SPORKMAN!

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Death by Spork!

The SPK-3F ‘Sporkman’, the 'totem' mech of The Buffet Assault Group. It is a spork armed Hatchetman.

Like the Hatchetman, the torso mounted AC10 & arm mounted medium lasers are still the primary damage dealers.

Note the kill marks on said spork, they are not identified so probably just infantrymen. That said, death by spork is an undignified way to go for anyone.

This is close as you can get to spooning with a mech...

I made a record sheet where I swapped the hatchet for a backhoe to represent the spork. This required the removal of a hand (no, the spork will not be shared), 1 heat sink and 1 ton of ammo. It does 6pts of damage which is marginally better than a punch but is +1 to hit because as we all know, sporks suck!

SQUEEEEE!!

I posted pics of this mech on a FB BattleTech group and got a reply from Sir Mortimer Bombito, the guy who actually sculpted this mini!

Apologies about the weird and wildly inconsistent highlighting. I copied the sporkman text from a similar post on the FLGS' Discord. The highlighting doesn't show in the post editing window, and it seems none of the available shades match the blog's grey background because reasons.

Blogger is a free service, and you get what you pay for.

My latest updates.

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The Cyclops from my last post wasted no time in getting 'stuck-in' in our campaign.

Unfortunately, said campaign ended in a spectacular double kill, with my Cyclops putting an AC20 slug into the Victor's ammo bin, while at the same time the Victor delivered an AC20 slug to the Cyclops' head!

In a nutshell, the above was the end of our home campaign. Both of our forces were thread bare, and neither would be able to replace the losses of the assault mechs.

Screech, taking a snooze in his battlefield debut in the new campaign. 

 As such we threw in the towel and started a new campaign. We moved the timeline up to 3049 & earlier. I am fielding the 1st Chisholm's Raiders whereas Nick is fielding Mercs of an indeterminate name. 

Just in case you were wondering, this is what 'forced withdrawal' looks like. This wreck limped off the board and has since been repaired. Screech however will be convalescing in the med bay for a bit...

In our first three games, I've managed to repair all damage suffered, whereas Nick is already down 3 mechs and 2 pilots (I head capped a Crusader & Griffin in the same game with a gauss rifle)!

The typical lance of random paint jobs. 

My converted STK-4N, this is my CO's mech in the current campaign. It is piloted by 'Major Grognard' a name inspired by Nick 2.0 himself!

The TBAG unit initial decals resulted in the typical memes when I posted these pics on the FLGS' discord. 

Next up, for my Corey's Cavaliers mercs, a pair of Hornets named The Grapes of Wrath. One of these is partaking in the campaign, piloted by John Steinbeck himself! Surprisingly, it survived its first game with only moderate damage. 

This Orion missed the last campaign, and as such will not see battle any time soon. 

I've never once fielded an Orion before, which is a trend that will continue for a bit longer it seems.

Everyone loves lava bases, why a mech would want to be in a lava field is beyond me though. If you haven't already guessed, this will be used as the Blazing Inferno variant.

Lastly, a Blackjack BJ-3 & Wolfhound WLF-1B, both finished up this afternoon.

As you can see above, I've also done a fair bit of painting. The Buffet Assault Group is even up to a company strength formation, combined-arms of course. I'll need to take some group shots soon. 

I hope everyone has a happy 4th of July! Don't go blowing any of your fingers off, it'll ruin your die rolls!

Recent updates

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Thus far the original CGR-1A1 & later 'Challenger' variant have been my favorite Chargers. However, after really looking over the 1A9's record sheet, I am thinking that this one may be favorite as well

I painted this CGR-1A9 Charger up to go with my 3rd Drakons after I sold their Firestarter some ways back. Ever since they have been a mech short and this have rarely seen the tabletop. I was going to give them one of my CGR-1A1s to use as a 1A9 but then managed to snag this one off of eBay along with some cheap tanks and several more Urbies, all for about $7.50 apiece (tax & shipping included).

I'm not sure if the red & white, quartered roundels on top of the MASH unit will warn of the vehicle's true purpose or insinuate that the circus is in town...

Next up, I have a MASH unit for use as either an objective or else as terrain, as well as a Bulldog & Hetzer, for my DCMS Swords of Light company. These are the first ever vehicles that I have painted for the SoL. All three of these are from the bargain priced purchase I mentioned above, as is the one below:

This is painted for my WILDFIRE! mercs which share some mechs and tanks with my Hell's Horses Iota galaxy force. The Horses do not have any access to the Skulker though oddly they do the command van...because honorably leading from the rear is a clan thing apparently. Oh wait, Iota has no honor, convenient!

Speaking of the rear, this is usually the end that Nick's VTOLs are invariably shooting up as the van tries to flee in futility.

Unless you really just need some speed, the skulker offers little of actual tabletop utility. This is why I mostly use these as a proxy for a 15-ton Command Van, or as I call them: senior citizens' activity buses (to fruitlessly dissuade Nick 2.0 from shooting them). 

As an armored lance for some cash-strapped mercenaries, this lance is all basics and no frills. 

The missile carrier has both launcher types (which one is the MRM?), and the Hetzer has been converted into the much maligned (even amongst Hetzer crews) laser variant. Please see below for an explanation of that. 

Speaking of vehicles, for the first time ever, The Buffet Assault group finally has its own vehicle compliment (well, aside from their former pair of Warrior VTOLs). The laser Hetzer (yes really) & Bulldog which I was using as the LRM variant survived their first game in the unit's new colors, as did all of the accompanying mechs, though there was quite a bit of damage suffered. 

Some pics from the battle vs Stephen, a new opponent.

The Suburbanmech survived this encounter with nothing more than a heavy punch taken to the CT. Two turns later it would exact revenge via a hit to the back of the Banshee's head with a PPC shot. Sadly for me, I wasn't able to inflict any crits.

I converted the Hetzer into the laser variant as I have always liked the concept of (though have never fielded) the atrocious cousin of the Missile and AC carriers: the Laser carrier. The Laser Hetzer is faster and much more heavily armored, if mounting only half of the Laser carrier's firepower. 

Optimal range: success. An LRM kill: well...

Combine that with the TBAGers' quartermasters not wanting to have to source AC20 ammo purely for a metal box and suddenly this doesn't seem like an entirely bad idea. If anything, it is the cheapest Hetzer option, and in it's battlefield debut was ignored as a non-issue which allowed it to get into the backfield where it proceeded to miss with 75% of its shots on average. 

Yes, the pizza template can even mount a potted plant...or a light forest hex.

After considerable effort and some abysmal gunnery, the Merlin (which had eaten enough LRMs to only have 2 points of head structure left by this point) achieved the game's only kill, taking down the other LRM carrier on the board. Had I kept it back out of the PPC's minimum range I likely would have killed it a turn sooner, but oh well.  

The Buffet Assault Group goes green(ish).

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The initial test model.

Not for the first time, and I cannot say it is for the last, but I realized that the reason I have been painting minis from every faction BUT The Buffet Assault Group is because I just don't enjoy painting their color scheme anymore. No real reasoning that I can think of but it happens. The tan/OD green camo with the central red stripe and occasional battlefield repairs is actually their third color scheme. 

So what follows is a bit of a history on their previous colors: 

The original TBAGer color scheme was an urban-type camo that almost looks like SWAT camo to me now. 

Yes, the Awesome on the left is the same one that is now painted below. It's been waiting on a paint job since 2019!

Note the Billboard sized/15mm scaled TBAGers logo on the side, and some digital chicanery to make up for an apparently crummy photo. 

I've looked & looked but cannot find a photo of The Buffet Assault Group's 2nd color scheme, that being not too dissimilar from the last one. It consisted of the same shade of tan (Vallejo Flat Earth) with a deep red, almost crimson trim. I know I had a metal 3rd party Stalker from Australia (yeah, that wasn't cheap) again with the TBAGer logo billboards on the sides of it's LRM arms. That was the unit's command mech at the time. 

I had at least an assault lance painted up like that before they went the way of eBay. I recall that they went to a buyer in Detroit. Their trip was more of an odyssey as the package visited every Detroit suburb that surrounded the buyer's burb over the course of two weeks or so, before landing in a distribution center that had no public access. Worse yet, he drove by it every day on his daily commute. The package spent another week or two there before finally arriving at his house. We had so many convos over the shipping shitshow that we were almost friends by that point.

Then came the color scheme that you all are familiar with: 

A company sized photo-op just prior to my first game of what  would become the eventually disasterous Steel Haven Campaign.

I kept the HBK-4G & UM-R60, but the rest of the painted mechs from the this bunch have redeployed to the western coast of Florida. The Urbie was featured in my last post, the Hunchback is currently soaking in Simple Green, and the two painted Warriors are now just a generic VTOL flight for whatever faction needs them (which is more or less what they were doing anyways). 

There isn't any consistency of the fonts used for the numbers on individual units.

I retained the tan and red in their new color mix for both some contrast and as an homage to the old color scheme. 

The addition of some Autumn colors to their basing shrubberies means the red still works for camo, or at least as much as camo works for a battlemech.

This is an Awesome choice for a my new company command mech.  

So, skipping to the present, I thought I'd try something different (yes I know that I paint most everything green, shut up!). I wanted to try a pattern breaker camo as that is about as close to digital camo as I can personally get. At first it seemed a bit tedious, until I realized that if I fucked up somewhere, I could just repaint over that panel with the next color selected. 

I am very pleased with how this lance has turned out. This color scheme has also been well received on my FLGS' discord which is nice.

The dark green AK Grime has given me fits though, far more than the regular shade that I use on everything else. Not sure why but I had to almost repaint close to a third of the Awesome after inking and maybe a quarter of the Blackjack.  That's as much trouble as I have had with almost a full battalion of the Desert Horde.

I just started on an armor lance, so will try using the regular grime on them and see how they end up. If they are not too visually different in the end, I may just continue on without the green grime going forward. 

We shall see I guess. 

Exercising the Nuclear option...

Right were this debacle fell apart...

Following my last campaign game and its subsequent rant. Last Tuesday I finally played the follow up mission where my wrecked lance, and a second 4100BV relief lance had to escort the spy again. My relief force was an Assassin, Phoenix Hawk, Panther and Valkyrie, all base models with 3/4 pilots in all but the Valk which had a 4/5.

We used my coolant truck rather than the ugly mini provided for the spy's truck. The spy was once again riding in the same 40HP vehicle with and SRM2 turret, 1 whole vehicle hit location, and the movement curve of a Demolisher tank. My mission was to escort him/her to safety, 3 maps away (where the relief force was coming from), as well as get all of my mechs off of the board, inflicting what damage I could on the OpFor along the way. 

Victory lay waaaay over there on the right edge.

The OpFor was a lance  consisting of a Mongoose, Locust, Wyvern, Crab and a Partisan tank. All base models I believe. I had 2 *free* turns of movement before the persuing OpFor arrived. My locust ran like hell, as did the slow ass truck on road for what little benefit that provided. My relief force did the same but was so far away that only the Assassin, moving almost like a LAM and the not far behind Phoenix Hawk would really take any part in this debacle.  

 Only the all but destroyed Royal Locust would manage to get across the whole board, the rest of the original lance would perish on the first map, with the truck barely making it onto map two before it's demise seen here. 

When the OpFor arrived, my last stand started with pummeling the Wyvern with all the Stalker and Hunchback could muster. In return, my commander's stalker was decapitated by a large laser hit (the head took a medium laser in the prior game), killing my CO instantly and dropping her shattered machine. The following turn, as the OpFor (unsurprisingly) caught up with and destroyed the truck, the Hunchback Alpha struck, and would have risked a shutdown from heat due to a last game engine hit had it not been destroyed out right (as it was). 

The Buffet Assault Group's roster post-game.

The only saving grace was the Assassin managed a snake eyes location on the Mongoose, inflicting an engine and gyro hit, sending it into withdrawl. The following turn my forces started to retreat enmass with the Catapult also falling to 2 more engine hits. 

Sounds fun doesn't it? 

On top of the suicide mission with no hope of victory, I was penalized -30 warchest points (about the cost of a light mech) for each mech lost, and a further -40 warchest points for the loss of the truck. This was somewhat mitigated by gaining +25 WCP for each OpFor mech sent into with drawl, those being the Mongoose and the Wyvern which was down to 1 structure point left in it's left leg. 

This scenario was so much fun that after the game I posted on the campaign discord channel that (quote):

 After playing back-to-back not at all fun to play scenarios & I’m not throwing any shade at Shadowstar either, The Buffet Assault Group is breaking contract. 

I’m out of the campaign, best of luck to the remaining players.

Shadowstar who was running the OpFor and had already suffered thru this scenario himself and was apologizing profusely throughout the game (and preemptively before any mechs were even deployed). His game ran better than mine only as he managed 3 consecutive headshots on the OpFor. That said, his spy truck died at the same approximate location as mine did. Extremely good die rolls should not be the only path to victory (I think his game was more or less a draw). We have no idea how the spy truck was supposed to cross the whole map, and why this didn't pop up in 'play testing'. 

The cat herder returns!

My exit caused a bit of an uproar, many private convos with folks in and out of the campaign, and ultimately is causing this leg of the campaign to end on this game. Digger will be once more taking the reins of scenario creation back. The guys who were running don't want to 'deal with the dysfunction' and don't understand why nobody is having any fun getting pasted repeatedly in no-win scenarios (they seem to be enjoying themselves, go figure). 

It wasn't my intention to kill this leg of the campaign, but after taking a month and a half of the summer off from the campaign itself, my first game back felt like an infuriatingly wasted night, instead of a fun time as it ought to be. I've also been told that the nerd rage was steadily building across the board and all that I said in my private convos with Digger post-exiting the campaign has already been said by most everyone else on the players side.

So my TBAGers will return, no doubt enticed back by a lack of other employment options and perhaps a meal plan tossed in to sweeten the deal.  

Escort the Spy

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I need to get a Mobile HQ mini so my games don't need to keep using this god-awful 'Command brick truck' model. 

I played the next mission in the 3rd leg of our ongoing campaign this past Thursday. This one ran more or less on rails with limited set piece actions over the course of the first half dozen turns. We were told not to make a list until we were told of the scenario rules/situation once we got there. To save time, I showed up with 9 premade lists from my campaign company and chose what I thought would be the best one. 

I started off with a wedge 'pursuing' the truck, with my locust flanking out at long range. Unfortunatly, terrain and the multitude of AC2s and the indirect firing LRM carrier would make mince meat out of it!

Shadowstar was playing the OpFor, he suffered thru this mission the week prior.

This post is as much a rant as it is a bat rep. Basically my forces were 'pursing' the fugly command truck to a fortified building. In said truck was a mole whole would go in, collect the spy and then make a run for it back along said road (5 hexes movement, no bonus for pavement) hoping to survive where the OpFor would then target the truck over all else. 

The Catapult sat back and used the last of it's ammo (from the prior mision) up taking down AC-2s on the tower. Unfortunately, the cluster chart meant you had to more or less fire 2 LRM launchers or large lasers (from the Stalker) to guarantee a cannon kill. 

Just as the Bulldog goes up in flames, a pair of SRM turrets pop up and replace it. If the popup turrets brings to mind the Solaris debacle, yeah well, the same guys are runing this leg of the campaign.

Prior to the esceape, the OpFor would be defending what they thought was a friendly vehicle from my forces. I took my commander's STK-4N, my CPLT-C1 from the previous mission which was down to 3 volleys of LRM ammo per launcher My intent was to have it running & jumping with lasers so was fine with that given the map, a LCT-1Vb and an HBK-4J. 

Struggling to remain upright due to a gryro and foot hit, and a multitude of other damage from slogging thru hellish terrain and high angled enemy fire, the Royal Locust lasered the LRM carrier to death before fleeing the board with 1 point of remaining CT structure. 

Something like 2-3 turns were spent pounding on tanks and turrets (and vice versa) while waiting for the Mole to fill out the government-like release forms in triplicate. By this point my Stalker's side torsos were so thin that I had dumped all of it's almost 3 full tons of remaining ammo, turning it into a laser boat. 

I was facing a tower with 2 turrets armed with 4 AC-2s each, 10HP per gun to be targeted and destroyed individually (really?). On said tower was also a spotter, and all were high enough to not have to suffer any terrain penalties. Also a pair of std. Scorpion light tanks, a std. Bulldog medium tank (proxied with a goblin) and an LRM carrier. There where no bonuses for pavement on the road and the scenario required a PSR to leave the road at any speed. Additionally, there was a 3MP cost to enter/exit water (6 to cross!) no MP penalties to move in water aside from no running. and once the spy was on the run, a fresh, randomly rolled for OpFor lance would appear 1 mech at a time per turn to take out the spy's truck. 

My mission: destroy everything and make sure the spy & mole escape in the truck. A cakewalk right? If you haven't figured it out from the preceeding pics and captions, it was anything but. 

Once the truck left, the Hunchback and stalker dropped the building in 1 turn, taking its 2 remaining AC-2s with it. Oh an look, the first randomly rolled for OpFor mech arrives, a Guillotine with a 3/3 pilot. Yay, that shooting exclusively at a box with 40 HP sounds fair. 

Followed by a Crab the next turn, I think the truck was down tot 20ish HP by this point, while I was pounding the Guillotine.

Next a Whitworth arrives and the Stalker punishes it for doing so, unfortunately the reversed arms' medium lasers all missed the Crab and it's rear armor. Meanwhile the still in the water Hunchback alpha strikes hitting the whitworth with it's 1 remining LRM and the Gullotine with everything else. In return the Gillotine kicks it in the chest as it was 1 level higher. Technically Shadowstar rolled a headshot, but knowing it would kill my pilot (who had already taken a head hit) he insisted on rerolling it to prevent me from losing a pilot in what he felt was an unfair scenario.

1-turn from the board's edge with 2 remaining hit points...

What? It blew up? The hell you say! The spy & mole managed to clamber out of the wreck after I rolled for them. With the loss of the truck aside, I accomplished all objectives. The cost of victory however...

Okay, so all objectives accomplished basically, I took out all of the guns, tanks, the tower, and damaged the new lance of mechs somewhat. I haven't said to much on damage suffered in this meat grinder. It was extensive, behold:

If this mech does indeed used in part 2, I am dumping its ammo beforehand out of self preservation. Hell, it only has 1 functional LRM-10 anyways.

Were it not for the gyro hit, I would be fine with this one fighting on as is. 

1 point of CT internal structure holding it together and I am supposed to use this? Sure. I should have left it on the board to die.

The part 2 mission is supposed to be some sort of 'pursuit' mission by the OpFor lance. Thinking it will be a rearguard action, and as slow as a Stalker is on the best of days, my CO may try and sacrifice herself while the other mechs escape. 

Now, I have no issue with feeding mechs into the proverbial woodchipper on a weekly basis as you all know. What I take issue with is an overly complicated set up that (as Digger put it) 'railroads you into slogging thru a meatgrinder of a mission' (again, not really unhappy with this, but..). We now need to use the same surviving mechs (I didn't lose any, Digger lost 2), without any repairs for a part 2 pursuit mission (whatever the fuck that means) which follows this one. Sure, the enemy mechs will be in the same boat, but they came on late (and in my game, the Jackalpoe didn't even make it on the board), so their damage is minimal. Well, Guillotine aside, I did beat that one up pretty good. 

Now, at the beginning of this track of the campaign, all mechs were transported to the planet of this campaign after being stuck with the same 4 mechs which caused some discontent in the previous leg, especially if casualties were suffered. So rather than grab some of the 7 pristine mechs I have on site, I need to use these 4, where the Locust is held together with prayers, 3 of the 4 have gyro hits, and all have considerable damage? 

What the actual fuck? 

There has been a lot of grumbling and negative feedback. Funnily enough, I've played the current organizer, and he gets really pissed when his mechs take heavy damage, so I have to wonder if this is all out of some sort of spite. He's a generally nice guy, so don't want to think that, but it's hard to tell at this point.

Nobody who had played thru this scenario has anything good to say about it really for one reason or the other (and several of us won), and one player who is new to the game isn't sure he wants to continue playing if this is how it is always going to be. Seriously guys, what did you learn from the Solaris feedback? 

Notta fucking thing by the looks of it.