I'll take 25 tons and under for $200 Alex.

 o/

This is a Frankie kind of lance: lots of speed and not much else.

My generic desert force now has mechs, faaaaaaast mechs! I painted them in two different shades, one that I know matched the most recent lance, and the other in hopes of matching the original lance (once again to no avail). 

Removing the excess ink on these was a treat with all of their nooks and crannies!

Close, but still not quite a match.

I have third armor lance in-progress and then that should almost be the end of this color scheme. It just started out as an exercise in quick and easy, and has just snowballed from there. The addition of the Mercuries and Mongoose mean that if I paint up a point of elementals who can tag along in a Maxim, I can even run part of this bunch as a  2nd line clan force.

The (never-intended-to-be) company thus far. 

REMEMBER THE ALAMO!

 o/

As mentioned in my prior post, Nick & got together for our all conventional forces battle, on a backwater world somewhere in the Magistracy of Canopus. 4K BV, no mechs or scenario beyond just killing one another. I opted for the attacker as aside from my Ontos, my entire force was fast & fragile. 

Nick (for once) had me outnumbered, with an entire reinforced company of conventional infantry (all ballistic rifle platoons), 2 standard Scorpion Light tanks, an Anti-Infantry Schrek, and standard Demolisher, 2 standard J Edgar light hover tanks, and a Warrior H7 VTOL. 

Here's how it all went down. 

Nick was defending and was deployed more or less at ease. the Warrior and J Edgars were patrolling the outskirts their base in lazy circles.

The tracked tanks were all parked, and the infantry were leaving the mess halls, full from a hearty meal of reconstituted, and generally unidentifiable proteins and carbohydrates.

See! I'm not the only one at the game shop taking pics all the time...

Pandemonium ensues as my Capellan Galleons and Maxims come racing in from the perimeter, the Galleons heading for the infernal weapon of terror: the Thumper Artillery piece! True to form, the Thumper hit nothing before it's demise.

A maxim deploys a heavy mountain platoon which deftly dodge the incoming hail of MG fire from the A-I Schrek. The Maxim and Galleon return fire, inflicting minor damage to the heavy tank.

The first epic moment of the game, a J Edgar fails its piloting roll and slams into the outer wall at high speed, suffering 20+ points of damage!

Patrolling outside the perimeter, my command van, Senior Center activity bus comes under attack from the dastardly Canopian Warrior!

The Galleon inflicts heavy damage to the Thumper before being deleted by the Demolisher (because that is what Demolishers do). 

With the old folks (senior officers) clutching their chests in horror, the activity bus continues to flee! Luckily it is armored well enough to survive several rounds of AC-5 fire. 

My heavy mountain platoons zip to the top of their respective hills, ready to call in indirect fire from the LRM Ontos. This platoon however gets into a rare, all infantry firefight with a ballistic rifle platoon. While they kill a squad's worth of Canopians, they are in turn wiped out. 

Ths quickly turned into a nasty close quarters scrum. The immobilized Maxim blazing away at point blank range, like all of the other tanks around it. In the crossfire, the A-I Schreck's MGs wipe out my other platoon of infantry in short order. The Maxim is destroyed, Nick's tanks take considerable damage, motive crits abound, while the Galleon remains largely unscathed.

The soon to be infamous Galleon #3 finishes off the artillery. It and the Maxim are caught in a close range fight, right where they don't want to be! Trading fire with the infantry and Scorpions while keeping a wary distance from the Demolisher. The Warrior overheard snipes at it's opposite off in the distance. 

The LRM Ontos meanwhile keeps sending in long ranged, indirect LRM fire. Its accuracy is as mediocre as most of my direct firing LRM fire in most games, though it's first volley pumped 30+ missiles into the Demolisher, much to Nick's surprise!

Hang on Myrtle! The activity bus slews around the corner, desperate to get away from the chopper, but not so much so as to come out from behind the wall and into view of the Schrek. 

The gloriously cinematic last stand of the 2nd Maxim! Swarmed by enemy infantry, it fires with its weapons in all directions, 5 separate targets total, doing the most damage to the swarming infantry! It might have even survived were it not for the infernal Demolisher that hit it's already damaged backside with an AC-20 slug!

War crimes? The Capellans don't commit war crimes. 

Galleon # 3 plows thru a Canopian infantry platoon, killing 15 pedestrians enemy troopers. Outraged, the surrounding infantry company sand blast the tinfoil armored tank into oblivion! To quote Nick: "I never thought I would see vehicular manslaughter in Battletech."

With it's LRM 10 hoppers run dry (seriously, what's with the ammo imbalance in the LRM Ontos?), all of it's compatriots lost, and being surrounded by the enemy, The Canopians offer the Ontos' crew an honorable surrender. In return, the Ontos fires a volley of LRMs at the far off Schrek!

This continued for 2-3 turns before the Ontos (now named: The Alamo) was destroyed. It continued to rain missiles into the Demolisher and Schrek, heavily damaging both, but failing to kill either. 

Tabled, but gloriously so! Nick felt that I got robbed as the both the Schrek and Demolisher were deep into their internal structure. I think he said the Demolisher was down to only 2-3 points of structure holding the front end together. As you may have already guessed, the activity bus did finally die, though it's MG was blazing when it did so, inflicting a whopping 2pts of damage to an immobilized J Edgar. yay. 

Nick said that my problem is that my force was wearing the wrong kind of camouflage, lol.

I wish the Capellans could have had the Galleon 200s rather than 100s. The 200s have a bit more armor and more importantly, machine guns which would have been helpful with all of the infantry around. That said, I probably killed about half of Nick's infantry in total, and speaking of...

Galleon #3 shall forever wear the blood of it's victims. 

 I added 3 teeny tiny Death Korps of Krieg skulls as kill markers to the fender. 1 for every 5 casualties. In hindsight, now that the tank is all bloodied up, black skulls would have stood out better.

The Ontos has likewise been branded and now my Capellans my have the battle cry of: 

'REMEMBER THE ALAMO!'

Desert Rats

 o/

I painted up a 2nd lance to go with the first and...uhh, I got the base color wrong. Apparently. As you can see, the new lance doesn't quite match the original one, but they're close enough to not bother with a repaint. 

The fast, the fragile and...uh...an Ontos. 

I'll be using these later on this evening (minus the 10-ton APC in the front), along with 2 platoons of added infantry and a Warrior VTOL. My opponent Nick 2.0, will also be fielding an all conventional force. No idea what he will be taking other than his favorite weapon(s?) of terror: on table artillery. 

Urbie Warfare!

 o/

So many Urbanmechs...

Nick 2.0 and I got together for our first game of 2025 last week. He was just starting to set up the board as I got there and said that he'd like to set up a tight, urban battlefield rather than spread the terrain out. I said it that sounded perfect because...

Oh no, no you didn't? 

Actually yes, I did. 

One of these is not like the others...

I decided to kick off 2025 with a long standing promise/threat of bringing nothing but Urbanmechs. 3,998 points of Urbanmechs! Seven UM-R60s, and 1 UM-R60L. Nick said he was terrified. Seriously. Luckily for him, my Capellan Homeguard rarely gets a chance to see combat, and my forthcoming die rolls would sadly reflect that. 

I'll do my best to sort the following pics out, but its hard to keep track as there were so many Urbies and...well, they all kind look the same...

The battlefield, we would start with our mechs all within 2 hexes of the outer edge of the terrain.

Nick's pirate raiders. No idea what kind of pirates attack with Urbanmechs. Maybe they're from the treacherous St. Ives compact or something...

Blue lance enters the city.

The Guillotine unloads into Red 4 stripping all armor from the front torso and knocking it to the ground!

The Blue lance hits the pavement and realizes that they can get extra movement! 

Nick sending pics to his buddies, much as I was doing. 

At this point my red lance was fully engaged while the Blue lance were all still flanking the pirates.

Red 4 regains its feet, facing backwards as it stood. With full armor on it's rear torso, it reversed guns and continued to press it's attack. 

Blue 4 rounds the corner and promptly misses the Stalker with it's AC-20. Unaware of the enormous round that just killed everyone on three floors of the Highrise to its right, the Stalker unloads into the thin skinned 60L, destroying the AC-20, most of it's meagre armor and knocking it to the ground!

The rest of blue lance, making good time on the city streets finally makes it into range and begins to create a crossfire. 

Some hot, sexy, Urbie on Urbie action...

Red 4 could have moved out of view of the Guillotine, but elected to stand still after finding itself in short range of the stalker with no modifiers (and my lousy die rolls). It's final AC-10 slug connected moments before it died. 

Suffering 40 points of damage applied, the stalker succumbs to the pounding and hits the ground!

Recovering, it rounds the building and the guns turn on the Guillotine. Unfortunately I don't think I hit anything this round. 

Am pretty sure I took only 3 medium laser hits in return, maybe there was a lot of smoke or something...

With targets barely in sight, Blue lance continues to fire, killing (rather than defending) many civilians.

The surviving red lance mechs either reposition or provide covering fire to blue 4 as it leads the charge with it's lone, small laser blazing!

The Guillotine ignores the charging small laser and targets the other Urbies, who in turn ignore the fast moving heavy mech can continue to hammer the Stalker and its little friends. This may be the round in which the Stalker's right arm was taken off. 

Same turn, different view.

Blue lance charges the pirates' Urbies for point blank shooting and toe to toe combat!

I threw everything I had at the Stalker and Green Urbie. I think he lit up the entire Blue lance in return.

The Green Urbie goes down for good, whereas Blue 1 hits the ground losing both it's left & right torsos!

The Stalker, it's right side in tatters starts to retreat with the suicidal Blue 4 in pursuit. What's left of Blue 1 makes a run for it while the yellow Urbie moves in. Meanwhile Red 1 & 2 provide covering fire. 

Blue 2 hits the ground in much the same state as Blue 1, and the pirate Urbie moves in to deliver a kick to the downed mech. Fortunately, it was aiming for a torso that was no longer connected, rolling a snake eyes! Luckily for Nick, it then made its piloting roll to keep from falling itself. 

Blue 4 delivers a small laser hit with no shots taken in return (guessing the stalker couldn't depress its remaining weapons far enough). Kicks were exchanged with 3 points delivered in 1 direction and 9 in the other! Luckily, the leg the stalker hit had yet to be hit, allowing Blue 4 to continue this suicidal assault. 

You can't getaway Kirk...

Did you just quote Wrath of Khan to me?

You mean to tell me that Ricardo Montalban is here?

On the table? In an Urbanmech???

Well, it didn't matter which leg the Stalker kicked this time, Whichever one it was went flying off the valiant Blue 4 and that was the final end of the little Urbie that couldn't. 

The Stalker walks back into the shooting gallery, taking a few more hits and stripping the CT armor down to 1 point left.

Blue 2 moves up to avenge the fallen Blue 4 and suffers heavily for it. 

And this is where we called it. 

At this point we called it as it was getting kinda late, and having lost so many Urbies I was ready to hand Nick the win. However much to my surprise, he called this a draw. His second Urbanmech was on its last legs and the Stalker was 'one die roll away from an ammo explosion'. So yeah, I'll take a draw. It doesn't really matter as I had a blast anyways, I always do when fielding all Urbanmechs. 

Our next game will be with just conventional forces...