A single NLAW anti-tank missile launcher can cost up to $40,000. An RPG-7, probably the most prolific anti-tank weapon in the world costs $2,500 per unit. Even a disposable AT-4 rocket launcher costs almost $1,5k. What's an army on a budget supposed to do? Here's a secret the military industrial complex doesn't want you to know: TNT only costs ~$10 per kg.
So instead of wasting money on expensive targeting equipment, unnecessary ballistic computers, superfluous rocket motors and "training" people to actually use all this effectively why don't we do things the old fashioned way - instead of shoving a PS5's worth of microelectronics into the missile to guide the explosive to the vehicle, we let the vehicle come to the explosive!

The ADHD AT zoomer with the attention span of a goldfish will run across the map at the slightest sign of a vehicle, wear out his W key and take 1/8 of the health bar off of a BTR.

But you, you are much worse.
You are the poor bastard who slaves away, digging away into the dirt unseen and unsung. The rest of the team is off having "fun" but you, you have a higher cause. You are the thing that goes bump in the night, you are the nightmare of crewmen everywhere. You will turn them into devout libertarians by instilling a primal and insurmountable distrust of roads into the very core of their being. For the rest of their lives they won't be able to hear the click of a ballpoint pen without conjuring into their mind images of their entire squad broken and scattered across the terrain in a shower of steel and fire, breaking down into a mess of tears in the middle of a business meeting.



If you have what it takes to do this to your fellow man and live with yourself, you've come to the right place.

In update 3.2 AT mines were updated to introduce much more nuance to them. You can't set them off by simply driving over them anymore, they have to physically come into contact with a vehicle's wheels or treads, which left me with some questions. What do these new restrictions boil down to and how can I use them most effectively?

A combat engineer can carry up to 4 AT mines in their kit at the same time, depending on their faction and kit (RIP British & Canadian engineer kit, the day of the rake hath come). An engineer can have up to 10 mines on the map at a single time, where the first mine placed will disappear if an 11th is placed. Mines can also be picked up and placed back into your inventory if you interact with them in an undug state.

I did some testing offline on Jensen's range regarding the damage and radius of the mines with US and RUS vehicles. Note that according to the game itself damage against vehicles may not be the same as on live multiplayer servers.

First of all both TM62 and M15 AT mines appear to do the same damage to the same vehicle (MATV M2400 CROWS, 800 damage according to this console command:)
despite the M15 AT mine containing 10.3kg of Comp B explosive, or 1.83x the TNT equivalent of the TM62 mine which has 7.5kg of TNT. This is probably done for game balance reasons.

Left: vehicle health after hitting M15, right: health after TM62

According to this spreadsheet [docs.google.com] I found anything heavier than a BRDM-2 scout car needs two simultaneous mine strikes to be instantly destroyed, anything heavier than a Stryker or LAV III needs 3 mines (practically just Warriors and Bradleys), and MBTs require 4 mines to completely take out.

Second of all the damage of two mines next to each other do not stack if only one of them is triggered by a vehicle. This means that if a mine explodes next to another one, the second mine does not go off and does no damage to the vehicle, it simply disappears and does no damage.


The second mine is gone, and the vehicle simply wouldn't have survived the second explosion

The range for this appears to be >6m, measured with an observation marker. You won't have an observation mark available when laying mines in the field, so you can use your footsteps as a ruler. 6m is equivalent to 6 audible footsteps at walking speed while standing.


That being said two mines being set off simultaneously will both explode and both deal damage to the vehicle even if they are within 6m of each other. There seems to be a short time before the spine chilling *click* and the actual explosion, where the mines also become impervious to other explosions. This is not confirmed, but is based on my own observations.

This kills the BTR.

Another piece of data supporting this hypothesis is the fact that if you move at high speed down a hill and hit a mine you can avoid some or all of the damage by simply moving out of the way of the explosion before it goes off.


In the video you can hear not one, but two mines being set off and the vehicle still takes less damage than when being hit by one mine at low speed.

The third discovery is that the mine does not have to be hit directly on the pressure plate in order for it to detonate. In real life an anti-tank mine is composed of the explosive charge, the large cylindrical piece underneath, and a pressure plate that is connected to a fuse, which is left exposed in the game when the mine is buried. TNT and most explosives by themselves are stable enough to not be set off by pressure or weight alone, which is why you need this separate device which is sensitive in order for the mine to detonate.

Here we can see how wide of a track a vehicle can drive on and still hit the mine.

My methodology here isn't rock solid and someone could and should try to create a more repeatable and scientific rig to test all this, but I tried inching a vehicle's tires closer and closer to the mine and it seems like the mine detonates even if your tire only clips into the explosive charge. This may not sound like much, but it practically doubles the diameter of the mine and thus the probability that a vehicle will hit it. In-game the mine probably has a spherical trigger zone with the same radius as the mine itself.

From here we can begin to extrapolate. If based on the spreadsheet linked above we can destroy heavier vehicles with multiple mines but they need to be struck simultaneously to deal damage, we can still come up with something devilish. If one mine by itself won't do the trick, then plant two. If two aren't enough, then three. If not three, then four. And if four mines isn't enough to kill whatever's coming at you, then you better start praying because I'm pretty sure you're ♥♥♥♥♥♥.


By planting the mines in such an overlapping manner, heavier enemy vehicles can be destroyed by hitting only one obstacle in a minefield. The orientation matters here - If you place the mines in a line one after another a vehicle driving on the road has the same chance to hit the whole stack as a single mine. But when you offset some of the mines in a triangle, swept line or diamond the vehicle needs to hit all mines at once, however because the stack is wider the vehicle has a higher chance to hit some of them.


But keep in mind the inherent restriction - you can only deploy 10 mines at once, and only carry a certain amount at a time (AUS: 4x, US, RUS, VDV, MEA, IMF, PLA, PLANMC: 3x, INS: 2x, USMC: 1x. Maybe you jarheads should hit the gym). So if you want to deploy these double mines, you can only have 5 of them at a time. With triples you can only have 3 1/3 full anti-IFV obstacles at a time, and so forth. These larger clusters are also easier to spot from further away, so use camouflage to your advantage where possible.


Still, the results speak for themselves. As I mentioned in the intro, this is how to destroy any vehicle in the game in one blow. This is something no other class or vehicle in the game can do. Remember: with great power comes great satisfaction when you see someone who just waited 20 minutes in main get instakilled and rage in chat.



You can check the vehicle count from the map screen for an accurate threat picture. If you can see that your current layer has no MBTs, focusing on quadruple mines is overkill and you can use your mines more effectively with smaller stacks spread across a wider area. You can also make note on how many vehicles on the enemy team can be dealt with how many mines. If most of the enemy team's vehicles only needs 2 mines to completely destroy and only one of them needs 3 mines, it's probably more effective to stick to double-mine traps. Remember that even one mine can be enough to ruin a vehicle crew's day, and that's why we're here.

With the previous discoveries and limitations in mind, where should we place them?
The obvious answer is roads. Vehicles travel faster on roads, so the people who drive them will in general stick to roads. This already narrows things down quite a bit, only a small percentage of any given map is paved road.


Next we look towards the enemy main. 100% of enemy vehicles spawn at main (excluding dirtbikes etc. on invasion layers), so the probability of coming across an enemy vehicle increases the closer you get to it. But be warned, most servers have some kind of rule against "main camping", which prohibits you from placing mines at a certain distance from the enemy's main base. Check the server rules or ask a server admin or your squad leader what rules are in place and follow them to avoid being kicked. Unless the road branches the enemy vehicles will remain on the same road anyway, so you can simply set your traps further up the road.

Now, where are those vehicles going? Most of these vehicles will follow the path of least resistance and will head toward the centre of the map, where the objectives are. This should narrow things down to two or three roads. You can also pay attention to the map at the beginning of a round to see what routes players on your team like to take. You may be on the enemy side on the same map sometime in the future.

Vehicle flow on the MSRs out of main. Branching arrows represent branching traffic with less volume.

"But there's so much road and only so many mines!" I hear you whine, like a petulant child. I should beat some manners into you with a pair of jumper cables, but instead I will continue with my explanation until such a time where I can assault you through your monitor. To get the most out of them, you should use them where the road is already partially obstructed. Look for natural chokepoints like narrow roads with deep ditches, trees or rocks on the sides of the road, or passes through cliffs. The enemy vehicles can't miss the mines if there's no way to go but over the mines. But the holy grail for mine placement are bridges. Bridges are narrow, usually hard or impossible to circumvent and incredibly exposed for finishing attacks. Anyone who's played a game on Narva against a competent engineer can attest to this fact. If there is a bridge in the way of a main supply route, you should make mining it off a priority.

Examples of chokepoints suitable for mines

Intersections may seem like another obvious spot to place mines, but they aren't that good in practice. Drivers like to cut corners at intersections and the surface area of the road is quite large if you want to completely cut it off. In addition players will be paying more attention at intersections, which makes it more likely for them to spot your mines. Instead you should prefer to place mines in the middle of nowhere in obstructed areas, so the enemies will be driving on autopilot and will be less likely to notice the mines before it's too late.

Also keep in mind the demonstration in the previous chapter; if you place mines on a downhill slope enemy vehicles will be driving too fast for the mines to be 100% effective.


Given the information on the map and nothing else, these would be my personal priorities for planting mines. Do not take this as the definitive meta for placing mines on this layer, nothing is permanent except for change. Being too predictable will cause the enemies to adapt and take shortcuts around these obvious chokepoints. You also have to maintain awareness on the state of the game. If enemies are pushed far enough from their main or the terrain is hard to cross like on Kohat Toi or Skorpo they're less likely to rely on ground vehicles for resupply, and will get all of their material from a helicopter. Enemy vehicles would have no reason to go to and fro from their main since even vehicles could repair and resupply at the front with repair stations. This would make your kit more useful in other roles such as FOB hunting or reinforcing the front line.

And how do you get to these spots? As you may remember most of vehicles head towards the flags, which gives you a relatively safe path to flank around and get to these juicy spots. Grab a light vehicle for mobility with enough reserve ammunition to deploy all 10 of your mines and take the long route. It's better to be patient than dead. Avoid roads where possible in order to avoid running into an enemy MBT who happened to have the same idea and take a few pit stops to listen for vehicles, observe where helos are landing, check your map and assess the situation.


Keep in mind that these are just statistically the most effective places to use your mines. You only have your kit because some other poor sap resigned himself to playing SL. Don't think reading this one guide makes you the Kobe of combat engineers and you can now singlehandedly destroy the enemy team, win the game and finally ask out that cute girl who called your name at Starbucks. You're part of a squad, and they might need you. Your SL might want you to help reinforce a defence point with mines, hunt for FOBs or build critical infrastructure faster. There's a cap of two engineers on a given team, so remember that your kit is valuable. Always ask your SL for permission. Who knows, he might even give you a LAT operator or rifleman to help you take vehicles out more efficiently.

Once you've gotten permission and have buggered off to do your thing, keep your friendlies posted on what you see. If you get around to the other side of the map you are the most valuable source of intel for the team. You can give an early warning on what roads enemy vehicles are travelling on or spot enemy resupply stations and FOBs, which can even give away capture points on the RAAS gamemodes.

Now that we've narrowed down where on the map we might want to place our mines, let's look on how we place our mines in these spots to get the most out of them. Due to the mines needing physical contact we can't just place the mines in the middle of the road. In addition we ideally want them >6m from each other so the rest of the mines remain even if a vehicle drives through the minefield, meaning each mine still has the possibility of finding a target instead of being wasted, much like your life up to now.

"But how am I supposed to get the mines 6m apart AND on the same road, won't they just go over the edge?", you ask again, unprompted, as my faith in you wanes orders of magnitude lower than I even thought was possible.
The answer is you place them in rows at an angle. You could plant all of your mines in the one row with a steep angle, but it's more effective to make several parallel rows. Each row should be staggered a bit compared to previous ones for more complete coverage. It's better to spread them out as well, so instead of passing through one barrier the enemy has to weave through several to make it through alive. A good minefield is like an onion - it has layers.


The lines represent paths parallel to the vehicle's travel that are obstructed by a mine.

The vehicle has been destroyed leaving behind 9 mines, and thus an effective minefield

On straight roads drivers tend to like driving on the middle of the road to avoid crashing into obstacles and flipping the vehicle. Some roads have textured grooves which correlate fairly well with the paths vehicles take, so prioritize blocking these off first and later add more mines for the edge cases where enemies aren't driving right down the middle.

Heatmap of probable vehicle paths

So far all of the mines you've seen have been left on the surface for the purpose of being easier to see, but the single biggest and easiest action you can take to make any minefield more effective is to left click on them with your shovel. This mighty gadget can bore through concrete, solid rock, steel train tracks or the very fabric of reality in mere seconds because that's how ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ jacked you are, you absolute unit. In fact engineer shovels can dig at twice the speed of other kits and this includes sandbags, HABs, FOB radios and everything else. Despite your overwhelming superiority you can also ask nearby friendlies or squadmates to help to dig your mines as you place them just so they can feel useful sometimes, bless their hearts. Burying your mines significantly reduces their footprint and in most cases is enough to conceal them from a moving vehicle.

But after one or two vehicles have been blown up, word will go around: There's an engineer on the loose. This is where the trickery comes in. You can look for props on the roads such as bushes, rocks, grass or other debris to further help further camouflage your mines to make them practically invisible to even dismounted infantry. Usually these small rocks and other debris don't have collision anyway so a vehicle will drive through it like it isn't there and hit the mine hidden underneath. If nothing else, try to find a spot where the colour of the terrain best blends with the mine and you have some shade to mitigate direct sunlight from glaring off of the pressure plate.



3 mines buried under rocks on the road

If the road is narrow enough to not suffer from a shallower minefield and has enough visual clutter to camouflage larger clusters you can place two or more mines in place of one and theoretically gain the ability to not only disable but destroy heavier vehicles than just logis. It's up to your discretion if you'd rather want a higher chance of enemies hitting a mine and getting disabled, or if it's worth having a smaller probability of enemies hitting a mine, but destroying them when they do. After all, I'm not gonna tell a guy with that much high explosives what to do. Or am I?

After you've gone through all 10 of your mines is when the waiting game starts. You can either leave your mines be and focus on other tasks and either relocate or replenish them if they get hit, or stay posted on your minefield if you have the patience. BTRs, Strykers etc. will probably get instantly destroyed but heavier IFVs and MBTs will only end up immobilized most of the time. If left unattended they'll simply repair themselves and be mobile in a matter of minutes. If instead you, or better yet a fireteam are waiting by in ambush the vehicle will be out of the fight for much longer or completely destroyed. Even if you're solo you can try to kill the dismounted crewmen, sneak your timed explosive charge onto the vehicle to try and finish it off or call it out for the commander to call in a CAS strike on it. Crewmen like to go prone behind the vehicle when repairing, so try to sneak around and get as close as possible before opening fire to avoid being spotted by the other crewmen in gunner or spotter seats.


Unfortunately you don't have to keep an eye on only enemy vehicles, but for friendlies as well. Your minefields are as lethal to enemies as friendlies, despite them having real-time locations on both themselves and the mines they are driving towards at the press of a single button. Weird how that works. Anyway to avoid getting auto-kicked out of the server for tk's thanks to these troglodytes give them a heads up if you see them driving towards their 100% avoidable and deserved demise.

Even after you're out of mines there's still ways to make life harder for the enemy team. You can deploy sandbags on impassable chokepoints to slow vehicles down or force them to dismount and dig them down. You can also blow up your vehicle on the road to make it immovable and completely block it off.

A roadblock on a bridge



Insurgent sappers also have decoy rocks available, however for the purpose of disguising mines I think it's better to use elements on the map instead of the rocks. A small flat disc sticks out less than a pile of rocks. What you can use them for however is to plant false flags. You can place these rocks on the road to make enemy vehicles waste time by driving around them or dismounting to investigate. You could also place an IED nearby to take out the infantry once they come to check it out. For this purpose you'll have to make them stick out, so arrange them into larger piles or unnatural, symmetric and straight formations so people actually notice them from any sort of distance. I'll be honest, this probably won't be that effective but the rocks only cost 1 ammo each, so you might as well try if you get the chance.

Despite the mad ♥♥♥♥ I talk, no hate to my AT chads. We are united in our struggle against the booger-eaters hiding inside of their crewman cope cages and in our celebration after popping them open like tin cans.

But to the rest of my chosen people stay sneaky, stay unpredictable and most important of all, completely disregard the Ottawa convention.

If you have any questions don't be afraid to ask, I want to ensure that I can never leave main alive again.