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The before/after mission blurbs in the Mechwarrior 2 campaign were more compelling.
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Oct 8, 2022 03:26
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I listened to all three Blood of Kerensky audiobooks in a weekend and can't remember any fights or characters or anything. I just remember the cool theme song and the weird voice saying "batttletech"
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Oct 8, 2022 03:28
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IlClan is a good sourcebook in its own right but it is significantly better than it has any right to be when that's the companion fiction.
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Oct 8, 2022 03:29
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See I thought the sourcebook was just a lukewarm rehash of JHS Terra.
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Oct 8, 2022 03:32
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I got a lot painted today. I just went with 1 vehicle per base. The 3D printed vehicles (LRM and SRM carriers) you could maybe squeeze two into a base. They're also dirt cheap (less than $1 each) so I could see just making a base with two on it. The Demolisher 2 tank is too big, I don't think you would even see one part of a base if I base it, it's much bigger than a single hex. The scimitar tanks wouldn't fix two to a base. I don't think I'm going to buy much official metal models, the models are old, hard to work with, and super expensive. It was $14 for the two scimitars, when the 3D printed stuff looks way better and is dirt cheap. I really like the official plastic from Catalyst and it feels fairly priced, at least.  
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Oct 8, 2022 04:54
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Good news: plastic tanks in the next kickstarter. I know I'm going to be making a large mistaken when it launches with no regrets.General Battuta posted:See I thought the sourcebook was just a lukewarm rehash of JHS Terra. I haven't read JHS Terra, and feeling no particular connection to any of the factions involved haven't found a reason to go looking for it. 
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Oct 8, 2022 05:03
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General Battuta posted:See I thought the sourcebook was just a lukewarm rehash of JHS Terra. Both of those statements can be true, it can be a lukewarm rehash and still be significantly better than it has any right to be considering the companion fiction. Because the book it's adapting is one of the worst things that I've ever seen published, and if I knew that my name was on something that bad, I honestly don't know if I could go on living.
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Oct 8, 2022 05:31
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Defiance Industries posted:Both of those statements can be true, it can be a lukewarm rehash and still be significantly better than it has any right to be considering the companion fiction. Because the book it's adapting is one of the worst things that I've ever seen published, and if I knew that my name was on something that bad, I honestly don't know if I could go on living. Hey, let’s not say anything we can’t take back. My name’s on the original Destiny as a writer (granted I did nearly check myself out during crunch on that game)
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Oct 8, 2022 19:16
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As a journalist, I've taken my name off articles I didn't believe were worthy of publishing. Just sayin.
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Oct 8, 2022 19:40
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General Battuta posted:See I thought the sourcebook was just a lukewarm rehash of JHS Terra. It reads like a narrative of someone's risk game. "So Alaric piled all his armies into Australia and then having taken that used his two bonus armies to take the Middle East. Meanwhile Malvina like the noob she was split her armies between South America and Europe and lost " Like I don't expect great writing from battletech but if you're going to write your character as a strategic genius you need to do better than whatever that sourcebook was.
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Oct 9, 2022 08:33
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I'm like 98% sure that was having to follow the Hour of the Wolf in which Pardoe thought it would be clever (it was not) and gave absolutely no thought to how much of a problem it would end up being.
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Oct 9, 2022 08:39
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“Traditional Clan Wolf doctrine is to rush in with everything, fast and quick.” This is from a Wolf general in Hour of the Wolf but if this book had told me that was traditional Falcon doctrine, or for that matter traditional Republic doctrine, I’d be equally (un)convinced. It seems like what everyone does. It’s certainly what Malvina and the elite republic Old Guard do. There were a couple good offscreen uses of artillery and the “massed superheavies vs. airdropped Elementals” was pretty cool.
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Oct 9, 2022 16:51
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I’d have a hard time characterizing “traditional Wolf doctrine” other than “win”? Do they really have a notable gimmick or philosophy?
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Oct 9, 2022 16:58
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General Battuta posted:I’d have a hard time characterizing “traditional Wolf doctrine” other than “win”? Do they really have a notable gimmick or philosophy? You know how when you open a character creator in a video game, and you see what your starting point is before you add any distinguishing physical features or change any of the proportions around? That character is Clan Wolf. Then all the other Clans are when they actually used the character creator. Defiance Industries fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Oct 9, 2022 |
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Oct 9, 2022 17:04
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So I just bought the Game of Armored Combat box and am finding it particularly overwhelming to start playing. Probably should have bought the beginner box, but decisions have been made. What's the best way to ease into playing? Is there an abbreviated guide somewhere? A cool scenario to try out?
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Oct 9, 2022 21:19
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unpurposed posted:So I just bought the Game of Armored Combat box and am finding it particularly overwhelming to start playing. Probably should have bought the beginner box, but decisions have been made. There should be a couple scenarios in the box that will ease you into it.
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Oct 9, 2022 23:52
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Goonhammer has recently been putting out Battletech content going through all of the starter boxes and CGL plastics which have personally helped me wrap my head around things better. I'll post them all here in case anyone else needs them: https://www.goonhammer.com/battletech-introduction/ https://www.goonhammer.com/getting-started-with-battletech/ https://www.goonhammer.com/battletech-expanding-on-the-starter-boxes-books-and-inner-sphere/ https://www.goonhammer.com/battletech-expanding-on-the-starter-boxes-clans-and-mercenaries/ https://www.goonhammer.com/battletech-era-overview/ They haven't gotten to the sourcebooks yet but I imagine they will in the next few weeks
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Oct 10, 2022 01:32
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General Battuta posted:I’m trudging through Hour of the Wolf and by far my biggest problem with it, beyond the sense that it’s just reportage on a sure outcome with no tension at all, is that the ENDLESS battle scenes don’t offer any insight into the characters or factions! There’s all this cool kit on the field, tons of new mechs and tanks and poo poo, drones, pocket warships, EMP weapons, bloo blah bloo. But none of this gets any particular examination. There are some vague gestures to the Falcons not taking prisoners and the Wolves…refusing to fight over key targets? But I couldn’t really tell you what a Republic unit fights like vs a Wolf unit vs a Falcon unit. Why are the Wolves always winning? Do they go fast to the enemy’s weak points? Do they use combined arms? Are they different somehow from Operation Revival Wolves? Yeah, it's not a good book. Rock of the Republic identified that the main Republic strategy was to build these huge impregnable redoubts around major targets that they figured the Clans would trial for, and get annihilated by, ala Tukayyid. Mistake #1 was Stone assuming Alaric would fight and trial like the old-school Clans would. Mistake #2 was Stone invited Alaric in, thinking he'd get to kill one Clan at a time, with CJF being invited next after he stomped the Wolves. The basic premise that Alaric decided to being "Un-Clanlike" and fight for territory rather than specific targest isn't a bad one, but Hour of the Wolf fails in so many regards past that. 1) Why is the Republic, once they realize that the Wolves aren't fighting how they planned they would, still feeding their units peacemeal into the Wolf frontline and staying in the redoubst? Regiment after Regiment gets annihilated one at a time. Tyrina Drummond got done dirty. 2) Why did the Republic give any shits about Alaric's hissy fit about guerilla tactics. The Republic blows up an ammo dump, the Wolves respond by levelling a town. And the Republic stops fighting guerilla warfare. Uhhhh, this is your last planet, you lose here it's all over, the Republic should have gone balls-to-the-wall zero fucks given. Let the Wolves level as many towns as they want, it'll turn the population against them and inspire more retaliation. Wolf frontline can't advance if all their supply dumps keep blowing up. 3) Republic was touted as the premier combined arms force in the whole Inner Sphere, yet all the combat is just the big stompy robots. Where are the huge lines of artillery blasting apart Wolf mechs? The Wolves get way more Elemental combat than the Republic does despite them having Clan Enclaves pumping Battle Armor into their Armed Forced for decades. I could go on and on but it just makes me sad. Basically, Catalyst decided they wanted to move past "The Dark Age Era", and that the Republic had to die to make that happen. So BLP wrote the Republic to be as dumb as possible, the Wolves as smart as possible, and the Falcons as vicious as possible (at least that's accurate), and the Wolves win. They should've gone with the original 2013 plan where the Republic and Wolves merge into something new after battering each other completely bloody and unable to rule anything.
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Oct 10, 2022 02:29
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The Republic was made to die, like Rasalhague or St. Ives or any of those pirate states that used to be on the top of the map. Killing them off only made sense, they just should have hired a better author to do it. Or, ideally, not write about it at all, skip over the actual battle so that we, the players, are in the same situation that the characters in universe are. When you're ready to have someone else roll in there, reveal that oh, Alaric won. He's an antagonist, you're allowed to have him just do things as a fait accompli.
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Oct 10, 2022 02:44
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mfw i imagine Battletech tie-in novels written by Battuta:  It'd be like that time Peter Watts wrote the novelization for Crysis II
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Oct 10, 2022 05:16
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I got this fellow finished:   
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Oct 10, 2022 05:53
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I love colorful mechs but the lack of regard for concealment makes me wonder how it got started in the first place. In MWO matches, having decent camo for your environment sadly matters (because ECM and stealth armor make the Mk. I Eyeball highly relevant).
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Oct 10, 2022 06:18
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The classic goony egg boyKesper North posted:I love colorful mechs but the lack of regard for concealment makes me wonder how it got started in the first place. In MWO matches, having decent camo for your environment sadly matters (because ECM and stealth armor make the Mk. I Eyeball highly relevant). MWO operates with everybody operating under double-blind rules. Normally, you can tell where people are because they all have miniature suns in their chests and the ship you took to get here is helping to coordinate your sensor data. However, in "reality" nobody actually goes into combat in their parade scheme on purpose. They use environmentally appropriate camouflage unless they're one of those mercenary units that wants to prove that they don't have a small dick. It's not very effective, but it doesn't really need to be because it's very cheap. I paint my units in parade scheme not because that's actually what they would fight in, but because I simply don't want to have to repaint them every time I pick a different map. Defiance Industries fucked around with this message at 06:24 on Oct 10, 2022 |
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Oct 10, 2022 06:18
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For mercs, I think it makes sense for them to advertise in parade colors as much as possible when not in an active war zone. That probably gets painted over double quick once the bullets start to fly in earnest though. And in tabletop terms, it makes it easier to tell my stuff apart from someone else's. Plus the whole landesknechts in space thing too. Fearless fucked around with this message at 07:25 on Oct 10, 2022 |
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Oct 10, 2022 07:23
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Ah, so MWO is making us bid away our overwatch like filthy Clanners, got it
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Oct 10, 2022 07:34
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Kesper North posted:Ah, so MWO is making us bid away our overwatch like filthy Clanners, got it Always assume that PGI is wrong and has done a really bad job.
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Oct 10, 2022 08:04
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Defiance Industries posted:Always assume that PGI is wrong and has done a really bad job. I was a backer in 2013, I learned that lesson well 
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Oct 10, 2022 08:10
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Kesper North posted:I was a backer in 2013, I learned that lesson well 
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Oct 10, 2022 08:27
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It’s BattleTech, you can always just say your mechs are camouflaged appropriately. Or whatever, really. My bright red 100-tonner Marauder II is actually a Flea in a ghillie suit in this game Really for me it’s this Fearless posted:And in tabletop terms, it makes it easier to tell my stuff apart from someone else's. I am however painting my tanks in deserty camouflage because I want them to theoretically work for any force that might bring along tanks, including a generic militia. Here’s one of my tanks I just finished  Not 100% sure about the brighter metallic on top, might just end up painting it brown. Kinda wanted some kind of accent color but didn’t like how white, red, blue or green looked. Any ideas? a cyborg mug fucked around with this message at 11:14 on Oct 10, 2022 |
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Oct 10, 2022 10:54
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a cyborg mug posted:Not 100% sure about the brighter metallic on top, might just end up painting it brown. Kinda wanted some kind of accent color but didn’t like how white, red, blue or green looked. Any ideas? Bronze looks really nice with brown/green.
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Oct 10, 2022 12:47
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Fearless posted:I got this fellow finished: This looks awesome btw, mentally screenshotting that glass effect on the shoulder
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Oct 10, 2022 13:41
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Defiance Industries posted:The Republic was made to die, like Rasalhague or St. Ives or any of those pirate states that used to be on the top of the map. Killing them off only made sense, they just should have hired a better author to do it. Yeah, it was made to die. Even Wizkids was going to kill off the Republic in Clix from the get-go, and only reversed course when many of the clix fans demanded they be made a full-fledged faction. It's always about the execution (No pun intended) of the act though, not the act itself. Had the Republic gone down fighting, bled the Wolves white, killed Alaric and left them leaderless, I'd be cool with that. Instead they were dum-dums led by a guy with brain freeze (Again, good concept, Stone thinks he's smarter than he is, gets shown up, but poor execution) who got dunked on by the "never-can-lose Wolves".
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Oct 10, 2022 13:58
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There's a lot of rhetoric from the Clan characters about how the Republic was a mistake, and a blight on the universe, and it's a bummer they're probably speaking for the author! I like(d) the Republic. Cool faction, very cool mechs.
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Oct 10, 2022 14:13
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Capntastic posted:I listened to all three Blood of Kerensky audiobooks in a weekend and can't remember any fights or characters or anything. I just remember the cool theme song and the weird voice saying "batttletech" I can sum up all three: A) Kai Allard Liao, Phelan Kell Wolf Ward and Victor Ian Steiner-Davion are all cool and good and chicks dig them. (notice the relationship between names and cool points on the Stackpole scale) B) Everyone else is a 2-dimensional cardboard cutout that either wants to kill the big three or heap adoration on them. C) coruscating, armor mist, man-made lightning, sweaty cockpit heat, etc.
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Oct 10, 2022 14:46
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Fearless posted:I got this fellow finished: This is really, really loving sharp looking.
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Oct 10, 2022 18:40
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Painted my first mech  I’ve done far more 40k and Star Wars models than comfortable admitting to, but mechs still manage to seem a little different. At any rate, yes I was a fan of the cartoon and saw it as it aired, why do you ask   gently caress doing the red axe though, Adam Steiner can keep that to himself in his propaganda series
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Oct 11, 2022 04:14
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You should put some googly eyes above the cockpit. Then when you look at it from above it looks like a happy squid. Source: have been doing this since the 90s
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Oct 11, 2022 04:24
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Defiance Industries posted:You should put some googly eyes above the cockpit. Then when you look at it from above it looks like a happy squid. The mental image of this is good, I’ll think on it  Just finished a Bushwhacker!  The red trim was almost too much, but it worked out well I think.
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Oct 11, 2022 16:36
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Honestly, I'd love to see a slightly less.. well.. grimdark is way too strong a word, but you get the idea. Something like the Ciaphas Cain novels combined with McHale's Navy/F-Troop. Plotline: "Company of misfit mechwarriors get hired as private security on some godforsaken Periphery world. Said bunch of misfits realize that while they're caught out in the Periphery, they really got a sweetheart deal, so they want to keep this going for as long as possible, because well, they're getting paid to walk around in their battlemechs and look tough, but don't have to DO anything." So they're trying to figure a way to convince their employers that they need to renew the contract.." "Think of it this way, kid. We're so far out on the edge of the Sphere that no one minds us being a little... eccentric. Back home, the brass would've wanted weekly inspections, and BattleMech parades down the Capital's main thoroughfare at least twice a year. Depending on how far away you are from the borders of whatever nation you called home, you might spend three-fourths of your time on meaningless bullshit that looks good but does nothing when it comes to fighting time. Spit and polish. Here, it's just spit. Someone like Jake, let's say (pointing to an Archer standing just outside a repair gantry, its pilot taking in the sunny weather with its cockpit open).. would drive some of those Steiner Social Generals absolutely batty. I mean, if "Social General Hassensmasher" saw one of his underlings sunbathing in just a pair of briefs would be bad enough. To have him do it lying on top of his mech in the middle of the day would give him a Steiner Scout Lance-sized coronary. But Jake makes that Archer move like a Mech half its size, and because that matters more to the Cap then whether his shoes are spit shined and his uniform being immaculately tailored. Besides, Jake never lets his hobby get in the way of piloting that thing.. well.. since that time the emergency drill was called, and he spent three hours piloting the Archer in Grantholm Canyon in the middle of the day, while covered in tanning lotion. By the time the drill was over, he was redder than the Combine Logo.. Couldn't wear a shirt for weeks afterwards, he was so burned. We get judged more on how we fight then how we look." Michael looked at Sarge, clearly not fully buying into the story. "But I saw the paperwork, Sarge. We haven't fought more then a training drill in more than two years, ever since Dad accepted the contract here." Sarge's look of outrage looked almost natural on his weathered face, but Jake knew that it was a practiced calculation. "Oh come on, kid. Look at the duty log, I mean, we drove off that bandit scouting party last month." Michael shook his head. "You mean the one that was scattered ground-pounder SRM's that didn't hit anything? Especially where half the security battalion was on leave all at the same time, and returned to camp shortly after the attack was driven off?". Sarge smiled thinly. "A coincidence, of course." Jake pressed his point "Don't you think our employer is going to eventually get wise to the fact that there really isn't anything out here that needs a full company of mechs plus vehicle and infantry support? That we've been basically stealing from them? What's going to happen then?" "Hey, the terms of the deal weren't THAT generous. We were pretty deep in debt when your Dad took the contract. Besides, think of it this way. There's an old saying, you get what you pay for, and it's not like they're paying for Wolf's Dragoons. They know for a lot of Merc Units, there's a reason that units come out this deep in the Periphery. So, they're glad we're eccentric and not, say, pirates or war criminals. And besides, that's what your dad had you come out here for.. to help us maintain our edge so if some bandit kingdom decided for whatever godawful reason to raid this planet, we'd be ready." "Yeah, but I'm beginning to think King Canute had it right when he tried to command the Tide." "King eh? What Periphery nation did he rule?" Michael shook his head. "Never mind Sarge, never mind." I must be a goon. Or high. That was just off the top of my head. SirFozzie fucked around with this message at 10:03 on Oct 12, 2022 |
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Oct 12, 2022 09:48
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So I committed battletech today and picked up a box (IS heavy lance). The FLGS only had two IS lance boxes and two Clanner star ones, none of the actual starting boxes or rulebooks. I don't think there's much of a local BT scene, so I'm looking at painting up at least two sides myself. After looking around, the Free Rasalhague appeals to me, both as a filthy scandigoon and that I like several of their paint schemes. The Hatchetman also feels suitably space vikingy. I don't know of a local BT scene so I plan to paint up two forces. Right now I'm thinking of Lyrans, Kuritans and/or mercs/pirates for IS opfor, and Wolf and/or Ghost Bear for Clanners. By the time I've painted up these four mechs, I assume the new Alpha Strike box should be available.
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Oct 12, 2022 12:26
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