide to try to cross or flank....anyone doing that will be in shooting range of two team members....unless they can completely bypass the team and give chase.

One good tactic is, that the whole team advances in chain(line) formations maintaining about 5m gaps between each other. In front of this chain are the sentries, few in front of the squad and two on both flanks. Their distance to the main unit should be around 25-35m.
When the sentries have made contact with the enemy they lay covering fire for the main unit to advance to same level as they are. Meanwhile the sentries on the flanks, immediatly after the main unit is in position, will flank the enemy unit. Their main task is to prevent the enemy from flanking their squad.
When the flanks are secured two soldiers from the main unit will move to the flanks, meet with the sentries there and engage the enemy. The idea is to wipe the enemy squad from the face of the earth.
All of the units will avoid using automatic fire, but should rather fire two round "bursts" at identified enemies.

If the enemy somehow manages to destroy one of the flanks, or the pressure there is overwhelming, the flanks should retreat back to the main unit, which would provide cover. When the flanks have reached the rest of the squad the whole unit should retreat, regroup and try again.

LOA! LOA! LOA! If anyone can tell me what that means, I'll tell you how the US Army does it...

LOA= Limit of Advance/Line of Advance depending on where you learn it. I learned it as Limit of Advance and that's what I'll be referring to. The Four F's of combat. Find'em, Fix'em, Flank'em, Finish'em.

Ok, this act is very easy to mess up. First, movement. You have Alpha and Bravo, maybe even a Charlie element. Whatever formation your in, when you make contact the pointman, if possible, automatically orients himself to the center of the fight. The SL or TL will be shouting "Get on line! Get on line!" Hopefully you know what a skirmish line is if you don't, it's merely a line of soldiers. One team get's on line and starts laying it on. This is suppressive fire. The purpose? Keeping the enemies head down to allow other teams to manuever around to either flank.

If you have radios, now is the time to use them. For the sake of simplicity, the suppressing unit is Alpha, maneuvering unit is Bravo. The flanking unit will move in generally a line, the first person in this line will move five to six paces past the last enemy personell and just drop. The will first person orient himself so that their is some space between the last man of Alpha and Bravo team. Five, maybe six paces. Why? So you don't shoot eachother. The rest of that unit will orient itself to the first man. Make sure the people are spread out, atleast arms length distance if not more. They have to be spread out enough that the element encases the entire enemy element but does not restrict comunication between soldiers. If your follwing me, the two units, Alpha and Bravo should form a L shape around the enemy with a space where the two lines meet. This entire time Alpha is still suppressing. Bravo has to move fast or Alpha will run out of ammo.

Bravo reports in" Bravo on-line" or whatever you want. At this point, Alpha SL will shout "Shift fire!" EVERYONE ECHOES THIS COMMAND! Unless you have radios. When I say everyone I mean everyone Bravo element as well. Alpha team will shoot to the left or the right of the actual target. No so far off target that the enemy realizes they're not direct targets, but enough that they can hear rounds going by/bouncing off. While Alpha is doing that, Bravo rises and gets on line. When they're ready, Alpha relays" lift fire lift fire!" EVERYONE ECHOES IT. ALPHA STOPS SHOOTING! Bravo moves on line, sweeping through the target, making sure to stay on line and shooting only what is in your lane of fire. When Bravo reaches the last person of Alpha, they stop and echo " LOA LOA LOA!" Limit of Advance.... Alpha then rises and sweeps through and when they get to the last person of Bravo....LOA.

When all of this is done. TL's and SL's meet in the middle and start making a perimeter. TL's will position one point man in the direction of their original travel and then everything will go off of him. 360 degrees of cover with TL's telling their men where to go, don't just get up and move. When that's done, LACE report by TL's. TL's report to SL's you do what you gotta do, continue on mission.

Let it be known, that's how the manual says it should be done. Anyone who has been in combat or even an airsoft battle knows things don't go according to plan.

Hope ya'll can take something from this.

Pelizzoni out.

nice guide

ABSOLUTE BEST WAY TO SUPPRESS AND FLANK start supressing fire of course but then send out a flanking team in both directions even if it's just one person each. Throughout this whole manuver the suppressing team should continue fire. They should try to stay hidden until the get in range then one of the teams should open fire. The other team should then keep hidden while getting as close as possible. The enemy should be so busy trying to defend against the first flanking team that they don't notice the second team right next to them. The second team should finish them off and there you go. I've been the leader of the second team before and it works like a charm. One time we even crept unoticed into the enemies cover and helped them "defend" against the first assault team with a little dry fire. By the time they noticed us we called a "coup de gras" on the whole enemy team.


by the way coup de gras means you point your gun at their temple forcing them to surrender

Don't forget that whilst your all preparing a master plan for a flanking mission that they could be doing the exact same.