Tonk, boom. Tonk, boom. That’s the sound of me hopping behind the wheel of a M1 Abrams in Battlefield 6, immediately driving over two land mines, and blowing up. In just a few short days with the full version of Battlefield 6, land mines have become the bane of my existence.
I haven’t decided yet if that’s because they’re totally overpowered or if I’m just a dummy, but what I do know is that “land mine spam” is real. The current best practice for anti-tank mines, as far as I can tell, is to plaster absolutely every road, junction, and pile of dirt with cylindrical death traps and hope that drivers are too distracted to look out for them.
It’s working so far: Whether I’m driver, gunner, or a humble passenger, at least half of my tank and jeep escapades have ended with the sudden and frankly terrifying boom of a land mine.
For example, this is what the average road on Mirak Valley looks like right now:
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There are, of course, some countermeasures: Later tank unlocks include a mine sweeper function that will automatically spot hostile traps, but almost nobody has it right now. You can also spot and shoot them yourself if you look closely, but there are so darn many of them that even a vigilant gunner and careful driver can easily slip up.
I thought that was the extent of counterplay, but did you know that you can actually drive right over mines without setting them off? Thanks to a random protip from DICE lead producer David Sirland on X, I now know what the “Crawl” button is for in tanks.
“Drive slower. Tanks can creep-drive = no explode,” he wrote.
You can hold Ctrl (or crouch on controller) to “creep drive,” as Sirland put it, which slows you down to a crawl and lets you drive right over mines without setting them off. Apparently this has been a thing since at least Battlefield 3, though I’m not sure every Battlefield since has had it.
After a tense field test on the streets of Iberian Offensive, I can confirm it works. It’s sort of like holding shift to move silently in Counter-Strike, except instead of trying not to give away your position, you’re trying not to spontaneously die.
The only real downside to crawling is that, as the name suggests, it’s dreadfully slow. I’d rather it not be necessary to inch around at a snail’s pace, but with the current density of mines (especially on the roads around flags themselves), crawling plus manual mine clearing is the safest bet.
Though maybe, just maybe, engineers shouldn’t get so many dang mines. The class spawns with three, and with a supply box, you can hold even more. If there’s a limit to how many mines one player can set down, I’ve yet to discover it. Is a smaller mine limit in order, or should drivers just adapt?
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