The Legend of the Answer

Fellow Pilots,
Once you’ve played the game for long enough, you will have undoubtedly heard many stories about great War Robots pilots, and their battles, but precious little can be verified once the ten minutes expire and the victory screen disappears. I can tell you what I have witnessed, though, and you can decide for yourself what you think is true like you do when you read Beowulf. I’ve seen Stalkers fly, and I’ve won battles with essentially zero health left to give.. I’ve seen robots die in midair and remain there … and I saw the Answer wipe out a whole enemy team.




“The Answer” was Allen Iverson’s nickname. Iverson, the shortest #1 pick in NBA history at only 6 feet, was so called because of his penchant for taking - and making - big shots. In the days of the Ancilot’s domination, which reached a peak in the summer of 2017 many pilots searched and failed to find an answer against this stout brawler. Almost invariably, they joined the stampede and got an Ancilot (or two) of their own. Among the top players, the average number of Lancelots in the hangar was 2.5, and the vast majority carried two Tarans and an Ancile. My experimentation led me to conclude that the answer was a Lancelot with Thunder, Orkan, and Taran - it could take the shield of an Ancilot down between 500 and 350 meters, and then hit it with all three weapons.

I landed on Yamantau, and the battle began quietly, as they always did. Before dashing and beacon rush, some pilots would land with Trebuchets and some with Lancelots. Position was gained very slowly, and both teams advanced carefully across the frozen tundra to avoid the inevitable long distance attacks.

I’m not really sure which robot I deployed first, but I know I got one of theirs with Piñatas. The name of the weapon still sounds funny to me, because piñatas are usually the thing getting destroyed. When they do, they dump candy everywhere and a whole bunch of kids dive onto the ground to grab their share. I could have been in a Galahad or a Griffin. It doesn’t really matter, and we had an edge on the beacon bar when I ate some Talumbas and spawned the Answer.



I saw the dead Butch, and it was one of the first times I had seen the GI Joe/Captain America paint job, so I took a screen shot. I imagined giving the pilot some advice - that little silo on the front of the ramp isn’t really enough cover, and moving the Butch further to either side would let him shoot at enemies as they approached the center beacon. Even better would be to leave that thing in the hangar and get a brawler! Of course, this is pretty much always my advice. Turns out the game designers had the same thought, and designed the Dash robots as their “Answer.”

Lancelots without Anciles are vulnerable to missiles. I once lost a close one at Springfield when I couldn’t get a clean shot at a Rogatka hiding in the structure on the dam. He jumped right over me for the coup de grace, preventing me from grabbing the beacon CHARLIE and preventing my team from winning. This was particularly galling because I had, after killing two reds with a single salvo from my Tridents, captured ECHO, spawned the Lancelot and crossed a thousand meters of hostile territory only to fall in the final seconds.



Lancelots and Furies aren’t ideal as beacon runners, and especially not on huge maps like Springfield, but I hate camping. And I really hate campers. They mock me. I will throw five crushers at the enemy while my team sits behind cover with Trebuchets and a cup of tea. I can almost hear them … “suppression,” “support,” “range,” blah blah blah. I know some of them had to see me on that dam at Springfield, and they are sitting there saying, “I know that guy. He LOST that battle. His way doesn’t WORK.” I don’t know, maybe I don’t know anything, except that like Unferth, they kill their own brothers. Pixonic might as well be make pilots able to do it themselves with “friendly fire,” because campers sit there and watch while the people doing the heavy lifting get slaughtered. And I can’t think of any famous campers - no one has ever heard anything about the guy who spent the whole match in his Gekko Patton. Except maybe that he watched while his brothers got murdered.

But I digress.

It was Yamantau, the map I hate the most, and I was in the Answer. Because the center was in our possession, I decided to attack underneath, on the left side, in order to send the reds back to their spawn point. Hopefully my team would follow!

Teams that are losing on Yamantau often try to sit back and bleed their opponents to death in hopes that they can grab center toward the end of the battle. It can work, but it takes patience (lacking in most pilots), accuracy (sadly, lacking in most pilots), and mobility. You have to move around because the center beacon provides strong cover. When I reached the enemy side of center, there were two Russian “death button” Griffins there, but they had let me get within 300 meters. Both - Rhiders and OneEye - went down quick because, well, Griffins die fast when you hit them with Thunders and Tarans. When I got END OF LINE, I snapped another screenshot. This was partly because I liked killing members of clan Tool Breakers, and partly because of my third kill in quick succession.



Even though I had less than half of my health remaining, and no visible support from my team, I knew the right move was to press the attack. If my team saw that our enemies were all the way back at spawn, maybe they would finally move forward. So I pushed forward and caught Maccofago leaving the tunnel. We had a wrestling match, slipping around on the ice, and he died running home to his mama after I blew his arms (I mean weapons) off.



I don’t have more pictures, but you probably know how it turned out. With Grendel, his mother, and the dragon all slain, it was OK for me to die and for the singers to start singing their songs. Today, with all the dash bots dashing around and the shocktrains shocking entire teams to death, we need a new Answer. I’ll be looking for one, as will the U.

So should you all!

Happy Monday,
Yat

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