Friday, May 31, 2019

Painting commission: the 1st lance is done!!


It'd be best if you didn't think of the children
crying in their car seats...

Yeah, yeah, I know this ought to have been the first pic, but the one above presents a more compelling thumbnail!

So yes, progress is being made! Luckily for me, Dana's color scheme is easier to paint than my usual convoluted choices...i.e.: yellow stripes over dark green? Why yes please!

The side their enemies never see...

Anyways...I doubt the Night's Watch will field this bunch as a specific lance as weight/battlefield role-wise they're all over the place. Still though, I think they look alright (but then again, my opinion isn't the one that really matters in this case). 

0-60 in 7 strides!

It also seems that they have a penchant for playing in traffic, not the best of ideas as mechs generally don't corner too well on pavement. 

How much you wanna bet that poor bastard was only 2 payments away from paying off the car?

Having achieved the 40% complete mark, I'm hoping the next 60 won't be too arduous. At least I'm not sick of painting black and red...yet.


Tuesday, May 21, 2019

Oh, so you elitist Battletech fucks are going to play eh?


lol, I think that means the 40k crowd misses us...

No idea who made this, but it's awesome!

That remark was made tongue & cheek (well, mostly) by Neverness after he asked if I was gaming Saturday, to which I replied yes but not at the FLGS. 

Instead of a night of Kill Team Hoss came over for his first taste of the Clans, well sort of. In their battlefield debut, I was fielding my Operation Klondike era Clan Wolverine star. Essentially, all mechs were SLDF Royals, as the newer clan omni-mech and weapons technologies had yet to be invented. 

One of these is not like the others...
I was fielding a Royal Thunderbolt, Catapult and 3 Wolverine IIs. WestRider and I have discussed in the past the mediocrity of the Wolverine II's main weapon: the Ultra AC 5. That however of little concern because of the 30-40 UAC-5 rounds I fired over the course of the game, exactly TWO hit (and neither in the same volley, because that 8+ roll on the cluster chart is a sheer impossibility for me). 

Needless to say it was infuriating. 

UAC-5, double tapping needs a 4 to hit: it misses, SRM-6 needs an 8 to hit: it hits...seriously WTF?!?

Using superior technology vs. Hoss' Tech I 'Pentagon Powers' force (they were all Star League era mechs, barring a Jagermech refit, but even that was all Tech level I) ought to have been a cake wake, but alas aside from one lone turn in which my Catapult hit with everything and even rolled well on the missile clusters (THANK GOD FOR ARTEMIS IV!!!) my dice were having none of it. 

Hoss bringing the pain!

Instead I had the usual bane of my existence, and 8Q Awesome, with it's Griffin sidekick beating the snot out of my Catapult and Thunderbolt, which were only giving sporadically accurate fire in return. Hell, even Hoss's Urbie was giving my cat hell, whilst proving largely elusive to my return fire. I only managed to silence it's AC-10 in the last turn (couldn't hit that ammo though). 

Yeah...I think it's best not to lend that little guy out anymore.

Speaking of the Urbie, Hoss' list was approx. 600 points short and he was just going to go with that. I would have none of it however and loaned him NOOB! with a 4/4 pilot which clocked in at 580 points. Heh, I use standard urbies so much that I actually have all of that memorized. 

There was an actual strategy in play here as my Wolverines maneuvered into position, well maybe...

My shooting on the other side was decent so long as you ignore my UACs altogether, whilst Hoss was fairly accurate across the board. He wasn't too happy with the Wolverine's mobility though. Spoiled by my usual urbie centric, slow grinding attrition tactics, my fast moving trio that was intent to get into his backfield gave him fits! Especially when he realized that it really didn't matter which way his Jagermech faced, I would have a rear-armor shot! Not sure why he was concerned though given my die rolling...

I have you now! (apparently the dice didn't hear that)

In the end, the hour was late, and both sides were badly beaten though still on their feet, with only my Cat taking an engine hit following a snake eyes, vs. his Urbie losing the AC and a heat sink. We were going to go one more round in which the T-Bolt, Cat and possibly Awesome would all start to display their innards but Hoss instead ran up the white flag and we called it a night. 

T'was a good game all around, but I think my Wolverines need a bit of time in the ol' mini case contemplating their gunnery failures before they see the tabletop again.


Monday, May 13, 2019

Urbies fightin' Dirty!

o/

The stars aligned correctly, and Hoss and I were able to try out my scenario based around the Şoarece.  Here's how it all went down:


My convoy would move as one, i.e.: all models at a walking/cruising speed, with the Stingers at 1/2 speed to keep from running away from my blob formation.



They were deployed as such, with the intent of getting the Şoarece off of the other side of the board. Straight line route to navigate, a narrow pass, what could go wrong?


Hoss's Andurien forces would be deployed anywhere he liked on the battlefield, so long as they were out of visual sight. Being 3030s/20s tech, visual sighting was the only options for detection.


As such, his force was scattered about the board, and I was later told: with hopes of encircling me, and launching his ambush from all directions on turn three.

Turn one was rather uneventful: My blob simply trundled forward whilst his Panther and Commando maneuvered unseen into closer positions. The remainder of his force held tight. Which was unfortunate for him because...


At the end of my turn 2 ambling forward movement, my right flank Stinger on point, turned its head and had a straight line view to Hoss' Dervish. Caught flat footed, my blob went into PANDA-MONIUM!!! (irony)! Urbies pivoted and blazed away with panic-fire in all directions!

The cat out of the bag, Hoss' mechs closed in and engaged my mechs, ignoring the Şoarece all together! One Stinger's arm (naturally the one with the ML in it) was shorn from it's body, reducing my scout for a free roaming MG (damnit!). My Griffin to an AC20 slug to the chest (gulp!) and fire was exchanged all around.

The most exciting part (me thinks) was when my rearmost and newest Urbie dubbed 'NOOB!' pivoted and put an AC10 slug right thru the right torso of Hoss' Commando, puncturing the ammo bin and becoming my 2nd Urbie to Kill a mech with it's 1st shot! (True, that's not as impressive as killing the King Crab like the last time, but we are talking about Urbies here...).


Turn three and the Şoarece's crew put the pedal to the metal, eking out an oh-so-unimpressive 3rd hex's worth of movement in a futile attempt to escape! My now near impotent stinger went into a full retreat, whereas NOOB! in the rear jumped up on top of the small hill that the stricken Commando had held. The last sight the injured Commando pilot was to see, was the underside of a trash can's foot as it squashed him (and quite messily too)! A most dishonorable act, and likely attributed to the mech warrior's inexperience and surge of adrenaline.

5 hexes...I had just 5 freaking hexes to go!!

Seeing their prize attempting to flee, the Anduriens dump all they have into the front of the massive tank, and unsurprisingly hit with most everything (except the Panther, I think that mech missed entirely...). Carving a massive amount of damage out of the front hull (by a 'normal' tank's standard, it was a mere 1/3-1/2 for the Şoarece). Unfortunately for me, Hoss has an uncanny ability to roll turret crits, and he disabled the AC-2, and locked the turret facing forward. Worse yet, 2 motive crits immobilized the beast! 

The Soarece did at least manage to return the Hunchback's favor by pumping an AC-20 round into it, knocking the machine from it's feet!

May as well be 175 tons of concrete now...

With my hopes of an easy win quashed, I turned to killing off my attackers in hopes of wiping them out, my only remaining path to victory.

Heavy and frighteningly accurate shooting in all directions meant most everything but the Dervish and panther got the shit kicked out of them!


Walking past the worthless tank, the battletech slugfest began in earnest. Urbies (unsurprisingly) held their ground, intent on pointblank attrition warfare, whilst my Griffin and Stinger both moved in to engage.

Urbies lack lower arm actuators, so they can spin their guns around and fire backwards, which is what the Urbie up by the Şoarece was doing. Consequently, by that point it also had more rear, than front torso armor as well...

My 2nd Stinger suffers the same fate as the first (why do they always lose the laser toting arm?!?), and also flees the field. Speaking of arms, my Griffin's PPC lands in the dirt, though that minimizes the heat issues from an earlier engine hit. All in all, a shitty silver lining to his plight...

Amidst the fearsome brawl, good ol Levi takes TWO AC-20 hits over the coarse of 2-3 turns, shearing off both the left and right torsos of his little Urbie, forcing him to flee! In revenge however, both urbies on point manage to take down the Hunchback in exchange. 

Once again, poor little Levi is forced to flee the field with about 1/3 of the Urbie he started with!

The Urbie on my right forward flank turns the up-until-that-point pristine Panther into a 'convertible' with an AC-10 headshot! Whereas NOOB! withers under multiple turns of the Dervish hammering it with LRMs (seriously, he landed 36 out of a possible 40 LRMs in the last 2 turns alone!). Predictably, the little urbie disintegrates, avenging the Commando pilot! 


We had set out to play 10 turns originally, but Hoss had to work in the morning and at the bottom of turn 9, technically it was almost 'morning' at this already (and he still had to drive home). I ran up the white flag of surrender only to be immediately corrected that the game ended in a draw. 

My few remaining mechs were akin to drunken boxers by game's end...

The Şoarece failed to escape and I likewise failed to drive off my attackers (though we did kick the shit out of them). In return, whilst he did render the Şoarece ineffective, he didn't kill it outright, and failed to wipe me out as well. 

So technically yes, it was a draw. However as I was in no shape to see off his remaining mechs (indeed, one of my was fleeing whilst the rest were in various forms of dire straights), I still think that overall it slants towards Hoss as victor.

Regardless, we had a blast, and I'm looking forward to more! Especially with the Şoarece acting as a principle combat unit, rather than just a free moving temporarily moving objective.

Tuesday, May 7, 2019

Enter: The Night's Watch...


I'm doing a commission job for a buddy of mine. Readers of my other blog, Da Long Ways Dezert Groop may recall my recent minor foray into the commission field in which I went rather high on the price as I wasn't too keen on the idea, and the client predictably declined to respond. In this case, I already have the miniatures in my possession. 

The Nights Watch unit logo. Luckily, he's ordering decals from Fighting Piranha Graphics, so painting the above is NOT my problem!

Dana (the client) is an old buddy of mine going way back to when I was about...19ish? For those wondering I'm starting to get dangerously close to 44!?! We've been gaming adversaries, drinking buddies (especially back when we were in the SCA), wingmen when on the prowl, roommates, etc., etc.. Regardless, we've always kept in touch and have both traveled several hundred miles to be at each others weddings. In short, he's kinda like an older brother to me. 

So, having seen several photos of my mechs posted in a Battletech FB page/group that we're both in, he asked me if I'd be interested in doing a commission to paint his new starter box minis for him. We settled on a price (no, no high ball this time...in fact my Beloved Wolfy thinks I went too low), and he sent the minis to me. 

Like the logo above, they're to be black with red highlights/accents. Nothing else to go by other than that. Of course I've threatened purple with pink polkadots, but I would never do anything like that... (hehehe)

We've already hit a snag...

I'll think of something I guess. I intended to prime them all this evening, but it seems my can was empty resulting in little more than a sad speckling (well now that just sounds wrong...). So starting this project will be delayed by a few days. 

Friday, May 3, 2019

Locust LCT-1E is complete!

o/


Just a quick, follow-up post to my previous one. This was kindova hastily made last minute post just prior to heading out on a little vacation, just outside of Savannah, Ga with my Beloved Wolfy (so don't expect any quick replies if any comments are made). 

In hindsight, I realized I based this differently than my glowy green Capellan Scorpion. Oops!

Anyways, I finished up my Locust LCT-1E conversion, painted in the colors of the Capellan Confederation's Warrior House Hiritsu. Having fielded them years ago, I'll admit that I don't have any specific love of that particular unit's history or fluff. Rather its their both pretty, and easy to paint color scheme! The first time around I had almost a company of Hiritsu minis, and I guess I'll be revisiting that, though on a smaller scale this go round. 

The side most opponents will see as it streaks by!

Hope you like it, and are having a good Friday (cause we are!).