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. 

Escort the convoy!

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'Its bumper to bumper out there folks, oh and watch out for that nasty crossfire...'

I played another game this week, though this time it was against my buddy Nick rather than a campaign game. It was my turn to come up with a scenario and I found this one:

We made some minor adaptations, we traded inches for hexes, and the movement for the convoy vehicles was slowed to 4 hexes rather than five (same +2 TMM) due to a lack of road. With 4000 points each of 3020s era, mechs (and in Nick's case, vehicles) all with base 4/5 pilots and crews as usual, the transports would be quite challenging to hit. 

My Lancers move up into position to escort their charges. 

The Jagermech makes a lucky, boxcars roll to put an AC-5 round into the far off warrior! I was hoping for a 1-shot-kill but instead I only stripped the armor off of the left side of the chopper. I never hit it again (though not for a lack of trying). 

I brought my St. Ives Lancers with an Enforcer, Jagermech, Vindicator (all base models) and a Hunchback HBK-4SP. That totaled out to 4K even and while that factor alone was enough for me to stop making lists, it really wasn't an ideal force as they'd be hard pressed to keep up with the convoy. 

The hover tanks swoop in, cutting across traffic with no turn signals employed! No hits were scored on the convoy though the J. Edgar took a few. Unlike my last game, this evening's shooting rolls were largely atrocious. 

The Lancers and Cavaliers move into close quarters. One Flatbed truck had been disabled, but rather than assist their stricken comrades, the convoys motors away.

Nick had his 1st Royal Cavaliers with an Awesome, Shadow Hawk, a Pegasus and J. Edgar Hovertanks and a warrior VTOL. As he would be the attacker (we rolled after set up to see who was who), his vehicles' to-hit modifiers would be even worse than those of the convoy!

Previously the Enforcer had only taken a single SRM to the head, but the Awesome took it out with a PPC headshot that vaporized the pilot! Seriously, no other locations were hit, just the head!

The Hunchback closes in, unloads and...

...Neverness sent me an instant message and apparently his dice rolling black magic was attached. That or Games of Thrones was on the shop's big screen, and the Hunchback's pilot was too busy watching the in-progress sex scene to give a shit about the Shadow Hawk. 

My stacking template is intended for mechs to be in the same hex as tanks, but it needed a boost to put the VTOL over the Shadow Hawk! Side note, I posted this pic on the Everything Battletech FB group, after less than 24 hours, it currently stands at 223 reactions and 38 comments! The blog post won't garner even a tenth of that. 

Ack,  while I forgot to take a final pic, the convoy almost made it, almost. One flatbed truck did manage to escape the board, but with only 1 out of 5 getting away, Nick won the game, though it was a toss up right up until the last turn! Another point of amusement was the Pegasus which I never managed to hit; it failed it's piloting check and slammed into the city wall for a nice 19 points of damage! I would imagine that there would also be chiropractic appointments needed for its crew!

The first Urbie is painted!

Just taking in the fall colors along with all of the other tourists...

Shut up Kushial, nobody wants to hear about the battalion you painted in the same span of time it took me to paint just this one! (...sigh...) This is the first of my fourteen Urbies and unlike Kushial, I doubt I'll have anymore than a single lance in the same color scheme.

Rather it'll be more like: AN URBIE FOR EVERYBODY!

As for this one, it's painted in the colors of the 1st St. Ives Cheveau-Legers (Light Horse). Originally I had intended to make a unit of the St. Ives Lancers, but I liked the blue trim more than yellow. So onto the light horse it is!

Nothing stops traffic like an Urbie!

Being a Capellan unit first, and then of the later independent St. Ives Compact arguably at least one more Urbie ought to join this one, but we'll see I guess... 

St. Ives Compact border skirmish

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This pic on it's own resulted in a bit of a threadought on the Battletech International FB page...

Hoss' PANDA-MONIUM!! mercenaries, no doubt in the employ of the accursed Capellan Confederation, launched a raid into the St. Ives Compact, and my St. Ives Lancers rushed to intercept! Here's how it all went down...

Turn either one or two, in which both sides (mine on the right) are closing in on one another...

My new Spider's battlefield debut occurred in the employ of Hoss. Whilst the light mech itself is faster than hell, running into point blank range of 2 medium mechs turned out to be folly. As such, the Spider blew up in the first volley. 

However on the next turn, Hoss concentrated fire on my lead Hunchback (HBK-4H). In fact, it was so concentrated that he cored out the center torso to almost the exclusion of all else, and down it went (permanently). 

The firefight starts in earnest, with my Hunchback (HBK-4SP) hammering Hoss' Jagermech, knocking it to the ground for the first time. That Jagermech would prove to be a nigh unkillable zombiemech...

This game was also my first test run of the new Suburbanmechs. With a 50% increase in speed (to a still abysmal 3/5/3) and no internal ammo to blow up I might never run a regular Urbie again! They proved quite dangerous, though as you can see, the one in the backfield fell under a withering onslaught, after it's entire left torso separated from it's body! 

4.5ish hours in my GF called to see how much longer and was kinda incredulous at the notion of it being maybe another hour or two, lol. She was hungry, but you won't like her when she's hangry! So we finished out the turn and this is where we ended up. 

Technically, Hoss' Jagermech wasn't dead with a lone point of structure holding its right leg on (pay no attention to the other pristine leg...). However there was so much internal damage, that the pilot was knocked unconscious, and he/she would have had a +7 to the piloting roll if this mech had attempted to ever get up again. It irks me that I hit most everything internal crit slot in that side torso BUT the ammo...

A late, last turn kill as I'd managed to leg one of Hoss' Panthers.

Whilst this Suburbie survived the battle, I doubt it would ever see battle again instead serving as spare parts for it's brethren.

The dead pile (notably smaller than our last game).

You may have noticed these awesome dice that Hoss both has and the above set which he gifted to me, huzzah! They keep track of all of the movement modifiers and movement rates on one handy little marker. I'd like to get a second set for myself, though they are currently out of stock.

With two mechs destroyed, and a third one effectively if not technically destroyed as well, Hoss handed me the win. That said, his Catapult, Dervish and second Panther, would all exit the field with nary a scratch on them. On my side, there was fairly moderate damage all around barring that one urbie and the K/O'ed Hunchback, and lastly my untouched Jagermech which was parked on a hilltop in the backfield, where it spent the game plinking away with mild effect all game.

As always my good friend, I look forward to our next game and once again thanks for the dice!!