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supersaiyanjedi14 · 1 year

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RWBY COMBAT ANALYSIS: JAMES IRONWOOD

"You can label me whatever you'd like, but the fact of the matter is I was right! The minute I softened, let my guard down, that's when Salem had her opening. All excellent philosophical points that won't matter if Salem wins. […] I am done letting others' inability to see the big picture get in the way of doing what's right. Robyn, the council, this Kingdom... even you.”

PHYSICAL

A human male, General James Ironwood’s exact age during the events of the series is unstated, though as a peer of the likes of Qrow Branwen, Jacques Schnee and Arthur Watts, I’d estimate him to be in his late 40s to early 50s. By the time of his death, two years after the Fall of Beacon, Ironwood had spent the bulk of his career as part of the Atlas Armed Forces, raising in the ranks to eventually become commander in chief of the Atlas army and later headmaster of Atlas Huntsman Academy. These joint positions earned him an unprecedented two seats on the Atlas Council, a factor that flavored the rest of his controversial life. However, while he represented the standard to which Atlesian Huntsmen and soldiers were compared, Ironwood was far from a conventional specimen. His most defining trait was his extensive cybernetic implants, his chosen treatment option for the multitude of combat injuries he sustained over the course of his life. By the end of the Atlas crisis, Ironwood had replaced both of his arms, his right leg, and the entire right half of his torso with robotic prosthetics, while an additional implant was installed into his forehead to link up the cybernetics with his higher brain function. While the full extent of Ironwood’s torso cybernetics in relation to his biological body has never been explored, I believe a good frame of reference would be those of the Star Wars antagonist Darth Vader, who was outfitted with various replacement organs to supplement his respirator and artificial bones and ligaments to reinforce his skeleton. However, where Vader’s reconstruction was restricted by the severity of his injuries and the need to preserve as much of his living flesh as possible, most of Ironwood’s cybernetics were merely a treatment option rather than lifesaving necessities, and he was all too willing to sacrifice his physical form in the name of continuing the fight. As a result, Ironwood’s prosthetics were both far more intrusive than was standard and designed to be combatively reliable, James’ ultimate goal being to become something more than human in order to combat the horrors of Salem.

While Ironwood’s willingness to discard his body for metal boded poorly for his restraint and principles, their practical benefits more than made up for it, making him one of the most physically powerful combatants of his day. Standing at a towering 6’6”, Ironwood’s cybernetic proportions closely approximated the muscular athletic build he no doubt sported as a young man, further distinguished by his graying black hair and beard, blue eyes, and pale skin tone. The most visible advantage of Ironwood’s metallic body was his incredible physical might, taking his already heavy-handed approach to combat and augmenting it with the benefits of robotics. He has casually manhandled high-caliber Grimm with his bare hands, lifted and thrown adult humans with an outstretched arm, crushed stone in his grip, and even smashed his own tactical console to pieces with a pair of slammed fists in a fit of anger. Given that his Aura was depleted when he lifted Arthur Watts over the Amity Arena lava pit, I feel comfortable saying that Ironwood’s baseline strength level was superhuman, his prosthetics specifically designed to surpass what his “weaker” flesh and blood could achieve. Compared to his peers, though few of Ironwood’s adversaries were particularly domineering, I think it is only reasonable to assume that only similar heavyweights could realistically challenge his strength. The only instance of Ironwood lacking confidence in his muscles and servos was against Penny Polendina, a designed and built combat drone far beyond mortal athleticism, motivating him to draw Due Process’s energy cannon instead. Despite this heavy emphasis on strength, the general’s other attributes were also polished. Though he favored grounded footwork and postures, rarely employing acrobatics, Ironwood was still quick on his feet, covering ground with power jumps, combat rolls, and running charges. While they appeared to be nimbler, neither Watts nor Lie Ren appeared to have any meaningful speed advantage over Ironwood, who kept up with them in close quarters and even overpowered them. While Winter Schnee was conclusively faster than him, this is no sign of weakness given her status as one of the most accomplished acrobats in the setting, and even then, his stalwart foundation and footwork allowed him to keep up with her. Furthermore, Ironwood’s reflexes were still polished enough to avoid point-blank gunfire, and he was skilled in the use of combat propellants to enable more dynamic maneuvers, freely using the gravity Dust in Due Process’s black half to launch himself across the battlefield. While the metal fingers of his cybernetic arms likely hampered his fine dexterity, Ironwood was still able to execute controlled technique-based attacks in battle, expertly wielding his guns as bludgeons on multiple occasions and easily keeping up with Lie Ren in a fist fight.

As has already been stated, Ironwood was a lifelong veteran soldier and Huntsman with a history of severe injury, the extensiveness of his cybernetics pointing to the amount of punishment he has had to endure. Between his prosthetics functioning as natural armor and his own incredible will to fight, Ironwood possessed an astronomical tolerance for pain and injury. During the Fall of Beacon, Ironwood endured a shuttle crash when his hacked AK-200 drones turned on him, and despite his clothing getting ripped apart, indicating an at least damaged Aura, he powered through and went on to demolish scores of drones in the battle. During his confrontation with Watts, Ironwood was regularly battered against the anti-gravity biome’s walls, was struck by several of Watts’ standard and Dust bullets, and finally broke his Aura when he tackled Watts off a platform and struck the arena floor. When Watts trapped his arm in a hard light barrier, Ironwood endured the agony of burning off his own skin to escape, sacrificing his arm before beating the scientist into the dirt. Even his defeats have only come from overwhelming force. At Atlas Academy, Ironwood was only brought down by the combined might of Team JNOR, Emerald Sustrai and Winter Schnee, subjecting him to a kick to the face, a flurry of thrown ice shards, multiple hits from the Long Memory, a direct hit from a charged Magnhild, getting run down by a charging Summoned Manticore, and finally a slash across the abdomen before he went down. Winter only defeated Ironwood when she assumed the power of the Winter Maiden and deflected a shot from Due Process’s energy cannon back in his face, bringing him to his knees. However, while Ironwood’s cybernetics allowed him to maintain his output in the long term, his overall stamina was surprisingly lackluster. By the time the Watts fight reached its final bout after only a few minutes, Ironwood was visibly fatigued, displaying labored breathing and less crisp transitions in his style. While the force he was up against at the academy was far greater than anyone could ever deal with, Ironwood still burned out fast, and it is worth noting that the general is one of the few characters who has actually lost consciousness when his Aura broke. Furthermore, despite his military discipline, Ironwood’s unwillingness to back down has led him to bite off more than he can chew and ignore dangers, needlessly subjecting himself to injury to force his way to victory. Accordingly, his ultimate fall was a long-term grind, his composure whittled away by his growing paranoia and his body beaten to the point where he couldn’t even regain his feet, dying under the crushing weight of Atlas itself.

While Ironwood almost certainly wore combat armor during his early years as an Atlas soldier, even continuing to own a pair of pauldrons for emergencies, his role as Academy Headmaster and a member of the Atlas Council meant that he was rarely deployed into active combat. As such, his usual choice of wardrobe was the Atlas Military Dress Uniform, though like other high-ranking Atlas operatives, his personal set was heavily personalized. During Atlas’s last days, Ironwood’s uniform consisted of a dress shirt and tie underneath a double-breasted white jacket, military style trousers, steel-toed boots, and a heavy white overcoat. He accessorized with a belt, bandolier, and a pair of white gloves, though after losing his left arm, he deliberately left the black prosthesis bare. With his cybernetics functioning as built-in armor, Ironwood’s wardrobe could afford to emphasize mobility over protection, leaving him free to leverage his mechanical physique to its fullest.

RANKING: Tier 1, Baseline Superhuman

Cybernetic enhancement generally affords significant practical advantages in physical combat, but their general limitedness often prevents them from drastically elevating physical performance level, and most cyborgs are merely squishy meatbags with slightly less squishy bits. However, James Ironwood’s extremely extensive cybernetics push him far beyond the standard, his prosthetics serving as both remedies to hold his body together and a preemptive measure to prevent him from breaking again. Ironwood is inarguably one of the toughest and strongest combatants in the setting, demonstrating physical might far beyond a mortal man’s and an absolutely inhuman tolerance for injury. Considering that James was perfectly willing to burn off his own arm, there is no telling how far this man will go to achieve victory. Ironwood’s only real limitation is his poor sustainability, indicating that he does have a limit to his performance and made all the worse by his refusal to cut his losses. Fatigue, both physical and mental, is James Ironwood’s biggest handicap, but pushing the general to that point will be an incredibly uphill battle, given that he is, quite literally, built like a tank.

MARTIAL

James Ironwood was armed with a paired set of heavy pistols known as Due Process, an ironic name if there ever was one. Combining aspects of both a revolver and semi-automatic pistol, each gun appeared to be about a foot and a half long, 5 inches thick, and designed with floral patterns engraved on the slide. Each pistol featured a secondary trigger that enabled it to fire specialized ammunition alongside standard rounds. The primary weapon was silver colored and loaded with explosive rounds, the yield strong enough to knock an alpha Beowolf into the air and reduce entire squads of AK-200 combat drones to shrapnel. The second pistol had a black finish along the slide and grips and was loaded with gravity Dust bullets, capable of generating shockwaves powerful enough to propel Ironwood through the air. Given that Ironwood was prepared to immediately execute Marrow Amin with the black pistol after the Faunus went AWOL, it is entirely possible that the Dust rounds were powerful enough to either break or penetrate Auras with a solid direct hit. Furthermore, the pistols were durable enough to be used as bludgeons in close quarters combat, one of Ironwood’s favorite tactics being to grab the weapon by the barrel and use it as a club when out of ammo. Overall, a simple yet reliably lethal weapon set, perfect for Atlas’s perfect soldier.

As the head of the Atlas Military and a professional Huntsman, James Ironwood obviously possessed the standard training background of his contemporaries, likely graduating from Atlas Huntsman Academy before enlisting his talents in the Special Operatives Division just as his later subordinates Winter Schnee and Clover Ebi did. Accordingly, he was familiar with the various ways to dispatch the creatures of Grimm and trained in the use of various military grade weapons and advanced hand to hand combat. A hardened soldier, his talents as a marksman and martial artist were built up through rigorous battlefield experience, and while his role as academy headmaster and government councilor meant he was rarely seen in the field, he clearly stayed on top of his training. By the end of his life, Ironwood stood as one of the most skilled and tenacious martial combatants of his day, effectively setting the mold for what Atlas Academy expected of its students. Ironwood’s personal fighting style was extremely physical, taking full advantage of his cybernetics to deliver a devastating offensive barrage, launching everything he had at the enemy and refusing to give an inch of ground. When at a distance, Ironwood relied on his exceptional marksmanship to dispatch opponents, alternating between single shots and dual wielding bullet swarms. Though he could expertly chain together sporadic bursts of gunfire to force opponents back, he overwhelmingly favored single shot takedowns. Against single adversaries, he homed in on his target and sought to destroy it with a precise killshot, nailing direct hits on Arthur Watts twice during their battle at Amity Colosseum. In group engagements, Ironwood switched over to explosive rounds, clearing away large groups of enemies with a single blow, as seen when he destroyed large squads of AK-200s during the Fall of Beacon. When forced to close the distance, Ironwood relied heavily on brutal close quarters combat techniques to overpower his enemies, wielding his guns as extensions of his body. His pistol whips were swift, powerful, and decidedly lethal, even when utilizing heavy ordnance analogous to Due Process’s energy cannon. When completely unarmed, Ironwood fully leveraged his cyborg strength through devastating punches, kicks, grapples, and tackles intended to subdue the enemy as directly and efficiently as possible. Despite this blunt offensive stance, Ironwood was not some mindless brawler flailing around. His unarmed skills were in fact quite sophisticated, clearly holding a dominant edge over Watts and fighting evenly with Lie Ren despite the latter having access to his weapons. If forced to defend, Ironwood’s policy was “endure and power through”, holding his ground and shrugging off hits before resuming the offensive. He employed deft evasions and sidesteps when dodging bullets, and when in close quarters he used his armored limbs to block attacks before manhandling the opponent to force open their defenses. Additionally, Ironwood’s understanding of his weapons’ functions allowed him to leverage the recoil for practical purposes, regaining his stance by blasting himself back to his feet. He bolstered his focused offensive technique with his Semblance and Dust loadout, striking with absolute commitment and intensity while adding more power to his attacks with elemental fury.

Ironwood was a reasonably capable military strategist, clearly understanding the value of his army’s strength and building his approach around leveraging this as fully as possible. However, Ironwood was no planner, his strategies mostly boiling down to building up his foundation to make an instrument that could overpower virtually any challenger while also being nearly impossible to overpower in turn. He expressed this both in preparing his forces and training his own students, investing heavily in the development of the Atlesian Knight drones and enjoying regular sparring matches with Oscar Pine. When commanding armies, he deployed his heavily armed and armored troops in as great numbers as possible, bringing down the hammer with an unstoppable force of offensive might. This approach proved successful at the Breach and in the early stages of the Battle of Atlas, the Atlas troops’ superior weapons and equipment allowing them to steamroll the various creatures of Grimm while also halting their advance long enough to develop a devastating counteroffensive. When he was personally fighting, Ironwood used these same tactics to turn battles into slugging matches where his cyborg strength and heavy guns could dominate. When confronted by the Alpha Beowolf at Amity, Ironwood rushed in and attacked directly, bracing up against the beast’s charge before shooting an explosive round into the ground, blowing it off its feet and allowing Ironwood to more easily manhandle it before shooting it in the head. As seen in his battle with Arthur Watts two years later, Ironwood was an expert at alternating his offensive abilities to keep up the pressure. He would propel himself with his guns’ recoil to close the distance then rapidly switch between standard, explosive, and Dust ammunition to hammer the target’s defenses. In close quarters, he employed the same methodology with his unarmed skills and pistol whips, each strike aimed at staggering or subduing the enemy in one fell swoop. His confrontation with Team JNR at Atlas Academy showed his ability to apply his tactics to group engagements, managing to overmatch the attacks of Jaune Arc, Oscar Pine and Lie Ren by seizing their arms and weapons and forcing open their defenses.

In all things Ironwood showed an emphasis on overwhelming power as a solid general-purpose solution, dominating his opponents rather than undermining or subverting them. Appropriately, his ultimate trump cards were the most devastating weapons he could get his hands on. Against Salem’s army, Ironwood used his troops to stall for time as he prepared a Dust warhead to obliterate the Monstra. In personable combat, Ironwood literally pulled out the big guns by outfitting Due Process with a large cannon. Less wieldy but more powerful, the cannon fired massive bolts of green energy capable of destroying heavy machinery and overpowering advanced ethereal defenses, punching through a hard-light Dust prison cell like wet paper and later overwhelming Winter Schnee’s black glyphs. Even with the extra heft of the cannon, Ironwood was still perfectly capable of swinging it around as a bludgeon, demonstrating the intensity and commitment that Ironwood brought to all of his skills. However, Ironwood’s tactics also demonstrate his serious weaknesses as a tactical thinker, weaknesses worsened by his pride and fear. Because his entire approach was built around leveraging strength and power for maximum effect, Ironwood was ineffective against more defensive and subversive opponents who could prevent him from bringing his full might to bear, while his overreliance on offense left him exposed to retaliation and tunnel vision. Despite being a physical lightweight with minimal dedication to physical combat, Watts was able to contend with Ironwood by maintaining a slippery retreat through the anti-gravity biome, forcing the general to chase after him while he chipped away at him from a distance. Ironwood was either unaware or unconcerned that he was being baited, continuing to come after Watts and getting his arm caught in the ring trap for his trouble. A similar fate befell him at the academy, his focus on each of his opponents individually leaving him blind to the various counters they levied against him, wearing him down. While Ironwood has displayed clever maneuvers in the past, such as when he outflanked Watts and Amity and surprised Winter with a pistol whip, these displays were a major exception to the rule. Whenever his preferred methods were questioned or his plans fell apart, Ironwood doubled down and fought harder, essentially forcing problems to become a nail for his hammer.

Ironwood’s tactical tunnel vision was most visibly demonstrated in his grand strategy blunders, stubbornly maintaining a military presence at the Vytal Festival and continuing the Amity Project while ignoring the concerns and protests his actions sparked in Mantle. Ironwood was at his best when his blunt approach was tempered by his more moderate allies, deferring to Ozpin’s subtler methods on multiple occasions despite their disagreements. When leading the charge, however, his stubborn persistence was his greatest undoing, allowing Salem and Cinder Fall to exploit and manipulate him on several occasions and essentially do their work of dividing humanity for them. When Cinder infiltrated the academy, Ironwood, convinced that Salem’s forces were with her, decided to abandon the Amity project and use the Staff of Creation to raise Atlas further into the atmosphere, abandoning Mantle to the Grimm. While Team RWBY’s attempts to talk sense into Ironwood fell on deaf ears partially due to their previous withholding of information, Ironwood’s flat admittance of the severity of his decision showed his commitment to a decision regardless of the consequences. Between ordering RWBY and co.’s arrests, murdering Councilman Sleet, attempting to execute the defecting Marrow Amin, and finally deciding to drop the Dust warhead on Mantle, Ironwood demonstrated an increasingly severe disregard for outside input or the questioning of what he and he alone saw as what was best for others. This arrogant short-sightedness directly contributed to his inability to anticipate the actions of his adversaries, underestimating Ruby’s resolve to save both Atlas and Mantle and being caught completely off guard by JNR’s ambush. When Watts disabled Ironwood’s cell during Cinder’s orchestrated chaos, the general emerged as a vessel of petty vengeance, murdering Jacques Schnee out of sheer contempt and triggering a pointless confrontation with Winter in the Relic vault to claim the Staff. While the two were able to fight on even footing, Ironwood’s brutal offensive allowed him to bully through Winter’s more delicate style and overpower her, proving that his martial might was extremely formidable despite its straightforwardness. Unfortunately, Ironwood was finally confronted by someone he could not simply overpower when Winter received the Maiden’s power upon Penny Polendina’s death, blasted into a crater by his own deflected shot.

RANKING: Tier 3, Standard Mastery

James Ironwood’s track record demonstrates a powerful, flexible, and ruthless martial combatant, capable of operating in just about any combat scenario with similar levels of comfort while bringing overwhelming force in all areas. His solid general-purpose weapon complements his fighting style and provides him with a solid array of offensive options, while his perseverance under fire allows him to keep up the pressure even in the face of staunch resistance. However, though certainly not unintelligent, Ironwood’s demonstrations also highlight his inability to think outside the box, failing to subvert his opponents or control the fight in a broad sense, and more disastrously, failing to prevent the opponent from doing the same to him. While political controversy obviously does not factor heavily into combative effectiveness, his ineffectual leadership in the crises of Volumes 7 and 8 does offer insight into his tactical failings. His only recourse to any situation being to throw brute force at it and keep it up until the enemy finally breaks, and he has nothing to fall back on if sheer strength fails. Still, this does not make Ironwood’s method ineffective or crude. His power and skill is undeniable, and anyone who opposed the general would be in for a whole Kingdom of pain.

SPECIAL

James Ironwood’s Semblance was an ability he called “Mettle”. A passive power, Mettle allowed Ironwood to strengthen his resolve and hyper-focus on his chosen goals, blocking out interference from both the world around him and his own reservations in order to drive him forward. When using this ability, injuries, odds, and even morality were non-issues to the general, turning himself into a deliberate machine of war who will achieve his goal or die trying. Unsurprisingly for anyone who’s been with the show since this Semblance’s reveal, the exact nature and effect of Mettle is not clearly defined, especially since its properties are so heavily tied to Ironwood’s personality and character arc. However, I do believe that Mettle’s specifics can be reasonably inferred based on what we do know. A common element whenever this power is shown or heavily implied to be in effect is Ironwood’s calm, borderline soulless, demeanor, even if the instance is shortly after a strong emotional outburst. When he decided to bomb Mantle, Ironwood was collected and relaxed (at least in a general sense) despite having smashed his tactical map to pieces in a fit of frustration not a minute earlier. As such, it is my belief that Mettle, in practice, serves as a naturally induced stress relief agent, numbing Ironwood’s nerves to help him regain and maintain his composure, a critical asset for a soldier in the field. To reference Star Wars again, Mettle has a lot of elements in common with the Expanded Universe power known as Battlemind, an inwardly directed telepathic mediation that Force-sensitives used to improve their focus and composure in combat.* Battlemind is also known to enable users to dispel negative emotion and telepathic attacks, and the former seems to be precisely how Mettle seems to work. With this power, Ironwood could essentially induce a state of mind where he could power through any obstacle, injury or distraction by simply ignoring it, homing in on his goal and pursuing it with all the unrestricted power he could bring to bear. Unfortunately, this factor also contributed heavily to his tactical limitations, so focused on his given objective that he was often blind to outside factors. Narrowing your focus might be a good call when you’re throwing hands with a rabid Beowolf or sniping someone, but trying to do the same in a tense political situation or a cunning trickster will leave you unable to see the forest for the trees.

Outside of his Semblance, Ironwood also incorporated Dust into his standard combat equipment, specifically gravity Dust bullets incorporated into the black half of Due Process. While most of the information here was already brough up in the Martial Arts assessment, the nature of these rounds still demonstrate an additional combative layer to Ironwood’s abilities. Black or purple in color, gravity Dust could affect gravitational fields to generate fields of force to either propel or attract outside objects. When used by Huntsmen in battle, gravity Dust often functioned as a form of limited telekinesis, manipulating the trajectory of weapons or projectiles for sustained or directed flight or generating powerful concussive shockwaves. In Ironwood’s case, the use of Dust in his pistol rounds was based around the latter application. The most obvious advantage of this feature, like most Dust ammunition, was enhancing the power of the projectiles, drastically enhancing the stopping power. Though seemingly a conventional power, Ironwood has utilized this property very inventively, particularly regarding the recoil. Similarly to Ruby Rose’s own use of Dust ammo in Crescent Rose, Ironwood utilized the shockwaves created by the gravity field to propel himself though the battlefield, functionally flying through the air. With only a few shots, he was able to reach Watts’ high ground position while also evading the scientist’s own attacks, and when he was caught in a geyser, Ironwood only needed a single bullet to arrest his fall and return to the platform almost immediately. Given that Ironwood is obviously not being blasted back into walls every time he shoots the black gun, it is likely that he incorporated technology into the pistol to enable some degree of control over the energy level, adjusting the intensity for different purposes. Where the full-powered blasts were enough to launch him up to great heights, a direct hit from one of the more controlled rounds sent Watts tumbling across the platforms but otherwise did not harm him, appropriate given Ironwood’s objective in capturing Watts rather than killing him. Furthermore, Ironwood’s attempted execution of Marrow Amin with the black Due Process leads me to believe that the Dust rounds could penetrate, or at least damage, passive Auras when used at the higher levels.

Ironwood’s Semblance and Dust loadout served as direct supplements to his martial methods, elevating his ruthless offensive with artificially induced focus and intensity and elemental warfare by way of his special ammunition. Leveraging Mettle has led to some of Ironwood’s most compelling accomplishments, powering through seemingly impossible odds to achieve his chosen objective regardless of what happened in the process. At Beacon, he charged the Alpha Beowolf head-on and was able to cooly overpower the creature in the bind. Against Watt’s, Ironwood’s determination allowed him to eventually close the distance with Watt’s slippery retreat and eventually overpower him, responding to the doctor’s subversions and traps as mere speedbumps rather than distractions. Even his own pain and injuries were able to be overlooked in this manner. However, therein lies his weakness. Despite these advantages and his range of applications, Ironwood’s special abilities fail to truly diversify his loadout, as all of his options are merely another tool to allow him to overpower the opponent directly rather than control the fight in a broad sense. More severely, they in fact contribute to his lack of tactical foresight. Where other combatants with metaphysical semblances, such as Qrow Branwen and Maria Calavera, have been able to adapt their powers to help control the flow of the engagement, Ironwood simply leaned on the basic properties of his abilities to force his way through situations. While a combination of Mettle and his own iron will allowed him to escape the ring trap and defeat Watts, Ironwood still subjected himself to unnecessary injury in order to attack Watts directly, throwing away his arm in pursuit of victory. Even beforehand when Watts caught his ankle in ice, Ironwood’s decision was to shoot it free so as to continue his pressure regardless of the tool he was taking. As Ironwood continued to slip into madness, his intense focus made him shortsighted and blind to other threats, his decision to bomb Mantle and complete unwillingness to budge on the idea alienating the last of his allies, up to and including the previously loyal Winter.

RANKING: Tier 3, Specialized Combat

Even if my theories of how Mettle works are wrong, there is no denying that James Ironwood’s special abilities elevate his fighting style into something greater than the sum of its parts. With Mettle’s hyper focus and his Dust’s devastating power, he brings his already domineering approach to battle to new heights by focusing his intensity and empowering his attacks. Despite this, Ironwood’s use of his abilities remains in a very narrow fashion, simply relying on the mind-numbing properties of Mettle and the power generated by his Dust to continue battering the opposition with brute strength. Ironwood has certainly mastered his traits and capitalized on their benefits, but his mastery functionally amounts to a one-trick pony. Instead of using Mettle to improve his laser focus where and when he needs it, Ironwood constantly spammed it so that he could ignore all distractions while he overpowered the opponent directly. Rather than providing him with options and versatility, Ironwood’s powers were just another club in his hands, and his use of them was ultimately devoid of subtly or tactical considerations. Instead, James Ironwood’s special abilities followed the mindset of “Once I see you, I’m going to beat the crap out of you.”

OVERALL RANKING: TIER 3, ADVANCED HUNTSMAN

As an overall combatant, James Ironwood serves as a quintessential example of the best that can be achieved through the direct application of power. Between his cybernetic enhancements, masterful marksmanship, expert unarmed combat skills, hyper focusing Semblance, and powerful Dust ammunition, Ironwood possessed all the tools he needed to overpower nearly any potential challenger, be it a battle of body, arms, or spells, all brought to a pint by an obscene will to fight. The problem is that this is all he can do, and his straightforward tactics mean that he doesn’t have the means or willingness to adjust his approach to different situations. Despite his superhuman physique, Ironwood’s capabilities are not so overwhelming that less physically able opponents cannot contend, and it ultimately does not drastically offset his more consistent standing as a martial artist or ethereal combatant. Like many other Tier 3s, Ironwood is flexible but not to the point of actual versatility, all his offensive options being ONLY offensive options. Given how his fighting style is built upon fully capitalizing on his physical capabilities, it is only appropriate that Ironwood’s body is the perfect metaphor for his strengths and weaknesses. Ironwood is trying to be the strongest piece on the board that can stand up and defeat any potential threat, just as he adopted increasingly intrusive prosthetics to make himself stronger than any other human. However, just as no one person can fight a war on their own, Ironwood’s body is too weak to shoulder all the demands he is placing on it in the long term. Just because you can fight to the death does not mean you need to fight to the death. Ironwood will ignore injuries and continue fighting until he is dead, but as a result, he’s burning his candle from both ends by forcing his way through hits he doesn’t need to take. Rather than building himself into an unstoppable juggernaut, Ironwood is a gas guzzler that can only go one way- forward.

For all his power, James Ironwood ultimately failed to become the mighty hero he believed himself to be, both because he was operating way out of his area of expertise and because he was afflicted by an overwhelming hubris. Despite his military mindset, Ironwood has spent the past decade or so prior to Volumes 7 and 8 as a peacetime politician and academic administrator rather than a frontline commander. While his snap judgements and demands of unwavering obedience are viable on the battlefield, where questioning the commander always leads to disaster and death, his attempts to apply that same mentality to grand strategy and government policy left him with an increasingly ruthless need for control. Ironically similar to Adam Taurus, Ironwood believed that he and he alone could bring about the success of his mission, and anything that challenged this perspective was a threat to be quashed. To Ironwood, if one did not approach the war with Salem with his views and strategies, they were ineffectual, naive, or simply too weak to do what had to be done. And rather than take in input from others, he simply surrounded himself with blindly obedient followers who would lay down their lives in service to him, all while insisting that others be grateful for his “hard decisions” even as they suffered for them. James Ironwood was a powerful warrior, but he was overly aggressive, bull headed, short sighted, and dare I say it, tactless. Instead of seeing Salem as the deceptive chess master she was or Ruby as a source of valid concern for his actions, Ironwood only saw more nails for him to hammer. And by the time he realized his hammer was broken, it was too little too late, having burned all his bridges fighting his friends rather than uniting against his enemies.