Get Good: How to win a Conquest match in Battlefield 3

Prules is an FPS veteran who has primarily earned his stripes in the Battlefield series. Active in the competitive gaming community and host to a sometimes-serious YouTube channel, he offers his enemy-slaughtering experience to would-be BF3 pros like you!

Conquest mode is simple: capture the flags and hold more than the other team to start bleeding out their tickets. Along with this, every enemy you eliminate is one less ticket for your opponents. What can you do as an individual player on a team to have the biggest impact on the outcome of the match?

It’s all about the flags

When you and your team are in the process of capturing or “burning” a flag, don’t peek out towards the enemy. Stand behind cover and create a disadvantage for them by forcing players to push aggressively. If you are successfully burning a flag, it means that your team has more players on it. Your goal is to make the flag neutralas fast as possible so to stop any more enemies from spawning – peeking is a quick way to get yourself killed and slow down the process that much more. If you get killed, a friendly medic will most likely go after you with their defibrillators, which means you now have at least two people out of position.

When the enemy is taking your “gimmie” flag (the one that will be closest to your deployment), do not continuously take them head on! If they are able to secure it, it means they have plenty of players waiting there for your team to come from your deployment. The best way to handle the situation is to go for their gimmie flag. By trading those flags you are forcing some of their guys off of your gimmie, making it easier to take it back. If the situation is handled well enough, you may even end up with both flags for a good amount of time.

Don’t be afraid to “flash” a flag in the right situation. This means having one player start capturing an unguarded enemy flag in order to move enemies off of more valuable areas, like your gimmie.

Squads: Build a winning combination

The two most useful classes in Conquest are Assault and Engineer. If you happen to be playing infantry-only (this is common in competitive play especially, where there is no passive health regeneration), the Assault is the only class you need. The ability to sustain yourself with medic packs when pushing flags and defibrillating teammates is invaluable. More importantly, the Assault class has the best weapons in the game when considering versatility and damage output. Engineers are vital to Conquest scenarios where vehicles are present; mines are the number one way in decreasing the effectiveness of enemy vehicles on the ground, and repair tools help keep friendly armor in the fight. Tanks are valuable assets, and this is even more so on servers with standard vehicle spawn times. Keeping your armor up and theirs down can easily be the difference between a win and a loss.

Some things to keep in mind as the Assault class:

• When using your defibrillator, you don’t need your crosshair directly on the body. You can go surprisingly far up from the friendly corpse to register a revive. And if you’re ever in a situation where your defibrillator isn’t firing off, make sure the body is clear of any medic packs / ammo packs.

• Medic packs can even be used to destroy some walls and cover by throwing it at it repeatedly!

Some things to keep in mind as the Engineer class:

• Unless you are doing a whole lot of repairing (in competitive play, specifically a part of a tank squad), you are better off getting mines instead to slow down and even disable/destroy enemy armor. To space mines out correctly, place them one-by-one, quickly sprinting and jumping once in between. This way, your mines are just far enough apart so that they won’t all explode amongst themselves when shot at by enemies.

•  Taking down enemy air is not so much the responsibility of Engineers, but instead friendly air and AA vehicles. Only a couple of Engineers on a team should ever need AA rockets, if any.

Moving into position

Covering ground quickly is important to starting the round off well, especially when it’s a map that is infantry heavy or infantry only. Make sure one person in your squad is using the Sprint perk to maximize your team’s mobility.  And keep in mind that jumping while sprinting will make you run faster. While sprinting, jump, and wait around one second after landing before jumping again.

Also remember – slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Conquest is full of flanks, and it’s surprising how much I catch people sprinting right through alleys and other narrow areas. You should generally avoid sprinting whenever you are in an area that might have an enemy. Be patient and be the one that is already aiming down sights. Play around corners as if there  someone was about to peek and shoot at you. That way, when an enemy is waiting, you’ll have the upper hand.

Looking to get serious?

If you have yet to try Battlefield 3 in an organized and competitive environment, it’s easy to start. One group I am familiar with is Team Reddit – all you need to do to get in the action is show up to practices with a mic and the VOIP program Mumble installed (all that information is in their platoon description). Team Reddit focuses on larger Conquest matches, but has plenty of members playing in smaller conquest scenarios like 8v8’s and 5v5’s. Getting involved in competitive play will help you dominate in pugs, and the skills will carry across to plenty of other FPS titles, so I encourage you to give it a try!