Rifleman
Riflemen make up the bulk of the force and are equipped with rifles, grenades and support equipment. Vitally important for both taking and holding ground.
Today’s topic is the Rifleman class: the core of the team, for which there are unlimited slots available. The base of the class is the standard issue main battle rifle and bayonet, but later unlocks will include reserve issue rifles and rifle grenades. The rifleman is also the backbone of the team and can assist other players in a number of ways, being able to resupply ammunition to teammates, provide fire support with their rifle grenades, and more.
Italian Fante Rifleman
The Italian ‘Fante’ soldier (Fante translates as ‘infantryman’) is equipped with the standard issue Modello M1891 Carcano rifle, while the Austro-Hungarian KuK ‘Landwehr’ carries the M1895 Mannlicher. Riflemen who want to use rifle grenades will have to surrender their bayonets. For secondary equipment, Riflemen can take a single hand grenade, or the ammo box - more on that later in the post!
The Austro-Hungarian army had changed from white to dark blue uniforms towards the end of the 19th century, and they would go on to switch again to a darker uniform in late 1915 - of course many troops would continue wearing the blue uniform seen below. Experienced Riflemen will unlock the newer uniform as a visual customization option.
Austro-Hungarian Landwehr Rifleman
Ammo Crates and Resupply
One of the Rifleman’s signature abilities is the ammo crate. In longer engagements your allies may run low on ammunition (especially Assault troops using light machine guns) and in these situations a well placed ammo crate can make all the difference between a successful assault or one that runs out of steam. There are two basic strategies for good ammo crate placement - put it near a spawn point, which will give newly arriving reinforcements a starting ammo boost without them even needing to use the crate, or place them near the front line behind cover, where troops in action can grab fresh bullets and magazines as they need them.
The ammo crate is a perk, but there’s also an ammo box secondary equipment option - this allows the Rifleman to resupply his comrades directly, but more importantly he can resupply static weapons like heavy machine guns, mortars, and even mountain guns. These heavy weapons can provide a lot of extra firepower but run through ammo quickly, so this is an extremely valuable service to perform for the team!
Handing out ammo with the ammo box.
Rifle Grenades
We looked at rifle grenades in detail back in blog number six but to recap, Riflemen can use rifle grenades to provide explosive fire support at long range. It takes a bit of time to load the grenade and some practice to get good at aiming them, but they can be very powerful.
Using a rifle grenade in fighting at the Gorizia train station.
Perks and Bandages
For more combat oriented Riflemen, you can get more accurate rifle grenades with more spares carried, or a stability boost for more accurate rifle fire. Most of the perks are support based though - the default Ammo Carrier option allows the construction of the ammo crate discussed above, Point Man increases your impact when capturing areas - you count for more than one person, which is very important when both enemy and friendly troops are present in a capture area, since only the team with the most soldiers present will make progress towards capturing the zone. Another option is the Chaplain perk, which doubles your bandaging speed. What are bandages? In short, when you get wounded in Isonzo you will probably find yourself bleeding. When this happens you will continue to slowly lose health, and can die. To stop the bleeding, someone needs to apply a bandage. You can do it yourself, but it’s much faster if a teammate helps you out.
An ammunition crate.
Class report complete!
With this closer look at the Rifleman, we’ve covered all the class options available in Isonzo! Every class has different strengths and weaknesses, and they’ll need to work together to fight at their best.
You can wishlist Isonzo on Steam!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1556790/Isonzo/
See you next time, soldiers... to end this devblog, we leave you with a little surprise. Exciting news will follow June 14. Stay tuned!
