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. 

To battle once more!

 o/

That's me on the right where my grey beard is looking suspiciously like mutton chops!

Happy Labor Day folks! Wow. Its been....EIGHT months since I last posted. What the actual fuck? I had a game or two get cancelled earlier this year due to real life and all of that nonsense. Then, my beautiful wife got a job in Charleston, South Carolina. So everything got boxed up and shipped outta Tennessee to our new home. Working remotely I've been going a bit stir crazy as my only hobbying here of late has been painting 40k minis.

I took this pic one evening after about a 10 minute bike ride from my new house.

In the Charleston area, folks use discord to set up games and being an older player (damned near 50!?!) I was avoiding that but finally joined one. Honestly it looks like a rebranded AOL chatroom to me, but after asking around a bit and getting added onto a few more servers, I replied to somebody looking for a 2500 BV, 3020s era Classic BattleTech game and he accepted. 

I was going to post that this was my first miniature game outside of Tennessee in a quarter of a century. However I just remembered that we used to go to the Atlanta Gamesdays and play in tournaments, so it was more like 15ish years or so instead. Doesn't quite have the same ring to it. Moving on...

There was a temptation to just bring (5) Urbies, but I didn't want to be that guy on my introduction to the South Carolina BattleTech scene. Nick, my opponent laughed and said he'd never considered that and likely would have wanted to cuss me if I had. He brought a battlemat, 3D-printed and painted terrain as well. After we set up the terrain we created a scenario on the fly where he was attacking and I was defending (due to having an Urbie) a large storage tank in the center of the board which had 100 points of structure. 

Here's how it all went down:

The battlefield, the large dropship-looking objective in the middle. 

The Urbie trying to gain altitude for a better advantage in terms of LoS.

As usual, the first few turns were just to advance into range, though the Rifleman was already pumping rounds into the objective much to my dismay.

The Capellan Confederation's Tikonov Lancers launch their raid!

Trying to get lines of sight. The problem with 4/5 pilots across the board (both sides), is that it is hard to hit anything at range. Except of course a large, immobile (-4 to hit) structure.

I'm faster than you! To-hit modifiers kept the Spider from shooting the Wasp, but it did deliver a nice, 3 point punch to the back of the Wasp's fragile head!

Still hammering the objective, a 40K-esque close combat scrum breaks out with my Hatchetman getting into close combat for the first time!

At this point, we gave up on the scenario as the to-hit modifiers made it impossibly easy to win for the attacker. Thus the game descended into the typical 'let's just kill each other' slugfest. The Spider kept punching holes in the Wasp, but stopped when I buried the hatchet in the Wasp's SRM-2 ammo bin!

The combatants scatter, the Phoenix Hawk goes after the Urbie with my Commando (the lousy AC-2 variant) in pursuit. The Spider and Hatchetman kept on after the Rifleman.

Caught in a crossfire, the Rifleman pummels the Hatchetman and in doing so overheats badly!

The Rifleman overheats so much that his ammo cooked off! It was partially my fault as the Hatchetman's AC-10 caused 2 engine crits! That said, the (now) Hatchetlessman also failed his piloting check and hit the ground hard enough for it's pilot to take a snooze for the next 5 turns! It was practically a double kill. 

On the other side of the board, the Phoenix Hawk shot up the Urbie enough to hit the last 3 rounds of AC-10 ammo in the Urbie's bin, obliterating the little guy! 

Not sure if this was a fair fight. The Commando's medium laser arm was gone leaving in point blank range with an AC-2 that was best deployed as an instrument of blunt force trauma (if 2 points of damage can be called that). The Spider just has 2 medium lasers and like the Commando hits like a wet noodle in close combat. The Phoenixhawk on the other hand was nice and toasty, and missing a jump jet or two. 

Unable to outrun my mechs, another scrum ensued for another half a dozen rounds or so where the spider kinda flailed about uselessly in the background while the Commando did the same to the front before finally going down to a lost leg. 

That said, they held up the Phoenixhawk long enough for the Hatchetlessman to wake up, get up and run across the field to deliver a game ending AC-10 Headshot!

Well that was a lot of fun! The original scenario not so much, and when I suggested that it was going down fast enough to play two games, switching roles of attacker and defender that we opted to just shed the scenario entirely. Both sides up until that point had taken minimal to no damage, so it was akin to starting over anyways. 

My opponent Nick was a blast to play against, and I look forward to future games with him. He'll be outta town for a few weeks for work but we already have tentative plans to play upon his return. Also the FLGS' owner was all about building up the local BattleTech community, and was asking about running events. Personally I've never been involved in one of those, but I sent them a link to the Comstar site in my blog roll at right. Those guys run pub tourneys all the time in England.

So hopefully they will be running some similarly styled events in the future. Its taken me a few months in in SC, but I finally think that I'm starting to find my local gamer community! I was also asked about playing Alpha strike and gave a few pointers on that (prefaced with the fact that I am a bit rusty on those rules as well). 

A little bit o' paint, and another 20ish years to go with it!

 o/

One's fast and Nimble, the other is a slug.

I'm finishing out this week by showing off the latest two additions (which includes my 14th and final painted Urbie) to this blog's namesake command: The Buffet Assault Group. Last year the TBAGers lost their two Stingers to the Hell's Horses Iota Galaxy because the Clan refit of the Stinger is sooooo much better than anything the Inner Sphere has to offer. 

The unit icon is visible on the Phoenix Hawk's leg. The Urbie is sporting one as well in the same location.

Those losses dropped the TBAGers down to a mere 5 painted mechs, whereas now I'm one short (again) of a fully painted demi-company. These two unlike my other TBAGer mechs, aren't sporting any primer gray replacement armor plating and/or salvaged whole body parts from other mechs. This means that either (A) they didn't survive the Andurien Crisis contract or (B) came afterwards. I'm leaning towards the latter...

A pic from last night's Alpha Strike game in which my Blood Money mercenaries were unsuccessful in fighting off Screech's Name Pending© mercenaries. The biggest highlight of the game was turn three I think, in which we collectively lost 6 mechs!

I had been limiting the TBAGers lifespan from the 3030s to the 3040 or so. Meaning their first contract in support of the Duchy of Andurien was also their last. However, as we so often play in the Civil War era (3060s), this leaves them woefully outclassed technology-wise. As such, I'm thinking that they managed to somehow pull their shattered unit back together after being expelled from Marik space and survived as a (somewhat) functional command into at least the FedCom civil war.

Hell's Horses Iota Galaxy Part 2...3...ish?

 o/

Honestly, I think the paint job on the Clan Demolisher came out the best of all of these. 

I finished painting up this force just in time for a game of Classic with Kushial and his favorite Eridani Light Horse this past weekend. The Clan Demolisher and Stinger C's were repaints, the Demolisher just had a generic urban camo scheme that matched nothing else and the Stingers were previously painted for The Buffet Assault Group itself. 

The light tanks are from Microworld Games and used as counts as Mithras light tanks. The actual Mithras mini looks more like a tracked and turreted farm tractor to me than a proper tank. On the tabletop the Mithras lasts about as long as a farm tractor as both died to a single volley of fire. Granted, in one case said volley was all 40 LRMs (seriously WTF?) fired from an Archer!

These three would not survive the coming battle...

I believe Kushial will be doing a more in depth overview of the game, so I just have a few pics here. This list is set up more for Alpha Strike as one of Frankie's preferred 'fast & the furious' type lists. In Classic, with all 4/5 pilots and crews save the Hellhound which had a 3/5 pilot, the above list came out to 8000 points even.

My army's MVP by a mile!

In Alpha Strike, again with all skill 4 pilots and crews, if I drop both of the Mithras tanks, the list comes out to 142 points. That leaves enough left over to boost 1 mech up to a level 3. While the Demolisher isn't fast, it is furious, having fired a dozen AC-20 rounds and hit with all but two! Only one was a cluster round and we didn't even get to that as the target had already disintegrated.

In the end the Demolisher only had a few nicks and scratches, whereas everything else still standing on the board had had the living shit kicked out of it!

The latest on my Mercenaries

 o/

This pic explains a few die rolls...

I've been rather productive on Battletech front. We're settling into a summer routine of a game of Alpha Strike once a night per week (fingers crossed it stays that way). Frankie seems to have taken a liking to it the game despite our continued losses. Indeed, he specifically requested that his lance include the Dragon this week, seems he's found a favorite mech. 

Unfortunately I was unable to squeeze my painted CGR-SB Challenger into this list.

Last week's game of AS saw The Buffet Assault Group itself take to the field, and for the first time ever at company strength! Having learned to not put all of our eggs into Frankie's basket, our lists were almost identical in points. Frankie commanded the lance in back, whereas I used the Hunchback lance as I knew he'd have trouble telling them apart. We split the recon lance with 1 Stinger a piece, with him taking the Phoenix Hawk and the Firestarter for myself. 

That's our dead pile on the right, with the three survivors on the left not having taken a single point of damage among them. Curious.

In Frankie's estimation 'I think we did a lot better this time!' (quote), to which I agreed that yes, we didn't get tabled. Rob & Screech both fielded 150pts each themselves with Rob claiming to have the Capellan Confederation and Screech with Steiner as is usual. Once again, without a lick of paint nor primer to be seen, they looked like the Grey Death Legion to us. 

***

In a bit of hero warship, rather than stop at a pink paw print, Hotshot has added splotches of pink to his mech's 2-tone purpleflage. 

Prior to that, I painted up the last member of Ace Darwin's Whipits: The WSP-1A who's pilot's callsign is 'Hotshot'. Named by Kushial after a brand of Wasp killer that he no doubt sells in the store that he manages. 

With a name like 'Hotshot', you can (correctly) imagine that this guy has an ego a mile wide crammed into the little mech's even tinier cockpit. An eternal discipline problem for the 18th Marik Militia, he 'wandered off' and was left behind on Hall when that unit suffered a crushing defeat in the War of '39. When the Dragoons radioed the dropships boosting towards orbit, informing them that 'they forgot one', the Marik response was 'he's your problem now'. 

Why stop at a mere pink paw print when you can make your mech's ridiculous camouflage scheme even more garish?

While a discipline problem pilot might normally fit in well with the Black Widows, they were unimpressed with both Hotshot & his mech, and left them both behind as well. Stranded on Hall, Hotshot begrudgingly signed a contract with the Fed Suns' 4th Republican Guards. Often-bored out of his mind by garrison duty (much like his servie in teh FWLM), he would amuse himself by using his mech to play Jenga with their palletized supplies. Quickly, the Davions cashed out their 'contractor' with a 1-way trip off world. 

Eventually making it to Outreach, Hotshot has bounced from command to command and contract to contract. He has quickly earned himself a reputation that few are willing to deal with. That said, he's like a star struck groupie in the presence of Ace, and has even gone so far as to add pink coloring to his Wasp's purpleflage, over and above the mere paw print that Ace requires.

Ace doesn't expect this subdued state to last, but he's hoping that the hero-worship will last for the duration of this contract at the least.

Alpha Strike, Round 2

 o/

Today is a good day to die!

I got in another game of Alpha Strike this week, again with my son Frankie fielding the 'good' lance, and myself with the lighter weight one. Frankie had a heavy weight, C3 lance. Still inexperienced, he came out cautiously, getting little to no benefit from his heavy armor, weapons, much less the C3. 

I again found myself leading the charge with Urbies, which had predictable results. 

Eventually, he got more aggressive after some prodding by me (and threats to have him field the fragile Urbies next time around). His Dragon did reach Screech's table edge though at one point, unfortunately he pulled a Neverness and blew his collective to-hit rolls and derived minimal benefits from the C3's lack of modifiers.

Screech 'posing' with his Grey Death Legion force.

Honestly, the game became more fun when I told Frankie that the prudent commander would see that the cause was lost and surrender. However the Combine's Bushido philosophy said: NO and the suicide charges began in earnest!

The IFF is...confused. 

(Always remember to paint your mechs kids!)

In a nutshell: we got tabled. As such I can't say that we're improving and I was a little salty for a moment there about Screech's pair of skill 2 pilots, but the game ended on a high note.  And by 'high note', yes I mean suicide charges and glorious last stands. Those being the Hunchback in the first pic, the Marauders above (Screech's survived with a lone point of structure remaining), and our last to fall, the Jenner below. 

Despite have a damaged fire control system, I've found that yelling: "WILD FIRE!' just before rolling the dice still gets good results!. Thus, this fugly little mech, our last to fall, earned itself a proper paint job. 

On to the next list...

My first impressions of Alpha Strike

 o/

R.I.P little Urbie, R.I.P...

Welp, after about a month of no gaming, I managed to get in a demo game of Alpha Strike with my buddy Screech, with my son Frankie in tow.

The 2/3 that managed to show up. I gave Frankie control of the medium lance whereas I took the light lance. Originally I had planned to split the tanks between us but it was not to be.

Frankie liked the idea of learning a game at the same time as i was, and having only read the same set of 'quick start' rules. I do have the rulebook for AS, but like most rulebooks that I own, I've done little more than look at the pictures and their captions. I'm far more likely to learn a ruleset by muddling thru a game of it than I am to read the rules beforehand.

Screech's unidentified Steiner force was suffering from budget cut and as such, were left without any funds to apply the regimental color scheme to any of their mechs.

300 points seems to be the 'typical' size for AS here locally, and conveniently my Dixie CTM clocks in at just that amount. However much to my surprise/dismay, when I was pulling out our forces at the FLGS, I remembered that I had transferred all of my tanks and infantry to another case which was still at home. 

Urbies have an Impressive (well, for an Urbie) movement rate of 4", which is for both jumping and on foot! That said, they have have a big whopping '0' for a Total Movement Modifier. 

As such, with my heavy armor lance not present, the game was scaled back to 175 points, and I informed Frankie that we were likely doomed without all of our big guns. Hell, it was both a weeknight and a learning game anyways, so what did it matter really?

Flanking maneuver in-progress...

This pics in this post are more of a highlight reel as I only took a few being more interested in getting a feel for the ruleset. Overall its not bad, though I can't say that I expect to like it more than the 'Classic' ruleset (no doubt much to Kushial's delight as he has no interest in AS). 

In the heat haze of heavy combat, Screech's mechs actually blended fairly well with the environs of the battlefield (note: the ubiquitous 'crotch shot' of my opponent in the background). 

I can see what Catalyst is aiming for though and Frankie seemed to enjoy himself. He did say he'd play it again whereas I've never bothered with trying to teach him classic as he lacks the attention span needed for it. I've heard it said that AS is more of a gateway drug into BattleTech and indeed I have to agree with that. 

The Hunchback HBK-4N was the first to mech to fall, much to my surprise as I was expecting the first kill to be a slow and fragile Urbie instead.

In all honesty, AS is fast paced enough, and units fragile enough that out-right kills are so much more common than in Classic that My Beloved Wolfy might have actually enjoyed this ruleset. For those who don't know, I'm referring to my late wife who was a gamer but HATED BattleTech as it 'impossibly made giant stompy robots boring'. For those who knew her, and her special loathing of BattleTech, that is a HUGE compliment to the design team!

Screech isn't offering advice here, but is rather looking at our cards to see which mech of ours is likely to fall next. Schmuck.

We tried the pilot die optional rule, where you roll 1 differently colored D6 and then another for every point of damage in your range bracket to simulate the possibility of some weapons hitting and some not, rather than the all or nothing approach. Honestly, I can see some form of that approach to shooting bleeding back into Classic. Although my little 14 section mini-tackle box filled with dice does a fine job on its own. 

The Warhammer went down next though an Urbie and commando went with it. Luckily Screech kinda blew his die rolling a little and the Uziel managed to hang on with 1 point of structure left!

All in all it was fun and definitely worth trying again. I don't think it'll displace Classic BattleTech (for me anyways), and I look forward to tryout some more lists with it in the future. Screech won with three kills to our one.

Alas poor Urbie, I knew him...