Desert Recon Lance

o/

Fast & fragile, just the way scouts ought to be!

These were a bit of a speed paint and as good as they look, you can expect to see more models painted to match these four. They give me a bit of a Desert Storm vibe, with rooster tails of sand billowing out behind them as they tear across the desert sands.  

Opposite view.

Three Galleon Light tanks backed up by a Skulker Wheeled Scout tank is nothing to be feared on the tabletop (well, unless they're C3i Wobblie Galleons...). That said,they do have their uses as distractions, spotters, harassers, as well as for the ever popular Alpha Strike past time of shooting enemies in the back. 

The parts to be obscured by all of the flying sand...

The Skulker, if used as the MG variant, can double as an APC.

The 'turret' is more of a remote weapon station, as on modern AFVs.

Curiously the side guns aren't in sponsons, and so only fire in a 45 degree arc out to the sides, rather than a more proper 180 degrees.

Of course, like all of the other KS tanks, the 'turret' rotates.

The lance itself is also generic enough to be useful in any Inner Sphere faction in practically any era. Hell, they'll even work for the Star League in Exile and the Pentagon Powers.

Battletech painting spree!

 o/

Making up for this year's paucity of painted BattleTech Minis!

In a little over a week's time since my Mercenaries Kickstarter minis arrived, I've painted a company's worth of miniatures! Of those, nine were from the KS and naturally (as you can see) they're not all painted in the same color scheme. 

First up are the Defenders of Andurien: 

The Cicada unit leader is a 3D printed mini, the other three came in my KS Mercenaries boxed set and 2 salvage boxes. Also, with the acquisition of the 'new' (to us) table, these are likely the last pics to be taken outside by the house's siding. 

White with blue & green stripes on the arms & legs, how hard could that be?

Bloody awful is that answer to that question!

Don't expect to see anymore Andurien mechs from me!

This lance is armed with: 6 machine guns, 3 flamers, 7 small lasers (6 rear facing) and 8 medium lasers. Clearly this lance is meant for routing out insurgents and pacifying occupied settlements. As such,  I don't expect much out of them on the tabletop...

The Buffet Assault Group's first contract was as a 2nd line support and garrison unit for the Duchy of Andurien during their secession and invasion of the Capellan Confederation. I say 2nd line as they're not a canon unit and therefore not listed in any of the official histories of that time period. The TBAGers didn't see any heavy fighting until first the Capellan counter attack, followed by Marik's reconquest of the Duchy of Andurien. Up until now I've not had any Andurien Defender mechs to run with my TBAGers. This lance is cheap enough to do just that. 

The CCAF is nothing without it's tanks!

Second to be painted is this armor lance which rounds out my Capellan Confederation's Homeguard company. Although, as they're camouflaged, they could easily be one one of a dozen or so Capellan units. So far the Homeguard has been an oh so inflexible 7 Urbanmechs lead by a lone Raven RVN-4X. Hopefully this lance will help mitigate that somewhat. 

Both Urbie lances have 1, 2, 3 & 4 colored stripes on their tops to differentiate mechs. As cavalry's traditional color is yellow, that is what I chose for this lance. 

The Vedette, while kinda worthless in any era prior to maybe the civil war is still fast, cheap and annoying for an opponent to deal with (and the new mini looks great!). The 2 Bulldogs are as always, under armored and over gunned. That said, with their even average speed, they're practically recon tanks compared to the Urbie horde. Lastly the LRM carrier has plenty of long ranged punch and is wrapped in cardboard as one would expect. Since the launcher covers are down, its also an easy proxy for an MRM carrier if I wanted to go that route. 

My opponent was shocked at what a Piranha could do in Alpha Strike at point blank range, and in the rear arc. He killed it in one volley, but by then it was too late and all six points of damage had already been done to his Nightstar!

This past Friday I played my first game vs. an Ilkhan era opponent. We played 250pts of Alpha Strike using whatever era we wanted. I'm not sure which faction my opponent was playing, not that I'd even heard of several of them when I looked that era up on the master unit list. While perusing the MuL, I looked to see what the Capellan Confederation's unit options for that era were, and following that: watch this space for future additions to my Capellans. 

A Griffin IIC and 3 points of infantry.

Speaking of that game, I fielded a late succession wars era, combined-arms binary of my Hell's Horses Iota galaxy. My opponent, 'Badger' (yes his actual real life name) his assault star's lightest mech was an 85 ton Stalker. He was keen to see what a mostly light-medium combined arms force could do against an assault star. Turns out that they can out run, out maneuver, and damned near overwhelm said assault star which was outnumbered by more than 2:1 at the game's outset.   

I've never had any want to field the Savannah Master, so these will serve as two points (platoons) of Fast Recon mechanized infantry. Just imagine a bunch of infantry laser rifles poking out of the side windows! 

I won, though the victory was pyrrhic, as both sides were retreating by games' end. I'd taken down three mechs, with a 4th deep into structure, for the loss of 4 mechs, 2 light tanks, and 2 points of fast recon infantry. In terms of point values of units killed & disabled I was ahead by a mere 25 points! 

These guys planted the final, killing blow to a Sagittaire assault mech! 

Not sure if that makes up for them being such a pain in the ass to paint...

So pleased was I with my force's victory, that I painted up all of the unpainted units used save the Firefly, which I am likely to give to another faction. This leaves me just 1 mech short of a fully painted Iota binary. My paint jobs also drew several compliments which I always enjoy.  While none of the opposing mechs were painted, of the 4 separate forces that Badger had brought with him, collectively about a third of the mechs were painted. 

You just know that the pilot would love to swat that little Elemental out of the sky!

The red & orange ombre was lost under the yellow of this one. 

Speaking of, I met quite a few BattleTech players that evening, and several of those folks play 40k as well. Also, the FLGS has a BattleTech campaign in the works, so I am looking forward to that as I have only ever played 1-off pick up games. 

'Are you painting a Wafflehouse for your game?'

I was quoting my wife with this post's title.

The 3050 financial reports are in and sadly we have bad news for our investors. This was to be the year that Dunkin Davions would move on from dominating just the breakfast pastry industry, and proceed to conquer the fast food market as a whole! 

First quarter sales started off strong, but by late spring things started to take a turn. Here now at the end of the fiscal year, hundreds of locations have closed across the realm's northern edge. Or at least we think they have, its hard to be certain given that HPG communication with so many occupied worlds has been lost...

Note the occupiers, on patrol around the perimeter. The other three from the squad will become basing decorations. 

It looks suitably out of business I think. 

I've had both the hotdog mech and the Dunkin Davions bouncing around in my collection for years now. The building itself has been in the background of many of my battle reports, and I once painted another hotdog mech for my buddy Rob who owns a Dairy Queen. I don't recall him seeing the humor and that mech is probably buried under the seat of his truck, or the like.

The dumpsters are of course Capellan green rather than Davion green. 

This was my guinea pig model for my new AK streaking grime. For my first try on a not so good 3D print (the building, not the mech), it came out alright I think. I was going for the grimy, out of business look for a building in a city wracked (wrecked?) by the smoke and fires of war. 

Also, I know I said in my last post that I would be showing off some painted KS minis in this post. However I wanted to post this off as I just finished it, so those will have to wait till next time. 

 

My Battletech Kickstarter Shipment has arrived!

 Huzzah!

The Dropship has arrived!

Saturday afternoon I was like a little kid on Christmas morning going thru all of my new toys! 

First off, I got all of the standard stuff: (2) sets of dice (Generic BT and House Steiner) the posters, (they're still in the plastic),the big Mad Cat, the Mercenaries starter box, the Visigoth fighter & lastly the salvage box of Savannah Masters (4 hover tanks, 2 bases; remember that before you join the chorus of complaints about that decision, they were free). 

In addition, I also got the following: 

Salvage boxes: 
Flea x2 (giving me 3 total including the one in the starter box)
Phoenixhawk IIC

Ostscout
Vedette medium tank
Galleon light tank (like the Fleas, this gave me 3 in total)
Shrek heavy Tank
Sturmfeur heavy tank (also bringing those up to 3 in total)

Rifle & Command Lances box:
Bulldog medium tanks x2

Hetzer wheeled tanks x2

Sturmfuer heavy tanks x2

Von Luckner heavy tanks x2

Such a cool sculpt! These are likely to only be used as 'filler' or possibly the APC version.

Recon & Hunter Lances:

Ontos heavy tanks x2

Behemoth heavy tanks x2

Skulker wheeled tanks x2 (LOVE the sculpts on these generally worthless vehicles)

Warrior VTOLs x2

Heavy Recon Lance:

Ostroc

Merlin

Charger

Assassin

Clan Cavalry Star:

Griffin IIC

Shadowhawk IIC

Locust IIC

Jenner IIC

Black Python (I found it odd to not make all 5 mechs be IIC variants)

I also gave the new Battlefield Support rules a look annnnnnd have mixed feeling about them. 

Its like catalyst said: Here, use these amazing new vehicle sculpts, now watch as we give you the 'new and improved' vehicle rules that minimizes them entirely. The vehicle motive crit chart is garbage, but I get that it is there to make Mechs more appealing. Personally, I'll stick with my infantry and tanks operating as they always have using the Total Warfare rules I think.

 

The Behemoth heavy tank, for when you need a free roaming pill box. 

As battlefield support, tanks and infantry are referred to as the generic category of 'assets'. No hit points or armor facings, just take this (not) much damage per turn and roll to see if dead and either you are or aren't. If you survive, there's no damage recorded except that they're slightly easier to kill next turn, and so on. Also like Alpha Strike, all weapons are grouped into a generic set of damage in 1 roll to-hit. Whereas the Behemoth above is bristling with weapons, facing in all directions, needing several rolls, meaning some will hit and some won't. 

Aerotech, otherwise known as: Reading Rulebooks, the Game.

On the flip side of that, we've never bothered with aerospace fighters, off map artillery and minefields as the rules are too convoluted to be bothered with. Sometimes it feels as if the folks writing the BattleTech rules assume we all have PhD's in Mathematics. Whereas using arty, airstrikes and mines via the 'Strikes' category of the new battlefield support rules doesn't bother me very much. That said, I am well aware that my lack of bias towards these new battlefield support rules are due to my having never used the old, Total Warfare ones for these types of attacks before. 

The Battlefield Support rules are optional, and...well, feel a hellova like mixing Alpha Strike rules into Classic BattleTech. I was discussing them with Screech and he'd heard that folks seem to like them, though whether that is what Catalyst is saying, or the community at large remains to be seen I think. Alpha Strike is a gateway drug for Classic, but I don't think it has any place in Classic. 

To battle once more!

 o/

That's me on the right where my grey beard is looking suspiciously like mutton chops!

Happy Labor Day folks! Wow. Its been....EIGHT months since I last posted. What the actual fuck? I had a game or two get cancelled earlier this year due to real life and all of that nonsense. Then, my beautiful wife got a job in Charleston, South Carolina. So everything got boxed up and shipped outta Tennessee to our new home. Working remotely I've been going a bit stir crazy as my only hobbying here of late has been painting 40k minis.

I took this pic one evening after about a 10 minute bike ride from my new house.

In the Charleston area, folks use discord to set up games and being an older player (damned near 50!?!) I was avoiding that but finally joined one. Honestly it looks like a rebranded AOL chatroom to me, but after asking around a bit and getting added onto a few more servers, I replied to somebody looking for a 2500 BV, 3020s era Classic BattleTech game and he accepted. 

I was going to post that this was my first miniature game outside of Tennessee in a quarter of a century. However I just remembered that we used to go to the Atlanta Gamesdays and play in tournaments, so it was more like 15ish years or so instead. Doesn't quite have the same ring to it. Moving on...

There was a temptation to just bring (5) Urbies, but I didn't want to be that guy on my introduction to the South Carolina BattleTech scene. Nick, my opponent laughed and said he'd never considered that and likely would have wanted to cuss me if I had. He brought a battlemat, 3D-printed and painted terrain as well. After we set up the terrain we created a scenario on the fly where he was attacking and I was defending (due to having an Urbie) a large storage tank in the center of the board which had 100 points of structure. 

Here's how it all went down:

The battlefield, the large dropship-looking objective in the middle. 

The Urbie trying to gain altitude for a better advantage in terms of LoS.

As usual, the first few turns were just to advance into range, though the Rifleman was already pumping rounds into the objective much to my dismay.

The Capellan Confederation's Tikonov Lancers launch their raid!

Trying to get lines of sight. The problem with 4/5 pilots across the board (both sides), is that it is hard to hit anything at range. Except of course a large, immobile (-4 to hit) structure.

I'm faster than you! To-hit modifiers kept the Spider from shooting the Wasp, but it did deliver a nice, 3 point punch to the back of the Wasp's fragile head!

Still hammering the objective, a 40K-esque close combat scrum breaks out with my Hatchetman getting into close combat for the first time!

At this point, we gave up on the scenario as the to-hit modifiers made it impossibly easy to win for the attacker. Thus the game descended into the typical 'let's just kill each other' slugfest. The Spider kept punching holes in the Wasp, but stopped when I buried the hatchet in the Wasp's SRM-2 ammo bin!

The combatants scatter, the Phoenix Hawk goes after the Urbie with my Commando (the lousy AC-2 variant) in pursuit. The Spider and Hatchetman kept on after the Rifleman.

Caught in a crossfire, the Rifleman pummels the Hatchetman and in doing so overheats badly!

The Rifleman overheats so much that his ammo cooked off! It was partially my fault as the Hatchetman's AC-10 caused 2 engine crits! That said, the (now) Hatchetlessman also failed his piloting check and hit the ground hard enough for it's pilot to take a snooze for the next 5 turns! It was practically a double kill. 

On the other side of the board, the Phoenix Hawk shot up the Urbie enough to hit the last 3 rounds of AC-10 ammo in the Urbie's bin, obliterating the little guy! 

Not sure if this was a fair fight. The Commando's medium laser arm was gone leaving in point blank range with an AC-2 that was best deployed as an instrument of blunt force trauma (if 2 points of damage can be called that). The Spider just has 2 medium lasers and like the Commando hits like a wet noodle in close combat. The Phoenixhawk on the other hand was nice and toasty, and missing a jump jet or two. 

Unable to outrun my mechs, another scrum ensued for another half a dozen rounds or so where the spider kinda flailed about uselessly in the background while the Commando did the same to the front before finally going down to a lost leg. 

That said, they held up the Phoenixhawk long enough for the Hatchetlessman to wake up, get up and run across the field to deliver a game ending AC-10 Headshot!

Well that was a lot of fun! The original scenario not so much, and when I suggested that it was going down fast enough to play two games, switching roles of attacker and defender that we opted to just shed the scenario entirely. Both sides up until that point had taken minimal to no damage, so it was akin to starting over anyways. 

My opponent Nick was a blast to play against, and I look forward to future games with him. He'll be outta town for a few weeks for work but we already have tentative plans to play upon his return. Also the FLGS' owner was all about building up the local BattleTech community, and was asking about running events. Personally I've never been involved in one of those, but I sent them a link to the Comstar site in my blog roll at right. Those guys run pub tourneys all the time in England.

So hopefully they will be running some similarly styled events in the future. Its taken me a few months in in SC, but I finally think that I'm starting to find my local gamer community! I was also asked about playing Alpha strike and gave a few pointers on that (prefaced with the fact that I am a bit rusty on those rules as well). 

A little bit o' paint, and another 20ish years to go with it!

 o/

One's fast and Nimble, the other is a slug.

I'm finishing out this week by showing off the latest two additions (which includes my 14th and final painted Urbie) to this blog's namesake command: The Buffet Assault Group. Last year the TBAGers lost their two Stingers to the Hell's Horses Iota Galaxy because the Clan refit of the Stinger is sooooo much better than anything the Inner Sphere has to offer. 

The unit icon is visible on the Phoenix Hawk's leg. The Urbie is sporting one as well in the same location.

Those losses dropped the TBAGers down to a mere 5 painted mechs, whereas now I'm one short (again) of a fully painted demi-company. These two unlike my other TBAGer mechs, aren't sporting any primer gray replacement armor plating and/or salvaged whole body parts from other mechs. This means that either (A) they didn't survive the Andurien Crisis contract or (B) came afterwards. I'm leaning towards the latter...

A pic from last night's Alpha Strike game in which my Blood Money mercenaries were unsuccessful in fighting off Screech's Name Pending© mercenaries. The biggest highlight of the game was turn three I think, in which we collectively lost 6 mechs!

I had been limiting the TBAGers lifespan from the 3030s to the 3040 or so. Meaning their first contract in support of the Duchy of Andurien was also their last. However, as we so often play in the Civil War era (3060s), this leaves them woefully outclassed technology-wise. As such, I'm thinking that they managed to somehow pull their shattered unit back together after being expelled from Marik space and survived as a (somewhat) functional command into at least the FedCom civil war.

A Hokie post to start off 2024

 o/

Happy 2024! Currently (as in the time of this posting) the Southern Snowpocalypse ought to be in full swing, which ought to amount to 2-3 inches of snow. Yes, by all means laugh at us as the region shuts down and chaos on the roadways ensues.

I had intended this to be painted in Jade green in honor of the Jade Turkeys, but my son had other ideas...

Its been a bit slow here on the Battletech front here of late, though I have a few updates. First up, The VTH-1 Hokie battleturkey -mech. This STL was released back around Thanksgiving by Hardware Studios and I bought it intending to make a Jade Turkey mockery-mech. I believe Bishop Steiner himself even came up with stats that would ensure that this bird would be cooked if it alpha-struck with all of it's weapons! 

As Frankie only plays Alphastrike, I'll use the stats of the Firestarter FS9-M for this. That is armed with twin medium & small lasers, and a pair machine guns which match this mini's poultry paltry weapons array.

As this rocket booster of a backend will attest, it also moves 12" a turn and can jump which he ought to like. There was a slight misprint, so I painted that up as battle damage.

Frankie however is a HUGE Virginia Tech fan (for those not familiar, their mascot is a Hokie which is another name for a turkey) and instead requested that this be painted in their colors. As such he was thrilled with this and has claimed it for future use.

As of yet, I have no idea which unit will be blessed with this mech's addition...

*****

Next up, I painted up a Golden Urbie that I had intended to use as a plinth mounted, monument-terrain piece to honor the Urbanmech and all of it's gloriousness. However suitable mounts are stupid expensive. As such, it instead it joined Ace Darwin's Whippets under the callsign of 'Hero'. 

Urban warfare at it's finest. Note the fallen Grasshopper behind Hero. When it came to piloting checks, I apparently I couldn't roll higher than a 3 on 2D6 for most of the night. Several mechs fell as a result. 

Hero made it's combat debut which was anything but golden after it failed a piloting check and broke it's LBX-10 during the fall. Unable to flee, it stood its ground and blazed away with small lasers (neither of which missed, for what little that is worth) as it was hacked apart by Kushial's Hatchetman. 

Speaking of, Kushial ought to have a battle report up soon. However by game's end I'd reached the obvious conclusion that Shadowhawks just plain suck. The two which are in my Whippets unit are liable to be retired from service after two consecutive games of fruitlessly plinking away at the enemy with their crummy weaponry.