DEATH FROM ABOVE!

 

Ha HA! I have you now!!

Such a dumb tactic. Why do people like DFA's so much? They usually fail. Considered a 'last ditch' effort in the fluff, on the table top the are in my experience usually attempted by near pristine mechs which is just baffling. Thus, in all of my many, many years of playing Battletech I have never attempted a DFA...that is, until this past Wednesday night.

My Fire Mandrills in their battlefield debut where they faced off against what should have been a forbidden foe: Space AT&T. Given the topic of this post, you can surmise just how well the game went. Honestly all was going well, until about turn three when the beat-up Night Chanter died to a 2nd head shot, and the pristine Lancelot C was also decapitated by a lucky gauss slug. It was all downhill from there. 

Anthony used his LAM Urbies as standard UM-R60s.

It was really weird fighting Urbies rather than fielding them. I killed one and beat up the other. 

Pivotal moment: the Black Knight unloads with all it has save the MPL in the Hatchet arm. All guns miss however, the hatchet hit which was brutal to my little Howler! Then, at +24 heat, the Black Knight shuts down. 

My Howler 4, with its 5/5 rookie sibko pilot was in tatters: missing an arm and lone LRM disabled. With little option to hurt either the heavily damaged King Crab nor the Pristine Black Knight, the rookie at the controls opted for a glorious death in combat and DFA'ed as the that was the only option! It passed over the Locust which sprayed the sky with laser fire, 2 small lasers connected with the little mech that could, which was all that was needed for the Howler's side torsos (yes both of them) to separate from the flying mech.

Bereft of jump jets, gravity took over and it connected with the immobile Knight, inflicting a whopping 6 points of damage (and taking 4 in turn) on impact.  The Howler made its landing PSR whereas the Knight simply fell, taking another 9 points, for 15 damage in total!

As the last mech on the field, what was left of the Howler fled the board, hopefully to graduate to a real mech in the future. 

Desperate times indeed. The other Howler disintegrated under fire and the Shadow Hawk IIC, trying to reposition following the death of the two heavier mechs, fell on pavement, and failed 3 fucking attempts to stand up with only a 5 needed! Already heavily damaged, and in sight of the 2nd Urbie and the one-armed King Crab, it died on its ass in the subsequent crossfire.

Oh hey, guess what? Following the game, I bought some new dice as I still shudder at the sheer number of atrocious rolls in this game.

Tanks for stopping by!

That pun was brought to you by your friends at Technicorp, the fine (and original) manufacturers of the Manticore heavy tank. 

Three of a kind?

As you can see, I finished a trio of Manticores this week and as is so often the case, they are all painted for different units. Thus, they are more likely to be shooting at one another in the future, than be fighting side-by-side.

This one will join my Turtles mercenary lance. Weighing in at 60 tons and moving along at a blinding 4/6 movement, this tank will serve as their recon element...or at least it will until I flesh out the rest of its lance with something smaller and faster. Yes, they are of Lyran heritage. Stop asking!

This Manticore puts my generic clan conventional star firmly in the clan Burrock camp. Among the Clans, they alone seemed to field (at least according to the MUL) both the Manticore as well as the Manticore EC (Early Clan) which is a halfway point between SLDF & Clan weapons technology. That said, none of the Burrock Galaxies use this color scheme, so perhaps this is used instead by their Dark Caste 'friends'.

Lastly, this Manticore will go to the Desert Horde. Designated number XIX, this one got its decal at the same time as the two J-27s from my last post. The Desert Horde is a generic force spanning all factions and eras. With this tank now completed, the rightly named Horde clocks in at 39 models and counting. I'll have to do a group photo at some point. 

Generals study logistics...right?

 o/

Here comes the maintenance platoon!

(...and somewhere Screech is twitching...)

So far this week I've finished up some support vehicles that, while technically armed, are really more like objective type of units. Sure, they're not really sexy or anything (well, Nick 2.0 was rather impressed with the Savior), but they are still pretty good to have around. Notably, the J-27s are painted for Desert Horde, bringing that mob's vehicle contingent up to 21 vehicles in total. The Savior just has a generic appearance. 

Just a bunch of gear heads...

The business end that gives your mech a hug, awww. 

The J-27's trailers were painted (differently of course) and glued to the landing pad as I didn't like the look of them crammed on the base with the tractor. 

My first completed model of 2026 and other updates

 o/

In an annoying Ai voice: 'We're sorry, your package has been lost in transit...'

I bought this wrecked Triumph Dropship terrain piece back around Thanksgiving, started paint it around Christmas and finished it earlier this evening. I'm rather pleased with it:

The print lines across the nose are a little rough but can be chalked up to damaged incurred on landing.

There is a nose art decal on this, but it is so obscured by dirt and debris that I ought not have even bothered.

The rear cargo bay hatches and engines. 

It was used in a WiP state in my game played last night vs. Nick 2.0. I had my Marian Hegemony III Legio vs. is fantastically painted Arkab Legion. Needless to say, I have also lost my first game of 2026. Having gotten that out of the way early in the year: Onwards to victory!

Baxter the pregame-terrain piece, warming up the table. You can see the WiP Triumph about midway up the table.  

The Arkab forces flee at the sight of the Neeka Kaiju!

The Arkab Legion passing the also WiP savior repair vehicle which is working on a defunct PDF Urbie.

The final close quarters scrum, it was at this point that I threw in the towel. The Dervish and Blackjack were in decent shape, the Hermes II was little more than a free roaming flamer, and my Cyclops and Clint were both down. 

Nick 2.0's Arkab Legion...or well some of them. I know he also has a Javelin painted up, and likely two more to flesh out second lance. 

Speaking of games, I also finished the Clan Solahma star I was working on the last time. which fought just before Christmas in my last game of 2025. That game was a brutal slugfest. I didn't know how well they'd fare against mechs, being the clan equivalent of Bulldog tanks (i.e.: average speed, over-gunned and under armored).

I added a point of Clan heavy assault jump infantry to these. 

Unlike Bulldogs however, Oros have clan er-medium lasers, large pulse lasers which are backed up by LBX20s. I lost all 4 tanks with no infantry/Elemental losses. Nick only lost a Phoenix Hawk but everything else on his roster was in dire straits. Had we not called it, we both agreed that it could have gone either way were we to continue. However it was getting late and with both objectives contested, we settled on a draw.