Runner

OFFENCE
Runner	Difficulty: Hard Supervisors: Queen Rank: Not defined Duties: Capture and harass prey. Guides: N/A Unlock Requirements: Not available. Detailed Description: |__________| Not defined |__________|

Playing a Runner

You are fast, but not particularly strong. You are essentially a Hive scout. Your primary role is to scout the land around the Hive, identify any threats and possible hosts, and report back to the Hive. Communicate frequently! Only capture hosts or harass any identified enemy where the opportunity arises.

Speed and cunning are your weapons, a fragile body and relatively weak attack are your Achilles heel. A few well-aimed shots will bring down a Runner and most Marines tend to fire lots of poorly aimed shots. Death can come swiftly if you're not cautious and careful.

Once evolved from a Larva, you should immediately seek to explore the world on which you find yourself. Until you can evolve or upgrade, however, you are very weak. Eventually you might find you encounter hostile beings that spit metal death. This is where your hide verb comes in to play. With this activated, and for no drain on plasma, you can hide under tables and in crates, allowing you to both scout and report back on enemy movements. You can also set up ambushes using your fellow sisters to help lure prey closer to you.

The Runner starts with the Pounce ability. This Pounce allows a Runner to close distance with Hosts quickly. It will also knock a Host to the ground if aimed to hit them. This works perfectly in conjunction with hide to let you ruin a Marine's day.

Runners are good at harassing round start survivors, who are ill equipped to fend you off. Runners are also good at hunting isolated Marines. They can also participate in larger conflicts by harassing and infecting retreating Marines, especially those that may get cut off from the rest of their squad.

Runner Evolution

Runners can evolve into a more powerful, larger variant of their caste; the Hunter.

The Hunter gains increased health, and becomes a more focused stealth and ambush fighter. Gaining a cloaking ability, the Hunter becomes a more effective single fighter.

Runner Tactics

• Young Runners tend to die at an alarming rate. Mature before you do anything dangerous! Also, don't feel ashamed to fall back if you take any hits at all. Find some weeds and heal up. Avoid charging right into a conflict.

• The Runner's scouting job is the riskiest job in the Hive because it keeps Runners constantly in contact with the Marines. Although the other Aliens may not agree at times, you are an extremely valuable part of the Hive. Don't take any crap about being stupid for dying. The Queen and Drones get to stay safe behind walls and the other offensive classes are much stronger than you. Death and danger are natural parts of a scout's job.

• Communicate frequently with the Hive about what you're scouting. Tell the Hive what's dark, what's abandoned, what's protected, where fortifications are, where there are hosts, and the positions and numbers of Marines.

• Hunt in a pack! You are weak alone, but as a group you can overwhelm most small groups of Marines. Any isolated hosts are easy pickings.

• Your Pounce ability can be very formidable if you're carrying Facehuggers. Once the Host has been stunned you can hit them with two Facehuggers to incapacitate them. But be wary of any other hosts in the area. The host's friends can kill you faster than you can click twice. If you drag the unfortunate host away from their comrades, you can devour them (grab it first, then click on yourself) to return them to a nice, snug nest.

• When you evolve from a chestburster larva, you keep your Crawl Through Vent ability. Use this to your advantage. There are a number of vents placed around the Nexus, use them as a quick escape if you're in danger, or use them to stalk hosts while keeping to shadowy areas.

• If you find yourself assaulting the Sulaco, try to escape the shuttle as quickly as possible. Your low health prevents you from being much use during the hangar assault, so find a vent and move to a less populated area. If you're lucky, there should be unarmoured civilian personnel that you can infect quickly. You're ideal to pick them off one by one.