Video Game / Mud And Blood

The marines on cover; here's how you'll actually observe them.◊

Unfair Random Brutality

Mud and Blood can refer to one of two top-down real-time strategy games available for free on various websites around the Internet. The first, Mud and Blood: Vietnam, puts the player in the role of a US commander who must recapture a firebase from the Viet Cong and Hold the Line against counter-attacks. Its sequel, Mud and Blood 2, puts the player in the role of a US commander who must invoke You Shall Not Pass! against Germans in WWII during the Ardennes Offensive. Mud and Blood: Recon has been playable on their website too.

Due to Adobe Flash Player being discontinued, Mud and Blood will be rebuilt and released on Steam.

Mud and Blood: Vietnam and its sequel contain examples of:

• Anti-Infantry: Any unit with a machinegun or rapid fire weapon probably counts. The mines you choose to lay are also effective.
• Anti-Armor: The Bazookas, mines, Rifle Grenades, Sticky Grenades, AT guns, and Sherman tanks all qualify.
• Artificial Stupidity: Grenades + your troops + enemies nearby other friendly troops = disastrous friendly fire...it very well may be worth losing your TP investment to remove grenades from your troops at times rather than risk them blowing up allied soldiers can eroding their own morale.
• A-Team Firing: You will be stuck with this if your soldiers spawn with low Rifle stats. The Germans in the early waves do their part to invoke this as well.
• Attack Drone: The Goliath is a remote controlled bomb mounted on treads. Primitive but far from ignorable.
• Badass Santa: Horribly inverted. Santa (who only appears in the game around Christmas) literally just walks around the battlefield.
• Badass Army: You can invoke this trope if you have units with a lot of Experience as well as if you buy Ranger training or Spec Ops soldiers, but the Germans count too; see Elite Mooks below to see the list of (in)famous and powerful units you may encounter.
• Bayonet Ya: Troops can be equipped with bayonets in 2.28b.
  • Officers cannot get other weapons aside from the logical hand grenades and the...less logical bayonet. We'll assume they're just using the bayonets unmounted rather than pistol-bayonet shenanigans.
• Bittersweet Ending: If you can manage well, you will inflict dozens or even hundreds of casualties among the Germans, but will still be overrun.
• Bragging Rights Reward: The Ribbon of Unfairness makes you have to have your teeth potentially kicked in a thousand times by unfair events...and then unfair events will give you a 1% chance of getting one more TP when they happen. This is more proof that you were masochistic enough to actually earn it rather than be an actual reward.
• Cannon Fodder: Volkstrum and Frenchies for the Germans and you respectively.
• Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys: Justified Trope, the Frenchies are basically untrained civilians sent to combat without the instilled resilience and training of your "average" soldier. They can Take a Level in Badass if they last long enough to get kills and experience
• Combat Medic: Subverted. The Medic unit carries a handgun, but he never uses it.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Part of the entire point of the game. The randomness brutally screws up your chances of victory, making the whole game sort of unfair. But at least the saying warns you so.
• Communications Officer: Do not underestimate the Signaler. While Sarge is busy trying to grenade spam a Tiger tank, the Signaler will enable you to bring down airstrikes and artillery fire that will destroy not only that Tiger tank but probably the rest of the wave as well.
• Death from Above: If you have more than six soldiers out in the open (as opposed to under camnets or in smoke), there is a chance this will happen in the form of German airstrikes. However, with a Signaler you can invoke this on your enemies too.
• Decapitated Army: The death of high-ranking officers will cause a very significant morale penalty on your surviving men, possibly routing a good number of them right from there and naturally cause Disaster Dominoes.
• Do-Anything Soldier: Downplayed. While you can give your troops different weapons for different situations (say, a BAR for suppressing fire and a shotgun for close combat), specialists such as Snipers, Bazookas, Scouts, and Gunners are often a better choice than equipping a Soldier with a new weapon. In addition, if the driver of one of your vehicles is shot out, then you will need to call in a driver as a reinforcement, as ordering a sniper to take the wheel of a jeep is just not possible.
• Downer Ending: If you're not good, the Germans will slaughter your troops and get past you quickly.
• Easter Egg: Two ribbons are more jokes that actually exist than actual gameplay bonuses for achieving: the Kyoto Ribbon is granted after 100 trees get broken by you and does nothing, and the I Like Pie ribbon is randomly obtained from a crate and does absolutely nothing aside from being kinda hard to believe that it actually exists and that you were given it.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: This depends on how you play. If you call in a lot of Spec Ops soldiers you will invoke this, as well as if you upgrade your regular soldiers with Ranger Training.
• Elite Mooks: The Waffen SS soldiers have good accuracy, can fire while moving really fast toward your troops, and have excellent morale. The German Paratroopers and Brandenburg Infiltrators count too.
• Endless Game: You play until enough Germans have gotten past your lines, or you quit the game.
• Ensign Newbie: Your officers generally start out poorly - you're going to have to wait for Magikarp Power to kick in as they gain experience to make their aura bigger and more effective at making your soldiers act faster, or make good use of special orders, or just existing so a Signaler can get to work.
• Expy: Many of the enemy soldiers in the second game are counterparts to your soldiers. With the German units first, Assault Pioneer -> Engineer, Waffen SS -> Scout, German Mortar -> Mortar, Sd. Kfz. 251 -> Half Track, German Flamethrower -> Flamethrower, German Sniper -> Sniper, Volkssturm -> Frenchies, German Officer -> Officer, MG-42 Gunner -> Gunner, Panzerschreck -> Bazooka, Wehrmacht -> Soldier, and more.
• Fake Ultimate Mook: When you put your cursor over them not only does the game state that the Wehrmacht are the backbone of the German army but also that "...most of them are hardened veterans from the Eastern Front." However, they're mostly unremarkable in gameplay and are just simple mooks a level above the absolute jokes that are Volkssturm.
• Fragile Speedster: The Zündapp KS750 will try to rush past you, but can be taken out by a single grenade.
• Ghostapo: If you play on Halloween, the Germans will deploy zombies. These used to be Volkssturm, but are now undead, and Revive Kills Zombie is decidedly averted. They don't attack unless engaged in hand to hand, but they never stop moving forward and are very hard to kill.
• Gunship Rescue: The first game would allow you to send in an attack helicopter for air support.
• Hero Unit: Sarge. His demise will lead you to only get the message "There is only one Sarge..." from trying to recruit him again.
• Hero Killer: A Wespe will really ruin your day; the game-ruining nature of the Wespe has reached almost a memetic status in the M&B fandom. Beyond that, just about any kind of armored vehicle has the potential to count if you're lacking in the AT department.
• Hold the Line: Your mission.
• Instant Death Stab: The Brandenburg infiltrator has a tendency to kill soldiers they engage in CQC instantly by stabbing them with a dagger.
• It's Raining Men: Paratroopers do this, naturally.
• Just Eat Gilligan: One must wonder why the Germans don't just send all their men at once to attack you, instead choosing to break up their seemingly infinite army into defeatable waves.
  • There are other Allied forces in front of you as part of Operation Luttich, and so the waves are caused by separate small groups of Germans making it through. Your defense is simply a small part of the 2nd Battalion, who was cut-off and attacked on Hill 314, defending their positions until 12th August. As Allied resistance in front of you starts to collapse, the Germans get larger and better-organized forces through. In the Ardennes Offensive, the element of surprise and the bad weather keeping the USAF grounded in various places were considered essential, so the Germans were ordered to move forward as fast as possible at all costs.
• La Résistance: The Frenchies, of course.
• Last Stand: There is no way to win-if you launch an offensive and advance, the terrain will simply change and you will have to fortify . The Germans will keep coming until they overrun your position.
• Lethal Joke Character: While Frenchies are mostly used by played just as a cheap meatshield to draw the Germans' fire, putting them toward the upper area of the map and giving them a shotgun grants a unit combination far more cost-effective than the same cost in soldiers with shotguns...unless the Frenchy's rifle skill is just that low.
• Luck-Based Mission: Unfair events are very bad things that happen randomly for each flanker that got past your lines...or a 1% chance of happening just from the game plain lasting past wave 80, with an additional 1% for every 25 waves past that. Your luck will probably run out at some point....
  • Blitz waves can also occur at any wave. While they'll give you some more TP, they also tend to be very, very bad, though artillery or air support blitzes can be canceled with a high-ranking signaler.
  • Having more than 6 men or vehicles deployed not under cam-nets will increase the odds of the Germans calling in advanced support against you. Cam-nets are incredibly fragile and 1st. SS Leibstandarte will render your cam-nets temporarily useless to make you run afoul of the aforementioned rule...
  • Most medals are generally granted after heavy amounts of pretty much Level Grinding. And then some require heavy amounts of a fairly rare event. And then the reward is also often a small chance for a bonus (though entirely concrete rewards do exist among the medals).
  • Crates that are airdropped down to your battlefield. They can provide a very handy stat boost of some kind to your soldiers, free soldiers (don't ask), extra tactical points...or they can give you armor plates for a health boost to your vehicles while you don't actually have vehicles, reduce flankers while no Germans actually got past your lines, decrease the wave counter when you'd really rather have it go up to get your valuable wave-based ribbons, do absolutely nothing aside from giving the soldier that obtained it experience, or worst of all, the crate could land right by the Germans who will then pick it up and instantly spawn another wave with no tactical points granted to you.
• Ludicrous Gibs: Common with hits from explosives and artillery.
• Magikarp Power: Normal Soldiers typically spawn with pathetic to average stats, but if they get enough Experience they will become killing machines. In addition, the Cannon Fodder Frenchies can be sent behind enemy lines to do sabotage, and if they succeed (which generally only happens if they have a lot of Experience) it will have significant effects on the battle, such as preventing vehicular attacks for a certain number of waves.
  • A few things makes the starting Springfield rifle of your soldiers to be spectacular when their users get experienced. The weapon is long-ranged, high damage, doesn't have to reload, and firing only a single shot means soldiers have a short firing sequence and constantly acquires new targets with it, meaning they avoid continuing firing sequences that are aimed at a dead enemy as well as have their effective fire-rate increased by ranking up even more with experience causing them to act faster and improves the effective fire-rate of Rifle Grenades equipped.
  • Signalers move like molasses and take a long time to complete any of their calls. As they gain experience, they can provide unique and quickly-arriving support to crush all but the unfairest of options the Germans assail you with.
• Made of Iron: Anyone with the Heroism upgrade gains up to 200 hit points, and if they're injured they can be raised to full health with the very same upgrade.
• Men of Sherwood: The Spec Ops soldiers. Arguably as good as Sarge relative to their cost, they will rack up kills much faster than an ordinary soldier and each is a badass in their own right, but they are nameless. Paratroopers and Ranger-trained regular Soldiers count as well.
• Mook Lieutenant: The German Officers.
• Mooks: Wehrmacht for the Germans.
• More Dakka: The Gunner's main job. Machinegun-equipped tanks, large stationary machineguns, anti-aircraft guns, and more can invoke it as well.
• Nerves of Steel: Spec Ops soldiers will never retreat in the face of the enemy. Ever.
• One-Man Army: Sarge is a standout example, but even regular soldiers can become this if they rack up enough Experience and are given the right weapons. The game's wiki page of him jokes that various characters in other video games are different incarnations of him, and Spec Ops are downgraded versions of Sarge.
• Praetorian Guard: The 1st. SS Leibstandarte are enemies in the game and functioned as Hitler's bodyguards in real life.
• Red Shirt Army: If you choose a quantity over quality approach in your troop composition, this will probably be the result.
• Sergeant Rock: Sarge from 2.28b, who comes equipped with grenades, a Tommy gun, has more health than a normal soldier, is a beast in CQC, raises the morale of nearby troops, unpins nearby comrades, and raises the experience of friendly officers.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: The Nazi soldiers are predetermined to eventually win; you can only deploy a finite amount of soldiers, while the Nazis will never stop coming. This is despite the fact the battle you're participating in ended in an Allied victory, and the troops you're commanding were relieved by 12th August.
• Smoking Is Cool: Sarge will occasionally smoke and drop cigarette butts, probably for no other reason than this.
• State Sec: The SS are among your enemies.
• Stealthy Mook: Brandenburg Infiltrators from 2.28b can only be spotted by your normal troops if they are very close, and might even pop up near one of your soldiers and spray them to death with point blank pistol fire. Luckily, your Scouts and Snipers easily spot them.
• Tank Goodness: The famous Tiger and Sherman tanks are in the second game.
• Unstable Equilibrium: All the time! Every German that gets past your lines gives a higher chance of bad stuff being called in against you, which will probably then kill or incapacitate your troops to allow more to get past until defeat. Naturally, every one of your soldiers the Germans kill or incapacitate makes it easier for them to flank your lines. Additionally, you can also further suffer it by calling in powerful units too early which "Exp Hog" by proceeding to murder the lion share's of the enemies and keep doing this even after hitting the maximum 100 experience, preventing the rest of your troops from getting kills themselves and ranking up until which your forces probably get overwhelmed from lacking experience.
• Vehicular Assault: On later waves, you will be at the hands of this.
• Very Loosely Based on a True Story: See the real life events behind the game here and here.
• Video Game Caring Potential: Several of your troops may lay screaming in pain on the ground, but if you have enough Tactical Points you can have a Medic fix them up.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: There is an achievement for gibbing Santa Claus.
• Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: They sure do. Flamethrowers have pathetic range, meaning the soldiers carrying them have to almost engage in CQC to even activate their weapon. When they do (which is after a long while, as the guys carrying the flamethrowers are slow), they frequently fail to set enemy soldiers on fire. A flamethrower equipped unit might finally be able to set an enemy on fire, only for his victim to bolt straight for him and set him on fire too.
• Villain Forgot to Level Grind: Notably inverted. The skill of enemy soldiers goes up as the waves go by, even if those soldiers are supposedly from the same unit.
• War Is Hell: A theme of the game. Your men might do well, but eventually they'll fail and probably join their enemies on the blood-drenched ground...
• What Measure Is a Mook?: Played with. All of your soldiers have names and faces which you can see by hovering your cursor over them, but the Germans are just generic fighters that exist only to kill your troops.
• You Fight Like a Cow: One of your options is called "Taunt", which calls in a new wave of Germans. However, this is actually useful, as it gives you a free Tactical Point.

Mud and Blood: Recon contains examples of:

• Endless Game: The game ends if your Merit roll fails at the end of your tour of duty; otherwise you spend another year overseeing Rangers hunting Charlie.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: The team you control are Rangers on Long-Range Reconnaissance Patrols with the special mission objectives to match them.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: Averted Trope, the Viet Cong will detect you more and more easily and observe noise discipline as your forces openly attack them. This will also raise the Heat level for future missions which will have the Viet Cong set up traps and bring in heavier support to tangle with you and can only be lowered by waiting days.
• RPG Elements: Rangers rank up as they do things and allows them to put a point in the skills of Combat, Comms, Medic, Demo, Spot, Stealth, Viet. Don't be thinking that RPGs Equal Combat though, because having your Rangers just kill everything they see and calling in additional support will make the Viet Cong be on edge and place traps or put in their most valuable elements into the area to deal with your Rangers.
• Sneak Attack: Rangers equipped with a Combat Knife can silently kill enemies while staying close by them while in stealth after some time.
• Sound-Coded for Your Convenience: The Viet Cong will talk as you get closer to them, letting you know now's the time to be careful. If you spend too much of the mission overtly attacking the enemy though, they'll wise up and keep their mouths shut.
• Stealth-Based Mission: Most of the time - actually killing the Viet Cong puts your troops at risk and raises the heat level for future missions, putting them further at risk; though it will give your Rangers experience and can provide intel from searching the enemy corpses. Many missions further encourage or enforce your Rangers keep their fingers off their triggers, while others will require your Rangers get their hands bloody.
• Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay: The use of your team's radio in the game is highly in-depth and non-simplified. The radio starts out as off because turning it on on drain the battery, your signal can be messed up by inclement weather or extreme range, you might have to send in adjustments for artillery fire support to hit effectively, you need to regularly send a situation report before command assumes you're having major issues rendering you unable to communicate and sends out a search party, etc.
  • None of the medical items are guaranteed to stabilize your injured soldiers, stabilizing won't last long meaning you have to be getting injured men onto a chopper ASAP and then they'll have to spend days off the field recovering, and the first aid kit only alleviates light injury to heal Rangers while they have at least 75 health.