No, not an Omnimech…but rather an Insomniamech.

Tuesday a rough night where I just couldn't sleep. About 2am-ish I said the hell with it and started painting.  I did manage about 3ish hours sleep later that night, however I was more or less a zombie for most of Wednesday as a result. 

Nonetheless I did get this mech painted. Like all proper metal Javelin minis, this one also has it's very own tree behind which to hide. While normally hiding is a bit hard with a fiery paint job, the fall foliage does help a bit. 

Some of you may have noticed that this paint job matches that of my Hell's Horses Iota galaxy force. The Horses have a pair metal (lead to be exact) of Stinger Cs and a metal Locust C. Add in this Javelin, and I have a lance of 3020s era mercs to use when we're not playing in the later eras. 

An Army fights on it's stomach!

Neither mech is mine...

Nick 2.0 and I got together for a game this past Friday night after my tentative Bolt Action 3.0 game got postponed by a week. It was my turn to pick a scenario and after perusing teh interwebz' multitudes of fan-made scenario offerings of 'Use these pre-selected mechs, with these mechwarrior skill values and then basically just kill each other' I was getting pretty annoyed. However I did find one that had potential, and after some heavy editing it came out like this:

An army marches on its stomach:

 A convoy of 4-6 disabled mobile field kitchens (MFK) are equally spaced along the map along the center line. Any mech or vehicle can drag/tow a target MFK back to their board edge. A mech or vehicle unit must be in the same hex at the end of their movement phase as the target MFK with at least 1 MP left to be able to start dragging/towing it. Mechs without 2 hand actuators and vehicles must use 1 turn to secure/attach the target MFK. Mechs & vehicles cannot attack enemy units while securing an MFK. The dragging/towing unit suffers a 50% reduction in their walking/cruising MP and cannot run or jump. A dragging mech cannot fire weapons in either arm, nor can a towing vehicle fire from the rear arc while towing an MFK.

A unit earns 1 VP for each MFK returned to their home map edge.

This ties in nicely with our convoy escort scenario game as we would be using the same heavy tracked APCs and trucks for the immobilized field kitchens. Game size would be the usual 4K points, except we went for Clan Invasion era mechs rather than our usual Succession wars as I wanted to use some of my Clan forces. Overall I didn't think the scenario wouldn't be too difficult. I mean, it ought to be easy enough for us each to at least drag one or two off successfully.

But then...

Anthony was in attendance at the FLGS and he is a recent convert to the Battletech cause, has some mechs, has read the rules, but has never played a game. With no other players present he was going to just watch, but instead we made it a 3-way scrum. His role in the above scenario? He would be defending his field kitchens. Simple, easy, no problem. 

Oh wait, everything I have is only 20 tons and now there is a defending force to contend with. Fuck.

Nick's Marik force wasn't nearly as perturbed by this new addition that they would to have to contend with.

Anthony's Lance. In the backfield he has a Griffin checking out an MFK's menu.

The Battlefield with the convoy in the middle. We determined that the board edge would be 12 hexes from the center line. 

What follows is less of the usual battle report and more of a highlight reel as I only took a few photos. 

My Piranha decides to go out with glory running at the Axeman that was trying to grab an objective. Due to my high defensive modifier (my mechs were averaging +3-4 all game), the Axeman missed with everything including its axe! I did some damage but nothing too major. 

The Death of one of my Howlers. I believe it survived this exchange, but in the next turn as it was running on by it took an ERLL to the CT rear and that was all she wrote. 

Having survived somehow, the Piranha gets behind the Axeman and sandblasts it a little bit. I believe that I ground all of the armor off of one of the rear side torsos, but nothing went internal. The piranha had to go & hide for a bit as expecting to die at any moment, I kept alpha-striking and it ended the turn at  +12 heat!

Nick's Griffin was trying to get away with an MFK (and made it about half as far as my dead Mercury did on the other side of the board). However unable to shake the piranha off of it's tail for 2-consecutive turns, the massed MGs got several possible crit rolls and I rolled a boxcars, taking off the side torso and inflicting 3 engine hits in the process! 

The last turn of the game, Anthony's Hatchetman goes in for its first ever swing in close combat only to miss. I don't recall if the Catatphract landed a punch or not in return, but both mechs survived the encounter. 

This is about par for the course for the whole game, little green mechs running in all directions. They didn't do much damage, but was the first time I've had Nick flip off my mechs in a game, lol! I believe the Wolfhound blew one of the side torso off of the Dasher in this pic, totally disarming it after it had lost its other arm previously. 

In the last turn, Anthony commented that his Griffin was untouched. I clipped it with a single, lousy LRM. However, Nick's Axeman connected with it's LPL & AC-20 and thoroughly ruined the Griffin's previously pristine state. 

Due to time we had to call it there. No MFK's were captured giving Anthony the victory by default. Nick & I each managed to drag one a short distance before our mechs were each gunned down. My 'Fast & the Furious' star ended the game as more of a triangle with the Mercury and 1 Howler down, and the Dasher reduced to a free roaming torso.  That said, my Piranha's pilot earned a future spot in an Omni-mech for being the first time I've ever had a Piranha take down a mech in a game of Classic (whereas doing that, is standard practice for the Piranha in Alpha Strike). 

Mid-week mini-games

Mini as in really small games, not just games with miniatures. 

This doesn't look like a fair fight, but looks can be deceiving...

This all started out with instead of the usual 'hey do you want to play this week?' Nick instead issued the following Batchall:

at an annoyingly high volume

The Wolves of Kerensky have have claimed this world for their own. What tame dogs defend it? A trinary of Delta Galaxy's Red Keshik stand ready to attack!

I challenge you to a Trial of Possession for the relic Griffin 1A known to be in your charge. (I just want the record sheet, I don't have that one) I bid two assault Battlemechs for the for the paltry task of subduing your forces. 

(Yes, I'm quoting him here)

Caught off guard, but playing along I replied:

Greetings lapdogs of Kerensky, we will gladly bestow the blessings of Blake upon you...

 I quickly consulted Google ROM for clan bidding protocols, and thus the bidding began. 

After some back and forth, we settled on 2 'secondline' WoB Medium mechs vs. a single heavy Clan Omnimech, and we both agreed the match up was Bargained well and done!

Not knowing what the lone Clan heavy omni would be, I guessed (correctly) that it would be a Timber Wolf/Mad Cat (a prime variant) with a 3/4 pilot. I opted for a pair of Crab CRB-30s with 4/5 pilots which doesn't seem to be a fair matchup despite being two-to-one, but they're C3i equipped, mwuhahaha!

We also each had a backup lance of 3020s lights & heavies just in case the trial went really quickly. 

The kitties help prepare the battlefield...

Checking line of sight from the rear Crab that was benefiting from the C3i mod bonus!

In the initial exchange, this Crab took a pounding! That said the replied with a few PPC hits in return, including a snake eyes crit roll that dealt an engine and gyro hit!

The next round was brutal again for the lead Crab and the Mad Cat which suffered enough damage to drop it due to the damaged Gyro.

The lead Crab goes down as it's side torso is removed, taking a big chunk of the XL engine with it. Meanwhile the Mad Cat hits the ground again. 

At this point, both opponents were in dire straights and my dice went suddenly cold and so tried to put a bit of space between us resulting in few turns of maneuvering and sniping at range. With only 1 arm remaining and the left torso dangling by a thread, that was not a winning prospect.

Offering his final prayers to the Blessed Blake, the WoB pilot realizes that there is no escape and meets the charge, hitting with all of his remaining weapons!

Unfortunately, so did the Mad Cat and not even halfway thru its damage rolls the Crab's left torso (and again, half of the XL engine) tore away and the soon-to-be-scrapped Timber Wolf was victorious!

With the trial complete, he would receive his record sheet (actually I sent him all of my Primitives XTROs, plus the Retrotech and the custom sheet that I use for the aforementioned Griffin 1A). There was time for a game, but not a full lance each. So we opted for a single heavy and light each, again with base pilots. 

Nick had a base model Marauder & Valkyrie of the Donegal Guards, and I had a Thorn F (the base N model is actually advanced tech) and a primitive Archer of the Arcturan guards. So a training mission it was to be!

Yes! The Thorn can see the Marauder, which also means...

Feline intermission. Neeka doesn't usually like strangers, but she really seems to like Nick. 

Not pictured was the end of the Thorn at the hands of the Valkyrie. Nor was the epic, two-turn continuous close combat brawl between the Archer and Marauder (seriously, WTF? Those two ought never be involved in lose combat of any sort) which resulted in the death of the Marauder due to a leg loss. 

The jumping Valk taunting and dodging the slow moving Archer. Each side was scoring hits, but one was far more heavily armored than the other. 

Finally ready to 'end it'. The Valk surprisingly moves not off of the table edge, but into 'magic range' for the LRMs (7 hexes). In this last brutal exchange of the night, the Valk hits with both its medium laser, and several LRMs land but the wounded Archer still stands. It replied with a whopping 32 LRMs connecting, all but dismantling the already heavily damaged Valkyrie! Which toppled and summarily ran up the white flag. 

All in all it was a very fun night!

The battle for the Thanksgiving leftovers...

 o/

Paint equals extra armor...right?

Well not really, there was enough homemade apple pie left to go around for everybody (we didn't ask for anything else). We made a quick visit to Tennessee for turkey day, and later on Black Friday, while shoppers across the nation were locked in brutal, hand-to-hand combat, fighting for the store's best deals, Screech and I settled down at the Airbnb that my wife & I were staying at for a game of Battletech: 

Jihad era, 10K points, standard scenario: Kill each other. Here's is the recap:

Screech's infamous Name Pending© mercenaries. 

My recently painted Wolf's Dragoons Alpha regiment. Not pictured is an additional platoon of hover assault mechanized infantry.

The battlefield, the buildings in the middle were levels 5-7 for some line-of-sight disruption in the centerfield.

Turn one and both sides' flankers, flank each other.

Everything starts to move in close except for the Atlas AS7-K which I parked on a level 4 hill to provide some long ranged fire support.

Strategery in action...

There were a lot of close in engagements with my Man O' War taking a beating in the middle. The Bushwhacker's LBX-20 was scaring the bejesus out of my mechs, though thankfully (for me) it never once connected with anything. 

The circus side show continues...

No circus is complete without a flea circus. The infantry managed to both hit the Flea and avoid the return fire. 

The last moments of the Firefly C, which (as always for my light mechs) was lost when it's leg was destroyed. Presumably it toppled into the river. 

The Guillotine was doing well as Guillotines always do, the Hoplite was also preforming well despite its mediocre offensive capability. The Man O' War meanwhile was looking for a place to hide. 

Oh and the waste of points in the backfield called the Atlas? Yeah it continued to miss entirely too often for a gunnery 3 pilot. 

The Man O' War was desperate to get away from the Devastator at this point!

With it's center torso almost entirely cored out, the Man O' War cinematically fired its arm weapons in either direction after it found it's hiding spot was instead a crossfire. 

The Flea's multitude of anti-infantry weapons finally connect, and the hover infantry is annihilated in the river. 

Both the Rifleman & Guillotine were giving as good as they were getting, the Archer on the other hand was about as inaccurate a fire support unit as my Atlas.

At about 11pm I ran up the white flag. While I only lost the Firefly and infantry, the Man O' War was down to a mere 2 points of CT structure. 

While the accuracy of our pilots left a lot to be desired all around, we had several mechs on both sides deep into structure and/or missing limbs. My loathing of the Atlas continues (and with good reason), whereas Screech's Archer and Bushwhacker weren't any better. As always, it was a good game which is all that matters, especially as we now live about 600 miles apart making these a rare event.

Wolf's Dragoons alpha Regiment

 o/

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.