Proud Bull Rising Part 3

Welcome back for part three of my Battletech alternative system.

2820

Having gathered the resources and volunteers needed, Taurus begins the final stages to start colonizing some of the worlds they've been examining. Three of the these worlds, Orkney, Charleston, and Carthage, are within the current Concordat borders with the remaining, Belle Isle, being just beyond them. The continued influx of refugees from the Inner Sphere fleeing the ravages of the First Succession War assist in finding the populations needed to get these colonies going.

All four colonies see a strong growth from the start. The refugees continue to expand the populations allowing them to reach a self sustaining level within a few years. By that point, all are able to begin exporting if not mined minerals and ores, then at least agricultural products to the rest of the Concordat. The desire to see the Concordat as strong as it was in the past drives the support of the average Taurian citizen. They might be unable to reclaim worlds lost long ago to the Davions and Liaos but they can grow outwards and reclaim worlds they had to abandon.

The TDF lures the King's Wild Cards mercenary unit out of Canopian service with favorable terms for anti-piracy and garrison duty. The King's Wild Cards are a light weight regiment that has attritioned down to just over a battalion in strength with no appreciable assistance from the Magistrix armed forces to rebuild or replace their losses. The unit is deployed to New Vandenburg for a year to train with the militia forces while starting to rebuild and then are sent to the Artru System to garrison and train the local militia forces while perfoming patrol sweeps to discourage piracy.

2821

With a handful of new worlds being resettled and several more being explored for their potential, the Taurian economy continues a slow steady growth. Several closed mining complexes are re-examined for the potential of reopening them. Expansion of asteroid mining in several major systems has also in the begining stages of implementation. The newly settled worlds, now with stabile populations and exports increasing, continue to slowly grow as more and more infrastructure is built. Celano, Regis Roost, and Argos are slated as the next worlds to be colonized.

With the official end of the First Succession War, trade with the Inner Sphere realms begins to pick up slowly but significantly as the various Great Houses seek the resources needed to rebuild the many shattered planets and industries across their space as well as their militaries. Exporting minerals and ores begin to give the Taurians the funds needed to further expand their own infrastructure and worlds. Refugees from farther within the Inner Sphere continue to arrive and are directed to the new colonies.

The improving assests of the Ministry of Intelligence leads to a crack down on smugglers and black marketeers. These efforts go a long way to assisting in improving the nation's economy as it eliminates the means for graft and displaced funds. These missions result in the discovery of several agents from other nations who were using the criminal activity as a source of information. One such agent was from the Capellan Confederation who was able to be turned. This new asset gives them insight into Maskirovka agents and missions in the area.

So that is all for this installment and I'll see you all in about a week for part 4.

Proud Bull Rising Part 2

Welcome back to the second installment of our story.

2818 The Taurian Ministry of the Interior reviews its Ministry of Intelligence and makes some changes on both its collection of information along the border as well as well as stepping up the presence of assets on neighboring worlds. Having digested and thoroughly discussed the findings of the defense force review, Protector Artantino and Marshal Choudhoury plan out a long term plan for the growth and improvement of the Taurian military. To help support this from the economic side, the Protector sets the Interior Ministry to begin planning new colonies rimward and spinward of their current borders.

Marshal Choudboury authorizes a new military academy to be formed as an offshoot of the Taurian Ecole Militaire, the Taurian College of Military Sciences. This institute will focus entirely on higher training including large unit tactics, military theory, strategic planning, etc for officers of Subaltern through Colonel ranks. In addition to identifying Taurian officers capable to teaching in this new institute, officers of at least Major rank are brought in from mercenary units hired by the TDF to teach some of the classes or guest lecture.

Work begins at the Taurus Territorial Industries (TTI) plant in the Sterope System to add a production line of WSP-1A Wasp Light Mechs. It is planned to be opened by 2822. This is seen a first step in a long term growth of the Concordat's defense industry to make the TDF stronger and less dependent on outside sources. The Wasp was chosen as the first to be expanded as it would reinforce recon lances as well as the various planetary militias. Other production lines are evaluated for expansion based on need by the TDF and exportability.

2819

Protector Artantino begins a series of meetings and hearings with the Privy Council to see about long term growth for the Taurian Concordat. Trade delegations are sent to the Outworlds Alliance and a number of independent worlds around Taurian space. Less formal contacts are made with the Magistracy of Canopus due to the still higher than normal tensions between the two realms. Talk with independent worlds closest to Taurian space who use to be Concordat worlds in the past are especially targeted by these delegations to draw them once more into the realm.

In preperation for the upcoming commerical, industrial, and military expansions, several battalions worth of militia engineers are activated and are slowly rotated through the various minor worlds of the Concordat with the aim of improving space ports and their attached infrastructure. Survey teams accompany these engineering troops to update planetary maps at the same time. The naval assests assigned to transport and support these forces use their time to update system star charts and replace communication and sensor satellites and bouys.

Marshal Choudboury forms a new force to supplement the TDF, the Concordat Special Services. This unit is trained up to regimental strength and is outside the normal corps structure to allow them to be deployed where needed for more covert missions. Only the best and most loyal soldiers are allowed to apply for the unit. The CSS are trained in a variety of mechs, vehicles, and small arms. They often deploy in units as small as a lance to perform their missions. This unit is trained rigorously between mission to keep their skills at an elite edge. The CSS is also trained to work closely with the Taurian Ministry of Intelligence's Special Task Groups.

That's it for this update and I'll get the next part up in about a week or so. See you all next time!

Proud Bull Rising Part 1

So something a bit different this time. I've always been a fan of alternative history, not just historical but also based on fictional stories as well. However my writing is far far from what is found on most sites for this so while I've been working on something for some time, I'll be posting it here as opposed to on a site dedicated for that. Point Of Divergence Taurian Concordat undergoes major reforms to the Taurian Military and Economy when Rayna Artantino takes over as Protector of the Realm from Semyon Calderon in 2816 rather than continuing on as before.

2816

The new Protector of the Realm Rayna Artantino and the newly promoted Taurian Defense Force Commander in Chief Marshal Natal Choudhoury assemble a team to begin a thorough review of the Taurian Defense Force as well as the training at the Taurian Ecole Militaire, Concordat Aerospace Flight School, and the various conventional training academies found throughout the Concordant. While findings and recommendations from the review are expected fairly quickly, they are also expected to be thorough. It is emphasized to the reviewers that it is better to take longer than hoped than miss something major or gloss over defects and areas of needed improvement.

There were numerous breakdowns in the brief war with the Canopians. The assault on Herotitus was the largest disaster as it saw all but two companies of mechs and a mixed half regiment of conventional forces destroyed before they even landed on the planet. Intelligence failures resulted in the large quantity of aerospace fighters not being identified as part of the planetary defenses. Poor tactics such as lack of a communication interdiction led to the destruction of almost the entire force and caused the remnents to be forced into surrender.

The Privy Council also begins to look into improving the financial and industrial standing of the Concordat. The Concordat needs growth and investment to rebuild its forces and to fund any needed improvements as well as freeing up capacity for growth as the nation needed to halt its slow economic decline. Trade agreements are to be explored as well as looking to expand the gathering of raw resources to increase the industrial output of the realm. Several exploration missions are planned for a number of the underdeveloped worlds in the Taurian Concordat to examine for potential new mineral deposits or ore lodes to exploit.

2817

Marshal Choudboury's work group finishes its review and begins implementing minor tweaks to training standards across the conventional force academies while also making major changes to scouting training in the Ecole Militaire and the Aerospace Flight School. The Marshal recommends to Protector Artantino that the Taurian Ministry of Intelligence under the Ministry of the Interior also undergo a similar review process for the same reason he instituted changes to the scouting training in the Military Academies, the fact that large numbers of Aerospace fighters were undetected on Herotitus during the recent war with the Magistracy of Canopus.

Former Marshal Gertrude Blake-Andrews, who had already been dismissed by the former Protector Semyon Calderon, had led the Detroit half of the Taurian-Canopian War. The Herotitus half of the invasion had been led by Comptroller Augustin Shapiro who had died when ambushed by the massisve wave of undetected Canopian aerospace assets. The entire brief war had shown that the Taurian Defense Force was lacking in force projection, intelligence gathering, strategic level tactics, as well as numerous other smaller deficiencies being identified.

With the two main leaders of the disaster out of the command structure already, Marshal Choudboury carefully evaluates the rest of the TDF command structure and several Comptrollers, Colonels, and Brigadiers are quietly demoted or retired during this timeframe. One bright spot of the actions was Comptroller Hendras Mohandun's defense of Spencer during the Canopian counterattack. It was one of very few things that went quite well during the war. He was duly promoted to Marshal Choudboury's chief of staff and tasked with helping to implement the changes to the TDF.

So that's the first part and I'll be posting new installments about once a week. Hope you all enjoy and see you all next time.

Davion Militia Slapfest

So this past Saturday I finally got a chance to get another game of Battletech in up in Johnson City and once again against Cheef. While I brought a full company of my Davian Ozawa Urban Defense Brigade, Cheef brought most of a mixed company of his Davion Dixie Cavanaugh Theater Militia. I'm not going to do a full blown report but merely do a photo dump with some thoughts about the game.

I decided that with my force deployed all together (hoping to overwhelm part of his force) that the eight UrbanMechs should have the nickname of Fort AC/10.

One of the things I must say is that my crit rolls GREATLY let me down. I didn't make a single one of potentially close to a dozen crit rolls on his mechs and only made a few against his vehicles. I scored a number of motive crits on his vehicles but that didn't exactly help remove their firepower any. This was balanced out though by his own difficulty in getting a lot of his shots to land that should have been easy hits needing around a 5 or so. All in all it was a fun time though and was great to see two fully painted forces totaling 22 units on the board. As Cheef noted in his own quick blurb on this game, the Alpha Strike game on the table beside us had half as many units on the board but didn't even manage one based, painted, or even primed model.

As I mentioned before I am getting some better supplies and equipment to up my painting game for a new regiment of Eridani Light Horse made up of some new Catalysts plastics I already have plus the ones that will be coming from the Mercenaries Kickstarter. My new magnifier with light as arrived. I've got a new batch of better brushes enroute as well as some contrast paints. I plan on starting on a test model here in a couple weeks and I might be asking here for some advice on things from any readers. Currently the plan is White Primer, then GW Imperial Green base paint with Dark Angels Green and Creed Camo contrast paints.

A Variety Of Topics

Hello all again! A few different things to discuss this time around. First up on that list is the $7.5 million elephant in the room, namely the Catalyst Kickstarter for Mercenaries expansion. I did indeed sink some money into this and am quite looking forward to a lot of it. Oddly enough the main box set is the part that has the least amount of plastic in it that I'm looking forward to. I definitely want to get my hands on all the new rules and fluff in the set for sure, however only the Maxim Hover Transports, Ostsol, Quickdraw, and Firefly are on my want list with the rest just not appealing to me and most likely I'll be looking to trade those away with friends from Johnson City after we recieve everything whenever that is. As to the Force Packs, I can't wait to get the Support: Assault and Cavalry, Support: Objectives, and Support: Recon and Hunter packs. Warrior helicopters, Behemoth and Ontos tanks, Skulkers, Long Toms, Hover Tanks, Demolishers and Shreks, what is there not to love? I'll be passing on the Support: Battle and Fire pack as I don't need more SRM or LRM carriers and never cared for the Vendette Tanks.

I'll also be passing on the Clan and ComStar packs as I'm not looking to expand my Clan forces and no desire to field a ComStar/WOBblie force. IS Assault Lance is one I don't care for the mechs and While I DO want the Ostroc, I'm not getting the IS: Heavy Recon pack for it and three mechs I don't want. The Dervish I want some of but not the others so I'll be passing on the IS: Persuit Lance pack as well. Hopefully I can get Ostrocs and Dervish when people start breaking up their packs to sell after everything gets shipped. Now the IS: Recon Lance packs is on my list to get as I want the Ostscout for sure and Javelins and Firestarters are also nice to have, with the Spector left as trade bait as the odd mech out. IS: Security Lance is one I'm on the fence about. I would like the Whitworth and Vulcan, and the Scorpion is slightly tempting though the Jagermech is unappealing. This is one I might pick up retail after it is all over. I'll be passing on all the Legendary packs as none of the characters or specialty mechs really calls to me. The Support: Command Lances will be one I look at getting though as I love the Hetzer, Sturmfeur, and Von Luckners and I'm sure I'll be able to find a home for the Bulldog. The Support: Battle and Sweep Lances though I'll most likely pass on. While I would love to get some Pattons, the Pike isn't appealing and I don't really want the J. Edgars or Drillsons either. Again, this is one I might consider at retail after it is all shipped and in stores regularly.

Now moving on to the swag is where it gets interesting. I'll definitely be getting a full set of the Eridani Light Horse swag. Depending on how the extras all work out Star League would be my second swag choice to go with my ELH, and if there is a third choice it'll most likely be Northwind Highlanders as the tartan items just look too cool. As to the map packs, I'll most likely look to get city battlemats just for something really different from the paper and cardboard maps I already have. Moving on to the Plushies ... I have to get the one Atlas as it's ELH and that's a given. As much as I would like an Urbie, I just don't care for the units they're done in and will have to regretably pass. The 4" MadCat looks cool, and maybe I can talk Cheef into painting it up for me in an interesting Clan Ghost Bear scheme for me one day. I'll be ending up with quite a few salvage boxes and what I do with those will come down to what is in them. The Visigoth fighter will end up as trade bait as again not adding to my Clan forces.

Even though I worked on Wednesday and Thursday, I did catch a fair bit of the livestream that the Catalyst people did on twitch through SixSidesofGaming. A lot of this was quite entertaining including the interview that Rem, Catalyst's new social media director, did with George LeDoux. He is a very entertaining man who seems quite humble and appreciative of how much he has been embraced by the Battletech community over the years. It was a pre-recorded interview from back in Feb but still quite enjoyable. The last hour of the campaign was interesting to watch the whole team on the stream from various locations taking a moment to enjoy its successes while thanking the community and backers profusely. They seemed quite enthusiastic to get into the next stage of the campaign, the backer kits, while already discussing new projects that are on the drawing board already. I thought it quite nice that even though the 8 million mark wasn't unlocked, Loren, the CEO, said that those items wouldn't be allowed to be picked as rewards for the different backer tiers but that they would be including them as possible add-ons in the backer kit which I thought was a nice gesture.

At the moment I'm not doing any painting as I am trying to upgrade my supplies to improve my painting of mechs beyond just table top minimum quality. I've gotten a better lit magnifier to use and have some much better brushes on order as well. I've been looking at some tutorials as well including an interesting one on how to get better consistency when thinning my paints that I'm going to try. I've also picked up some different basing material to see about doing more than one type of basing per unit like I currently do with just grass, fall flocking, snow, or sand. The one thing I am going to remain wary of doing myself, and when it comes time will probably see if I can bring everything up one game night to get Cheef or Neverness to help with, is decals. I just have always had no luck with them and with the new plastic models in such nice quality, I do want this new regiment of ELH to be properly decalled, especially since I already own all the decals to do it with. So that's where we are right now as far as myself and battletech. Hopefully my ramblings made some sense and I'll see you all next time with a battle review as my Ozawa Urban Defense Brigade will be taking the field against Cheef tomorrow evening.

More Progress And More To Do

So I have made some more progress the past couple weeks. First up I took a lot of older plastic and a few metal models of mechs that either I don't care for the mech or at least that particular version of it. It's a group of mechs that aren't worth selling off and yet didn't just want to throw them away either. Thus I lumped them all together into an op force for use in any planned pics for blogs or such. So since this was for a force I wasn't going to care much about, I was looking for soemthing with a fairly simple paint scheme but still a unit I liked even if in a faction I don't like. Thus I landed upon the 15th Dracon. I've always like the unit's fluff and always felt sad that they never were given the chance to break away from the Liao chain around their neck. They have a nice simple grey color with green trim, then toss in a simple sand base with green trim around the base and they're done.

I've also invested in the Catalyst Games Battletech Mercenaries campaign. After initially looking at my Eridani Light Horse regiment with the idea of thinning it out to make room for the new models, I quickly ran into the issue that the new plastics are great looking and just don't match up well with the older plastics and metal models. So with Cheef no doubt laughing at this and saying that he told me so, I'm going to just start a second regiment of Eridani Light Horse with nothing but new models and a few 3D printed that fit well with them. I've already got some units to start shaping it out with the place of pride going to three of the Eridani Force Pack Thunderbolts that I picked up. I still need 1 more to have a full lance of them. However this has lead to a new issue, that being that I have to figure out how to paint jumpjet smoke plumes.

Next up I have another star of Snow Ravens to finish and they should be in the next update. Thanks for stopping by and hope to see you all next time!

Time To Clear The Backlog

Alright, so now that I'm settled into the new job with normal work hours for a change, the first order of business is getting caught up on stuff. Using the new Catalyst Games Battletech Mercenaries Kickstarter as a motivator to make room for all the new plastic that will be arriving later this year, I've broke out the paints and brushes to get some mechs finished. I've gone to batch painting since I do basic paintjobs which allows me to make a lot of progress quickly. Over the past couple weeks I've completed the two engineer mechs for my Eridani Light Horse support forces, 19 mechs for the Ozawa Urban Defense Brigade, and then 15 Clan mechs for the Snow Ravens. I just couldn't get into the Ghost Bear schemes again but I now have a hatred of trying to paint diamonds on top of non-flat topped mechs.

As to the Kickstarter, I'm definitely looking forward to getting some ELH swag as part of the rewards, and any extra swag I get will be SLDF to go with the ELH as well. I'm definitely getting Support: Assault and Cavalry, Support: Objectives, Support: Recon and Hunter, and Security Lance Packs. I'm on the fence with the Recon Lance. Several of the other packs I'm only wanting a single mech out of so I guess I'll be hoping some of these hit the secondary market as singles on the cheap side. All in all I'm pretty pleased with what all is in the Kickstarter and how the rewards are stacking up. I knew it'd clear the goals easily based on the previous ones, but I didn't expect it to hit the base funding in under a minute and then all the original goals in under 16 hours.

I also would like to get some of the Eridani Light Horse Force Packs but with the only mech I want in the pack being the jumping Thunderbolt, I'll be passing on that pack for the time being. So that's where we stand at the moment, and I'll see you all next time for hopefully more progress.