Hiding in overturned cars has become an amazing strategy in Battlegrounds

You don't kill your way to victory in a gruelling round of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds on luck alone. Anyone who's survived a hundred-man deathmatch and come out on top will tell you that having a solid strategy is the key. Some players (like me) avoid conflict as much as necessary as the bloodbath transpires. Some players rush high-value loot areas to secure the best gear. And then there are those that intentionally flip one of Battlegrounds' disused cars so they can turtle inside it.

Earlier this week YouTuber Sir Lance and his partner stumbled into a pretty killer tactic to survive the chaos of the first 20 minutes. En route to a bunker, they accidentally flipped their sedan and landed upside down. Now, most people would do the logical thing and get out of the car, use a bandage to recover the health they lost from flipping over, and continue on foot. But not these two geniuses. 

For about 20 minutes, they sat upside down in the car and waited. At one point, Sir Lance scores an amazing kill despite being upside down with his view obstructed by the long grass—one of the most badass things I've seen in Battlegrounds so far. Eventually Sir Lance and his pal are forced to abandon the vehicle as the deadly electric field, which effectively narrows the size of the map, closes in. At that point they're in such good shape from avoiding combat that they don't have much trouble winning the round.

Being a sitting duck might sound stupid, but it works beautifully. As Evan wrote yesterday, Battlegrounds plays like a streamlined, hyperconcentrated Arma. And like Arma, there's no 'command' for flipping an overturned vehicle. And, mercifully, flipped cars also don't explode like they do in most videogames including the other popular battle royale game, H1Z1: King of the Kill.

All this means most players have learned to view overturned vehicles as useless, abandoned objects in the environment. Who could possibly anticipate that someone would be sitting inside of one just waiting? Why would they?

Those two small kinks in the established formula of how we expect vehicles to work in videogames is what makes Sir Lance's tactic so effective. And players have already started exploiting it to hilarious effect. Twitch streamer PaperbagNinja and three friends piled into a tipped over jeep and waited patiently to ambush players strolling by. With four against one, the element of surprise doesn't matter nearly as much, but that doesn't mean it's not hilarious. 

If you do decide to use this strategy, just be careful. Players are quickly wising up to it, as demonstrated by omnomanom on Reddit. 

Sadly, I don't think sneaky sedaning is going to fool people for very much longer. With more examples hitting the Battlegrounds subreddit daily, players are beginning to regard any flipped vehicles with an appropriate amount of caution.

That said, it's not like Battlegrounds' cars will go back to only being useful for something as boring as driving. No, no, no. See, the only thing more ingenious than sitting in a car for 20 minutes like a middle-aged parent waiting for their kids to finish school is using that same car for physics-defying feats of strategic prowess. Consider this clip posted to Twitter: 

Or this amazing play by Headlessturt1e where he uses a jeep for a stealthy rooftop infiltration: 

Okay, so not everything in Battlegrounds is realistic, but I'm willing to bend the rules a bit if it means more of these ridiculous stunts.