Just to Be Different

[Baron Waste]

I mentioned a while back that if you're not happy that everyone else at Home Base is carrying MG-36s and all you get is a machine pistol, use 'blindax' to give yourself gas grenades, box in one of the grunts with them and take his weapon. I also pointed out that the same technique could be used to give yourself a bazooka from the git-go, because one is standing beside the Gunsmith door. You could do, I said, but it was of limited utility.

Well, what the heck. The helicopter duel on level 2_2 -- you can -see- the helicopter out of the corner of your eye the moment you come out onto the map, but you have nothing (at that point) to shoot it with. Unless, of course, you've already brought it along...

It's an insanely powerful weapon, capable of pulping troops to hamburger at -unlimited range-. For open map fighting, such as the battle at the church in level 1_3, it changes the whole picture. It's just as devastating in the trenches, though obviously it requires care in use -- its main advantage is that the explosion it generates is -so devastating- that troops around a corner are wiped out before they even see you!

It makes an interesting choice for weapon 6 -- you ought to try it.

[It would come in handy in Wolfenburg, certainly, but by the time you can possibly get hold of one you're two-thirds of the way through the level anyway. The Siberian rocket rifle works almost as well, even if it is less dramatic...]

[Baron Waste]

The lady scientists you encounter in the Wolfenlab use the same wav files as the solders, «Твою мать» and the like, but sped up by about a third again to raise the timbre of their voices. [There are Russian female wav files, but they aren't used in the game as we have it.]

Likewise (and I don't know which came first, but I suspect) the distinctive burbling sound of the wall-mounted I C Ts, sped up tremendously, becomes the microwave-tower whine on the Reichstag roof.. Knowing that, listen and you'll recognize it.

[Baron Waste]

The problem with a tightly scripted scenario is that if the player sidesteps the programming, the whole situation unravels.

In Level 1_3, if you make your way to the runway up and out of the trench, go farther down toward that far firing pit and throw down a landmine or two. Come back, go up the runway, show yourself, and duck back down. The firing pit crew will come after you, but they're stopped by the mine(s). Now, snipe the sniper in the church tower (if you haven't already) and those in the bunker. Run up and out... and circle round counterclockwise, right up against the invisible barriers bordering the map. Go over the firing pit, across the two little metal bridges, all the way down the far side towards the wrecked tank, which you're now approaching from the far side of the trench.

The defenses of the church depend on you going along the trench like a good little trooper and forging up that slope beside the tank. Everything spawns, troops advance firing, &c., &c. So if you don't, if you climb over the tank from its far side... there's nobody home. Almost nobody; there's some guys at a machine gun (who don't use it) and three troops spawn when you're approaching the wrecked gateway. You can snipe all these in comfort... and then just walk right up to the church. No machine gunners, no snipers, no troops, nothing.

Now, if you want to be funny, you can salt the whole area with land mines, everywhere you know Russian Mongols will appear -- on the bunker windowsills, behind the machine gun at the church, here and there -- and then go back across to the runway, down and along the trench as you're supposed to. Run fast enough up the slope, and you can see the explosion flashes as the appearing troops get a nasty surprise.

[Baron Waste]

Professional driver on closed road. Do not attempt these maneuvers yourself.

[Baron Waste]

The squadron marking may look familiar...

[Dragosani]

Hmmm. an Ugenburg AirForce fighter squad strafing the trenches.....would I have ever made it to the bombed-out church?

[Baron Waste]

I've long thought that any sequel to Iron Storm ought to explore the War in the Air. I could imagine ol' James climbing around inside the gasbag of a Hindenburg-sized Zeppelin. He'd better just use his sabre then, boy, because one stray shot into one of those ten-thousand-litre hydrogen gas cells and it's the big kablooey.

In spare moments I'm crafting an Iron Storm fanfic, short fiction exploring some of these ideas. It's been fun. I even figured out how it was that Ungern-Sternberg (or Ugenberg, in this case) came to the assistance of, allied with and eventually absorbed the Whites, the anti-Bolshevik forces of the Russian Civil War. [Along the way, I even found out who "Anton Denikin" was: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Denikin ]

When the Soviet forces managed to reorganise and turn the attack against Kolchak from 1919 he quickly lost ground. The Red counter-attack began in late April at the centre of the White line, aiming for Ufa. The fighting was fierce as, unlike earlier, both sides fought hard. Ufa was taken by the Red Army on June 9 and later that month the Red forces under Tukhachevsky broke through the Urals. Freed from the geographical constraints of the mountains, the Reds made rapid progress, capturing Chelyabinsk on July 25 and forcing the White forces to the north and south to fall back to avoid being isolated. The White forces re-established a line along the Tobol and the Ishim rivers to temporarily halt the Reds. They held that line until October, but the constant loss of men killed or wounded was beyond the White rate of replacement. Reinforced, the Reds broke through on the Tobol in mid-October and by November the White forces were falling back towards Omsk in a disorganised mass. The Reds were sufficiently confident to start redeploying some of their forces southwards to face Anton Denikin...

Right there: Autumn, 1919. If Ugenberg's victorious forces had reached the Tobol river by summer, they could have caught the retreating Whites, forced important concessions from Kolchak (who was not a popular leader, certainly not like the demented but charismatic 'Mad Baron') and beaten back the Reds. In theory, Moscow itself could have been in his hands as early as 1921.

Then on, leading his hordes against the decadent West!