A New Force

Yeah, I know what you're thinking.  There is an Eridani Light Horse regiment, a Donegal Guard regiment, most of an Arkab regiment, a militia regiment, some Ghost Bears, why are you messing with a new regiment?  I'm blaming this one on Cheef.  He had to share that pic of the Robotech mechs from Kids Logic (now also available through Aries Miniatures) which of course lead me to ordering a lance of them because who doesn't love the Phoenix Hawk?

But this is where the problem came in.  The ELH and Donegal Guard force are completed and have no room to add to them.  I really don't want to put the lance in the Arkab unit as they just don't fit the feel of everything else in the unit.  The militia was a possibility but I'm already got the miniatures coming to finish off the 3rd company and don't really want to expand it past the single battalion at the moment.  So what to do?  Well, I decided to make a small supplemental force that I can easily use with the militia or ELH and in a stretch with the Donegal force.  And just what am I planning?  A small force of MI6 Rabid Foxes is just the thing.  Since they don't have a set color scheme (being covert and all), I went with a nice dark scheme with just a bit of color to break up the model.  I really like how the gunmetal blue came out actually.

Plan for this is just a single company at the absolute most and no plans to add to this single lance for a while.  But very maneuverable medium mechs with decent firepower make perfect sense for such a unit.  This will make a nice unit though to attach to the militia as advisors or to an ELH unit as liaisons.

I've also found an interesting website that has gotten a couple orders from me now.  It's a discount site that has a lot of great deals and I found an interesting Robotech one that fits the theme of this post quite well.  Items all seem to ship very quickly and it's possible to find some really interesting things and cool deals there.

 

It's a good size model with lots of details and options to swap out parts for the look that you want.  It's a good five inches tall and it's one of my favorite collectibles right now.

And this is the configuration I went with for displaying it.  So hope you enjoyed the update and I'm interested to see what suggestions you all might have to adding in the other two lances of the Rabid Foxes.  I'm thinking at least 1 or 2 Wolverines and a Jenner and a Kintaro would also make sense for infiltrating Draconis Combine worlds.  Anyway, still mulling it all over and the expansion is a very back burner thing for now.  So I'll see you all next time and have a great week.

Interesting Points In Battletech History

I'm going to do something a bit different this time.  I don't have any new models or terrain to post so I thought I'd dig into a point in Battletech history and explore it a bit.  We're going to look at the 2nd Hidden War, or as it was also known, the War of Davion Succession.  This took place between 2725 and 2729 between House Davion and House Kurita.

 

In 2696 Mary Davion fell in love with Soto Kurita.  They married 2 years later and she went to the Draconis Combine to raise their children.  To avoid potential heirs who had been raised as Kuritans, Prince Roger Davion passed the Act of Succession in 2700 removing that line from being able to assume the title and rulership of the Federated Suns.  She signed this after a couple years and all was sane and well.  When Roger died a few years later, Mary's younger brother became ruler instead.  After she died in 2715, the current Coordinator of the Draconis Combine, Takiro, claimed she never signed it and her son should be ruler of the Federated Suns.

Not wanting to see a fight between two of it's member states, the First Lord of the Star League, Jonathan Cameron, stepped in to mediate and appointed a committee to investigate the succession.  After eight years, it had achieved no results or conclusions and Kurita ran out of patience and attacked the Davions.  Both sides launched deep strikes that achieved a lot of destruction, some border changes, and not a lot else.  The Star League refused to get involved and had some intrigue of it's own by the head of the Star League Defense Force to try and remove First Lord Jonathan for his sister to get him to make a decision.  Davion's current leader was killed in action leading to a series of victories by Kurita before the SLDF finally got involved and forced them back to roughly the original borders and denied Kurita's claims to the Davion throne.

Now the part I want to explore is what if  Jonathan Cameron hadn't been so hesitant?  If instead of tying up the committee's progress in various side issues, they were allowed to make a decision or had even committed troops earlier if it had gone that far still?  By waiting so long to intervene, especially as it was after the death of Prince Joseph, it caused a major rift between the Davions and the Camerons which lead them to participate in undermining the Star League later down the road.  Because it took so long and had so much invested in it after 8 years of pursuing the claim and then 4 years of war, being denied and pushed back also alienated the Kuritans leading to them to being to actively undermine the Star League as well.  All of which started the path of destruction that would come.

On the other hand, this war also showed that Kurita had been violating the Council Edict of 2650 and had built their household army well beyond what was allowed.  This started the other houses to begin to use various loopholes to build their forces as well.  The cost of this would lead to the later increased taxes on the Periphery to pay for all of this, which also leads to the coming destruction of the Star League.

Anyway, hope you all found this interesting and if so I'll see about doing some more of these.  Have a great one and I'll see you all next time.

New Shelving For My Battletech

So earlier this week I worked on my shelving for my Battletech.  There was plenty of room for them but there was so much space between the shelves that was wasted and caused them to take up so much extra space.  I got a new shelf unit that matched what I was using and cut the uprights in half to get in more shelves.  That allowed me to space out the rest of my collectibles in the living room so I'm going to cover all of this as well.  Since I haven't been spending much at all on war gaming (since I'm barely getting to play any at all lately), I've been spending my splurge funds on action figures, Funko Pops, and similar items instead.

So this is the Battletech shelves with the Eridani Light Horse 21st Striker Regiment on the left two shelves and the Castelton Davion Militia over the 8th Donegal Guard on the right.  Top shelves are Tron, Godzilla, Big Bang Justice League and Battlestar Galactica on the left and Transformers on the right.

Here you can see the rest of the Donegal Guard, my Ghost Bears, and my Arkab Legion forces on the right.  On the left we have Thundercats, Flash Gordon, Labyrinth, and other retro heroes such as Green Hornet, Phantom, Space Ghost, and Rocketeer.  Lower down we have Thunderbirds, a Gonzo one of my nieces got for me, and then Battletech terrain and terrain parts on the right.

Next up is the top of my desk.  We have a lot of Pops obviously, mainly movies and other ones I thought were cool.  Jaws, James Bond, Dirty Dancing, Office Space, Princess Bride, and more to be found here.  Also a variety of other collectibles such as my WW2 Hero collection for Bolt Action Weird War that I never used, some Fortnite figures I thought were cool, various military diecast, Just a catch all for things that don't fit other places.

Now we have my Star Wars collection.  Various action figures, Pops, vehicles from X-Wing and other sets, even a Tie-Fighter Bluetooth speaker down on the bottom shelf.  Since I don't plan on playing X-Wing more, this has given all my ships a home.

Next up is into my DC heroes.  Again a mix of Funko Pops and various action figures.  Figures are from various lines that have caught my eye.  Mainly variety but Shazam and Thanagarians are both common here.

Moving onto Marvel which takes up twice the space as my DC stuff.  This is the first half over my DC shelves.  Up top is Spiderman related on the right and Avengers and Antman stuff on the left.  Plenty of Pops but a mix of action figures as well.  Second shelf is Avengers and Dr Strange related items.  Captain America and Dr Strange have always been characters I like, and Thor works into the collection fairly prominently as well.  The little Pop figures throughout are from a Funko advent calendar box.

These are the other two shelves of Marvel.  Top shelf is X-Men.  There are still some action figures I want to track down for the X-Men but I haven't found them at a price I'm willing to spend yet.  Shadowcat, Juggernaut, Psylocke, Banshee, and Longshot are all on my list of wants.  Lower shelf is Guardians of the Galaxy and a Black Knight figure I really love but didn't fit anywhere else.

Now we have some more retro related items.  First is Wildcats, an interesting group from the 90s Image Comics.  I always liked this group and just need to tract down a Warblade to finish the core group.  Also here is Cheers, Men in Black, and my two 40K Pops.  Next is Masters of the Universe but is a little slim of what is there.  Lowest level is Ghostbusters and I haven't looked for any action figures in that brand.

Here is a collection I've been working more actively one.  GI Joe was a big part of my youth and been slowly getting both the original 3.75 figures and the more modern 4.0 figures.  The art on the wall is by a YouTuber who does reviews of vintage Joes and is a good artist as well.  These are three of my favorite Joes from when I was growing up, Recondo, Beachhead, and Stalker.  It's a pretty small collection compared to what is out there but I've only been going after figures I really enjoy and not a full complete collection.

And last of all, we have my Lord of the Rings below my TV and some X-Men diecasts on the ledge in front of the TV itself.  I only have the one action figure for LOTR, but that's due to them being expensive than I want to spend but I'm hoping to get more of them over time.

So that's my living room of collectibles.  Thanks for coming along on the tour and hope you enjoyed it.  See you all next time.

Finally A Game!

So Saturday afternoon and evening, I finally got some Battletech in with the Cheef.  It was 8K BV per side and we both packed in the models.  I took most of a company of my 8th Donegal Guards with 10 light mechs.  (Fluff wise, I'm just saying the other two were back guarding the dropship ride home.)  There were 5 HCT-3F Hatchetmans, 2 JVN-10N Javelins, a WTH-1S Whitworth, and 2 VLK-QF Valkyries.  The entire force was jump capable and was able to be very mobile on the board.

Cheef took a mixed bag of his 25th Marik Militia with a GRF-1S Griffin, a WTH-1 Whitworth, a WVR-6M Wolverine, a SCP-1N Scorpion, 3 UM-R60 Urbanmechs, and then a Heavy Tracked APC with a Heavy Mountain Platoon.  Like Cheef, I'm a fan of the Urbanmech and the Wolverine is one of my favorite mechs so it was nice seeing them on the table.

Both forces were standard mechs with no advanced tech so a basic enjoyable 3025 force for both of us.  This was a game with several firsts for us.  The first successful Death From Above attack, first time someone killed one of Cheef's infantry platoons, and first time I got to kill something with a Hatchetman's hatchet.  It was a very enjoyable game played over 9ish hours at a casual pace with several breaks throughout for dinner and other things.  We actually remembered to give each other a force list this time which will help with the game reviews we'll both be doing.

We played on Cheef's game table with his urban hex map and new terrain.  The Dropship is very impressive and has made it onto my "I Want One" list.  His force was spread across the board and I went heavy to one side to take advantage of the slow Urbanmech movement to give me a chance to hit his other flank harder while they got into range.  If either of us could roll better, it might have worked too.

I completely forgot about taking pictures for a number of turns.  At this point, we both had some very messed up mechs.  The only kill though so far was where my Valkyrie by the dropship just flamered the last of the infantry platoon away.  While they're only on the list to round out his points total, I don't think he thought I'd bring a unit to kill them like that.  Normally they're good for piling on 6 to 12 points of damage a turn helping wear down a mech.  Somewhere a bit before this picture was the successful death from above attack where one of my Javelins which was missing a side torso  landed on his Scorpion.  He tried to shoot the mech and spoil the attack but only managed 9 of the 10 damaged needed to force the piloting check.

A few turns later and we arrive at what I am referring to as "The Muggings".  His Hunchback was badly hurt with 2 engine hits and his Wolverine in the background had fallen over due to engine hits as well as losing a foot actuator.  At this point the Hatchmans moved in and had favorable rolls.  I also intended to use the hatchets to finish the mediums off and was looking forward to swinging some axes.  Both mechs died from the shooting though and there was no close combat attack.  This was the turn where the game really swung in my direction.  Even though I had several mechs barely functional, he'd lost 3 units to the one dead Javelin on my side so far.

This was right at the end of the game.  My second Javelin died in the bottom corner beside a Hatcheman that fell over while killing his Griffin.  The Griffin punched my Hatchetman in the face forcing a piloting check with I failed but he took a hatchet to the head to decapitate the Griffin.  This was my first kill with a hatchet so it was nice to see it finally get to earn some glory.  At this point do to being able to gang up on his outnumbered force I took out one Urbanmech, knocked one over as ran out of ammo from a torso crit, and the third lost it's AC.

At this point Cheef called it a game as it was getting late and while he could take out some more of my mechs, I was going to be able to just overwhelm his remaining units with weight of fire.  He was down to a barely touched Whitworth that was running low on LRM ammo, a Scorpion in decent shape, 2 Urbanmechs with no weapon capability, and a barely dented (I kicked it in the butt with a Valkyrie at one point) Heavy APC.  I had both Valkyries with no LRM ammo, a very hot Whitworth with 2 engine hits, and 5 Hatchmans all damaged to various degrees from moderate damage to barely upright.

The Raiding Force

So all in all it was a successful raid for the 8th Donegal Guard with the ability to salvage mech parts and supplies from the city area as the remnants of the 25th Marik Militia force withdrew to regroup and call for some assistance.  We both rolled fairly poorly for a while but around midgame my rolls started improving while his continued to be very streaky.  I'm starting to think he and Neverness need to swap dice and see if that helps any.

I'm definitely looking forward to another game (which hopefully won't be in a year or so like this one took to get in).  And in addition I got a cool Eridani Light Horse decal and an Atlas he had no plans to ever field again from Cheef as a late Christmas present.  I'll be making a run up to Cincinnati in a few days and plan to stop by Iron Wind Metals for some mech shopping so keep an eye out for incoming new mechs.  That's all for now and thanks for stopping by.  See you all next time.