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.

We're gonna need tanks, lots of tanks!

This new lance brings some serious firepower to my rarely used pile.

Whilst all has been quiet on the gaming front, the acquisition of forces to be thrown away needlessly in combat continues. I recently added another lance of 3D printed tanks to flesh out my slightly over-strength tank company.

Clocking in at 13 armored vehicles (APCs excluded), I'm one tank over a standard company. Well...that, and then of course there is the ridiculously oversized Şoarece. However that colossal waste of resources (and Battle Value points) is largely a scenario piece, and used mostly as terrain. 

Below are the reinforced company's units: 

2 Brutus Assault Tanks (PPC Variant)

2 Manticore Heavy Tanks

1 AC-2 Carrier conversion (there's no official     model)

2 Missile Carriers

2 Vedette Medium Tanks

2 Hetzer Wheeled Assault Guns

2 Either LAC-2 or Medium Laser variant Scorpion Light Tanks

and lastly 3 Heavy Tracked APCs

Now these just need paint. No doubt that like my mech forces, these will be split amongst multiple units, which means I'll get some more eventually, so each unit can have at least one of everything and, well, you know how it goes...

Hot Diggety Dog! (mech)

 o/

Just a quick post on a 'mech' that I painted up for a buddy of mine. He owns a Dairy Queen (and yes they also sell hotdogs) and when we ordered an ice cream cake for my GF's son's birthday a few weeks back, he gave it to us free of charge. 

You can try to run, but this will ketchup with ya!

As a thank you I painted up this mech for him. Already laughing at it I told him that if it wasn't absurd enough already, I put it on a snowy base so that it could then be a chili-dog... Groaning at the pun, he simply turned to my GF and said I'm sorry you have to be with him (in all honesty she thought it was hilarious). 

In case you're wondering, this mini is painted in the colors of the:

Draconic Combine's Mustard Soldiery...

When I last played Battletech, I had this unpainted mini standing atop my Dunkin' Davions building and it looked fantastic there. As such, I need to get another one of these for myself.

Finally painting some Mechs!

 o/

In homage to the now hidden blue resin that this was printed in, the ruins on the base were painted blue.

Call sign: Yankee.

As promised in my last post, I painted up my Enforcer that took down the executioner with a lucky headshot. It seemed dumb to leave out it's lance mates, so they're in progress too...well, most of 'em. The Charger, deserves paint  for sponging a hideous amount of damage whilst refusing to simply die. However it's destined to go with The Buffet Assault Group, and as I lack their primer color currently, it remains in the mini case. Instead it was replaced in the lance by a Hunchback HBK-4SP. 

One of these is not like the others...

The Vallejo camo beige that these are all base coated with is anything but opaque. Thus, three successive coats were needed to achieve a consistent opacity. Thus whilst they were drying, I painted up a Clan Wolverine Zeta Galaxy Hoplite. This is a conversion to represent the Operation Klondike era HOP-4Cb, which is armed with a gauss rifle and SRM-6. I also painted up a base of motorized infantry to match which took no time at all. 

Stomping it's way thru the underbrush...

That yellow is such a bitch that I only added the accent stripes across the top side.

These are technically 10-ton wheeled APCs, but they're Savannah Master sized, so I used them as motorized infantry.

Those Bloody buildings are in the way again!

 o/

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. 

Battletech in the burbs.

 o/

Not all trees are pretty and symmetrical.

lol, not until I put them on a map did I realize that these two aren't orientated quite the same as the other, larger buildings.

As is illustrated here...

Whelp...these took a lot longer than I thought they would, but in the end I'm rather pleased with them. All of the buildings are numbered for potential objective purposes. These add a good bit of line-o-sight blocking terrain. 

There are several geometrically shaped greebles to add visual appeal I guess. As such I painted them in a variety of bright colors to break up the grey and in hopes of looking like a housing developer's idea of a 'happy place to live'. 

To the trees!

Wait, one of these is not like the others...

A close up of the Heavy Tracked APC lurking above that I painted recently.

I also based 15 trees/shrubs to serve as light forests. Basically any hex within the outline counts as light forest. Plus a few shrubberies to complement the buildings. I'm sure I'll add more foliage bases to this collection in the future. 

All of it together, adding a lot more blocking terrain to what I had previously. 

The ubiquitous Battletech Baxter pic. If the table top comes off, he has to be right there to get in the way...

Tentatively I have a game set up for tonight, so hopefully I'll have a battle report to post here in the near future.  

The residential district

 o/

Here we see a Hetzer wheeled gun 'in the wild' and praying for the blind deployment rules that we don't use here locally...

I'm still here, not dead just nothing happening on the Battletech front for a good long while. That said, Steel Warrior Studios is moving to a new location and hosted a sale in hopes of having less stuff to physically move. I took them up on the offer and picked up another small set of terrain. 

Shoo! Go away! Don't look at me!

This is not the mech you're looking for, move along, move along...

These residential buildings will make for an interesting little warren of close quarters, urban warfare. Listed as 'slums', these new buildings will give my little spaceport something it desperately needs: residential housing, retail shopping would be good too (I'll get to that in a minute...). They're all capable of blocking mechs, my Urbie especially as you can see, and the tanks simply disappear behind them. 

Note the Dunkin logo is still in the wrong spot here.

These will likely replace the vast majority of my tiny little MDF buildings which all too often end up being knocked about the map, often getting in our way as players rather than functioning as obstacles for our mechs. 

oh...yeah...like that...

The centerpiece of this purchase is that galaxy spanning, food processing retail empire we all know and love: Dunkin Davions! Yeah a note on that...initially I thought the Dunkin Davions sign was to go on top of the building, so braced it in that position. Only until waiting for it to dry and get all good and solid did I consult the website and see that it's placed across the front of the donut. 

Idiot. 

Oh well, its fixed now. No idea as to when I'll get another game in, maybe after these are painted but hopefully before.