Alpha Strike, Round 2

 o/

Today is a good day to die!

I got in another game of Alpha Strike this week, again with my son Frankie fielding the 'good' lance, and myself with the lighter weight one. Frankie had a heavy weight, C3 lance. Still inexperienced, he came out cautiously, getting little to no benefit from his heavy armor, weapons, much less the C3. 

I again found myself leading the charge with Urbies, which had predictable results. 

Eventually, he got more aggressive after some prodding by me (and threats to have him field the fragile Urbies next time around). His Dragon did reach Screech's table edge though at one point, unfortunately he pulled a Neverness and blew his collective to-hit rolls and derived minimal benefits from the C3's lack of modifiers.

Screech 'posing' with his Grey Death Legion force.

Honestly, the game became more fun when I told Frankie that the prudent commander would see that the cause was lost and surrender. However the Combine's Bushido philosophy said: NO and the suicide charges began in earnest!

The IFF is...confused. 

(Always remember to paint your mechs kids!)

In a nutshell: we got tabled. As such I can't say that we're improving and I was a little salty for a moment there about Screech's pair of skill 2 pilots, but the game ended on a high note.  And by 'high note', yes I mean suicide charges and glorious last stands. Those being the Hunchback in the first pic, the Marauders above (Screech's survived with a lone point of structure remaining), and our last to fall, the Jenner below. 

Despite have a damaged fire control system, I've found that yelling: "WILD FIRE!' just before rolling the dice still gets good results!. Thus, this fugly little mech, our last to fall, earned itself a proper paint job. 

On to the next list...

My first impressions of Alpha Strike

 o/

R.I.P little Urbie, R.I.P...

Welp, after about a month of no gaming, I managed to get in a demo game of Alpha Strike with my buddy Screech, with my son Frankie in tow.

The 2/3 that managed to show up. I gave Frankie control of the medium lance whereas I took the light lance. Originally I had planned to split the tanks between us but it was not to be.

Frankie liked the idea of learning a game at the same time as i was, and having only read the same set of 'quick start' rules. I do have the rulebook for AS, but like most rulebooks that I own, I've done little more than look at the pictures and their captions. I'm far more likely to learn a ruleset by muddling thru a game of it than I am to read the rules beforehand.

Screech's unidentified Steiner force was suffering from budget cut and as such, were left without any funds to apply the regimental color scheme to any of their mechs.

300 points seems to be the 'typical' size for AS here locally, and conveniently my Dixie CTM clocks in at just that amount. However much to my surprise/dismay, when I was pulling out our forces at the FLGS, I remembered that I had transferred all of my tanks and infantry to another case which was still at home. 

Urbies have an Impressive (well, for an Urbie) movement rate of 4", which is for both jumping and on foot! That said, they have have a big whopping '0' for a Total Movement Modifier. 

As such, with my heavy armor lance not present, the game was scaled back to 175 points, and I informed Frankie that we were likely doomed without all of our big guns. Hell, it was both a weeknight and a learning game anyways, so what did it matter really?

Flanking maneuver in-progress...

This pics in this post are more of a highlight reel as I only took a few being more interested in getting a feel for the ruleset. Overall its not bad, though I can't say that I expect to like it more than the 'Classic' ruleset (no doubt much to Kushial's delight as he has no interest in AS). 

In the heat haze of heavy combat, Screech's mechs actually blended fairly well with the environs of the battlefield (note: the ubiquitous 'crotch shot' of my opponent in the background). 

I can see what Catalyst is aiming for though and Frankie seemed to enjoy himself. He did say he'd play it again whereas I've never bothered with trying to teach him classic as he lacks the attention span needed for it. I've heard it said that AS is more of a gateway drug into BattleTech and indeed I have to agree with that. 

The Hunchback HBK-4N was the first to mech to fall, much to my surprise as I was expecting the first kill to be a slow and fragile Urbie instead.

In all honesty, AS is fast paced enough, and units fragile enough that out-right kills are so much more common than in Classic that My Beloved Wolfy might have actually enjoyed this ruleset. For those who don't know, I'm referring to my late wife who was a gamer but HATED BattleTech as it 'impossibly made giant stompy robots boring'. For those who knew her, and her special loathing of BattleTech, that is a HUGE compliment to the design team!

Screech isn't offering advice here, but is rather looking at our cards to see which mech of ours is likely to fall next. Schmuck.

We tried the pilot die optional rule, where you roll 1 differently colored D6 and then another for every point of damage in your range bracket to simulate the possibility of some weapons hitting and some not, rather than the all or nothing approach. Honestly, I can see some form of that approach to shooting bleeding back into Classic. Although my little 14 section mini-tackle box filled with dice does a fine job on its own. 

The Warhammer went down next though an Urbie and commando went with it. Luckily Screech kinda blew his die rolling a little and the Uziel managed to hang on with 1 point of structure left!

All in all it was fun and definitely worth trying again. I don't think it'll displace Classic BattleTech (for me anyways), and I look forward to tryout some more lists with it in the future. Screech won with three kills to our one.

Alas poor Urbie, I knew him...

Ace Darwin's Whipits

 o/

My incarnation of Ace Darwin's Whipits circa mid-3050s.

I've always liked this unit, and it's a prefect dumping ground for my 1-off paint jobs as well. I've decided to give my band of Whipits a bit more personality and as such, all of the Mechwarriors have callsigns painted on the back of their bases. They're also much more highly skilled than my usual horde of 4/5 noobs.

Their callsigns.

What follows are the little backstories that I've come up for each of my named mechwarriors.

Ravyn: The only female mechwarrior in this lot, she's a former (and at best fair to middling) Solaris jock who competed in several smaller leagues but never hit the big time. Her immaculately maintained yet stock SHD-2H is always painted jet black, which goes with both her hair, and some would say her heart (though not to her face mind you). Side note: The spelling of her name is done in the same manner as an old, long lost friend of mine from a few decades ago. 

Yankee: Yankee earned his name a few years back when fighting Screech's Nova Cats. I had two new Enforcers in bare resin, one grey (and now in my St. Ives lance from the prior post), and the other in blue resin. Dubbed Rebel & Yankee respectively, their performance was at best adequate though my mercs were taking a beating under the withering hail of superior clan pilots and technology. Then Yankee managed a lucky roll and put an AC-10 round thru the cockpit of either a heavy or assault omni-mech, and turning it's trueborn pilot into goo. The mech was painted within a week and the name stuck (unlike Rebel's).

Yankee's ENF-4R has been upgraded with an aftermarket SLEP package. The mech has been reskinned in ferro fibrous armor which shaved a half ton off of it's overall weight, and yet still having enough armor plating left over to reinforce the mech's rear torso armor to something almost approaching respectable. The remaining half ton was utilized by added CASE to the AC's ammo bay.

A glamour shot of Ace's both famous and customized Pink Panther. 

Ace: Canon backstory.

Here's a better look at their Pink Panther paw insignias. 

Hopper: I don't have much on Hopper other than to say that if on hearing his name the somewhat disheveled sheriff from Stranger Things comes to mind, then you're on the right track. His stock GRH-5H is nothing fancy, but like his Netflix counterpart, he's both a good guy and generally gets the job done.

Ronin: Ronin's a veteran/deserter of one of the renegade DCMS units that revolted during the Ronin war. Rather than fight in a glorious if suicidal last stand as Bushido would dictate, he instead took the pragmatic route and somehow managed to flee into exile as a mercenary. Unlike Ravyn's SHD-2H, Ronin' has been modified. The head mounted SRM-2 has been swapped out for a 2nd medium laser, and the weight saved by the removal of the SRM's ammo was used to add an Artemis IV targeting system to the LRM-5. 

I also have a Wasp on the way (and the rest of the lance that it comes with it, though only the Wasp will join the Whipits). Color scheme and name for the Wasp and it's pilot are still to be determined. 

Seven more mechs cross the finish line!

 o/

Huzzah! It should be noted that the Wolfhound in the middle finished first. 

Its always good to get some more minis added to the finished painting stage! As you can see above I finished up the last three mechs in my army for the Lyran Alliance's Dixie CTM. While in back is a medium lance for my St. Ives Cheveau-Leger (Light Horse). 

First up the Cixie CTM:

No Lyran formation is complete without a Hatchetman (some would say Atlas, but I don't currently own any of those monsters). The Wolfhound is in the middle, my first ever for one of these mechs, and a Hunchback rounds the unit out on the right.

This is a custom refit of the HBK-4N. Arguably the worst of the original Hunchback variants, This 3D print came with a pathetically wimpy AC-5 gun barrel (more akin to the Uziel's machine guns). So I swapped it out for a Team Yankee minigun out of the bitz box and came up with a record sheet that swaps out the AC-5 for a RAC-2 (which conveniently is both the same weight and has the same range!).

My apologies for the crummy lighting in my basement, but...well it is a basement. Here is my entire painted Dixie CTM force, a combined arms, reinforced company. This by far the largest painted formation in my entire Battletech collection!

Next up is the St. Ives' Cheveau-Leger:

This lance is the first of three planned for this army. Left to right is an Enforcer, Jagermech, Vindicator and lastly another Hunchback, this time an HBK-4SP.

The basing on these three look like the ruins of an aerospace port, or perhaps a mech staging area. The Hunchback meanwhile has the ruins of a bricked building on it's base. 

The camera's flash doesn't really do these any justice (again in the basement). I wanted to show these with the originally painted Urbie, which is the first of four. Depending on the era, the St. Ives Military Compact can either be fielded as a stand-alone nation, or as part of the Capellan Confederation's Armed Forces (which requires LOTS of Urbies!!). 

When obscure militias collide!

 o/

There seems to be heavy traffic in the Valley of Death.

Kushial  and I managed to get in a game this past weekend. I only took a handful of pics that are below as he intended to post a battle report I think...

My Dixie CTM  force gathered up for a glamor shot.

Kushial's Ozawa (aka: Yowza!) Urban Defense Brigade,

deployed on what he was calling 'Fort AC-10'.

Both of our initial deployments. The (shallow) river was just counted as difficult terrain so that the tanks wouldn't be hamstrung in their movement options.

Early on with the fast movers out in front and the infantry deploying out of the heavy APC on the island.

Optimal range = a short ranged bloodbath. Also known as a place where that Commando seriously did not belong!

I won't post any spoilers in regards as to who won in hopes of a future battle report via Kushial. It was fun to play a game in which every model was painted (as opposed the Alpha Strike game being played behind us, in which nothing was even primed!).

This week in random paint jobs (part 2)

 

One of these is not like...anything else...ever.

As stated in part 1, bereft of a game to play this past Saturday evening, I opted to clear some of the half painted stuff off of my desk, the Battletech portion of which you can see above. 

Parallel parking a 20-ton mech is an absolute bitch!  

Hot feet! Hot Feet!

This is a Locust C for my Hell's Horses Iota Galaxy. The Locust C, is a refit of a captured inner sphere mech refitted with Clan weaponry for use by solahma (2nd line) mechwarriors. Given that the Iota Galaxy's mechwarriors are generally considered to be dezgra (honorless scum) its really notta bad ride. 

I've designated this class of Frankenmech the WTF-o7.

No weapons face the rear though you can see the remote sensor dispenser's ejection port at the lower waist. Naturally, said sensors have long run out with no hope of resupply. 

This...thing, was gifted to me by Kushial and I had to look it up Sarna to figure out what it even was. Frankenmechs exist only in the periphery where proper mechs are all but impossible to come by, and what few mechs that are there, are little more salvaged wreckage augmented with whatever scrap and spare parts that can be found. 

Once they reach the heavy-to-assault weight class, they're often referred to as 'Corsairs', though I'm just sticking with 'Frankenmech' for my WTF-o7. It's outfitted with an eclectic array of weaponry, armor values that vary across every location (with no consistency what-so-ever), and a half dozen or so wasted tons due to cannibalization, jury-rigging, and shit just no longer working yet not worth the effort of removing (like that sensor dispenser).

This one will be piloted by an Errant mechwarrior, basically the sole defender of a planet. A few of these Errants were the first victims of the Clans when their invasion entered the deep periphery, leading them to believe that the Inner Sphere had degraded to little more than techno-barbarism. 

Anyways, the WTF-o7 will likely fight alongside my piss-poor periphery mercs Battle Rattle. I'll probably toss in a Podunk PDF tank or two and some infantry to round out the points for a game.

Enter: The Self-described 9th Level of Hell

 o/

The fist almost looks to be disembodied in front of the backdrop.

In recognition of being the MVP from my last game, I painted my primed Hellhound mech. However, rather than paint it in Snow Raven colors to match the already painted Shadow Hawk C, I instead painted it in the colors of one of my all-time favorite of BattleTech units: The Hell's Horses' Iota Galaxy, whose members refer to the unit as the ninth level of hell. 

The 'fire' was surprisingly simple, just requiring a bit of patience to allow each color to dry before adding the next.

The Iota galaxy is the worst of the Horses' least respectable warriors, the trouble makers, discipline problems, and problem children. Just my kind of unit! Honorable tactics are about as common in Iota as ethics and scruples. 

Lacking any unit colors barring just plain black, the mechwarriors and vehicle crews have taken to painting their machine with fiery motifs for no other reason than that they simply can. 

I knocked this mech out in under an hour which is quite a bit quicker than painting literally anything GW.

I'm debating on whether or not I'll keep the Ravens' Epsilon painted minis, or if I'll adjust their teal blue sections for fiery blue flames instead. 

The Battle against the Mech that shall not be named

 o/

The following battle report is of my game vs. Kushial that we played Saturday night. Kushial said that it's been at least three years since we've played Battletech against one another and while I find that hard to believe, I gave up on trying to find a battle report on here of the two of us playing a game. 

We played our usual 8k points at the local FLGS on one of their 3D printed maps which was really quite a treat! He was fielding the Lyran Alliance's Donegal Guards whilst I had the Clan Snow Raven's Epsilon Galaxy. 

Both sides deployed.

Moving up the center with a Shadow Hawk C and Hellhound, my pilots started to question their superior technology in the face of all of the massed tonnage and firepower before them...

As my Star Commander's Adder drops off it's load of Elementals, the mech that shall not be named is spotted and a furious exchange of gunfire ensues. The Adder loses that fight as virtually all of the enemy mech's fire connects with the Adder's right leg (while it's UAC-5 rounds fly off into the ether)!

On the rest of the board, my fire was a bit of a mixed bag, with the Shadow Hawk likewise taking a LOT of damage to it's right leg whereas I seemed to be carving thru his right torsos. Then of course there was the piranha, blazing away with lasers and a dozen machine guns a turn and hitting with just one MG on average before his Valkyrie jumped away again. 

The Mech that shall not be named outmaneuvered me following a mistake on my part, and dishonorably kicked the Adder's already crippled leg, destroying it and removing the mech from the game. The Shadow Hawk took command as it was painted, only to lose it's leg a turn later. 

Command then fell to my Primed Hellhound which had the most surviving paint left in my force (and was also inflicting the most damage overall). Here it unloads in the the Mech that shall not be named while in the background the Elementals and piranha collectively sandblast about 40 points of armor off of the sides of the Donegal Black Knight! As heavily armored and undamaged as the Knight was, it merely found this experience to be irritating.

The Hellhound punches thru one of the side torsos of the not named mech and hit the SRM Ammo, obliterating it and avenging the fallen Star Commander! He hoped that this act would inspire his remaining troops...

However it was not to be as the piranha, dreadfully overheated due to an engine hit, tried to duke it out at point blank range with the Donegal HBK-4P. A dazzling exchange of 8 medium lasers vs. 12 MGs and an ER small laser ended in the only obvious result.

At this point my 2 remaining Hellhounds (of which the unprimed one had lost half of it's weapons) bugged out, leaving the 4 remaining Elementals for dead. 

As crushing of a defeat as it was, this was still a fun game and I'm looking forward to vastly more frequent games with Kushial in the future!

The latest off of the painting table...

 o/

Comstar and/or the Wobblies in the back row and a pair of tanks for the Dixie CTM in front.

These three mechs literally took no time at all thanks to GW's white contrast paint. The Flashman on the left was a repaint as was the chunk of a commando that is being overtaken by the flora on its base. The Archer in the middle, is my chief negotiator when it comes to past due phone bills and pleas to not nuke one's homeworld from orbit (again). Lastly the Vulcan on the right will serve simply as a distraction/harasser. These three flesh out my Level II which already has a pair of Crabs and a Sentinel.

Meanwhile my recently painted Steiner scout squad was seriously lacking in brute force and more importantly tonnage. These two PPC variant Brutus assault tanks correct those concerns, as will the still WiP Manticores in my painting queue. As always, there is a matching heavy APC in the works as well for the hauling about of their token infantry platoon.