Flaming Ivan

**Key Features** | »» *"Screwdriver"* Pneumatic Molotov Mortar»» Storage bucket for Molotov reloads»» *"Annihilator"* 180mm Siege Gun»» Robust tracks resist wear»» Shustov on tap

*"Ivan is home at last!"*

- *"Crazy"* Ivan

## Tactical Analysis

* **Knock knock, Ivan's here**: *"Flaming Ivan"* Siege Tanks are highly effective urban combat vehicles. Though they are somewhat slow, their heavy armour lets them weather dozens of hits, and they are unparalleled in the area of clearing out occupied structures.

* **Don't play with matches**: The *"Screwdriver"* pneumatic molotov mortar of the Flaming Ivan can bombard enemy infantry from range with oversized molotov cocktails, highly effective against garrisoned infantry and groups of soldiers clustered out in the open.

* **Happy Birthdaay!**: The other weapon of the Flaming Ivan, the *"Annihilator"* Siege Cannon, is purpose designed to destroy base defences and the like, and can also be used to relieve a building of its occupants.

* **Ivan's Special**: Some drivers have taken to cooking up even more potent cocktails. Those successful in their endeavours have cocktails so potent that even light vehicles will be melted by the heat, though tanks remain largely unaffected. The same drivers are also known to slap on as much armour as the vehicle's engine can handle, usually resulting in a remarkable increase in durability.

## Operational History

It is rare that the design of a military vehicle owes so much to one person, but it can be said confidently that the **Flaming Ivan**, an increasingly popular siege tank among combat engineers, owes its existence to a single man; *"Crazy"* Ivan Brechkovsky.

Born in Stalingrad in 1940, Brechkovsky was a difficult child. His absolute obsession with fire, explosives, petrol, and the combination thereof led to serious infractions at a young age. After his birth parents died in an apartment fire when he was four years old (an incident he may or may not have been responsible for), Ivan was taken in by the Soviet Service for Orphans, who attempted to educate the young child, to no great effect. Outside of the application of fire to things not meant for burning, Brechkovsky had few interests.

At fourteen, Brechkovsky was arrested for the first time after successfully razing an abandoned cargo ship hulk to the ground on the banks of the Volga during a field trip. Though his conduct was unacceptable, authorities were impressed with his enthusiasm and skill at causing major conflagrations, and so he was assigned to a combat engineer platoon to learn the ways of demolition from the experts. It was here than things started to go terribly, terribly wrong.

When attempting to shift a 285 ton JS-2 Mammoth tank which had become bogged down in the mud, Brechkovsky struck upon the (utterly mad) solution, explosives. Though the Mammoth Tank was freed of the riverbank, more than a dozen members of his platoon were killed in the resulting explosion, the shock of which was said to have caused General Golovastov to suffer a heart attack despite his camp being nearly sixteen kilometres away. Following the incident, Brechkovsky earned his nickname *"Crazy Ivan"* and a long stay in the Gulag.

Of course, no prison could hold such a man, not even one in Siberia. Ivan was deemed a danger to his fellow prisoners and moved to a penal battalion, where he swiftly went about devising means of launching objects into low orbit by abusing magnetic mines. After multiple transfers, Ivan eventually ended up in one of the rare transport battalions shipping food to front-line soldiers. Chained to the inside of his tank with a commissar looking over his shoulder, Ivan drove his ZM-42 Resupply Vehicle for three long years. Finally, in 1968, he would make history.

 File:VM-SovietFlamingIvan.png
Imperial Tankbusters were a constant source of frustration for Resupply Divisions. Hidden along popular routes for resupply vehicles, they would suddenly appear and destroy large numbers of defenceless vehicles before disappearing again into the snow to await the next convoy. Ivan, transporting novelty humorously oversized bottles of Vodka for an officer's victory celebration, found himself embroiled in one such ambush late in 1968, and surely would have died with the rest of his platoon if it were not for his quick thinking. Lining the oversized bottles of Vodka up under the rear hatch, with a burning cloth from his (sadly deceased) commissar's coat, Ivan pulled upon his chains to launch the bottles as an improvised catapult which burnt the Tankbusters out of their spider holes.

After this, Ivan was a Soviet Hero. His criminal record erased, he was employed by the Ministry of Experimental Science as an expert in demolitions, and famously redesigned the ZM-42 into the ZM-FI69, or, as it is universally known, the ***"Flaming Ivan"***. Crewed by volunteer members of the Combat Engineers (known for their pyromania and excessive drunkenness), the Flaming Ivan has a pneumatic cannon for launching large Molotov Cocktails at foes, burning out garrisoned enemies and creating large conflagarations. Its armour allows it to shake off impacts as it moves into range, and it is extremely effective even over walls. The recent addition of a powerful assault gun, which was designed by Crazy Ivan himself, adds the rather nasty capability to blow apart structures in a few shots, though the *"Annihilator"* assault gun has a reputation for being somewhat dangerous to handle, after one unlucky Soviet engineer nearly had his arm torn off by the blowback from the weapon.

As for Crazy Ivan, or *"Dr. Brechkovsky"* as he is properly known, he continues to work on creating ever larger explosions in his *"lab"*, a massive stretch of abandoned tundra where he tests and revises his insane explosive mixes, in between teaching his popular university course *"Inner Peace through Superior Firepower"*. In his notes, he has indicated a desire to *"blow up the atom itself"*, and it is generally hoped he never succeeds.

## Behind the Scenes

* The Flaming Ivan shares part of its name with RA2’s Crazy Ivan

## Just the Stats

 **Armour Type** | Heavy Armour

 **Kill Reward** | 12000

 **DPS** | 26.7

 **DPS** | 6.7