To win in Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood, you must know authentic WWII squad tactics. To win you must fight as a team and lead your soldiers as a real WWII squad leader would have led them, capitalizing on their strengths and protecting their weaknesses from the enemy.
Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood involves a lot of urban, close in-town and village fighting. You will fight beyond Hill 30 and move out of the hedgerows and into the urban areas. The tactics in urban combat are similar to the tactics used in more open ground. The difference between the two is distance. Narrow alleys and destroyed buildings can offer little room for maneuver. Fighting in villages and towns, therefore, requires greater tactical skill as all the areas on the urban battlefield can quickly become "kill zones" with little room for movement or escape.
To fight this close quarter fight you will employ your WWII Parachute Infantry Rifle squad. The squad is divided into teams of complementary capabilities that derive from the various weapons carried by each team member. The Assault Team usually consists of three soldiers armed with rapid firing M1 carbines and M1 Thompson submachine guns. The Fire Team usually consists of three soldiers armed with M1 Garand rifles.
To win in urban combat the player must employ the Fire and Assault team using the "Four F's": Find, Fix, Flank and Finish the enemy. The player must find the enemy first, fix him with overwhelming fire, maneuver an assault element to the enemy's right or left flank, and then order the assault team to close with and destroy the enemy.
Find the enemy first! This is more difficult on the mostly urban battlefields of Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood.
FIND the enemy first: In urban battle, finding the enemy is more difficult and usually accomplished at much shorter ranges. Finding the enemy first gives your squad a tremendous tactical advantage in an urban fight, since blundering into an enemy trap in a narrow alley is certain destruction. To find the enemy first, the squad leader must scout, or send a team, to check the ground before moving into potentially unsafe territory. It is an important military rule to occupy the high ground on a battlefield and in urban combat two or more story buildings can make excellent observation posts. In Earned in Blood, the player should scout ahead or use his Assault Team to scout and make first contact with the enemy. A cardinal rule of squad tactics is to always engage the enemy on your terms, not his.
