Rifleman

Overview
The rifleman is the basic class of Trenches, costing 0 points and being unlocked on the first day. The rifleman is equipped with the rifle, a shovel, a pickaxe, and a melee weapon. They also have the capacity to carry one grenade.

Rifle
The rifle is perfectly accurate, has 6 rounds in each magazine and has a slow firerate. It has a mediocre reload speed. As with any other bullet based weapon, the rifle deals 40 damage on a bodyshot and 90 on a headshot. The rifle's sights are very simplistic, consisting of 2 squares and a single triangle. Shots will land on the exact tip of the triangle.

Grenades
Grenades are short ranged indirect weapons. They have a blast radius of 10 studs, enough to cover an entire trench. It has a fuse time of roughly 4 seconds. The grenade will detonate on impact with things players can mount, that being vehicles, artillery, and HMGs. It does 1/3rd of a standard tank's health, while it instantly destroys artillery pieces and HMGs. Note that if the grenade hits something else first, it will not detonate. Grenades do not damage landmines, czech hedgehogs, and barbed wire.

Shovel
Shovels are capable of building most objects in the game. They build at the standard speed and they place things at the standard speed. Dugouts, pillboxes, artillery, HMG, and grenade boxes aren't available for the Rifleman.

Pickaxe
Pickaxes are capable of destroying almost every object in the game. They destroy at the standard speed. Few things are destructible are also immune to pickaxes. These are all trees, the rock spires of Badlands, the fossils of Badlands, and the town buildings of Town.

Melee
The rifleman has a selection of random melee weapons they spawn with. These are the knife, the pipe, the wrench, and the mace. All the weapons are identical in stats. They all have roughly a second of swing time, deal 80 damage, and ignores line-of-sight checks. They should only be used as a last resort.

Tactics
Riflemen are the most expendable part of the army, being the only offensive class that costs nothing. They are most effective en masse, being able to take losses and not worry about it too much due to being a free class. They are also effective as cannon fodder for the other more expensive classes such as the LMG and officer. As they can carry grenades, they are somewhat capable of fighting enemy tanks, either by ambushing the tank or by suicide charging at the enemy. However, this requires an engineer to build a grenade box beforehand.

Despite being most effective en masse, a single good rifleman can be equally as terrifying. Due to the rifle's perfect accuracy and slow fire rate, it is very easy to control the recoil and snipe at people repeatedly. While not as fast as a grenade, a rifleman can consistently cripple any visible artillery piece in a single magazine. They are also good enough when they make it to the enemy trench to cause some chaos and confusion, especially when using the surrounding natural structures.

Riflemen are also the second best melee fighters in the game, as every other class except officer have the same melee weapons as they do, yet they cost equal or more than the rifleman. While a melee rush will not work when the enemy is calm, it may cause enough confusion to let you sneak in a hit or two. Since melee also hits multiple targets at once, this is the best way for a rifleman to deal with a rushing horde of several enemy soldiers.

Trivia

 * Riflemen used to spawn with 2 grenades. This was changed in update 051, where the rifleman only spawns with 1 grenade with the capacity of two. This was later changed in update 053 where they can only hold 1 grenade, and finally in update 055, they no longer spawn with grenades.
 * Riflemen used to be the only free class until in update 046, medic is also changed to be free.
 * The rifle is mostly based on the Short Magazine Lee–Enfield No. 1 Mk. III with the bolt being straight-pull action based from the Austro-Hungarian Mannlicher 1895 or the Canadian Ross Rifle Mk. III.