Insurgency: Sandstorm – How to Be a Good Commander

Five steps to lead your team to Victory!

Step #1: Identify Your Role

Note: Credit goes to Zengit

The Commander class is nothing more than a Rifleman + Binoculars, which you can use to call in fire support. There are plenty of classes in the game with some kind of a bonus.

Just because the name is “Commander” doesn’t mean that you are empowered to give your team orders, they don’t have to do what you tell them.

Your job is same as anyone’s – use your class to do the objective, that’s it.

Step #2: Be the Best You Can

If you want to influence the decisions of your team, you have to earn their trust and respect.

Don’t leave all the work to your teammates – Play the objective and don’t stay all the way behind. To be a part of your team is to do what your team does.

Show good gameplay – Play safe and smart. Staying alive should be your #1 priority, but do take risks – engage in firefights and take objectives. Your goal is for other players to think “He’s a good player” or “He’s ok”. You don’t have to be a pro, but just don’t rush buildings and die after spraying 5 enemies.

Use your microphone – Share information, where you see enemies are coming from, what kind of attacks are coming, what kind of fire support you plan to call in.

If you write all that and don’t use your microphone:

• A) you will get killed while typing.
• B) the messages wont be seen or will get ignored.

Speaking into your microphone is a sign of confidence, people will have more respect for you if you are confident about what you are saying.

Step #3: Give Advice

Most often people don’t talk, people do their objective and kill enemies.

If you see a situation where your team is doing something wrong, or could do better, give advice.

For example, you see that enemies are both on left and right of the objective. Your whole team is running in the middle. You understand that they will get surrounded if they run in the middle, so you say “Guys, there are enemies both on left and right, I think it’d be better if we went from the left side, that way we aren’t surrounded”.

Or, as the Commander class you hear “Enemy mortars incoming”, then you say “There are enemy mortars incoming, it’d be best if you got into some building”.

By giving advice after advice that actually works and helps your team survive and get the objective, the team will start understanding that you do give good pieces of advice afterall. They will start to trust you more, and eventually they will actually want to listen to you.

Somehow, after just giving advice, you have gradually become the leader, everyone is interested in doing what you think should be the best for the team.

Step #4: Using your Binoculars

Using your binoculars depends on how your team cooperates with you. Best performance of the binoculars come when the team is compliant.

Always inform your teammates about what kind of support you are about to call and where!

As a golden rule, try to save the Gunship support for the last objective and the Minigun support for the last or before last objective. Though if the situation is critical and there is no other choice, use these earlier. (Security)

If your team complies with your advice to stay away from the objective, do use the Gun-Run, Rocket Artillery, Bomber Drones and other useful supports.

Otherwise, don’t use these at all – you will kill your teammates who are already on the objective by the time the support has arrived and it will ruin your reputation even more.

Try not to use smoke supports at all – they take long and serve no good purpose.

Cool tip: If you are Insurgents and your team has to defend an objective, make sure your team has gas masks and order a chemical mortar on your position. This will make it longer for enemies to come in. If they don’t have a gasmask, they will die, so that’s a big bonus.

Step #5: Dealing with Absent Observer’s

Nothing more annoying than Observer’s who are 100m away from you, when you are about to make an important support call.

A good minute or so before you do a support call – check the TAB menu for the name of Observer and call him out on the microphone, asking “Hey (name), can you come to me? I need to call in support”.

If they don’t there is nothing you can do, you have to deal with it. Being outrageous, teamkilling the Observer or harassing him is only going to show your teammates that you are impatient and emotional.

Instead, ask the Observer to come closer a few times, if he doesn’t, leave all the Binocular job for the last objective (where observer is probably going to be in the same room with you).

If you remain calm, one of the teammates may want to help you and become an Observer himself.

Conclusion

A leader is not the one who gives orders. A leader is the most powerful member of the team, who knows what’s the best for it.

Leader – from the word LEAD, not PUSH. Don’t push your teammates to do something.

That’s why, if you want to take on the Commander class and actually try to command your team, become a good player first. No matter how good your communication skills are, if you aren’t the one who knows what’s best for the team, people will not take your advice, therefore will not listen to you.

If you are a relatively new player – learn to play all the other classes first, then try be a commander.