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.

Weekly painting update.

 o/

Just a quick post of this week's painted minis. I did play a game last night, but didn't take too many pics. Unless I can get some photos from Nick, I'll have to skip the battle report on that game. 

The hero of my last post, the Demolisher/Devastator tank is now painted, replete with nose hull art and 3 kill markers on the turret. The sides of the turret are a slightly darker shade of tan making this one of the rare, 2-tone models in my Desert Horde. 

Also for the Desert Horde, for when we play in the SLDF/Early Succession wars era, the rare LBX carrier. Equipped with 2 LBX 10s, and 3 LRM 5s, and a decent amount of armor, I'm hard pressed to wonder why a Lostech version with standard AC-10s was never created. 

I am tempted to order more of these, though we rarely play in that era so am not sure how often even this mini will actually get used. 

Lastly, my Fire Mandrills Elemental point is now painted. Being the closest in game to 40K's Spess Mahreenz, I'm thinking in hindsight that I ought to have painted them like ANGRY MARINES!! as Neverness suggested when I posted pics of thier mech star. 

A few more projects & game highlights

 o/

We had another rain sodden weekend which lead to a bevy of painting time. So see below at what all crossed the finish line: 

First up: I completed the last three mechs, a Shadow Hawk IIC, Crab/Night Chanter and a Lancelot for my Fire Mandrill Kindraa Mattila-Carrol (gosh that's an awful thing to both type and have to say!) star. This star is a fast moving glass cannon. 

Brightly colored and bordering on obnoxious!

I almost took this for a game eariler this week, but couldn't squeeze them down to 6k BV without running prettymuch all 4/5 pilots which is not at all in the flavor of the clans, not even for the crappy solahma units that I tend to favor. I still plan to paint up a point of Elementals to hitch a ride on the Night Chanter, but nothing is currently planned to expand them beyond that. 

One of these is frightening, and it is not the one you are thinking it is...

Next up: An armor lance for Corey's Cavaliers. In my recent game where the Cavaliers & Turtles took the bridges from the Capellans, The Cavaliers couldn't help but note that the tanks had largely carried the day. Unable to convince the Turtles to join their ranks (the tankers simply took their payment and left), the Cavaliers sought to purchase and outfit their own assault armor lance. 

I tried to tie in the brown accents on the mech's lower limbs by adding it to the lower and rear hulls.

They started off with the Shrek which killed their budget for this project, and corners had to be cut to flesh out the lance. Two Scorpions and a Vedette round out the force. That said, in another recent training skirmish scrum with Anthony & Aiden where my Cavaliers were woefully outgunned, my new armor lance suffered 75% casualties. 

You know how this worked out...

I used the Armor Scorpions which, in both cases required an extra turn of shooting to finish them off. In the interim they landed a few AC-5 slugs before expiring. 

After his other Mad Cat was crippled by Anthony's forces, my Vedette scored a glorious SRM hit that caused Aiden to run up the white flag! This also saved my (by-then armless) Rifleman from certain destruction.

My armor lance's MVP was AC-2 Vedette that plinked an AC-2 round into a Highlander IIC's cockpit, and later put an SRM into a Mad Cat's side with a snake eyes crit yielding 2 XL engine hits! It took a few good licks in return, but survived the game! It has thus been promoted to the lance's lead tank. 

And last but not the least:

I mean seriously, why would it be any other number?

An old custom decal from Fallout Hobbies (they no longer offer this service).

Lastly, I finally put the decals on my Canopian Pleasure Circus' dropship. Sadly, it does not feature in games at the FLGS as the last time I brought it there to use as terrain, one of the landing gear's 'feet' broke. Thus, it is only used here at the house. 

It's got an axe! RUN!!

 o/

lol, these three are the latest to cross the finish line. The Axeman is painted to match my 5th Donegal Guards, and the two Howlers are for my newest faction: Clan Fire Mandrill Kindraa Mattila-Carrol (yeesh, that's a mouthful!). I also tried out some of my new AK diorama (basing) paints on these and am really happy with the results. 

Applied to a sacrificial base, it looks good as is.

However I added a sepia wash and once dry again, I drybrushed it with wraithbone and I really like the final result. So much so that I did just the same on my Howlers below.

First up the: Fire Mandrills. These howlers were previously painted in Jade Falcon colors, but were stripped and repainted. the rest of that JF star will go to the Desert horde where I will be able to field a stupid fast, second line binary.  As for the Mandrills, I just liked the color scheme, yellow with black & red trim. Though you have to be careful not to add too much red trim, or else you start to get McDonalds' vibes...

The outlandish, yellow, red and black almost work as a sort of camouflage in the desert scrub landscape of their bases.

The side of the Howlers that you most often see as these little fuckers run away at lightning speed!

Saving the biggest for last: the Axeman AXM-2N. This mech joins the Steiner Scout squad, and matches them reasonably well. Especially after I truncated the disasterously difficult painting of the 'scouts'. As such, I will add 3 more assault mechs to fill out a second lance, if not expand them further to an entire assault company (because Steiner).

Folks like to try and get in close to missile boats, but not this one!

Mech #6, I had to look up the number on the Steiner Scout Squad post to make sure I didn't duplicate the numbering.

Note the Jade Falcon Hunchback IIC-turned-stepping stone and the 'concrete' AK diorama paint.