Desert Recon Lance

o/

Fast & fragile, just the way scouts ought to be!

These were a bit of a speed paint and as good as they look, you can expect to see more models painted to match these four. They give me a bit of a Desert Storm vibe, with rooster tails of sand billowing out behind them as they tear across the desert sands.  

Opposite view.

Three Galleon Light tanks backed up by a Skulker Wheeled Scout tank is nothing to be feared on the tabletop (well, unless they're C3i Wobblie Galleons...). That said,they do have their uses as distractions, spotters, harassers, as well as for the ever popular Alpha Strike past time of shooting enemies in the back. 

The parts to be obscured by all of the flying sand...

The Skulker, if used as the MG variant, can double as an APC.

The 'turret' is more of a remote weapon station, as on modern AFVs.

Curiously the side guns aren't in sponsons, and so only fire in a 45 degree arc out to the sides, rather than a more proper 180 degrees.

Of course, like all of the other KS tanks, the 'turret' rotates.

The lance itself is also generic enough to be useful in any Inner Sphere faction in practically any era. Hell, they'll even work for the Star League in Exile and the Pentagon Powers.

Battletech painting spree!

 o/

Making up for this year's paucity of painted BattleTech Minis!

In a little over a week's time since my Mercenaries Kickstarter minis arrived, I've painted a company's worth of miniatures! Of those, nine were from the KS and naturally (as you can see) they're not all painted in the same color scheme. 

First up are the Defenders of Andurien: 

The Cicada unit leader is a 3D printed mini, the other three came in my KS Mercenaries boxed set and 2 salvage boxes. Also, with the acquisition of the 'new' (to us) table, these are likely the last pics to be taken outside by the house's siding. 

White with blue & green stripes on the arms & legs, how hard could that be?

Bloody awful is that answer to that question!

Don't expect to see anymore Andurien mechs from me!

This lance is armed with: 6 machine guns, 3 flamers, 7 small lasers (6 rear facing) and 8 medium lasers. Clearly this lance is meant for routing out insurgents and pacifying occupied settlements. As such,  I don't expect much out of them on the tabletop...

The Buffet Assault Group's first contract was as a 2nd line support and garrison unit for the Duchy of Andurien during their secession and invasion of the Capellan Confederation. I say 2nd line as they're not a canon unit and therefore not listed in any of the official histories of that time period. The TBAGers didn't see any heavy fighting until first the Capellan counter attack, followed by Marik's reconquest of the Duchy of Andurien. Up until now I've not had any Andurien Defender mechs to run with my TBAGers. This lance is cheap enough to do just that. 

The CCAF is nothing without it's tanks!

Second to be painted is this armor lance which rounds out my Capellan Confederation's Homeguard company. Although, as they're camouflaged, they could easily be one one of a dozen or so Capellan units. So far the Homeguard has been an oh so inflexible 7 Urbanmechs lead by a lone Raven RVN-4X. Hopefully this lance will help mitigate that somewhat. 

Both Urbie lances have 1, 2, 3 & 4 colored stripes on their tops to differentiate mechs. As cavalry's traditional color is yellow, that is what I chose for this lance. 

The Vedette, while kinda worthless in any era prior to maybe the civil war is still fast, cheap and annoying for an opponent to deal with (and the new mini looks great!). The 2 Bulldogs are as always, under armored and over gunned. That said, with their even average speed, they're practically recon tanks compared to the Urbie horde. Lastly the LRM carrier has plenty of long ranged punch and is wrapped in cardboard as one would expect. Since the launcher covers are down, its also an easy proxy for an MRM carrier if I wanted to go that route. 

My opponent was shocked at what a Piranha could do in Alpha Strike at point blank range, and in the rear arc. He killed it in one volley, but by then it was too late and all six points of damage had already been done to his Nightstar!

This past Friday I played my first game vs. an Ilkhan era opponent. We played 250pts of Alpha Strike using whatever era we wanted. I'm not sure which faction my opponent was playing, not that I'd even heard of several of them when I looked that era up on the master unit list. While perusing the MuL, I looked to see what the Capellan Confederation's unit options for that era were, and following that: watch this space for future additions to my Capellans. 

A Griffin IIC and 3 points of infantry.

Speaking of that game, I fielded a late succession wars era, combined-arms binary of my Hell's Horses Iota galaxy. My opponent, 'Badger' (yes his actual real life name) his assault star's lightest mech was an 85 ton Stalker. He was keen to see what a mostly light-medium combined arms force could do against an assault star. Turns out that they can out run, out maneuver, and damned near overwhelm said assault star which was outnumbered by more than 2:1 at the game's outset.   

I've never had any want to field the Savannah Master, so these will serve as two points (platoons) of Fast Recon mechanized infantry. Just imagine a bunch of infantry laser rifles poking out of the side windows! 

I won, though the victory was pyrrhic, as both sides were retreating by games' end. I'd taken down three mechs, with a 4th deep into structure, for the loss of 4 mechs, 2 light tanks, and 2 points of fast recon infantry. In terms of point values of units killed & disabled I was ahead by a mere 25 points! 

These guys planted the final, killing blow to a Sagittaire assault mech! 

Not sure if that makes up for them being such a pain in the ass to paint...

So pleased was I with my force's victory, that I painted up all of the unpainted units used save the Firefly, which I am likely to give to another faction. This leaves me just 1 mech short of a fully painted Iota binary. My paint jobs also drew several compliments which I always enjoy.  While none of the opposing mechs were painted, of the 4 separate forces that Badger had brought with him, collectively about a third of the mechs were painted. 

You just know that the pilot would love to swat that little Elemental out of the sky!

The red & orange ombre was lost under the yellow of this one. 

Speaking of, I met quite a few BattleTech players that evening, and several of those folks play 40k as well. Also, the FLGS has a BattleTech campaign in the works, so I am looking forward to that as I have only ever played 1-off pick up games. 

'Are you painting a Wafflehouse for your game?'

I was quoting my wife with this post's title.

The 3050 financial reports are in and sadly we have bad news for our investors. This was to be the year that Dunkin Davions would move on from dominating just the breakfast pastry industry, and proceed to conquer the fast food market as a whole! 

First quarter sales started off strong, but by late spring things started to take a turn. Here now at the end of the fiscal year, hundreds of locations have closed across the realm's northern edge. Or at least we think they have, its hard to be certain given that HPG communication with so many occupied worlds has been lost...

Note the occupiers, on patrol around the perimeter. The other three from the squad will become basing decorations. 

It looks suitably out of business I think. 

I've had both the hotdog mech and the Dunkin Davions bouncing around in my collection for years now. The building itself has been in the background of many of my battle reports, and I once painted another hotdog mech for my buddy Rob who owns a Dairy Queen. I don't recall him seeing the humor and that mech is probably buried under the seat of his truck, or the like.

The dumpsters are of course Capellan green rather than Davion green. 

This was my guinea pig model for my new AK streaking grime. For my first try on a not so good 3D print (the building, not the mech), it came out alright I think. I was going for the grimy, out of business look for a building in a city wracked (wrecked?) by the smoke and fires of war. 

Also, I know I said in my last post that I would be showing off some painted KS minis in this post. However I wanted to post this off as I just finished it, so those will have to wait till next time. 

 

My Battletech Kickstarter Shipment has arrived!

 Huzzah!

The Dropship has arrived!

Saturday afternoon I was like a little kid on Christmas morning going thru all of my new toys! 

First off, I got all of the standard stuff: (2) sets of dice (Generic BT and House Steiner) the posters, (they're still in the plastic),the big Mad Cat, the Mercenaries starter box, the Visigoth fighter & lastly the salvage box of Savannah Masters (4 hover tanks, 2 bases; remember that before you join the chorus of complaints about that decision, they were free). 

In addition, I also got the following: 

Salvage boxes: 
Flea x2 (giving me 3 total including the one in the starter box)
Phoenixhawk IIC

Ostscout
Vedette medium tank
Galleon light tank (like the Fleas, this gave me 3 in total)
Shrek heavy Tank
Sturmfeur heavy tank (also bringing those up to 3 in total)

Rifle & Command Lances box:
Bulldog medium tanks x2

Hetzer wheeled tanks x2

Sturmfuer heavy tanks x2

Von Luckner heavy tanks x2

Such a cool sculpt! These are likely to only be used as 'filler' or possibly the APC version.

Recon & Hunter Lances:

Ontos heavy tanks x2

Behemoth heavy tanks x2

Skulker wheeled tanks x2 (LOVE the sculpts on these generally worthless vehicles)

Warrior VTOLs x2

Heavy Recon Lance:

Ostroc

Merlin

Charger

Assassin

Clan Cavalry Star:

Griffin IIC

Shadowhawk IIC

Locust IIC

Jenner IIC

Black Python (I found it odd to not make all 5 mechs be IIC variants)

I also gave the new Battlefield Support rules a look annnnnnd have mixed feeling about them. 

Its like catalyst said: Here, use these amazing new vehicle sculpts, now watch as we give you the 'new and improved' vehicle rules that minimizes them entirely. The vehicle motive crit chart is garbage, but I get that it is there to make Mechs more appealing. Personally, I'll stick with my infantry and tanks operating as they always have using the Total Warfare rules I think.

 

The Behemoth heavy tank, for when you need a free roaming pill box. 

As battlefield support, tanks and infantry are referred to as the generic category of 'assets'. No hit points or armor facings, just take this (not) much damage per turn and roll to see if dead and either you are or aren't. If you survive, there's no damage recorded except that they're slightly easier to kill next turn, and so on. Also like Alpha Strike, all weapons are grouped into a generic set of damage in 1 roll to-hit. Whereas the Behemoth above is bristling with weapons, facing in all directions, needing several rolls, meaning some will hit and some won't. 

Aerotech, otherwise known as: Reading Rulebooks, the Game.

On the flip side of that, we've never bothered with aerospace fighters, off map artillery and minefields as the rules are too convoluted to be bothered with. Sometimes it feels as if the folks writing the BattleTech rules assume we all have PhD's in Mathematics. Whereas using arty, airstrikes and mines via the 'Strikes' category of the new battlefield support rules doesn't bother me very much. That said, I am well aware that my lack of bias towards these new battlefield support rules are due to my having never used the old, Total Warfare ones for these types of attacks before. 

The Battlefield Support rules are optional, and...well, feel a hellova like mixing Alpha Strike rules into Classic BattleTech. I was discussing them with Screech and he'd heard that folks seem to like them, though whether that is what Catalyst is saying, or the community at large remains to be seen I think. Alpha Strike is a gateway drug for Classic, but I don't think it has any place in Classic.