III. Enemy Attack

Once you have built the Sniper Tower your lookout spots the enemy approaching - and you get to meet the Blackguard for the first time! They sort of look a lot like Nazis, right?

This point in the tutorial is intended to introduce you to one of the enemy in the game - the primary enemy at least in terms of the single-player campaign is concerned, though the differences between regular single player campaign and multi-player are rather blurry in Boom Beach, a subject we will address later.

For this battle you can only watch as their Gunboat bombards your base, and then their Landing Craft release their Riflemen, who are roundly defeated thanks to your quick-thinking and accurate Sniper.

The enemy fails to take the HQ - capturing the Headquarters Building being how the game defines victory.

There are several lessons you are meant to learn from this brief battle - the first being the proper tactical progress of a battle, which always begins with Scouting an Enemy Base, then attacking it by first softening the target defenses up using the naval cannon on a Gunboat.

After that you then commit your LCs (Landing Craft) sending the troops ashore to take out any of the base defenses that must be taken out in order to clear the way to capture its HQ.

More than a few such attacks have gone pear-shaped thanks to a stiffer than expected defense or the player trying to direct all of the troops attention towards taking out the Headquarters under the basic strategy that once you cut off the head of the snake, the snake dies (or in this case surrenders).

That can be a good and even great tactic - if you have well-trained and leveled troops who can dish out sufficient damage quickly enough to take out the enemy HQ before their defenses chew them up.

It is a risk - one that you will come to understand as you get more experience both in playing and in the survivability levels of the different troop types based on their levels.