Merry Christmas Folks!

I have battletech-related presents for my local battletech opponents, and will get them to all of you...eventually. Sorry, but I seem to be piloting an Urbanmech rather than Santa's Sleigh when it comes to delivering presents.

Sadly, it has been quiet around here this month. Getting sick as hell is to blame, especially when it manifests on the very morning that I was looking forward to playing a game of Battletech vs. Kushial. 

Damnit!!! 

Likewise, painting prettymuch ground to a halt, as has most everything else. Which, given how crazy Decembers can be isn't anything really all that out of the norm. I do have this entire week off from work which is great! Though...with Christmas smack dab in the middle of it, and the obligatory family get togethers it'll likely feel like a whirlwind I'm sure, so enjoying a restful vacation will remain as always elusive (but hey, there will be presents at least right?).

Fear not, January is on approach, and little if anything happens the beginning of the year given everyone's broke, and worn out from the holidays in general. That means there will (hopefully) be time for gaming, with both a tentative scenario game vs. Hoss as well as a rescheduled game with Kushial (dates to yet be determined). Or at the very least there will be painting. 

Anyways, hope all of you enjoy Christmas, the New Year and anything else that pops up along the way! 

Happy Terrainsgiving!

o/

All of these pieces are from Hardware Studios.

I've just been a dry brushing away on my collection of 3D printed terrain here of late, and am making pretty good progress me thinks. I know the red and grey fuel tank was pictured in my prior post, but it seemed only fitting to include it again with the rest of what I've painted since. 

The black splotches represent battle damage resulting from my all-too-frequently inaccurate shooting...

The stenciling for hex bases on the roof of the vehicle bay was done by taping down spare bases with blue painters tape and painting the lines in between them. Originally, I had painted the building in red, blue and purple of the Free Worlds League, but I didn't care for the look. So, I went back over it heavily in grey. The latter is still barely visible giving the impression of paint that has largely flaked off over the years.

As you can see, ryza rust has been my friend on all of these pieces. 

Lift off in T-minus 10, 9, 8...

I didn't add a hex grid in on the landing pad as the Dropship is always parked there in game. As such, the four corners, and landings on the ramps are the only places a mech can sit without fear of wobbly model syndrome. 

The dropship is from Hardware Studios as well, whereas the bunker came from Steel Warrior Studios as a free bee with my last order! 

I have a hardened bunker and the Dropship itself left, as well as an older bunker and liquid storage tank that I'll likely be giving a repaint to, to match this newer terrain as well as my urban map sheet. 

Tanks! All sorts of tanks...

o/

I thought I'd preempt the inevitable Tanksgiving posts that will flood the blogosphere next week with two recently painted 'tanks' of my own. 

First of all, more over Steiner and your puny Atlas based scout lances, the Şoarece proves that no one can waste resources like the Free Worlds League can! 

Note the Şoarece's dirty appearance
from a recent river crossing. Due to
it's weight, few if any bridges can
support it. Luckily though it has a
limited amphibious capability. 

A rolling 175 tons of Seriously, what the fuck were they thinking?, the Şoarece is a nigh impregnable mobile fortress, slathered in 40.5 tons of armor, and moving at a whopping 18.5mph (on solid ground, going down hill and with a good tailwind). It has mixed autocannon armament that's...theoretically good at all ranges, and in practicality kinda worthless, backed up by a lone nose mounted machine gun. 

Fewer than 100 of these monstrosities tanks were built before production ceased, thus the roman numeral XIII on the front hull is actually the production number rather than any sort of regimental or unit marking. Also, due to their enormous size, at the time of manufacture Şoareces were christened with a name, much like naval vessels. 

This particular one was Christened the Warhound, and has a canine rampant decoration on both the port and starboard sides. However crews and regimental commanders alike quickly dubbed it The Dog due to its sluggish mobility and both anemic and mismatched weaponry. Most of it's career was spent in static defense and on parade duty.

In 2913, The Warhound went in for an overhaul and rearmament to (hopefully) silence the incessant complaints of the armored brigade commanders who despised the machine. The AC-2 and AC-20 were removed and replaced with a pair of AC-10s, giving the tank a triple mount of identical guns.

Whilst a bit more useful, The Warhound was now essentially a slower, overweight, Star League era Alacorn.  Commanders, resigned to the fact that there was no fixing the tank, continued to use it as little as was possible, until the tank was mothballed a mere two years later. The Warhound was reactivated a few times however, to serve as a stand in for a hostile, grounded dropships without actually risking damage to an actual dropship in large scale live-fire field exercises.

*****

And then there's the other tank. Its a 'not a fuel tank Screech!'  that I recently purchased a pair of from Hardware Studios. Its all drybrushing and I cranked it out in about 15-20 minutes. I'm quite happy with it and despite being intended for Battletech, is large enough to be useful as a LoS blocker in 40k/KT as well. 

The Robotech minis the Kickstarter backers ACTUALLY wanted...

o/

THIS! This is what we wanted out of that infernal Kickstarter!!
Also of note is the new Hardware Studios terrain in the background (funded by the sale of 40k minis).

By now, regardless of whether or not you were invested in it or not, everyone ought to be well acquainted with the clusterfuck that was Palladium's Robotech Tactics Kickstarter. Heh, after looking up that link, I checked on the now 103K+ comments of vitriol and hate to see that folks are STILL commenting on there...lol. It's done guys, get over it. Really. 

The mech itself is feather light and the wings are translucent, but ought to be fine even if you drop it...maybe.

Besides, Kids Logic now has the license and is making the minis we had hoped for in the first place! Unless you actually wanted a Warhammer that came in 30ish pieces rather than 3-4...

Really crisp detail. 

For instance, I ordered a Phoenix Hawk Battloid mode Veritech as a test purchase. $15 total with shipping direct from Hong Kong that took maybe a week and a half total. The mini had ZERO flash/mold lines and was 3 pieces that went together in minutes. 

Fits perfectly on the Gamecraft base which is the standard hex size. 

The only trimming was removing the pegs on the bottom of the feet so I could put it on one of my Gramecraft minis' hex bases. This was more or less a 'test purchase' (being justifiably wary after the KS), but now that I have it there will likely be another coming in the future as right after I ordered this they released the Warhammer. 

The Buffet Assault Group FINALLY gets it's colors!

o/

I've only had this blog for nine months now and yet whenever my TBAGers mechs hit the table top they're always sporting a combination of either primer or bare metal. Well not anymore! 

Not something you want to see cresting an adjacent hill...

Now they're sporting a two tone medium brown and red color scheme. The legs, from the knees down are all red representing the bloody work of the mercenary profession, and then the upper torso is trimmed red as per the pilot's preference. The TBAGers logo is on the left an right sides or arms depending on wherever the decals fit (originally being meant for 15mm scaled tanks, the options for decal placement are limited).

The hip on the Stalker probably shows the primered armor plates best in these pics.

Whilst its a bit subtle, and not all that visible underneath the grime  from heavy use as well as the soot from multiple missile launches, various sections of armor plating are unpainted and instead just sporting a rust colored primer, representing newly repaired battle damage. One unit logo on the right side of the right most Awesome is missing because of this.

The decals just barely fit!

The Stalker is only sporting soot from the SRMs, as the STK-4N's 2nd LRM 10 was removed as well. I haven't finalized the mech's fit yet, but will explain this in a later in a post about the TBAGers' later history. I've tweaked the original fluff enough to make a mess of it, and I think a complete rewrite is in order.

With this mech, the lance will be able to launch 110 LRMs per turn!

Lastly, you'll note the this fire support lance's 4th mech is missing. That's because I only just ordered it recently and it has yet to arrive. I got a Longbow LGB-7Q, sculpted by Strato minis and purchased via Steel Warrior Studios. Once that arrives I'll paint it up to match. I hadn't planned to expand the unit past this lance, but they're woefully vulnerable to close range attacks and flanking maneuvers, so they do need some support...

Can you post a battle report if you don't really remember the battle?

Unfortunately, life over the past 2 weeks was hell and hobbying as I know it ceased to exist during the span of it. Worse yet, just prior to the shit hitting the fan (literally, the night before...or perhaps the night prior, see? it's a bit fuzzy to me) Screech came over for a 12k point game of Battletech. However the game ought to be mentioned as it was the first time EVER (to my knowledge), that Screech fielded Inner Sphere mechs!! 

This caught me by complete surprise as expecting the usual Clan Nova Cat onslaught, I'd prepared an elite, 3060s Capellan augmented assault lance. In return he was fielding all of the plastic mechs out of the new Game of Armored Combat boxed set (and thus all with lostech weaponry and heat sinks). 

I introduce to you a new mech: the Corvair. Which end is the front? Yeah, we don't know either... 

I don't recall what variants Screech used, but coming from the boxed set and it's record sheets, I'm assuming they were all base models, and piloted by Lyrans-his favorite of the Inner Sphere's factions. On the other hand I had an Atlas AS7-K, a stealth armored Cataphract CTF-4L, two of my own modified Awesome AWS-8Rr (adding CASE for the ammo, Artemis IV for the LRM-15s, and swapping the large laser with a large pulse laser, all coming at the expense of several superfluous heat sinks), and lastly a pair of Liao Condor hover tanks. 

The following is my usual photo-dump with vague recollections that...in truth won't be much different (I guess) than my usually half-assed bat reps. 

I rotated the map 90 degrees from our last game, which meant advancing across the table would be at a diagonal, with the hex grid instead matching the roads only in the left-to-right direction. It turned out to be difficult for maneuvering for the both of us. 

My augmented lance, under the name of the Blackwind lancers who's color scheme is quite similar to that of the Atlas (as it turns out, the 16th Lyran is a Republic of the Sphere era unit, necessitating a search for an earlier era unit with a similar color scheme).

Our scouts initiated with a fruitless exchange of quite inaccurate medium laser fire. My Atlas however pumped a gauss round into the left torso of his Locust! The hit tore off the entire torso as well as a chunk of center torso armor. 

Hovertanks aside (which were running amok) my line was fairly static, whereas Screech's forces were on the advance, needing to get closer to engage with their (generally) shorter ranged weapons.

It matters not at how good the pilot, or advanced the weaponry. My dice ensured that these two lights survived their close range firefight with my assault mechs. Worse yet, he scored a snake eyes to the front and rear of the Awesome on the right, resulting in 2 engine hits!

As I recall, this is where the Awesome literally stomped on my Condor! Surely that has to be seriously demoralizing to the crew...
Also note that Catapult up on the building, we'll come back to that soon... 

My Awesome is clearly quite popular with the enemy. 

However, in a brief round of hand to hand combat, my Awesome finished off the Wolverine, my first mech kill in quite awhile!

The as yet untouched Catapult took about 20-25 points of damage this round, a gauss slug and LRMs I believe. Subsequently failing it's piloting check, it fell three levels and upon landing sustained another 20+ points of damage!!

....and following that spectacular event, we called it a night.

In the end, as the hour was late, we called it a night and Screech ran up the white flag. The Wolverine was destroyed, the locust and Catapult crippled, and the rest all damaged in one way or another. In return my tanks both had suffered heavy armor damage though curiously neither any motive or regular criticals of any sort. The two Awesomes took a pounding, but the only internals came from the two lucky snake eyes and subsequent engine hits to the one 8Rr, though given the still numerous heats sinks, it wasn't all that hindered. The Atlas had little more than a few dings, whereas the Cataphract hadn't even been shot at as with the additional stealth added to-hit modifiers, Screech commented that 'it wasn't worth shooting at'. 

I'd like to play against his Inner Sphere forces again, but with 3020s era mechs of my own, making it a true 'fair fight' rather than just relying on my bad die rolling to hold the superior equipment in check. 

Its red and black all over again...

o/

The other day I decided to just paint a mech in whatever caught my fancy and I ended up doing red trimmed with black. In hindsight, this proved to be reminiscent of the Kell Hounds (okay, a direct copy), there are several other units within the battletech universe with the same color scheme as well due to a collective lack of imagination I guess. 

I've never been a fan of the Hounds due largely to the lame 'phantom mech' incident. You're targeting equipment can't get a lock? How bout you line up your guns visually on the mech sitting right the fuck in front of you and then just pull the trigger?   So dumb. If ever there was a textbook case of 'plot armor' that was it.

Amusingly, I realized that this color scheme is just a reverse of the commission I did of my buddy Dana's Night's Watch mercenaries.

Ya know...I'm betting a Kell Hounds decal would look perfect in that black triangle on the Swayback's rear...

Other obvious choices are the FedSun's Robinson Rangers (though they usually use an Orky red/black camo) and possibly the various Draconis March militias, and speaking of Draconis,  these scream the Swords of Light to me even though that brigade doesn't use black trim (well, officially).

Like The Night's Watch, these also paint up quickly and painlessly, and I cranked out both a Swayback and my last Whitworth in just a few hours. With a bit of luck I'll manage to paint up at least a lance, if not a demi-company's worth before burnout sets in, but we'll see... 

It's the great pumpkin Charlie Brown!

I've never been a fan of the Atlas. The whole 'unstoppable mech' myth is a fallacy that I'm quickly proving now that I have one in my collection. Then there's the terrifying death's head/skull mask sculpted head...yeah no. To me, it's always looked like a jack-o-lantern. As such, now that I have one and am likely to only ever going to have just one, I saw little option to but to realize that pumpkin visage.

Its the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown!

Terrifying as it may not be, I think it actually goes quite well with bizarre and seemingly ineffective blue/khaki camouflage of the 16th Lyran Regulars. The 16th is a unit with next to no history...in fact, it's odd color scheme (chosen to reasons unknown) is about all it is known about it and even then that's thanks only to camospecs. Still, such a camo scheme isn't without precedent...

Image copyright of Tank's Encyclopedia.
Its a great site, you should go there often!

Also of note is the half-buried wreck of a Whitworth in snake Draconis Combine colors. That was my 3rd Whitworth, however it was a plastic one I got from Hoss. Whilst it worked as well as any of the others I have on the table top, I just couldn't reconcile the differences in the sculpt vs. it's metal counterparts. So, I sawed it in half and used it as basing material. The Commando from the new starter box suffered the same fate, only it was because I just don't like Commandos. 

Whilst I don't agree with the sentiment, in the opinions of most would agree that the Whitworth is only fit for basing material. 

At this time...I only have a single heavy lance intended for the 16th Lyrans, but as with so many collections, we shall see...

ALL UNITS, SUPPRESSIVE FIRE!!

o/

Unfortunately, 'suppressive fire' isn't really thing in battletech, but I'm going to assume that that was the erroneous order issued forth by my mech commander in order to justify the otherwise atrocious inaccuracy of my mechs' shooting Thursday night. 

Oh sure, I did hit the enemy now and again...however in all but two specific instances during the WHOLE game, my shooting was an exercise if futility. Indeed, most hits seemed to be by accident rather than design. Admittedly, Screech's gunnery skills weren't much to be praised either, however mediocre is still vastly better than atrocious!

I'm not sure what the Free Worlds League is paying these schmucks, but it's clearly too much!

My TBAGers were running a demi-company consisting of an an assault lance made up of an AWS-8R x2, STK-3H, AS7-RS, and a medium lance using all three of my HBK-4N2 refits, as well as a Stinger STG-3R refit that upped the armor to that of the 3G, and swapped the MGs out for a single small pulse laser.   

On the other side of the board, Screech had a mixed star made of 4 points (8 tanks) of the base model Joust, and his star commander piloting a Thor/Summoner, who clearly shat in some Khan's cornflakes to be tasked with leading a bunch of tanks into combat!

As such this won't be as much of a bat rep at as it will be me showing off my WIP city map/board, whilst lamenting about the inability of my force to even kill fucking tanks of all things!!

An overhead view of the battlefield. All of the little MDF buildings are now painted. The cardboard blocks were intended to be temporaries until I got more terrain, but they make for excellent line-of-sight blockers. So I think I'll just keep them, prime and paint 'em up a ruins. 

The Marik Militia's vehicle park. The problem with a parking lot is it creates a vast open space. However using it as a tank park broke it up nicely, not to mention being the TBAGers' employers, they couldn't simply step on them, making  that lot into a bit of an obstacle course as well. I periodically tried to activate the tanks but Screech would have none of it for some reason...

The view from the other side of the board. Screech was running late (as usual), so while waiting I used a spare base to trace a hex grid on top of the cardboard bricks in he event that any mechs jumped up there. It was a bit crude but usable, and in any event none jumped up there. Once these bricks are painted up, I'll redo the hex grid with a bit more care than this go round.

(In my best Star Wars Imperial Officer impression): Ah yes, our first missed shots of the day...

Gratuitous Dropship pic. Still super happy with this though I have yet to paint it or it's landing pad.

Okay, 1st excellent gunnery incident: My Stinger jumps 6 hexes into the rear arc of two Jousts, firing and hit with both lasters! Unfortunately you've no doubt seen the two other jousts that did a quick reverse in direction to get rear armor shots at said Stinger. Screech was salivating at the prospect of 16 LMGs taking it apart, however his 1st shot, an ERLL hit the center rear torso and killed the mech in 1-shot! Normally, players are thrilled with 1-shot kills, but Screech looked totally crestfallen as all of those LMG gun barrels slowly spun to a halt, unfired.

The last savage exchange of fire, shooting lots and hitting little. Just off to the right and sadly not in the photo, my other Awesome connected with both LRM15s and its large laser with no less than an 11 for any rolls! As usual the missle clusters were kinda meh, but whatever it hit at least.

As for my mechs above, collectively about 1 weapon in 5 actually hit their targets, though I did at least get a box cars roll on the cluster chart for the lone LRM20 of the Stalker that hit. That aside though, many, many civilians no doubt died horrible deaths.

*****

In the end, my Hunchback on point as badly beat up and the one mech I lost, the Stinger, I fully expected to as it was the cheapest thing on the board by a vast margin of points! the Stalker's left torso was exposed meaning had we gone another turn it would have tried to hide to dump the SRM ammo in that location before continuing on it's bonsai charge! Lastly the Atlas' left arm was in ruins but otherwise was doing fine. The loss of the laser in said arm would have eliminated and future over heating issues. The rest had just a few minor dings with one Awesome and Hunchback each leaving the board untouched!. 

On the other side, Screech's Thor had taken a few decent hits, but no internals . Whereas his collection of tanks ranged from untouched to crawling off of the board trailing busted track links whilst a few drivers struggled thru multiple, stacked driving penalties! One Joust also lost it's weapon's stabilizer in the last round which would have been an issue had we continued. 

So it was kindova draw I guess. 

The dropship has landed!!!

Okay first up, a bit of a USPS rant here. I commented on my prior post in response to WestRider on how my last birthday purchase was circling the state of Tennessee due to the US Postal Service's gross inefficiency. The approximate driving distance my package had to go was about 1000 miles. In the end, thanks to tracking I saw that my package went about 2400 miles (and the box looked certainly looked like it upon arrival). Luckily there was lots of bubble-wrap and all arrived intact!

The 3d printing resolution is pretty good, with print lines really only noticeable on the top of the shuttle itself.

I'm super thrilled with my dropship and landing pad from Hardware Studios!! I opted for the smallest of their dropships (it's about 3.5" in diameter) due mostly to budgetary concerns so its too small to carry mechs. Instead its more of the K-1 Dropshuttle size, making for a good objective and line-of-sight blocker. It also sits perfectly on the landing pad. 

Extra gratuitous pic for no other reason then just because.

As for the pad, its quite large (9.5" x 5.5") and will occupy the space near the parking lot on my new battle mapsheet. It has an open slot on the side for a switch if you're one with the technical prowess (I am not) for LEDs or the optional magnetic setup that allows the shuttle to hover above it. The latter is quite cool but also quite expensive ($79.95 on amazon). 

These paint up in just minutes, its all dry brushing!

As you can see, these are all victims of my pilots/crews' stellar gunnery skills...

I also got some resin, textured bases for my mechs w/o the pewter tab between their feet and vehicles. I also bought two packs (totalling a dozen) 6mm scaled cardstock buildings from Gamecraft Miniatures. Whilst I certainly need more buildings beyond the pad, shuttle and these first few buildings, I'm off to a good start for my urban warfare setup. I have some Space Marines on ebay, and am hoping I can use some of the funds from those when/if they sell to also put towards more terrain (and not just bills). 

My birthday presents are starting to arrive!

Wait till you see what will be placed in that open space next to that parking lot!

For my birthday (44, WTF?!?) my Beloved Wolfy and my awesome in-laws got me a Visa gift card with the instructions of: go buy some toys! 

Gladly!

I had wanted to get some terrain from Steelwarrior studios, however the gift card was only valid in the United States, whereas Steelwarrior is located in Canada. Disappointing, but not the end of the world (and I'll save that set for my Christmas wish list). There are other options for terrain, but I'll get to those in my next post after they arrive later this week. As for what has already arrived? well keep reading:

A perfect fit!

First up, I bought a 36" x 36" gaming mat with a battletech hex grid printed on it from Mats by Mars. Its vinyl, water proof, and I can even use dry-erase markers on it were I so inclined (I'm not). It was a bit pricey but I'm happy with it. In the future I may get another (assuming I start running out of room for terrain) and just trim it down to fit side by side with this one, and thus covering the whole of my game table. 

BTW clan players, if you like the IIC's ATM 12 variant, you can easily do that with this missile plate sprue!

Next, from Aries Miniatures, I bought a trio of Hunchback IICs and some generic missile launcher face plates to use as Inner Sphere Hunchback HBK-4N 'Swaybacks'. I love the hunchback's stats, but have never been a fan of the model, and can't afford anymore Aussie MWO sculpts due to them being cost prohibitive. I do like the clan IIC model though and after Aries confirmed that the missile plate ought to be 'workable' to use on the IIC's guns, I bought 'em for some conversions. 

They fit perfectly! Seriously, its like they were made for one another. The simple solution for using these is to simply make a record sheet, with the weapons rearranged to match these minis. That said, I'll likely to custom refits as well. The most basic swapping the 2 LRM-5s and shedding 1 medium laser to fit in an LRM-10. Also, an easy War of 3039 upgrade from that would be to swap out the nigh useless small laser for C.A.S.E. to protect against ammo explosions. Beyond that, these now scream for an MRM-10 refit as well. 

Stay tuned for the next set of toys that I'll also be showing off like an annoying little kid at Christmas, lol! 

The 'effing' Wobblies vs. Clan Nova Cat

o/

Well, its only taken 2 years, but I finally got Screech to play a (non-digital) game of Battletech! After some debate we settled on 12k points. Originally I was going to field my Wolverines just to irritate his sense of Clan pride, however I would essentially be fielding a carbon copy of a list I've used previously with maybe a single mech swap at best (i.e.: the unpainted one). 

In the typical Wobbly 'false flag' operation, my mechs were using their complete lack of paint to masquerade as Rob's Lyrans, lol. Note: there's a 2nd Stinger deployed on the other side of the Catapult. 

Thus I delved into list hammering for something different.  Initially, I was trying to come up with a Kuritan C3 lance, but the modifiers are just to damned expensive! The only two mechs I have that have C3master variants are the Atlas (which is why the mod. is so expensive) or a Komodo (which is too fragile really). I originally bought the Komodo for the C3M capability, but only for use in a medium-light lance, which really isn't the best choice when fighting against the clans.

OMG! SCREECH PAINTED HIS MECHS!!! Well sorta, lol. Seriously though folks, even just primer is actual progress (though how recent this primer was applied I couldn't tell you). 

However in the end, (mostly) light mechs is what I opted for, deciding to use this game to try out a bunch of mech variants I've never used before. Not to mention, who is better than for fielding new stuff than the Fucking Wobblies? Also no, it wasn't a C3i Level II for the same reasons I didn't field the Kuritans. 

Going for a suicide squad of uber pilots (Urbie excluded) in mostly light mechs, for the 'new' designs I chose the the rocket launcher equipped Panther 14S and  5R Stingers, a Flashman 8K (with that mini making it's battlefield debut), and lastly the R-80 Urbanmech. A Catapult CPLT-K4, the only variant out of this list that I've used before, rounded out the list.

The first couple of turns was merely maneuvering at speed (the Urbie was literally bouncing along lest it never get to shoot) to get into line of sight of one another. 

No scenario, just the typical slugfest on my canyons of death map. We deployed in opposite corners with everyone eventually joining the melee in the middle. We made the black objective markers level 4, the same as the canyon walls just to fuck up lines of sight even when we were out in the open.

My first piloting check and I rolled a fucking snake eyes! yay. 

My initial shooting was in a word: abysmal, hitting with next to nothing. Also, unlike my last game with Hoss where I held the initiative almost all game, in this one I had it maybe once. Eventually the dice warmed up, though with a bunch of light, 1-shot wonders floating around shooting and missing is bad!!!!

Ack! Squiggoth! Squiggo-oh wait, wrong game system. 

You is looking here, so I sits here.

lol, it never fails. Whether I'm doing a crossword at dinner with the Mrs.,  or playing a mini-game, Baxter figures out where our attention is focused and plants himself right in the middle of it every time. After a few of these interruptions, I moved him to one of the hammocks in the kitty tree, where he could watch (and luckily decided to stay).

That said, my crummy little expend-a-mechs took far more punishment than I thought the would, with one out of every two rocket launchers actually connecting with their targets. Heat spikes resulting in lost movement weren't really a concern as the mechs are fast and the excess heat is from 1-shot weaponry (mostly), so you don't continue to add excess heat turn after turn. 

Gauss rifle huh? Yeah well I have a rocket launcher...

Yup, gauss rifle. ...sigh...

The Nov Cat 'war face'. Rumor has it he just tested down to a solahma vehicle crew position, hence his lack of fury/glee.

Still though, Stingers vs. Shadow Cats is anything but a fair contest with both Stingers coming out on the losing sides. The Panther did fairly well vs. the Ryoken, however caught in a crossfire between that mech and the Nova Cat squashed and hope of victory in that exchange.

I believe this is where the Panther started losing it's arms, side torso...eventually in the last turn, the Panther's pilot would have no other option and just reach out of one of his mech's gaping holes and fire his sidearm at the enemy. 

....and another one bites the dust! Have you ever seen what a gauss rifle in the back of a Stinger looks like? It ain't pretty!

Good night sweetheart! This was the 2nd game in a row where an enemy pilot has been knocked unconscious!

To be honest I wasn't looking to win (and its a good thing!), but rather just test out new-to-me designs and was happy just to get a game of anything in with Screech. To that end I'm calling this a draw even though technically the game was a loss for me of 3 mechs lost vs. none (though he didn't kill the Urbie, a mech he loathes especially which is a win in my book!)

Overall I was pleased with the rest of my mechs in their collective test run. Expenda-a-mechs aside, the other three performed well:

My last pic of the game, with the Panther and 2nd Stinger both starting on their ultimately futile attempts to retreat. 

The Urbie was a wobbling and a weaving (i.e.: evasive maneuvers), drawing considerable fire but remaining untouched until taking 2 medium pulse lasers and a gauss slug to the back in the last turn. Despite that, it survived and remained upright! Prior to that mauling it had scored several snub nosed PPC hits on the Ryoken, Nova Cat and one of the Shadow cats.

The Flashman, once it warmed up (both literally and figuratively) proved an excellent combination of speed, firepower, resilience, and heat sinks (though 17 doubles are still easily overwhelmed, so ya need to be careful with it). Expect to see this beastie fielded more often in the future!

As always, the K4 Catapult is a slow but deadly mech. Kind of hampered by terrain and the bouncing Urbie being in it's way early on, once it got stuck in the HPPCs never missed a shot! It is well armored too (for a Catapult) and soaked up a savage last turn exchange in which it and the Nova Cat both fired near point blank alpha strikes at one another with neither missing at all! I should have gotten a photo of that in hindsight but oh well. 

I suppose I'll take something a bit more conventional next time. Something that can absorb the high-powered, clan weaponry. I have altered the TBAGers fluff to have them not be wiped out till the clan invasion. So they can now plausibly face Screech's clan mechs. They might have this time had I not announced early on that I would be using this map which would have neutered both of my Awesomes at the outset. 

Regardless, I just hope it doesn't take another two years to get Screech to play again.