Wolf's Dragoons alpha Regiment

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I picked up the Stone Rhino on a whim from the FLGS along with several other loose mechs recently. I've always liked the model, but figured I'd never actually field it given that the base model clocks in at 3001 points with a 4/5 pilot! I've seen Screech use his only once in Alpha Strike, and he had to devote another mech just to guard it (it did barely manage to hobble off of the field that day).

This looks so much cooler than what it is actually capable of.

However after buying the mini for dirt cheap, I was looking at the Stone Rhino's page on Sarna and found that the Wolf's Dragoons' Alpha regiment had a unique, lostech-equivalent Behemoth during the succession wars that clocked in a much more reasonable 1703 points. With a Clan standard 3/4 pilot, it comes in at 2248 points, which is still pricey but far more reasonable than the Stone Rhino. As such, I needed to paint up a lance to go with it. 

This sculpt is a MASSIVE improvement!!

This is also the first mech to be stomping thru my new Autumn colored shrubberies. 

There were two mechs in my collection that were no-brainers for a Wolf's Dragoons force: The Firefly and the Hoplite. The Hoplite has always been one of my favorite mechs, even if the old metal sculpt looked like ass and didn't match any of its record sheets! Equipped with an AC-10, an LRM-5 and too many heat sinks, hell its basically a 55 ton Urbie.  

Looks kinda like a LAM. 

Instead it is just another example of the 35 tons of mediocrity that so many light mechs are. 

The Firefly is another odd one that really only works for the Dragoons, about the only other option I had for it was to add it to me fledgling Dark Cast Bandit star. An LRM-5, (3) medium lasers and (4) small lasers, yeah, terrifying...

I've never really been a fan of the mech, or any of it's variants. 

It irks me that the new sculpt of the Atlas is the Dark Age era The AS8-KE. I know Battletech really isn't WYSIWYG, but for fuck sake could they not opt got one of the multitude of LRM 20 equipped models? If they wanted to pick an oddball variant, how bout the one that is covered in SRM launchers? 

Its WYSIWYG now!

Thus, I made a custom one that swaps out the LRM-20 and its 2 tons of ammo for an LRM-5 and an AC-2, each with 1 ton of ammo. The few tons left over went to heat sinks. Regardless of the launcher size, unless it has Artemis IV fire control, I can't manage to hit with more than 3-5 missiles (at best maybe 7), so why waste the tonnage? As for the AC-2, I have a fondness for that generally useless weapon (just ask my old opponents in Tennessee) and so figured why not? If the AC-2 hits and all 5 LRMs connect as well, I'm still at the 7 points of damage, in 5 & 2 point groupings that the average LRM 20 cluster roll would most likely have given me anyhow. So its a wash.

Everybody should own at least one of these. 

Lastly, I rounded out the 'lance' with a Guillotine. This is an excellent all rounder that I seems to do well whenever it hits the table. Unfortunately for me, the last few times I've seen this mech on the table, it was shooting at me! The Guillotine will allow me to field a lance post 3028 as the Behemoth was lost during the battle of Misery. If I recall correctly, following the Clan invasion, the Dragoons reorganized their forces into stars, so I will likely add one more mech to allow for that. Probably a captured Clan omni. 

Escort the convoy!

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'Its bumper to bumper out there folks, oh and watch out for that nasty crossfire...'

I played another game this week, though this time it was against my buddy Nick rather than a campaign game. It was my turn to come up with a scenario and I found this one:

We made some minor adaptations, we traded inches for hexes, and the movement for the convoy vehicles was slowed to 4 hexes rather than five (same +2 TMM) due to a lack of road. With 4000 points each of 3020s era, mechs (and in Nick's case, vehicles) all with base 4/5 pilots and crews as usual, the transports would be quite challenging to hit. 

My Lancers move up into position to escort their charges. 

The Jagermech makes a lucky, boxcars roll to put an AC-5 round into the far off warrior! I was hoping for a 1-shot-kill but instead I only stripped the armor off of the left side of the chopper. I never hit it again (though not for a lack of trying). 

I brought my St. Ives Lancers with an Enforcer, Jagermech, Vindicator (all base models) and a Hunchback HBK-4SP. That totaled out to 4K even and while that factor alone was enough for me to stop making lists, it really wasn't an ideal force as they'd be hard pressed to keep up with the convoy. 

The hover tanks swoop in, cutting across traffic with no turn signals employed! No hits were scored on the convoy though the J. Edgar took a few. Unlike my last game, this evening's shooting rolls were largely atrocious. 

The Lancers and Cavaliers move into close quarters. One Flatbed truck had been disabled, but rather than assist their stricken comrades, the convoys motors away.

Nick had his 1st Royal Cavaliers with an Awesome, Shadow Hawk, a Pegasus and J. Edgar Hovertanks and a warrior VTOL. As he would be the attacker (we rolled after set up to see who was who), his vehicles' to-hit modifiers would be even worse than those of the convoy!

Previously the Enforcer had only taken a single SRM to the head, but the Awesome took it out with a PPC headshot that vaporized the pilot! Seriously, no other locations were hit, just the head!

The Hunchback closes in, unloads and...

...Neverness sent me an instant message and apparently his dice rolling black magic was attached. That or Games of Thrones was on the shop's big screen, and the Hunchback's pilot was too busy watching the in-progress sex scene to give a shit about the Shadow Hawk. 

My stacking template is intended for mechs to be in the same hex as tanks, but it needed a boost to put the VTOL over the Shadow Hawk! Side note, I posted this pic on the Everything Battletech FB group, after less than 24 hours, it currently stands at 223 reactions and 38 comments! The blog post won't garner even a tenth of that. 

Ack,  while I forgot to take a final pic, the convoy almost made it, almost. One flatbed truck did manage to escape the board, but with only 1 out of 5 getting away, Nick won the game, though it was a toss up right up until the last turn! Another point of amusement was the Pegasus which I never managed to hit; it failed it's piloting check and slammed into the city wall for a nice 19 points of damage! I would imagine that there would also be chiropractic appointments needed for its crew!

Steel Haven Campaign game: The Jig is up!

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Up close & personal!

Here's the battle report of my latest campaign game that went totally not the way it was supposed to! I could field no more than 325 tons of mechs from my TBAGers company, with a minor payout bonus at the end if I opted to bring less than that. I had no idea what my objective as to be aside from kill the enemy. 

I opted for a 310 ton force consisting of: 

Stalker STK-4N (my commanding officer for the TBAGers Catalina Styner)

Catapult CPLT-C1

Charger CGR-SB (Challenger)

Hunchback HBK-4SP

Urbanmech UM-R60

Not terrifying at all...

Initially, the OpFor played by Dylan consisted of a Longbow, Thunderbolt, Shadow Hawk, 2 Locusts and a Wasp. Every other turn Dylan would roll a D20, and on a 15+, 1 or 2 (I think he had a roll of 20 to get 2) mechs would show up as reinforcements. Pretty daunting considering his choices of reinforcements are all of the mechs pictured above!

The Hunchback charges into the killzone!

Starting out, my Catapult lobbed some long ranged shots (It wouldn't move all game earning it's pilot a name: Happy Camper). Oddly, (to me), Dylan was using his bug mechs to call in max ranged indirect LRM fire at my...Urbie?!? What the hell? I mean the assault mechs didn't mind, but seriously, what the hell. Dylan's still a new player and apparently had his first encounter with a UM-R60L recently, and that experience scarred the boy. The Urbie would survive the game unscathed.

Six small lasers or not, do you really want to get that close to a Challenger? Movement modifiers prevented any lasers from hitting either mech, but then...

...The kicking started. The Wasp missed, likely as it's leg went cartwheeling away following a 16 point hit from the Challenger's foot!

After the Charger had dropped one locust and then kicked the leg off of a Wasp that was hell bent on suicide (you're welcome), Dylan switched targets to murderous effect! An ungodly number of LRMs just kept raining down, turn after turn, it was brutal!

The hunchback takes down the wounded T-Bolt with a few head shots!

Only one mech arrived as a reinforcement however, a Crab. He never made another successful reinforcement roll! The Stalker, Catapult and Hunchback had pounded the Thunderbolt. Indeed, once in range, the first round of shooting, the 4SP missed with nothing!  Eager to try out something new, the Shadow hawk charged the Hunchback (to quote Dylan: these aren't my campaign mechs, what do I care?) My Hunchback ignored it and took down the Thunderbolt in another shockingly accurate volley!

Dylan's Shadow hawk meanwhile, fumbled it's roll to hit and instead the Hunchback deftly stepped aside and tripped the Shadow hawk into a nice, 18 point face plant!

Trying to recover from that debacle, it took the Shadow hawk 2 tries to stand back up, and when it finally did so, he positioned it with it's back to my Stalker, which was a mere 3 hexes away. Giggling uncontrollably, Catalina removed that terrible pilot and his mech from the world! Not even halfway thru her damage rolls and something hit the Shadow hawk's SRM ammo and that was that. 

The 2nd Locust should be a puff of smoke somewhere out there in the middle.

By his point the second locust was gone, crippled by several turns of point blank medium laser fire from the Catapult, it turned and tried to make a run for it. Climbing down the hill it had been on, it ended its move a perfect 7 hexes out from the Catapult... Meanwhile the Catapult's bodyguard, the Urbie never hit a damned thing all game, though it wasted almost a full ton of AC ammo trying to hit that stupid locust (and for a few turns it was in easy small laser range). 

Finally the Challenger fails a piloting check and falls, knocking out its pilot for 6 turns (we were on the next to last turn). The Stalker came running into the rescue to finish off the Crab that was pummeling my stricken mech (along with the longbow firing indirectly). The head only had 1 point of armor left, luckily they never hit it...

This game was definately not going the way that Dylan thought it would.

The Longbow continued to rain death on the Challenger, along with the seriously damaged and overheating Crab. He was passing his shutdown rolls after taking 2 engine hits, losing an arm, a few heat sinks, and several other components.  The Stalker would soon finish the Crab off. Meanwhile the Hunchback was flanking around a hill to finally starting laying some fire onto the infernal Longbow. A short ranged Hunchback should never be allowed to get that close to a longbow, much less should it be able to inflict enough damage to cause the longbow to fall over, twice!

The Crab turns to slag and the Longbow hits the ground again!

The game ended with the OpFor practically tabled. Only the Longbow was left, it was on the ground and it had my MVP, the Hunchback all over it! Jake, the FLGS owner and campaign manager wandered over, looked at the table, then looked at Dylan and said: how could you fuck this up? You're fired (No, Dylan doesn't work there). The objective was for things to get so overwhelming that I as the campaign player would realize that discretion is the better part of valor and make a run for it. 

Instead I obliterated the enemy, huzzah! Now at the end of this 'track of the campaign, I can repair all of my damaged mechs. Starting with this one:

Ouch! Zombie mech anyone?

The Urbie Menace!

Well, that's what they were called by a friend of mine. After seeing pics of my Royal Cavaliers lance, he made that comment and I thought to expand on that by posting a pic of the entire Urbie horde. 

GLORIOUS!

The photo above includes: 

13) UM-R60s - 6,552 points 

1) UM-R68 - 561 points

1) UM-AIV - 603 points

1) UM-R27 - 610 points

1) UM-R80 - 699 points (this one is just to have TAG on something for the Arrow IV Urbie.)

All told that clocks in at: 9,025 points. 

Were it not for the advanced actuators and CASE, this could easily be a Succession Wars variant. I may have to make one of those in Megamek to get some use out of this mini.  

The UM-R27 above is the oddball being an Ilkhan era only model. If I take that one out, and drop back to the Jihad era, it rounds my Urbies out to an even 16, making for a reinforced company (with its own integral artillery support). Let's say they're the mercenary command called The Skittles: Taste the Rainbow bitches!

The base UM-R60s can be swapped out for the other various cannon armed variants, moving the point totals all over the place, just using those 13 mechs alone: 

13) UM-R90s - 10,049 points

13) UM-R63s - 7,020 points

13) UM-R69s - 7,657 points

13) UM-R80s - 9,087 points

13) UM-R60Ls - 6,110 points That's 13 AC-20s (((shudder)))

13) UM-R70s - 9,412 points

In between the Jihad and the IlKhan eras, are a few other over-engineered Urbies...

13) UM-93s - 11,622 points

13) UM-R96 - 11,076 points

Lastly, waaay back in the 3040s, I could also make one of them the prototype UM-R100 which clocks in at 915 points on its own (no doubt the golden Urbie), and the most expensive of Urbies...well, barring perhaps the Urie LAM (which I don't have, but only but have seen on the store shelves). 

As impressive as these numbers are, I'm sure that halfway thru this post Kushial stopped reading and started tallying up the points on his Battalion of Urbanmechs...

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.

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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...