Episode 15: Adepticon

The Odysseus Legion Podcast is your source for all things competitive BattleTech. From list building and play-by-plays to event structure and organization. Everything you need to play, compete, and organize.

In today's episode we talk about Adepticon with Garner and returning guest Zess. Both played in events at Adepticon, and Zess won several including the Grand Melee, Bloodright, and Instant Action events.

For rules of engagement, discord links, and an events calendar visit www.odysseuslegion.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:46

Welcome to the Odysseus Legion Podcast.

SPEAKER_03 0:50

Hello, hello, and welcome to the 15th episode of the Odysseus Legion podcast. My name is Nicholas, and I will be your host for today. Joining me as usual is the man with the cursed dice, Garner.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Hello.

SPEAKER_03 1:02

The man who we all wish played more, Luke. I've got games coming up. Along with the returning special guest and winner of multiple events at Adepticon, Zess.

SPEAKER_04 1:15

Hey old Trotkin.

SPEAKER_03 1:16

Today we are talking about Adepticon, where both Garner and Zess competed in Battletech events. However, before we begin, I want to touch back on our previous episode. Not long after the episode was released, Keith Hahn, aka Zodl, the man behind many of the rules changes we discussed in that episode, announced that the changes to partial cover mentioned in the developer notes and something we talked about in that episode would no longer be part of the core rules. In his own words, it went in with, quote, minimal thought and no real playtesting, unquote. This emphasizes the concerns I expressed in that episode, which were that this project feels extremely rushed and lacking in testing. While many of the changes seem okay on their own, I have doubts that their effects in totality have been sufficiently thought through. I do, and I sincerely believe that Zodal and the staff at CGL have good intentions and good ideas. I do believe that this book will be good for Battletech as a whole, but I do not believe that this is being done as well as it should be. I have so many concerns. And while this is a very small podcast, and I do not expect an actual response, nonetheless, because I am being critical, I do want to extend an invitation to anyone at CGL to come in and have a more in-depth and critical discussion and review of some of these changes in the vein and the sort of the depth and detail that we have gone through in some of our previous episodes about rules and issues in Battletech. So, with that said, before we get into Depticon, what have you guys been up to, Battletech or otherwise?

SPEAKER_01 2:56

Uh well, I am currently painting up my Ost War. So that's been my that's been my thing. I got the uh the new Barnes and Noble exclusive box and I've been chewing my way through those. The Scarabus got painted last week. And now I have my final Ostmach.

SPEAKER_00 3:14

Nice, nice. Um I've been derping around with my with painting my golden century smoke jaguar. So that's really what I've been doing. I put the finishing touches on my black knight to use in the Grand Melee at Adepticon, and then was uh told it was not bring your own. Oops. So rest in pepperonis. I was misled! This is how we get you. This is how he wins. He misleads his opponents.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

I misled myself. That's called a fate. That's called a fate.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

I did.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Were we mislead?

SPEAKER_00 3:54

But, anyways, so yeah. But that's what I've been working on. I've been working on a spirit walker, night chanter, coyotal, um, then some uh royal lights to actually go and do things. And I've been having a lot of fun with painting it. It's all uh Minutemen. People people be like, Well, but smoke jaggers, why aren't you painting those spots? I'm like, well, I'd much rather just continue to paint my lines. I like lines. Lines are my friend.

SPEAKER_04 4:26

So for me, obviously, I well, for you guys, obviously, uh, I did not partake in the past Iliad season because I was busy with work and wanted to prep for Adepticon. Uh, so most of my battle tech has all been in Adepticon or in a couple practice matches to prepare for it. But uh obviously Adepticon went really well, we're getting into that soon, but that's been most of the BT. I did get a uh a few car knobs painted up as proxies for hummingbirds, and I did get a Contio printed and painted for the event as well. As well as a NovaCat and a Ebon Jag, and I think I painted something else, which then we found out we were not going to be using because I was wrong and did not realize that they had changed the rules to the melee. So my bad, Carter. My bad. If it's any good.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

I was promised fun, and I was like, I'm bringing something unique. No one would ever bring this.

SPEAKER_04 5:21

So, for uh for a little bit of information of what happened here, I've looked up rules for how the melee is usually done, or at least it had been done in the past a long time ago. It used to be bring your own clan omni mech of up to 200 BV after skill. And it is now actually a draft event where you get placed in order and then you draft your pick from a pilot in the mech that's already predetermined. So, Bob Avion.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

It's okay. I'll forgive you this time.

SPEAKER_03 5:50

And since the last episode, I have just been editing a podcast and uh uh going through doing some design notes and doing getting a little bit more progress on Charybdis Moon.

SPEAKER_00 6:03

Did a practice yesterday.

SPEAKER_03 6:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

In the Battletech house.

SPEAKER_03 6:08

This is the house of Battletech and water.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

Oh my god, so much water.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

Yeah, I I saw you guys got a little bit invaded by the uh the the storm.

SPEAKER_00 6:21

A lot of it invaded. I had 110 gallons per minute pumping out of my basement and it was still filling.

SPEAKER_03 6:28

Yeah, if you check out the Pets channel, there's a video of me like trying to take Cheddar out so she can, you know, do do dog stuff outside, and you can just see there is basically a full bowed like creek, like river just flowing right down the driveway right in front of the house.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

I was gonna say it looked you like you walked out into a stream, which Yes, that was my driveway.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

Or now that's what was recently my driveway, and now is in fact not a driveway, and uh just a pile of dirt that was one time a driveway.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Nice. I I mean I always joke about how the way I'm going to die is the dam in Ithaca is going to break, and my house is directly in the line of fire after the police station. A laser beam of water is just gonna take out all of the cops and then me shortly afterwards. Uh, and I'm I'm surprised I didn't, and you guys were the ones who had problems instead.

SPEAKER_03 7:24

We we uh took a day to take care of issues and we did a playtest, so fun stuff upcoming. Yep. Garner and Zess, you were both at Adepticon. Why don't you tell us a little bit about Adepticon? Like what is Battletech like like there, some of the events, and uh just overall what you thought.

SPEAKER_00 7:48

I think we should first start with it is not a Battletech thing. We should start with what Adepticon actually is. And Adepticon is a the largest miniature wargaming convention in North America. It's been going on for, I believe, 25 years now. Or close to it. 25 or 20, I'll have to look and see what my shirt says. Um but I've been going since 2015. I was going for Warhammer 40k for the first four years, then 30k for the last few years, and then this year was my first time actually going and doing some battletech stuff. They have a plethora of a large selection of narrative events with a couple tournaments sprinkled in of both classic and alpha strike, and Zess was in like every classic event.

SPEAKER_04 8:45

Only four. I would have been in more if there wasn't scheduled conflicts. The nice thing is it it's recently moved to Milwaukee. Last year and this year, for the first two years it's been in Milwaukee. It used to be in Schomburg, Chicago, but it greatly outgrew its um venue space. Uh so let's see. So that was 2024 was the last time it was in Chicago, and let's just say it was very, very packed. Uh getting getting around a lot of the hallways wasn't too bad, but they were forced to put a lot of like vendor booths and stuff in hallways, which did cause congestion, and the battle tech area was way outgrown. Uh like trying to get in the play grinder or something, it just it just was painful. Uh so that year I I did not play really any grinder, I just focused on um uh playing BTCC championship circuit, and then kind of just uh stayed around to talk to people because it was very difficult to get onto tables. So the nice thing is with the new venue, it is a lot of space. Uh it's like what three floors? Actually, I think it ends up being four floors of the Baird Center, and it it feels much less congested. There's still some areas where like you get uh a lot of people kind of moving back and forth, like near the uh the bit straighter and similar things, but uh it does it doesn't feel as swamped as a big event like Gen Con does, where the hallways are always packed, there's always traffic, you're always waiting for lines and different things to move out of the way, and it can be a lot, but it doesn't really matter.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

So well, I've got two things about the new venue that kind of make me sad. Um one is that it's two hours further away of a drive, which is annoying.

SPEAKER_04 10:22

Oh, you drove it. I drove it as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:24

Okay. We're psychotic. Um I I can't say anything. I drove to Mississippi two weeks ago, so we need a Battletech bus.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

Um then the other thing is that so if you weren't one of the flagship games at Schomburg, you kind of got put into some smaller room, so you were kind of isolated with like only your game, and I feel like there's a there was less of that here. Horse Heresy was stuck with a whole bunch of other things, and then the other side of the room was basically Horace Heresy and Battletech sandwiched a whole bunch of small games, and then in the direct middle was X-Wing. Like it was just kind of a mishmash of game systems. This was at Milwaukee or Schomburg? This was in Milwaukee. Schaumburg, there was very delineated rooms set up, and they were smaller and felt cozier. It wasn't as like cavernous.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

You get exiled to the land of wind and ghosts, but you're only with your people instead of being in a big convention hall with a bunch of games. Yeah, where it's it just gets really loud in the big convention halls.

SPEAKER_04 11:32

It does get pretty deafening.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

I've I've done uh Millennium a couple of times, and I have to imagine it's basically that times several massive. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:44

So, Zess, you participated in a bunch of classic events. Yes. No Alpha Strike.

SPEAKER_04 11:49

No, I've never played Alpha Strike still.

SPEAKER_03 11:51

Garner keeps bugging me that I need to play more Alpha Strike, and I'm just thinking next time you make your way to Rochester, I'm going I challenge you to play me in a game we both don't want to play. And so Garner can be happy.

SPEAKER_02 12:05

No, you're just scared. I challenge you to Alpha Strike.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

Zess, please come to Rochester to have a bad time with me.

SPEAKER_04 12:14

I've not been driving for four hours to play alpha strike.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

You're just scared of having to have some more tactics and involves.

SPEAKER_03 12:30

Zess, if you're here already playing classic, we add like an hour and a half alpha strike games to it.

SPEAKER_01 12:38

Just do the thing chess masters do where you play the two simultaneously. Okay, I'll I'll do that.

SPEAKER_03 12:52

So, Adepticon events. Why don't we start with I believe you both played in the Grand Melee?

SPEAKER_04 13:01

Yes, so this started first day right at 10 o'clock, so nice and early. We could get straight into it, right? Like I said, a little bit earlier, it was a draft-based system. I would have been there earlier if I realized that the when you checked in was gonna be when you got to draft your mech. So fortunately. I agree with that. The same thing happened to me. Because we kind of just roamed around and and talked to the people at the CGL booth, and by the time we showed up, like I think we were 6th, 7th, and 8th. And Garner, you were a few slots behind us because you showed up for the last time. Yeah, I was 11th.

SPEAKER_00 13:31

I mean it didn't end up mattering.

SPEAKER_04 13:33

Yeah, because I think you got the mech you wanted, right? And I I got the mech I wanted.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

Um no, I picked the mech that I had the mech for because I'm a WYSIWYG connoisseur.

SPEAKER_04 13:42

So um there was a bunch of sheets, uh, you know, 20 of them, because it was it's a 20-person event. And uh there was everything from well, I think I think it was 45 tonners up to 80 tunners with various different skills. Uh I'm pretty sure that the gargoyle was the heaviest thing on the board. There was two of them. And I think the two ice ferrets were the lightest things on the board. Unless if you noticed anything else.

SPEAKER_00 14:09

Well, the Griffin 2C is 40, so oh okay, yep.

SPEAKER_04 14:12

So there was something slightly lighter.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

Um it's basically medium through the bottom end of assault.

SPEAKER_04 14:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

Through a fat, heavy.

SPEAKER_04 14:22

Yeah, uh playing light number one. I say it light even though it's heavier because it's just it gets less usable to base. Anyway, um, so at first people were just passing around the sheets, holding them in hand, so each person that was picking next couldn't get seen the sheets until they got past it. Finally got to me, and I just I just spread them all out so people could look at them. And uh, and that's when, you know, I think Garner peeked over my shoulder and was looking, and and uh I was eyeing up the uh the gargoyles. I was looking and like, man, this there's a lot of options here. There was what, a summoner, there was some there was a hellbringer, there was a hellbringer 2. Uh, but I I locked eyes, so to speak, with the uh the ice ferret tee, which is for a long time been a mech I wanted to use in Iliad. And it's on my short list of mediums that I would like to play for Wolf List. For a short description of what the T does. So the Ice Ferret T is an Ice Ferret, so it is a uh 812 movement profile. This one has a supercharger, so it can boost up to 16. Uh, it is built around two main guns, the first one being an improved heavy large laser and an ER medium laser. Uh, the nice thing about these is that they pair out to the same range brackets, they're both 5, 10, 15s, and that if you fire them on a run, you only build one heat. So you can fire four rounds in a row, then drop ER medium, they'd be back to almost zero, right? Uh it also has an SRM2 with a single ton of ammo, uh, which is kind of deserves extra. I wish it was something else, to be honest. It would be better off, I think, it's like a uh uh micro pulses or something like that, right? Or heatsink and micro pulses. It would work out a lot better for crit sinking than just being a rogue SRM2 with a ton of ammo in it. And I think it also has a probe. So it is a very mobile uh mid-range skirmisher with quite a lot of punch. I mean, uh 16 and a 7 damage main gun are not bad for something that moves that fast and can dictate engagements that that well.

SPEAKER_01 16:20

Yeah, it's as far as clan mechs go, it's a relatively low alpha, but being able to head cut and also have that amount of speed is nasty.

SPEAKER_04 16:29

So it was gunnery two, piloting two, and physicals are allowed in the melee because Zelbrign is turned off.

SPEAKER_03 16:35

So I have a question for you on your thought process. Have you played in Grand Melees before?

SPEAKER_04 16:40

No, I never have. This is my first one.

SPEAKER_03 16:43

Okay. So like my my thinking there is like strategy going in. Did you pick the ice ferret in the sense of you think it's something you want to use and it was proactive? Or was there a sort of like a meta concept of I'm playing with a bunch of people, maybe if I pick something lighter, I'll be less of a target for people.

SPEAKER_04 17:01

So this was multi-layered. Uh, first of all, yes, I really want to play it. I saw the 2-2 pilot. I'm like, this is gonna be a lot of fun. And also, it is something that can dictate engagement very well. Uh as you know, Nicholas, like I am I I prefer strikers and uh skirmishers kind of as a as a core pick. I guess in Iliad I haven't really used too many of them.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

Uh use a dire wolf and one support.

SPEAKER_04 17:28

And an archangel. Yeah. So I I've been doing uh what I call big heavy anchor, which is that there's there's a sniper kind of piece that sits on a on an overwatch and then uh the army kind of moves around that.

SPEAKER_03 17:39

Um I have no idea what that's like. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:42

I mean, yeah, it just works because standing still, oh I wish new rules would apply. If you stand still, it's minus one to hit you. That that would fix turret tech uh a lot better than a lot of other things. It would be so good. Almost like it's a very effective strategy. Right, minus one, uh maybe minus two at the worst, but I think that's too much. Well, minus one at least offsets woods for partial.

SPEAKER_01 18:03

You declare stand still and you count as a mobile.

SPEAKER_04 18:05

Uh but anyways, point being, uh, I knew that the movement profile was something I am very good with, and that it would allow me to get out of bad engagements and get into uh opportunistic engagements very easily. And indeed, I did end up playing across almost the entire board. It's it was a BFM, so it's one of the huge mats, right? And I played across almost all of it except for two corners of it.

SPEAKER_00 18:30

I would like to point out that I had the Globetrotter award as I went from one corner to one corner to the other corner. So I effectively went in a diagonal overall by going along the bottom of the map and along the side of the map. Yeah, I made a big L. I made a huge L. And guess what? I got a big L!

SPEAKER_04 18:48

Oh jeez. So just tie up with like the last reason why I picked it was having the ability to dictate positioning was very important to me. Uh after Gen Con playing in the uh Solaris finals, so I I won the Solaris uh championship in Adepticon last year. So there were people on the table that witnessed me win that, and some of them were also people that had gone to uh Gen Con and were on the table and were in collusion with other players, which is illegal, uh, in order to prevent me from winning. Um, I'm not gonna name names, but people told me that there was uh people need to know I know a lot of people at these conventions, so even if you talk privately around other people, those other people often know me and will tell me when they hear things. Uh so I I didn't want to have something slow that would get me locked down. I wanted to be very, very mobile for the game. So that's probably why I just locked into the ice fair and took it.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

Yeah, and then I ended up going with the Gargoyle 8. I barely remember the thing. It was a 3-3. I was annoyed with it because it just couldn't hit anything, even though it was a 3-3.

unknown 19:53

Uh Gargoyle H.

SPEAKER_04 19:54

I think you ran into the same issue that the uh the Nova H's ran into, right? Where they were three gunners as well, but the heavy lasers put them to basically a four gunner.

SPEAKER_00 20:01

Alright, so it's Gargoyle H, it's an LRM 10, an ultra 10, a heavy large laser, and two ER mediums. Not a lot of not a lot of firepower outside of that heavy large. And it does not have arm flips. There was a second Gargoyle, I think it was the Gargoyle M. Oh, I think it was the G. It was the G. Because I had the LBX20, three AP Gosses, and uh four ER mediums. In hindsight, that probably would have been a better pick for what I was doing, but the other thing that I was probably would have played had I had the miniature, because I'm a WYSIWYG connoisseur, and I had a gargoyle in my bag, um, was the Warhammer C3. And it was a 4-4.

SPEAKER_03 20:44

The Warhammer C3 is one of my I really enjoy that one. I think that one died relatively quickly because It didn't get picked. Oh, it didn't get picked.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

It didn't get picked. It was sitting on the table at the end, and I looked over and I said, Really? That stayed there?

SPEAKER_03 21:00

I mean, double head choppers with a targeting computer would make you a target. Do you remember what the skill was on it?

SPEAKER_00 21:06

It was a 4-4. So it was effectively a 3-4 because it was a T comp.

SPEAKER_04 21:09

Right, and it's just got two streak sixes, the only thing's the left bonus. Yes. So yeah, this uh this Warhammer C3 would have been a fantastic pick. I mean, this is I think it would have been fine.

SPEAKER_00 21:19

Like even the the big targets weren't actually really getting targeted. The the targeting priority was uh more akin to a salvage event targeting priority and less a survive to the end targeting priority.

SPEAKER_04 21:36

Uh meaning So in the end, things went too slow, so uh we ran out of time, and so it went to kills. Which, I mean, I I had a kill lead that beat anybody on the board. Um I was working on my fourth kill, and I think everybody else only had singles. There was like a four way tie for third or for second.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

Sir, I had two and a half. And then you died. I did. Because I took

SPEAKER_04 22:02

Yeah, so Garner and I, like Garner was saying, um, I think we're reading the board in the way that most most players do not. Um Garner immediately noticed I was a problem. Uh I spawned, what, two locations off to your left, basically? Uh about the weight on the.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

I think you spawned three. I think he spawned three. So I was kind of-Eric was right next to me. And there was somebody in between you and Eric.

SPEAKER_01 22:27

And the locations are how far apart from each other?

SPEAKER_00 22:30

Uh wanna say uh 12-ish?

SPEAKER_04 22:37

I could probably look it up in the pictures and see how far apart they were. But um they they were about as equally spaced as they could be, but with so many people on the board, like you're gonna have fights immediately, right? Um so both Eric and Garner started moving towards my side, so I flushed out and saw that there was a Hellbringer. Or sorry. Not Hellbringer, sorry. Oh yeah, it was a Hellbringer. There was a Hellbringer. It was a Nova. There's a Nova, and there was a Nova that had moved not optimally, and I could immediately supercharge and get behind the um the Hellbringer. And Hellbringer had only moved from one T. So I moved right behind it, and the uh the Nova moved up within three of both me and the Hellbringer. So I had a plus four, and the Hellbringer had a plus one. So the Nova declared on the Hellbringer uh with like a bunch of its improved heavy lasers, right? I think it was an H. And um. Meanwhile, I'm on right behind it, and I'm looking at it, and I have like a plus two to hit the Nova. And so I think I was hitting the Nova on sixes and I was hitting the Hellbringer on fives. And I decided that like the Nova was gonna be a bigger issue, so I shot the Nova instead of the Hellbringer. Because the Hellbringer did end up taking a whole bunch of damage from the Nova and had its frontal armor slag. It got internal on one or two locations. And I put one laser in each torso of the Nova, which uh you know stripped off most of the armor in the case of the Heavy Large. So it did a good job of putting the Nova further down and made it easier to kill later, although I do not remember who killed it. I did not get final blow on it.

SPEAKER_00 24:17

I think I did. I think you did, yeah. I got I got the final kill on the Hellbringer and the Nova.

SPEAKER_04 24:23

No, I took the Hellbringer. I don't know. I got two.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

Well, yeah, after I flushed you out of your stupid bouncing between two heavy woods every turn.

SPEAKER_04 24:37

So yeah, as the fight develops, uh Garner was coming over, there was the Hellbringer, the Nova, me, uh Garners, uh Gargoyle, and then Eric was coming over in his uh what was he in a Shadowhawk 2C? Shadowhawk 2C, yep. With uh gunner two, two medium pulse lasers, ultra ten, and I think something else.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

So it was a terrifying little thing. Yeah, I've fought those. That that Shadowhawk, I have a version of it which is painted as the new Groom on my desk somewhere.

SPEAKER_04 25:06

So I was determined not to get close to that because it was one of the few things on the board that could reliably hit me. And Eric was moving, I I don't think he was trying to really flush me out as much as as he realized he was, but um he was going into positions where he would have opportunity shots on me if I moved where I wanted to, so I kept getting kind of delayed. But Garner realized that, well, everybody realized, and Garner was the only person that really tried to prevent it, that there was two heavy woods positioned in a way where I could supercharge off of the one that was deeper in and go back around to the one that was further towards the edge of the board and pointing back, and then run straight into it with a regular run. So I could do a supercharger every other turn and be a plus five to hit. And one time you got a plus six. Yeah, because I decided to uh come in at a different angle and then ended up running out. So Garner set up in order to get at point blank range of the heavy woods, and I could see that he was setting up for it because I had to move first, and so I wasn't going to uh go there with a gargoyle getting really close because I just didn't want to die, and I ended up starting to uh disengage from the fight because Eric was setting up medium pulse lasers on the other woods, so I basically was getting leveraged out of the positions, but uh on the last shot before I left, I did kill the hellbringer with a what was it, I think a medium range shot down to the hellbringer on the hill.

SPEAKER_00 26:30

Yeah, if you had killed that one turn earlier, I probably wouldn't have died, to be completely honest. I mean I'm because I took so much damage from it surviving.

SPEAKER_04 26:38

I needed like fives to fucking hit it, and I rolled twos. I think I rolled twos and threes. Like it's just like Garner, I missed.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

I was like, I was like, the you can't shoot the Nova, so you're not gonna shoot the Nova, but that that Hellbringer has much better uh target numbers for you than me, so it's gonna because I had a plus three because I ran in a straight frickin' line.

SPEAKER_01 27:02

Alright, so for my own edification, how is the uh so how many people were playing in this event with you guys? 16? 17? Okay. Yeah, and how do they, out of curiosity, how do they manage initiative for something? Cards. Cards? Okay. Cards, just like how I do the um when I'm running the salvage. Yep. I was just I was just thinking that sounds like you have an interminably long uh turn time if someone decides they're gonna tank on a uh the movement. It is a bit rough, but they kind of localize areas where if like uh one battle's gonna be the BFM, right?

SPEAKER_00 27:42

It's what eight of the two by two of the two by one map sheet or uh find uh what are they called? Oh my god. I think you're pretty it's four, right? It's more than four. Is it not four? It's four perhaps it's it's eight, because it's four it's four and four.

SPEAKER_05 28:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 28:01

I think it might be six, but it's definitely not four. 100% not four. I'll have to I can I can go lay them out actually later than that because I'm curious now. But anyways. Um so basically what it ended up happening was we were playing on the desert side of the first BFM and uh basically if you were separated into quadrants because what ended up happening was everybody except for me that spawned on the airfield-esque side uh went to the middle of one of the short edges and then there was a small brawl uh at each corner of the other short edge. Got it. And so like they just be like, hey, you're on deck, hey, you're not you're not even anywhere near the two people that are moving before you, you can just move. So it actually increases me.

SPEAKER_01 28:57

Okay, so they're they're localizing it based on if you're likely to make a shot at each other, and then if someone decides they're gonna make a marginal shot at 20 hexes, they just take cameras out and discourage them not to. Got it.

SPEAKER_02 29:12

Yeah, and that makes sense, particularly if there's a TO there to help navigate that whole thing.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

Yeah, because that sounds like it could get miserable if they don't.

SPEAKER_04 29:21

There was yeah, so uh Garner punched me out from the heavywoods, and I went over and fucked up to sorry, I should stop talking so much. Uh I went off and messed up another uh another fight that was off to our side. Uh fortunately they were fighting in very heavily built-up terrain. There was a lot of like little hills, uh spiky mountains, and uh there's like a ravine over there. I think there's some water trees all over the place. And there was like a there was like a Marauder 2C with like or something. No, it was a Marauder 2C. I think it was a Marauder 2C. That would be not a it was a Black Python Black Python like 5. It was two year PPCs Gauss rifles. Oh, it's that one, okay. Um there was a gunnery one something, I think that was the Griffin 2C.

SPEAKER_00 30:13

Yeah, Griffin 2C. That was modeled as a spider, yeah. That was proxy with spider.

SPEAKER_04 30:18

Um there was something with a large pulse laser and like a two-gunner over there. I I ran over into it and realized when I was fighting. It was like, I'm gonna let this fight mature a little bit because a lot of things kind of looked at me and were trying to see if they could shoot me. I was like, maybe not. And I uh also realized Garner was going to try and flush me into the fight or into him. And I barely managed to kind of get away, but I had to risk getting shot at the back by Eric uh with long range for pulse lasers and uh ultra 10.

SPEAKER_00 30:50

You got away because Eric, I felt like he was very set on hitting the better target number between me and you, and I was always gonna be the better target number, as apparent from the turn when I took 40 damage, 30 of it from him.

SPEAKER_04 31:03

Oh, right, yeah. He's just like he was like, Well, I have like nines or sevens or something to hit Garner and nines to have to know and shoot Garner, and then double with the U.

SPEAKER_00 31:14

No, so then after after that happened, where I was like, Alright, I'm working to try and flush the quick movers out, so because I've played enough salvage events to know that if you let them just be fresh while you're beating all the pulp, you're going to lose. Period. So the Luke strategy. Yeah. Or the the Wyatt strategy is what I call it. Because I see enough people just trying to hide, and that's one of my biggest pet peeves in free-for-alls, is when somebody just tries to like just doesn't take damage until the end. Like, that's just a huge thing of like, you're not allowed to do that here. I will force you to take damage.

SPEAKER_04 31:46

Yeah, Garner told me jail when I was just cycling heavy woods.

SPEAKER_00 31:50

So I was like, You're gonna you're gonna you're getting kicked out of this, you're going to jail. Because I had planned that, and then you saw it the turn beforehand, and you're like, oh no. Yeah, I realize what you're doing, and I'm like, Garner?

SPEAKER_01 32:02

Are you flushing me out? Bad and naughty mech warriors go in the pilot wiggler.

SPEAKER_04 32:09

Yeah, his response was just simply jail. I'm like, ah, yep, I'm not allowed to do this. Uh so the fight kind of develops. The the Nova and Hellbringer died in our section. Garner was kind of trying to push me out and then ended up pushing into the other fight. Eric kind of was skirmishing into uh my back as I as I kind of went around it and uh and then pushed into it. Uh as I flushed out though, I did finally win initiative on him, and I went for a a rear shot on him where he could only get one pulse laser on me, and I needed sevens to hit him in the back and whipped both lasers. I'm like, you lucky son of the gun.

SPEAKER_00 32:46

I mean, you were also really lucky because you won initiative three times in a row before I died.

SPEAKER_04 32:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:53

Let's there was there was some other luck there.

SPEAKER_04 32:56

Well, wait, was that when I was getting out, or is that when I was attacking the other section?

SPEAKER_00 33:00

Uh that was when I got stuck in, and then the Thunderbolt and the something else just unloaded into me at long range and all hit.

SPEAKER_04 33:09

So that that was justice. Because I ran over to the other fight, right? Murph was on the ground crippled and unconscious. Um, I was gonna get somebody else, but I ended up taking the shot into him because that was my best shot, and I just killed him with a cold shot to the torso. That turn, Brewer had gotten so frustrated because there was some probably collusion going on between a couple players who had been coming in from the far side of the airfield, and one of them was being was like not engaging. And what Brewer did was he was standing in heavy woods, and there was going to be a um a mech behind him with twin heavy lasers and two ear medium, twin heavy larges and two ear mediums on a tar comp. And it was a uh it was what, a summoner, right? Summoner H? Yeah, summoner M or something. It's the H. He said that he was he was just really frustrated, and he's like, you know what, watch this, he'll jump away. Stands still in the woods with his the rear of his Nova facing this summoner, and called it the summoner jumped away behind LOS. Like it jumped behind a building out of engagement instead of standing and just killing it. But why?

SPEAKER_00 34:17

I don't know. That that was the other corner. I was basically fighting for my life.

SPEAKER_04 34:21

So, and then like the the other ice barret was supporting it and would actively avoid shooting at him unless it wasn't completely impossible. Like, there was a point in time where he tried to shoot through a mountain, and I'm like, You're trying to shoot through a mountain in order to engage me instead of engaging the uh the summoner. This was one of the players that um has a has a medetta against me in uh Solaris. So uh I I got frustrated because I could see that there were two players ganging up and completely refusing to engage each other and then also playing dishonorably. So I went over to engage that.

SPEAKER_05 34:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:54

See, true friends shoot at each other on purpose.

SPEAKER_04 34:59

I shot at andor hit all of my friends on the board.

SPEAKER_00 35:04

I specifically targeted the thing with the most armor that was in a hittable range.

SPEAKER_03 35:09

So for people who are thinking about participating in a grand melee or another big sort of free-for-all type uh event, what uh tips would you offer them?

SPEAKER_04 35:21

You have to really carefully balance offense and defense, right? Like if you're too defensive, you'll you will do nothing and you will achieve nothing. Uh it is a very clan event when it comes down to it, although Zelbriggan is is removed from the equation. You don't necessarily want to push in and just brawl everything and die quick, but like it can be really fun. So do what you find fun for sure, because it is an enjoyable event. I had a lot of fun. Uh I know most of my friends had a lot of fun. I know Garner, you got a little bit frustrated that people kind of focused you, but I was like a good time to try this.

SPEAKER_00 35:56

I mean, I had a I had a I had a fun time. It was less that I got focused and more that I got mech warrior aimed off the board. Yeah, that's true. You you did get drilled really hard. I am not kidding. I only took like people only rolled sixes to hit locations. I took 10 damage to my right arm, ten damage to my right leg, ten damage to my left leg, and then everything else, except for one Goss rifle, hit my right torso, the Goss rifle hit my center torso.

SPEAKER_01 36:23

Damn, rerun of our uh our game in Rochester a while back.

SPEAKER_00 36:26

Oh yeah, when you took out my left leg with every single shot in the cheetah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was wonderful.

SPEAKER_04 36:34

I did see Gunnar Um right after I killed the Hellbringer, and he was he was drilled really hard in a couple locations.

SPEAKER_01 36:43

I'm I'm still just marveling that someone had the the Cahones to put a Hellbringer on the field. This does not seem like an event I would want one of those then.

SPEAKER_04 36:52

And then he was always moving at very, very uh short distances.

SPEAKER_00 36:56

Yeah, he was moving no TMM the whole time.

SPEAKER_04 36:59

And it survived getting focused fired for forever. I I finally killed it by hitting it in the right arm, which collapsed into the right torso, which collapsed into the CT and then it killed it because it just had that little left.

SPEAKER_00 37:12

Oh it had it had one when I shot it, it got down to one pip of center torso structure, and then nobody could touch the center torso again.

SPEAKER_04 37:20

And then it got the alpha strike garner again.

SPEAKER_00 37:23

Yeah, it alpha striked me three turns in a row.

SPEAKER_01 37:27

Wait, which which hellbringer was this?

SPEAKER_04 37:31

You probably remember better than I do because you're getting shot by it.

SPEAKER_01 37:34

I know it's not the prime because three turns in a row means that the ammo has cooked off and the mech has shut down turn two. If that thing alpha strikes.

SPEAKER_00 37:42

Yes, it was. It was the T. Yep. It alpha striked me two turns in a row, it went up to like a billion heat. And then he said, Well, I'm gonna die next turn anyway, and alpha strikes me again.

SPEAKER_01 38:00

You gotta have balls to play that sword and that can have melee event because you are painting a target on your back and you cannot survive the cracking. But he found Wild Bill.

SPEAKER_00 38:10

But he did, he survived. I was like, somebody's gotta hit the CT. Someone, please, anyone, and no one did.

SPEAKER_03 38:18

Wild Bill's distant cousin just locking Alpha Strike and Override shutdown, just two buttons.

SPEAKER_05 38:25

I was trying to hit it inside.

SPEAKER_00 38:28

I think like he shot everything button ERPC, then shot everything, shot up the heat scale, and then shot everything the turn that he was going to die, and then didn't die and then shut down, and then you killed him, I think.

SPEAKER_04 38:41

No, he was still active when I shot him.

SPEAKER_00 38:43

Was it was he still active? I thought he had shut down.

SPEAKER_04 38:45

He was still, he just couldn't move.

SPEAKER_03 38:47

Uh Zess, you ended up winning because you had three kills more than anybody else when the whole situation came to time, correct?

SPEAKER_00 38:55

He also had taken seven damage.

SPEAKER_04 38:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:59

I believe it.

SPEAKER_04 39:05

And he hits me and I miss all my shots. Like three turns.

SPEAKER_03 39:08

See, I I I've played enough salvages to know that there's uh there's an aspect of mobility and sort of table politics of picking something like the ice ferret, where you might not be top on people's radar, both in terms of size and TMM. You can maneuver and find your positions. I might be what I would have picked. Like if I had the choice between that and other things, like I feel you zest. Like, that is you would have picked the Warhammer C3.

SPEAKER_00 39:38

Let's be real.

SPEAKER_03 39:39

Let's be real. My love is always in the lights and mediums, media specifically.

SPEAKER_00 39:44

So I don't know, you got real sad when it overheated and shut down against me. And you didn't care about your fire falcon.

SPEAKER_03 39:51

Examine the words that you're saying there. Why would I care about a fire falcon? Because it's a little light that moves fast, like you said. Not a devil. Devils I like. But in any case, so Zess by winning with a grand melee, that put you in the blood right.

unknown 40:08

Correct.

SPEAKER_03 40:08

Kind of. He was already in it.

SPEAKER_04 40:10

Yeah, I already had a ticket, technically, but uh it it would have given me the uh ability to go in. Instead, they went down the list to find somebody that didn't have a ticket that got into the blood right instead.

SPEAKER_03 40:23

So if Garner got in second, he might have been able to get into the blood right. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 40:27

I would have been in the blood right.

SPEAKER_03 40:29

If he had survived.

SPEAKER_00 40:30

Yep. But I died. I was the fifth to last person to die.

SPEAKER_03 40:34

Oh, it just just a slight change in statistics. I'm a statistical anomaly, Nicholas, you know this. Oh, I know. It's affecting me now.

SPEAKER_00 40:44

How many times are you falling on your back on your open torso?

SPEAKER_03 40:47

Yeah, how many times three games, three important games in a row. I have fallen backwards onto my right rear torso, very specifically, causing my my turkina or jade Phoenix or whatever to die. Or just suffer severe damage that ends up costing me the game. So I it's it's just so weird that's the exact same thing happening so often. I blame you. You're welcome.

SPEAKER_01 41:17

I warp reality. I mean, that's a pretty old house. Have you looked into the history of it? Is it cursed? I told you about the piano.

SPEAKER_00 41:27

I mean, yeah, so it my house was owned by one by one family up until about 15 years ago. And uh this guy lived here from when like it was built until like his wife got dementia, and then they both got put in homes by their kids. Their kids were here for a little bit, and then they sold it to these really bad house flippers who then I came in, did the tour, I looked at the girlfriend or whoever that was here, and I was like, if you put down your tools right now and stop ruining this house, I will put in an offer tonight.

SPEAKER_03 42:02

Yeah, some of the work is is awful. Some of the work they did is terrible.

SPEAKER_01 42:07

Alright, so what I what I'm hearing is the house isn't cursed, it's just angry about the scars from the house flippers.

SPEAKER_00 42:14

Um, kind of. There were the ghost was pissed about the untuned piano, but now that it was tuned, he passed by. I see. Because the house came with a piano.

SPEAKER_04 42:24

That seems very specific.

SPEAKER_00 42:27

It did. It came with a baby grand piano. I don't know what you want from me.

SPEAKER_03 42:31

Yeah, if if you don't know, pianos are very difficult to move because not only are they heavy, but they also have to be moved in very specific ways and possibly disassembled in specific ways to get them out without destroying them. And so a lot of people in a lot of places will just say, like, do you want this piano? It's yours. I don't want to I don't want to deal with that.

SPEAKER_00 42:54

I'm pretty sure that the piano came in through the bay windows when they were constructed. The used piano is effectively free. I mean, it's a very nice piano. The guy that tuned it was just like, you have one bent hammer, but other than that, this thing is like pristine, and you could get some good money just for the bones. The exterior needs a lot of love, but the interior is very, very high quality.

SPEAKER_03 43:15

Anyways. There are I used to work at uh multiple sort of music venues, and and there is a lot of people who say to you know charities, hey, I will donate this piano to you if you come and get it.

SPEAKER_01 43:29

Yeah. Anyway, welcome to uh piano talk with the Odysseus Legion.

SPEAKER_00 43:34

I mean, there were pianos there, there were not Battletech miniature robots in Odysseus' times.

SPEAKER_01 43:40

There weren't pianos in like pre Homeric Greece.

SPEAKER_03 43:47

Yeah, I opted out this. And here's the funny part though there may have been miniature war games. They have recovered tiny little like soldiers, like Little clay figurines with like detachable hats and swords that they suspect may have been used in like children's games or miniatures games or just dioramas or like battle planning.

SPEAKER_01 44:11

Our hobby is timeless. Yeah, the sand table is an old tradition. Elements of our hobby are timeless. Robots not. Yeah. Diogenus uh running into the uh the forum with his little uh with his catapult going, behold a man.

SPEAKER_04 44:30

I mean, it just would be golems back then, right? You said rock robots instead of metal robots.

SPEAKER_03 44:36

Zest has figured it out.

SPEAKER_01 44:37

Yeah, well, it's not golems because that's uh specifically uh from the the Jewish tradition, but you do have the uh Colossus of Rhodes was a thing. Yeah, Trojan horse. Oh my god, this the the uh the uh health horses had it right. Why is the colossus no longer there? Yeah, we don't know where it went. It got up and walked away. Alright, we are we are deep in the weeds and we still have two events to talk about.

SPEAKER_03 44:59

Yes. So Zest, you made it into the Blood Rite. Why don't you give us a broad review of the Blood Rite?

SPEAKER_04 45:05

So Blood Rite is interesting. There's 32 players, they sell 31 tickets, the 32nd is awarded to the winner of the melee, uh, which is a canon way that blood rights are done, right? This this is how um they determine it in lore. Basically, uh 31 uh pilots are sponsored either directly by one of the blood named remaining or the uh the blood named council determining the last slots, and then the last one is given away in the grand melee. So part of my goal for this con was to see if I could do the Aid in Pride run, which is go into the melee, win the melee, get the 32nd slot, and then try and win the blood right. And so I won the melee, and I'm like, all right, well, let's see if we can get the blood right. So they have pre-selected mechs and pilots. Once you select a pilot, that pilot becomes yours. So if you start with a 3-4, you are now a 3-4 pilot to route. Even if you get somebody's mech who was a 3-2 or something like that, uh, you use their mech as a 3-4, not as a 3-2. So there was a draft. Uh they go around with a bag, you pull a chip out of the bag, and it has a number on it. The numbers in which order that you draw mechs. When I won in Gen Con, uh, I was 11th to pick, which is pretty pretty far enough ahead that you can usually ensure getting at least a 3-4 pilot. When I drew here, I drew 21st. And I was like, oh no. Like, you don't know what's going to be around when there's only gonna be 12 mechs left on the board. So it's like this this might be unfortunate. So um, there was a lot of copies of mechs. There was definitely an issue that happened where normally everything is a pre-painted mech that resembles exactly what you're playing. And when you kill your opponent, you get to keep their mech and you put it in your pool. And so you start with one mech, after round two, you'll have two. And then as you determine who is hunter and who is hunted by a dice roll, hunter gets to choose which mech both players use out of their own pools. And then Hunted chooses the map setup and the weather for the map. In the first round, if you win Hunter, because you don't get to determine anything, you instead get a second edge, because every round you get one edge. Hunter in the first round gets two edge. So when I went through to pick, all of the three two pilots were gone. There had been a couple Wendigo A's, which is a medium with a reflect armor, torso manic cockpit, two large pulse lasers, L15. There had been a couple, I think it was Shadow Cat M's, which is also a twin large pulse laser medium. The timbre wolf was gone, pretty much everything's gone, but there was still a Jadehawk 2 for the 3-4 pilot. Okay. And yes. So I went, yep, we are taking the Jadehawk, right?

SPEAKER_00 47:55

Um the last three, just really quick, the last three mechs that were picked were the Shogun C2, the Shogun C2, and the Shogun C2.

SPEAKER_01 48:02

You're all so mean to my boy. Oh my gosh. Four ATMs. And the guns keep going. It's got another like 35 point. Yeah, two AR large, three are small, five eight.

SPEAKER_03 48:17

That is. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 48:18

It's it's pretty good. So my first matchup, I sit down, my opponent sits down to across from me, and I see a Timberwolf A, which is a mech I am very, very experienced in because I've used it in multiple years in grinders and kept that thing alive for literally entire days. I'm like, okay, well, Timberwolf A is pretty, pretty fierce. Like, this is gonna come down to, you know, I can maybe get some opening shots of range, but really it's gonna come down to can I get AT damage on? But my first thought was I need to not win Hunter because I do not want them determining the weather. Uh, the weather effects include an option called Heavy Gale. Heavy Gale applies a plus two penalty to all missile weapons, and it's a very obvious choice for that timberwolf A to choose, and then just beat me based on energy armament, right? And so we roll, and of course, when I don't want to win things, my dice like bang bang out of 10, and I think he rolled like a six. And I'm like, okay, you're you're hunted, and I get two edged, and he looks through and he's just like, yeah, I think I'm gonna choose heavy gale. I'm like, God damn it. And uh, I might just I might just lose based on this, right? Uh he set up the map to be fairly fairly broken terrain. I was like, well, I just need to get close, lure him into some of these hills, and just draw the TMMs down as low as I can and basically cause a stand-in shoot where I'm gonna I'm gonna need those three medium pulse lasers every every turn, right? But I need the 8G ATMs to hit, and that's the only way I'm winning this. And so I did switch one of my bins, so I had two bins of HE and I had uh one ER and one standard. And I did open up a little bit at range as we closed, and we we both got some hits on.

SPEAKER_03 50:02

I want to pop in here for a second because we do sometimes get people commenting on not knowing terminology. So I want to specify here for anybody listening the important gun, the ATM6, fires six missiles, and the HE, the high explosive, deal three damage each. So it is effectively a very big, very powerful gun at very close range, but only at you know, three six nine range.

SPEAKER_04 50:26

So you've got to get very close against a Timberwolf, which has the same movement profile with twin year PPCs and three medium pulse lasers as a secondary armament.

SPEAKER_00 50:36

You're speaking like a very strong clanner right now, saying it's only 369, like that's not the SRMs for normal mechs.

SPEAKER_01 50:44

Yeah, all of us, all of us suffering other sphere players are just hearing this going, please, sir, can I have a hex?

SPEAKER_03 50:53

My bad. Oh, 369, that sucks. It's like that's most of my guns.

SPEAKER_04 50:59

Well, yeah, it's all the good, you know, short-range guns, medium laser, etc. Anyway, uh, I did succeed in drawing him up in some hills, and there was about two or three turns of merely standstill and shoot. And I managed to break in with enough HE to uh to kill him before I got killed. But that that was definitely a fight where I'm like, this is going to suck because of that plus two. Without the plus two, I would have stayed probably at range and just dumped ERs in with a log space.

SPEAKER_01 51:22

Yeah, because you can you have a pretty nice kind of uh range advantage over that uh timber at eight and nine hexes.

SPEAKER_04 51:32

Yes. And I did only end up using one of my edge. So, you know, I had the uh I had the safekeeping against a head cap that if a headshot came up, you know, I've still got an edge there. I think I re-rolled attack and I still had one in my pocket at the end just to make sure in case the headshot came off of ear peeps, I was safe. So round two, um, I go into it having now that Timberwolf in my pocket as well as the Jayhawk.

SPEAKER_03 51:54

Quick question. So, how many rounds are there?

SPEAKER_04 51:57

There's five. I'll go through them pretty quick.

SPEAKER_00 51:58

As the spectator of the last one, I will make comments.

SPEAKER_04 52:05

Alright. I will allow that. So round two, um, I end up matching against somebody I I've met at cons before. He's a nice guy. And um he ends up winning Hunter. So at this point, I never across the entire tournament get to choose the mech matchup. Ever. Uh, it was always predetermined for me. A lot of people say that like you, if you don't win Hunter, that kind of can determine the finals and things like that. But I am living proof you can win it win it being hunted the entire freaking time. So going to round two, uh, my opponent had the head of Wendigo A, and what was the other thing he had? I forget the other thing he had, but he chose that to fight my Jadehawk. I think he should have taken on the Timberwolf, not the Jadehawk. Because the reflect I'm not gonna.

SPEAKER_01 52:50

Yeah, you have one of these mechs's missile and energy based, and one of them does have a missile weapon, but it's very heavily energy based.

SPEAKER_04 53:00

And he realized that by the end, and since I got to choose the weather in the map, I gave him a map sheet that had no trees. I gave myself one that had a partial cover and um woods pump up like you go, basically on the on the edge. And I chose the weather to be something called heavy fog. Heavy fog makes it so every hex you enter is plus one MP to enter. And if you jump, oh and if you jump, it is uh PSR at plus one. And the other effect it has is all energy weapons are plus one to him.

SPEAKER_03 53:33

See, I I I hear this, and I, you know, I I I before the podcast, I specifically mentioned to use this. I complemented what I was calling sort of like the three broad concept conceptual like skills, which is your skill on the board, your skill on like list and comprehension of unit structure, and then your skill meta-knowledge of the format. I'm like listening to this, knowing you and hearing about the weather rules, I would almost say it's to your advantage to be given the scenario, the situation of mechs, and then picking the horrible weather and map rules that they that is just exist in battle tech. You can just look just look at and go, I can pick a combination of map and weather to really screw you over.

SPEAKER_04 54:16

And that that sums up match two, three, and four. It's just I I uber screw over my opponent with map and weather.

SPEAKER_03 54:24

Because it's just like I I feel like most people who play regular battle tech well are not going to ever really fully encounter the weather rules and systems, but someone who's plays like a lot of mega mech, a lot of games where you randomly encounter different weather and gravity conditions through various scenarios, and you start to see that just just how much heavy fog sucks, just how much high gales can make it so that your lasers are good and your missiles are awful. See experiencing those random effects constantly. I'm hearing this and you go, you could depict the weather? Weather rules are just are just so horrible and crippling for very specific things.

SPEAKER_01 55:04

Like it seems like it seems like the way the hunter is supposed to deal with this is by choosing both players to have very evenly matched mechs and capability so that any uh any sort of negative impact you can throw at them via weather is going to hurt both parties equally. Which that I mean on one hand, I guess that does encourage you to not try seal clubbing people by giving them awful mechs, but on the other hand, that does seem like it does that that does kind of obviate the uh the ability to choose mechs at all in some ways.

SPEAKER_04 55:46

It is definitely meant to be a a safeguard, where it if you go too far one direction, that sometimes you can blunder into the hunted having too much of an option, right? Or you've essentially chosen the option for me because it's so optimal, why would I not take it? And I I think people do sleep on just how effective hunted can be, and because they're so focused on getting the optimal matchup of mech versus mech when they get hunter, and not seeing how strong it can be when that is blundered with well, this weather type completely like hurts you really bad, and I can also set the map now and give you a crap map sheet while taking Garner's favorite as my own, right? Like, but we'll get to that. That was round four. So uh basically I just posted up and I just shot one modulator. I spit I have four bins of ATM ammo. I did two ER, two HE. Uh he was forced to slog because the Wim Digo is a 6-9. Uh, it was only ever able to get a plus two TMM. It could never get to the plus three because it's just it it cannot travel far enough in the fog, right? And it was also unable to close distance fast enough, and with the uh lasers being only a minus one effectively because of the plus one from the weather, um, it was not getting as large pulse lasers as often, and I was sitting in better terrain, and he was he was just forced to slog forward into me, taking five damage hits from the large laser a couple times, and then just a bunch of ATM hits. I emptied both ER bins and then pulled forward. So the first turn I was only able to shoot with the large laser. Uh the next turn after moving I was able to get long range, then there was a medium range, then there was finally a short range salvo where I killed him on the first ATM six hit, and then there was three more to render, but the mech was already dead.

SPEAKER_03 57:26

So I have a question for you here. I want your opinion on this, which is of the three types of ammo to bring in an ATM, right? If you have to choose two, like what are your preferred ammo on eight on ATMs?

SPEAKER_04 57:40

If you're only choosing two, it's a bit dependent sometimes. Most people will say go ER and HE. Most people will cut standard out completely. Um, I think it's a bit of a mistake. Uh, there are times where H or standard is it has very, very good um points, but it's usually only specifically at like five and ten hexes that it is more optimal than other options. Yeah. But if I'm using something like a Balak, which has a coaxial basically uh ER medium laser, which has five, ten, fifteen brackets, then you're probably using standard anyway because it matches the brackets, right?

SPEAKER_00 58:16

That makes sense. I mean, I I would do just standard and HE unless I have other long range things to complement it because HEs aren't doing anything on their own. You mean ERs? Yeah, that's yes, I meant ERs. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_04 58:33

So normally normally I would not cut out standard completely. I actually am one of the few people that enjoys standard ammo.

SPEAKER_00 58:39

Oh I'm a huge fan of standard. It's a long-range SRM. Right, it's great.

SPEAKER_04 58:44

But um in this case, I knew that it was gonna be so long of him slogging forward into me that I would be able to chew through two ER bins.

SPEAKER_00 58:52

I probably should have also um I probably should have done one H E bin one standard and and two ERs, but I I did what I did, so I didn't know you got to uh speaking of that, I just I didn't realize you get to swap which ammo bins you take each round. So that's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 59:11

So I think the the Wendigo is it is uh it is well armored, but it is a 50-ton medium. And that means that over a couple of turns being able to plink for, I'm guessing, between four and five damage with each ATM each turn with the uh the Artemis bonus, you are gonna start getting through its side torsos pretty efficiently.

SPEAKER_04 59:35

Yeah, you're basically expecting it for me six or four, right?

SPEAKER_00 59:38

So one thing to note about the Wendigo is that there's a lot of the downside of reflective armor that is not there because there's no physicals.

SPEAKER_04 59:49

So I see big and I think it was also crowding too, so it's very not likely to fall. In fact, I even got a gyro crit on him and he was still standing, right? Because it took two six ups for a gyro and damage crit. I think it it was very, very stable. Because reflect armor for those people that do not know, uh it doubles uh melee damage, artillery damage, and fall damage that is applied to it. But it has energy damage that's applied, essentially.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:19

No, no, no. I will yeah, I was more meaning it is over a cut over a bunch of turns. If it has to creep towards you very slowly in the fog, you are just gonna chew through a lot of that armor because it's it's it's well armored, but it's there's only so much you can do on a 50 turner.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:37

Yeah, so the the matchup just decided that match pretty much outright. So going into the third one, um as Garner pointed out, there was a lot of Shoguns on the field. Uh so I fought somebody that had a Shogun C2, he chose to use it, he had a 3-4 pilot, and I had he chose my uh Wendigo to fight it. And in this case, I chose Heavy Gale. This obviously right off the bat, I'm just like Heavy Gale. I mean, the the Shogun C2 is an ERP PC, two streak aleron 15s, two streak sixes. All its firepower is in the streaks, right? So if I apply a uniform plus two to your streaks, good luck.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:15

Uh and now the if if you know your opponent can choose a a weather that makes all missiles plus two, and you bring a missile boat, like dude did he give you a missile boat?

SPEAKER_04 1:01:27

I mean, I have another thing. Yeah, that yeah. I didn't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:31

I would like to say that it is two streak, twos, or is two streaking. Also Oh, did I say four? So you said two. Uh Luke tried to correct you and say four. Um, but the other thing to note about the Shogun C2 is it is Pharaoh Lamler armor.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:52

Yeah, it is Feralam. So it's it's it's actually a pretty nice mech overall. It does a lot of damage. Uh, but the issue is if it the entire armament is now plus two gunnery, and the one good gun you have that is accurate, which to his credit, he hit the air PPC every freaking turn. Uh, it's only gonna do seven damage to MMD Go. And what I did is on on the way back from Gen Con, uh Eric and I did the math on side torso tables. So I got myself posted up in partial cover, intentionally giving him a side torso. And he hit he hit location six three times. So out of the six hits he got into the ERP PC, four of them hit dirt, and two went to left torso, which reduced it down to 14 total damage from two hits total. And one streak six hit me. So for another, I think one hit dirt as well for another 10 damage. So I took like 24 damage total, I think, and I just I carved it apart with like three up large balls lasers.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:52

Oh, I would like to say that that's not the first time that day that almost every shot that hit you went to dirt. Um when you were facing off against that Griffin 2C across that one hex of level one.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:06

So to be fair, we were joking. We actually just we missed everything and we just joked that we shot the hill.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:12

Okay, none of the shots we hit. Okay, never mind. Very well.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:16

But yes, we we did make that joke of that should be level level zero at the time. Um yeah, that so yeah. So uh anyways, now I have a uh a Shogun C2. And so go into semi-finals and uh end up against Tom Biview, who is the uh he was the TO at um at Gen Con who watched me found the the McGuire blood name, right? And um he had joked on the uh previous map when he was still there in round three. He was like, guys, I'm not supposed to still be here. And uh his opponent was like, I shouldn't be here either. So he uh he managed to get through and uh pulls me as his opponent, and uh Eric was still around and gets uh who's you know, so Eric's my friend, and Tom had one of his friends still there, so it's two friends across, or not across friends, but kitty corner to each other, playing off against another pair of friends, trying to get a friend's final. Right, which is pretty funny. So Eric got put into a Shadow Cat versus Shadow Cat mirror match, uh, where he he unfortunately didn't choose the right weather. He was getting a bit tired, he chose I forget what he chose for weather type, but he should have chosen heavy fog because it would have slowed them both down. But the difference was Eric had a uh two up pilot, and the other pilot was a four piloting. So whenever they jump, which they'd be forced to jump to generate TMM with those Shadowcats, because they would they would only be even if they mask, right, in a straight line, you can only get six hexes. You'll never get a plus three TMM running. So you're gonna be forced to stand to jump.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:53

Didn't play with reckless movement? No. If there's fog, reckless movement should be an option to ignore the penalty to for a PSR.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:00

But even then, like that just makes it more, right? Because now your opponent has a PSR, PSR, PSR, PSR in order to move. And you're you're gonna make them generate a ton of PSRs, you're gonna be falling.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:10

Uh it's it's it's only one per move, but yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:12

But I mean, still, like it's it's PSRs, right? You're you're just you're making an advantage for yourself, an obvious advantage. Because any any jump Eric does, he'd be uh getting a three up PSR, whereas his opponent would be doing a five up PSR. So like you're you're fairly likely if you jump round after round after round to fall on a five up. Whereas on a three up, I mean you just avoid snakes, 2.77% chance, right? Like it's it's it's such an advantage. So I wish he had chosen that. Uh he lost the initiative a number of times and got outmaneuvered and ended up dying. But uh anyway. So my match was uh I lost Hunter to my opponent again, and Tom looks at my sheets, and he already had on his side two Shogun C2s. And so he laughed and said, I've already killed two of these, I can kill a third. And I I go, oh, is that so? And so he chooses for himself a Night Gear F, I believe it was. It's the one with a Hag 20 and Hag 30 on a targeting computer. Uh yes, yes. Yes, ECM targeting computer, two year mediums, hag 20, hag 30, tarcomp. Uh I forget, I think his pilot was a 3-4. So he chose that. So I chose the weather that uh gave everything that was not a missile weapon a plus one in order to offset his targeting computer. And because obviously almost all my firepower is in missiles. And I chose Garner's favorite map sheet. Oh yeah. Uh which I forget what the name of it is, but I'm sure Garner knows.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:41

Uh actually, I don't. I just know what it looks like. That's that's actually the surprising part, is that I don't know the name.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:49

Uh Nicholas, I'm pretty sure you know which map sheet I'm talking about here.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:53

Foothills two.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:54

Excellent. So uh there's a position on that map close to my own edge where I can get into uh level two in woods partial cover behind a level three, right? And the LOS level four. And I gave him a map. Uh it's the uh actually it was this is the one that has the the big base on it that's got the uh it's uh most of it's level one, like pavement. Well it's not actually pavement, but it's it's like forward base. Yes. And then it's got a bunch of level three walls, right? So I gave him that so he had like no no trees and really nothing, and he in order for him to get into partial cover, I would defeat his partial cover, right? So it would force him just to kind of vault into me. So first couple turns of just positioning, I get up in the perch, he gets into the base, and um I fire my first round of missiles, and I hit both streak 15s and the ERPC, and he missed both hags. So I dumped 45 damage into him in the first round of shooting, uh, which was pretty satisfying. Uh so he kind of cut for uh a wall and went past it. Or no, sorry, yeah, he came in, kind of cut around, and then went past the wall, and I just kept hitting him with streaks and peep. And uh he ended up jumping behind one of the um up on one of the buildings behind the uh behind the wall. But I'm I'm tall. No, sorry, that does give him partial cover because it's the same height. So he does get partial cover from there. But um I hit him once in the head with because it was 12 hexes now, one of the streak sixes hit and hit him in the head, got a head wound. I went internal on, I think left arm and blew the hag that was in the left arm, which I think is the three pilot. Yes, that was the hag 20. So he went unconscious, falls fourth head wound, right? And uh now I'm like, well crap, I can't see him, he's behind the wall, right? Prone. So I jump forward, it was gonna take me like four turns to get there to be able to see him. And uh, so first turn I jump forward, he immediately wakes up at the end of the turn. This nails the 10 up to wake up. I'm like, okay, jump back into my perch, fire the PPC, uh, hit with that. Uh so I did I didn't even render all the other missiles, and um, it hits the opposite arm, so it hits the right arm, goes internal, crits the hag, four pilot wounds.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:06

It's just game over.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:08

Why you don't bring Gauss rifles, folks.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:12

Liquid pilot.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:13

So Tom Tom joked that he's like, I went outside the map bounds and just found the like endgame boss you're not supposed to find and just died instantly. That is that is pretty um Yeah, that was uh it was a good time. Uh so then there were there was another like half an hour or so of Eric's Ericsson that's still uh still going. And um that one ends and it's finally the finals, and uh it was a really friendly gentleman that I faced in the finals. Uh it was his first blood right, so huge props to him for getting to the finals in first blood right, like that's a major achievement. And uh he of course wins Hunter, and out of his mechs he he selects having a 3-4 pilot, a Kodiak six to fight my timbre wolf A.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:06

And I cried internally.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:08

Well, the thing is, I mean, like, he was thinking ahead enough to like realize that weather is a big thing and that he needed to not weather blunder and wanted to choose something that uh you know both of our main guns are energy, so I can't really prevent him from having giving you the option to put a double planet bowling ball on the board because you have the longest range gun he has is like 15 picks.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:41

What ended up happening here, I said I was gonna do this one. So what ended up happening? His opponent was a nice guy who get got uh the hunter, like he said, he took, let's I'll put it in quick layman's terms for those that don't know mech stuff, he took a rather close-range heavy brawler to a and then gave his opponent a fast m a fast air quotes moving sniper. And then gave his opponent map choice.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:10

Uh-oh.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:12

And uh in the blood right, this is something we did not talk about. Normally when we're talking about putting map sheets side by side, it's long edge to long edge. In the blood right, you can put short edge to short edge, making it insanely long. So that was not mentioned before. That is a thing that happened. So he proceeded to walk in circles on his bowling ball field while his opponent had to chase down through his bowling ball field bowling lane to get to him. So by the time the Kodiak came within range, which by the way was kept between like 9 to 15 hexes away the whole time. He did get within five.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:58

He did get within five a few times. At the end. At the end.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:01

Yeah, because I'm the the the Kodiak is is a four-six movement while the Timberwolf is a five-eight. So the the Timberwolf could move backwards almost as fast as that thing can run forwards.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:14

But if you just run and then turn through tr run and turn, run and turn, you're getting he's the Timberwolf Zest played very, very well and ran with one turn every time, so that it was just a 3 TMM at long range.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:28

Ugh.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:29

Uh aga that his opponent had to fight at usually medium range. So right there, just flat fives plus distance, and he was going to be at short range most times with his ERP PC. And just by the time the Kodiak actually got to fire its weapons for the first time, he was already down 60 or 75 armor.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:54

Yeah, that is not a recipe for success.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:56

Oh this is this is a format ripe for abuse.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:03

I felt really bad for the guy, unfortunately. Like he did really, really well getting that far, but like when that happened, I felt I was like, oh no. As soon as I saw Zest pull out the first bowling ball, I was like, oh no. It's gonna be that. Because it was Aerobase 2 was the map that Zest started on. And then it was Grasslands River Comm Center was the map that he gave his opponent.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:36

Very interesting maps.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:38

Anyways, then I saw this like that. The the armor advantage that the Kodiak had is now gone.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:44

So most of my PPCs at the beginning though went into arms. I had like both arms down to like three armor by the time that we really got engaged, and then I never hit arms again.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:54

He you did almost die one turn though, in one fell swoop, which was great. The I think the second round he got shots on you, he hit with two of his ER mediums and domed both of them.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:08

Oh yeah. Like I think that was actually his first hits, wasn't it? I think it was.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:13

I thought it was the second set. I thought it was the second set.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:15

What is his first set of set or second set of shooting, but I think it was his first hits. Yeah, he hits hits two lasers, boxcars both, and I'm like, so he's a headshot headshot. I'm like, okay, edge fully in the frame like so that was a bit scary. I was uh I was down to five five HP on the head uh right at the start.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:36

Yeah, I mean it has two streak sixes and an LB20 auto cannon. Like, there is a lot of uh random hit potential for more head hits there.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:46

So fortunately, he was focused mostly on using his era medium lasers. Actually, I talked to him on Reddit real briefly about it uh after because he he commented on my uh my thread that I made. And um he was not using the LBX, the streaks, or the medium pulse enough. And he forgot his question.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:02

And that was something that And that was something that I told him like right after the game. I was like afterwards, I was just like, hey, so I have a question for you. Like, I'm not trying to be mean or anything, but you have a medium pulse laser that you could have swapped in, which would have let you fire for three, four turns longer than shooting all eight mediums, and you were always in the same range bracket with the same damage, you would have just generated literally one less heat. And he's like, I didn't think about that. I'm like, Yeah, I'm sorry, man. I mean, I wanted to say something in the middle of the game, but I'm like, I can't, I can't say it.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:38

Now, I I want to say I have a question to in this person's defense, which is like, is this all these games at one day? Yes, it's all back to back. So this is this is a long day. It ended a long day. Like, you know, considering that I give a lot of grace towards this person. And it was his first time.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:58

So, like, no, he did he did very, very well for his first time. I was just like, I just I felt I was I I just saw what was I saw everything unfolding before it unfolded. I was like, oh no.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:07

And he also could not have known going into it that the Timberwolf A is one of my most used mechs hands down. And that he gave me a mech that I have extreme expertise in, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:16:17

Like Zess, you've heard me say many times talking about the Timberwolf in various like competitive formats, and I want to stress that is largely referencing the Prime. The A. Oh, the A's good.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:30

The A is so valuable in so many because what I would make the claim that the Timberwolf A is hands down the best clan invasion heavy F.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:41

I mean, that the other heavy mechs are kind of fighting on bad terms, but yeah. Yeah. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:51

Like it's it's it's one of those, like, without serious thought and specific uh connotations or like context.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:58

Yeah, like I can't I can't disagree. I mean, so like it has 40 dissipations, so it can fire both PPCs, two of the medium pulse, and the streak six, and it only generates heat if the streak hicks six hits, which only puts it up to plus four, so you don't get movement penalty. And you obviously got 12 extra damage out of that volley. And then you can drop a medium pulse, fire the streak instead. If you don't get a hit, you now cool. If you do get a hit, you stay at the same heat and you're getting 12 extra damage again. It's just it has a very easy-to-use curve. It has great brackets, it has two year PPCs, so it can disengage things at long, or it can brawl. It's it's just it's very, very good though.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:34

And it was funny that the crit that he got on you was on the third medium pulse that you never use.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:39

Yes. And the streak never hit until the last round of fire. Uh, we were starting to make jokes that we didn't know if we loaded ammo or not. Because I missed every single streak pull, which was almost the entire game. It just never hit until the end.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:52

So for those at home, uh streak missiles, when you shoot them, they either don't fire because you failed to achieve lock, or they do fire and generate heat because they achieve lock and they hit with all their missiles. And so if Zess, you know, the S's pilot had failed to achieve lock every single time, the weapon just doesn't fire. So correct, he would not know if there was no ammo if he missed every single time.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:16

I mean you can see the indicator light, but yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:20

Well, maybe maybe they clicked that over when they did the quote unquote reload, but like, you know, re- did the reset, but forgot to actually put the ammo in, so the counter thinks it's full, but it's not.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:30

Anyways, that was that was the game. And then even in the uh dying breath, where I think he was like on the ground, like three hexes from you, if I remember right, at the end.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:42

He stood up and I think it was at six. Because I had gotten displayed.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:46

Was it six?

SPEAKER_04 1:18:47

I think it was six. Was it I can look up a picture of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:49

But either way, it was like you alpha strike or he alpha striked you and like did not much of anything. Like it just spread everywhere.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:59

Yeah, and that at this point he was running out of armor everywhere, so everything is just starting to get away.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:03

Well, he just needed a headshot too, though.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:04

So it's just like Because I do want us to have time for games played, and we still have instant action. I think we've been talking a bit too much about each of these games.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:14

These were the more interesting things. Instant action was pretty boring. Umfortunately, I I was sitting there and I'm just autoplaying my list because I I want it in list design.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:23

Yeah, I we've we had some definite we had a lot of conversations about instant action and the choice of instant action for a competitive environment, and it's that sounds like the I think of it was not ready for a competition was basically correct.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:39

So, do we want to just explain the format of instant action here real quick for people?

SPEAKER_04 1:19:44

I can go through it pretty quickly here. So, instant action is you build a 6k force, you choose a type of force. There's five different types. You choose to either develop a uh destroy, confront, hold, salvage, or recon list. And then depending on what type of force you have and what type of force your opponent has, there's a matrix, and based on where your two roles line up, it chooses what mission you play. So you have a mirror match, like recon versus recon, you play a uh that specific match, but if you have uh destroy versus salvage, they play a different mission objective set, right? Uh any of them that are not a mirror match are all asymmetrical objectives. And they are not well optimized. It clearly has not been stress tested by people who break things, is what I will say. I I I love what Robert's done, but it has not had a true stress tester go in because I broke it in 15 minutes.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:43

Well, here's here's the thing I say about instant action, right? For for a pickup environment that's not supposed to be in competitive, if it's casual, if it's more narrative thought-based, where you're just playing something and you have a force that you can kind of create a concept for and they're completing an objective, it's good. It's interesting. I the the the lack of mirror matches for a like like I emphasize casual, not competitive. Very good. It is not a competitive format, and I don't I can't understand in my brain of why it was picked for a tournament.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:19

So it was picked because it's simple. Yeah. Because it's not a hundred pages, Nicholas. I I did pitch before it was chosen, I did pitch Iliad. However, they opened the document and saw how long it was and decided it was it was it was just too long. So which I mean to the credit, it's a hundred pages. It's it's a lot, it's a lot for players to go through and understand. Like it doesn't really have its own dedicated tournament document. Uh I think that is a proposal to me to go through with you.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:46

It's a weakness, and we by the time I was able to like find the time to like really sit sit down and talk to you about shortening it, they had already picked instant action. So and and I was I was just looking at before this, the conversations about how long the Iliad format is, and we're we're we're separating it down, we're eliminating the the Alpha Strike portion of it, but I just looked and the the Alpha Strike, the e Wolfnet 350 rules document has gotten up to 60 pages now.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:15

So well, I mean, if you're gonna have a tight packet, there's a lot of things to cover, right? So like it's gonna start ballooning out in order for you to cover all the facets. Plus, you need to have um all the objectives, maps perhaps written up to show like how the objectives are set up, and clear delineations of how those scenarios work to make sure people play them correctly, and like you know, uh frequently asked questions, possibly even right. You just get a bunch of things stacked on, it's gonna bloat.

unknown 1:22:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:42

The goal still, uh I as soon as I can find energy and time and whatnot, is to I think Garner created a version of this, but A, we're separate the Iliad and the Odyssey. We don't need them combined anymore as Odyssey is getting more play. We have a lot of things we want to change about that. Um, even separate the idea of they're not playing all the same missions anymore, but also just in terms of you know, separate that, that'll save a bunch of space, followed by creating a full packet and a quick packet, right? A player packet and a full organizer packet, where you know you have the construction rules, you have the missions, you scrap out a lot of it, or you just sort of do a broad list. So for all of the rules, you can list them out and not and not have to have to explain them and sit and you can reference the other doc document if people need more information so that you have both it is kind of similar to if you need to look up a rule, you pick up the book, the full book, and look at it, you know, in a tournament packet that lists optional rules and whatnot. So it would be a okay for for for most purposes you just use this like 10-page packet, and then if you need more explanation, you pull up the full dock.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:56

Yeah, I cut I cut it down to 25, and it could be cut down to sub-20 if you cut out the remaining Odyssey stuff on the pages that I cut out, and just move the map layout set like objective setup thing into where Odyssey was on that page, and you immediately cut it down to sub-20. And that's for army construction, missions, uh, and pre-game setup.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:25

On some of this, I will point out that uh, because we we probably can get into a lot of discussion here. So, yeah, inst action basically came down to I ran a recon list. Uh, we identified, I think same as Garner did, that recon was by far the strongest uh force type. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:40

Uh in the I didn't I didn't end up playing, by the way. Let me clear, I looked at everything. I looked at I said, this is just not gonna be any fun for my opponents. And then I was like, and if I can find that, somebody else is gonna find that, and I don't want to play that game.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:57

So a lot of people did show up with recon. Uh most of them did not show up with insanely optimized recons like I did. So uh my my list was very, very scummy. Um it was Jamie McGuire, who uh is canonically a Direwolf E pilot, so it's a 4-4. Uh it should be more like a 3-4 or 3-3 if it was gonna be more canonical, but it's a 3-4 Direwolf E, which is just death, right? Death incarnate. So that's half my 6k list. Uh and then taking up most of the other half, another 2500 or so, was a Contio with a 4G. Okay. I see where this is going. Oh so clearly I've generated problems, and then the other 500 BB about was spent on four beatals with uh nothing but bloodhound growth.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:48

Oh, my favorite, the skimmer. Oh, it's like every problem we've encountered and tried to view with an alien all at once.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:56

So let's so my uh list that I was looking at was actually something not quite that, but in that vein, except it was all mechs, where it was the Narc Masakari, the Narc Mislinks, the Narc Bloodhound, and Um I forget what the other thing was because like the way that recon works is that you like scan objectives by like doing things to it and being near them, and like tagging it, oh, and also the tag, and like if you narc beacon something like you get you accrue points. So like the Dragonfly R can scan three different objectives in one turn.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:45

Well, it would it would take it three turns to do it because it takes two turns to scan with a probe, two turns to scan with the narc, and it would take three turns to scan with a tag.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:53

Correct, but I'd say like it can do three different ones on its own.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:56

Simultaneously.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:57

Yes. Simultaneously. And it's fast enough that like you're not really touching.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:04

Yep. So the thing I was scared about though was recon versus recon, because basically there's six locations on the map, you have to analyze them through either being close enough, being within probe range two rounds in a row, uh, tagging them three times, or narcing them twice. And uh so obviously with with four bloodhounds, my plan is just to be within eight hexes two turns in a row on multiple of them per VTOL, right? And then uh after a unit has gotten scanned data, it can leave the board, it cannot come back after it leaves, and then you score that data. Yep. So my plan is to you know have the VTOLs scan everything and then leave with probably two or three of them having all the data that they need, but the the fourth and third one are kind of there as safeguards. But all of them can leave and have all the data probably on turn three.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:52

How much BV is each of those VTOs? Like a hundred some.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:57

They were gonna re six. They were gonna be six about four V.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:00

Uh god, I uh so I I I I I still have okay uh conversations on occasion with people who are it's like I don't I don't V tools aren't that bad. You can just bring LBs and c and hard counter them. It's like you don't understand how V Toll interactions work.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:19

This is how confident I was in not getting shot. They have bar five armor.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:25

Ah. I see. So these are industrial armor vtolls.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:33

Yes, and I just planned to never get freaking shot. Yeah, you just hide you just like land and hide. One of them did get hit in a a time where I had to uh I have to it was against confront. So basically there's like a bunch of locations that are determined that I have to place beacons on, and then the opponent has to already be standing on them and then stand still to remove the beacons. If out of the six locations I have beacons on more than half of or half or more of them, I win at the end of turn seven. So at the end of turn six, they have to already be standing on four of them and remove them in order to uh to win. But the problem is the timing is also really poorly written. They're removed in movement phase, and I can re-plant at end phase. So if I have a VTOL hovering over top of your mech that pulls the beacon up, and you have nothing shooting out of the sky, it will just plant the beacon back at the end of the end phase and win regardless. So I had that in my pocket, but on top of it, at the end of turn six, he couldn't even get mechs into position to prevent enough of them. Uh I lost one VTOL because I put two of them. It was basically it determines that the points are a significant terrain feature, center of the map, um, the lowest level location on the map, which it's all zero, so we had to rant, but we just determined center of the board, uh like between the center of the board and the uh the edge. So there was two on the center, and uh the highest terrain point, which there was two towers, and we did it with the one that was more in the center, it was actually on his side, so it was everything was kind of loaded up on his side, and it was still super unfair. Uh, because I put two VTOLs up on top of there. He had precision ammo and plasma rifles and stuff, so like he killed one of them, but the second one survived and dropped the beacon, and now his spider has to jump up there in order to try and remove it, and it jumped away because it didn't want to stand in front of the direct beat shot and tried to remove a different one, and it did remove a different one, but like at that point he couldn't get anything anywhere to prevent. And one of the mechs, he's he had he had a Tom Star Lance with C3, and uh the battle cobra died, it went behind the uh the direwolf and was standing on one of the objectives, and it died. It just gotten there that turn, and so it didn't have a chance to uproot. And so I was gonna have like four locations, and even if he was removing stuff, I had three more VTALs placed on top of his mechs to drop more beacons, even if he did remove them. So, like I was winning on like three different factors.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:06

Yeah, it's interesting to see in other formats and other things people create that problems that they are encountering are things we've encountered and dealt with, and it makes me think that possibly the biggest advantage that we have is that we have been at this for various iterations on a consistent basis for several years, and in the the way we approach the Iliad and and in competition, the way we sort of see the problems in just consistent play is a lot of what other formats and areas are not, because talking to other agents, other organizers, it is as far as I understand, most other communities do not have the same kind of competitive league structure and player base that we have that allows this, and it's it's it's our greatest strength, I think, uh locally and around. So in hearing this V toll thing, it's just like, oh, I'm so glad we dealt with that already on our end.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:14

Right. I mean, like I just I said the list and you guys immediately understood the issues, right? Because you've already stress tested through these issues and and knew at a glance, just just as soon as you hear it, the inherent issues of this list. Because like the VTOLs don't have to land interactive objectives, and in fact, in this case, they're interacting with objectives from eight hexes away. Uh-huh. With no line of sight.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:34

Like V Tolls, the biggest problem with them isn't necessarily like the VTolls actually designed for combat. The biggest problem is V tolls that are very cheap and have specialized equipment or functions that don't directly interact with the opponent, but amplify things a player is already doing.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:53

Yeah, they let you focus way more of your uh actual points on killing because the things that are winning you the game on victory points are taking up like maybe 500 BB total.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:07

Here's the thing. I only ever killed one mech, and I didn't even have to kill that mech totally.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:11

Well, you don't need to kill a mech with a contio, you just have to threaten them with killing it.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:15

Exactly. Which is why that that one match, like, you just kept seeing mechs with their backs against walls because they're scared that the Kantio's gonna go in. And it never it went in once, right? So, like, I never cat I never punched the head off with it, but just the severe threat of oh my god, piloting two contio, my palate's focused on that and trying to work around how they deal with that, they're not seeing the threat of oh the V Tals are winning the game. And the opponents that that did see that forfeited at the end of turn two. I had two opponents forfeit at the end of turn two.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:44

Playing against you with with a similar list as that for for Iliad, or just the way I've been playing recently in a lot of competitive tests where I would have, you know, you have the dire wolf, I'd have a Turkina or it or a Jade Phoenix as sort of the distraction unit. It is a big unit, it is a big threat. But the actual problem for in a lot of the matches I've been playing is my little howler. And if you you if you don't deal with the howler, it's gonna do stupid things. But if you deal with it, I don't care. It's only 500 BV, but that might put you in a position to be dealt with by the bigger thing. And so you have your Contio at piloting too, which is a threat. You have your direwolf, which is a big threat and a distraction. And if they try to deal with the VTOLs and leave themselves open to your big things, oh oh goodness, that's terrifying. But if they deal with your big things and then don't deal with the V Tolls, they lose. They it is there is no goodness position to be in automatically.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:39

Yeah, because basically my opponents were trying to play Battletech and I was playing a completely different game, right? It's basically what it kind of came down to.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:45

Yeah, they are playing Battletech, you are playing instant action.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:48

But yeah, I mean it's it's I mean, that's also something that even outside of instant action's rule set, uh, something I have noticed when I have looked at the Contio is it does, it is kind of a mech you play jazz with, in that it's a very much about the heads you don't punch. Where the uh I've I've talked about this before, not on the podcast, but the idea of basically hurting effect, where you can use something like a Contio or a uh the Devastator, or I was gonna say the Direwolf E is also a really good example of this. These are mechs that are not necessarily going to kill a lot of opponents because they are they have some weakness to them. The Contio doesn't want to deal with mechs that are ganging up on it. The direwolf is fairly slow and short range. However, what they are very good at doing is map control, where the direwolfie has basically a 12 hex bubble of you do not come here around it, that it can enforce pretty aggressively, and you can zone your opponent out. The Contio says you are always going to be like ganging your mechs up together because as soon as any of you wander off, I am just going to rip your head off. And that is in a lot of ways much more powerful than them actually getting kills, especially in a game where you have forced the opponent to play into uh map objectives, which my understanding is that is most of what recon's objectives were.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:25

Yeah. So two of the opponents I thought were hold. And against hold, what I have to do is I have to analyze over three-quarters of their list, and then escape off of their map edge.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:40

With half my force. Helicopters. With helicopters.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:46

I was purpose built for this, right? Like, so like you said, Luke identified this, right? Hurting. Like anything that goes off on its own dies. Or you hurt everything together and it all gets scanned by helicopters just giving it a uh a toilet bowling, basically, right? So what do you do? I mean, like that's why one of them forfeited the other one. If we were going to match four, there's only supposed to be three matches, but we saw two undefeated feeder fighters, so they were like, hey, do you guys want to play for it? And he was almost willing just to give it to me right there because he's like, I don't know how to beat this. Um, but it was it was John, he he's a he's a strong player, and he ended up just drawing his forces off to his his side of the board. I I literally put him in a corner, and it was uh nobody was baby in a corner. It wasn't baby, it was John. It was about to be direw for finally engaging. Contio could have charged something off the board, but it would have had to take fire from four mechs to do so.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:41

Coward.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:42

Um, it would have been like an auto-hit charge. Well, the thing is, I still I still needed to scan it, and I was like, what happens if I remove the mech from play? Um, but also like everything like there's precision AC tens over there. So I was gonna take like ERP PCs and precision tens on like sevens. The medium pulse sizers were too far away, but it would have taken the year large. It wasn't the right turn to go forward. I needed the direwolf closer. And the direwolf was getting into a bunch of woods that I could leverage the position and then use the Contio and this force scam things and give him a lot of options at once, they're all bad. Right, so I just I needed a few more turns. Yeah. The writing was kind of on the wall, and so we called it uh because it was like 90% chance to win.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:27

So yeah, it it the way you describe it and the way it's constructed, it seems like you're right that you you want on list destruction and dealt with like the a format that had not yet encountered the issues that we had encountered in Iliad. Yeah. Um, you know, just cheap units, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:38:48

Because obviously I mean I'm using sub-200 BD units here. And VTOLs. Yeah, using VTOLs. VTOLs that are not forced to land, interact with an objective.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:00

Um it's just And have nothing that actually contribute to anything other than like they don't actually have to be in line of sight of anything to do whatever they need to do.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:11

Oh, bottom loaded and not okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:15

Oh my god. I missed that.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:17

Interesting.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:20

Oh I maxed up units, right? And then fought people that pretty much everybody had lances.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:25

So I just weren't people weren't just like even throwing in some cheap battle armor.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:32

No, it was it was all pretty much four mech lances.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:37

Yeah, people after my own heart.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:39

Yeah, yeah, they're not playing Capellans. They have not yet uh understood the power of the augmented lance. Zez! You you you won at round zero.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:50

Yeah. Let's let's get into games playing.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:53

I'm not proud about it, but I'm really not. It's I I wanted to make a point.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:59

Exactly it. Like, I I was gonna say you you didn't win so much as they chose the wrong thing. I mean, you did win, but yeah, you made the point of like this is not a format that's ready for competition.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:14

I I made the argument many times in private because I mean I I know some of the people that were producing it. Uh, I didn't know the TO, but uh he's a nice friendly guy. Um and I was like, look, the instant action it cannot be used for a tournament setting of like it doesn't have scoring, like it does not work. And uh, well, it's it's the best we have as an option for we're gonna go with it. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna break it.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:38

If if that's the best they have, I'm just what I'm hearing is we gotta we gotta cut that packet down to like 20 pages. Like, depending on what I'm doing this weekend, I can I I I don't have Adobe editor, actually, but I was saying I can go through and I can cut that because if yeah, if that's the if that's the the bias we have for the biggest tournament in the country, I think we can get our foot in the door.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:03

One last thing. All in in the future, all maps will be foothills too.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:12

And considering we're doing the games played, I'm just gonna sit here and listen because we already went through late 20 of mine.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:18

So you can you can time in.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:37

Okay, please, get please be give a commentary or you know, be be our own version of the uh something in Waldorf from Sesame Street. Or not a Mustafa Street, Muppets. Statler and Waldorf. Thank you. All right, so I don't have much to talk about in terms of games played. Uh I I've played a lot recently, but in since the last recording, I didn't actually talk about games the last recording, but really what mostly what I've played in recent memory to talk about is a test game with Garner that uh a lot of it I do not want to talk about because it will be a surprise when it does come out. But uh Garner definitely made it a lot better, and I'm excited for how it turns out. The other thing is I did play a quick pickup game, a 7k pickup, where I brought a Black Laner D, it did silly things, I had a Turkina that did absolutely nothing, and it it wasn't wasn't even fair, and Garner even had to end up teasing me about bringing always bringing a black laner.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:40

It wasn't just the always the black laner, it is the same three mechs that I have not seen you not use at least two of the three in each one of your forces. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:48

I after after Richmond, I am definitely going to stop using some of these mechs and try to vary my forces a little bit. I have a bit of a neurospiciness in from my own internal perspective. Like the various slight iterations of the same list feel very different for me, and I really enjoy it, but I have to be conscientious that my opponents don't always want to face the same mechs.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:17

Whereas is the complete polar opposite of me, where I have not I think I have duplicated mechs twice, or like once, and that was when I brought a list that was just best of my five previous lists.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:30

Yep. No, so this this upcoming season, I am definitely going to be bringing back again. Yeah, I'm bringing it back. I'm playing the same things, but it's stuff I've only used once before, which is my Rassel Hog list, and it's going to be uh they're going to be excited and interesting. Something I should have mentioned early in the what have you been up to? Uh slacked off a little bit on finalizing some of the stuff for season one of Iliad. Season two is technically open. I've only seen one list of missions so far. I have to post my uh my own list. This is going to be the season to play test the pulse as precision rule, which we recorded an episode about, and I've gotten back and still need to edit. So that will be talked about. I know there's various opinions on it. I like I said, but I want to test this to see how it plays out, because I don't like any of the other options in terms of trying to balance pulse and pulse is a problem.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:29

I listen, I'm not totally confident that this is gonna fix the issue. Um I think uh pulse cap is probably the most efficient way of going about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:36

But the the problem you run into with pulse cap we we'll talk we talked about in the thing, but really quick counter that. The the problem with pulse cap is there's too many ways to handle it, and no matter how you handle it, there's gonna be some really dumb stuff that gets caught in the crossfire.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:52

That and a pulse cap kind of just encourages everybody to bring that much pulse, and it doesn't sort of like deal with the issue of pulse is just very easily optimized to a certain extent playing the game. I make the joke of bringing bringing a lot of pulse turns and ends up being playing the game on easy mode if someone else doesn't know how to optimize or play against it, and it is a significant problem, particularly because there is an uneven usefulness of various kinds of pulse, so that you know if you don't bring the best pulse or also a damage cap doesn't factor in or deal with if if as a tar uh targeting computer or not to magnify the issue. I think of the common ways to handle pulse, I think you're definitely right that a pulse damage cap is the best common is out of the bad options the best one. But I I do want to see if the pulse has precision, like does it work? How does it feel? So I'm not I I think on paper I like it. I at least want to see one iteration of it on an Iliad, and that's it. Alright, so that's that's my conversation, games played.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:07

How about you guys? I have I have games planned for this weekend and this coming weekend, but I have been super busy with school stuff, and also I may have briefly mentioned this. I over spring break was doing my other kind of competitive hobby, uh, sword fighting at an event in Louisiana. So I've been I've been away for a little bit and I'm I'm back.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:34

I don't think I really played much of anything. I played Axel at Simcon, where his pirates failed to load his rocket launchers correctly, and every one of them just hit my arms on every back shot he got on me, and the Spirit Walker did Spirit Walker things, which is solidifying it as one of like my favorite little not used mechs, Spirit Walker Ace, so good. And because I've only gotten like two games of actual Iliad in with my list, I'm probably gonna end up using it again, even though I just made fun of Nicholas using the same lists over and over again.

SPEAKER_03 1:47:13

But I didn't get to play a lot with it, so I might be able to squeeze in a game over this weekend. There's some complicated stuff going on in my life, but yeah, I mean, maybe we could play a game. Who knows? True. Well, thank you very much, guys, for joining me again on another episode. Thank you, Zess, for enlightening us with your experience.

SPEAKER_04 1:47:36

Hey, thanks for having me. It was fun.

SPEAKER_03 1:47:37

All right, I will catch you guys again soon. Later. Goodbye. Um goodbye. Thank you for listening to the Odysseus Legion Podcast. This podcast was created by the Odysseus Legion, a battletech club organizing play around central and western New York State. Rules for all of our formats, as well as a calendar of Odysseus Legion events, can be found on our website, OdysseusLegion.com. All music and audio in this recording was licensed through Adobe Stock or open source. All views expressed herein are those of the person expressed to them and do not necessarily represent the views of the Odysseus Legion, Catalyst Game Labs, or the Catalyst Demo team. Please make sure to like and subscribe to the Odysseus Legion podcast on your podcast platform of choice or on our YouTube channel. Have a great day.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:38

Can you guys hear me? Oh my fucking god, okay. So I've been trying to talk for like the past ten minutes, and I come back mentally muted myself by on the hardware on my microphone. I was wondering why you guys kept icing me out. Yeah. Cool. Okay, that's excellent. Well, I've been I've been I've been part of the conversation, just no one's been replying to my super cool jokes I've been. Um