Two more for the Horde

 o/

You will pass the potatoes!

I've been a little burnt out on painting mechs here of late, and so these and a few other half painted mechs have been knocking around my desk for awhile now. To be honest, all but one of them are at the ready-to-be-inked stage. As I was inking some Star Wars minis this weekend (visible here), I added these two into the inking batch in order to push them across the finish line. 

Looking down the business end, a sight few survive unscathed. 

Mech # 14, the arm also shows a few kill marks which may, or may not have occurred during it's previous career as a Dark Caste Bandit. 

The Starslayer was previously painted for my Dark Cast Bandits, but I stripped and repainted it for my Desert Horde. It will most likely be used as the STY-2C-EC as I have been wanting to field this oddball variant with a force of pre-Clan invasion Nova Cats. 

The sight of a Hoplite usually doesn't alarm an opponent, this one might though...

I couldn't resist the adding the checkboarding on this one, making this the only Desert Horde mech to have any sort of decorative flourishes. 

As this model is armed with a PPC (either a standard of ER model), I carefully trimmed off the AC-10's ejection port and covered the area up with more checkerboarding. 

The Hoplite has been modified using an LRM-15 launcher from reddogminis to serve as a HOP-4B, and/or the far more dangerous HOP-4Bb. This came out well enough that I may order some more hoplites and repeat the process for my Wolf's Dragoons. 

Shrooms, kitties and clan mechs oh my!

 o/

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. 

Some random stragglers

 o/

Frenemies?

No gaming for me this week, but I did at least finish off another lance's worth of mechs. That said, they are split amongst three different factions as you can see. 

First up, is a century for the Marian Hegemony's III Legio. 

All of the bases line up nicely. As much of a pain in the ass as that was, this bunch might not get any additional minis...

Corey' Cavaliers, up to a full strength lance, with not a decent mech amongst them (well, maybe the Charger).

Lastly the Cicada joins the ever growning Desert force (I wonder if it is too late to change their link/name to Desert Horde?). There are just as many tanks to go with these, plus a point of Elementals. Why Elementals you ask? Well I just reprimed the former Jade Falcon Fast & the Furious star in wraithbone. Meaning that along with the Mongoose and Mercuries, I'll easily be able to field a 2nd line binary with a minimum speed of 7/11!

Coolant Truck Scenario

Coolant, gimme fresh coolant!

Mal & I got together last week for another game. This time trying out my coolant truck scenario which I based off of an Alphastrike scenario that I found...on reddit maybe? Below is said scenario (its a bit of a long one): 

Each player has 5,000 BV forces. 

Following a recent battle, the defending forces are falling back to a Forward Operating Base (FOB) for repairs and maintenance. As the defenders are approaching the FOB’s defensive perimeter, an enemy vanguard is detected on approach. Unfortunately, the defender’s battlemechs are in no shape for a direct engagement until they’ve undergone basic maintenance. 

The defender chooses a table edge and marks a zone (that is the size of my firing arcs template) representing the forward operating base. The FOB is placed anywhere along their table edge. It must be six hexes from the table edge, and at least six hexes from either side of the table. Place a coolant truck at the center of the FOB. The attacker’s table edge is opposite the defender’s table edge. 

Next, the defender places four watchtowers on the table. Place the first tower within 8 hexes of the base’s perimeter. Further towers can be placed anywhere on the table, but must be within 8 hexes of another outpost and not within the base’s perimeter. Towers may not be placed within 10 hexes of the attacker’s table edge. Each Tower is a heavy building with 40 CF. Outposts may be a spotter for indirect fire. 

The defender rolls for each of their mechs for pre-existing damage, either: 4 SRM hits or 3 small laser hits (ideally half of the force should take SRM damage, and the other half SL damage). Roll for locations using the front facing chart, rerolling head shots, critical hits are ignored. The defenders’ units are placed within their walk/ground speed of the table center in initiative order. 

OBJECTIVES 

Emergency Cool down: The defender’s mechs are damaged and need a coolant swap before they can be fully effective on the battlefield. A defender’s battlemech’s heat sinks function at half efficiency until they undergo a coolant swap. Each of the defender’s battlemechs must perform the Coolant Swap action to be restored to full efficiency.  Score 1 VP each time a battlemech completes the Coolant Swap sequence.  

Hold the Line: The defender scores 1 VP for each enemy mech that is destroyed or forced to withdrawal. 

Slash and Burn: The attacker must destroy as many watchtowers as possible to help clear the way for a future assault. The attacker also scores 1 VP for each enemy mech that is destroyed or forced to withdrawal. 

 

SPECIAL RULES 

Coolant Swap: A defending battlemech’s heat sinks function at half efficiency until the coolant swap action is taken. To perform this action, a battlemech must end the Movement Phase adjacent to a coolant truck and announce the mech is hooking up to the coolant truck. Hooking up requires the remainder of the turn and the mech may make no attacks, nor be attacked (per standard Succession Wars battlefield etiquette). The coolant swap takes 1 round (so 1 round to get into proper position of the coolant truck, and 1 turn to perform the coolant swap). Only 1 mech may perform a coolant swap at a time. 

 If during the coolant swap the battlemech expends any movement points or moves at least a hex due to forced movement, the mech takes a 5 point of damage grouping allocated by the Kick Hit Location and the coolant truck is destroyed. The coolant truck is too valuable to be directly targeted by the attacking forces. 

Forced Withdrawal: The attacker & defender must adhere to the Forced Withdrawal rules. A mech is considered crippled and forced to withdrawal when it suffers any combination of the following: 

• 2 engine hits 

• 1 gyro hit 

• When it loses a side torso 

• When all ranged weapons are rendered inoperable 

• When at least 3 locations have suffered internal structure damage 

Here are some pics from the game, but with Mercuries running rampant in all directions, it was kinda hard to keep track of what was going on where.

I was fielding the Capellan Confederation (early succession wars era) with an Assassin ASN-21, A Mongoose MON-67, six Mercury MCY-98s, and a superfluous mountin infantry platoon to guard the FOB. 

The battlefield with the FOB plainly evident. I forgot that I don't have 4 watchtowers, so 4 apartment blocks were used in their place. 

The Mongoose undergoing an early coolant swap with a Mercury waiting in the wings for a swap next. 

Mal's always ready for a fight!

This week the Infernal Legion was fielding a 3/5 STK-3F, an Archer ARC-2R, A wolverine WVR-6R and a Commando COM-2D. 

Turn one and Mal's lance took down Watchtower # 6 for an easy VP. I tried to claim war crimes and the killing of civilians. To which Mal replied: Civilians don't spot for indirect LRM fire.
(Oh come on, it was only an LRM-5...).

By this point Mercury # 5 was into internal structure on it's leg and well too far forward for any hope of a coolant swap. Screaming For the Confederation! It unloaded into the rear armor of the Stalker and managed to hit with everything, including a few rear torso shots! Of course it's paltry weapons didn't punch through the Stalker's armor

Mercuries! Mercuries everywhere...

Having never fielded any of these mechs previously, Mal was having a hard time getting a feel for them as the Mercuries ran in all directions, sniping from every angle (all that was missing was the Benny Hill theme music). 

I screwed up and left the Assassin out of position, wasting a turn before got into proper place next to the truck. Here it is getting a coolant swap for a 3rd VP, while another Mercury is heading in. 

Oh btw, the Stalker reversed it's arms and destroyed Mercury 5, for Mal's 2nd VP. 

Chaos was reigning across the board when unfortunately we ran out of time, as the FLGS was closing. 

In the end, I won by a slim margin of 3VPs to Mal's 2. Had we not run out of time, who knows who would have won. Mal did pose a question to me after the fact of: how many victory points were needed to secure victory? Uhh...yeah, I dunno. I hadn't thought of that, 8 maybe?

I thought I was in trouble as I figured that she would simply take down the 4 towers for 4 easy VPs. However the horde of distraction bots did just that, and she forgot about targeting the towers after the first turn.

Honestly I am not sure how this would have worked out if she was defending as I likely would have surrounded the FOB and she'd more or less be forced to circle the wagons.

Here are Mal's thoughts on this one:

The "damaged lance needs to refuel" concept is cool, but I'm not sure how to balance it. Maybe they get some light turrets instead of watchtowers that can only do spotting? Or have a time limit for the attackers; if all enemy units (or a minimum of 4, if one has a swarm) get refueled, the attacker has to withdraw, with the premise being hitting the weakened lance is a target of opportunity, but if they get resupplied, it would just become a pitched battle the attackers don't need to force.

I guess I'll have to tweak this one some more and maybe try it without any small fast hordes to see how it would work out (though it was built for the Mercuries, something I forgot to mention to her before game.

We had fun though.

New Shadow Hawks

 

Let's just get this out of the way up front: Shadow Hawks suck. There, I said it and with that out of the way let's move on. 

I bought these from Reddogminis.com (who is having a sale it seems, so more minis are on the way). These two (three actually, I have one set aside for Nick 2.0) showed up within a week and flawlessly cast. Plus there are two arm options allowing for slightly different posing. Not much more to say than that so I'll just show off some my pics of these two. 

Alternate  arm options

I left the LRM-5 off of this one and covered up the SRM launcher to use as a Primitive Shadow Hawk. 

The Desert force Shadow Hawk, painted, sealed and ready to get dirty...

...and dirty it is! Slathered in the AK streaking grime. 

After a 10ish minute pause, the excess grime is removed via mineral spirits and severl Q-tips and here ya go! Easy peasy (and why the desert force has exploded in size so quickly). 

The primitive got the same treatment, but it is not as noticble on OD green as it is on the wraithbone primer. This one is painted for my 65th Lyran Regulars.

Callsign: Daisy, with the decals to match

Yes Votann players, it is a daisy. Get over it.

Finished Desert Force Shadow Hawk.

The 9th mech in the unit, there will be a full mech company in no time!

And they said Nuln oil was liquid talent...bah!

Two more, ready to go!

Reconnaissance in force

What's really fast and hits like a wet noodle?

So, as you can see I had an idea. Having 3 Mercuries, an Assassin and a Mongoose already painted in desert colors (I sold the Ostscout for a tidy sum), why not expand the mech contingent of my generic desert force up to two full lances? 

Mercuries VII & VIII's numbers had to be spread across both shoulders due to their size.

As such I ordered another Mercury and while awaiting that, I soaked my Goliath Scorpion & Jade Falcon Mercuries in simple green, stripping their prior alliegiances off, so all three could be painted at once when the new Mercury arrived in the mail. 

These can be used as most anything with the following coming almost immediately to mind:

SLDF era Mercs

Early Succession Wars Capellans

Commiestar & the Wobblies (a full C3i Level II of MCY-104s could be scary)

Order of the Faithful (Wobblie equipped pirates)

SLDF in Exile and/or Pentagon Powers (such as the the Sand Confederacy)

If I ditch the Assassin, then they can also be:

2nd line/Operation Klondike Nova Cat Star

Or an entire Sept of The Society using the relics taken from an ancient Brian cache

With so many identical mechs, I thought it prudent to number the backs of their bases as well.

Urban gridlock

 o/

Nick and I got together for another game this week. Here was the scenario of his creation: 

3500 BV, Units are limited to infantry, combat vehicles and Mechs of no more than 30tons. It will be a very small city map, the objective is to have the infantry occupy a specific structure to gain VPs. For each unit more than your opponent occupying the structure at the end of the round you gain a point. For each enemy unit destroyed you gain a point. We play to 10 points, first one there win's. Only infantry can enter the structure and only by (2) possible entry points. Only units inside the building can fight each other with a +1 to hit modifier.

Here is how it all went down....

My 'Skittles' Force: (2) ML Scorpions, (2) RL Galleons, (2) SRM Wheeled APCs, (2) Command Van, Q-Variant, (2) Warrior H7A VTOLs, (4) Assault Hover Mechanized Platoons, (1) Motorized MG Platoon, and (2) Ballistic Rifle Foot Platoons, and my 'official' job title. 

Nick's Force: (2) Standard Scorpions, (2) Standard J. Edgar Hovertanks, (2) UM-R60s, (1) Warrior H7A VTOL, and (7) foot platoons of various types. 

Baxter helping set the table up. 

Small and dense city indeed, the large grey building next to Dunkin Davions was the objective. 

We set up 10 hexes out from the objective building. 

Nick curved his force around the city at the same distance. 

Neeka checking on Nick's math. 

She had her game face on and even 'helped' smack my dice around a bit. 

Early on Nick realized his error as his foot sloggers had no transports and my mechanized platoons moved 4 hexes a turn. 

His Warrior swoops in to gun down my lead hover platoon with it's machine gun. Due to modifiers, their return fire was ineffectual. 

With light tanks on both sides, they make for fairly equal adversaries. That said the SWAT APC was immobilized here. 

My warrior puts an AC-5 slug into the Urbie which turns and cores the VTOL in 1 shot! I lost both of my VTOLs this round.  

Nick's Warrior did it's job and Nick took an early 3 point lead. 

Next turn and my tan hover platoon platoon made it inside the objective and no doubt was recreating the Blues Brothers' mall scene! Meanwhile the other two platoons were right on the doorstep. Desptite being suicide, Nick's VTOL simply rotated in place to gun down another platoon, as his foot sloggers were still 8 hexes out. 

The flame platoon would die before the VTOL met a similar fate, but the grey platoon underneath made it in fine. 

This is chopper 5 traffic, looks like we have gridlock on the west side of town...

The J. Edgar and and Galleon blaze away while the scorpion's AC-5 was unable to hit at point blank range. Out of rockets, the Galleon would not survive this fight. 

The Cavaliers'  Wheeled APC lost it's SRM to a lucky crit on turn one. Rather than retreat, it went hunting for infantry and some vehicular manslaughter. Here it would kill 8 troopers while suffering a shotgun blast of damage all around and a motive hit (or was that just bodies stuck in the wheel wells?). 

A short distance later it would run into another platoon, killing 8 more before succumbing to the collective fire of an outraged infantry company!

Nick's J. Edger was immobilized and the grey Scorpion right next to it would spend a few turns in a static, point blank range fire fight! Still intent on the objective my motorized infantry finally was able to join into the fray.  

The Urbie put an AC-10 slug into the front of the as yet untouched Scorpion, which returned fire and scored an engine hit and jump jet loss on the previously softened up Urbie. 

The Motorized platoon dumps into the beleagered J. Edgar and puts it out of it's misery!

My second Galleon, all out of rockets, zipped by the other Urbie and gunned down another  platoon with it's twin MGs.. 

Yes I will bloody up the Cavalier's APC in recognition of it's war crimes. 

In the end I won, 10-6. While I lost more units than Nick, my hover platoons quickly getting inside the objective won me the game. Despite the force marching, his infantry never got anywhere near the objective (nor did my foot slogging platoons). This was a fun little scenario, that needs some tweaking (or transports) for the infantry. 

It was also fun to have all light tanks and mechs duking it out. Usually they just show up and die quickly, but against equalish opponents, light tanks and mechs quickly find themselves in the rare, lightweight slugging matches.