Enlisted looks like just another WWII shooter in screenshots, but the second you drop into a match you realize it's playing a different game than Battlefield or Call of Duty. You don't control one soldier — you command a squad of up to nine, switching between riflemen, machine gunners, and vehicle crews on the fly. That single mechanic changes everything about how you should approach your first matches, and most new players waste their first ten hours figuring it out the hard way. Here's the faster path.
Pick your campaign before you touch a match
Enlisted splits its content into separate campaigns — Moscow, Berlin, Normandy, Tunisia, and the Pacific — and each one locks you into a specific faction lineup and tech tree. This decision matters more than it looks like at the menu screen, because your silver, orders, and unlocked squads are tied to whichever campaign you're playing.
- Normandy (US/UK vs Germany) is the most populated campaign on most servers and has the gentlest learning curve — vehicles and weapons are well-balanced and matches fill quickly.
- Moscow (USSR vs Germany) has the deepest tech tree if you're planning to invest long-term, but early Soviet gear is rougher.
- Tunisia and the Pacific are lower population outside peak hours, which means longer queues but less sweaty lobbies if you want to learn at your own pace.
If you're brand new, start with Normandy. It's the campaign the matchmaker fills fastest, and the weapon unlocks are the most forgiving for a first-time squad leader.
Build squads that survive contact
A common rookie mistake is treating your squad like one big blob you throw at the objective. Enlisted rewards specialization instead. Before your first real match, set up at least three distinct squads:
- An assault squad — riflemen and one automatic rifleman, built for pushing objectives and trading shots at close-to-mid range.
- A machine gun squad — one or two MG gunners with rifleman escorts, used to hold a flank or suppress a doorway rather than push forward.
- An engineer/support squad — soldiers who can build fortifications, repair vehicles, and plant explosives on objectives.
Only bring soldiers you can actually equip. A nine-man squad with two men holding pistols isn't stronger than a five-man squad where everyone has a real weapon — it just means more silver spent reviving dead weight. Trim your squads down to what you can properly arm.
Don't burn silver on the wrong upgrades
Silver is Enlisted's main progression currency, and it's tempting to spend it the moment you earn it. Resist that. The mistakes that cost new players the most silver are:
- Buying premium soldiers too early. They're a nice quality-of-life boost later, but a fresh account needs weapon and squad slot investment first, not another body to feed silver into.
- Fully upgrading a weapon you're not using. Weapon upgrades (rate of fire, optics, capacity) are per-item, so spreading silver across five different rifles you're testing is worse than committing to one and maxing it out.
- Ignoring orders. Orders — earned through weekly and campaign tasks — often unlock gear you'd otherwise pay silver for. Check your orders tab before every silver purchase; you might already have the unlock queued up for free.
A good rule for your first twenty hours: pick one assault rifle or SMG, one MG, and one vehicle type (tank or plane, not both), and funnel silver into those exclusively. Breadth comes later, once you understand what actually fits your playstyle.
Play the objective, not the kill feed
Enlisted's scoring and match outcomes are tied to capturing and holding points, not kill count. New players who chase kills across the map tend to die repeatedly to flanking squads while the objective slips away uncontested. A few habits that translate directly into wins:
- Use your whole squad's positioning, not just your active soldier. Spread AI-controlled squadmates near cover on approach so they can trade shots even while you're focused on one target.
- Deploy fortifications early. Sandbags and barbed wire placed the moment you spawn near an objective do more for your team than another rifle on the point.
- Switch soldiers mid-fight when it makes sense. If your rifleman is pinned but your MG gunner has a clear lane, tab over. You're not locked to one body for the whole life.
Final tip
Enlisted rewards patience more than reflexes in your first few weeks. Take the time to build squads you can fully equip, stick to one weapon and vehicle line while you learn the tech tree, and prioritize objectives over kill count. The players who struggle longest are the ones who try to play it like a traditional shooter — once you start thinking in terms of squads and positioning instead of a single life, matches start clicking a lot faster.
