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Wonder if they will sign up to the ORC. In other news, I see this on the Battletech community Facebook page.  The comments...are Facebook. (oh wow, what a Gauss Rifle Snipe) Also, that flag makes me wonder if the Clans are going to attack one of the ex/combined clans (Ghost Bears?), and have the entire Inner Sphere Start sending Mech's to support them indirectly. Comstar fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Jan 13, 2023 |
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Jan 13, 2023 03:02
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That flag is the Ukrainian flag. I saw that post on the facebook page too. So much complaining about new 'woke' authors changing everything ruining it. Stackpole's only been writing Battletech books for 35 years.
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Jan 13, 2023 03:30
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Comstar posted:Wonder if they will sign up to the ORC. correct me if im wrong but isnt the eugenics tech not working as well as it used to? I swear I read this in a setting book released recently
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Jan 13, 2023 07:42
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Floppychop posted:That flag is the Ukrainian flag. I haven't seen any grognards complaining about BattleTech fiction becoming woke. I did see some fans on the forums complain a recent Shrapnel published story was super-incel though. Most of the complaints I see are targeted towards the numerous grammatical and spelling errors in a lot of the new books, as well as some of the more flimsy characters. TheDiceMustRoll posted:correct me if im wrong but isnt the eugenics tech not working as well as it used to? I swear I read this in a setting book released recently The Eugenics program of the Clans, morality aside, has always been a mixed bag. The average Clan character has faster natural reflexes, less body fat, less diseases, than the average Inner Sphere individual, but none of those guarantees someone being a proficient warrior, let alone an effective leader. Plenty of stories abound in both old and new fiction of 'sibkos of great individuals' who all flop their training, leading to much embarrassment from the geneparents (Ter Roshak of Aiden Pryde fame had his entire gene sibko flop). Plus, the dearth of genetic diversity among Clan Warriors can lead to dangerous situations such as when the society genetically engineered diseases to target individuals and their descendants, wiping out whole lines of warriors.
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Jan 13, 2023 14:42
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The Clan eugenics program has never been portrayed as very effective. The actual Clan advantage came from organized training and any Inner Sphere warriors who received similar levels of training were equally effective. And even that advantage is undercut by the specifics of Clan culture. Clan training programs water down their own effectiveness with rituals, nepotism, "bloodletting" practices, and poor leadership because it isn't their best or most experienced that train the next generation but their worst, their mentally ill, and worse who used the younger generations as punching bags to work out their own frustrations and failures. The Clan eugenics program made people who were no better and (usually, fortunately) no worse than any other people. They may have had targeted 'physical performance minimums' but at the end of the day they were still human beings and things like 'skill' aren't inherited genetically. The real thing that's broken down is the Clan training program which, good? I can't blame any Clan warrior for the specifics of their births but the Clan training programs were always monstrous. Their breakdown is exactly the plot development I've been hoping for since the Jade Falcons started calling up unblooded skibkos to bolster their numbers after the Refusal War.
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Jan 13, 2023 15:31
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Crazy Joe Wilson posted:I haven't seen any grognards complaining about BattleTech fiction becoming woke. I did see some fans on the forums complain a recent Shrapnel published story was super-incel though. Most of the complaints I see are targeted towards the numerous grammatical and spelling errors in a lot of the new books, as well as some of the more flimsy characters. gah im trying to find the quote now but I remember it was more of a direct statement, something like a journal entry which was like "oh jeez I hope someone has the balls to tell Alaric that 9/10 iron womb decantings fail because our gene stock has been irradiated" or something like that. I know the main theme in the Clan story has always been "all of the genes in the world can't save you", mechanically speaking a baseline clanner who has been training his entire life for mech combat has the same abilities as a mechwarrior who fought in one campaign, and "campaign" can literally mean a few weeks or months depending on much combat you see
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Jan 13, 2023 15:37
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I used to want more of this from fiction based in the Combine, and then the Clans, but slices of life for non-warriors showing that the whole Way of the Samurai-slash Clan Warrior stuff was a paper thin veneer propped in front of a society that runs on compromise
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Jan 13, 2023 15:39
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:gah im trying to find the quote now but I remember it was more of a direct statement, something like a journal entry which was like "oh jeez I hope someone has the balls to tell Alaric that 9/10 iron womb decantings fail because our gene stock has been irradiated" or something like that. I know the main theme in the Clan story has always been "all of the genes in the world can't save you", mechanically speaking a baseline clanner who has been training his entire life for mech combat has the same abilities as a mechwarrior who fought in one campaign, and "campaign" can literally mean a few weeks or months depending on much combat you see I know in Wars of Reaving it was mentioned so much Clan Wolf genetics were damaged that they tried to steal fresh copies off the Repository on Strana Mechty before their expulsion. I feel like I recall a Manual that did mention Clan Wolf was still suffering with decanting because of that. Decantings and Iron Wombs bring up another really icky subject in BattleTech, the divorcing of mothers and their children in the pregnancy process. There's ton of research out there about all the different ways babies and their mother's bond while still in the womb (A child is born knowing their mother's smell for instance). There's also the way a child's cells and mother's cells interact with each other, with the two exchanging cells that remain in each other's bodies for the rest of their lives (and can actually heal the mother's body). I know the iron wombs were always a "brave new world" sort of thing, but with recent research on all the intricate relations between mother and child in the pregnancy process, the iron wombs seem even more monstrous, because how can they replace any of those natural things? And what kind of psychological effects might those missing pieces have on trueborn children? In the Dark Age novels, there was brief mention about how some Clan enclave cultures (In the Republic) were changing with regards to iron womb technologies. Some had gone full 'freebirth' and didn't care. Others kept the traditional methods (Trueborn focus but allowed freeborns to join military). And others had gone 'realborn' or something like that where they got rid of iron wombs but still arranged marriages in the caste-system. I think it would be neat if some of these surviving Clans like the Spirit Cats and Jade Falcons decided the Iron Wombs just weren't worth it and went full freeborn. Crazy Joe Wilson fucked around with this message at 16:44 on Jan 13, 2023 |
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Jan 13, 2023 16:14
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Crazy Joe Wilson posted:with recent research on all the intricate relations between mother and child in the pregnancy process, the iron wombs seem even more monstrous, because how can they replace any of those natural things? And what kind of psychological effects might those missing pieces have on trueborn children? That's one of the reasons I enjoyed Wolf Pack, even though it wasn't a great novel. At one point early-on, Brian Cameron heads to the Wolfs Dragoons trueborn cloning labs seeking comfort. He's not supposed to know which iron womb chamber he was grown in (and doesn't, even though he technically has the authority to look it up) but is still able to find one that 'feels' like the right one and admits to visiting it frequently. He meets Maeve (not yet Wolf) there who seems to be seeking the same sort of thing.
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Jan 13, 2023 16:23
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The clan eugenics program is a sliding scale from Complete Failure (aerospace) to Okay I Guess (Mechwarriors) to What If We Started Steroids On a Fetus (Elementals). Their biggest failing is that they punished failure too harshly instead of treating it as a learning experience, and only complicated that further by ending who knows how many prospects prematurely with an extreme level of Training Accidents. Also even during the invasion era there were rather blatant clues that the clans that didn't exactly follow The Truebirth Way were doing better. Clan Wolf with a better acceptance of Freebirth members, Clan Ghost Bear with their secondary testing program, Sea Fox with their "Maybe we shouldn't treat merchants like poo poo" approach, and so on.
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Jan 13, 2023 16:49
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:Looks like CGL did the classy move and promoted Land&Sea's first novel on their main page. From what I can tell, it's not to help BLP, but rather the other guy working on it, since he's a part of CGL, which is neat. I wasn't going to look into Land&Sea before, because it seemed like "gently caress you! I'll make my OWN Battletech, with blackjack, and hookers!" but Brent Evan's post made it sound okay. It's weird but I somehow don't trust BLP to not use the deep-sea aliens or Atlanteans or whoever the enemy in that series is as a blatant allegory for leftists or communists or BLM or something. Also while I've enjoyed some of his earlier BattleTech stories like the Highlander books, Hour of the Wolf wasn't exactly inspired writing.
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Jan 13, 2023 16:56
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Crazy Joe Wilson posted:There's ton of research out there about all the different ways babies and their mother's bond while still in the womb (A child is born knowing their mother's smell for instance). There's also the way a child's cells and mother's cells interact with each other, with the two exchanging cells that remain in each other's bodies for the rest of their lives (and can actually heal the mother's body). I know the iron wombs were always a "brave new world" sort of thing, but with recent research on all the intricate relations between mother and child in the pregnancy process, the iron wombs seem even more monstrous, because how can they replace any of those natural things? And what kind of psychological effects might those missing pieces have on trueborn children? 
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Jan 13, 2023 17:07
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Taerkar posted:The clan eugenics program is a sliding scale from Complete Failure (aerospace) to Okay I Guess (Mechwarriors) to What If We Started Steroids On a Fetus (Elementals). Their biggest failing is that they punished failure too harshly instead of treating it as a learning experience, and only complicated that further by ending who knows how many prospects prematurely with an extreme level of Training Accidents. I mean Nicholas Kerensky for all his faults never wrote that trueborns were to be superior or lord over the freeborns. The trueborn program under him was a way for the Clans to super-charge their warrior numbers with theoretically better fighters than what they could do naturally. The trueborn = superior, freeborn = inferior thing came over time as trueborns were seen as designed and intended, versus freeborns being random and unplanned. The Clans that allowed Freeborns far more freedom and equality (Nova Cat, Wolf, Ghost Bear) are adhering closer to the original vision than Clans where freeborns are despised (Viper, Smoke Jaguar, etc.).
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Jan 13, 2023 17:15
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Taerkar posted:The clan eugenics program is a sliding scale from Complete Failure (aerospace) to Okay I Guess (Mechwarriors) to What If We Started Steroids On a Fetus (Elementals). Their biggest failing is that they punished failure too harshly instead of treating it as a learning experience, and only complicated that further by ending who knows how many prospects prematurely with an extreme level of Training Accidents. And after training, regularly pitted 30 of their most capable fighters against each other in tournaments that had a reasonably high probability of killing everyone who wasn't the final victor. The Clans were living the "Life is cheap, BattleMechs are expensive" tagline and proving why it's entirely false.
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Jan 13, 2023 17:26
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PoptartsNinja posted:And after training, regularly pitted 30 of their most capable fighters against each other in tournaments that had a reasonably high probability of killing everyone who wasn't the final victor. And after that, regularly bidding away whatever other advantages they still had in the name of their honor system, because they weren't fighting the Inner Sphere nearly as much as they were fighting each other.
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Jan 13, 2023 17:35
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Icon Of Sin posted:And after that, regularly bidding away whatever other advantages they still had in the name of their honor system, because they weren't fighting the Inner Sphere nearly as much as they were fighting each other. In theory, the bidding system is supposed to be a lot more efficient than the books portray it as. Commanders aren't supposed to say "I bid everything I have to defend X!". If you've got a cluster defending a town, and you're challenged for it, you might bid a binary from it, and then your enemy bids probably smaller for the honor of beating a bigger challenge. Instead in the fiction you see frequently cluster vs. cluster bids or even galaxy vs. galaxy increases vastly the amount of casualties from that conflict. But cluster vs. cluster is more interesting and gives the writer more options.
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Jan 13, 2023 17:48
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A lot depends on A) How important a target is, and how much the upper levels need a victory to boost their Bloodname status (either a prospect for Star Captains, or to improve their politicking ability for Star Colonels and Galaxy Commanders. There ain't no glory for a Galaxy Commander in a Star vs Star battle.
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Jan 13, 2023 18:32
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That's why Galaxy Commanders build special mission units like Vandervahn Chistu's Nicholai Malthus's Falcon's Claws Keshik, so the Galaxy Commander can take personal credit for their small elite force of mostly bloodnamed warriors winning bids against larger, worse-equipped forces even if they themselves were in another star system when actual fighting took place.
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Jan 13, 2023 18:40
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https://bg.battletech.com/news/learn-more-about-the-mercenaries-kickstarter-on-our-pre-launch-page-plus-new-releases-and-street-dates/quote:BACKERKIT PRE-LAUNCH PAGE IS LIVE!
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Jan 13, 2023 20:10
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BattleMaster posted:It's weird but I somehow don't trust BLP to not use the deep-sea aliens or Atlanteans or whoever the enemy in that series is as a blatant allegory for leftists or communists or BLM or something. Also while I've enjoyed some of his earlier BattleTech stories like the Highlander books, Hour of the Wolf wasn't exactly inspired writing. Yes but I don't think it's his choice - but I'm not going to carry water for someone like that. It sounds like an okay setting, so we'll see what they do with it. World's big enough for more western mech stuff
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Jan 13, 2023 20:38
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I think the setting sounds fine, and the mech on the cover looks fine, and I kind of like the apparently much smaller size of it. I specifically do not trust BLP as a writer
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Jan 13, 2023 20:42
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gently caress Pardoe and his Confederate apologia. Anyone willing to work with him is kinda damned by association.
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Jan 13, 2023 20:56
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PoptartsNinja posted:gently caress Pardoe and his Confederate apologia. Anyone willing to work with him is kinda damned by association. Yyyyyyyup
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Jan 13, 2023 21:01
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once again im not here to carry water for that guy, I just remarked it was kind of neat that CGL has the capacity to be the bigger man in a situation like this. Does anyone own any of those dice pucks? That seems like an insane price for a set of dice, are they made out of metal or somethijng?
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Jan 13, 2023 21:18
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The redesigned Ostroc and Mobile HQ look pretty sweet! I'd kind of like to have a mobile HQ to be a C3 master node, I'm trying to build out a combined-arms section to go along with a light/medium lance or two for my mercs.
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Jan 13, 2023 21:26
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A mobile HQ is more of an objective marker, you probably don't want it in your c3 network. Imagine being able to shut down the whole network by putting an ECM at any point during the many kilometers between it and the actual fighting.
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Jan 13, 2023 21:35
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:once again im not here to carry water for that guy And I'm not calling you out. I'm just saying that Pardoe chose which bridges he wanted to burn on his march to Atlantis.
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Jan 13, 2023 21:36
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:
Yeah, they are made of metal. I wanted to get some for a video on BT dice I’m making but they’re like 20-30€ for one die and um gently caress that
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Jan 13, 2023 22:03
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A Mobile HQ does give you +2 to your initiative rolls for 300-ish BV so I could see someone wanting to field one from time to time, especially in fluffier force compositions
a cyborg mug fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Jan 13, 2023 |
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Jan 13, 2023 22:06
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Diamond Shark / Sea Fox is my favorite clan and I'm a sucker for fancy dice. So I have a set on the way. $60 for a set of 6 with spiffy engraving and a matching metal case isn't too bad
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Jan 14, 2023 00:36
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Speaking of Sea Fox, Skate or the ilKhanate probably would've been easier; but after failing to achieve an convincing-looking turtle-shell effect for Tiburon Khanate, I settled on Fox Khanate. I'm pretty pleased with those basetones, I hit pretty much exactly the shade of seafoam I was looking for.  I'm not sure how I'm going to pull off tattooing 15 'Mechs yet. I want to make sure it's respectful. PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 02:05 on Jan 14, 2023 |
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Jan 14, 2023 01:53
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PoptartsNinja posted:I'm pretty pleased with those basetones, I hit pretty much exactly the shade of seafoam I was looking for. Army Painter Military Shader?
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Jan 14, 2023 03:22
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I mixed paint until I made a color that felt right. I like the slight variance in tone/color I get from mixing the same paints in slightly imprecise amounts because it makes them look like maybe something was repainted after battle damage or after a bucket of paint ran out and some poor astech had to scrounge up another bucket. It's why the King Crab's right claw is slightly greener than the torso. Edit: PoptartsNinja posted:I'm not sure how I'm going to pull off tattooing 15 'Mechs yet. I want to make sure it's respectful. After a fair bit of research (and looking for vector patterns for maybe a decal sheet) I decided to keep the symbolism simple and stick primarily to shark teeth, waves, spearheads, and fishhooks; and that it would be best to freehand all the details even if they come out looking completely terrible. I think this came out pretty ok. 
PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Jan 14, 2023 |
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Jan 14, 2023 03:39
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Looks pretty drat okay to me!
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Jan 14, 2023 05:12
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PoptartsNinja posted:I mixed paint until I made a color that felt right. Do you own an airbrush by any chance?
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Jan 14, 2023 06:41
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I do. Why do you ask? PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 13:31 on Jan 14, 2023 |
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Jan 14, 2023 07:25
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Those are good enough to make me angry.
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Jan 14, 2023 21:48
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The guy that runs my lgs is trying to drum up interest and get some battletech going. He's willing to sell the things to play at cost so for $15 I had him order a beginner box. I see the OP hasn't been updated in some time so once this comes in and we get the hang of the system where do I go from there?
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Jan 14, 2023 21:54
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Len posted:The guy that runs my lgs is trying to drum up interest and get some battletech going. He's willing to sell the things to play at cost so for $15 I had him order a beginner box. I see the OP hasn't been updated in some time so once this comes in and we get the hang of the system where do I go from there? Play a few games with the beginner box, adding to the two included 'mechs with the little standees as you go for more variety. Once that feels good (and if you like the basic gameplay of it!) your next purchase would be to pick up A Game of Armored Combat. $60 MSRP but even at retail it's a decent value with 10 mech minis representing a lot of iconic and powerful guys, all the basic rules, map sheets, etc. That will add a fair bit that you might have felt was "missing" after a few games, including torso twisting, indirect missile fire, the ability to knock out specific weapon systems with damage that goes through a 'mech's armor, and tracking heat tracking and its effects-- one of the big resource management mechanics of the game. If he's willing to sell that at cost, there's a double bonus because it will come with a $20 coupon to get something from CGL's website, no minimum order, so you can get 20 bucks worth of stuff and pay ~$7-8 shipping (lance/star box would be good, or a few map sheets. Or whatever spend your money how you like.) From there if you like clan stuff, the Clan Invasion box is an obvious get. Then Total Warfare might be a good buy if you really want all of the rules for what happens if your mech runs too fast on pavement and skids into a medium construction 3 story apartment building with infantry posted up on the roof. If you and the play group that develops at this FLGS find that you want to resolve company-on-company stuff without setting aside a weekend for it, I haven't played it yet but Alpha Strike is the game for that. Owlbear Camus fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Jan 14, 2023 |
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Jan 14, 2023 22:31
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10 'Mechs in (5 to go!) and I'm super pleased with these three. The Hammerhead I posed doing the Predator Challenge is exposing its shark teeth as a threat, the Vapor Eagle's shapes just look so much like shark jaws it was perfect for teeth, and...  I tweaked the Tiki on the King Crab to turn it into a crab. And the Hammerhead got the only other Tiki, nothing else so far was really suitable for Tiki painting but I think having two is enough to create a nice impression. Both of them have their tongues out to properly intimidate foes. 
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