1st Royal Cavaliers

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Conformity is not a requirement for membership.

Why yes, I did need yet another faction to add to my ever growing list of miniscule armies. The Fed Suns' 1st Royal Cavaliers were chosen more or less on a whim. Their color scheme is red & grey applied however the Mechwarrior/vehicle crew prefers. Thus their varied appearance. Prior to inking the color scheme looked so flat that I was contemplating stripping them and doing something else. Luckily my AK streaking grime saved the day! 

Much like the Dragon in the DCMS, I don't think you can have a proper force in the Federated Suns without at least one Enforcer included.

The new Jagermech sculpt looks pretty good. Luckily this unit was created during the civil war, all but guaranteeing that I'll be fielding this as one of the upgraded variants.

The Fed Suns have some fun variants of my beloved Urbanmech. The MRM equipped R-68, UAC-10 toting R-69 and the one that I am most excited to try out, the RAC-5 armed R-70. Sure they have the base model R-60 as well, but I think at the least (unless I'm really scraping for points) the canon armed Urbie below will be an R-90 Suburbanmech at the very least. 

The scuffed up, 40k caution stripe decal came out really well I think.  

I'm quite certain that the building on the base was destroyed long before this R-68 knelt down on it.

I love the pose on this mini!

I'm thinking that this lance will get a second one to go with it (possibly some armor). Given the era, I am thinking that the 2nd lance may include a salvaged clan mech as well.

You must like this guy, you finished painting all of your terrain.

 o/

The title is a direct quote from Frankie Wednesday afternoon.

Only having 4 heavily damaged buildings and a half painted dropship to go, I took a break from mechs to paint the last pieces of my terrain. The novelty of a fully painted battlefield at home, not just the FLGS is what spurred the finishing of my terrain. Here you can see the Battlefield (sans cat) using a mix of both my, and Nick's terrain. 

Look who forgot that the table opened up to reveal another table inside?

Nick came over for the inaugural game of Battletech at my house Wednesday night. 4500 points BV, 3020s era as always, homemade lasagna in the oven, and the following scenario of Nick's creation:

One side is trying to steal newly discovered technology from the other, in this case, the chemical make up of the coolant for lostech double heat sinks. There were 3 structures on the field that a designated hacking mech needed to be adjacent to for 2 turns (could not shoot while downloading the info), and would need to download from all three structures. If damaged but the hacker mech was capable of escaping the board, another mech could pick up the task to get to the remaining structures for downloading the still needed info. 

The forces of arrayed for battle, not pictured is Nick's Capellan weapon of terror (for both sides), a Thumper artillery cannon that would be firing from the table itself. 

The scenario sounded pretty steep to accomplish, but figured we'd give it a try. As I was fielding periphery pirates in the form of Battle Rattle the 65th Lyran Regulars (Battle Rattle is no more), vs. Nick's filthy Capellans Red Lancers, it only made sense for me to be the raiding force trying to steal the technology. Also as periphery pirates, all of my ammo bins were half empty at the start of the battle as logistics is hard when you have to steal supplies. My hacker mech would also be my fastest, a Javelin.

Turn 1 was the usual maneuvering and some sparse LRM shots at maximum range.

The Javelin plugs into objective building #1 while the Blackjack tries to fend off a Locust and Battlemaster. Luckily the Battlemaster was confused by the tree the javelin totes around on its base, and largely missed!

My shooting was largely ineffective aside from this Whitworth putting 2 volleys of LRMs into the sliver of Wolverine behind that large objective building .

With the Thumper terrorizing both sides by lobbing rounds of death that are scattering randomly (hitting nothing but scaring all), my 2nd Whitworth breaks free and runs down the board edge (and behind Dunkin Davions) to kill that infernal cannon!

The T-Bolt and my commander's refitted primitive Griffin shoot at point blank followed by a good ol' fistfight. Unfortunately, a punch to the head knocked out my commander for 2 turns!

Alpha striking with all weapons as soon as it got in sight, the Whitworth takes out the Thumper!

Trouble brewing...

Neeka takes to the field (she made 3 separate passes thru during the game). By this point my Javelin was lost, legged (as usual) by the seemingly not-so-random damage chart. The Javelin took 1 ML hit to a side torso, and all other damage to its leg. Seriously WTH?  

With the Javelin lost and the Capellans pummeling my prone Griffin, all hopes of salvaging the technology was lost and the Blackjack and Whitworths tried to inflict as much damage as they could against superior foes. 

Guess what turn it is? 

Correct, last turn and everyone piles in for a good scrum!  The Battlemaster (unsurprisingly) really pummeled the Whitworth in front of it resulting in 1 gyro and 2 engine hits. The awakened, 1-armed Griffin had a few parting shots for the T-Bolt, and the Blackjack shaved all of the armor off of the back torso of the Battlemaster, but sadly failed to go internal. 

Scenario Result: Capellan Victory. 

The Javelin losing a leg after successfully hacking the first building, and thus unable to get away with any stolen info was disappointing. Not saying I would've won had it not taken virtually all of its damage to 1 location, but had the damage been spread out to something reasonable (for even a lightly armored mech), then I ought to have had al least a fighting chance. As such, the scenario needs some tweaking in both our opinions. 

Being unable to fire, needing 2 turns each per (3) locations (so 6 static turns for 1 mech?), and with the defender knowing where you are headed and able to surround the target location is borderline insurmountable (well, we were out of era for Wobblie shenanigans, those fuckers can accomplish almost anything). Roles reversed, I am not sure Nick would have fared much better in this scenario even with heavy his mechs.

Now its my turn now to devise a dastardly plan scenario for a future game...

Campaign Mission: Liberate the Settlement

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The game in a nutshell...

I got my second game in our local Chaos Campaign in Friday Night. This was the first mission in the '2nd track'. My opponent Jake who is running the campaign didn't feel like going back to finish up the first 'track' (section) of the campaign so instead my TBAGers did what mercenaries do best: Hang back and collected a check for doing nothing. 

The structure to defend and the elementals were playing the part of the helpless civilians. The rest of the mechs pictured were the pirate OpFor.

Heading into this mission, pirates had occupied and were harassing the locals in a small settlement. I needed to minimize civilian casualties and defend a building for 4 turns, and then either cripple the commander's mech, or kill one of the lesser pirate mechs which would force their retreat. The pirates would not engage me until fired upon. I was allotted 2k BV from my TBAGer company. The forces were as follows:

The Buffet Assault Group: 

Merlin MLN-1A, Pilot Murl N., Gunnery 3, Piloting 4

Panther PNT-9R, Pilot: Ace Darwin, Gunnery 3, Piloting 4

The Buffet Assault Group, advancing more or less at a mosey...

The Pirate OpFor:

Warhammer WHM-6RK (the pirate leader) Gunnery 2, Piloting 4

The following pirate mechs were all Gunnery 4, Piloting 5:

Commando COM-1D

Commando COM-1D

Wasp WSP-1A

Locust LCT-1E

The pirates turn to engage the rescuers!

Not really a fair fight in terms of numbers, but I had an easy job to do, or so I thought. From what I heard (after the fact) most folks in the campaign engaged immediately once in even long range resulting in civilian casualties and sometimes loss of the structure as the pirates, once engaging the player's forces had time to send one or two light mechs back to raze the settlement. 

Kill the locust & win, easy-peasy, right? Wrong!

Having a pair of 4/6/4 mechs, I maneuvered in close hoping for some easy, kills, engaging on turn 4 (and keeping the civvies alive and the building intact accomplishing that part of the mission by default), all I had to do now was kill an enemy mech to win. With 3 PPCs, plus a variety of lesser weapons, how hard could that be? 

Carrying the team, Ace's almost down a leg (as usual) and then, of all things receives a Wasp-delivered-successful Death From Above attack!

Turns out, that apparently Murl N. (now known as: Murl N. Sucks!), my Merlin pilot was...intoxicated? Every turn, he'd fire a spread of weapons, keeping his heat neutral, hitting with one weapon (never once with the PPC), and rolling just 1 point below what was needed to hit with every other weapon, and he did this this: 

Every. Fucking. Turn.  

Turns out that landing on your feet following a DFA strike isn't easy...

When virtually all of the damage is coming out of a freaking Panther (and with the law of averages, he missed sometimes too), while a 60 ton mech bumbles about, well, needless to say its not easy trying to kill even a light mech! Then, just to try it, Jake's Wasp made a Death From Above attack! Of course a 20ton mech doing this to a 35 Ton Panther resulted in equal damage for the two participants!

...and here we are at last. 

Eventually, I took out a Commando by legging it with a kick in close combat. It's wreckage was represented by a 'rough' terrain marker. The following turn, as the pirates turned to flee, the dumped into the the (by then) one armed and still woefully inaccurate Merlin, inflicting considerable damage. In response Murl N. rolled a snake eyes for his piloting check and was summarily knocked out for 3 turns following his impact with the ground.  

Ace moving and shooting to save his both unconscious and intoxicated teammate, removes the Wasp's left torso with a PPC shot! 

Pirates being pirates, fled on by, pumping all they could into the prone merlin for added fun. In the end I won, but the victory was pyrrhic for sure. Jake figured we had time to play two games, given how quickly I had accomplished the first half of the mission. However, due to me abysmal shooting from the Merlin, we only played this one game. 

Somehow Ace's Panther survived the game instead of getting legged as usual, though as you can see, it was a close run thing. 

This bastard is going to cost a bloody fortune to repair!

Damage can't be repaired until the end of this track, and given how beat up these two mechs are, they're effectively out of use for now. I have a considerable warchest of C-bills at this point, but repairs to these two will likely gut that. I ought to fire the pilot 'Murl N. Sucks!', but my Assassin pilot died in my first game, and I might not have enough cash left to hire another mechwarrior, so he's safe for now.

Production! Production!

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Technically, this isn't all of them...

This is more like 2ish weeks of painting or so. As mentioned above there is one more, a repaint of the (now former) Hotshot of the Whipits. That mech can be seen running around in my prior post. Here are the latest mechs up close: 

Just a minor conversion of an existing conversion. 

Previously, this Urbie was one of two UM-R68 conversions (the other one is here). However I recently bought the new Urbie lance box and got an actual UM-R68. So, with the addition of a little bit of plasticard, and a decal of 'IV' to drive the point home, I present to you the UM-AIV. The artillery Urbie that has been known to launch nukes from time to time. Of the two, this one turned out better, so the other went to eBay (I seriously don't need two arrow IV Urbies) and is currently transiting the inner sphere enroute to a repeat customer of mine Texas.  

Yeah, this is too dynamically posed to be an actual Catalyst model. 

Originally I gave this stats for an industrial mech called the 'Tonka' that could be modified in times of crisis to wield a modular LBX-10. That said, more likely than not I'll just use it as an Arbiter (if ever).

Marik Militia Ostroc & Quickdraw.

The Quickdraw, I have yet to use this mech but it seems decent enough on paper.

I just love the garish color scheme of the Marik Militia.

The Ostroc, another new KS mech, and a vast improvement over the old model! 

Years ago I had the ancient lead version of this mini and it did fairly well on the tabletop, it was just hideous looking which resulted in it getting sold off.

The whole, newly finished lance together. 

Why did the Dark Caste Bandit cross the road?

This is another mech where the base was harder to do than the mech itself.

The Starslayer is...kinda ugly, but it's grown on me. These guys must've been digging deep into the trash heaps to find and refurbish this old STY-2C-EC (Early Clan). 

Closing out with a group shot. 

Tonight I am going to the FLGS for some campaign games hopefully (I'm waaaay behind on those) and next wednesday Nick is coming over tentatively for the first mini game to be held at our new house. So I should have some battle reports to post on next week!

Speed? Got it. Accuracy? Not so much...

 o/

Yet another hapless settlement about to be destroyed in battle...

Nick & I met up for another game Wednesday night, this time using a scenario rather than the usual kill everything in sight (though, ultimately they all kind of go that way at some point). 

The mission brief. 

We upped the game size to 3500points, Lostech era with the exception of one mech sporting some Star League tech of some sort. We then rolled off to see who's mech would be the 'prize' to be captured. Nick had a Blackjack BJ-3 with its new fangled double heat sinks, whereas I had a Cyclops CP-10-HQ, with a still intact Collapsible Command Module (basically a side torso stuffed with a fold-a-fort/field HQ/tent and super computer). This Cyclops variant is more or less an objective/fluff model, and this was the perfect opportunity to actually use it!

I won the roll off and decided my prize was better, and thus my Cyclops would be the hunted mech, meaning it could not be shot at. Erroneously, for the first half of the ensuing game, I was under the mistaken impression that I also could not shoot at Nick's Blackjack, allowing it to roam the field unmolested, doh!

That said, with base 4/5 pilots and a bunch of fast moving mechs with +3 & +4 to modifiers all over the place, there would be a lot of shooting, but not so much hitting. So perhaps that really didn't matter. Throughout the game, the dice were not kind to either of us, though for a turn or two, Nick especially. 

Oh look! The city is undefended...

The wall seemingly goes on forever!

The first shots are fired, with the Prize bringing up the rear.

Jenner v. Jenner. At least one of these two ugly machines had the decency to try and conceal itself! These two would tangle with one another throughout the game. 

An overhead view of a bunch of small mechs shooting a lot and hitting only a little (odds are the buildings didn't fare too well in these exchanges).

Still not firing at the Blackjack the Dragon put a few rounds into the Panther instead.

Speed is life! My Jenner survived this multi-mech  assault with nary a scratch due to its +4 to hit speed modifier. Speaking of, it's reversed guns didn't hit anything for the same reason.

REAR ARMOR? This is a great opportun-oh wait, fuck it has a damned +4 to hit. Take that you damned wall!

Shots were landing here and there, but none too many were recorded. My Wasp was the first to fall (doesn't take much), and my Jenner taking some hits, in exchange for similar (though not yet fatal) damage to nick's Panther and Spider.

Its gotta be interference from the radar and communication towers, that must be what is throwing off our aim!

Ugh, these two again. I believe that by this point my Jenner was down the SRM launcher and one arm (taking 2 lasers with it) which was fine as it had an engine hit as well. 

The battle finally moves outside of the city's wall

Well mostly, the Panther hopped the wall and my Cyclops finally put the mech out of it's misery (it had been running around 1 remaining point of CT structure for several turns).

 This was a fast moving game of extensive maneuver and atrocious aim! My elite Swords of Light mechs were as sharp as the average spork, and Nick's Vegan Rangers (or the Soy Boys as he called them, lol) weren't doing much better.

Like the Panther before it, my Jenner succumbs to the inevitable, losing a leg. 

Similarly, the Dragon, incapable of shooting worth a damn, charges the damaged, 1-armed Spider and punches and stomps the little mech into oblivion!

Any notion of not shooting the Blackjack had long since passed, with my Cyclops and (armless) Dragon making a last stand against the Blackjack, while the Dragon's rear mounted laser shot at the Jenner (again). Indeed, at this point blank range the Cyclops emptied it's LRM's ammo, but it was all to no avail. 

The hour was starting to run late and it was a 'school' night. While the tenets of Bushido would rightfully inspire the Dragon to suicidally fight to the end, doing so would only delay the inevitable. As such the Cyclops powered down, and it's pilot turned the keys over to Nick to claim his new Cyclops with it's integral field kitchen collapsible command module...

The victor claims his prized...sheet of paper?!?!