Ammo Tactica: Fire Ammunition

Ah, fire ammo. What a great tool for killing your enemies and cooking bacon with one order. Welcome to the fourth installment of this tactica,where we will discuss the joys of burning your enemies to a crisp.

Fire ammo is very limited in  weapon variety but is quite widespread among all armies. Every Infinity faction has access to either Light Flame Throwers, Heavy Flame Throwers, Flammenspeers, Light Rocket Launchers or Heavy Rocket Launchers. Some armies have wider access to it: Corregidor Jurisdictional Command, Haqqislam and Morat Aggression Force are some of the main users of this ammo. But what does fire do? Well it burns and there are rules to represent its fiery nature.

Once hit with fire ammo, the target must pass an Arm roll just like any other ammo type, but (there is always a “but” in Infinity) if your target fails that roll,  they must keep rolling until a roll is passed or until the target is turned into a nice, dead and crispy brisket.

If you have been following my previous articles, you should know that several targets do not just simply stay dead once they have received a wound. Many of them will either rampage via V:Dogged, take revenge raising from the dead via Doctors or automedikit/regeneration. Others just don’t give a damn and will keep fighting via V:No Wound Incapacitation or simply because they are tough, multi wound troops.

But fear not, fire is the answer to all those persistent bas***ds. I’ve seen light TAGs being set on fire and keep burning to a crisp from a single flamethrower shot. You will need a lucky strike to manage this, but when it happens, is just awesome.

Another thing to remember is that the Tohaa Symbiont troops are fire vulnerable, which means that  a single failed Arm roll against fire ammo kills them outright, including their 4 wounds TAG.

But wait! , there’s more!.Fire has useful properties other than burning people. This ammo will destroy special equipment without the need to cause a wound, just hitting a troop with any level of camo, impersonation devices, holoprojectors of any level, optical disruption devices/fields or nano screens will deactivate until repaired by an engineer. Camo of any type will be downgraded to just mimetism.

I don’t know if you understand the awesomeness of this. all those thermo-optical d-bags, the jock confederation (Steel Phalanx) with their fancy optical disruption devices, all of them lose their deluxe advantages by just hitting them. Also remember, denying a camo troop the ability to recamo is priceless. No more unopposed rolls and less maneuverability! By the way, fire cooks Shasvastii embryos into a delicious non-scoring omelette too.

On the downside, Total Immunity troops treat this ammo as normal ammo.

So let’s talk about the two types of weapons loaded with this ammo: direct template and circular template.
Direct templates allow you to sacrifice a face to face roll in order to directly hit your target. The only fire loaded direct template weapons are heavy and light flamethrowers. Their beauty lies in their simplicity. Enemy up close? Lay down the template and let your enemy think about dodging (at -6 to ph) or shooting at you unopposed. Although it is true you will receive the shots, it is a good idea if the troop with fire ammo templates is cheap, a well armoured (TAG) or would die anyway. If your little chasseur is able to remove the thermo-optical camo from that Cutter before dying so your AP HMG Veteran Kazak can kill it, It was totally worth it.

Another awesome advantage of direct template weapons  is the Intuitive attack.

It is a long skill requiring a WIP roll (with no modifiers) and allows you to hit an undiscovered camo marker or you can target anything  within a zero visibility zone (Including a camo within a 0-V zone!). You don’t need to see in order to kill, just fire up! In case you fail the WIP roll, you will not be able to perform the same skill against the same target for the remainder of the turn.

Keep in mind, that once a camo marker makes an ARM roll it is automatically discovered; and because you used fire, the camo will be burnt and useless! How cool is that?

Circular template weapons: Those are heavy (HRL), light rocket launchers (LRL) and flammenspeers. HRL have great range, damage 14 and burst 2, while LRL have a weaker 13 damage, less range but greater Burst of 3. Flammenspeer is just a disposable weapon with 2 uses, burst 1 and HRL stats. All benefit from +1 burst bonus provided by link teams. Multiple armour rolls against fire is a good way to ensure a kill. Even a TAG should be aware—low rolls do exist and lead to a burning death.

The most useful thing about this weapons is their ability to cause collateral damage, link teams too bunched up, prone troops next to the target, camo markers nearby, even if you are really lucky (and your enemy is honest) hidden deployment troops!. Being able to kill enemies “for free” is just awesome, and the fire ammo properties is just icing on the cake!.

So to recap:

-Good against camo heavy armies (Ariadna, Shasvastii…)

-Good against Tohaa.

-Burns multi wound targets, can even kill big things in one shot if you are lucky.

-Breaks fancy stuff just by hitting, makes targets with huge penalties to hit, more manageable for the rest of the team.

-Allows intuitive attack and collateral damage shenanigans.

-You can sing Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire when you kill 3+ models with a single shot.

Well that was it! I hope you found it useful. If you’d like to add something else don’t forget to comment your opinion on fire ammo below. See ya!.