Weekly painting update.

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Just a quick post of this week's painted minis. I did play a game last night, but didn't take too many pics. Unless I can get some photos from Nick, I'll have to skip the battle report on that game. 

The hero of my last post, the Demolisher/Devastator tank is now painted, replete with nose hull art and 3 kill markers on the turret. The sides of the turret are a slightly darker shade of tan making this one of the rare, 2-tone models in my Desert Horde. 

Also for the Desert Horde, for when we play in the SLDF/Early Succession wars era, the rare LBX carrier. Equipped with 2 LBX 10s, and 3 LRM 5s, and a decent amount of armor, I'm hard pressed to wonder why a Lostech version with standard AC-10s was never created. 

I am tempted to order more of these, though we rarely play in that era so am not sure how often even this mini will actually get used. 

Lastly, my Fire Mandrills Elemental point is now painted. Being the closest in game to 40K's Spess Mahreenz, I'm thinking in hindsight that I ought to have painted them like ANGRY MARINES!! as Neverness suggested when I posted pics of thier mech star. 

Just a good ol' fashioned slugfest!

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Two different flavors of death by a thousand paper cuts. 

Last week I played a game at the FLGS vs. Anthony again, where the scenario was simple:

Just kill each other! 

8K, Clan Invasion Era, I was fielding my Desert Horde as mercenaries this time vs: whatever Anthony put in his force. He's still a newer player so is not concerned with faction limitations. It's kinda like fighting an ilClan era force, albeit with units from the 3050s. 

I didn't get force pics, but we fielded the following: 

Desert Horde Mercs:  Crusader CRD-6T, Shadow Hawk SHD-3H, Cicada CDA-3G, Starslayer STY-3D, Condor medium tank (Laser), and a Devastator heavy tank.

Anthony's mixed 'star':  King Crab KGC-001, Bane 3, Jenner IIC 3, Fire Falcon D, and a base model Sturmfeur heavy tank. All missiles in his force were Narc capable.

Here's how it went down:

Ugh, not what you want to see coming at you...

The Shadow Hawk tries to swing wide and moves up the flank whereas the Devastator just punches it and runs straight up the middle!

Jenner IIC got cocky, and ran right past the Devastator!

Not a good idea, even with +4 to hit! One AC20 connected with the center torso and that was all she wrote for the Jenner IIC!

After some careful maneuvering, my (narced) Crusader moves into point blank range and these two just start pummeling one another! The Starslayer mesanwhile was firing a consistant large laser & ER PPC shot per turn, usually hitting with at least one per turn. 

I forgot that the starslayer had a rear facing medium laser, not that I would have stopped it from getting narced here. 

Cicada, Condor & Shadow Hawk vs. King Crab = still not a fair fight!. The Sturmfeur was largely immobile at this point and the Devastator started working over the Sturmfeur with it's big guns!

The point blank pummeling continues...

The Starslayer snipes at the Bane while the Crusader turns and smacks the Fire Falcon, causing to to hit the ground!

The Bane falls back out of the Crusader's optimal medium laser range while the Devastator moves into point blank of the Sturmfeur which really cannot defend itself from that range!

Luckily, the King Crab largely wiffed, with the Shadow Hawk's right arm being the only casualty! The Cicada maintains it's point blank attack on the Crab's rear with all guns & even kicking!

Down goes the Sturmfeur!

Oh hey, look who was running from the King Crab on pavement and failed it's PSR...

The Bane keeps living up to it's name and hammers the Crusader, damaging a shoulder which more or less fuck's the firing of half of the Crusader's lasers! Not that I stopped shooting with them or anything...

The King Crab is slowly getting surrounded and taking on heavy fire!

The Bane & Fire Falcon both move into the back corner, for mutual support of each other while my forces move in (with the rest of the board more or less being ignored at this opoint).

In a lucky shot, one of the Condor's ER medium lasers connects with the Bane's head (previously hit by a medium laser from the Crusader). On the crit rolls, both the life support & the mechwarrior connected to it are vaporized! 

Huzzah!

With the Bane down, everything turns their guns onto the King Crab, ignoring the Fire Falcon which is by far the lesser of the two threats left on the table. 

The King Crab goes down fighting, taking off the Crusader's side torso, as the Devastator does the same to the King Crab, resulting in double XL engine-induced kills! The Fire Falcon being the last thing left standing in Anthony's force, wisely fled the field. 

Dude, look at that! Only 6 points of armor left on my Crusader's forward facing! This thing was an LRM sponge! It should have died well before it did!

The King Crab certainly had a rough go of it as well, although oddly a barely hit the CT. 

That was fun and Devastator is already in the process of getting painted in recognition of it's glorious actions in combat! I'm also a fan of the Crusader CRD-6T, it's like an HBK-4P on steroids!

Capturing more bridges...

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One hellova fight in progress!

As promised previously, Nick & I played this scenario again with our roles reversed. This time I was playing the defenders and he the attackers. Oddly, I was playing Capellans and Nick Mercenaries, so we also switched factions. 9300 BV this time as Nick's force was a little off again, 3050s era although Nick would end up fielding no upgraded tech. 

Here's how it all went, or as best I can recall as there were a lot of mechs and tanks on the board. 

My Capellan Homeguard force which I called the Jedburg Militia (Jedburg is a town not far from here, with the most redneck sounding name that I have ever heard of). I had a Heavy Mountain Platoon, 3055 LRM carrier, (2) standard Bulldogs, a Liao Vedette, a UM-60, UM-R63, (2) UM-R60Ls (both with 3/5 pilots), an RVN-3L, RVN-4X, CTF-1X and a CPLT-C4C with a 3/5 pilot and serving as my commander. 

The battlefield during our opening maneuvers.

A better view of the same...

I did not get a group photo of Nick's forces, but you can see them pretty good here. In green were The Swamp Foxes fielding a Highlander, Marauder, Quickdraw & Valkyrie, and in blue with the lightning trim were Haim's Hebrew Hammers (yes really), fielding a Battlemaster, Phoenix Hawk, Warhammer and Wasp. All of his mechs were base models & pilots I believe.

Turn two and both sides finally got a good bead on one another with the Vedette leading the charge down the center.

In my backfield, the Infantry platoon was camped atop a building and calling out targets for the hidden LRM carrier's indirect fire. These two units would neither move nor suffer any damage all game. Firing with impunity, they would connect with a fair few missiles on Nick's forces. 

The suddenly, all hell breaks loose! The Cataphract would put an AC-10 into the head of the Highlander deleting it's life support systems (luckily not needed on this world). The Cataphract would suffer heavily for that, but remained standing. In the backfield, Nick would complain that my RVN-4X was tying up an entire lance though in truth that was not so. 

I love this photo. On the left you can see that if any of Nick's mechs were to hop over my Raven and the building behind it, then they would be squarely in cross hairs of a trio of Urbies as well as an immobilized Bulldog (not quite, but the driver was bleeding out...), which were instead sniping at limited targets and doing so at long range. 

With my Catapult, and all of my forces across the 2nd river providing fire support, my Raven-3L, Cataphract and 2nd Bulldog run straight into a hornet's nest! The Raven whiffed other than to plant a Narc beacon onto the Battlemaster, the Cataphract & Bulldog put in a few hits into the Warhammer, which along with the indirect LRM fire, brought that mech to the ground. In return the Cataphract got mauled with it's autocannon being taken out of action, as well as a rear facing ML. The Bulldog was hit as well I think, but nothing major.

The Catapult meanwhile dumped into the Highlander, hitting with both LRM 20s & large laser for a collective 40 points of damage! 

Just another angle of the brawl on the boulevard.

Behind all of this, the first bridge was heating up as well...

Successfully having run the inital gauntlet, the Vedette moved to secure the first bridge. My RVN-4X and Nick's Valk & Quickdraw all jumped onto the bridge as well (luckily it was sturdy). They traded fire but no major damage was suffered as the movement mods were pretty high all around. 

Meanwhile one of my UM-R60Ls held the 2nd bridge, daring something to come around the corner. With so many models firing, the non-firing R60Ls went unnoticed in the chaos. We don't declare mech variants beforehand, so Nick probably assumed that the Urbie on the bridge was another standard one. That said, with 4 Urbies on the table, he commented while we were deploying that there was likely an AC-20 Urbie hiding in there somewhere. 

You're about to find out why Nick really doesn't like this Catapult variant...

Things got rather ugly when Nick's Mercenaries made a late push on the 2nd bridge! The Cataphract backed up to a building to dump its now useless AC ammo (which had little armor by this point to hide behind). The Catapult took a punishing volley of fire that knocked it from it's feet, but not before it put it's large laser into the Highlander's head, vaporizing the mechwarrior within! The Phoenix Hawk & Wasp jump onto the Bridge and the Urbie damned near takes the Phoenix Hawk's leg off with an AC-20 slug! Knocking the mech to the ground. 

The Brawl from the first bridge moves on up the street following the rest of the mechs, while the vedette stayed behind, successfully securing that objective. The Narc'ed Battlemaster ran into some heavy trees to (successfully) avoid any incoming fire and damaging the 3L Raven which whiffed it's shooting at the wasp aside from plunking a Narc beacon onto the back of that mech's head.

My backline continued to fire at whatever was in range all game, the 2nd UM-R60L took a pot shot on this last turn, cratering a building and scaring the be Jesus out of the Battlemaster, but doing little more. Nick was not pleased by the realization that there were two AC-20 Urbies were on the table. Aside from the Bulldog in the trees, none of my units in this last pic suffered any damage in this game. 

By this point in time it was 9:45pm on a weeknight and Nick ran up the white flag. I held 1 bridge, the 2nd was contested with my R60L staring down a Phoenix Hawk and Wasp, both of which had one leg into structure. The Highlander was down, the Warhammer not far from it, and...well everything on that road leading to bridge #2 was moderately to severely damaged in one way or another. 

I still had a pristine LRM carrier, spotter platoon and trio of Urbies in the backfield, The Urbie on Bridge 2 took a ML hit I think. While not mobile by any means, were there still time to play this one out, he wasn't sure his battered forces could weather this untouched force, while still having to deal with my first wave units. 

Once again this was a fun scenario, and again a close one with 1 bridge held and the 2nd contested. After the first game, I was fearing Nick would arrive with his Demolisher tanks, to do to me what I had previously done to him. Likewise while the infantry spotters and 3055 LRM carrier preformed admirably, all it would have taken was 1 VTOL to zip into the backfield and wreck my day. I don't think he did anything wrong tactically, rather I just got really lucky with his traditionally built force. It allowed my static backline and sheer numbers carry the day. 

A few more projects & game highlights

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We had another rain sodden weekend which lead to a bevy of painting time. So see below at what all crossed the finish line: 

First up: I completed the last three mechs, a Shadow Hawk IIC, Crab/Night Chanter and a Lancelot for my Fire Mandrill Kindraa Mattila-Carrol (gosh that's an awful thing to both type and have to say!) star. This star is a fast moving glass cannon. 

Brightly colored and bordering on obnoxious!

I almost took this for a game eariler this week, but couldn't squeeze them down to 6k BV without running prettymuch all 4/5 pilots which is not at all in the flavor of the clans, not even for the crappy solahma units that I tend to favor. I still plan to paint up a point of Elementals to hitch a ride on the Night Chanter, but nothing is currently planned to expand them beyond that. 

One of these is frightening, and it is not the one you are thinking it is...

Next up: An armor lance for Corey's Cavaliers. In my recent game where the Cavaliers & Turtles took the bridges from the Capellans, The Cavaliers couldn't help but note that the tanks had largely carried the day. Unable to convince the Turtles to join their ranks (the tankers simply took their payment and left), the Cavaliers sought to purchase and outfit their own assault armor lance. 

I tried to tie in the brown accents on the mech's lower limbs by adding it to the lower and rear hulls.

They started off with the Shrek which killed their budget for this project, and corners had to be cut to flesh out the lance. Two Scorpions and a Vedette round out the force. That said, in another recent training skirmish scrum with Anthony & Aiden where my Cavaliers were woefully outgunned, my new armor lance suffered 75% casualties. 

You know how this worked out...

I used the Armor Scorpions which, in both cases required an extra turn of shooting to finish them off. In the interim they landed a few AC-5 slugs before expiring. 

After his other Mad Cat was crippled by Anthony's forces, my Vedette scored a glorious SRM hit that caused Aiden to run up the white flag! This also saved my (by-then armless) Rifleman from certain destruction.

My armor lance's MVP was AC-2 Vedette that plinked an AC-2 round into a Highlander IIC's cockpit, and later put an SRM into a Mad Cat's side with a snake eyes crit yielding 2 XL engine hits! It took a few good licks in return, but survived the game! It has thus been promoted to the lance's lead tank. 

And last but not the least:

I mean seriously, why would it be any other number?

An old custom decal from Fallout Hobbies (they no longer offer this service).

Lastly, I finally put the decals on my Canopian Pleasure Circus' dropship. Sadly, it does not feature in games at the FLGS as the last time I brought it there to use as terrain, one of the landing gear's 'feet' broke. Thus, it is only used here at the house.