So often people say “play the objective”, but what does it mean? This guide will answer this question by doing two things. I’ll tell you what sort of decisions and tactics are best for playing the objective, and then we’ll examine how this applies to Dunkirk B.

DOI has a wave spawn system – a system which gets taken for granted by many players.

In the more popular game modes (Offensive and Invasion), waves are triggered by player death and time. In Invasion, once a few players die, a countdown begins until the next wave. Regardless of how many players die during the countdown, a wave will spawn at the end of it. In Offensive, defenders must regroup to trigger a wave. The regroup only becomes available if enough defenders die. If nobody regroups, then a countdown will eventually activate.

What this system creates is a rhythm. This is different to other games such as Battlefield, where spawns are a set amount of time from the player’s death. In DOI, groups of players respawn. What results is an ebb and flow to the fighting – times of relative danger and times of relative rest.

Attacking and defending share one thing that they revolve around, one thing which all players should be conscious of. It’s the ability of the defenders’ wave to fill in any gaps.

The attacking team is always on a race against time to do whatever they need to do before a new defending wave comes in and plugs any holes. The defending team is always trying to delay the attacker’s breakthrough so that a defending wave can relieve the pressure.

The theory is straightforward. The dichotomy between race and delay informs what a player should do, while the wave defines when the player should do it. Apply this theory to the objective and voila. It’s not that simple, so I’ll explain it to you.

Dunkirk B is one of the largest objectives in the game, with multiple entryways which are quite far from each other. Additionally, the objective is broken into multiple rooms and two levels. All of this adds up to make Dunkirk B an objective that has considerable amount of fighting occur within it and with room for lots of variation too.

On top of that, I think Dunkirk B is fun as an attacker or defender. The size of the objective allows you to be creative with how you approach it.

• Thick black lines are walls.
  
• Breaks in black lines are doors/entryways.
  
• Slightly thinner lines in thick lines are windows.
  
• Blue shading are the objective area.
  
• Dark grey shading for non accessible regions of the building.
  
• Light grey shading/objects for stuff you can jump onto or provide partial cover.
  
• Boxes with notches indicate a camping location and the way it faces.
  
• Checkerboard pattern for the fancy schmancy piano.
  
• Repeating thin lines for stairs.
  
• Names for places I’ve just made up.

Just for some context, I’ve included the full map with some relevant markings.

I think the fighting has four regions.

1. Courtyard (with the gazebo): the Allies can really only hold the courtyard directly after A has been taken, and usually are quickly cleared from the area.
   
2. Middle Buildings: it only takes one or two people to hold these chokepoints, which is good and bad for the Axis. It’s bad because it’s so easy to die here, but good because if you can kill just 1 or 2 people you can have easy access to B.
   
3. Periphery: what I find interesting is that the area immediately surrounding B Objective is usually quite safe (for attackers). If the Axis manage to clear one side of Middle Buildings, the next line of defence is usually within B itself. It’s often safe enough that an Axis officer can drop in supplies directly north of B and Axis can use it.
   
4. B Objective: the one we’re interested in, and a place where a large amount of fighting can take place (compared to other objectives).

If the attackers have made it onto the objective, there’s a pretty good chance that the whole of one side of the defense has been killed. A new defending wave will spawn and be on its way soon – the objective just needs to hold until then.

To understand the importance of delaying, let’s take a look at a mistake I see too often. Attackers pile into the objective and clear a lot of it out. The one or two defenders who remain on the objective don’t realise that they’re the only ones left, and contest the attackers. Even if they are able to kill a few, they die and the objective is taken.

The mistake is that these defenders should have played as passively as possible, or even hidden. If the majority of defenders get wiped out, the remaining defenders need to be on the objective and be turtling. The only way a defender can really know this (the state of their team's defense) on an objective as large as B is to check their maps constantly.

Take a look at the B map and identify the Allied position in the southwestern corner of Long. It’s behind a crate, making it a sneaky spot for a defender to lay prone at, making sure that the attackers can’t capture. The reason it’s sneaky is that you can’t see if anyone’s prone behind the crate unless you actively take a look by going around it – and this simply is something 99% of players won’t do for a place like this. The expectation is that anyone behind the crate would be crouched and looking for kills, not prone and hiding. This is the ultimate delay: one defender being responsible for stopping an entire attacking team.

If the objective begins to blink, you know that there must be an attacker within some known region. This requires a change in behaviour to deal with a possible threat. Too many defenders don’t notice the blinking objective, and even if they do they don’t check to make sure the situation is under control. If the objective is contested, then defenders on the objective need to take steps to ensure that they aren’t shot in the back of the head.

Usually, it’s very easy to work out where the attackers have pushed in. For example, on Dunkirk A the attackers really only come through one door into A. If the objective begins blinking here it’s usually very standard. But Dunkirk B is different because it has multiple entryways.

If the objective starts blinking there are two possibilities: either a) another attacker has entered into the Breach; b) an attacker has come in through the east or west. How can you know which of these possibilities it is? This is where the map becomes crucial. If you check the map and see that the left side has no defenders on it, then it’s pretty clear that the attackers have broken through there.

Attacking an objective through the most obvious entry is usually a bad idea. The problem is that this is what the defenders expect, so you have to confront defenders head on. They’re aiming where they expect you to be and if you’re there then you are likely to be shot. Engaging a defender this way is to give them an advantage over you.

The safest and most common route for attackers into B is through the Breach. While the initial entry is safe, usually it doesn’t yield any results. Since this is the most common route, one or two defenders are usually camping it. In addition, smart defenders will lob a grenade or two in, clearing the Breach.

Basically, the Breach is inert. If you make it into the Breach, what next? Someone saw you go in – they’re waiting for you to poke your head out. From the Breach, it’s exceedingly difficult to take any further action, so it’s essentially a waiting room for death. I think the only time anyone should use the Breach or Front doors is if they know the relevant defending spots have been cleared.

The lesson is that alternative routes into the objective are usually preferable to frontal routes.

If a frontal entry isn’t a good option, then hopefully an alternative entry has the potential to be better. And alternative entries are absolutely better than the obvious route, because that isn’t what defenders plan for. Alternative routes give you the opportunity to shoot people in the side of the head, and that can only be a good thing.

If the Breach is inert, then what are the side doors? They have potential. There’s certainly more risk involved because of the requirement to push through the side building which can have a lot of defenders. But if you make it through the doors of the building, then you have options. You can go upstairs and shoot the balcony boiz in the back, you can head south or north.

Sometimes, running away is better than direct confrontation. In most objectives, this is impossible because they’re so small. But B is large enough that you can run away.

The usual example is an attacker in one of the Upper rooms, and a defender in the other. The normal ending to this story is that one of them dies. If you’re that attacker, then just run back downstairs and try something different. As a sneaky attacker, you want to catch defenders off guard. If the defender knows where you are and is trying to beat you in a peek contest, then heading somewhere else to shoot their buddies is a good plan.

This is the most important part of an attack. If the defenders are trying to get players back onto the objective through a wave, then denying that wave entry is what makes the delaying of the defenders amount to nothing.

Any defender who is trying to enter the objective as quickly as possible will enter through Bar. Experienced players recognise that camping the defender entry through Bar is what allows the objective to be captured.

Spawn camping the defending team is the true “the tables have turned” move. Normally, attackers are the ones being mowed down. While spawn camping defenders often involves not being on the objective, it’s also true that it can be the ultimate in denial of defender entry.

Dunkirk has a perfect camping location for a sneaky person. Identify the German position on the Map Overview to the west of B. It’s a window that looks onto the flat area between B building and the plane. An MG42 in this location can severely delay the defender’s entry onto B, making it a possibly game winning move. Maybe a few defenders who understand the urgency of defending the objective will make the risky run, but most defenders will waste time waiting for someone else to take the MG out.

I love grenades and I’ll take one over a sidearm any day. The vast majority of common camping spots can be cleared with a well placed explosive. Today I’ll teach you one I’ve found.

The kitchen is a very powerful position for a defender. It provides line of sight to the breach, and any attacker who might try to move into the southern areas of the objective from the front room. Most players try to challenge that position front on – difficult and dangerous. The question for me is always this: how can I guarantee a kill with no risk to myself? The answer is this:

Step 1: stand wedged into the corner of the sandbags
Step 2: throw grenade (preferably cooked) through the window
Step 3: rejoice as the grenade arches beautifully through the window, through the room, through the doorway and into the kitchen, coming to rest against the southern wall where it can clear all relevant camping spots in that room

Explosives are an effective way of clearing effective camping spots, which means that you only have to deal with non-camped defenders.

If an attacker sees a blinking objective, they know that their allies have made it onto the objective. The question is: do I take the risk of making it onto the objective to join them? To understand this, I think of it in terms of critical mass – a threshold that must be passed to produce the effect.

Attacking an objective is the same thing. If only one or two attackers are on the objective, they can’t repel a defending wave themselves. There’s a number of attackers required to allow a defending wave to be repelled. If there are more attackers on the objective, not only does the objective capture faster. It also means that the inevitable death of attackers to a defending wave won’t result in a collapse of the attacker’s position within the objective.

This is absolutely true for Dunkirk B. Attackers will naturally suffer attrition on the objective, and it needs to be made up for. At the end of the day, if you see the objective blinking it usually means that it’s time for you to move on as well. But if you check your map and see that most friendlies are dead, and that it’s just the one attacker on the objective, then it probably isn’t worth it. In this case, it’s better to hold the defenders at bay.

Hopefully you can see how these ideas I've discussed are applicable to all objectives. I also think that some of these ideas apply not only to objectives, but also to gameplay in general.

There's a guide by Merry that I must recommend, because you'll see an application of these sorts of ideas to many different objectives. Check it out! https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1243587446