Recent updates

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Thus far the original CGR-1A1 & later 'Challenger' variant have been my favorite Chargers. However, after really looking over the 1A9's record sheet, I am thinking that this one may be favorite as well

I painted this CGR-1A9 Charger up to go with my 3rd Drakons after I sold their Firestarter some ways back. Ever since they have been a mech short and this have rarely seen the tabletop. I was going to give them one of my CGR-1A1s to use as a 1A9 but then managed to snag this one off of eBay along with some cheap tanks and several more Urbies, all for about $7.50 apiece (tax & shipping included).

I'm not sure if the red & white, quartered roundels on top of the MASH unit will warn of the vehicle's true purpose or insinuate that the circus is in town...

Next up, I have a MASH unit for use as either an objective or else as terrain, as well as a Bulldog & Hetzer, for my DCMS Swords of Light company. These are the first ever vehicles that I have painted for the SoL. All three of these are from the bargain priced purchase I mentioned above, as is the one below:

This is painted for my WILDFIRE! mercs which share some mechs and tanks with my Hell's Horses Iota galaxy force. The Horses do not have any access to the Skulker though oddly they do the command van...because honorably leading from the rear is a clan thing apparently. Oh wait, Iota has no honor, convenient!

Speaking of the rear, this is usually the end that Nick's VTOLs are invariably shooting up as the van tries to flee in futility.

Unless you really just need some speed, the skulker offers little of actual tabletop utility. This is why I mostly use these as a proxy for a 15-ton Command Van, or as I call them: senior citizens' activity buses (to fruitlessly dissuade Nick 2.0 from shooting them). 

As an armored lance for some cash-strapped mercenaries, this lance is all basics and no frills. 

The missile carrier has both launcher types (which one is the MRM?), and the Hetzer has been converted into the much maligned (even amongst Hetzer crews) laser variant. Please see below for an explanation of that. 

Speaking of vehicles, for the first time ever, The Buffet Assault group finally has its own vehicle compliment (well, aside from their former pair of Warrior VTOLs). The laser Hetzer (yes really) & Bulldog which I was using as the LRM variant survived their first game in the unit's new colors, as did all of the accompanying mechs, though there was quite a bit of damage suffered. 

Some pics from the battle vs Stephen, a new opponent.

The Suburbanmech survived this encounter with nothing more than a heavy punch taken to the CT. Two turns later it would exact revenge via a hit to the back of the Banshee's head with a PPC shot. Sadly for me, I wasn't able to inflict any crits.

I converted the Hetzer into the laser variant as I have always liked the concept of (though have never fielded) the atrocious cousin of the Missile and AC carriers: the Laser carrier. The Laser Hetzer is faster and much more heavily armored, if mounting only half of the Laser carrier's firepower. 

Optimal range: success. An LRM kill: well...

Combine that with the TBAGers' quartermasters not wanting to have to source AC20 ammo purely for a metal box and suddenly this doesn't seem like an entirely bad idea. If anything, it is the cheapest Hetzer option, and in it's battlefield debut was ignored as a non-issue which allowed it to get into the backfield where it proceeded to miss with 75% of its shots on average. 

Yes, the pizza template can even mount a potted plant...or a light forest hex.

After considerable effort and some abysmal gunnery, the Merlin (which had eaten enough LRMs to only have 2 points of head structure left by this point) achieved the game's only kill, taking down the other LRM carrier on the board. Had I kept it back out of the PPC's minimum range I likely would have killed it a turn sooner, but oh well.  

Break-Out Mission

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SURPRISE!

Here is the latest battle report from my most recent game. No, this is not the Frenemies 2.0 follow up mission as that was more or less a slaughter in terms of victory points rather than casualties. Nick brought the speed and I really wasn't able to counter it. I believe the VP total in the end was something like 17-2, ouch! Anyways, onto this battle: 

The Scenario:

Allied forces have been holed up in a dense urban area and have been under segie, unable to break out and retreat. Your objective as the attacker is to break through enemy lines and escort your trapped forces to safety. As the defender your objective is to prevent the enemy breakout and if that fails, to prevent their retreat off of their home board edge. Two separate forces were needed, 3K & 5K, Late Succession war/Renaissance era forces. 

Here is how it went: 

The Battlefield.

My 3K force was a tank lance and a UM-R60L in the city. Here my missile carrier deploys with an excellent lane (literally) of fire. 

Nick's 5K break-through force advancing on my defenders. I had deployed the catapult up on the hill, but with 3 medium/heavy mechs on approach, i jumped it down into cover. I was more interested in it surviving past turn 1 than going down in an immediate blaze of glory. 

Another angle of the above. My Raven at the top of the image would take several hits, all to the same leg taking it out 1 turn! I was not off to a good start...

My urban defenders moving into close quarters with the enemy with the misssile carrier hanging back on overwatch. 

Down a medium laser and a little beat up after a skirmish with one of my Bulldogs, the Spider races down into point blank range of my missile carrier. It is at this point that I revealed that my SRM carrier would stay put! Hilarity ensued and the Spider's pilot punched out when it's 2nd laser was lost. Aww, I wasn't even half way thru my damage rolls. 

Nick's Locust made it to the city and the enemy moved to flee. It was difficult to pursue as my two Bulldogs and Vedette had all suffered motive crits, rendering them as slow, if not slower than the Urbie (which was only remodeling buildings instead of mechs with it's AC20). 

But here comes the SRM carrier! I would spend the rest of the game moving at flank speed, serving as an area denial weapon desperate to get into range. Following the Spider's demise, it never got to fire another shot. 

Hiding in a copse of trees, my Catapult had long since revealed itself to be the unique Butterbee model and it was pummeling an LRM Scorpion tank (that had been NARC'ed earlier on) with impunity. Sadly, the woeful lack of double heat sinks in this mech was severely limiting it's rate of fire. Seriously, why the fuck was that never remedied after they became availible?!? 

Speaking of being NARC'ed, my 2nd Raven died here. 

The Cataphract was outgunned and outnumbered, yet fought on valiantly...

The Scorpion succumbs to the inevitable. 

The Butterbee, camped in the trees simply reversed it's arm launchers to engage the oncoming horde. 

The Cataphract, after a protacted scrum takes a hit to it's remaining AC10 ammo and goes BOOM!

The Butterbee takes a headshot that knocks my pilot unconcious and we called it there. My defending force in the middle was down to the snoozing Catapult and my pursuing force from the city was being lead by an SRM carrier and it's blinding 3/5 speed curve. 

This was a fun one and we will play it again in the future with roles reversed. We collectively took a lot more pics than are posted here, but it gets hard when looking at the thumbnail pics to sort them out into a coherent order as the time stamps differ between phones. 

Complicating matters further, I can tell that the order in which Nick sends over his pics (no doubt sent in the order they were taken), clearly doesn't match the order in which they are recieved, making a further mess of the time stamps. Going thru 30+ pics, reordering them chronologically while deleting dud/redundant pics is kinda laborious. 

A Thunder Run with our 'Frenemies'!

lol, almost looks like it's been attacked by a salad!

A battalion of the 2nd Chisholm's Raiders are deployed to McComb to serve as a ready reserve for the 1st Chisholm Raiders' operation on nearby Marduk. Just as they settle into their FOB, HPG transmissions arrive telling of the burgeoning FedCom civil war which is rapidly devolving into violence. While ultimately siding with the Archon, at this stage the Raiders like so many units are a mix of troops with varied political affiliations. 

The battalion splits in half along political lines, and while both sides are sorting themselves out, one faction seizes the initiative and captures the nearby spaceport. Unfortunately, the Raider's jumpship is no longer in orbit and both sides are stuck planetside. Having not yet come to blows, trading only insults with their new found frenemies over inter-unit comms, the commanders of both camps are left wrestling with the twin threats of tension and boredom amongst their troops. 

Tired of being on the backfoot, and just sleeping in the mud with the bugs, the Raiders bivouaced at the FOB outside the spaceport decide to make a 'Thunder Run' into to mix things up a bit, and perhaps opening yet another front in the civil war...

The Mission:

6,000 point BV, 3060s era, Fedcom faction availability only. The 'attackers' will enter from one short board edge and need to reach the Dropship's landing pad before turning back to exit via their board edge. Initially caught unawares, the defenders will be deployed midway between the opposite board edge and the landing pad.

 The attackers get the first turn, with the attackers/defenders determined by a die roll. 

Attacker (ground) units get 1 VP for reaching the spaceport, and 1 more for evacing back off their board edge (if not under forced withdrawal). 1 additional VP is scored for each defending frenemy unit destroyed or placed into forced withdraw towards their board edge (standard rules for forced withdrawal apply see page 258 in Total Warfare). Likewise the defenders recieve 1 VP for every unit they prevent from reaching the landing pad, 1 VP for any unit forced to withdraw, and 2 additional VPs if said unit is destroyed thereafter. Otherwise they get 2 VPs for killing a unit outright. 

Note:  Chisholm's Raiders were chosen because they lack a cohesive color scheme and conveniently, the 2nd Raiders were known for their mobility. However unlike the 1st regiment on Marduk, the 2nd's whereabouts during the Civil War are unknown.

Here is how the game went:

Starting with the backrow and going left to right, my force consisted of a Javelin JVN-11A, Whitworth WTH-2, Shadow Hawk SHD-2D2, Griffin GRF-1DS, a standard Vedette tank (which was carrying the) squad of Cavalier SRM battle armor, and lastly a standard Rommel tank. 

Nick's force consisted of an Axman AXM-1N, Nighstar NSR-9FC, Vindicator VIND-5L and a Bushwhacker BSW-X1

The initial set up with just my terrain  which yes, includes Baxter. 

the Thunder Run begins with my forces charging in from the right, while Nick's mechs moved in towards the launch pad for the most part. 

I believe everything that I had that was elligible to shoot in my first turn needed boxcars to hit. Which is to say, everything missed. 

Nick's to-hit numbers weren't much better and the first round of shooting was largely bloodless. 

The Bushwhacker tries to flank me and draws a fair bit of fire in return for it's efforts. 

My Shadow Hawk & Griffin make it to the objective first, scoring me 2 VPs. Knowing that the Shadow Hawk is the weaker link, Nick concentrated fire on it knocking it to the ground (where the Axman delivered a savage chop to it). Damage sustained put it into the forced withdraw category giving Nick his first VP. 

My Javelin zips around into rear, point blank range and startles Nick when it opens up with all 7 MLs! Naturally only 2 hit and Vindi's rear armor was not penetrated. Typical. 

Neeka was pissed that we were using her lounge table for a game and wanted it back! Most of the time, the table is covered with a quilt & kitty cushions where they can lounge in front of the windows all day. She is the most hostile towards gaming member of my household.

The tanks reach the launch pad and the Vedette drops off the Battle Armor, netting me 3 more VPs and an early big lead! I was starting to rethink the scenario...

As my first wave retreats from the pad, the Whitworth which had been hanging back with supporting fire was finally on approach. 

I got lucky here in that the Axman's AC20 & ax both missed the Griffin. Both of our pulse lasers hit though I believe my punch missed as well. The Griffin 1DS is over-sinked which allowed me to jump and alphastrike every turn with impunity. I could do so even with an engine hit had I suffered one! As such, I quite like this variant.

But then the Shadowhawk went down to a trio of engine hits, followed by the Vedette which was obliterated by the Nightstar in just 1 volley! The Vindi which was taking heavy fire, overheated itself by 25 points(!?!) and shut down, falling to the ground. It would not rise again as I kept shooting at it and destroyed the smoldering mech while it lay helpless on the ground.

The battle armor swarmed the Nightstar in the prior turn. I had to look the rules up and in the Total Warfare book, where it explains how the enemy's infantry can also swarm the same mech to fight my troops on said mech before bothering to explain what damage I could actually do with a swarming attack. Well done game designers, well done! It was a mostly superfluous 2 page read to find what I was actually looking for.

The Whitworth, having left the landing pad, waddles away as fast as it can while the Nightstar ignores my battle armor and destroyes the oh so dangerous Rommel. Barely mobile by that point, the tank was stunned in the prior round and unable to defend itself. My lead was quickly dwindling as the casualties were racking up!

In the backfield, despite a last ditch effort to stop it, my Griffin escaped on one side whilst my unopposed Javelin did the same on the other, netting me two more VPs. The battle armor were doing their best to annoy the Nightstar, though as heavily armored as it is, only the 1 head shot got it's attention. Undeterred, the Nightstar ignored the battle armor and obliterated the fleeing Whitworth instead. 

At that point all I had left on the table was the battle armor, and being too slow to escape the overwhelming firepower remaining in Nick's force, I conceeded that they would be casualties. Adding up all of our VPs we ended up with an even tie!

Well that was fun! This scenario is loosely based on an old X-Wing scenario that we used to play called Wolfy's Hit & Run. I was concerned early on when I pulled ahead with an early big lead, but once my casualties started to mount, Nick closed the distance quickly! 

It was kinda hard to make a list not knowing who would play what. Speed is needed primarily as the attacker, but so is the need to put down mechs quickly if defending. Next week we will try this again with roles reversed as we often do. Nick was lamenting about what he ought to take as most of his mechs are on the slower end. I'll try not to tailor my force too much, now that I know that I will be defending on the next go round. 

The Buffet Assault Group goes green(ish).

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The initial test model.

Not for the first time, and I cannot say it is for the last, but I realized that the reason I have been painting minis from every faction BUT The Buffet Assault Group is because I just don't enjoy painting their color scheme anymore. No real reasoning that I can think of but it happens. The tan/OD green camo with the central red stripe and occasional battlefield repairs is actually their third color scheme. 

So what follows is a bit of a history on their previous colors: 

The original TBAGer color scheme was an urban-type camo that almost looks like SWAT camo to me now. 

Yes, the Awesome on the left is the same one that is now painted below. It's been waiting on a paint job since 2019!

Note the Billboard sized/15mm scaled TBAGers logo on the side, and some digital chicanery to make up for an apparently crummy photo. 

I've looked & looked but cannot find a photo of The Buffet Assault Group's 2nd color scheme, that being not too dissimilar from the last one. It consisted of the same shade of tan (Vallejo Flat Earth) with a deep red, almost crimson trim. I know I had a metal 3rd party Stalker from Australia (yeah, that wasn't cheap) again with the TBAGer logo billboards on the sides of it's LRM arms. That was the unit's command mech at the time. 

I had at least an assault lance painted up like that before they went the way of eBay. I recall that they went to a buyer in Detroit. Their trip was more of an odyssey as the package visited every Detroit suburb that surrounded the buyer's burb over the course of two weeks or so, before landing in a distribution center that had no public access. Worse yet, he drove by it every day on his daily commute. The package spent another week or two there before finally arriving at his house. We had so many convos over the shipping shitshow that we were almost friends by that point.

Then came the color scheme that you all are familiar with: 

A company sized photo-op just prior to my first game of what  would become the eventually disasterous Steel Haven Campaign.

I kept the HBK-4G & UM-R60, but the rest of the painted mechs from the this bunch have redeployed to the western coast of Florida. The Urbie was featured in my last post, the Hunchback is currently soaking in Simple Green, and the two painted Warriors are now just a generic VTOL flight for whatever faction needs them (which is more or less what they were doing anyways). 

There isn't any consistency of the fonts used for the numbers on individual units.

I retained the tan and red in their new color mix for both some contrast and as an homage to the old color scheme. 

The addition of some Autumn colors to their basing shrubberies means the red still works for camo, or at least as much as camo works for a battlemech.

This is an Awesome choice for a my new company command mech.  

So, skipping to the present, I thought I'd try something different (yes I know that I paint most everything green, shut up!). I wanted to try a pattern breaker camo as that is about as close to digital camo as I can personally get. At first it seemed a bit tedious, until I realized that if I fucked up somewhere, I could just repaint over that panel with the next color selected. 

I am very pleased with how this lance has turned out. This color scheme has also been well received on my FLGS' discord which is nice.

The dark green AK Grime has given me fits though, far more than the regular shade that I use on everything else. Not sure why but I had to almost repaint close to a third of the Awesome after inking and maybe a quarter of the Blackjack.  That's as much trouble as I have had with almost a full battalion of the Desert Horde.

I just started on an armor lance, so will try using the regular grime on them and see how they end up. If they are not too visually different in the end, I may just continue on without the green grime going forward. 

We shall see I guess.