The Winning Hand.” Nickname given to the 10th Heavy Ranger Battalion.
The Blackjacks are not only one of the toughest and most resistant units in the USARF but also one of the lethal ones due to their firepower. If they are known as “the Winning Hand” it is because their deployment in the AO always means a sure victory, without concessions for the enemy. And this unit has been created to withstand the hardest part of combat and, above all, to finish off the enemy. The 10th Battalion has not been created to take prisoners, and this is something its members are always clear about. Blackjacks kill and finish, always leaving an ace of spades on the bodies of dead enemies, as a calling card. This sinister custom has turned this card into a symbol of death known throughout the planet Dawn.
The Blackjacks are a premier unit of the USARF, and one of the most ambitious projects of the US Department of Defense's DARPS (Defense Advanced Research Projects Service). It is said that the Blackjacks went into action within minutes of being formed as a combat unit, being sent directly to the battlefield as soon as they surpassed the status of an experimental unit and received the green light from High Command to enter active service. Such was the desire of the USARF leadership to put them to the test in a combat situation, and let them work their lethal magic, thus silencing criticism of the Blackjack program. This DARPS project had been questioned after the first field tests, in which the Buffalo power armor prototypes demonstrated major performance problems under live fire conditions. However, once the long and costly testing period was over, the Buffalo armor became one of the main exponents of indigenous Ariadne warfare technology.
The origin of the Blackjack nickname for this unit is not very clear. Some suggest it is due to the tactical black color of the test models. Others believe that it is due to the serial name that the armor prototypes received, and that it would cause their test pilots to receive the calling code of Buffalo Soldiers. Others suggest that the name was imposed by the unit's leader, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Cortado, a great fan of card games. However, the origin of this unit's name matters little, because Blackjacks, the Winning Hand, will always be considered harbingers of death by their enemies.
