A weapon or ability that is effective against basic infantry units. Typically involves Kill It with Fire, if not specialized munitions or More Dakka. Herd-Hitting Attack-style weapons or abilities are also often used.
For the sake of Competitive Balance and Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors, many anti-infantry-specific weapons are near useless against sufficiently armored enemies.
Sub-Trope of Weapon of X-Slaying. See also Anti-Air, Anti-Armor, Anti-Cavalry, Anti-Vehicle and Anti-Structure.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- The Five Star Stories: Exaggerated. See all those little divots in the average Mortar Headds' armor? Chances are each one has an anti-personnel laser and/or grenade launcher inside it.
- Mobile Suit Gundam:
- Most Gundam designs carry Vulcan Cannons on their helmets, designated as both point-defense and anti-infantry weapons.
- Mobile Suit Gundam SEED: The 105 Dagger has small-calibre vulcans mounted in its feet. They're shown being used (with very visceral results) in the OVA Mobile Suit Gundam SEED CE.73: Stargazer.
Literature
- Bolo: The stories sometimes mention anti-personnel weapons meant to be used against enemy infantry.
- Hammer's Slammers: The panzers have anti-personnel mines attached to their armor. Since infantry can still sneak up on a hovertank and take it out with a cheap buzzbomb, these mines are necessary.
Tabletop Games
- BattleTech:
- While they have their usefulness in Humongous Mecha combat (for example, by overheating an enemy 'Mech and thus disabling it), flamethrowers and machine guns are much more typically equipped to deal with attacking infantry. Among other Battlemechs designed around such capability, there's the appropriately-named "Firestarter" series. Anti-personnel Gauss Rifles are also fearsome infantry-killing weapons that fire gobs of small projectiles that carve up conventional infantry formations at three times the range of a machine gun.
- Battle Armor are banes to unarmored infantry. Clan Elementals are 10 ft juggernauts capable of surviving hits from mech weapons, and will easily mow down infantry with flamers, machine guns, and anti-personnel weapons (typically a sub-machine gun of some sort). Some suits also mount fearsome infantry-killing melee weapons like Vibro-Claws
- Car Wars has this as a limitation on most pedestrians' weapons. After all, if a car is built to handle a few seconds of 7.62mm machinegun fire, it likely won't be as hurt by, say, a 9mm handgun. There are a few pedestrian weapons that are effective on cars, though; notably, the axe and hatchet, for those who feel like going into melee.
- Ogre: The titular cybernetic tank has anti-personnel weapons used against the armored-suit infantry of its opponents.
- Paranoia had several gas grenade types (and cone rifle warheads) that only affect people.
- Poison: does physical damage, can kill.
- Vomit: causes uncontrollable retching.
- Hallucinogenic: "Oh look, there's a unicorn! And my flashlight is talking to me!"
- Warhammer 40,000 has several vehicle variants on each faction that the fluff describes as more effective against infantry.
- Variants of the Chimera APC with flamethrowers or toxic waste-throwers instead of the normal multi-laser are particularly effective against massed infantry.
- The Devastator-Pattern Leman Russ tank has dual autocannons effective against anything with light armor, but again the fluff describes as an "anti-personnel" variant of the tank... which says a lot about the kind of monsters commonly considered "enemy personnel", actually. The Punisher-Pattern Leman Russ tank is instead armed with an enormous gatling gun capable of turning a massive enemy army into red mist.
- The Space Marines' handheld missile launchers and the Ork Kannons are good examples of the difference between anti-infantry and anti-armor, since they both allow to choose between two kinds of ammo: one is a single-target high-power round ("krak" missiles), while the other is weaker but with an Area of Effect (frag missiles).
- Attilan hunting lances can be fitted with frag tips, which detonate in clouds of shrapnel designed to clear crowds of enemy infantry.
- War Machine has plenty of Warjacks that excel in mowing down infantry. The Cygnar Cyclone for one has pair of chain guns as its weapons.
Video Games
- Advance Wars: The Anti-Air vehicle unit is also very effective at eliminating walking infantry units with its vulcan cannon, not just planes and copters. Tank machine guns don't kill infantry with nearly the same effectiveness, unless it's an overpriced Mega Tank or such. Anti-Airs only have to watch out for bazooka-carrying infantry striking first.
- Aztec Wars: The bears and jaguars do wonders against infantry, but are rather useless against buildings and vehicles.
- Brothers in Arms:
- The Browning M1919 and the MG-42, fixed machine-guns capable of killing enemy infantry in one hit. In Hell's Highway, portable versions of these machine-guns appear, and are the standard-issue weapon for machine-gun teams of both the Americans and Germans.
- In terms of artillery, there's the 88mm Flak 36 gun. While normally used in the Anti-Air or Anti-Armor role, the gun can also be used to attack infantry, as demonstrated late in Earned in Blood and well into its sequel.
- Command & Conquer:
- Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn has the flame tank from the Brotherhood of Nod. GDI have the Wolverine to fill this role for them.
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert: The first game has the Yak, a plane that strafed targets with machine guns and earned the nickname "Infantry Eraser".
- In addition to all vehicles being able to run over enemy infantry, Command & Conquer: Generals has each three sides having at least one or two units that excel in this (and one unit each to instantly clear out Garrisonable Structures). The USA has infantry-sniping Pathfinders, Rangers with flashbang grenades, and Humveesnote ; China has the Dragon and Gatling tanks; and the GLA has the Toxin Tractor, the Technical, the Quad Cannon and Jarmen Kell.
- Company of Heroes has most units use a weapon that will be at least usable against infantry, if not especially good at it (the especially good ones usually either having a high rate-of-fire or simply explodes over a large area). The minority that aren't are anti-vehicle specialized weapons, which can kill unfortunate infantryman in a single hit due to their power, but are encumbered from being particularly useful in that regard by a low fire-rate and abysmal accuracy against man-sized targets and make actually killing them in most cases a miracle.
- Dark Reign: The Future of War: Each side has one that specialize in this. The Imperium have their Shredder that instantly kills infantry it can hit with its blades. The Freedom Guard have their Sniper that can snipe infantry from afar.
- Dawn of War: The game divides its infantry into regular (Guardsmen, orks...) and heavy infantry (Space Marines). A good rule of thumb is that the higher the rate of fire, the better against regular infantry (heavy infantry is best taken out with plasma weapons), although artillery is remarkably effective at scattering and killing infantry. The Orks have Flash Gitz that excelle in shredding infantry, and heavy infantry with lots of dakka. They can easily gun down infantry from afar but they are bad in melee.
- Enemy Territory: Quake Wars: Engineers can place an anti-personnel defensive turret (a machine gun). It will only attack soldiers, though-which means that it's possible to attack it freely with a vehicle if it's undefended.
- Fire Emblem:
- Subverted by Tutorial Failure in the GBA games. The handful of weapons labeled as "effective against infantry" are actually Anti-Armor and Anti-Cavalry. How this is supposed to add up to "infantry" is never explained.
- Fire Emblem Heroes: The Poison Dagger weapon inflicts bonus damage against infantry units.
- Mastermind: World Conqueror: The flamethrower upgrade. Not very useful on its own, but the only type of enemy that attacks the Moonbase is infantry.
- MechCommander and its sequel have both standard and Powered Armor infantry, carrying small lasers, machine guns, and missiles. Unlike the source material, you have to target each trooper individually. Weapons with fast fire rates tended to be the best option, since any one hit would take one trooper out, but it needed to hit a trooper first. Sheer volume of fire means that pulse lasers and rapid-fire autocannons worked best against infantry.
- MechWarrior: In the Mech Warrior: Living Legends fangame, most Anti-Air assets also double as Anti-Infantry against the Personal Space Invader Battlearmor, courtesy of their high-powered, rapid-fire autocannons being able to shred battlearmor with only a few shots. LB-X buckshot shotguns carried by some of the anti-air assets also create a satisfying spray of blood and gibs and are much easier to use against battlearmor currently using their Jet Pack. The best anti-infantry weapon is the Short Ranged Missile, which sprays up to 6 missiles towards the crosshair with enough damage and splash to rip a battlearmor player to pieces — although they are nigh-unusable against clever battlearmor who never lands within the SRM's firing arc.
- Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos: Averted in that armor and damage types are distributed among all units, so an orc grunt and a siege catapult can be weak to the same type of damage. Some melee units take more damage from melee than from ranged, some have the inverse, some take more damage from magic, etc.
- World in Conflict has a few:
- The Sniper is extremely deadly to infantry of all kinds, especially if he is well hidden in the woods or perched atop a tall building.
- Napalm and gas canister Tactical Aids are pretty much the only efficient ways to flush out enemy infantry hidden in the woods or inside the buildings (only gas works on infantry in the buildings, but it helpfully leaves the buildings intact).
- Heavy artillery Tactical Aid has universal effect but works best on infantry standing in the open (heavier units can generally escape the bombardment area before dying; infantry can't).
