Battletech: Game of Armoured Combat box number Two

 In order to have more mechs for my Outworlds Alliance and Mercenary Company, the Patchwork Guild, I picked up another Battletech: A Game of Armored Combat box. It also provides me with another beginners rule book, reference sheet, maps and such. See my previous post for details of the mechs in this box set, and here for my Outworlds Alliance paint scheme. The Patchwork Guild paint schemes are variations of the ones here.

Battletech: Inner Sphere Direct Fire Lance and the Patchwork Guild or "The Unseen"

The Battletech Inner Sphere Direct Fire lance has four plastic mechs: Atlas, Orion, Marauder II, and Crusader. The Atlas and Orion are painted with my Federated Suns Regulars colours. the Marauder II and Crusader are for a mercenary group I created, The Patchwork Guild" or "The Unseen". More on them below in this post.

Atlas: 100 tons, slow, Autocannon-20, LRM-20. SRM-6, two medium lasers forward and two medium lasers rear. Painted in Federated Suns Regular colours. 

Orion: 75 tons, regular speed, autocannon-10, LRM-15, SRM-4, two medium lasers.

The next two are part of a mercenary company called the Patchwork Guild and their paint scheme reflects this. They are a made up group by myself and not part of written Battletech cannon. They are mostly veterans of Houses of the Inner Sphere, Periphery groups, Mercenary companies, and Clan warriors who had become disillusioned with their factions. They take contracts that do not target innocents and strive to make things better. Even though the are picky about their contracts the Guild never seems to lack spare parts. When in public they wear patchwork jumpsuits and black full head masks with mirrored frounts, as many are wanted by their original factions, and mimicked for their mechs. They are also nicknamed "The Unseen" because of this.

Crusader: 65 tons, average speed, two LRM-15, Two SRM-6, Two Medium lasers, Two Machine guns. Primed black, heavily drybrushed Iosian Green and drybrushed mix Iosian Green and Menoth White Highlight. Patches of Khador red Highlight, Cygnar Yellow, Cygnar Blue Highlight, Khador Red Base, Murderous Magenta, and Beaten Purple used. Cold Steel on metal parts. Washed with GW Nuln Oil. Sulfur Yellow for missiles, Khador Red Base for lasers, and Thamar Black for projectile weapon barrels. Thamar Black applied to head area with Cryx Bane Base drybrushed on then Cryx Bane Highlight lightly drybrushed on, and Army Painter Gloss used on cockpit window. Base painted cheap black then GW Technical Armageddon Dunes used on base. Army Painter Matt White applied on frount and back base arcs, and finally paint pen was used to write the name of the mech.

Marauder II: 100 tons, slow with jump jets, LB-10X autocannon, two extended range particle projection cannons, and two medium lasers. Primed black, heavily drybrushed Cygnar Yellow and drybrushed mix Cygnar Yellow and Menoth White Highlight. Patches of Khador red Highlight, Iosian Green, Cygnar Blue Highlight, Khador Red Base, Murderous Magenta, and Beaten Purple used. Cold Steel on metal parts. Washed with GW Nuln Oil. Sulfur Yellow for missiles, Khador Red Base for lasers, and Thamar Black for projectile weapon barrels. PPC barrel painted Meridius Blue and in center painted Arcane Blue. Thamar Black applied to head area with Cryx Bane Base drybrushed on then Cryx Bane Highlight lightly drybrushed on, and Army Painter Gloss used on cockpit window. Base painted cheap black then GW Technical Armageddon Dunes used on base. Army Painter Matt White applied on frount and back base arcs, and finally paint pen was used to write the name of the mech.

"

      "The Unseen" will be made up of mechs that in the real world history of Battletech went through legal troubles. They were called this because FASA, the original company that created Battletech, paid money to a company that claimed it had exclusive rights to the mech images from the original Japanese anime outside of Japan. In the mid-90's FASA was sued by Harmony Gold, who owned the Macross Saga rights in the USA, because of the use of several mech images that Harmony Gold owned the rights to. FASA lost the legal battle initially and all the mech images used from any Japanese Anime were severely altered. The originals of these mechs were called "The Unseen". After several decades Topps, the current holders of the Battletech license, won the rights to use the original images. Since I played Battletech when the original images were used and stopped playing (no connection to the removal of the original images) I wanted to make a mercenary company as a nod to these original mechs. A good article on SarnaNet goes into more detail.

Battletech Inner Sphere Striker Lance - Outworlds Alliance

The Battletech Inner Sphere Striker lance has four plastic mechs: Blackjack, Jenner, Panther, and Wolfhound. See here for some data on these mechs. See the Dragon mech here for how I painted them with my Outworlds Alliance paint scheme. 

Battletech: Inner Sphere Support Lance

The Battletech Inner Sphere Support lance has four plastic mechs: Cyclops, Thug, Spider, and Dragon. I have painted them with my Federated Suns regular paint scheme, except for the Dragon. More on that later.

Cyclops: 90 tons, average speed, Autocannon-20, LRM-10, two medium lasers, SRM-4. Many variants.

Thug: 80 tons, average speed, two PPCs and two SRM-6's. 

Spider: 30 tons, extremely fast and with jump jets, two medium lasers.

Dragon: 60 tons, fast, LRM-10, Autocannon-5, two medium lasers. As the Federated Suns never produced the Dragon mech, I have painted it in Outworlds Alliance 4th Wing colours. The Outworlds Alliance will be my second faction and as it borders both the Federated Suns and Draconis Combine (which two of my friends play) I can use them against them and my Federated Suns for teaching games. The second alliance air wing was my inspiration for the paint scheme. 

Primed black, painted GW Contrast Apocathary White, drybrushed GW Praxeti White, the drybrushed Army painter Matt White. Model was painted Craftsmart Pale Blue, then Cygnar Blue Highlight in the upper 2/3rds, then Cygnar Blue Base in the upper third. Then GW Drakenhof Nightshade wash applied to the entire model and the Craftsmart Pale Blue drybrushed to the lower third again. Cold steel for metal parts, Arcane Blue and Matt White for cockpit windows, Cygnar Yellow for missiles, Khorne Red base for lasers was applied. Then a Pedeo acrylic matt white marker was applied to upper third in lightning shaped lines then a Pentel silver pen applied to those lines for bright lightning. 

Battletech: Alpha Strike Commander's Edition

Two weekends ago I played my third game of Battletech: Alpha Strike. When I was introduced to this version of Battletech last year I was very enthusiastic. Another game of it and I was sold on the ruleset and speed of mass unit combat. I love Battletech for its smaller scale combat but the unwieldiness of having more than one mech per player can be tedious and time consuming. The ability to have 12 Mechs per side and finish a game in an afternoon gives me the ability to scratch the large scale gameplay itch.

The Battletech Alpha Strike: Commander's Edition is the current definitive ruleset. There are plans to release a starter box this fall. The basics can be learned quickly and expanded with the plethora of extra rules that can added as the players see fit; more terrain, more movement and combat options, more units. It has it all. There is also the bonus of being able to make your game lists and stat cards for free with Master Unit List and its Alpha Strike Force Builder, an authorized product.

The back of the rulebook.

This is an example in the book of a stat card for the Thunderbolt. Now you can see how the unit rules were simplified to have larger scale games in a short amount of time. 

Here are some images of my third game of Battletech: Alpha Strike, 400points per side, my Federated Suns vs my friend's Kurita. The rules recommend not using a hex map, that Battletech uses, and applying terrain like most tabletop wargames. The objective was a modified "King of the Hill" scenario represented by the landing pad on the top of the central hill.

At the midpoint it was getting quite frantic around the landing pad.

There was a mini conflict happening on a flank between my missile and sniper mechs, and defending skirmish mechs, vs Kurita Skirmish mechs. After I started to withdraw by long range mechs closer to the middle, and providing defensive fire from my skirmish mechs, the tide of battle started to turn in my favour. 

This image is from one of the last turns when my slightly better positioning and luck won the day. By the end, not many mechs were still around and most had fled on the Kurita side with lots of wreckage on mine. I would say that although I had won the battle, my greater casualties would have lost me the longer war.

I look forward to playing many more games of Battletech with this ruleset.