Maps in Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory contain many elements that you should use to your strategic advantage in firefights. One of the (if not the) most powerful of them: corners. You probably know the situation where some opponent pops up unexpected behind a random corner, shoots you down without giving you any chance and you slam the mouse while shouting “lame corner-camper”…

But let’s have a closer look at

1. why are corners so powerful
2. why it’s not lame but clever to use them
3. how you use them best

@1: As LXasylum points out in his RTCW-movie “how to achieve maximum accuracy”, corners are both an offensive and a defensive weapon. You can lean behind a corner a see whats happening and how many opponents come towards you so you know more than they do which is always a powerful advantage (e. g. let them eat a nade). When you pop up unexpetedly behind a corner you got…

• stamina to strafe which makes you warpy and often harder to trace with the crosshair for you opponent,
• you surprise them which makes you most likely the one to give damage first,
• you may – in narrow ways (think of tc_base, battery, …) – additionally benefit from them doing team damage to each other while standing in line one after another and you’ll be the one who gives damage first when one opponent falls and the next in line is under immediately your crosshair while you continue shooting without interruption

Further more: as fast as you appeared you can also disappear again behind the corner to a safe place to heal you, reload, draw a grenade, etc. which makes a powerful defensive aspect of corners.

@2: I hear people often say it is lame to camp behind corners. That is honestly total crap. First: if you are an experienced player you expect opponents to pop up everywhere – especially corners. And thus you can anticipate it. And second: you can also camp behind corners and do the same. In order to get a good efficiency (which is the relation from kills to death or damage given to damage received), corner camping is a very strong and no lame means.

@3: The means of camping behind corners is most effective, when it is totally unexpected to your opponent. To make and leave it unexpected: vary your positions! But also keep in mind that you don’t get the maximum out of the game if you just camp behind corners, if you just sit and wait… Play agressively but controled and use corners effectively when needed, e.g. when you know opponents are approaching there.

Other useful obsticles
Besides corners there are other, although often less powerful obcticles in maps you can use to your strategic advantage:

1. crates -
   you can hide behind or rather stand behind them so that you are hardly visible and thus hardly hitable to you opponent
2. trees -
   dance behind them for example while you are reloading in a firefight and you got no chance of reloading behind a safe place… the tree may absorb some of the bullets of your opponent.
3. walls -
   where you can hide behind so that you see the full field and your opponent may hardly spot your head
4. …

All in all we can phrase the following rule:

Be invisible to your opponent(s) by using obsticles – especially corners

Wolfenstein: Enemy Terrritory is a very fast game. In close combat often the player wins who hits first, so timing is crucial. While your opponent gets hit it will be much harder for him to aim at you or rather hit you because his screen shakes and you start off the fight as it were more health for you.

Headshots usually do 40/50[*] damage while bodyshots do less. Further more you got to know that the first shot usually hits where you aim at – without any weapon spread!

These two things we combine to the following rule:

Always point your crosshair at head-level where an opponent will most likely appear (or in the middle of two points when the likelyhood of an opponent popping up there is euqal) while you wander through the map.

Note that it doesn’t matter if you are searching for opponents and thus are moving forward or if you are escaping a firefight and are running backwards – your crosshair will stay always at the point where the head of your next opponent will most likely appear, so you minimize the way you got to move your crosshair until aiming directly at your opponent. I sometimes point the crosshair in the middle of two points if the likelyhood is equal for an opponent to pop up from the right and the left side. Avoid uneven and difficult terrrain in order to keep your cross-hair in place.

*Tip: use grooves to be on head-level

In many maps you can additionally use markings on the wall to keep your aim always on track (e. g. grooves on the walls inside buildings, see the thumbnail* or video-example**). Don’t look on the ground except for reviving, placing a mine, stealing an uniform and stuff like that or if you expect an opponent move along beneath you. Be prepared at corners where opponents often camp and enjoy the corner-camper calling you a wallhacker when you got him. Also include obsticles like crates in your pre-or “as if”-aiming when nescessary. First it may be hard to pursue this rule but after some time you will see you benefit because this makes sure two important things for you:

1. you are the first one of both giving damage in the duel
2. you probably initiate the fight with a headshot giving maximum damage

But: Instead of aiming for the forehead of you fictive oponents model, you should go a little deeper (have a look at W:ET’s hitbox-model). If your opponent hits you first – for any reason – from the front, your screen-shakes will make your cross-hair move up (see the analysis from madscientist under “shakes”). So if you aimed for the forehead in such a situation, you not a single bullet probably would have hit.

[*] damage given per headshot may be lower than 50 due to helmet protection on (usually -20% = 40 damagepoints per headshot), long ranges etc. Please find information on how many damage each weapon in ET gives here.

**Video-Example: Use markings on the walls to keep your cross-hair on head-level