Shrooms, kitties and clan mechs oh my!

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Nick's Awesome AWS-9M taking shelter amongst the giant shrooms.

Earlier this week Nick 2.0 came over for a game, I really didn't take enough pics for a battle report, so am just posting a few photo highlights. 

Poor Neeka, pouting as her lounge table has been turned into a dumb battlefield again. 

Nick's Commando COM-2D skulking behind a burning tower as my Hunchback HBK-4P and an AC-10 Hetzer close in... 

We called the game early due to time. Nick called it a marginal victory in his favor. It was more of a crushing vistory by that point as he had accomplished far more objectives than I. That said, I had beaten the hell out of his Awesome in the last round played. Likewise my Dragon lost a side torso to an ammo explosion but didn't die for once (thank you CASE!). 

*****

The Fast & The Furious sequel number...what? 10? 12, 13?

I also finished up a trio of clan mechs for the Desert Horde. Previously known as the more generic Desert Force, I went back and updated all of the prior post's labels to now say 'horde'. With the addition of these three, to go with my Mongoose and six Mercuries, I will now be able to field a clan second line binary where the slowest mech has an 8/12 movement rate! These three are also the only ones with any appreciable offensive firepower in said binary. 

Piranha, the only mech that makes me want to play Alpha Strike.

Locust IIC, the arms have 8 ER small lasers, rather than the SRM-4s that they look like they carry.

The binary commander's rocket ship Fire Moth.

Some time ago, I also painted up a point of Elementals for the Fire Moth to carry around as ablative armor. I am planning on a third star that will have a much more normal rate of speed, allowing me to field a full second line trinary. 

Project: Recovery

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Covid recovery always involves working on minis for me. 

The past week good ol' Covid decided to stop by & ruin my week for a third time. While I powered thru the best I could at work (I work remotely, so can still push buttons on a keyboard despite feeling like death warmed over). Luckily the fam didn't get it, though they did get...something. The Mrs. was none too happy as my telehealth visit got me some really good drugs whereas hers, not so much.

Anyways, despite the glorious weather outside this past weekend, I didn't do a whole lot out there aside from chilling in our adirondack chairs. When in post covid recovery you tend to get really tired, really fast as so many folks know. That said, I did do a fair bit of painting as you can see above and below. 

You'll note that several photos were taken out in the yard. Why yes, I did lay down in the backyard to take these as any, self respecting 49 year old gamer would. The Mrs. rolled her eyes and the teenager ignored me outright & the dog thought THIS IS GREAT! Or rather he did right up until he got yelled at for stepping on my toys. Clear coat for the win!

A Patton/Rommel for my generic Desert Force that is sucking in units like some sort of fucking black hole!

A second Patton/Rommel as well as a Drillson for my 1st Chisholm's Raiders which is once again a home or my orphaned units and random paint jobs (as the Raiders lacked a coherent color scheme). 

A point of Elementals for the Desert force in case I run my lance of  old Star League mechs as a 2nd line star. Likely as Nova Cats as all of their Galaxies always use appropriate camouflage. 

The Raiders' mech lance made up of survivors from my defunct Comstar/Wobblies and St. Ives formations. I opted to try and tie them together with repainted base edging and a shitload of decals!

40K Ork checker and triangle stripe decals work GREAT on mechs!

Hit 'em Hard The motto of most any Hunchback variant. The Space Wolves paw looks nice on there too. 

Vulcan, not seen in this pic though you can see it above, are the checker stripes across the tops of the shoulders. Also on the MG arm is says Buzzsaw in the same script as the Hunchback's Hit 'em Hard. 

This mini was actively on eBay when is was saved after performing admirably in a game where it was used as a primitive Archer. The decals came out great on this one!

Holy Camouflage Batman! It is a good thing this has blue markings & a brightly colored base, otherwise it would disappear into the background!

Three more models are also in-progress, but I'll save them and whatever else for a fututre post. I'm also hoping to reschedule a campaign game this week coming after cancelling last week due to my case of the black death. 

The effing Wobblies vs. Clan Nova Cat

 

These two would hammer each other all game long, even though it is obviously an unbalanced match up...

My buddy Screech came over for a thoroughly enjoyable marathon game last week. Clocking in at 15k points, he was running Clan Nova Cat (still short of a full star, what the hell?), and I was running the Fucking Wobblies. He often laments the high cost of Clan Omni-mechs, so to make him feel better, I fielded a C3i unit of 5 out of the 6 mechs I had in my Level II force. The C3i bonus modifier clocked in at just under 2800 points, ouch!

Posting this a week later, I don't recall the specifics, so instead this post is more of a highlight reel than a bat rep.

My Wobblies. The sentinel was a proper shade of white, whereas the Griffin & Scorpion had yet to paint over the colors used in their prior, false flag operation.

Screech's mechs. The Mad Cat mark II was a custom design in which the jump jets were removed, and armor was then slathered on like butter. Also note the black primer, yes folks-he really does paint his minis!

What idiot put a HUGE light forest right in the middle of the battlefield?!? Yeah, as you can imagine that caused all sorts of LoS issues for the both of us.

The crabs and Scorpion would receive a disproportionate amount of damage in return for their collectively heavy fire. 

Close range clusterfuck in progress...

Eventually, the Scorpion, bereft of it's right torso and two attached legs is reduced to cinders. 

For a new mech, this 40 tonner did quite alright. The LAC-5s were loaded with precision ammo, of which the last rounds were fired in the last turn of the game.

My shadow Hawk ended the game at +21 heat! Never before have I gone so high up on the heat chart.  It survived both the involuntary ammo cook off and auto-shutdown rolls, my last of the game.

This is by far the most resilient variant of the Scorpion that I have ever fielded! So much so that it might get a white repaint in the future...

Crabs are in general awesome. Being heat neutral and with C3i, these were down right amazing!

My first mech to fall, but as you can see-it didn't go quickly.

In the end my force was effectively toast. 4 mechs dead (at the end he legged an otherwise lightly damaged griffon), the Shadow Hawk heavily damaged and over heating to the point of insanity, and the Sentinel, defying new model syndrome-staggering off of the field like a drunken brawler. 

In return All 4 of Screech's mechs were on their feet, though only the executioner was in halfway decent shape, with the rest staggering around on their own last legs. 

As a reward to my 2 Crabs and their stubborn refusal to go quietly into the night, especially as they blazed away continuously whilst taking a ridiculous pounding, turn-after-turn, we decided that they deserved to head to the front of my painting queue. As you can see, they are now ready for their next bout, adorned with their new hard earned paint jobs!

The bases were deliberately done differently so as to tell 'em apart.

Those Bloody buildings are in the way again!

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Great, it can't see anything...again!

My buddy Screech came over Thursday night and we played an 8k point game of Battletech. I was surprised that he agreed to such a low point limit (locally that's the norm, but most of the time we're all fielding Inner Shpere mechs) as I knew he wanted to use his new shiny clan mechs which tend to be hideously expensive. 

Nonetheless he agreed and we played a straight up kill each other game pitting my Federated Suns force (probably the Chisholm's Raiders as they lack of coherent color scheme which matches my style) vs. his Nova Cats. Here's how it all went down...

The battlefield. The two central, forested areas at the top and bottom were all 'light forest'. Also of note is the Duncan Davions corporate headquarters (for this planet) surrounded by ample tank-scaled parking.

My Davion force consisting of a Charger CGR-SB (my commander), two Enforcer ENF-4Rs with the Blue one dubbed 'Yankee' and the grey one 'Rebel', a Jagermech JM7-D, and lastly a heavy tracked APC and  heavy mountain infantry platoon as filler (my army totaled 7999 points!).

Screech opted for the 'That Guy' list consisting of a Dire Wolf Prime and an Executioner A. Clocking in at 195 tons between just the two of them...all of my pilots, troops and vehicle crew collectively wet themselves at the sight of these monsters! There were enough points available to round out his list with a point of small laser equipped Elementals who would ride on the Executioner.

My right flank just after the first turn's movement. Turns out my Jager was a single hex out of range, damnit!

On my left side, the Charger lived up to it's name and ran straight into the jaws of hell!

On the far left, the APC was slogging thru the forest in hopes or remaining both hidden from view and uninteresting to the enemy assault mechs (and it was mission accomplished!).

Turn one saw the charger shoot poorly, maybe scoring a lone large laser hit, whilst being savaged in return! It's a good thing it has 40 points of armor on the CT, because Screech ground thru 35 points of it in one volley, whilst also scoring 2 engine crits! At least it managed to stay on it's feet!

Not to ignore the rest of my force, Rebel also drew some fire taking a pair of clan LL hits as well. Whereas my return shooting was largely ineffective

What would a bat rep be without a pic of Baxter getting in the way...as usual?

The Infantry dismounts (still within the forest) and it's participation awards for everybody! Seriously, aside from some wandering around in the woods in subsequent turns, this is all the infantry platoon would accomplish in this game.

Turn three....would be the turning point in the game! Up until this point things had predictably gone badly for my force as they desperately fought these two monsters. However Yankee managed a to hit with it's AC-10 and then made a lucky location roll of box cars, putting that AC-10 round right thru the head's canopy! 

2 Crits were rolled, destroying the life support which was irrelevant as what was left of the pilot was splattered around his cockpit as well! With a groan the mech toppled over into the nearby building and it's accompanying shrubberies, scattering elementals all around (slightly wounding 2 in the process). 

Aww yeah! Yankee is now #1 on my painting queue!

In what would become a reoccurring theme, my Jager's line-of-sight to the Dire Wolf was blocked by the intervening buildings. Thus preventing it from actually doing anything. Again. As usual.

Ironically, using these buildings as cover hide behind was largely the reason I purchased them in the first place. Unfortunately it turns out that that was a double edged sword.

In the following turn Yankee would suffer that same fate, rendering it unable to support the Charger which was again being savaged by the Dire Wolf.

Whilst the Charger fires what lasers it's heat sinks will allow (given the engine hits), it and Rebel engages the Dire Wolf, which sponges all incoming fire with no apparent ill effect! 

The Jager meanwhile blazed away into the Elementals missing with virtually everything, fucker. Whereas the Elementals themselves started chewing on Rebel. 

The Dire Wolf then closed in for the kill, whilst my force closed in to surround the beast. Hell even the little APC that could even came flying in, machine guns blazing (spoiler alert: it missed). 

Rebel wanted to flee, but wouldn't in front of Yankee which had already proved itself my MVP! Basically everything pounded the Dire Wolf from all directions, chewing thru armor and inflicting an engine crit (from Rebel) and taking out a heat sink (from Yankee). 

In return the Jager took it's first hits of the game, the Charger's 2nd large laser was disabled and one of the Enforcers took a hit I think as well. Seriously, that damned Dire Wolf has waaaay too many weapons on it! 

At this point we called it as the hour was getting late and we both had to work in the morning. Had I been paying attention to the time I'd have fired another large laser on the Charger, heat be damned. However I'd only fired one plus the medium to bleed heat for the next turn. Oh well. 

We called it a draw as we weren't sure how the chips would have fallen had we gone another round. Having alpha struck, taken an engine hit and suffering the loss of a double heat sink, his Dire Wolf was cooking at 11+ heat! Likewise his Elementals were out of SRMs. 

On my end, the Charger was almost a heat neutral mech once again having lost 2 large lasers, however it was beat all to hell, and most any hits not on the head or left leg would have just gone straight into the internals. The Jager was fine, the Rebel Enforcer was in fairly rough shape though, whereas Yankee was still fit for active duty without need of much repair. 

Still, it wouldn't take much to drop the Charger and Rebel with no guarantee I could finish off the Dire Wolf at the same time. So a draw it was. 

Fun game, and I'm looking forward to the next. 

Clash of the Clans

Kitties ALWAYS roll box cars!

Screech came over and we had a fun, 12k game of Battletech. He was running an understrength star of Nova Cat omnis: 

Shadow Cat Prime with a 3/4 pilot

Shadow Cat A with a 3/4 pilot

Mad Cat Mk II 2 with a 3/5 pilot

Nova S with a 3/4 pilot

I was running a slightly understrength Mixed Binary from Hell's Horses Eta Galaxy. My list was as follows:

Piranha with a 4/4 pilot

Puma H with a 3/4 pilot (Binary commander)

Crab CRB-27b with a 5/4 pilot (The 5 due to being such an ancient and obsolete mech which is no doubt well passed it's prime, especially in terms of proper maintenance.)

Hoplite IIC with a 3/5 pilot (Custom made clan built Hoplite with 10SHS, Hag 20, LRM-5 w/Art. IV, AP gauss rifle, CASE, 5/8 movement and same armor as the original.) 

Marauder C with a 4/3 pilot

(2) Laser Elemental points with gunnery 5

Clan Foot Infantry point with Gunnery 4

Clan Pike with a 4/5 crew

Clan Demolisher with a 4/5 crew. 

As the Nova Cats are (quote) 'opportunists' and Eta Galaxy is more or less a dezgra unit, zellbrigen would play no part in the following battle. Here's my photo recap:

My deployment. Forgoing the use of 3-dimensional terrain as we got a late start, we used my 'canyons of death' map. The plateau/canyon walls are all level 4 and the few black objectives in the middle were level 1, though we pretty much ignored them. Note: The pike on the left was a top one of these plateaus.  

Screech's deployment, we opted for starting out corner to corner to keep the ranges long, though in and amongst the canyons long range is more or less a moot point. 

As such the first few turns were spent maneuvering at high speed in an attempt to get a clear line of fire. The Pike parked atop it's plateau and it's crew summarily fell asleep, taking no part in the game. I lacked any jump-capable mechs, so it's job was to shoot anything that went for the high ground with it's 5 ultra AC-2s. Not much of a threat, however I'd imagine that Screech is still smarting from his Catapult taking heavy fire and summarily falling off of a level 3 building last spring. Thus, he never landed up on a plateau effectively taking the Pike out of the game due to never having any lines of sight.

Turn 3 finally saw some gunfire as our leading elements arrived into the open. My Marauder put an LPL shot into his lead Shadowcat, and the Crab put a few lasers into the Nova. In return the Nova and Mad Cat began their thorough attempt to dismantle the crab, punishing it heavily right out of the gate. 

The Piranha added to the din though without connecting, however my Hoplite hit the Nova with it's LRM and HAG-20, inflicting moderate damage which included (2) separate head shots! Shortly thereafter one of the Shadow Cat's would pummel the rear armor of the Hoplite, going internal though not scoring any crits. This would be the majority of the damage the Hoplite would suffer all game.

The following turn saw the moment we were all waiting for: The Piranha unloading with everything into the Nova (though the fucker torso twisted ruining my hopes of shredding the thin, rear armor). The lasers took a few chunks off, but the real fun was shooting all twelve MGs! Only a few hit, but it was still fun if a bit laborious.

As the scrum in the middle continued to to play out, my Puma backed up into cover to deploy it's cargo of toads. Screech's Shadow Cat Prime moved to outflank prompting a torso twist followed by a cinematic firing of both heavy large lasers, 1 at the Shadow Cat and the other at the Mad Cat. Only 1 hit though I don't recall which target it was.

Screech's Shadow Cat A rounded a canyon wall and unloaded into my Marauder, ignoring the Demolisher right in front of it. Bad, bad idea...

One MPL, and AC-20 slug, and about a dozen bits of AC-20 buckshot later, and the entire side torso exploded due to an SRM ammo hit! 

Still running...the poor foot slogging infantry never fired a shot the whole game, or even came into view of the enemy. However due to excessive running in the desert heat in full combat gear, we both assumed casualties from physical and/or heat exhaustion were many.

Ah yes, the inevitable visit from this world's mega-fauna. No doubt attracted by all of the commotion of battle. Baxter decided to aid my forces by blocking off the principle avenue of escape for Screech's stricken Shadow Cat which was being harried by the piranha. Speaking of, in just 2 turns the Piranha burned thru more than 10% of it's ammo, lol.

Baxter. watches approvingly as one of my Elementals puts an SRM into the head of the Shadow Cat Prime. A heavy large laser blast along with the elementals' SRM fire would knock the mech from it's feet!

The Nova moves in to try and finish off the beleaguered Marauder, inflicting heavy damage and hitting the UAC-5's ammo, which tore the entire side off of the mech! Speaking of, my Crab on the other side of the field was still standing but so heavily damaged that it likely resembled legs holding up a bunch of garbage!

In return the last round to leave the UAC-5's barrel pasted the Nova's pilot, taking out the mech! With the Nova down and both Shadow Cats heavily damaged, Screech ran up the white flag, much to the relief of my Crab and Marauder pilots, whose mechs were both on their last legs. 

All in all a good game! I was pleased with the performance of the Puma, Demolisher and and Hoplite especially. Though the crab ought to get a thumbs up purely for the resilience of the mech. My Elementals only one fired 1 volley each, however it was my first time ever using them and they did nicely. The new models also look fantastic which is a plus! 

On the down side, the Pike was poorly positioned and never fired a shot and I'm thinking that the Marauder may go into Inner Sphere service as I wasn't too impressed with it in this game. Mainly due to ridiculous overheating issues. I mean seriously, two turns to cool off, WTF?!?