Carpet-bombing with the Iron Bomber

Demoman for the longest time was my least-played class, and for good reason. While classes like Soldier and Heavy do tons of damage even at low skill levels, good luck actually ever hitting anything if you intend to do the same as Demoman. He is an unusual class, with a deceptively high skill ceiling. The days of Left-Click-Right-Click-BOOM are a thing of the past. And since I already play one intense, deceptively hard class that everyone relies on, I never really fancied taking on another.

That has changed. I’ve been edging towards playing more Demoman for ages, sick and tired of being unable to look after myself in public servers, where Medics are a rare old thing. Unless you’re playing on a server for contracts, then there’ll probably be one lone Medic, trying his best. But why play Demoman when I could play Soldier, which is both aggressive, defensive and supportive at the same time? I simply never got around to it. What pushed me over the edge was how crap I was during the second Festive SPUF event. I needed to bring more classes onto the same level as my Medic skills. Demoman would be my first challenge.

Then I played other games and kinda gave up on TF2. But with my internet currently unusable, TESV Skyrim crashing every five minutes and Saints Row the Third refusing to load, I’ve got some spare time. Unfortunately, I am still shit.

This doesn’t mean I’ve given up though. It’s just opened my mind up to the Iron Bomber, the only grenade launcher I appear to own. I can’t switch it back for Stock or the recently nerfed Loose Cannon, but that’s not really a problem. I’ve discovered that I LIKE the Iron Bomber. It’s the sort of weapon I never thought I’d see myself liking.

Awesome model aside, it is an interesting item. It’s essentially the same as the stock Grenade Launcher, with some little differences here and there, the biggest one being how the grenades you fire simply don’t bounce. They do this cute little spin on the spot when they land, rather than bouncing off into the distance. This is the first thing you’ll notice, and it’ll feel like you have far less range. Which is true.

The Iron Bomber though isn’t designed for spamming at enemies, it has a better little niche. Catching people with rollers is harder but destroying buildings is far easier, as each grenade sits in place underneath your target until it explodes, and Engineers may try to short-circuit them, but they definitely can’t shoot them with their shotguns like they can with stickies. But even when you can’t catch people with posthumous rollers, you can still spam the Iron Bomber down a corridor towards enemies. It does that job exactly the same way as normal.

There are downsides. There always are. Not having bouncing rollers makes life harder and the loss of range is noticeable. And it’s probably just my imagination, but the explosion radius feels a lot smaller than it is. That doesn’t matter though. It still feels the same as the stock grenade launcher, just with a few tweaks, which, to me, make the weapon feel way more usable.

What amuses me most though is that it’s got 4 chambers and uses 4 grenades. Unlike the stock Grenade Launcher. Or the Loose Cannon. Or the Loch N Load.

Just don’t get me started on the Sticky Bomb Launcher. I swear I’ll never get my head around it.