Rakshasa Land Cruiser

## Tactical Analysis

* **Pride of India:** The Rakshasa is India's thundering superheavy vehicle, armed with huge and powerful missile launchers that can devastate vehicles, structures, aircraft, and infantry, armored with thick, angled armor that laughs at lesser anti-tank munitions, and enough size and weight to simply roll over and crush lesser vehicles should they be unworthy of the Rakshasa's time.

* **Signal interruption:** As if this titan of the Rajas wasn't already fearsome enough, the Rakshasa can release a burst of jamming signals with deletrious effects on enemy communications, and even when not set to burst mode, guided missiles have a chance of being redirected or losing their guidance; missing their marks entirely.

* **The Tiger Demon takes his time:** The Rakshasa is however, slow, and in terms of raw stats such as durability and firepower, is strictly inferior to the likes of the Apocalypse. It's own turret traverse also leaves something to be desired, making swift approaching aircraft or quick flanking enemies who can pierce it's armor a powerful worry. It is also hardly anything anyone would label "cheap".

* **Let me show you some spells:** The most elite Rakshasa crews get gifts from India's excursions into China. Engines improved in mysterious ways give a respectable speed boost, and new warheads increase the power of the Land Cruiser an appreciable amount, making the Land Cruiser even better suited for bringing war to the enemy.

## Background

*"The tiger hunts today."*

- Land Cruiser commander in Oman.
Though the Allies frequently state their preference for mobile units for the battlefield and many generals dismiss superheavy units as impractical, in truth, they have always wanted their own counterparts for the likes of the King Oni or the Apocalypse. The very fact that the massive Assault Destroyer is capable of functioning on land should be proof enough, especially as it was later joined by the Assault Striker, and Germany is still working on an *"Uber-Panzer"* for their Panzergrenadier units, with promising results. Even before this, designs such as the T28, the Liberty Heavy Tank, the multi-turreted monstrosities of Poland, and the German superheavy tank projects, all spoke of a desire to make "a tank among tanks."

India is no exception. As stated before, they greatly admire Soviet weaponry and the Red Army despite their anti-communist stance. So a commission was put out for Commonwealth companies to give India her own Soviet-style superheavies. The winning designer based the design on the JS-2 Mammoth Tank, made infamous in the Second World War for its power and the dread Allied tankers had for "Stalin's tank", which outclassed all other attempts at superheavies by leaps and bounds. But perhaps the most major change (save for those that were an inevitable result of going from Soviet technologies from Stalin's era to Indian ones in the 60s) was the decision to remove the guns in favor of using missile launchers, lowering the weight and saving on the expense needed to create and maintain guns for their secret weapon as well as offering, in their minds, the advantages of added range and accuracy.

The other great change was using the weight saved by the removal of the guns and their connected systems was adding electronic warfare suites to make up for India's inferiority to Soviet material science by being able to strike at the enemy's ability to attack them at all. Dubbed the Rakshasa and ordered into mass production, great things were expected from the Land Cruiser. While occasional and highly secretive tests in China during India's aid program to the Blue Chinese in the Civil War and against the GLA were promising, it was the Empire's invasion that really cemented the behemoth in the Frontier Corps' arsenal. Not expecting such a monster from the Commonwealth, the Rakshasa was able to hold down numerically superior Japanese forces before being destroyed, and much was made from their role in the defense of New Delhi, Kolkata, and Hyderabad in the most desperate hours of the war.

After the war, the Rakshasa was sent to new battlefields, namely Oman against the GLA once more, into the now desolate wastes of China against the Royalist menace, and into the Horn of Africa in India's peacekeeping on the continent. Once again, the tiger demon of the Rajas strikes fear into the hearts of those who oppose the Commonwealth, and the Frontier Corps cannot get enough of them, making the industry behind producing them a center for jobs and the accumulation of wealth. No longer a secret weapon, the Rakshasa is as heavily promoted by the Commonwealth as the Apocalypse is by the Soviet Union. Workers are proud to make them, crews are eager to operate them, soldiers are glad to fight besides them. As India dreams of an ever-expanding commonwealth, they are sure to see even more action.