Episode 16: IS vs Clan List Building

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 ended up talking about list building for the two broadest categories of factions in the game, the Inner Sphere and Clans with our friend Nate.

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

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:22

17,000 feet 40 podcast incoming message. Before we get into this episode, I would like to say a few things. First, I want to apologize for the delay in getting episodes out. Going forward, we're going to be switching to a once-a-month release. When I started this project, I had a lot more free time and energy to devote to the podcast and other biotech projects, but a lot has changed in my life and I really need to change my priorities. I will be doing my best to catch up on releases and episodes already recorded, then aim for new episodes at the beginning of each month, uh starting in the next month or two. So thank you all for listening and being supportive. Hello, hello, and welcome to the 16th episode of the Odysseus Legion Podcast. My name is Nicholas, I will be your host for today, and I play too much Jade Falcon. Joining me as usual is the occasional smoke Jaguar enjoyer, but not the Star League kind, Garner. Hello. The man, I am never entirely sure what he's going to play, but it might just be Capellans, Luke. Hello. Along with our friend who feels out of place when his commander isn't in an Atlas and only owns one planet, Nate. At it. As we approach several of us going to a tournament, we are jumping into another casual conversation episode. But before we get into whatever it is we end up talking about, what have you guys been up to, Battletech or otherwise?

SPEAKER_04 2:22

Uh, I've actually played some games in the last couple of weeks, so that's been a change from my previous schedule. And I'm currently working on painting up a Rock Shassa in Davion colors.

SPEAKER_06 2:35

Wait, like a real rock shassa?

SPEAKER_04 2:38

It's it's a print, but. You got me all excited that you got a secret release. No, I'm not getting Oh no. I listen, that that core rock shassa is so nice, and I cannot wait for that. But it's like, I am I am, as I say often, a nobody as far as CGL is concerned, and also I am not buying an Iron Winds Rock Shassa when that Catalyst one is coming out in like six months.

SPEAKER_06 3:05

I mean, I know this isn't a Warhammer um podcast, but I did get a copy of the second edition of Horus Heresy six months before it released. So I mean, those do go out into the wild, and you can find them. And if people know you like the thing, they'll be like, hey, I will give you this thing because they sent it to me and I'm not going to use it.

SPEAKER_02 3:26

So, CGL, you know how I made that uh intro in the last episode of hey, come talk to us. I'm gonna make a make another announcement here. Hey, Luke is an amazing painter whose stuff has been on on Sarna is constantly stolen and claimed by other people as social media and whatnot. You should send him stuff to paint. Also true.

SPEAKER_04 3:50

That would require me to play nice with uh with camo specs, and their painting application scares and confuses me.

SPEAKER_03 3:57

Uh hi. I I've been working on uh a few different things. Uh mainly um I've been working on some Novokat stuff for my Novacat sheep visional galaxy stuff. I also have picked up a number of uh stuff that I'm throwing into my Scorpion Empire force. Uh just last week I got absolutely housed by Luke over here, but at least he bought me dinner first, so at least there's that.

SPEAKER_04 4:28

Listen, the dice did most of that.

SPEAKER_03 4:30

I realized that it was a lot of bad dice. Was I there in spirit? Kinda. Um, and then yesterday we also had our uh RPG session with John, one of the other guys that's been on before, uh, where myself and Nicholas were playing with a couple of other folks, and I gave him a metal Black Lantern D and two Iron Hold Battle Armor dudes that I have been working on for the past month.

SPEAKER_06 5:05

Oh, and you know what I just realized, because it's sitting in front of me on my desk. You were supposed to get a mech from me as well. You're supposed to get the heiress I picked up for you.

SPEAKER_03 5:13

Oh, I forgot you did that.

SPEAKER_04 5:15

This uh this this week is kind of going to be the substitute teachers are rolling in the uh the big television, and we're we're taking out a VHS of some film from like the 1980s to watch because you guys are going to uh Virginia uh next week. I guess I will be doing like interviews with all of you about your tournament experience. This is about really fun.

SPEAKER_06 5:39

Also, interesting side note because I was looking up hotels and stuff. There is a Garner Hotel, like right next door. Ooh, fancy. Literally, it's Garner Hotel. I did not know that there was a chain.

SPEAKER_04 5:53

It's just it's just your face on the neon board, and it just says no it.

SPEAKER_02 5:59

Oh, it's it's like the the episode of The Simpsons where Homer saw this like like Japanese icon that looked like himself, but it was like a combination of like official light bulb. And so Garner just looks and it's his face. He's trying to figure out how, but it's just some innocuous combination of items. Garner, what have you been up to?

SPEAKER_06 6:19

Uh being extremely indecisive on figuring out what I want to do for the Richmond Open and Eastern Assault because I have strong feelings on the army construction rules and they annoy me. And nothing feels right. And I hate getting punished for having an incidental small inner sphere small pulse laser. Or I have to activate mask and supercharger to get to TMM4, and then that counts as one of my two TMM4s I can get, because running in a straight line with no turns is definitely just as effective as jumping 17 hexes. I have feelings.

SPEAKER_02 6:59

Uh, as for me, I've been painting. I've been emailing people. And this episode is coming out after lists have to be submitted, so we can talk about our lists without any concerns. Of I know mine's submitted, but he hasn't said anything. But he has replied to a bunch of emails in a chain about, and I'm trying to get him to like clarify and be specific about problems with the optional rules he's implementing. So we'll we'll probably talk it more about afterwards, but the whole like like they reference an alternate attack declaration rule listed in the BMM, which is not actually what they're using, because if you read that rule, you declare your attack and you make your roles, but you don't assign damage and you go and do damage altogether later on, because they know that this would break the rules of the game to take to go each unit individually, declare roll two hit and roll damage before moving on to the next unit. In the way that breaks the game in terms of it trying to be simultaneous, because it breaks, first of all, knowledge chain of what happens. So if you kill a unit before it activates, then it could just be like, well, f you, I'm using up all my shit. Does heat doesn't matter, I'm dead. Versus you know, like ammo explosions. Like what I quite what I questioned was because I'm trying to get the idea that this is not doing simultaneous actions, right? Either A, something happens that's not simultaneous and it prevents something from happening later, or something later interacts with something that's happening now, and both are issues. So the most obvious example was you know, you shoot a unit, you get hit an ammo crit for an ultra auto cannon bin with two shots left, where the the player, if they haven't acted yet, they have the ability to use both shots by declaring also mode where maybe they would not have beforehand.

SPEAKER_04 9:05

So I have I have one better for you as a better example of this. How does AMS work? With that, because so normally I think so. I've gotten, I think, clarification on this from uh one of the CGL devs, Alex, where basically the way that we like speedroll through turns, um, like it is normally supposed to be you trade back and forth, you confirm all the hits, and then you have to do damage. I believe the way AMS works is you are all you can't bait it with like LRM5s. You have like they get the ability to choose which of all of the missile attacks that actually successfully connect that they're going to AMS. Yeah. So how does AMS work?

SPEAKER_06 9:55

I mean, you choose which of the missile attacks in the order. Like, I guess I don't I don't understand the question.

SPEAKER_04 10:04

So okay, so like say you are getting attacked by like an LRM 15, uh like two LRM 15s and an LRM 20. The way it has been described to me prior, and I will have to go check, is basically that you are allowed to but basically basically the idea is you couldn't you couldn't basically bait out the AMS uh with one of the 15s and then have the 20 hit later.

SPEAKER_06 10:36

Why? Why is that not what you roll you you trigger AMS immediately after a hit roll but before cluster is rolled. I don't understand the I don't understand the confusion. Uh let me see if I can find it.

SPEAKER_04 10:49

I may be like I said, I might be talking out of my ass here. Anyway, go on.

SPEAKER_02 10:56

Alright, yeah, so uh I tried to explain it to him, and he's just like, well, if you if that happens, just don't do the ammo crit and you'll deal with it later. And I'm trying to point out to him if that's how you're doing it, then nobody should ever actually deal with the ammo crits when they happen, because players are gonna want to expand the ammo to reduce the damage. I just want you to clarify that if one player takes action A, that is that may be later significantly impacted by other players' action B, you do not fully resolve action A until you can determine action B. You need to set precedent for this optional rule because it will change how people I I I wanted to respond again, but I didn't. But the whole point is this needs clarification because it will change how how players act. It it can change specifically the order of activation. It changes like how far you want to draw down your ammo bins, it changes in theory potential actions during the physical attack phase or I mean uh anti-missile system.

SPEAKER_06 12:06

I mean, to be fair, like I explained, it changes yours. I was already doing that. I was already using most of a bin and then switching to a new bin.

SPEAKER_03 12:18

Yeah, but you're the ultra auto cannons guy.

SPEAKER_06 12:20

I guess. Question mark?

SPEAKER_03 12:24

Like, if you don't use a bin a turn, I don't think you're playing Garner.

SPEAKER_06 12:28

Uh I don't use that many UX. And actually, this week I fought against a uh standard bane. And that was a lot of two-point clusters from insane range.

SPEAKER_02 12:43

Yeah, so I've I've been uh painting up trying to get my force ready for the the um Eastern Assault tournament many of us are coming up to, so I'm very excited for that. And uh play the RPG with Nate the other day, as well as we're doing more sort of the local semi-RPG campaign. I volunteered to be sort of a overhead game master, supporting the actual game masters on multiple tables with rule supervision, which works because I'm often running late, so uh that's a thing. Alright, so first point of con odd contact is Nate. Thank you for finally joining us on an episode of the podcast. Why don't you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_03 13:31

Uh well hello. As as you know, my name is Nate, as of this point. Uh and I am I'm big on you know uh trying to play as many different kinds of factions as I can, and I try to have mechs as available as I can for that faction because I don't want to, you know, mix up all my colors on a single board because I have weird mixture issues in my head that say no, you're not supposed to do that, which is why I'm not allowed to use my Lyrens with my uh Free Worlds League, for example, or my smoke uh not smoke jaguars. I almost admitted I had smoke jaguars, and I don't. Uh Novacats.

SPEAKER_06 14:18

There's only one of us here.

SPEAKER_03 14:20

Yes. Uh as there should be. Uh Novacats, Scorpions, uh, maybe Star Adders sometime down the line. That one remains to be seen. But I do a lot of that. I try to do a lot of the hobbying. And I'm big on stuff that you don't see very often. Like, I try to find some weird stuff that's out in the boonies when it comes to uh uh list building where you'll just look at, you'll be like, what the f is that thing? What is that?

SPEAKER_02 14:57

Nate's first laser in the laser jar.

SPEAKER_03 15:00

Yes. Like last year, as just a good example, is one of my big Iliad uh lists that I probably had the second most success with other than the first season. Because the first season was actually like I came in first in the first one. Um that one was with Lyrens, but my favorite one that I've run is a Touring Concordat list that used pretty much nothing but rocket launchers, except for a Warhammer, and the Warhammer was my jump seven unit. Which, you know, that's a heavy mech. They're not supposed to do that. What the hell is this? All I know is that it's behind you now.

SPEAKER_02 15:44

I believe Murph this season is bringing a jump eight oozeel, which I thought was a bit of a surprise.

SPEAKER_04 15:50

Oh yeah, the the 8S. That's a good one. I would argue one of not maybe not the best, but one of the best mediums in the game.

SPEAKER_03 16:02

It's kinda what if Jenner, but like 15 tons heavier.

SPEAKER_04 16:07

What if Wraith, but more evil?

SPEAKER_03 16:09

I would say it's about the same, to be honest. Same as a Wraith.

SPEAKER_04 16:14

It's heat negative, so you don't have to, it's unlike the Wraith, you don't have to lay off, you can just keep throwing it at people.

SPEAKER_03 16:20

Oh, that's true.

SPEAKER_04 16:22

Also, it is an ECM system and a streak, so it has more utility than the Wraith does.

SPEAKER_03 16:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:37

As a I we don't exactly have a firm topic planned, but just as a starting point of conversation, we've mentioned to you guys the idea of not list building in in as a broad term, but specifically the difference between building a list for a clan force versus building a list for an intersphere force. Because I know Nate, that's something that you struggle to go back and forth on. Garner's in the middle of trying to figure out his list building for the tournament. I'm in a position of everyone's tired of playing the same Jade Falcon force over and over again, so I need to switch to something different. And I've been fighting it for three years. I believe the phrase I made were made before was in my own little neurodivergent brain, when I switch out one of the mechs, it feels like a completely different list, but I have to be conscientious that other people don't feel that same way. So yes, I am going to make an active effort to really switch things up.

SPEAKER_03 17:34

The constant use of the Black Lanter D from you actually is what influenced me to get the Iron Wind Metals model of the Black Lanter D and paint it up for you.

SPEAKER_02 17:46

It has become just a very favorite unit of mine, and in the way I've been using it, it is it is silly.

SPEAKER_03 17:55

It's good. It is a good mech. I'm not going to dispute that it is a good mech. I just see it a lot.

SPEAKER_02 18:07

Uh so um, I guess I'll take the like the take the board here. Obviously, we mentioned how I play Jade Falcon, and I've played a lot of Jade Jade Falcon in the first season ever.

SPEAKER_06 18:20

So let's be let's be very clear. It's the issue isn't you playing the same faction.

SPEAKER_02 18:27

You couldn't let me complete my statement.

SPEAKER_06 18:30

No, because I'm sorry, the thing that goes through my mind right there when you're saying because you said I am I just only play Javelin. Well, I pretty much only play Federated Sons. But like I am playing a completely different list like every season with like one repeat, maybe.

SPEAKER_04 18:48

In in fairness, in fairness, I so all of us are all of us are jumping in front of uh in front of you, and I apologize for that. Um I have a thing I want to talk about once you once you after you kind of introduce your your list-building thoughts.

SPEAKER_02 19:08

I was gonna say, like, well, that the my very first Iliad list was all lights and mediums with the attempt to sort of like with no jump in whatsoever as an experiment to really see what that would do. For a period of time, the two units I would always bring were an Incubus 3 and a Cougar Prime, but I stopped using those because I just felt the pulse was abusive. My very early Jade Falcon list did not even have black laners, it was essentially you know, you know, incubus, cougar prime. I I had a had Gosshawk, I brought a devil, I think I tried Pack Hunters once.

SPEAKER_03 19:50

In the early time, you actually had a Marauder 2C somewhere in there as well.

SPEAKER_02 19:55

Yeah. Right? There's at a certain point, I realized to play King of the Hill, I needed a big heavy thing. Yeah, and like I know uh I needed to push out and escape my sort of comfort zone, yes, and uh I've jumped back into Wrestle Hog. I think part of it for me is just if I had my main reluctance is obviously I have a favorite faction. But second, it always is like, what is my what is a second faction I'd actually like to play? And there hasn't been one I really wanted to invest my time and energy into painting and and exploring other than Rassellog, because I really like Rasselhog, but I don't like Ghost Bear Dominion. And having to Garner, you forced me to play Intersphere for a season as sort of a trade-off, and that that got me to realize that Russellhog exists up through the Civil War before it becomes the Dominion. It has it's a Comstar Protector for a period of time, and that gives me a bit more access into interesting mechs and designs for Rasselhog. And I'm pretty interested, like I like my my weird quirky list with a couple of mechs with single heat sinks. So I'm excited to use that more this season. Once my schedule opens up, I can actually get some games in.

SPEAKER_03 21:13

I have a suggestion for you. Yeah. Alina Mercantile League.

SPEAKER_02 21:21

What about Nate Nate's gut voice is just gone for the rest of the episode. Anytime he speaks, it's just silence, or I'm overdubbing his episode getting like a mercantile league.

SPEAKER_06 21:36

No, actually, I I expected him to tell you to bring the Green Bird Sword Mercenary Company.

SPEAKER_03 21:42

Yeah. For the record, that was a post that I made in the Discord channel while I was talking to somebody explaining how they could make their own custom mercenary company. And what I use as an example was. Basically, me uh meeting on what the Jade Falcons are. And Nicholas was unimpressed.

SPEAKER_04 22:09

I think Nicholas was also unimpressed because you had just done a called shot on a thing that Nicholas had previously cooked up himself. And I I apologize if this is if this is not supposed to be public knowledge, but you had like basically a like a Dragoons compromise butt jade falcons thing that you were cooking at one point, weren't you?

SPEAKER_02 22:36

I mean, that's my Monday Night Mega Mech campaign.

SPEAKER_04 22:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:40

Is literally I guess that kind of was the seven Falcon Lancers, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_02 22:45

The seventh Falcon Lancers, so that my my headcanon for my main uh like Iliad Force is a sort of an exploration conceptually on both of both as a premise in in universe and sort of like a thing to explore, which is that in the concept of as the clans enter the inner sphere, they would be encountering alternate alternate cultures, they would be encountering sort of gladiatorial combat. And one for a society that's entirely based on propaganda and sort of a concerns of like warriors are the greatest, plus a population who is a significant portion are failed trueborns or descended to failed true borns who would cling to sort of the genetic legacy and warrior identity of their lineage, probably are like idolizing and following you know former members of their SIPCOs or other people or other members of the houses, it's sort of the set of you really would have recordings of battles existing as sort of treasured objects and publicized things. Then you have the seven Falcon Lancers, the idea being that they would eventually be ritualized combat, sort of specific teams of forces that are designed to not necessarily fight in traditional military campaigns, but forces that are specifically designed to fight in trials and specifically televised trials, as sort of like a version of Solaris that is clan-based and sort of, hey, we're fighting over possession of this. Here's our force, and it is like you know, totally decked out decoratively in not field camo. It's warriors that fight very much to the absolute letter of Zellbringen, possibly to the point of soccer teams and faking injuries for cards and whatnot. You know, the it's a weird level of super honor, but also petty petty glory. And so the seventh Falcon Lancers, which I create the logo for as the hand of the Khan. They're the idea is here's a task force whose sole purpose is to really engage in trialslash arena combat. So they would be the force that could either show up in a very much Zellringman, like we're here, we're fighting by the rules in a trial for this stuff, but also they'd be equally at home fighting in Solaris kind of close combat, specifically small unit tactics. And so it's a it's an exploration of both in universe kind of how these alternate societies would can function. Because one of my biggest complaints in Battletech fiction is they really don't pay as much attention to sociology as they should. They kind of hand wavy them a lot of this stuff and think overly simplistically about it. And Seventh Valkyralancers, which is uh yeah, uh cool exploration of the idea, but also just as a gameplay aspect of like I'm playing a force that has to exist in some context where it is effectively engaging in arena solaris combat. See. So both the seventh Falcon Lancers, which I said, I'll see if I can pop this into the video on YouTube or post it on the Discord or whatever. But maybe you guys have seen it. It is literally a uh Falconer's glove in position over a logo. And I have a logo for the uh Emerald Cast Mercenary Company, which is my intro tech megamech campaign, the secretly run by a Jade Falcon watch operative mercenary company, there to spy and figure out what what the hell the dragoons are up to. They also have a logo, but that one is made in Illustrator but manipulated from a stock version, like stock uh file of a bird. And I don't know, I mean it's it's one of those like, yeah, it's I kind of in both cases, particularly with the seventh Falcon Lancers, wanted something that was good but not like modern good. It still retained some of the cheesy weirdness of a lot of the old school battletech logos where yeah, it's a fucking glove on a background. Couldn't you come with something cool or slim? No, it's a glove on a t on a diamond.

SPEAKER_04 27:10

Graphic design is my passion.

SPEAKER_03 27:15

Yeah, the uh the reason that I was the reason that I ever saw it was because uh you used to do that thing when you made uh list submissions uh at the start of seasons. You were actually like putting that up next to the Jade Falcon logo above the list itself on the PDF file. Yep.

SPEAKER_04 27:37

Mm-hmm. Anyway, we're here to talk about list building today, not necessarily lore. Um I mean, the list itself.

SPEAKER_02 27:47

I had to build it.

SPEAKER_04 27:48

Yes. And before you get into that, and I I wanna I wanna I wanna just put in my my because I'm the BB nerd, I wanna put in my little sidebar about part of the reason why so many clan lists look the same way. Um and my answer to that is clan tech is too good, and that causes a lot of problems. As a kind of shorthand, we've talked about this in the past, but the way battle value is calculated is uh it is based on actual performance and ignores things like weight and construction costs. Uh and as or and so one of the easiest examples of this is if you look at the clan ER medium laser and you look at the inner sphere large laser, they have a battle value ratio that is exactly proportional to the amount of damage they do. Uh the ER medium is does seven damage while the large laser does eight. Uh the large laser the sorry the medium laser is seven eighths the cost of the large laser because they do that damage over exactly the same range. Heat is not regarded, weight is not regarded, crits are not regarded. Ammo is, but for clan mechs, because they have case everywhere, that's rarely a factor. And as a result, this tends to mean that clan mechs, unless you're very careful, have this big problem where their offensive BV starts to run away very, very quickly, and their defensive BV it doesn't keep up with how much of a threat they are. Because armor, at least until Ill Clan era, is pretty much capped at whatever you're uh at by your tonnage because you can only carry double your um like structure pips in armor, no matter whose tech base you're using. So a lot of the times, clan tech and making lists predominantly using clan mechs, you need to thread this very narrow balance of finding mechs that are good and efficient at what they do while also not seriously outstripping their offensive capabilities, their defensive capabilities with their offensive capabilities. Which means you often see a lot of the same mechs because you need to find the most often the most optimized uh mechs possible in a lot of cases.

SPEAKER_02 30:24

I'm gonna chime in here. This is why I know in my case I tend to like a lot of clan mechs, like the big value ones that have an autocannon, because it takes up space that stops them from strapping on a billion more lasers and upping their BV to stupid amounts.

SPEAKER_04 30:45

Yep. Autocannons, Gauss rifles, um, really stupid engine math is another good way to do it. There's a reason why uh the gargoyle, despite being kind of poo-pooed, tends to be a very good value pick for clans, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that so much of the mech's tonnage is taken up by its giant 400 rate engine that the weapons it can carry are relatively sedate.

SPEAKER_02 31:13

Or we we we just talked about the Black Lanter and some of what my speedy boys they like to bring. The efficient, fast mechs for clans tend to be ones that strap on a whole bunch of low BV guns rather than you know a whole bunch of higher to massive BV guns. The the speed factor for a clan ERPPC makes some of the mechs with those ridiculously expensive. Versus, I mean, look at the Incubus 3 versus the Incubus with an ERPPC. The Incubus 3 is just shy of 1400 versus the one with the ERPPC is over 2000. And the actual combat effect, like they're the same HP, same movement, same sort of defensive profile, but one has an ERPPC and the other has a streak SRM6, which ends up it is a much different combat profile.

SPEAKER_04 32:11

And speed factor for those of you playing at home is the battle value of any given weapon is multiplied by the maximum speed that a mech can travel. Uh so in the case of the incubus, it can travel 14 hexes, so that is fed through a very silly and complex equation to give you your speed factor. Uh, and that multiplies the cost of the gun. Yeah, so the incubus is so the base ERPPC costs 412 battle value. The incubus, because it has a run speed of um it has a maximum run of 14, has a speed factor of 2.16, which means that its single gun costs almost 900 BV.

SPEAKER_00 33:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 33:04

Uh yeah, 889.9 BV for 115 damage head chopper, which is nothing to sneeze at, but also if you are playing on a tight budget, it can be less than ideal compared to your other options.

SPEAKER_03 33:20

Like two urban mechs.

SPEAKER_04 33:22

That one gun is literally, or if if you want a better light mech, like that's a spider-9M. That's a Spider-9M. Two urban mechs. That's a scarabus. Yeah, it is a scarabus. But anyway, so going when thinking about putting together clan lists, and Nicholas is kind of the one who plays the most of them, can explain how to deal with this as a problem.

SPEAKER_02 33:49

But I'm gonna actually chime in here for a second, right? Comparing it to the Incubus 3, which is a mech that I've used a lot. I'm looking at the BV breakdown for that right now. Just the weapons, the offensive battle rating for this Incubus is 875.88, right? That's still less than the one ERP PC. And that is for all of its guns versus one of its guns. It's it's just silly.

SPEAKER_04 34:21

This kind of fundamental tension of um clan weapons technology and clan weight savings technology in the battle value system is, I would say, the biggest contributing factor to problems when putting together a clan list.

SPEAKER_03 34:39

I think another one that comes to mind for me on that front is actually like the adder. Where the adder is always, it's almost always, not always, not always, but almost always equipped with something absolutely fake ass huge as a gun, even though it's 35 tons. Where you look at the prime, it is two ERP PCs tied to a targeting computer. Now, granted, it's fire, it can't ever sync them because it has a hard-pointed flamer they could have replaced with more heat sinking, but you know, uh just the clan invasion was weird like that. It is a 35-ton light mech that is throwing out two head choppers, and it is 2,000 BV, almost 2100. For 300 more, you can have a cheap Kingfisher or a high-end. I mean, I hate to use the tur the uh example, but the Atlas or high-end Battlemasters or something that actually packs a whole bunch of meat into a package.

SPEAKER_04 35:46

If you wanted to, you could bring a uh the uh Gauss rifle equipped vulture for less.

SPEAKER_03 35:55

For some reason I thought you meant the the Vulcan, and I was really confused.

SPEAKER_06 36:00

No. No. Um I don't know. This is some weird stuff comes into play, like when you're looking at B V costs and like how expensive things are versus how cheap others are. And I a thing that I have discovered, which is has annoyed me because we've been doing an Operation Revival trial like mini campaign at one of the local stores. And in my Smoke Jaguar Force, I was given a Stone Rhino 4.

SPEAKER_03 36:38

Oh no.

SPEAKER_06 36:40

Oh yes.

SPEAKER_04 36:45

Oh, is this the Oh, it's this awful thing.

SPEAKER_03 36:48

Okay. It's a terrible one that I really like.

SPEAKER_06 36:50

It's the one that they have the crit slots to have double heat sinks. And they choose to have 17 singles instead.

SPEAKER_04 37:01

Oh, this thing is enchantingly terrible. I love it.

SPEAKER_03 37:05

Yeah, I really like that loadout.

SPEAKER_06 37:08

I like the loadout. I don't like that it has empty slots and single heat sinks.

SPEAKER_00 37:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 37:15

Uh, because Nicholas, I think, did like after I showed it to him, he did the man. I was like, if I just up if it was just upgraded to doubles, the Pv would go up like 200. It would still be cheaper than a lot of other things.

SPEAKER_03 37:33

It would be cheaper than most other stone rhinos.

SPEAKER_06 37:36

Yeah. And actually, you know, be able to fire more than one weapon group at a time. This is so bad. I love it.

SPEAKER_03 37:47

I absolutely love that thing, and I want to use it at some point.

SPEAKER_06 37:53

I used it on Thursday. Um, and my opponent was bringing had brought a Stone Rhino 7.

SPEAKER_03 38:04

I don't know what's on that.

SPEAKER_06 38:06

And two large pulse lasers and three ER larges, and enough double heat sinks to be able to volley fire the 2-3-2, the ER larges, and be heat neutral.

SPEAKER_03 38:18

We have Omega at home.

SPEAKER_06 38:20

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 38:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 38:22

And uh yeah, so I declared Zellbreaggen against him, and he accepted to have a stone rhino off, and mine just flatlined. It lived because the rest of my force killed the rest of his force, and it was just the stone rhinos staring each other down. Or not killed, but had basically killed, and he requested Hagra, and I allowed it, and he walked off the board.

SPEAKER_03 38:54

For those that don't know, Hegira is honorable uh retreat uh declared by Clanners.

SPEAKER_02 39:02

Also, for those who don't know, it seems like every one of Garner's games, something bad happens to one of his big units, and yet somehow he comes out on top most of the time.

SPEAKER_06 39:12

I don't know what you're talking about. I have no idea what you're talking about. I come out on the bottom.

SPEAKER_02 39:20

Okay, so something bad always happens to his big unit, such as they, you know, roll twos three times in a row, fall over and knock themselves out, and then on a skill three pilot, sir.

SPEAKER_06 39:32

That was a skill three piloting that missed a kick hitting on fours, failed the pilot roll on twos, failed the consciousness check, or failed the seatbelt check, then failed the consciousness check. There there was four rolls in a row. I cry.

SPEAKER_03 39:54

I can confirm I've never beat Garner without head dropping two of his mechs in the same fight.

SPEAKER_06 40:02

Sounds about right. Yep. I get I get one in 36 a lot.

SPEAKER_04 40:10

Just sometimes sometimes they they just gotta do it to you. But anyway, so in regards to putting a clan list together, because this is again the thing we're we're coming back from. This is like I said, the kind of fundamental tension here is clan mechs are too clan technology is too good for the battle value system, and it can lead to incredibly stupid and dumb mechs, which will explode instantly on contact with someone who actually knows what they're doing. How do you deal with this?

SPEAKER_06 40:44

By playing in the golden arrow like I have been. Or the golden century like I have been with my smoke jaguars and having a blast.

SPEAKER_03 40:53

For me, it's a lot of leaning on um stuff that runs uh standard fusion engines, so you can't fit as much into it in the first place. So it winds up being cheaper.

SPEAKER_06 41:06

That sounds to me remarkably like golden century mechs, like the spirit walker.

SPEAKER_03 41:10

Nah, I'm thinking more like Kingfishers.

SPEAKER_06 41:14

Yeah, that works too. Or as Nicholas loves to say, a howler. The howler. Uh any of it.

SPEAKER_02 41:21

I love my howl. Like uh we've had a conversation of like I will give up most all like I I'll I'll find different mechs and play chain falcon still, but I I will struggle to give up the howler.

SPEAKER_06 41:34

As you got like I'll give can you just get like three more this week?

SPEAKER_02 41:38

One of them was for me. I got more. Yes, I'm definitely going to be bringing breaking the howler. It's my it's my delightful little thing, it'll be annoying. It only has an LRM5. Maybe I'll switch out and bring you know, switch eras and bring different ones, but or I'll bring back the devil and use the howler as a proxy. But the black laner will go, the trachina will go, other things will go, but the howler might be eternal.

SPEAKER_03 42:06

I think uh another thing that I tend to lean a lot on is heavy laser spam. Because heavy laser heavy lasers are straight up just they offer so much bang for their buck that it's kind of crazy. So, like, one of the mechs that I'm actually bringing for uh this current season ability, season two of 2026, is the Sphinx 4, which I've run in the past. It is a 5-8 moving heavy clan mech at 75 tons, with uh I think it's almost 100% armor coverage, 94%, uh, with two clan large pulse lasers, 10 heavy small lasers, and enough heat sinks to alpha strike pretty much like three turns in a row before needing to cool off, just a little bit, which means just leaning off of one of the large pulse lasers, and that only costs 1952.

SPEAKER_04 43:16

Yeah. I will say I think um uh heavy lasers are kind of a double-edged sword because they're incredibly heat intensive, which means if you build a mech to use them correctly, you are going to be filling up a lot of tonnage with heat sinks, which do not cost BV. Um, unfortunately, that also means that they do have the option to completely screw you and just forget to give you heat sinks.

SPEAKER_03 43:46

Yeah, that happens a lot with heavy large lasers.

SPEAKER_04 43:50

Yeah. Which means a good heavy laser, a good heavy laser max hit real hard the Fire Moth H. Uh, I think. It's the summoner H is quite I've used in the past, and that's very decent. Um, speaking of standard lasers, I haven't tried this yet, but I've been eyeballing um I think it's the Charlie configuration of the lupus, which is another Golden Century mech that C Fox brought back. So the lupus is cool. Yeah, the lupus is really cool, but uh it's uh targeting compute, it's uh 5.8 chassis. It's basically a it's basically a crossbow omni mech, but it's a little bit lighter with a little bit more pod space and a little bit less armor. Uh and also they put stuff in the side torsos so you don't have to worry so much about crit transfers. But one of the later era versions of it is a um heavy laser build that has two heavy larges, two heavy uh two improved heavy larges, two improved heavy mediums, a targeting computer, a coolant pod in case you want to alpha strike and not cook yourself, and um a supercharger so it can sprint 10 hexes towards you. And I really badly want to try that because that that seems like a big barrel of laughs.

SPEAKER_03 45:07

Also another standard fusion engine design.

SPEAKER_04 45:11

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 45:13

The thing's gonna be hard to put down.

SPEAKER_04 45:16

That is that is why I like it. It it takes a lot to chew through one of those mechs, and you don't have to worry about a um you don't have to worry about giving it a gunnery upgrade in that heavy laser one at least.

SPEAKER_03 45:31

I do think it's kind of funny when you look at the timeline for variants of the lupus, where it goes 2857 for the prime, 2857 for the A, 2857 for the B, and then skip like 300 years to 2147 for the C and the D.

SPEAKER_04 45:50

Yep, because yeah, it got it got brought back by Seafox as a uh Ilclan pick, which the uh weirdly available to the periphery. Yeah, because it's Sea Fox.

SPEAKER_02 46:03

So look thinking about uh us and our various playstyles, I know I'm branching into Inner Sphere. I played one season with my Rassel Hog list before to sort of and I'm I enjoyed it, I didn't get the full games in, and so I'm excited to really learn playthrough, and I can talk about some of my strategies behind building it. Luke, you kind of play kind of whatever. Nate, you are in particular have been struggling with the success of your clan versus inner sphere lists, and Garner, I think you're the one who's had the most success using both. Oh, yeah. An inner sphere and a clan list.

SPEAKER_06 46:46

Um I mean I just like to build really weird stuff and try to use less used things. And I think that honestly does more for me than anything else. Because if people aren't used to fighting against it, they don't really know what to do against it. Like Yeah, like I still am the only person that I've ever seen put a Coyotol on the board, and I've played two to three different variants of it.

SPEAKER_00 47:24

Um I've definitely been crazy by it.

SPEAKER_04 47:29

Which is crazy because the Coyotol is such like it's such a it's such like a like strong fundamentals omni mech, and it has a good plastic model.

SPEAKER_06 47:40

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 47:41

And Sea Fox brings it back.

SPEAKER_06 47:45

In crazy cool one, I have a plasma cannon and an ECM.

SPEAKER_03 47:49

The reason I haven't run one is because I haven't been wanting to put it on the table to paint it before I use it.

SPEAKER_06 47:57

Well, I've been painting uh I've mine as painted, but no, but like, I don't know, it's uh I think that's really most of the successes. I'm just picking things that people aren't used to farting around with. Like my last clan list was I brought an iron cheetah. Which is just a D-shelled direwolf that moves a little faster. It's a 4-6 instead of a 3-5. And it did what it needed to do. It it shot things and only dies to uh a certain individual in this podcast only hitting the leg with every single gun. Hi. The same gun, but on the same leg.

SPEAKER_04 48:45

I do think going, yeah, I I play a bunch of things that people aren't used to fighting, and then bringing up maybe one of the most optimized clan mechs. And have you seen one on the board? Other than mine? Other than you, not actually, no, I have. I haven't.

SPEAKER_02 49:06

Um the fact that there isn't an iron cheetah in plastic is kind of a sign.

SPEAKER_06 49:13

Hey, there's not a spirit walker in plastic. Wait, hang on.

SPEAKER_03 49:17

Um, the Night Chanter. Wait.

SPEAKER_06 49:22

Yeah, actually, that was a lot of fun last season. That's why I'm resubmitting that list to play the season so I can actually play it. But anyways. No, it's just like what I end up doing, because the the diff- the list building is drastically different between what we do locally with Iliad and what we most people do. Most people don't build sideboards. Sideboards are not a real thing anywhere else. No, that's a that's a fake thing that we've come up with. So, like that's really, I think, one of the bigger reasons that I've had more success is because I tend to bring more toolbox mechs. And I can swap them in and out to where I need to have them. Or units, I guess. Primarily mechs. I think I've brought like three vehicles in the entire two years that I've been playing Alien.

SPEAKER_00 50:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 50:23

I think. And I think that that's one of the kind of the strengths of the inner sphere from a list-building perspective over clans, and that's not to say clans can't do this. They can a little bit through things like vehicles and battle armor, and especially if you play with master unit list instead of just um the tech bases, uh, you get access to um a lot of royal mechs and a couple of random inner sphere imports that they keep around in Brian caches. One of the kind of big benefits of the inner sphere is you can put a 1200 BV mech on the board, and it will probably have okay armor, and it will have something useful it can do. It might not be much because it might have just like one terrible gun and then a bunch of Ewar equipment, but you will be able to do at least something with it.

SPEAKER_06 51:20

How dare you slander the Raven's name like that?

SPEAKER_04 51:24

Oh I'm I'm very specifically thinking of um a uh a firestarter I've used way too much, actually.

SPEAKER_03 51:33

But yeah, the ravens are all sub-1k as far as I'm aware as well.

SPEAKER_06 51:37

Yeah, but when you say Ewar equipment, I think like the original Raven with literal Ewar equipment.

SPEAKER_04 51:45

Oh yeah, the the early Raven is not good. But no, I'm the mech I am thinking of in this case, I believe, is the um Oh, it's even it's it's I think probably cheaper than I thought it was. Ah, there we are. And it has it, yeah, no actual doesn't actually have a uh any gun uh any Ewar equipment. I'm thinking of the Firestarter uh Gulf configuration for the OmniMech, which has an LBX 5 and then three ER medium lasers. No, not ER mediums, just normal mediums.

SPEAKER_03 52:24

We love putting small grade autocannons on s on light mechs.

SPEAKER_04 52:29

Uh say again, Garner?

SPEAKER_06 52:30

I'll say that it's uh it's the OG. I don't know. I like the was it the OE? The one with the MRM20 and a sword?

SPEAKER_04 52:41

Something like that. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:46

Oh, speaking earlier as how much I liked clan mechs that had auto cannons that sucked up so much of the tonnage and crits that they couldn't overdo their BVs. In some sense, I I feel the opposite when it comes to inner sphere, sub-intersphere mechs and auto cannons, where I look at it and go, man, if you didn't have that AC5, you could fit a more engine, more armor, more something.

SPEAKER_04 53:10

Yeah, the AC5 is, especially with IntroTec Mechs, the AC5 is a is a bad weapon. I like I we can we can maybe at some point talk about the ammunition changes from the new core rules are going to, I think, cause some issues with the how much they've buffed armor piercing. But uh yeah, base auto base autocannon two uh twos and fives are uh they're in a rough state.

SPEAKER_02 53:38

Light to medium intersphere mechs with autocannon twos and fives that are you know running at at at 6'9, you know, with like 24% armor, and you're and you just think, come on, man, just just toss out the autocannon, put some more armor or more engine on there, jump jet something.

SPEAKER_03 53:58

Hey, we were just talking about the Clint last weekend.

SPEAKER_04 54:01

I was gonna say, why are why are we why are why is our our our our glorious uh ugly uh um six-shooter boy getting slandered like this?

SPEAKER_06 54:12

Catching them strays.

SPEAKER_04 54:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 54:17

Well, I'm gonna- I mean, I was feeling very sad about the uh Valkyrie QD2. You were making me feel sad. I love that little guy.

SPEAKER_03 54:28

Is that the one with the two light AC2s tied to a targeting computer?

SPEAKER_06 54:32

Maybe. You might have fought it before? In one of my lists.

SPEAKER_02 54:47

That's that's that's kind of fun. I love that.

SPEAKER_06 54:54

Yes, but imagine it with armor piercing rounds.

SPEAKER_03 54:57

I was mainly getting uh my face beat in by a stalker at like my fourth game of the day.

SPEAKER_04 55:06

Yeah, this is a this is a a this is a contraption. I would I love this contraption.

SPEAKER_02 55:14

See, as someone who's branching into Inner Sphere, my experience with my list has generally been like I I I'm happy with a lot of the units I picked, and I watch them and they're doing stuff, and then I I look, I think literally this happened in a pri in a test game with Garner where something was about to die, and I was looking, it's like, oh, if you kill that, it's eight points in this mission, and I'm still ahead by like something or whatever. Like, go ahead, kill it. Like, it's doing a bunch of work, and I'm just surprised at how much it can get done for how little BV it is. Because I'm used to things being more expensive in order to actually have a significant gameplay impact.

SPEAKER_04 55:53

Yeah, you can. I mean, I think I think the big difference is it's it basically comes down to the thing the inner sphere does well is you can get mechs that can have presents on the board for cheap. If you want cheap presents in clans, and we didn't really talk about this, you need to use battle armor. And I hate it. Battle armor is so good for cheap presents.

SPEAKER_02 56:14

I and this came up in a conversation with Garner about how it's like, I don't think battle armor is that bad, and I have to pause and go, I've mostly used battle armor on other people. I have not so much been the receiver of battle armor pain.

SPEAKER_05 56:29

This is correct. This is correct.

SPEAKER_02 56:36

Luke, do you do you remember what you said while you were making the noise with your paint cup? Yeah, something about the swarm of toads. If you don't have a plan for the swarm of toads. Yeah. You should have one. Problem is if it's if it's assault or heavy battle armor, is there a VTOL or carrier on the board?

SPEAKER_04 56:58

Yeah. Well, I think so. Assault and heavy, well, heavy battle armor, I think a little bit less so. Um it can be it can be difficult to deal with. I think assault battle armor, the big kind of reason why the elementals are the gold standard that they are, is they're tricky enough to hit that, and they're also tough enough that they're quite tanky. The issue that I have seen that has I've seen people run into with assault battle armor, and this includes I've I've because I've played against some of your Lissin Mega Mech Nicholas. Once you are only like moving like one or two hexes a turn, yes, they are very frustrating if your opponent can entrench them, but they are also now much more hittable in general than they would be otherwise.

SPEAKER_03 57:54

Something I wanted to add before was uh on the topic of Nicholas assigning a lot of uh a lot of hurt using battle armor to other people and never really dealing with it himself, is mainly that uh Jade Falcons have a lot of very heavily specialized like high-end battle armor, like uh iron holds and uh storm birds, like they have so much like high-end battle armor that is just implacable half the time.

SPEAKER_06 58:33

And they're all fire, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 58:35

Remove it, yeah. That's what I was gonna say, was you can't remove it the normal way you would with battle armor. You have to point actual guns at it on top of the fact that you're dealing with a black laner in your back arc or a Turkina right in front of you. I think uh I think a lot of it, the reason that uh battle armor gets kind of an uneven spread across the board is that certain factions just have stronger battle armor.

SPEAKER_06 59:05

Yes. Yep. The uh the fact that just even elementals are ten armor one structure makes them a million times better than most inner sphere variants. Because eleven damage, not as common as ten damage.

SPEAKER_02 59:25

I mean, I'll I I'll I'll or throw out a thought here appreciate opinions on. So when I've encountered other people using battle armor, people are often using faster battle armor that has sort of like a different gimmick, which often makes them more they're have less total health. And so despite having a higher TMM and some interesting in um interactivity, they often just they die faster or their guns are less impactful to the point of a lot of times. I can just kind of ignore them. You know, oh you've got your T you've got your you know moves four or five battle armor on the board, and okay, you're gonna try to do something with them, but for the most part, they just haven't seemed as combat effective as just uh a unit of elementals or storm birds or iron holes that's just like, yeah, it doesn't move very far, but it has AP Goss. It can it dominates to a certain extent the area that it's in because it is extremely accurate, it doesn't pay to the movement penalty, so it is effectively you know two gunnery higher right off the bat.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:32

So no, the bigger problem is Nicholas is that you have access to clan armor. Clan battle armor. Intersphere battle armor does not have nearly as many weapon mounts and stuff, so yes, you can have uh AP Goss or rifle to four AP Goss rifles mixed with some amount of SRMs. We are lucky if we get one flamer and a and a SRM launcher, and in order for us to be able to use our jump movement, we have to jettison the frickin' SRM launcher.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:06

That's also true.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:07

Yeah, I want you to spoil Yeah, it's you get you get you get modern assault battle armor. I want you to go I want you to go look up the Kanazuchi.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:18

Like I was How do you even spell that?

SPEAKER_04 1:01:20

A-A-N-A-Z, and then it's the only thing you're gonna find.

unknown 1:01:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:25

But also, like even looking at like grenadiers. I was sending you links for grenadiers. Your stuff is just ten times better than a squad of grenadiers, and squad of grenadiers costs more. It doesn't make any sense.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:39

Yep. This is this is where this is where things are on the other foot, where inner sphere battle armor is very is is very bad in a lot of or not very bad. Inner sphere battle armor is incredibly okay, and clan battle armor is very good, is I think the better way to put it.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:01

Yeah, I'm looking at the Kanazu Juchi assault battle armor, you know, the the support version that comes with a one-shot SRM3, another one-shot SRM three, and an SRM four. And it has nine shots of SRM four for some reason.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:20

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:21

That's that's a lot of SRM. And it is what's its move it broke move at one, doesn't even have jump.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:30

Yeah, nope. You like I said, you have been spoiled.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:34

Well, it's like nine shots, and it's like that okay. My you didn't know uh three hundred and sixty-eight BV versus the my storm bird bird battle army here at six hundred twenty-five.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:49

Also remember it's four troopers versus five. Yep. And troop costs.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:55

So the four would have less dude. Yeah, four hundred and sixty-four, so a hundred BV more for something with jump two, SRM3, four shots, and a Goss rifle.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:08

Mm-hmm. Yep. And an extra guy.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:11

Also, the Stormbird is heavy, so it and not assault, so it can mechanize.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:16

Well, it's and it's fire resistant instead of normal armor. So you can't kill them with uh you can't kill them using um infernos.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:29

I do love my my Jade Falcon storm birds. Yeah. On a howler. It's stupid. They are very it's really dull.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:38

Also have they also have bag clamps. Yeah, yeah, that's yeah, they do.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:46

It's strapped to my howler. That my jump seven howler.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:51

Trying to trying to test out prototype lists for Richmond against Nicholas has been hell.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:58

Tell me about it.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:00

Because the storm burst. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:04

Yeah, you guys are gonna show up with it. Are they I I forget. They they they have basically put the kibosh on uh artillery cannons, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:13

That's right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:16

So I was gonna say, that seems like the most effective way to get rid of them.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:21

It kinda is.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:25

It definitely impacted a game I played against Murph last season, where if if I had if I hadn't put my BA on the obvious artillery spot that didn't delete it, I definitely would have won that game. And if I hadn't fallen backwards into my open torso again, just stopped being bad. Uh yeah, so if if if dice were just a little less awful, it would have been 80-20. In any case. Yeah, no, I've got I'm I'm spoiled by my battle armor versus other people. It it is it is something that has dawned on me. So when Garner complains and says he's not going to miss them when they're when they're gone, at least for a while.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:12

I didn't I didn't add that last year.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:14

I get it.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:16

It might have been implied. I did not imply that. You will know if I imply that.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:21

Will you miss them when they're gone?

SPEAKER_06 1:05:24

I will not miss them on a train or a plane. I will not miss them anywhere. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:31

So the the the the when we do switch over to core rules and battle armor vehicles are nowhere to be seen for a period of time, Garner's going to have a h he's gonna have a happy pleasant.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:43

I will be jumping for joy.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:47

Meanwhile, I'm over here trying to justify Marauder battle armor.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:54

I mean I can pull that up.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:56

I'm gonna it's very I just submitted my Richmond list while we were talking. Oh my god. I committed.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:10

All it took was the podcast.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:13

No, I realized. I went, I finally I looked it up, and it is the 26th when lists are due, and I want to make sure it's in since I'm gonna be gone for most of the week at a wedding, so I wanted to make sure I didn't lose it.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:27

Yep. But yeah, I've I've been looking at Marauder battle armor for a good minute now. Because one, I think they look funny, and two, they actually pack a decent chunk of firepower while still being able to magnetize to something. So you can actually transport them.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:46

Yep. Some of my inner sphere builds, I was playing around with inner sphere uh magnetic battle armor. Magnetic standard battle armor, and I just Oh, magnetic standard is so good. And then I just put I give them like uh Gunnery 5 or 6 and piloting 3 or anti-mech 3. And then just run them up and just try to leg cap people.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:12

There's a lot of at least for the inner sphere, something to look on the bright side about in regards to battle armor is that most of it is stupid cheat. Yes. Like sub 400.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:29

Hey, those of you out in the internet space, the members of the Odysseus Legion, we are trying an online sort of bi-weekly event, a hobby hangout where everybody comes, you can listen in, you can pop on mic, you can pop on camera, show off what you're doing. The idea is everybody wants a little bit more encouragement to paint, to handle their pile of shame, to work on their projects. Well, bi-weekly on Sundays at 6 o'clock, we're gonna try to do a community hobby hangout where everybody's just doing something. No need to speak, no need to show to show up on camera. Just grab project, hang out. You don't even have to have have a project, just come hang out. So, so Nate, you've you've had some struggles switching between uh different factions while build building lists. What do you what do you think those struggles are and how how successful you think you've been dealing with them?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:22

I would say the biggest problem that I have because I play if you want to get technical, I literally have like 45 factions, but we're not being technical, so it's closer to seven, probably. So I would say the biggest problem that I have is honestly just figuring out a game plan at the start in a lot of cases. Because I'm honestly just bad at planning a planning ahead for a scenario because I tend to just approach with a show up and see what happens mentality when I uh when I build lists. So I'll just build something that I think can handle a lot of situations, and I'll often wind up in situations where exactly that is not what I needed. So something that often happens is I'll take my Lyrens, for example. My Lyrens tend to wind up being pretty big and chunky, not very fast, but definitely pretty tough and very armed to the gills with uh brawling distance weaponry. But I will often wind up struggling when it comes to long range, unless I bring my Thunderhawk, in which case that has that covered in spades, because that's three Gauss rifles on a stick that you have to hit with another Thunderhawk to kill. Um but then it comes down to like I often wind up struggling on the speed half of things because of that, because I didn't prepare for speed as an example. But then there's another one where like if I switch to um if I switch to my scorpion empire forces, enough of my stuff winds up being too expensive because it's clan, while being unable to fit in as many like quality players as far as my uh my sensibilities are concerned. Like uh something that winds up showing up often enough is a war hawk. But a war hawk often winds up being I suppose outpaced in terms of what it can do by most of what my opponents bring, because I I think maybe I commit maybe a little too much to going generalist on it when I should be leaning into the specialization. But switching between generalization with an intersphere force catches me off guard when I switch to clans because the clans want to be more specialized on that front. So I would say the biggest problem that I have is trying to adopt a proper mindset that actually applies to the faction that I'm playing. Where either I try to spread myself too thin on when I play clans, or I don't focus up enough when I play inner sphere.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:53

Yeah, like I'm trying to think about the the times I've played both of your sort of your wall of steel versus your uh scorpion empire lists, and I definitely think I had a harder time playing against you as the Steiner Wall of Steel because I have to chew through so much, and when you're playing the c the clans, there's fewer units, each individual unit has to pull more weight, and so you don't have the same board presence, and I think positioning in that sense let feels easier to move around you and deal with, yeah, because that is another thing to think about of if you have fewer units on the board, just in terms of creating space for your opponent to move around and in and interact with.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:41

Yeah, I think that I think that makes some sense. Um I do sometimes struggle with uh when I don't have an extra body, like playing Intersphere, I almost never have that problem. But when I play clans, I often find that I don't have that extra body to come and fill a gap in the line where I need it to be so that I can deny the enemy like some move or another, or adapt to a situation where it needs to be uh taken care of.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:21

Like uh your strong suit is often king of the hill, and your weakness is definitely and your weakness is definitely demolition.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:30

Oh also, yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:33

You're one of the few people who has told me that they don't like that mission.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:37

I struggle so hard with the demolition game mode. I I just don't know what it is, I just can't get it.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:44

That to me speaks to the whole concept of sometimes you can build a good list, but if it doesn't match the way you play and your the way your brain works, it's still not going to work. And understanding I like I've I've I've been talking to Gardner about this because he's struggling with he was struggling with lists for for a while there.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:05

Well, I'm still struggling with it. I'm just committing and I'm just saying I just don't care anymore. Nothing fit nothing is meshing with me because of the list restrictions.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:14

But trying to say, like, if he's he he puts up like two lists in front of me, he's like, what do you think of these ones? Which one which one? It's like which one do you think you'd have more fun with? Which one matches your playstyle?

SPEAKER_06 1:14:25

Neither is the answer.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:26

Garner is a bit amorphous, so it doesn't always necessarily work, but it is something for out for people out there or other people to consider of like if there's a way you like to play, first of all, don't necessarily be me and don't move away from what you enjoy playing. Uh you could you could definitely vary your forces more than I have, but also don't be afraid to you know stick to what you're good with, stick to what you you enjoy and work around that instead of trying to force yourself into you don't have to play C3 if you don't want to. If that's not the way you want to play, it's not the way you enjoy playing, then don't don't feel like you need to make a C3 list just to just to do it.

SPEAKER_06 1:15:06

And if you decide that you need to have a black lanter in your force, you we have a support group for you.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:12

Uh something else I was going to add, because I just thought of it, was there's another factor I tend to throw in to uh my list building, which is I really don't want to necessarily make my opponent angry, so I tend to temper my uh my choices at list building so that I'm not showing up with 16 Gauss rifles and just pounding them to death from standoff range because that doesn't sound like fun for them.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:45

Or, you know, uh 12 clan medium pulse lasers attached to targeting computers or VTOLs or, you know, 37 clan large pulse lasers, whatever.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:58

What the heck?

SPEAKER_02 1:16:01

I'm I just jumped with a number. I'm I'm still thinking about that uh 17,000 BV dropship with 21 clan large pulse lasers.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:11

Excuse me, what? There's an Auntos out there that probably has that many clan large pulse lasers on it.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:17

Not a chance, and fucko. Not a chance.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:23

So, Luke, I don't know if you you you there's a drop ship. It's the the Titan something or other. And it has 21 or 22 clan large pulse lasers. I encountered it in Mega Mech. There's one that I have fought in a in a mission that popped up, and it just had a stupid number of clan large pulse lasers, and trying to deal with it was an absolute nightmare. Um It was a mission where my star was 30,000 BV, the enemy forces were 90,000 BV, I had to destroy the drop ship before it took off. I had 12 turns to do it. Uh I didn't realize what it had until I got on the board, because normally the dropship forces was like, okay, like a union and a bunch of stuff, and you can kill it and run away. And I thought, okay, even if they outnumber me three to one, I can probably do this because you just kill it and run. Well, I didn't realize that it was 17,000 BV of dropship with that many pulse lasers, and the moment you get in range when you have 200 damage of large pulse lasers standing still shooting at you, you're kind of screwed, particularly because your unit is all medium mechs. The one thing I had was two Stormcrow primes with all of their ER large lasers that outranged it. So I put them in a position to shoot at it. The problem was the enemy forces also had aerospace bombers and artillery. And I finally I used the three other members of my star to try to protect the Stormcrows from the aerospace, and they were doing an okay enough job where things were going okay, but then the artillery didn't just hit, it hit with laser inhibiting smoke in front of the fighting position for my Stormcrows. And at that point, I was just I was just no, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna be able to kill this drop ship before it takes off. This is a failed mission, I'm leaving. It's the only mission I've lost in that entire Mega Mech campaign. Because oi. So yeah, sometimes you just show up and your opponent has just stupid stuff.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:36

Yeah, sounds shout out to anti-TSM LRMs that end up on like 90% of the LRM mechs you fight.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:46

Oh, that's so hilarious when it randomly happens. Like the the moment they enter like legal rotation, right? The the like somehow they put this stamp on like we built the factory, we could now start producing them way over in Davian space. It means that suddenly way over in Kretan space or you know, wherever the other side of the galaxy, that next day, somehow all of the archers just have anti-TSM ammo in them immediately. Sounds legit. Yeah. Mega Mech is funny sometimes. Luke, you are I think probably the most flexible here about the lists you build.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:27

There's a very simple reason for that. What is that reason? Which is I build the list first and then I find a faction to put it in later. Womp womp womp. Like that is that is what is happening 90% of the time when you see one of my lists, is I will I come up with an idea that I want to see on the table, and then I find a I confabulate myself a way to make that happen. Is what's going on.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:59

That's how you end up playing Capellans.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:01

No, I play Capellans because it okay, so there is another way that I play, which is the way that I choose my paint jobs, is um I need a faction which A can plausibly throw down with a lot of different uh other factions, and B has that shit on, and unfortunately, Capellans do have that shit on.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:22

Sometimes. There's some weird elements.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:28

There are definitely random Capellan mechs that you just I just look at and go like, man, that that mech designer was smoking something good that day.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:39

Yeah, there's uh there's a lot of Capellan mechs where they they they just they have good they have good design sets.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:48

There there is there is gold in that hay. But there's also a lot of hay.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:55

This is true, yes. I mean, let's yeah, they have they have some of the they have some of the most like aggressive uh they have some of the best tech in the game, they do not always use it for good purposes. Um I think the big thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:14

Often winding up with TSM and stealth armor or lots of plasma rifle.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:19

Yeah, if you if that's the thing, is it's a lot of tech that you really don't want to be stacking.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:26

And they do it a lot.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:28

Less than you'd think, but also yeah, they they there's there's a there's a lot that they do that's quite goofy.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:37

I mean Stealth TSM doesn't sound too bad off the bat.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:42

Um the problem is they do stealth the problem is there's this Capellan doctrine of you're using TSM to fight through an incredibly hot over um alpha strike where you're alpha striking to like you're alpha striking to like 13 heat, and then you're using TSM to ignore the heat penalties so you can run away. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:09

That's yeah, that's not which is less good.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:15

They also often have a lot of high heat weaponry attached to their stealth armor mechs as well, and also not great ways to modulate.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:23

I don't know about not great, but yeah, there's they can have some issues. But I will say generally what I do when I am coming up with a list is not quite the same as some of the stuff that Garner is getting up to, but it's um there are um kind of some similarities where you talked about the idea of the uh the like mech toolbox, and that is also something that I usually think about when I am building my lists, uh, where you want to have your list, you want to partially cater it to making sure you have, oh, what is the what are the words I'm looking for here? You want your list building to have a couple of basically mechs which are serving as answers that are cheap enough that you can throw them at that you can throw them into a problem and sacrifice them without losing that much tempo. Um, yeah, you want you want some of your mechs to be you want some of your mechs to be fairly expendable. So in my case, like, and I I think often usually usually for me, this is actually where I will tend to dip into specific clan tech because there is nothing quite as one-shot, one sh one kill as Fire Moth H. And it is comically available for big chunks of the timeline, which make it a great include in a lot of lists of just being like, here is here is some hot nonsense that I can I can throw at a problem and cause issues.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:06

Fire moths are another one of those things that I know I personally have had haven't had too much of a problem dealing with, but I also bring a uh a force that is unusually fast with some sort of a counter pulse where it's more difficult for a fire moth to take advantage of it. We also have a meta where most of us upgrade uh our main combat unit to Gunnery 3, which definitely skews the curve down in terms of handling a stupid fast fragile thing.

SPEAKER_06 1:24:38

So does shooting woods, which they're getting rid of, big sad. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:43

Well, so I will say the reason why I think fire moths are good and useful in a lot of circumstances has a lot less to do with the fire moth being used in the role that I think you're kind of dis ascribing to it, which is like it's not you're not necessarily looking for return invest you're not necessarily looking to throw it at someone multiple times. It is a cheap unit that can rip around into something's back and deliver a crippling to killing amount of damage, and you can threaten that all game without pulling the trigger on it, and you can use it as a battle armor delivery system. Like you can play, you can play a fire mod fairly conservatively, and you can keep it hidden from a lot of the map in a lot of cases. Because it just it has so it has such a high movement speed that it will get where it needs to go the turn when it is needed. So that is one where I I tend to I tend to keep one of those on deck just as as a as a little treat.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:54

Yeah, I I just find that fire moths are often they play that whole BV problem of the speed uh speed factor where they have no armor, they die to particularly when you're playing clans, then they get hit by most guns, they start to disappear off the board immediately. And it's a lot of BV to you know it's a lot of BV to invest into a movement threat like that. It's a lot of BV to even for the low BV ones, where I would I know personally the way I play, again, I play with a a lot of light, fast units, where maybe if I didn't have the Black Lantern, maybe if I didn't have um the howler or some other things acting in a forward operative space, I would have more room for something like a fire moth to engage, or you know, if my forces weren't what what they were, someone using a fire moth against me would feel more impactful. But yeah, I don't know. I just it I I I'm not I I say it from a personal experience of I haven't seen them be as threatening or as powerful of assets as other people have, and it's just a question of like, okay, why is that? Is that they're just not good, or is it just just the how they interact with my playstyle?

SPEAKER_06 1:27:14

No, the specific reason why is the same reason that most people have a problem playing against you because you only select units with flippy arms. Yeah. That is actually the reason, and you're you're beating around the bush. If it doesn't have flippy arms, you don't take it.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:33

Lack of flippy arms, I think the other I think the other one here is because I think the other one here is you don't play enough assault mechs for it to matter.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:42

And the ones you do have flippy arms.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:44

You don't even play enough heavy mechs for that to matter.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:48

I'm just saying, like that that's that that's what it boils down to. Like the Scarabus is an absolute demon to everybody but you, who's just like, whatever, flip arm.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:57

Yeah, it is I I it wasn't Sam who had a fire. Mouth who as who got a hit and I just flipped my arms back with a black lantern to like delete it off the board.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:05

That's the bigger thing is like there should I I still think there should be some kind of penalty. Even if it's like a plus one to hit when you flip your arms.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:15

I think I've made Garner have a vendetta against flipping.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:20

Have extreme dislike of flippy arms. Because you're not you're not trading away anything.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:33

Whoa, curse of lower arm actuators be upon you.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:37

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:42

You lose crit padding.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:44

Yeah, uh-huh. Sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:46

You can't punch very well. Uh-huh. You don't punch ever. You just kick things. You only I have a punch monkey for punching. That's true.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:55

Yep. You come up with all these reasons as to like why these things aren't your problem, though. There's literally one specific reason why you're able to do most of what you do, and it's because flippy arms.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:06

Yeah. Flippy arms effectively means you have 360-degree arc of firing with your arm guns.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:15

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:18

It's it is incredibly powerful. Also, I mean OmniMechs do to a certain extent enforce flippy arms.

SPEAKER_06 1:29:26

No, only if you have paired in each side, because I have an absolutely silly amount of mechs that have one arm with that can flip, and the other arm can, and if both can't flip, you can't flip your arms.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:40

Sounds like you just need to be playing with more AP Gauss rifles.

SPEAKER_06 1:29:44

I tried to bring six on one Nova and I got yelled at.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:48

Was it the Nova S?

SPEAKER_06 1:29:50

It was the Nova R.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:52

R.

SPEAKER_06 1:29:52

That's Nicholas and Chris both like, no, you're just gonna turn your pilot into brain soup.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:00

I really don't think that the masked AP Gauss rifles is as much as of a risk as people give it credit for.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:08

No, it's just it's a thing that can happen.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:11

Yeah. Just because it can happen doesn't mean it will happen, and I don't think that should deter you from trying to do it.

SPEAKER_06 1:30:18

I mean I literally just brought up these two times in the past month where my devastator has fallen asleep on like the first hit it took.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:29

Sure, but that's that's just battle tech, man.

SPEAKER_06 1:30:33

Yeah, but it consistently happens to me. It's not even a like a yeah, I'm the I'm outside the bell curve.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:41

I think basing things on what can happen off of your bad luck of the past is going to limit your choices of what you should bring.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:52

I've seen what he plays, it sure doesn't right now.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:56

Like, I had probably like a two-month period like two years ago at this point, where I was losing two to three mechs a game on headshots, and I was playing like twice a week.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:10

Yep. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:11

And then it just never happened again. I haven't lost a mech to a headshot in probably like a year and a half.

SPEAKER_06 1:31:17

I haven't won an initiative roll-off in four games.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:23

I mean, you won some of some of the ones you played against me.

SPEAKER_06 1:31:27

Yeah, but in the past four games, I have won a single initiative roll-off out of eight rounds per game.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:36

Initiative compensation is important, I think.

SPEAKER_06 1:31:40

I mean, I've just pushed my bad luck onto my opponents as Nicholas when he gets kicked in the back with a devastator boot.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:46

Yeah, he's weirdness is happening to me. No, I'm like speaking of flippy arms, I'm looking through and I keep needing to confirm because the Warhawk C has should have flipped should have flippy arms, but the record sheet has that I'm looking at on Mega Mech Lab right now has a lower arm actuator in the right arm. Ooh. That might be an error. I think it is, because you I think you're not supposed to have a lower arm actuator with a large arm user.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:19

Uh no, that's not true. It's it's PPCs, Gauss rifles, and auto cannons are the things that remove.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:26

Mech Lab also has Oh the Oh, you said the C.

SPEAKER_06 1:32:30

The C does have the is the one of the two pulses in the arm.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:34

Yeah. Yep. The C has the lower arm actuator with the other.

SPEAKER_06 1:32:37

Yep, so I guess you have to- I guess I've now cursed you to run the Warhawk C. Congratulations.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:41

However, however, why would you curse us with that? Interestingly enough, it is where is it? I saw it here. The H. The right arm has two large pulse lasers and an LRM 10. No flipping with no lower arm actuator, so that one does flip R.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:01

Go look where the ammo is for that LRM 10, by the way.

SPEAKER_06 1:33:04

In the opposite arm, I know. Remember, Warhawks. Warhawks are a clan smoke Jaguar invention, so I love them.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:13

And I am a Scorpions guy, so I'm the only one with any left.

SPEAKER_06 1:33:16

Because you stole the plans from my decaying corpse.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:34

Alright, moving on to games play.

SPEAKER_06 1:33:37

Unrelated, but really quick before we do that, I completely forgot that streaks just force you to roll a seven if you have AMS. Or AMS forces you to roll a seven. I I always kept doing the minus four, and I was annoyed that streak twos just ignored AMS, but now I'm just an idiot. Anyways. Also, AMS can pop narcs. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:59

I knew they could hit Thunderbolts, but yeah, you can't also BM a narc list and just be like, yeah, your your your whole thing doesn't work against me.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:11

Oh yeah. Thunder Thunderbolts are interesting and annoying, but the idea that that AMS kind of just counters that it's a 50-50, remove your missile.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:22

Oh, well, on the other side, if you have a if you have a mixed list of Thunderbolts and uh LRMs, it is hilarious because people will hyper focus on the Thunderbolt and try and and try and get rid of those instead of actually dealing with your normal LRMs.

SPEAKER_06 1:34:41

But yeah. Anyways, moving on. I was closing out stuff on my screen and I was still on the AMS like page. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:51

Alright, anybody want to go first?

SPEAKER_04 1:34:53

Oh boy. Uh we can, I mean, we can jointly talk about. I think I've had, like I said, I've played two games in the past week. I think one of them wasn't anything worth talking about, and the other one was me versus Nate with some advanced tech, and mostly just the dice decided that game. Nate, do you want to go over what you brought, and then I will go over what I brought.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:16

So the list that I wound up bringing to uh Luke's place last weekend was I am being kind of slow on this as I try to bring it up so I can refresh myself on what it was that I had. Okay, I've got it right here. So what I brought was I tried to limit myself mainly to Lyran Alliance and Lyran Commonwealth. So that might inform some of the weirdness. First off, I had a Gunslinger 3 ERD, which is a 85-ton assault mech that moves 3-5-2, uh, has a clan XL engine instead of a uh Intersphere XL engine, so it's actually pretty durable underneath all of the ballistic reinforced armor it has. It has a pair of Gauss rifles, a set of four clan era medium lasers, some X Pulses. Two of them are mounted to the butt for some reason. Um and it's honestly just like a pretty good uh like mid-range sniper duelist. Uh the second thing that I had was an absolute creature of a mech, the Zeus X3, which is uh it is an 80-ton assault mech uh that moves 588. It has composite structure, so if you go past the armor, it takes double damage, and then it has a 400 XXL engine, meaning it gets real hot, and its weapons are kind of mid to be honest. It's a ERPPC inner sphere, and four inner sphere ER medium lasers all tied to a targeting computer. And effectively what I had it yeah, uh for 2178 is what this thing costed, and I basically had it there to quickly get to a forward objective and then play it like a normal assault mech. It didn't end up working out that way, because I was fighting things that kill assault mechs, but we'll get to that. Uh thirdly, I had a Wolfhound 6S, uh, so 35 ton uh light mech move, 711, uh inner sphere XL engine, decent armor coverage, uh large re-engineered laser bolstered with AES, uh three ER medium lasers, inner sphere, and a rear-mounted small X Pulse. And then lastly, I had a Succession Wars Era Mongo67, which is just three inner sphere medium lasers and a small laser tied to inner sphere single piecings. And that was kinda it. It's pretty cheap.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:28

It's a good mech. Also, for uh reference, the AES is actuator enhancement, which gives a minus one, which is incompatible with targeting computers. And the ballistic reinforced armor, because I had to look this up, is uh it reduces the damage of uh incoming missile and ballistic weapon attacks against uh the mech uh by up to half, but there's some weirdness around single damage pings that it still lets through.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:02

Yep, it is it is a minimum one pip destroyed with every shot that hits it, but it is not uh it doesn't carry over odd numbered damage, basically. So if you throw like if you throw three damage at it, it will only take the first two and destroy a pip. But if you throw an LBX at it that does one damage per uh cluster, then each of those will also just destroy a pip.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:34

Yeah, it's a it's a weird armor type, and honestly, given I uh like aside from uh Feral Lamaler, I think it might actually be one of the best armor types just because it ignores re-lasers, because lasers just do normal damage to it anyway, and it catches so many things. It's it's pretty nifty, and I would like to see more of that.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:56

It actually, it actually was like that. Gunslinger was honestly like other than how unlucky they tend to be when I bring them, it put up with a lot of hurt. Like, I'm looking at the damage sheet right now. By the end of the game, it had hit 28 heat, and it only had like four pips left on the left leg and like 20 pips on the right, and the rest of the armor was gone.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:25

Yep. Meanwhile, on my side I brought uh Old Dependable, the Fire Moth H, uh, which did fire moth stuff, um a Dark Crow 2, I believe, which is kind of a weird riff on the it's kind of a clan riff on the Lancelot, and specifically like the weird autocannon Lancelots, where it has two LBX 5s and an ER-large laser attached to a targeting computer, and it has a small laser as well, but it's mostly just there to kind of run around and flink you at long range with good hit numbers. It's surprisingly cheap for a for a clan mech that's a medium. I enjoyed it quite a lot. And then I also, what because I wanted to play uh with Advanced Tech, brought a Merlin C and a Warcrow.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:14

I think it was the C, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_04 1:41:16

Uh yeah, I think it yeah, it was a Warcrow C. And those are both Snow Raven Ferrolamelor mechs, which if you have not had the displeasure of playing against Feral Lambler, it reduces I vomited a little. It reduces every amount of up to five damage that gets taken by one. So a Gauss rifle does 12 damage against it, SRMs do one damage against it, uh, LBX pellets do nothing against the armor. It is one of the most powerful armor types in the game. Actually. No, scratch that.

SPEAKER_06 1:41:49

It is the most powerful armor type in the game. The most interesting thing about Faro Lamb is that say you take a magic BB to the head from the LDX 10, you don't even take a head hit from it. Nope. Uh vehicles do still take motive checks, though. Really?

SPEAKER_04 1:42:05

Yes. Interesting.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:06

Yeah, because you can't are you can't armor the motive system itself.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:10

Well, you can.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:11

Unless it's armored motive system.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:13

Yeah. But it's it's yeah, it's specifically, even if you do no damage, it's still it still can uh uh uh throw in the grass on the tank. Yep. But so the the the warcrow is the the warcrow I took is kind of a cooker. It uses um a bunch of ER lasers and ATMs, and it can really only fire a couple of those at a time. Um the Merlin, on the other hand, I was I kind of just threw it in on a whim because I have the model and I haven't used it before. The Merlin C is an absolute beast of a mech if we want to talk about standard engine clan tech. Yeah, it has an ERPPC and a streak uh and a streak LRM5 for long range, and then in close, it also has two improved heavy lasers and um a flamer and a heavy machine gun, which mostly don't really do that much. Um it has maximum Faro Lamb, it can sync all of its weapons on a run, it has four jump jets, it can run up to six hexes a turn, and it has a standard engine, which makes it a hell of a brawler for uh the incredibly cheap price of like sixteen hundred something? 1870. 18, yeah, 1870, which is for what you get very good.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:40

Yeah, that's yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:43

Oh, also it's oh, it's not it's not a hundred percent, but it's eighty-four percent of uh the maximum armor it can take, which is enough to give most things pause.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:54

I'm a big fan of mechs right around the 1900 level of cost, particularly in clan specs, you can get effectiveness out of them because that is about the point where you can either field them in doubles or you can field it with something more expensive and have a little bit of room left over for some extras, where it's not such a huge part portion of your force in a 7 or 8k game that its loss is completely devastating, but it's it's enough of an investment that it can really play an important role in the battlefield. You can upgrade them and still have some wiggle room. That that that 19 that just shy of 2000 point is like is just on the BV curve, so nice when you get there just right. Yes. And that looks like a good one for it.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:46

Yeah, this is this is in the with the the core book kind of forcing more people into playing with Pharaoh Lamb, especially locally, I think this thing is probably going to end up showing a lot. Because this is like the this is just kind of no must, no fuss, uh well, some fuss, a very, very effective brawler. But yeah, we ended up playing raise the flag, and Nate tried to assault onto his flag, which was on my side of the field to try scoring points off of it, and ran directly into the brick wall, which was this thing's close range armament.

SPEAKER_06 1:45:26

I would like to just interrupt really quick. It's crazy that for the first like half, like actually like the first full year of playing Iliad, like nobody played Raise the Flag, and now that seems to be the only thing people are playing, which is just just crazy to me.

SPEAKER_04 1:45:44

That's because we introduced it halfway through the U Gar Year Garner. Yeah, but I'm saying like crazy how this mission type that we introduced during the summer has been getting played a lot since then.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:57

No, no, no, no, no, no. It did not get played until we switched the point system over. Uh I I asked people and nobody said they specifically avoided it. But statistically speaking, people were definitely avoiding playing it during the in the old point scoring. I think switching it over where it's no longer you know the the four total points, it's now 80 points. Uh so raise the flag has a bit more nuance to it, makes it a lot more approachable, a lot easier to understand, and a little less like weirdly swingy, so that people are really enjoying it. It's it's allowed that format, that mission structure to really like blossom where people are in interested in playing it and not lying, saying they're choosing not to play it. So Garner's definitely right in this. Nobody was playing Raise the Flag until we switched the point scoring.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:49

I would like it to be added that what we rolled to determine what match we were doing, we rolled supply raid. We raise the flag because I told Luke, I have never gotten raise the flag a single time. So I have no idea how that how that works.

SPEAKER_06 1:47:11

And it's not demolition, so you were happy.

SPEAKER_03 1:47:14

Pretty much, yeah. Yeah. Like, I mean, I gotta be honest here. As long as it's not demolition, I'm fine.

SPEAKER_04 1:47:21

Yeah, but as a as a as a mission type, I quite like it because it forces you to split your attention between two different uh zones to both keep your opponent from winning and also to push your own uh victory points at the same time. I think that's a I think that's a that's a it's a good it's a it's a good format for that.

SPEAKER_03 1:47:45

Uh wasn't that all the units that uh you brought, Luke?

SPEAKER_04 1:47:49

Oh, I had a I had a uh stand of uh clan rabid battle armor as well. That's what it was.

SPEAKER_03 1:47:56

I remember there being five.

SPEAKER_04 1:47:58

Which is this is this is just one of the this is one of the um kind of alternatives that you can take to elementals where they instead of having um ten armor, one point of dude, have um uh nine and one, and for that you get your two loads of SRMs as one-shot missiles that you can rip off in one turn, and you also get an extra point of jump movement. They're also significantly cheaper. Yep. Which makes them very effective at being little dinguses that can just kind of run around the board doing leg attacks.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:42

And they are also-leave me in kind of a pickle when uh when he rolled those up with the fire moth and the gunslinger, being that it only has two jump jets, could not adequately escape from them.

SPEAKER_06 1:48:55

No. I mean that's why I take them. To be fair, it's weird that you weren't running them because they are a Novacat invention.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:03

Well, I was playing Lyrans.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:05

I'm just saying, like The Rabbid also don't have battle claws. Um they just have basic manipulators, and I forget exactly what that does mechanically.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:16

Two of them, you can still do a normal leg attack. Yeah. And still mechanize.

SPEAKER_06 1:49:23

And swarm.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:49:26

Yeah, I mean the answer is the answer is uh for the purposes of normal play, it does nothing. Over uh like they still have full uh they still have full swarm and and like attack abilities.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:42

Yeah, they're also missing the secret thing that most people forget about elementals, which is the anti personnel mount.

SPEAKER_04 1:49:50

Yeah, sure, but also like they get one turn of shooting, and then every other turn they're on the board and active, they're gonna be doing uh anti mech attacks. No.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:59

Yeah. The uh the other thing that battle claws do is they bolster uh AP attacks when you're in the same hex.

SPEAKER_04 1:50:06

For all of the times you're fighting conventional infantry.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:10

Which you can't do in Iliad because we have the BV gate of 200 BV and you can't get conventional infantry that high.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:18

Yeah. No, the we like if you guys listened to last episode, it like listening to some of the issues with instant action is like listening to the history of Iliad and the number like the problems we encountered and solved. 200 BV minimum would have dealt with some of that that stuff. And I'm just so happy we we ended up doing that, because the more I delve into other formats what other things are encountering, we don't want those issues. Yeah. We don't.

SPEAKER_04 1:50:51

Yeah, we've dealt we've we've worked through a bunch of stuff.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:55

Yeah, so the way that the game basically went was we started off um it's short edge deployment. So we both wound up effectively doing the same thing. Half the force was running towards our objective we needed to claim, the other half of the force was going over and uh defending the other one. What I wound up doing was in order to uh defend against Luke's force coming in to score points, I put the gunslinger and the wolf hound on the on his point to guard that against his uh warcrow because I figured that was going to try and like push up. So I was gonna try to use the re-laser and the gauss rifles to just kind of brute force my way through the Faro Lamb armor.

SPEAKER_04 1:51:47

And in fairness, you did eventually manage to kill that warcrow.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:50

I did do that. The warcrow made a tactical error at the end where it presented the back to the gunslinger, and it alpha strikes all the way through the left torso and through to the CT and just kills the dead. And it came at the cost of the gunslinger's pilot kind of boiling alive in the cockpit while being brain fried to death. Like the pilot was dead six ways to Sunday. It was just that's just how it went. Um and on the other end, I ran the um I ran the Zeus X and the Mongoose up to try and claim the other point and kind of like skirmish. I basically tried to rush them up as soon as I could to claim the objective before his stuff arrived. And unfortunately, one of the stuff was his Merlin, which is a monster at close range. Um and his Lancelot was, or not his Lancelot, my bad, uh, Dark Crow. Um those two were kind of skirmishing between each other at my uh combined force that was on the point, where the Merlin actually managed to knock over the Zeus with all the damage it did, because I uh I beefed the PSR, it fell over, and then he kicked the head off the Zeus with the Merlin and left me with a significant uh you know status set and then would proceed to uh a few turns later, the mongoose would uh go down to being cored out after its pilot failed to stand up uh like six attempts in a row. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:53:54

I got a five. At some point that just turned into sick curiosity on your part about how bad you can make the numbers.

SPEAKER_03 1:54:04

After three of them, I was like, this guy's not getting back up anyway. I just want to see if I can kill him now. So and then over on the other end, the uh the gunslinger went down to just a bunch of damage and a dead pilot, which left the only unit I had on the board a lightly peppered wolf hound with a broken gyro with attack.

SPEAKER_04 1:54:30

Lots of missiles coming down the rail off of those uh those rabbits. And then the yeah, and my I mean it was yeah, it was kind of the the Merlin was kind of my MVP for that, followed up by the Fire Moth, which was bouncing around dealing lots of damage. The the Dark Crow was just kind of there, but also I think it's kind of a I think it's kind of a goofy mech, and I want to see it more because it's if you look at the cost, it's like I think 1500 battle value for something that can pretty consistently throw 20 damage downrange uh at like eight hexes for its short range. I would consider it a a perfectly cromulant medium.

SPEAKER_03 1:55:11

I always forget that it's a medium.

SPEAKER_04 1:55:13

It well, the problem is it is it is literally just here is here is a clan version of a Lancelot, and it has almost identical armor characteristics. The difference is just it's five tons lighter.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:24

Well, here's my real question. Up, nope, it's got nine head armor. It's not a Lancelot. Oh, whoa, no, the Dark Road 2 has eight head armor.

SPEAKER_03 1:55:32

The Lancelot C is short on head armor armor. I think the normal Lancelot isn't.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:39

Well, now I have to look this up. Normal Lancelot, seven head armor. Oh. Nine seven, seven, nine, eight, seven. I just realized the other day that cougars don't have full nine head armor. Yep. It was yesterday.

SPEAKER_03 1:56:00

We were at RPG.

SPEAKER_04 1:56:02

Eight head armor is fine. Yeah. Oh no, you get headcapped by uh the a large variable speed pulse laser, a gun that basically nothing uses.

SPEAKER_03 1:56:15

Unless it's free worldwide in the jihad.

SPEAKER_06 1:56:17

An Oscout only has six head armor.

SPEAKER_04 1:56:20

Oh no, you get headcapped by a large pulse laser, which is actually kind of significant.

SPEAKER_06 1:56:26

Yep. Well, I guess it's just the early the Oscout 7 series. The next ones they actually figured out how to put armor on the head. Nope, because there's eight on the on the ComStar variant. Hang on. We're getting into weird weird signs. Seven on the 9S. Eight on the 10C.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:44

What the there's so many different but also 10 damage goes internal just about anywhere. It's one of those.

SPEAKER_04 1:56:51

Yeah. It's a mech that's it's relying on its movement speed as its defense. It's not relying on its armor.

SPEAKER_03 1:56:57

There was a really funny moment during our game where uh I managed to land a single shot from the I think it was the wolf hound that was uh firing at his at Luke's uh fire moth. And if it hit anywhere else, it would have gone internal and probably been a crit. But because I hit him in the face with a medium laser, it survived scot-free and got away.

SPEAKER_04 1:57:30

And then you hit it the next turn with another medium laser in the head and you hold it.

SPEAKER_03 1:57:36

But I took the hardest way through a fire moth.

SPEAKER_04 1:57:41

We can only hit it one place, but the one place we can hit it, oh boy. Yeah, the fire moth, uh yeah, that but the fire moth did what it needed to do, which was throw a bunch of damage downrange constantly. Very close ranges.

SPEAKER_03 1:57:54

It it was basically responsible for doing all the hurt to the gunslinger that ended up taking.

SPEAKER_04 1:58:00

Yes. Yeah, because it turns out uh missile missile don't go so well into uh uh armor which has missile damage.

SPEAKER_03 1:58:10

Yeah, BRA is BRA is great, and I highly recommend everybody use more of it.

SPEAKER_06 1:58:16

Uh uh the uh what did you call me? Clan Federated Jaguars or Clan Smokesons disagree.

SPEAKER_03 1:58:24

I called you clan smokesons.

SPEAKER_06 1:58:25

I like my ballistic damage tribal, alright.

SPEAKER_03 1:58:28

Yes. Listen, it'll work.

SPEAKER_02 1:58:32

I think it's largely settled, we'll have the uh the official discussion, but I think once cool rules come out, you're gonna be limited to one unit of special armor because well don't worry, I'll go into that when I talk about my game.

SPEAKER_04 1:58:45

Alright. There you go. What's your game?

SPEAKER_06 1:58:47

So my game was I just I came up with this really dumb C3 Lance to that fits in the uh in the Eastern Assault Richmond Open uh list construction format, and my brother decided to or I asked my brother if he wanted to do a quick practice game against me. Because Nicholas has been busy, and he's like, Yeah, sure. So we end up try-booting up Mega Mech and playing online. And we s we start playing. I actually go and like start clicking on his mechanism look at his things and said, Ah, you brought the Akuma, you have hardened armor. Oh, you also brought our Kurokubi, you have hardened armor. Oh, you also brought a Wendigo, you have reflective armor. Hmm. I was like, I just wanted to bring these because I've just got the models for them in the Kretan packs. Yeah, well, it is all of the special armor. And I have MML sevens and PPCs.

SPEAKER_04 1:59:55

I think I assume you I assume you mean the uh the Shiro, not the Akuma, by the way. Yes, the Shiro.

SPEAKER_06 2:00:01

That is correct. I was thinking of I was thinking about the stupid not Atlas skull, but yes, it is the Shiro.

SPEAKER_03 2:00:08

I like the Akuma's face.

SPEAKER_06 2:00:12

So does Luke. But yeah, so my my force was the Avatar OC as the C3 Master. It has two LRM tens, a PPC, and an Ultra 5, and some miscellaneous ER medium lasers. Then I've got a Battle Axe 8D, which is four ER medium lasers, three MML7s, and four tons of ammo.

SPEAKER_03 2:00:50

Big fan.

SPEAKER_06 2:00:52

I've got a yes, I love that mech. Even without it being in C3, I love that mech.

SPEAKER_03 2:00:57

Big Hellspawn.

SPEAKER_06 2:00:59

Yes, big Big Brother Hellspawn. Uh then I've got a Thanatos 6S. I would have taken the 6S too, but for some reason that shrapnel has not been added to the MUL yet.

SPEAKER_04 2:01:19

We can we can scream about this later, but I believe that shrapnels later than like 12 have not been added to them all.

SPEAKER_06 2:01:28

And big sad, because 6s2 is cool. But the 6S um is a unique contraption because it has a heavy PPC, two ER medium lasers, two regular medium lasers, and three LRM5s. With two tons of ammo, mind you. The then to round out the Lance I have an Owens OD. Which is just an Arc and an SRM4. And a probe. And they're all in a C3 lance together, and to add in a little bit of extra, I had a Cavalier 2 flamer variant battle armor. That could mechanize onto the Owens. Then as a little spicy added bonus, there are two tons of LRM 10 ammo in the Avatar, and there were I kept two tons of LRM ammo for the MML7s in the Battle Axe. So one ton of it, of each was Narc equipped, and one ton of each was semi-guided equipped. And working our way through a bunch of crashes, I think we got to like turn four, maybe five. But I just was doing zero damage to his pile of hardened armor. Even though I was just hitting him. But he was also just missing me.

SPEAKER_04 2:03:04

Missing you also the like what did he have? The shi uh Shiro, uh, the Roku, and what was the last one?

SPEAKER_06 2:03:12

Oendigo, and then he also had. It was one thing it it was the only thing that didn't have special armor. I can't remember what it was.

SPEAKER_04 2:03:21

But the the Shiro and the Roku are a lot of armor and not a lot of anything else is kinda the problem with them. Like, the Shiro has 40 tubes worth of LRM tens, and then if you're using the hardened armor variant, an LB2X autocannon. Yep. The Roku has either a uh PPC or a um late AC5.

SPEAKER_06 2:03:51

He had the late AC5.

SPEAKER_04 2:03:54

Which, yeah, it's it's a little bit of a And then he had the Wendigo A.

unknown 2:03:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:04:00

Which those are those two mechs are are very much immovable objects versus I don't know if I want to call C3 an unstoppable force.

SPEAKER_06 2:04:10

Especially not that though I didn't have a lot of things that really got to take advantage of it. I did do a funny thing though, and he didn't realize that I had improved jump jets, and I jumped right next to his Rakuro and tried to kick it. Yeah, that'll I jumped into Heavywood six X's and tried to kick him in the head.

SPEAKER_03 2:04:30

You know, like I've heard Luke say hydrogen bomb versus coughing baby. I'd like to introduce an alternate term for this scenario, which is hydrogen baby versus coughing bomb.

SPEAKER_06 2:04:43

Yeah, that does kind of sound like what happens. But after the last time when we got when the game crashed out and we couldn't load back in, we just kind of called it, but it was a lot of it was the mission we played was one of the Richmond Open missions. It was the they're effectively the King of the Hill one where there's just a random level two structure in the middle of the map. That you are you whoever has the most units within two hexes of that random two hex or two level tall structure gains points for it.

SPEAKER_03 2:05:28

The random building that for some reason you can't shoot past even though there's nothing actually there.

SPEAKER_06 2:05:35

It's a they call it a level two building. Here, I'll I'll 3D print, I'll I'll bring one of my coolant towers for you. Uh that that I got from one of the things, and you can put that in the middle, that way you can visualize it better.

SPEAKER_02 2:05:47

It is indestructible, blocks line of sight, and you can't enter the hex, you can't get on top of it.

SPEAKER_03 2:05:53

Yeah, it's awful. Like, if you're on opposite sides of it on like on the point, you can't fight the other guy that's also on the point. Yeah, it's terrible.

SPEAKER_02 2:06:03

Hey, d how do we make elementals potentially more oppressive in this format with limited TMM unit counts and everything else? I know. And hang on. Don't allow B-pods. Yeah, don't allow B-pods. Even though you have to bring the book that has the rules for B-pods.

SPEAKER_03 2:06:23

Yeah, it was. I played a test game of that scenario with Nicholas, where he threw his Jade Falcons at me, and I was still like trying to work my way through what I was gonna bring for my stuff, and I didn't realize that I just couldn't shoot through the uh I couldn't shoot through the building. So he put just two things behind it, and I just couldn't do anything about them. And he just won.

SPEAKER_06 2:06:50

See, when I played against Nicholas with that, he just dropped his storm birds on it and then laughed at me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:06:57

Yeah, it seems like the object It seems like the objective holding missions in the Richmond packet really heavily incentivize the use of battle armor. Yep. As a force multiplier.

SPEAKER_02 2:07:09

This is coming out after the the list uh things are in. Um and I don't want to get too heavily into it. Well we'll we'll see how it actually plays out. But in a in a format that only allows you to bring two units max of to of TMM four or one unit TMM five, and has emissions that count number of units for gaining points, it means you are significantly advantaged by having both of your TMM4 units able to carry battle armor and then dropping off battle armor, because unless your opponent also takes advantage of that, you now double the unit count in the center where you're claiming objectives, and you're and if you don't have some way of engaging or delaying or occupying that, if you don't have at least one battle armor of your own to get into a position, you're you're basically you're setting yourself up on a very heavy back foot right at the start. Yeah. Yeah, that's not that's not ideal. Yeah, like if if you're if you're gonna allow battle armor, you can't you shouldn't have that TMM limit.

SPEAKER_04 2:08:22

Yeah, because it is well, unless you want to encourage everyone to be bringing battle armor. But people just make battles and then be annoying.

SPEAKER_03 2:08:35

Yeah, yeah. They don't have a limit on the BV that you have to spend on it either. So you can just bring a 36 BV power armor like exoskeleton that is technically battle armor, and then you can still just have most of a force while you still have three uh units that are just they're there, they can capture objectives, but they don't do anything other than do that.

SPEAKER_06 2:09:05

As long as they have two basic manipulators, man, you can do anti-mech attacks. That's what I was doing with my pals.

SPEAKER_03 2:09:11

Yeah, but that's just an added benefit.

SPEAKER_04 2:09:14

Yeah, you can throw them at people and you can use them to uh you can use the grabby hands.

SPEAKER_06 2:09:22

Don't make me sad that we're gonna be.

SPEAKER_04 2:09:30

I'm trying to think of what the what the like min uh what it like the um like diminutive form of senior is.

SPEAKER_03 2:09:40

He ho we have He ho grabby hands?

SPEAKER_06 2:09:48

Yeah. Oh my god, my praise seeker, I wanted to bring him so bad. I know but eating both movement slots because he can get TMM5 because if he runs in a straight line with no obstacles, is a little short-sighted.

SPEAKER_02 2:10:10

So when it comes to me and games played, I don't have all that much to talk about. I I've been pretty busy with some stuff. Uh for anyone is anyone local who's listening, for those who don't know, I am a classically trained fine artist, and I had a studio down where I used to live that I'm moving out of. And so I've been coming going down to Ithaca on weekends to pack it up and move it because I'm moving out of that RT studio down there, and I'm eventually getting one up here, and I'm hoping to get back into making art. But you know, moving out and driving and spending all day Saturday dealing with that has been a lot combined with all of a sudden only having one day off on weekends with obligations. It's been it's been a deal. That's but there's my life, there's there's some personal stuff. But uh, I did manage to join our RPG game down in Ithaca yesterday, made a visit, and in a similar sense of how much I love my ultra PPC Panther in the local semi-RPG campaign going on up here. I really I I have a weird uh super TMM bonus now, cougar. As Nate will attest, the the dungeon, the game master John, who's been on the podcast here. There was a funnier moment further down the line I'll cover where allowed allowed me to use the ghost targets optional rule for ECM because my character is a com is a computer expert. Uh uh he uh basically he has a higher bonus than the difficulty number to the base computer use stuff. And so he just kind of you know 80s movie hackers his way into. Like systems overrides things. Yeah, yeah, he's got a power glove. It gives him a bonus.

SPEAKER_03 2:12:05

He also says, I'm in like six times a session.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:10

Oh, yeah. We had a we uh we had we did like an online uh session once where we couldn't meet in person because of the bad weather or whatever, and so my character infiltrated this facility, and every time he like hacked a security pad, I would go just go or just look at everyone. I'm in.

SPEAKER_03 2:12:29

It wasn't it wasn't everyone. He was messaging my character specifically.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:37

I'm in. Uh but anyway, because the cougar is an omni and he he lets it customize and it's well under the technical BV limit, I ended up with patches the Cougar Mark III, which is a cougar base omni-mech with two ER large lasers, a targeted computer, six light machine guns, an active probe, and three ECMs. And when you are using your computer skill instead of your piloting skill to roll for ghost targets, and your target number is now a four, you essentially give yourself plus three TMM every turn. And uh when you run in a straight line and have a TMM six on a cougar with a targeting computer, you end up, you know, in an honor duel with your opponent and winning.

SPEAKER_03 2:13:27

In an honor duel with an with a hero falcon. Yep. Which you appear to have claimed as Isola. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 2:13:37

Most definitely.

SPEAKER_03 2:13:39

And the funny moment that I mentioned before was I was sitting next to you and I looked over and I saw you were customizing what you were gonna run for your hero falcon. And I saw I saw you click on ECM suite, go up to add and click it twice.

SPEAKER_02 2:13:57

It starts with one to begin with. Yeah. So it has uh jump jump eight. So be prepared for a TMM seven. You're a fucking. I'm not actually going to do that. That's just that's too much. That's too ridiculous.

SPEAKER_03 2:14:20

Yeah, you're gonna get us pulse tark on to death.

SPEAKER_02 2:14:25

How many ECMs do I have to mount to make your DC not work?

SPEAKER_03 2:14:31

Uh I don't know, but it'll still work well on the rest of us.

SPEAKER_02 2:14:35

Uh I I I made that somebody made the joke that um ghost targeting is broken. And I I and I I I made the comment it's not broken until you can feel the ECM with your teeth. It's not it's not wrong. Just feel it in your fillings. Exactly. Just the the buzz liter. Uh anyway, well. So yeah, I found a I found a way to turn my like skills-based character and his weird, overpowered thing he's doing on the RPG side to convert it into actual on the table weirdness. So we'll see. I'm kind of I'm I'm really excited to uh see what happens after that that honor duel and that that boss combat thing. But that's my recent games played. You know, another RPG thing that this week. I want to try and get some more games in at some point, but you know. Hopefully, soon my life will settle down a little bit and I'll be able to play more. And other people than Garner.

SPEAKER_03 2:15:45

I just happen to live too far out, is all.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:49

You are always welcome to visit.

SPEAKER_03 2:15:51

I'm I'm the only one that does it regularly.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:54

Your dog doesn't randomly pee on the floor, so your dog would probably be welcome. Okay. And there uh there's there are extra beds throwing throwing it out there.

SPEAKER_04 2:16:06

Probably going to end up getting um at some point uh I'll probably be up again because I have I would like to play you guys more. But it's been very hectic with uh finals coming up.

SPEAKER_03 2:16:22

And diving school. And sword fighting.

SPEAKER_04 2:16:25

Uh yeah, the I listen, the the diving is diving is really funny because on one hand, it is it is surprisingly natural once you get into it, but also like there's this looming specter of if you do things wrong, you do just kind of die. Like there's there's like five different ways that the air you're breathing is trying to kill you at any one moment, and it's like, yeah, if you if if you hold your breath, you're gonna get an expansion injury and your lungs are gonna explode. If you go down too quickly, the nitrogen makes you drunk and you do stupid things and then you probably drown. If you go up too quickly, the nitrogen boils out of your blood, and that causes problems everywhere. Like most of what dive most of what go uh doing this diving class has taught me is air very dangerous once you start pressurizing it. I mean that's really anything.

SPEAKER_06 2:17:24

But also, Luke, I need a uh I need an encyclopedia ruling quick. Because I just realized something. If I put infernos in my battle armor, yeah, and I'm sharing a hex with another squad of battle armor, and my salamanders explode. So it does it hit both of us. Uh salamanders don't explode. Fire resistant. They're fire resistant, yes, but the what if they did? But the tubes had infernos in them. Can that splash onto the battle armor that I'm dueling in the same hex?

SPEAKER_04 2:18:11

Uh so no, like salamanders, salamanders will not uh cause explosion, it will not cause like a uh a propagation on death.

SPEAKER_06 2:18:22

Okay, I thought that they just ignored the effects of Infernos for that purpose.

SPEAKER_04 2:18:27

Not that they No, so if it's no, if you have fire resistant, then you don't have to make the explosion on death. Gash jack.

SPEAKER_06 2:18:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 2:18:37

Uh that said, um here's the funny one though. If you have a stand of elementals in uh that have infernos, and all of them die, and you're in the same hex as another stand of elementals, uh, and an enemy battle mech, all of those get treated as getting splashed by the uh by the infernos on death. Amazing. But uh you that would violate stacking rules, I think. No, because it's it's your friendly battle armor and then an enemy mech and enemy battle armor. It's two per side. You can have up to four units in a single hex. But only one of them can be a mech. So you can that doesn't seem right. Look at look at the rules. It's it's you could have uh it's up to two units per side. Only one of those only one of those units can be a mech. Are the rules for sacking. Doesn't come up very often, but that that that is that is how much stuff you can have in a single hex.

SPEAKER_06 2:19:56

I I need to see this now, because that is counter to everything that. Alright, page 57.

SPEAKER_04 2:20:06

But yeah, it says for the for the inferno detonation, it says all units within the hex are treated as though they were successfully struck.

SPEAKER_06 2:20:14

Yep. At the end of each phase up to two units from each side may occupy a single hex maximum of four. That's okay. Interesting.

SPEAKER_04 2:20:24

Yeah, this was I mean, this was kind of the thing where like Axel was like trying to fit was like trying to figure out how uh infantry transports work. So he was like, I gotta do this super weird and offbeat thing, and then it's just like, no, that's just something you can do with infantry transports, Axel. And it's it's based off of that.

SPEAKER_06 2:20:46

Gotcha. Okay. So okay, so then I guess non-fire-resistant things. So like so if I've got like a squad of normal elementals that pop off, they will splash everything in their hex. Yep, it is everything in the hex. Outstanding.

SPEAKER_04 2:21:12

Which oh no, I just had a I just had a a very silly thought of how you could take advantage of that. I'm looking to see if there are any pals with SRMs. I was not gonna say I wasn't gonna say pals, I was gonna say, I was gonna say you call an artillery strike on your own battle armor. Yeah. That that in you can do that. Call yeah, you call artillery on your own battle armor, pop the battle armor after they resolve their attacks, and then blow them for the rest of their damage. That's so dumb. But you can do it.

SPEAKER_03 2:21:56

This feels like a very Korean thing to do.

SPEAKER_04 2:21:59

Yeah, what can you do with uh SRMs on battle armor is the is the question now.

SPEAKER_05 2:22:08

Alright, so there are so the Constable Pacification suit has SRM1s.

SPEAKER_06 2:22:18

Have SRM ones and two grenade launchers. Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 2:22:23

Uh 226 BV or 168 for 4.

SPEAKER_03 2:22:28

We go into the periphery for this.

SPEAKER_06 2:22:31

Well, the thing about the constables is you just make them like gunnery six because you don't care.

unknown 2:22:38

It's true.

SPEAKER_06 2:22:39

You just fly them up to die.

SPEAKER_03 2:22:42

In Iliad, you do have to keep in mind that it has to cost minimum 200 BV.

SPEAKER_02 2:22:47

We're probably not talking about Iliad. No, this is 100% uh for Hypothetical.

SPEAKER_03 2:22:54

How can we use element uh how can we use battle armor as landmines?

SPEAKER_02 2:22:59

How can we break somebody else's format?

SPEAKER_04 2:23:04

Wait a second. What is Oh no, I have uh I have a I have one for you, Garner, actually.

SPEAKER_02 2:23:12

You know, here's the thing before we get too much into the the random depths of us looking at random megamex sheets, I don't think that's the most engaging content. No, this is this is just us both.

SPEAKER_06 2:23:22

This is just us both this is bullshit, yeah. Squad 4 console pacification suit that are 4-3 are 202 BV.

SPEAKER_03 2:23:33

Okay. Never mind then.

SPEAKER_04 2:23:36

I was gonna say if you want to really goober this, um you can use the I don't know why they're oh no, it is standard rules. Uh look up the it's uh word of Blake, but look up the Asura medium battle armor.

SPEAKER_03 2:23:52

Hey, that sounds familiar.

SPEAKER_04 2:23:55

Yeah. There's a one-shot SRM version of it that has an SRM 6 rack. There's probably cheaper ways to do it, but that is kind of funny.

SPEAKER_02 2:24:06

Jump 3, 221, SRM6, one-shot.

SPEAKER_04 2:24:10

That is scary. Yeah, here's your SRM 36. It's gonna miss.

SPEAKER_03 2:24:17

Yeah, because it's a it's a Blakeist thing, so you just get six of them.

SPEAKER_02 2:24:22

Don't don't make me use We don't want Garner showing up with a wob list.

SPEAKER_03 2:24:30

I don't want anybody showing up with a wobblist. They're weird and annoying.

SPEAKER_04 2:24:35

And small cockpits. Yeah. I mean I small cockpits is a really evil banshee.

SPEAKER_06 2:24:43

I mean, I'm just looking at it in terms of just because I could bring the the Zura and a shot of artillery on my own and fire for in danger close to myself, and we'll be fine. Everything's fine.

SPEAKER_04 2:25:00

Actually, if you wanted to if you wanted to.

SPEAKER_02 2:25:05

We we're I'm we're gonna call it here. Yeah. So thank you so much for your joining me, guys. Thank you, Nate, for being uh for your first time on the podcast. I look forward to talking to you again as we wrap up uh Eastern Assault. Yeah.

unknown 2:25:21

Alright.

SPEAKER_02 2:25:22

Glory to America. Have a good night, guys. What was that words? Say say goodbye. Have a good night, guys. Good night. Good night. Bye-bye. There we go. I need a call out from everybody. Glory to Mary. 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_04 2:26:29

If you aren't thinking about how you're going to be killing the swarm of toads, then the swarm of toads can be quite the issue.

SPEAKER_03 2:26:39

Here's the here's the thing about what's that noise?

SPEAKER_04 2:26:42

What was yeah. Oh, that Luke my paint cup, sorry.

SPEAKER_02 2:26:47

You were you were speaking while you were making a noise, so I can't edit that noise out from when you were speaking, Luke.

SPEAKER_06 2:26:55

He's just masturbating while we're talking.

SPEAKER_04 2:26:58

Yeah, no, I I listened. I'm thinking about that one element that one uh that one source book picture of the elemental out of the armor. Uh no, it's like the one in all the fish nets? Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 2:27:15

You know the one. Everybody knows the one.

SPEAKER_02 2:27:24

One second. Garner, you've got a clicky clacky fidget. I mean do you have are you making do you are you holding something that makes a clicking noise? No. I've I've been heard hearing a clicking noise when you were when you were talking just a second ago.

SPEAKER_03 2:27:36

I actually was hearing that too.

SPEAKER_06 2:27:42

What is that? It's me playing with um Mike Boomarm.

SPEAKER_02 2:27:49

Stop I can't mute the squeaky sounds that happen while you're speaking. If you're holding the speaking stick, don't move. I'm sorry, I'm I these are fidget toys.