Episode 17: Eastern Assault

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 Luke takes over as host and interviews several of us who went and competed at the Eastern Assault tournament at the Richmond Open.

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

Transcript

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Now people have come to the cult of her feet. If you recall Monty Python, the Black Knight comes out of that alive. He doesn't come out of it well. Oh, he's a punchline. He has to stay in the end. Yeah, everybody and their mom has one of those. Welcome to the Odysseus Legion Podcast. Hello, hello, and welcome to the 17th episode of the Odysseus Legion Podcast. My name is Luke, and I will be your host today. Sitting in in FOB Ithaca and calling out to our forces in the fields. Today I have Jade Falcon Galaxy Commander Nicholas. Hello. Smoke Jaguar Galaxy Commander Garner. Hello. Along with our friend and newly minted Solaris champion Nate, operating out of the Free Worlds League. Howdy. And Ty E. Chris of the Draconis Combine Mustard Soldiery. Oh my god, I must have. Mustard Soldiery. What the heck is that? I see mustard soldiery. Mustard mustard. I put it on hot dogs. Now the rest of you are currently convalescing after returning from a tournament in Virginia, which will be our main discussion tonight. But before we get into that, what have you guys been up to, Battletech or otherwise? Well, I've actually been building my StarCraft Tabletop Miniatures game stuff when I'm not continuing to paint my uh Delta Galaxy smoke Jaguars. And the kits goes together surprisingly well. I was surprised. I wish they were a little less monopose for something that you build. Like I don't have a problem with battletecs because I don't have to build them. But um I enjoy the building process though, unlike other people. I love building, cut modifying, customizing. And at least with battletech, I can you know hack off arms, legs, whatever, and it comes off in generally nice setups, even especially with like jewelers' saws and stuff. Other than that, just been working on painting up the remainder of our Operation Revival little mini narrative campaign thing that's going on at one of the local game stores here in Rochester, where we had all picked a clan faction and uh rolled on some rarity access tables and formed a force at a trinary that was composed of one star of elementals and then two stars of mechs, and I've been having a lot of fun with that. Very cool. And how about you, Nicholas? Well, obviously, we I I went and played in the tournament, uh, but before going to that, I was painting up the minis for the tournament. I'm very happy, in particular, with a jumping howler that people seem to enjoy. So my boy is shining. I now have a howler with a jump jet plume coming out from behind it. I am mildly helpful with that. Very cool. So did I. I supplied the jump jet or the jump smoke. I supplied the howler. It's a team effort here. Go team! Uh, and how about you, Nade? Uh, well, my apartment currently reeks of pewter dust and super glue. I have a mild headache, and my fingers are hardened, having been assembling like 17 different IWM models over the past like 16 hours. We'll get into where those came from a little bit later, I think. Yep, yep. It's fucking it it's it stinks in here. It's so bad. Yeah, Nate has to avoid large events with an IWM booth because it is a plague on his wallet. So, Nate, you're going to uh Gen Con with me, right? Uh no, I'm not. I don't know, man. You'll have to yeah, you'll have to mortgage yourself. And how about you, Chris? Um, actually, uh, I've been taking it as downtime as much as possible. Played a couple games here and there, uh, you know, prepping for uh trying to convert to Hexless Alpha Strike uh for the Odysseus uh you know uh you know format and uh you know working with the team there. Very nice. I have been uh slacking on Battletech. It's the end of my semester, and I have been completely bushwhacked by schoolwork. Uh these past two days I've actually been doing a uh uh the final certification for a diving course that I was taking as part of a study abroad program that I'm working through right now. So I am mildly congested and compressed at the moment. At least you don't have the bends. Oh well, yes, at least I at least I haven't managed to uh nitrogenate my blood like a nice pint of Guinness. I got nothing. Alright. So now that we've done updates out of the way, you guys went to uh the Richmond Opens to participate in Southern Assault. Not Southern Assault, Eastern Assault. I I still take uh complaint. I have a complaint about that. They called it Eastern Assault. I one of the main reasons I went was because I was excited to complete my set of pins. There was no pin. Like Northern and Southern, and I was sad. I I I want to file a complaint that Eastern Assa so Eastern Assault is in Richmond, which is not on the coast, Northern Assault is in Northern Virginia, which is DC. That's not Northern. Actually, it's downtown DC. Alright, so before we get into uh the tournament itself, I wanted to ask you guys how was the rest of the trip to uh Virginia? Is there any fun stories, anything that happened while you were down there that wasn't battletech related or was not directly related to the tournament, rather? So I was kind of crazy. I actually went the weekend before to an event in Harper's Ferry, Virginia, or West Virginia, uh, and played four days of like uh an intense, you know, board game, and then Winterridge been opened. So I was foolish enough to do that, but it was a great time. Yeah, the Friday when we were leaving, I had to drive down two hours to drop off my dog with my ex, who watched the dog over the weekend, then drove back to Rochester, at which point Garner took over the job of driving both of us down to Virginia. Uh, thank you for doing all the driving, Garner. I love it. Um, did you guys decide to do the deranged plan of stuffing yourself into Garner's Mustang, or did that not happen? That exactly happened. It also is very comfortable. What are you talking about? Yeah, there's plenty of space. Like that, that's not sarcasm. I don't know why. I don't think of a Mustang as a fuel-efficient car. Maybe I'm off base there. That's because you think of people that don't have bargain bin six-cylinder automatics that. See, I yeah, I think of I think of fun people who have Mustangs. Yes, whereas I'm lame and I said, I like the way this looks, and I can get one for cheap. And it's just like uh under under the hood, it's basically the same as by Corolla. Yes. Okay, cool. I get I get like 26-27 miles to the gallon. Okay, that's not terrible. Yeah, so it would have been about the same as taking my Subaru. I ended up just renting a car for uh my drive down. I ended up heading down a day ahead of everybody else, except for Chris, obviously. I ended up just renting a car and I I started on the Star Wars Darth Bain trilogy, audiobook trilogy, uh, heading on the way down. And I've been super enjoying that as I like continue working through it over the course of the week. When you were stuck in traffic? Uh I wasn't really stuck in traffic, to be honest. That were I was stuck in traffic on the way back, not on the way down. I have I have one more thing to add to our before tournament adventures, which is our shirts. Oh, yeah. I was gonna bring up some shirts. As sort of as a as a bit of a lark early on, I decided to get for myself uh if you've heard of the internet meme uh Three Wolf Moon, it has its own wiki page. I recommend looking it up. It is absolutely hilarious. It started off as this kind of cheesy, silly t-shirt with three wolves howling at a moon. The reviews all talked about how I got this shirt and then I got a promotion. I got this shirt and then I felt like so strong I could lift a car. It's all these silly things. And I decided for because I I play Chage Falcon, I I got a three Falcon moon shirt. A long time ago. And a long time ago, then it came up as an idea of like, oh, we're all, you know, we're all part of the Legion, we should go to the tournament, we should uh wear a shirt or something, and I don't know whose idea it was, but someone suggested that we all get three blank moon shirts. So I got a three, my, you know, I have my three Falcon moon, but on top of that, we got some heat transfers for our logo that went onto the back of our various shirts. So on the front is three totem animals howling at a moon, and on the back is the Odysseus Legion logo. And we ironed them up. We all showed up at the hotel with all of our various shirts, and we managed to iron them on, and they looked great. They're very large. They were perfect. I loved them. Got plenty of nice comments. Who all had what shirts? So I I had three dragon moon for Draconis Combine. What did you have, Nate? Oh, he's a punchline. He has to stay at the end. He's a punchline. I had three Jaguar boots. And then for Smoke Jaguar? Oh, yeah, for Smoke Jaguar. And Nate, bring it home. What'd you have? I, a glorious Merrick Warrior, wore a three pigeon moon t-shirt. Purple bird strong. It was glorious. Glory to Merrick. Glory to Merrick. Also death to Merrick. You know what? You know what happens a lot in the Free Worlds League? Civil War? Coos. It's not even true. Like, Nate, consummate Steiner went from the actual sleeper, like true Civil War enjoying faction, to the one that everyone gives crap about it for. Yeah, could you the greatest enemy? I know. Weren't your losses to Merrick? Uh, one of them was. Okay, I find it. It was still uh those shirts were awesome. There were no PPCs in those shirts. Yeah, the logo is based off of an atlas, not another one. It was representative. We had one animal for each PPC. True. There you go. I said that we did joke about a three PPC moon shirt. And then uh and then I said we needed to do three moon uh animal shirt. Just to, you know, reverse it. I did get a spare uh that we ended up using as the uh as the uh pilot shirt for the uh heat transfers, which is three scorpion moon. Oh heck yeah. Yeah, I'll I'll throw it out there because it it was actually really fantastic. Uh we got the heat transfers from T-shirt ninja. We're not sponsored, this isn't paid or anything, but I ordered four. They sent us five, they transferred beautifully once we figured out what we were doing. Uh, I'm very happy with the heat transfers we got from them. Some you hear that? It's not non-SpawnCon, but pretty pretty solid t-shirt people if you need t-shirts for your silly joke that you take to a tournament. Just remember to check the sizes on the transfers first. Yes, yes, they're large. Yeah, I I made the mistake of it's like, alright, just what's what's a large size for the transfers? Like, okay, that seems big enough, and I went with it. I didn't get out a tape measure and really look that a 20 inch by 20 inch does not fit on my back. Yeah, it's it's bigger fine actor did not fit. It's fine because me and Chris are big back in it, and it worked out. Worked perfectly. Speaking of speaking of uh jokes for the tournaments. So Eastern Assault. Uh, let's talk first about the format for the packet in terms of list construction and um missions as well as how the tournament was scored day of, and then we can get into some games. We've complained about it a couple of times because uh you guys have been doing um explanations of your practice games for games played, but I don't think we've had a single comprehensive thing about what the packet actually looks like. Okay, I just wanted to make sure you weren't like doubling down on yeah, because last time was about uh Nate's episode for list building. So the concept for the Richmond Open, this is a as far as tournaments go, there are some kind of interesting things that are going on with regards to list construction that they're doing. So this is a 7,000 battle value tournament. So your total list has to be 7,000 battle value, and it's a single list for the entire tournament with a maximum of uh six units, min of three, and you can only bring battle mech compliant uh battle mech manual compliant mechs and introductory and standard rule battle armor. In addition, we have a maximum of two of the same chassis, and uh each variance must be different. This is fairly standard. Uh, and some very interesting stuff under the rule of two. There is a section in the rules called the rule of two. Do you guys want to explain these limitations that they put on list construction? Sure. So there were three different factors that were limited in this format. One of them was TMM generated, one of them was ammo swapping, and the last was Accuracy. Accuracy, yep. An effective pulse limit, which is what you see commonly in a lot of events, but normally it's a pulse limit of like you can have like this much damage of pulse. Whereas in this case, instead of it being like that, they said you can have this two units with pulse, and pulse be but the pulse not the weapon type, pulse as in anything that has an innate modifier of minus two to hit. And that's in combination. So if you have a re-engineered laser with a target computer, that's minus two. If you have Axe Enhancement System and Artemis 5, that's minus 2, it counts as one of your pulse slots. And then for all these restrictions, you can have up to two of each of these, but each of them has an additional. If you go overboard and bring something that's really, really good at whatever the thing is, you it counts as both. In the case of TMM, if your mech can make five TMM, it eats both of your TMM four slots. If your mech can get minus three to your to any weapon on the chassis, that mech eats all of your pulse slots. As I uh lamented with my Spirit Walker A, that was my pulse boat, with two small pulse lasers linked to a targeting computer. It technically hits it. Also, I should note it is it is so in the packet at least, it is specifically listed as uh uh for accuracy, it's listed as it counts if it can reduce target movement modifiers specifically by two or three. Was that how it was enforced, or was it enforced as if it can function as effectively a minus three at any time, regardless of uh penalties that it is uh working on? If it's at any time, all these trigger at any time, which was something that kind of frustrated me with the packet, because I like to run things with like masks and superchargers and stuff. That should not have them. Looking at you, Devastator 10. So running. So if I pop both of them, I can generate a TMM4 if I run in a straight line. So, Garner, you didn't answer my question. Uh so to give to give you the example, this packet is also using the optional rule that allows you to use beagle active probes to negate woods. Is that plus pulse laser is considered a minus three or just a minus two? It's still a minus two because the beagle active probe does not reduce TMM. It reduces woods. Also interesting though, the uh Spirit Walker A also has a Beagle Active Probe. So technically you can get a minus ride. That was a minus four, baby. It came up for never guided gauss rifle. Yeah. Yeah, so overall, what was your experience with this as a uh kind of a rule for curtailing some of the more powerful behavior that Battle Type is known for? Because these are largely kind of known pain points in the system. Um lasers are known to be quite powerful. Semi-guided, especially. I think Narc is catching a stray here, but semi-guided munitions are quite powerful. Um and we know from experience things that can consistently generate very high PMMs can just win you games a lot of the time, especially if you're using protective stuff. So, what was your experience for this in terms of actually managing to curtail some of that? Um I'll throw in here uh right from the start, I think that the implementation of the mobility limitation was not the greatest. There is a significant difference between a unit that is capable of generating a TMM through jump to a unit that is capable of generating TMM through running versus mask and supercharger. Making all of these units placing them within the same category, uh, it's I think they're functionally different enough that it's uh ineffective. Uh I also think that there are some concerns based off of other, you know, the the salvage rule and whatnot, where someone brought a fireball that could run 40 with mask and supercharger. 42. 42, thank you. And we'll we'll get to the we'll get to the uh the salvage rule in a second here. The other thing is when you're placing this mobility restriction and allowing battle armor, it is immediately incentivizing someone to bring two mobile units and two battle armor that can ride them so that they can in effect bring four units to objectives early on, so which penalizes. As someone who doesn't have that capability. And one thing that was weird that didn't catch strays from mobility was battle armor, because I also ran up against a guy that had a really nice guy. He's actually friends with one of the people up here in the Rochester area, but he brought Barack Battle Armor, which just move seven, and with Battle Armor our bring it to effectively a TMM of four. Oh, you're right. But it's not great. But its other is is battle armor. Oh so I had I had to fight that guy. I just ignored I just ignored the Barocks until they were my only target, then I lit them up and then they ran away. So that there wasn't another point being given to me. Yeah, Baroques are interesting, but they don't really do that much. They do stuff when you have to assault objectives with them on it. And then there's just a more of they're a harrying thing. It's more of a like it's the potential of winding up with three machine guns behind you. From any level. Yep. From the sounds of it, uh with mobility at the very least, the most powerful things still ended up being on the table. Uh and there were a lot of units that ended up kind of just incidentally catching strays. Yep. There was a dire wolf E on the table. I'm like, that's mobility. Oh, but yeah, that's also pulse. That's pulse. And I'm just like, okay, so um that eats one pulse slot, whereas certain things like incidental pulse lasers, like small pulse lasers. It sounds like the kind of the blanket uh kind of rules catch on this of if you have any of the thing that breaks this, then you automatically get put in no fun jail. Um ended up putting most list builders in a situation where they chose to bring the most degenerate version that they could of each of the categories within the rule of two if they wanted to use them. Yes. And then did you guys see anything like that with the the uh the ammunition restrictions, or was that not a that not a ammunition restrictions weren't really a thing? I saw like like in my experience, as far as I remember, the only time the precision came up was the urban mech that I brought. And as far as semi-guided, I only saw that once in my second round against my opponent. Okay. I did see a hunchback with an AC-10 in precision. Oh yeah, that the the the 4H that thing works pretty well. So, okay, so for the most part, for the most part, it sounds like the kind of pulse restrictions and the restrictions on uh TMM kind of didn't do much apart from encourage a lot of the most powerful versions of those things to show up. Speaking of which, our next section down here is called a time of war, uh, which allows you to take one unit from outside their faction uh faction restriction or one unique unit. And or. And or the big thing there is and or. If it was just or, I wouldn't have had that much of a problem with that. The and or So you guys wanna ex do you wanna explain, I guess, both was this a rule that uh any of you took advantage of in building your lists in like big significant ways? No, so there's the thing is that like it also gave up bonus victory points, that's the bigger thing. So that kind of curbed some people taking them. Yeah. But when you did see them, what what would what were the things people were taking? I saw one unit. I only saw one unit in the event that was a time of war salvage, and that was the unique fireball that runs 42. Yeah, which is a lot. That seems like that's taking the kind of mobility rule of two and going, all right, but what if we break this in what if what if like we're we're throwing everyone in jail today, so I guess I'm gonna get away with serial homicide. Yep. Yeah. And that was that was a uh that was my opponent in round four and one of Chris's opponents earlier on, and it is uh maybe we'll save that conversation for games played, but there's a lot to be said about that. But the guy, the guy was cool. The guy was cool, yeah. Yeah, he was he was a nice guy, but I I think that unit should just that like it just broke all the rules. I mean, yeah, I I'm gonna interrupt you and say, Sean, if you're listening, because yeah, Sean, if you're listening, or like we hung out for a bit afterwards, yeah, we had a conversation, like it was fun, it was cool, nothing against you. I I mean and he did check with the TO first. The TO said, Yeah, sure. Yes, yeah. Like it wasn't like like so like he did get permission, so like again, it but the ultimately the blame is on the organizer for for allowing it to happen, and at least in my game, a big portion of it was just I got battle tech that game. My dice just flopped on me. Like, I I could have recovered from the fireball situation, except my dice didn't let me. Um, but ultimately, like I said, Sean, you're cool. It was great hanging out with you afterwards. I really hate that you brought the fireball. Yeah. That's about right. Alright. And we have, I think, one other optional rule I want to get into before I we talk about missions for this uh and the mission structure, which is the alternate declaration rule that was used. Uh so do you guys want to explain what was going on with that? I don't think we've heard from Chris or Nate yet. I I want to point it state specifically at the beginning that while it says alternate declaration rule, page 10 BMM, it's not in the BMM. Okay, so where is it? It's nowhere. It's nowhere. Interesting. Alright, so can one of you please explain what's going on with this? Use the have the person that actually built a list to uh use it. Uh explain it. Was that me? Cough, cough, Nate. Oh, Nate. Wait, what? I didn't do anything to exploit that. You said yourself that your longbow. No, no, no. Other people's longbows were able to do it. Mine mine theoretically could have, but I did not have the alternate uh declaration in mind when I picked that longbow. I just thought that I was picking a sleeper longbow, the 13C, with way too many SRMs. Um not realize that. I assumed that I didn't realize that it was just going to be kind of a meta option when I picked it up. Yeah. Because I talked like we talked about it, because that was what that was the most common chassis at Southern Assault. But anyways. I wasn't aware of this. Yes. When I uh when I made my line. So I'm I'm familiar with its crimes, and I know from playing it relatively passively, that thing is hateful. But if you want to explain, if you want to explain what's going on with this alternate declaration stuff. I will do my best without uh hopefully my voice giving out. Um so the way that the alternate declaration worked was uh rather than being standard where you declare all targets and weapons from said targets uh to uh you know enemy targets. That wasn't the best way I could have explained it, but you know. Um and then moving to shooting afterwards and resolving damage all as you go. What instead we used for the uh for Eastern Assault was this alternate declaration rule where you declared declared weapons and then fired all in sequence exactly as you declared the uh uh unit that's shooting. Which was, you know, kind of a problem because one, it lets you um like the one that uh certain others here have brought up multiple times, is you might try to mitigate like an ammo explosion by consuming the ammo out of a bin after it's already been shot and like detonated. Or in my case, I I ran into this problem a number of times, especially when I was fighting against other longbows, where, or anything that had infernos, really, where a mech with infernos could threaten an entire group of mechs instead of just one all at once, by just withholding its activation until such time as you decided to fire any of your high heat stuff, and then they would just respond. So instead of declaring and then resolving, it is you declare resolve, and then the other person declares resolves, and then you trade back and forth doing that. And yeah, I can see, so yeah, it sounds like Inferno ammunition and heat-based weapons in general, instead of just having um I mean I think you can you can still kind of manage that with uh you can still kind of do that under the current initi uh under the current declaration rules, because you can just hold up your heat-causing mechs until the very end of the initiative order and see what else is shooting. But I think the like the immediate flexibility that you're given uh through this is pretty powerful. And also I think the other the other thing that you you mentioned. I was gonna say, I've got a I've gotta chime here. The bigger issue that I ran into with it is oh look, I got an engine hit on you. Now you're just not gonna shoot half your weapons. Or and you know this, so there's no or um you you know how much infernos hit hit, you know, you know if they hit, you know how much extra heat they did if they already hit, so you can adapt. You can then respond with another unit if you have two units with infernos. But that's dealing with that kind of stuff. The bigger issue is that so the way that I play Battletech is I make my opponents choose their poison. I give you no good targets till I give you all the targets. And that's really bad in a situation, especially because like my first round opponent had a had like uh a Sun Cobra with a target computer and two Goss rifles on a hill, uh AC20 with precision ammo, and like, oh look, you kill one thing, okay. Well now you're not focusing any other fire because you got that like you know one lucky hit in, and so now you can just go and handle like like oh look, I don't have to put I don't have to overkill anything, I can exactly kill things now. Yeah, it's it's kind of it's kind of the inverse of the the Nova thing that I see in Alpha Strike sometimes where a Nova a Nova gets killed outright and the pilot and the uh uh player just goes, Alright, I'm overheating to four. Yep. Um and blows something off the table very, very quickly doing that. Except in this case, it's uh, well, I know you got an engine hit, so you are going to step down a gun. Yep. Or etc. etc. Okay. Uh I want to throw out there in particular the ultimate declaration rule that's in the BattleMech manual. I'll reread this and edit it out if I have to, but the ultimate declaration rule in the Battle Mech manual is you declare all your attacks, you roll for their hits, but you don't roll damage, you don't roll locations until everything has done their two hits. Interesting. I don't think that I don't know necessarily why that's you know, that's not supposedly the way the tournament ran things would be faster. I don't think it's really is, and I don't particularly think it's better. But at least the one in the battle mech manual preserves some amount of knowledge. You don't know how much like where things hit and if the thing is dead as you go through and roll the declare and roll to hit. The specific thing that's doing is it's letting you if you have reactions to damage, which there are very few things that give you that. I think that the main one I can think of is anti-missile systems and I guess theoretically B-pods and B-pods. Okay, well this is a rule they weren't using, so it doesn't matter anyway. But like that uh that alternate declaration rule like theoretically gives you more information on the edge case of reactions to damage, which would be cool if Battletech had more of, but it doesn't really, apart from anti-missile systems. Um but that's not what they ended up playing with. So okay. Yeah, it's it's uh basically closer to the Alpha Strike system, but instead of making all of your attacks, you alternate attack to attack. So sounds like it created timing confusion and it led to um deterministic scenarios where oftentimes the units people withheld until the end of the turn got to make the most uh optimal moves in response to damage. Yep. Are two are two big things there. Alright. Alright, so I think is there anything else in uh kind of general rules and list restrictions that we want to get to before we move on? Like the rest of this feels to me, as someone who wasn't there, like this is more or less actually. Oh, wait a second. I think there is there is one thing that we need to talk about, which is the way the interplay of BMM only mechs and introductory and standard rule battle armor, which I know Nicholas, you had a you had a uh a run-in with when you enlisted it. The original version of my list had a Turkina C, a unit that I'm very fond of, and it has A-pods. And A-Pods are not in the Battle Mech manual, but they are in Total Warfare. But I was banned from using that unit, despite the fact that I would have to have Total Warfare with me to use battle armor, which I thought was a little it's a little bass awkwards. Yeah, it it didn't make any sense to me. I mean, he's gonna make he's gonna allow a fireball, but not allow A-pods. Okay. I switched to a Jade Phoenix C. We'll talk about that in in list uh in our lists, and I don't know, maybe it benefited me, maybe it didn't. I still did, I still still think my list was very strong. So I think it benefited you greatly, honestly. Yeah, to be honest, I think the Jade Phoenix was like for one thing, it was really cool seeing a Jade Phoenix instead of once again seeing the Turkita C showing up. I think that is that is the only time you are going to hear that from a battle tech player because my understanding is the Jade Phoenix is uh loathed by many players. I didn't have to fight it, so I'm fine with it. Yeah, he could Nicholas could have his it can terrorize someone else with that bullshit. Alright. So uh with I think general rules and and list building out of the way, let's talk about um the way that these objectives are set up. So the scenarios they had you guys playing, um, I know the main thing that you wanted to talk about was scoring. So all of the missions here are scored based on there are a hundred correct me if I'm wrong, there are roughly a hundred and yeah, there's a hundred and forty points that you can possibly get out of each of these scenarios. Half of them are 70 per uh so 70 of those points are from completing an objective on the board, and then 70 of them are from killing enemy units, with uh enemy units being worth um uh one hundredth of their BV. So it's the 7,000 point list, so for every 100 BV you kill, you get one point. And then if you if either player at any time reaches 100 victory points total out of that 140, the game ends and that player wins. Is that accurate? Yes, yeah, that's that's the key aspect is that you can only get 70 and kills and you're uh immediately end, by the way. Because you can overscore. Yeah. That was a bigger that was a that was a different issue that I had with the rules packet, was that you can overscore. Right. I mean the game reach or exceed at around that. So the game will end during the status phase or at the end of the heat phase or whatever of whatever it is, of that event. Yeah. During yeah, during the end phase. So okay, so do you guys and what was what was your experience with this? Because I have I have thoughts about this going in, which seems like this seems like you could either tailor your list to doing objectives very well, or you could just tailor your list to blowing your opponent off the board and do objectives kind of okay, and you could get through. So I built my list to do both, where I can switch gears. And that's what I did in most of my games, was if my opponent went super hard on objectives, I just shot him and got my objective points later. If my opponent went for like killing, I can hide somewhere and or not hide, but like play the objective game and just be fine. And kill like one model. That was your experience with it as as a uh list builder. What was what did you see other people for the most part doing? Playing the objectives really hard. Or they they did one or the other. Like there wasn't really and that's what like I just people built their lists differently. Like I know that the person that came in second Uh brought a very killy list. Yeah. Because if you can if you can just blow your opponent off the board, that's 70 points there, and 30 points of either of these objectives seems relatively gettable. Yes. Of any of these objectives. So you can uh as far as that second placer had gone, uh their list was straight up like a lot of it was a lot of it was basically paid for by downskilling the paletting on just about everything. To the point where you wind up with such massive uh discounts that they wound up showing up with nothing less than they had five mechs and a point of battle armor, and four of those mechs were over 45 tons in packing big guns. So for uh reference, the um the tournament allowed any skill combination between a skill of three and a skill of six, correct? Yes. Um and a and this is so a four-six gives you a uh give me a second. Five percent discount. Yeah, it's a five percent discount. So you are effectively able to bring uh like seven thousand uh like seventy three hundred and fifty uh points of stuff if you are down skilling to four six instead of uh three four instead of four five. Which that's relatively that's relatively minor, but still that's not nothing. That's like a locust or another point of battle armor that you're allowed to bring in. Or you just bring bigger, more threatening things that you've also cheapened up. Yeah. And I think the I think the bigger thing here was the tournament was also running the careful stand rule in addition to this, which We didn't bring this up, but careful stand is you can uh stand up on a walk if you have more than a certain number of movement points. You can't make any other moves apart from just standing up, uh, but you get a pretty hefty bonus to the pilot's skill roll to stand, which means that four or six pilots, especially in big chunky mechs with long-range guns, become pretty nice because you are only ever getting an attacker movement modifier of one or two, most likely. Um, sorry, of zero or one, most likely. Uh, you have the armor to tank shots, and you have the range that you can reach out and touch people. So I can I can see this that kind of confluence causing some issues. Um, so so it sounds like it sounds like people mostly just geared their lists towards whichever of these um like kind of broad objectives they preferred between heavy metal mayhem, which was the killing objective, and whatever the object the specific objective of the mission was. Um did any of the missions in particular stand out to you guys, or do we want to save that for games played? Or any other like kind of general setup? We could probably save it for games played just because all of us played the same games for every round. Yeah, it was they they set it was either a random roll or predetermined, they every round everyone played the same missions. Yep. Yep, all right, on very drastically different maps. Yes, yeah, so let's talk about let's talk about the the maps. Well, that'll be the podcast, guys. Uh we have a lot to say here. Alright. Uh I I'll I'll I didn't really have any notes for my own then, so yeah. I'm gonna pop in here and say that the fact that they used basically every neoprene map, well, maybe not some of the the clan trials or whatever, but they they had this sort of vision of using every single map setup that they could, and a lot of the neoprenes, a lot of the pre-planned like map setups are made for interesting narrative scenarios where you're assaulting a building, you're coming in and attacking a mine, you're doing this thing that's cool if you are you know coming in and attacking a defender as part of a narrative structure. They are completely and absolutely wrong to use in a tournament. I think so. I think the big one, so I have I have two questions for you, Nicholas. One, did they put the box canyon map on the that was his first graph? Oh my god, they put box canyon on. Yes. And then I put box on in round two. So they put the lava mine map neoprene out. Okay, so the the lava mine one uh it's like that's that's okay. I'm no it's not. So I am I am uh I am more ambivalent about that than some of the others. So um the box canyon, for those of you who have not been who have not experienced the the wonders of Box Canyon, is a map which is based on an old FASA map from I think the original Planned Invasion stuff, uh, which is a U-shaped canyon, uh, which is entirely made of level eight hills surrounded by otherwise level one terrain, with I think one ground level entrance and then a couple of entrances you can use, like some tricky jump jet mechs or something that's quite fast to get into, but it is otherwise just this box that you have to fight within. And the entrance to it is not on the entrance to it, is on one of the sides of is put so that it is very difficult to enter if you need to move across terrain with uh the way the neoprene is set up. Uh, Nicholas, if you could edit in a picture of the Box Canyon Neoprene for the uh the visual podcast, I think that would be helpful because this is like the the lava mine map. I have used it before and just said we're playing this as like a sulfur spring, it's just going to be water. Um, and it's it's come out more or less. That's what we did. But the the bigger issue is that it is it's the mine itself is the problem in those cases. Yeah, and it's it's but I think Box Canyon is Box Canyon, the fact that that showed up on the table where I've looked at that and I've gone, this is this is goofy. Uh, why would you ever even try this? Because some of the some of the maps that Catalyst puts out are clearly part of a triptych where it's multiple maps that fit together into a single large scene. Um the airfield maps for the desert pack, there is kind of a two-fort situation in the like temperate forest maps, where there is two bases that are kind of kiddie quarter from each other on a big four-map setup you can do. The box canyon neoprene is nonsense um in how it is placed, and it doesn't hold pause in here. I'm looking, I think we're we're confuse. I don't remember seeing actual box canyon. Okay. And it was there. It was? Yeah. I remember seeing it, and Darnell says the eight-level high one. Oh, eight. Wait, hang on. You're we're you're confusing uh the because you said I started on it. Yeah. No, the bot the one the box canyon Luke is talking about is not the one I played on. Is it this one? Hold on. It's not that one. It's not that one. Yeah. Alright. I can I can get less of Savannah. It's the one that literally says Savannah Box Canyon. Yeah, I remember seeing that. This one I never played on it, but I remember seeing that. Oh, never mind. It's not that one. No, what is it? What Neoprene is it? But here's here's another one while we uh while we look for images of the Box Canyon thing, or whatever it actually is. Uh there was also the arrow base. Yes, there was the arrow base. And anybody like there was one at one point that I was just like observing, like, across the table, because I had like finished up already. Um the players that ended up getting placed there straight up just had to have their map replaced completely because one person uh because we ended up with one of the objectives that has like a short end deployment, I think it was Karnov down. Somebody ended up having to deploy behind the aero base and physically couldn't leave their deployment. Interesting. So they straight up just had to scrap the map completely. But that was around that was around after we'd already started. And this is with the 3D printed terrain, mind you. They already knew that this was a problem and they printed it. Yeah. Yeah. They did it, and they just forgot about it anyway. I don't know why. I think was was the one that you were playing on, I think the one you might have been playing on was Mountainside Lake Map, Nick wasn't it? No, it wasn't Badlands Battleman. Okay. I'm posting it now. Yep, that is the one. Yeah. That okay, that looks very familiar. That should not be used in a tournament. Uh a blast from the past for you here, Nicholas. The right hand side of that map is the one where you tried to kill Luke when he was in a wasp and you were in an axe-man during one of our salvage events. Yep. Yes. And I think that that plus a couple of other things were why we started doing map calls because we got tired of dealing with a map where because all the pilots are skillful jump jets and everyone has like woods that they can hop between. It was a nightmare. Um, but yeah, this is I would say this is this is a map that I have, this is a map configuration I have seen in Iliad. But the reason I have seen this in Iliad is because one of the sides has a bunch of cavalry and the other side has a bunch of stuff that is fairly stagnant that can infight in hills, and both players are choosing maps which are advantageous to them. Um, and you're not necessarily stuck with it. Uh, I think the big the bigger one that I saw um where I I saw some of the the photos that you guys took from the tournament, and one that I was raising my eyebrow at. Let me see if I can find a photograph. Um or was it in which chat was it in? Probably the Richmond Open Chat is where I posted my photos. Um is it in this chat? The day one, all three maps that I got were absolute junk. The the one okay, so we can we can scrap me ranting about Fox Canyon, but I think the one that I saw which I I was raising an eyebrow about was Yeah, Rivers is awful. Yeah, the Rivers map. Yeah, I played it that way. Because so the thing so the thing with Badlands is Badlands is not great, but like I can see it's still at minimum kind of maneuverable, and I can see a reason why this would exist. When you force somebody that has the hardened armor stalker to start on that side, please they get kind of wrecked. Yeah, the mind battle mat. This is so it's the alien worlds collection. This is a lot of the ones that are absolutely awful. I'm familiar with Alien Worlds. I have one of them, it's quite fun, but we also play it with the understanding that sublevel ultra is funny and we want to see it happen. It's not something that we're doing for tournament play. Yeah, I still haven't managed to dunk you into the hole yet, Luke. No. Um there was another one that I swear I saw one which had like a double wide river in it. Was that something that you guys encountered? Yes. Okay, but it was remember something, yeah. The double wide river map was the one that I saw that, and I was like, really? They're playing with this? That wasn't a battle mat. If you're looking, if you're thinking of my photo, uh, it was two paper mats with 3D terrain or whatever onto it. Because they had printed it and then put tufts down for and like they added bridges. I was okay. If if you're thinking about the one where they added bridges to the the mat, that was my photo. And uh it was awful. Yes. Uh okay, yeah. The the mine is okay. I see what the problem with the mine mat is. It was more of a problem on uh when you had the long edge deployment and the uh one particular scenario where you place buildings near your deployment zone. Yeah. Oh, so you just my opponent just hit the buildings. Yeah, that was match two. Yeah, I had the mind that mind map for match two, and uh we can talk about that game, but that was awful. Yeah, probably cover that when we get the games played. Yeah, which so it sounds like in so I I was listening to this, and you guys were having like some serious map woes. Um, and I was I was thinking to myself, well, they're already 3D printing the terrain. Why at that point I would think you could simply get field tech maps, which are just hexes, no that's um that's what they did at Southern Assault, yeah. No terrain, and then either do kind of player place terrain within reason or set up standardized, like five or six different standardized map systems where it's like this is this is what our battlefield looks like, um with some alterations based on the mission type, uh, because they knew which the missions were overall. And I don't know how many how many helpers the TO had, so that might not have been practical, but it feels like they could have, if they were going to go to the trouble of having the 3D terrain, it feels like they, unless if the 3D terrain might have been from Hextech, so that might have been why they ended up doing what they did. No. But I think it was actually 3D printed. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So three so hextech also allows sells STLs. Yes. Of their stuff. Was it not their stuff or was it someone else's? I think it was their stuff. Yeah, it was probably. Because I was thinking that's the only reason I could see doing it this way. Well, you can see they're still mix and matchy because you can like they were you could they were separatable? Separable? Yeah. So like Yeah, it feels like it feels like they could have they could have anticipated some of these issues and come up with map setups which uh did not kind of as severely impact some of the games as it sounds like. I'm gonna throw it out there. I can I can understand why an organizer with a limited budget might not be able to create the most unique setup. I like a you know, there's there's a limit to what a tournament organizer can do, but I still think that they shouldn't just use what they have. There's a lot of things, there's a lot of maps that just should not have been used in a tournament. Um I understand maybe you want to use all the three terrain that's been given to you, but I I think there should be a priority placed off on fair maps and and gameplay rather than trying to use everything you have that's already printed. Uh some of these maps just should not have been used. Yeah. I agree. I think the many of the maps should not have been used. I think that they could have done things with paper maps for going 3D trained that could have provided a much more fair experience. That there were just too many that it just was beyond the pale. But some maps were okay, but many were not. I'm also gonna throw out there there was a significant issue of people being placed on game boards they had already played on. Yes. Which I think that's a symptom of the system they used, because BCP does not let does not make that happen. Makes that not happen specifically. I think that's just a limitation of the system they used. Yeah, which yeah, I can see that's already like if you're if you're like if you have just gone and found like a Swiss pairing system, I can see that being a thing it isn't accounting for, where there's a second dimension beyond winds and strength of schedule, well, a third dimension beyond wins and strength of schedule that it needs to be keeping track of, which is it can't be pairing you back on the same map sheet unless it's absolutely necessary. Yeah, and that's something that like back before best coast pairings became a thing, like people would literally just reverse the order. And just be like, either by actually moving the table numbers or by um just calling them out backwards. This is you know, before before we had uh phones that you could check and things were just posted. I'll say in Neil's defense though, I mean, when I when it came up, uh I was on the same map that I had already played, he was like, you know, very quick to say, oh, just switch it and play on the next map over. Yep, and then I played on the same map for a third time, and then I had to get someone to the other side of the universe. Yeah. I I understand it wasn't perfect, but I I get that. But I think he was trying his best to avoid that. The one time I got placed in front of a normal fair map, I ended up getting moved to an a different awful map. So we're just looking to punish you, Nicholas. I uh man, that's that's terrible. That's on day one. Day two, I was a lot less concerned because I didn't make it into the top, and so like day two, yeah, it was just like I'm just here to I also I uh I just I don't like how important points end up being, particularly because you can overscore. It means gameplay becomes down to points manipulation to a certain extent. Like it's not even that you won, it's how hard you won. Yeah, ultimately, just the fact that you could overscore and that your score was so important for placement rather than just it it would encourage min-maxing, right? Yes, it encouraged you to you know not end the game to try to end it in a position where you had more points. Yeah, like you could try and prolong the game so that way, like, I not kill the guy so I can get a few more objective points or like cripple something else and then kill them both at the same time. You try and end the turn on 99. Yep. Exactly. Okay. Right. There the score cap should be 100. You shouldn't be able to overscore so that the game ends with a game ends, and if you win with a game ending score, you are in the same position as somebody else who won with a game ending score. And if you go over a hundred, those points should go towards um like tiebreaker. Like if you both score a hundred, you count as a you both count as a win of the hundred and a loss of win a hundred one hundred period at the end. I think we should summarize what we've said in uh maps bad. Maps, yeah. I think I think the maps were were terrible. Um I I agree. Overall, they were they were terrible. There were some okay ones, but it but I think the fact that the TO and um setup scenarios that was preventing uh fair gameplay across the board. It doesn't need to be perfectly balanced, but the there needs to be a sense of fair gameplay for both sides to be able to compete and win on equal terms. And that was the big thing I'm hearing is the thing that Nate mentioned, which was there was a table which put themselves in such a quagmire that they had to completely reset to a different map to effectively play the game. Yep. Like I'll phrase it as the missions, I don't think the missions were particularly good. I don't think they were awful. I have had some fundamental issues. I think player-placed objectives is not particularly good. But ultimately, what made the missions absolutely awful was the maps. I agree with that. The missions were were fine. The missions were playable. You're right, but then on certain maps, they became terrible, unplayable, uh, you know, just not worth your time. Some were fine. I my first and second games were fine. Or no, I'm sorry. My first uh yeah, my first and second games were fine. We won't get into that. Uh the maps were relatively balanced and the missions were okay, you know. Um other games it just wasn't. I and I could see many, many of the boards were not balanced. Needs needs some balance, or at the very least, some consideration for the uh scenarios that are going to get played out. Right. Uh now for game time, all of you have at least five matches from this. Chris, we are probably going to have you on for a second round to talk about Alpha Strike separately because was that a different TO? It that was a different TO, it was different maps. Um uh and on that basis, I only played three classic uh scenarios. And then uh each of you going down the line, if you want to give a brief description of what your list was trying to do, what the kind of key units and the key things you were looking for in those. Units were in your list, and then what was kind of one standout game from the tournament, and then we can we can go over kind of general uh general performance overall, but we've kind of been talking about that already. So uh Garner, if you want to get us started. Sure. So uh my list was a period piece. I played uh Smoke Jaguars with original or early, early OmniMex. Um I have a Clansback Black Knight, which is a Spirit Walker A. I've got a uh Gladiator slash executioner TAC B A, which is a which is a frontline brawler, because it is unlike normal Gladiator Executioners. This is the original design where they tried to make it an assault mech and not a fast heavy. Yes. As uh Nate liked to joke, I was running autocannon tribal. Um and then for my and he was one of my battle armor carriers, just because he had nothing in his torsos, and they could or nothing relevant at range in his torsos. So they could either absorb shots or he or just when he got stuck in, they could be annoying. And then my second battle armor carrier was the original omnich, the Coyotal. I took the cheapest one, the B, because it does what it needs to do, and also has an Ultra Auto Cannon 10. Let's not to love on a 7-Eleven with an Ultra 10. I've used this thing before for less than 1500 battle value. This is a really solid clan omni mech. And it does come back once the sea foxes start the factories up again in the dark ages. Um but then my next mech that I brought was a Roy or my last mech that I brought, excuse me, was the Royal Oscout. It's an 812-8 uh monkey that does uh he was a gunnery 5 piloting 3 to do like DFAs to get people off of objectives or just be annoying. And then for the last round out, because it was max six units, I brought a unit of space elementals with flamers. What space elementals are is just they're elementals without an SRM. So they cost like two-thirds of the cost of a normal elemental. And they again were an anti-MAC 3, because and they were usually on the executioner, so that way if you do fight the executioner, they're gonna come up and they're gonna leg attack you and make you fall over. They're inner sphere standard battle armor brackets clan. Yeah, kind of. They still have the 11 total health with a 10 armor and one structure. So that's the auto rifle. And then uh last but not least, I had a unit of salamander battle armor with loaded with inferno missiles as well, so that they could maybe slow something down to catch it. So, not quite fully period, because those are plan invasion, but still very good and useful, uh useful battle armor. The uh the salamanders need a very different style for fighting them than a lot of other battle armors do. Correct. Okay, so your list is mostly kind of you have um this kind of heavy and assault core to kind of roll around the battlefield killing things, and then the coyotal and off-scout to uh kind of harry and cause problems. Basically, the the off-scout was to be anti-objective, and the coyotal was around to punish people for maneuvering in weird places. Alright. So, what what's one uh what's one kind of standout game that you got from the uh from the tournament that you thought was cool? So I'll just go through the my f the favorite thing that happened to me in the event was I was actually playing against uh that uh gentleman that's friends with one of the local players here, and he had brought a Hell's Horses list, but it had a bunch of just like the clan refits of Intersphere Mex. So it had like the Spartan C Thunderbolt C uh the Royal Sentinel, like just like kind of more generic Intersphere mechs, but clan stuff. Clan refits of uh old uh royal stuff. Yep. Yeah. And so and a pair of Burrocks and a Jenner 2C loaded with Infernos. Also, yes. Yeah. Um and he We ended up just kind of punching around for a bit, like just kind of poking at each other for a bit, put his uh Spartan right in the middle on the middle objective, basically. And I just walked my whole force up the middle and just shot. He got really scared, backed away with it, as one does when facing autocannon tribal in your face. And then uh I ended up and then I ended up getting into the middle while my Oscout was playing with the Thunderbolt C until the Thunderbolt C saw an opportunity to get over and kick my Spirit Walker from a one level higher. And it was very tempting. So he took that, and then my autocannons all turned and shot him. He did not die, but he did fall. I think I see where this is going. And one of the things I was getting to when I was talking about the Spirit Walker was that it still has one empty hand. So it turned, because it was already turned because it had unloaded, because that thing has an ungodly amount of guns. For how much it costs. And it turned, and I punched. And I hit the center torso and ripped out the engine. Hell yeah. I Collie mod him. He's like, oh, you're gonna Kali M! Hell yes. And so then me, me and my me and me and uh my opponent, we just joked about it. Like, you know you're gonna have to model, you're gonna have to cut that hand off and model an engine burning in its hand, right? So yep. Yep, you're right. So good. And it was funny because he had like he was already kind of overheating. He's like, I've got this chance to kill your spirit walker, I'm gonna try and do it. And one of the things that people didn't realize is how hard it is to kill that spirit walker. Because it is still a black knight. Yeah. It has a standard tension. The only way to kill it is to remove its center torso or its head. You can you can get close with the ammo explosions, but there are two things that can blow up. Yeah. Well, one of them is a gauss rifle. That's pretty easy to touch. If the arm falls off, but but anyways, so the Yeah, so that was that was probably the the highlight of my weekend. That was game four. I had that's that's pretty sweet. But it's just like it was so good. And he had a good fun with it, and he's like, I had to go for it, and he said, that was a trap, wasn't it? I said, Yep. People think that they can kill that it's so much easier to kill the 75 ton 70 76% armored mech than it is to kill the 95 ton almost fully armored executioner. Um that's a funny joke because that executioner, half of the each side torso is ammo. Yes. And it has clan XL engines. Yes. So it can, it will just go up like a firecracker if you go at it wrong. Yep. And people kept trying to kill the that was that was the moral of the story is don't shoot the spirit walker unless you have no other options because it will not be. The thing with I was gonna say the thing with the thing with the spirit walker is it only has the like the ER small laser center line. If you recall Monty Python, the Black Knight comes out of that alive. He doesn't come out of it well. Oh, he came out of it well still. He did work. And this is And this is a mech where it's like, yeah, this is gonna this is gonna do work, but it's gonna it's gonna take some it's gonna take a beating in the process. It actually popped up and shot and uh killed the uh Spartan Sea afterwards. While loot while missing most of it. Its Goss Rifle was still hanging on by a thread. Yeah. Barely connected in. Alright, so you had a the classic kind of battle tech nonsense melee phase, it sounds like. Sure. Um, so I brought uh Draconis Combine Mex. Um, so I was obligated to bring a C3 component. Uh so I had a Gunslinger 2 ERDR and a Tarantula 5A. Uh both of those are C3 boosted, so I was avoiding any ECM shenanigans that didn't actually appear, but I was avoiding it. Um uh I also brought uh a Wraith standard TR1 and a Nodachi uh 2KC. Uh the Nodachi, while it did have um uh C3 uh in it, it was not activated, it was not part of the network. And then I brought some uh IS standard battle armor with magnetic clamps to you know just kind of help out. Um the the concept was Tarantula goes in and gets in close uh using its you know uh masking to get in there. Um and the basically the gunslinger sits off at range and pumps uh two Goss around each round into things um wherever it can. That was the basic thing. Uh the Wraith was to run around and grab objectives when it could, and then Dachi was playing whatever it could in whatever role it could. It was basically uh that thing it's it's not a zombie mech, but it's for whatever reason, it's got just enough armor that it nothing could kill it until you basically ripped every piece of armor off. Yeah, the KC is I've played it a little bit, and it's you're right, it's not a zombie mech, but it is a I would it's uh it likes to get up in your face screaming at you and then cause problems until you put it down like a rabid dog. Exactly. That's exactly how I played it, and it I mean he was great. You know, the the like uh uh the the moment that I'll talk about was actually my second match. Um, I lost horribly uh because he actually failed me in every single opportunity that he had. I got up behind uh my opponent's Roiken and like I had the perfect like sword. I just needed to stick the sword in his back. It was right there. Stick the sword in the back, and I like had two opportunities and missed them both. And I mean, it it just the dice betrayed me, but it was a fantastic match, and um it that was the cool moment because it we were I was waiting for kind of the Kalimar moment, you know, just I just needed to stab him with the sword in the process, and it just didn't work out. But uh lots of fun. Yeah. Great list. I I really did enjoy it. Um yeah, yeah. Worked out well. Yeah, and I I I like a lot of those mechs. The Nodachi is very fun. Uh, I know Nate has had bad luck with the gunslinger. Um historically. I've been telling you there's something funky with the tarantula. I also I adore the tarantula. It's such a strange little creature where it's it's a quad version of a spider, effectively. Um but it's yeah, it's so much fun because people don't know what to expect from it. Um and it can with that much MP, you can do some really tricky stuff, especially with that uh the uh movement enhancer on the one you brought. Yeah. The uh the cool thing with the tarantula, or I had one other cool moment with it was is like one of the legs got damaged, uh like a hip and uh and a foot actuator or another actuator, um, and it was slowing it down, and it was funny he ended up shooting the leg off, which actually increased the movement for a while. Because of Quadmex, you know, it just it was it was a hilarious moment. Um is a good boy. Alright. And then you've been promoted to tripod mech. Exactly. Speaking of Nate, how is your you were running Free Worlds League for this, which is a little out of character for what we normally see you with in Steiner colors. So my thing there is he was running Steiner Tribal, alright. He still had a pile of assault mechs. Pile of assault mechs. I have no, no, no, no, hold on. I had two assault mechs. The other free worlds player in the tournament had four assault packs. Interesting. Yeah, he was my last uh he was my last match on the second day. Uh that was a rough fight. Uh, but anyway, uh so uh what I brought was obviously Free Worlds League, which um I'm learning has a lot more things that I like a lot than how Steiner does. So I may accidentally have converted to them. Um but anyway, the head of the force, like heading things up, is the Flashman 9M, which is just a real bastard of a mech. Uh it is a pair of heavy PPCs and a whole smattering of backup lasers for punishing anybody that thinks that getting in minimum range is a good idea. I also had a longbow 13C, which again did not know that was a meta option. Just throwing that out there. I didn't know that was going to be an overperformer, I thought it would be a sleeper. Coming up from 30 rock. Everybody yeah, everybody and their mom had one of those things. And obviously, it was going to do what anything that has seven MML sevens with Artemis 4 is going to do, which is SRM Storm the moment you get within six hexes of anything. Oh, um. Can I cut in here really quick? I just realized there was one critical thing we did not mention in list construction. There was an error locking. Right. You could pick. Also, yes. So what made me think about that was when you said Longbow C and everybody in the mother had. I'm like, well, everybody in the mother had access to it because at one point it was on IS General, and then everybody had it. So pretty much no clans allowed, but you have your own version of it. Yes. Yep. But anyways. So yeah, it was uh Longbow 13C, and then immediately followed by a Battlemaster 3M, which is just it is just stock standard, high quality Battlemaster. It is a PPC, it is a bunch of medium lasers and an SRM on a stained fusion engine. You I wish you luck ever trying to kill one because it just refuses to die. And I'm a big fan of that. And then that got me up to 6k, and I was like, what do I do with the last thousand points? And Nicholas said, How about an urban mech? Because I didn't have any pulse, and he was like, How about an urban mech with precision ammo? And I was like, Bah, that's funny. So I did that, and it proved weirdly useful uh over the course of all of my games. And then I also had for token objective play, because pretty much my whole thing was Killy and Shootie, I had a Flea 14, which is 270 BV, for like 16 armor pips on legs, and a medium laser. It moves 914-4. It's literally just there to be legs for the last unit, which is my Spectre uh stealth battle armor, because those have mag clamps and can actually use it as a uh battle bus. So for about 500 BV, I can get battle armor onto a point and then just maybe the flea is useful afterwards. I thought you were kidding about 16. No, that is that is one ton of God's own armor on the Yeah, I told you it is 16 pips. It got hit with an AC20 twice over the course of the tournament. What's left after that? Uh all say all I'm gonna say is uh it's a good thing we weren't playing with uh repair rules. I was gonna say, like, that is that's literally half the mechan, not like not like as in like sections, as in armor and structure. Here's the thing both times it got hit in the right arm where the medium laser was. Oh, jeez. And it still got cored out afterwards. Yeah, I mean that's just the that's just perfect horse with any 15 tonner. My my prey seeker ate an AC-20 in the second round of Southern Assault. That's the only thing happened. It hit the arm like cool, I might lit. Absolutely not. But yes, I had that flea there specifically as a delivery system for Spectre battle armor and nothing more. And as far as uh as far as games go, uh so because Garner mentioned that he played with the Hell's Horses player already, I'll go with the other one uh that is uh favorite, which was when I fought my mirror, another knight, who was running a he was running a uh C3 mediums list, where it was a scorpion playing as the uh playing as the master, and then he had the Wolverine Eat C, which is just like pulse boat and a bunch of streaks, and a Shadowhawk that had a heavy PPC and like a small handful of other lesser weapons. And then I know it's a heavy, but he also had a dragon, so it might as well be a medium. Um this was the closest match I had. It was straight up like it was the buildings fight, which is where I kind of just ran the longbow up to like threaten one of his buildings early on from range. And he immediately started like focusing on the longbow, as I was more or less intending, because might as well get his attention on that. But the best part of that match was probably where he had me at a standstill and was actually up on points. And the only thing I could do was take the Shadowhawk that was currently a stick lying on the ground with no guns on it, and kill that with the flashman as it fell unconscious. Or no, it was the battlemaster that killed the uh shadow hawk while it was unconscious. And then the flashman, right before that went unconscious, managed to put uh heavy PPC into the CT of the uh enemy wolver. Just in time for the longbow to manage to just put every single SRM onto the CT of that Wolverine. Hell yeah. And that that managed to put me up on points, but not before he like he crippled like all of my stuff. He also back kicked the scorpion into the flea, which I forgot that quads could do that when I ran it up. I forgot that they could do that, and that's why the flea was splattered across the uh the terrain behind it. I can just imagine kick the baby pew right into the right into the wall. And this was like in the same turn that I'd like I dropped up the battle armor like behind him because I was like, yeah, this will be clever. This will be smart. I could pressure the scorpion and keep it from like being able to do things, and maybe I can even remove the C3 bastard. And then the flea just it just evaporated on the spot. And I was like, oh, I forgot quads could do that. Yeah, it's very like like horse kicking a tin can into orbit type stuff here. Yeah. And it was like like uh I will say about the Urby, the Urby was useful in every single game. It did something good in every single person. As a person who recommended it to you, I have to pop in and be like, yes. First of all, I play with an Urbie in Elite League, and I have to say I was always happy with how it performed. And second, I have developed just a love of having one little disposable guy whose mission is to just do something. Yes. And you're so happy when they do it. That's why I like the well. I'm always very happy to run like the dart in cases like that, so I know you're I know how that how that works. People would continuously make fun of me for putting an Urbie in every one of my lists. My brother. You've given me crapboard a bunch of times. Uh, Nicholas. And I was gonna say, and so I have stopped putting them in there because I'm sick of being made fun of for bringing in Herbie, and now people have come to the cult of Urby. And it's makes me come to the cult of Urby. I o I always had faith in it. I just never used it because I didn't have any for the longest time. You should have talked to me. Remember, you saw my company. Well, now I have two boxes of Urbimax. But yeah, that's that's basically my experience. I was thinking about talking about the first one where I had these Spectres roll a 12 on a leg attack to crit the leg off of the Spartan in my first game. But didn't wind up going with that one. Last but not least, Nicholas, if you wanna go through your list in one of your uh games that you would like to highlight. Alright, so my list was a Jade Phoenix C, Black Laner D, Powler 4, the uh set of Stormbird Battle Armor, the Jade Falcon variet uh uh variant, salamander battle armor, and the personal armor light the pal. I forget which variety of them, but the just it's the one with the battle armor ECM. And so the the Those are Nighthawks. Maybe. Those are the Nighthawks like XXX or XXIII or something. I don't I don't think that's what I had. There might be another one with a VA ECM, but Yeah, there's quite a few battle armors that actually have the one-hex ECMs on them. In any case, the the list was designed to get early engagement with the Black Laner charging in with a secondary uh operative coming in, which is the Howler dropping off the Stormbird battle armor. Uh the Black Laner is uh 7-Eleven, it runs 14 with the mask, has SRMs with Infernos. The Howler is a 7-Eleven 7 with a single LRM 5. It really didn't do all that much with its weapons, but it can jump. It was a piloting 3, so it was able to run around and kind of do insane things. But its main mission was to drop off the stormbird, which is heavy battle armor with an SRM3 and four shots and AP Goss. That those things dealt so much damage, with course the tournament. Also, PAL stands for power armor flight. Power armor, not personal armor. Thank you. Power armor light. I was gonna say the other thing of note with the stormbirds is that did you mention the mag clamps? Oh, yeah, the stormbirds have mag clamps. I was gonna get to that. They have mag clamps and they also are fire resistant. That's the worst part. They're fire resistant, they're heavy, they have lots of health, they have an absurd number of SRMs. They dealt a stupid amount of damage. So the the point of the list was to use the black laner and the howler as battle armor carriers. The black laner carrying the salamander, the howler carrying the magclamp stormbirds. The laner would get into position to drop off the battle armor and either engage with objectives or turn to start dealing damage and harassing enemy units because it's a flex unit. It can basically go where it wants, it can take down things heavier than it. It took out a longbow at one point in the tournament, the longbow 13C. The howler would basically, if it was able to live long enough to drop off the stormbirds, it accomplished its mission. After dropping off the storm birds somewhere where I want them, it would either move to gain objective points or act as a distraction against for for the enemy to try to shoot at. Following up was the Jade Phoenix C, which is a jump five assault mech with dual ATM12s, dual SRM6s with standard and inferno ammo ammo, as well as two ER medium lasers. That thing could deal so much damage. It can always choose uh once it's getting into the the engagement, it can always change a br choose a bracket to shoot at short range. Which when you're jumping, you uh had three gunnery, right? You're shooting at base six right from the start, and it also it just means you have the utility to choose your engagements or engagements, right? So, hey, look, you have something over there with TMM3, I'm shooting my extended range um at nines now. Great, I can still hit you. Oh, you have something slow, great, I'm shooting at you with the high explosive standards. It could choose its engagement and its best numbers in any situation. It it dealt a lot of damage, it was a nasty unit. Um, the whole purpose of it was to let my forward units operate and move into position to either engage or supplement as needed. Because with jump five, it didn't care about terrain, it could find a position to just engage. So uh very powerful force. My the the power armor light was there. Uh it's it it it it occasionally did things. Yeah, it was an activation, so that helped because I lost initiative like 75% of the time. Or multiple. Yeah. I I'd be a good quality of life trailing uh change. I think out of the entire event, I won initiative eight times, considering most of my games went to like round six or seven at least. That's that's not a lot. Um and so having the pals as a as an activation was very useful. Having battle armor to sync activations to move was also very useful. The pals did end up they almost took a guy off with Incarnov down and earned some points. They didn't actually do it, but they almost did. So they almost got me points. They, I think, died once, and my opponent was annoyed to say when I told him, hey, that's one point, or no, no, no, they got crippled, and they're just like, the crippled, how many points is that worth? None. I have the exact same situation when it comes to my flea. Yeah. Oh, the the howler died more, I think, four out of the five matches I played, or it was severely injured. And it was always funny to have it crippled into like, well, how much more how many more points do I get if I kill it? Two. Like, uh like, yeah, you could you could spend the shots to get those two points. But yeah. Like, howler, lovely MV, like everybody, everybody did the work except for the pal. Well, actually, no, the salamanders didn't really do much either. But they were a threat. Yeah. I mean, so this is this is something that I've talked about. We talked about this a little bit in the episode with Zess, of the idea of um hurting as a concept in battle tech, where often there are some units where they're uh it's a little bit like jazz, it's in the it's in the uh it's in the um things they don't take down, that is what you care about. In that there is kind of a un there's an unseen role in kind of shaping the battlefield, and I think salamanders especially are very good at doing that. Where people will stay the fuck. Yeah, they kinda did, kinda didn't. The salamanders were just they were there. I don't regret bringing them, but if there's a way I could finangle that list to have two storm birds, oh, that would have been disgusting. Those storm birds were so good. Um surprised you didn't bring iron holds anyway. Without a carrier, uh, that's right. They can't mechanize. Okay, that makes sense then. Yeah. So uh without vehicles to press some kind of carrier to move the iron holds around, they're just not mobile enough to be useful. But you know, the stormbirds being able out to reach out and hit people with their AP goss at nine hexes. So good. Uh, in terms of a game that I played that I'd really enjoyed, uh, my favorite match was against Perry from Goonhammer slash tabletop battles. Uh we were we talked about not naming people, but Perry might be writing an article, so I feel and knows we're gonna I I also ended up naming somebody and they're me. Yeah. So uh Perry brought a list that was two fireballs, but not the unique kind that were very fast, along with an iron cheetah and a star adder. And it was it was uh the the mission where we had two sort of objectives to pick up in the middle, and then you had to carry them around, and each each I don't think there were three. Yeah, there were three. There were three objectives to be grabbed. As long as you pick them up and carry them, you got 10 points a turn for carrying them. And the the fireballs were able to run to the middle and grab them early on. I was got into a position where I almost killed both of them right from the start by walking my units forward. And from then on, it was just it was kind of a back and forth race. In terms of games I played, I think it was the most evenly matched engagement where it felt like a lucky turn of the dice or a position on either end could sway the battle. I ended up losing. We did make a misplay where my Jade Phoenix C fell over in water. Uh the first hit falling didn't breach. The second one did breach, and I lost the arm. However, we forgot that you take half damage falling in water. So I should not have ever made that second breach check. And I think if my I'm sorry for pointing that out to you on the way back. Oh no. This this was a like, listen, we we I what I made the we both forgot. I forgot. But in terms of like the rules, things to to mess up, that was one of those, like, I took the falling damage. I think that would have pushed it more towards my victory ultimately, but regardless, it was still a hard-fought, very fun game. Uh excellent opponent. I'm excited to see what Perry writes about it, but just the little my my absolute favorite game of the whole event. Hopefully he writes about yours. He never wrote about our game at something to solve. Well, it's also it's a day two game, so I don't know if we'll we'll see it because at that point it was he was washed out of the tournament. No, it was it was like all of my other matches had something else going on that you know, whether it's the map or something about the mission or this and that that really kind of tarnished how much I enjoyed the game. But this last one against Perry was it was we we we played, it was it was day two, the stakes were a little bit lower. We were it's we felt very evenly matched. There were definitely moments where Perry was shooting my Black Lantern where you know hits could have been real nasty going a slightly different way, or if I had gotten another head hit on the star rider to knock it out, like it was it was just this tight moment of like, okay, let's see what the dice do, let's see what the dice do. We'll do this. And right at the end, I made the decision of like, listen, Perry, this is not the optimal move, but this Jade Phoenix has talons, and I want to try to get the kick. So I jumped into position, and the game sort of was ended basically when I got a head hit, when they got another head hit on the Jade Phoenix, and it fell unconscious, and I didn't get the kick. And it's one of those like, listen, we're here for fun. This is not the optimum move. I'm saying I'm admitting to it, I want to get the kick and try it, and it failed, and the game basically ended there. But you know what? It was great fun. It was really right up until that moment where it's just like, no, we're doing the fun move here because it's a talent, it's a 26 damage talent kick on a fallen over iron cheetah. Like, yes, let's do this. Or yeah, it was an iron cheetah. I woke up, I was like, wait a second, is it a direwol or an iron cheetah? No, it was an iron cheetah. It was an iron cheetah, yeah. It was an iron cheetah, it was the iron cheetah C. C. Yeah. So it's like, you know, went for the kick, didn't work out, but you know what? Just so much fun. Great opponent, great time. Perry was really excited by just I had all the the jade falcon swag out. I have two little like actual jade birds that I bring with me. Yeah, I've seen those. I got the shirt. I was wearing a jade uh bracelet, a jade necklace. I gave you the jade. I told you to put the jade necklace on. I told you you weren't full. Yeah. No, no, that was the bird pendant that I put on the thing. I actually have a a jade necklace. And uh I was also really excited by my like my paint setup. So it was just a great game. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds like a really fun game that you guys had. That's also that's also where it just devolves into it's like, okay, this is like we're kind of in we're kind of in garbage time now, so it's time for it's time to do a silly one is a good way to end the tournament. So yeah, it sounds like overall, um, that was kind of the Odysseus Legion's experiences with Eastern Assault. What is our kind of do you guys have any closing thoughts on the tournament? Anything else that you want to say that you think we missed? Any kind of opinions about like going back next year? Not going back. It's pretty far for us. I could be convinced to go back just because I like a good road trip, and I this was the first vacation off of work that I've taken in like 12 years, so I had a good time with it. I also got the uh Solaris Championship Award at the end of it. Oh yeah, tell us about that real quick. It was straight up just like he just uh uh Theol, uh the TO uh just basically told everybody like um everybody's going to write down a name for a player that they played with that they enjoyed playing with the most. Um and my assumption is that like there were probably a whole lot of people that voted for uh uh like two people or I guess that's not the best way to explain it. Basically, a whole lot of people got two votes. I guess I was the one that got three. No, the way it works, it's so what it is, it's it's actually effectively best sportsman. So how that works is that you vote for your favorite opponent, and then if there's ties, which there usually are, it goes to whoever has the highest win-loss record and then go from there. Oh, okay. I didn't know that the win-loss record had anything to do with it. Best opponent is always judge right, because if you have if you're winning and your opponents love you, then like that's a bigger sign of that makes sense. That does make sense, after the fact. So I wound up getting the little award, which is this very nicely painted little uh it's a gothic atlas with the uh House Steiner uh setup. And I currently and it has like a little placard that says like Solaris Championship uh 2026, and I have it sitting on my paint desk behind me. Right next to my uh Odysseus Legion trophy that I got in the first season. That's very cool. I was pretty proud of myself for that. I know Sportsman is always the best one in my yes, it is. My question is how Solaris translated to sportsman, but that's uh that's a good question. Um murder is legal, but they all think Nate's good. Yeah. He let's say this way, he got Best Warsman with the Longbow 13C. Bigger. That that is true. Um uh probably because I always tried to like make it funny that it was happening. Rather than just being like, yeah, I'm just gonna do pain to you. I was always like, all right, time for pain, or something like that. Um and I always tried to like, I was always trying to like if my opponent made like a mistake that I knew how we could rewind it, I would always let them do that. Yeah, yeah, where it's like I I I see your thought process and what you're doing doesn't work the way you think you is. Don't do that. Yeah, and I do that even in competitive events, or even like where it was like, oh, I just realized that I couldn't do this damage. Uh just scratch off that hit and we'll discard whatever crits happened because of it, stuff like that. Or like where it was like uh I think it was in the third game, um my opponent was very confident that he could win on the like last round until I like I pointed out that he was one MP off from getting his VIP off the edge of the board using his hunchback. And I was like, that feels bad. And I'm sorry that that happened. Would you like to play it out? And he was like, Yeah, let's play it out, and he managed to actually uh he managed to actually kill my he killed my flea and he killed my longbow in the uh uh end of that uh turn and managed to walk away feeling a lot better about at least uh scoring based on kills. Yeah. That's that's a good way to you know balance that e yeah. Yeah. Nobody likes a feel bad a feels bad moment, and I try to always give one. You always try to give a feel bad moment, and then you're gonna be able to do that. That's not what I meant. The words kind of just came out. Jonor of feel bad moments. But we also had a few other awards. Like there were four mechs offered up for the uh top four placers, but there was also obviously the Solaris Championship Award, there was the Best Painted Award, and there was the uh there was the Golden Erby for whoever came in last. Um and uh I mean I'm honestly kind of jealous of the golden herby because it looked really fun. So all so almost all the events have a golden herby. Like the cool thing about uh the cool thing about like Motor City Mayhem is that if you win the golden herby, you get a free urban mech. A free R60 Urban mech in your force. Yeah. For the next gear. It's it's very funny. I was gonna I was gonna say I I feel like I feel like an alternative would be I'm trying to remember what's the is it ogre tactics? Um uh yeah, that's that's that's what they should do is that I know that the uh 40k equivalent of the golden herby is the smoking boots award, which is they give you a starter set for Age of Sigmar. And they do the same thing for AOS, they give you a 40k starter set. And I think I think we should do this for Battletech, but they give you a uh they give you the rule book for ogre tactics. Oh you give no, you give you give uh Alpha Strike or um I mean I'd take that Alpha Strike box. Yep. Um but the uh the person that won the uh the painting award, I don't know what their name was, um, but they had this very pretty uh House Karita force where it was their entire force was white and cherry blossoms. Oh, this is very interesting. This is a it's a ghost regiment paint job. I believe so. Yeah, I've every time I see one of these, like Ghost Regiment is one of the most like striking uh Kirita paint jobs, period. And at some point I'm gonna do one. That's what I was looking at doing. Yeah, it's lots of ghosts. Very it's very interesting. And the uh the person that ended up winning that uh was I don't remember what it was that they got as an award, to be honest with you. I don't remember which mech that was, but it was very there was some stiff competition on the uh on the painting end of things, because I had to pick between like probably like seven different people because I liked all of their schemes. And it kind of wound it came down for me between a uh it was the cherry blossoms versus I think it was Stone's Lament, is the like full black and like bones of the spooky skeletons, yeah. Yeah, they were like right next to each other, and it was the hardest decision for me to make. Oof, yeah. Wait, did we vote for Best Painted? Yeah, yeah. Oh, I didn't. Did you not vote for Best Painted Garner? No, I didn't even hear a thing saying, hey, we're voting for best painted. I didn't hear anything about that. Oh. It was during the I don't know, punch legends. It was during the whatever yeah, yeah. I didn't know we were voting for it. I thought he was doing it with uh Chuck. Nope. Nope. Okay, well, oh well. Nope, that was uh community driven. In any case, uh you asked if we would want to go back, and my thought is this is actually my first battle tech tournament. And your first Waffle House. And my first Waffle House. You get Waffle House on the morning of the first day of the tournament. Best thing you can do, get Waffle House. We got Waffle House prepare for war. We we should have mentioned that we were talking about uh pre-tournament events or things we did. It's Waffle House. I was gonna mention it, but uh we wanted to type. Yeah, it's also it's it's a it's a thing that you do going to large events that have a Waffle House as you go to Waffle House. And then we celebrated on the second day with really good Mexican gotta with a with Nate's life-altering quesadilla. That's also good. I didn't know that you could put pineapple and steak on a quesadilla together. Someone hasn't watched Food Wars, just wasn't an option. I don't watch anything, so like I like this is like Nate as the like small Victoria child in this scenario. It's good food. I also got horchata for the first time. That's also good. Oh, horchata did that. They had really good horchata there. Yeah, very, very pleased with that restaurant we went to over on England Street. Casa Casa Heradura over in Ashrail, uh, Virginia. Well, also don't forget to make a right on uh England Street, please. Yeah, it's on England Street. Make sure you turn right on England Street. Kill me. Continue forward on England Street. Make a right on England Street, turn right off of England Street. What? Oh, it's ridiculous. But anyway, um, I think that a I want to experience uh different events. I think that uh ultimately I want to see how other things are run, experience them. I had enough concerns with the overall event that I just don't think I want to go back. Yeah. Especially it's Richmond is a fra is what like a six-hour drive. Yeah. So it's uh seven and a half. Yeah, it's a bit of a it's a bit of a trek for eight for me. I'm used to I'm I'm used to thinking of I'm used to thinking of it as I'm using cities that are an hour closer at both ends. I don't know. I would I would go back, it just depends on timing and stuff for because also I've got Motor City next weekend or this weekend. That's what I was gonna say. Like it's just timing-wise. I would go back, especially if there are some changes to the packet. Same here. I would go back if if it was at a different time. Um, but for me, Motor City is uh a higher priority. It's more I would enjoy Motor City a lot more, um, being more Alpha Strike focused. Hopefully, they'll bring classic in future years, but um the timing two-week difference. I mean, it was a convenient opportunity for me to go to Richmond, but I probably won't do it again um because I'll choose Motor City two weeks later. Sounds like we've had we've had a good conversation about um the Richmond Open tonight. Thank you for joining us, uh Nate and Chris, as our guests for the night. Um, does everyone want to sign off? One thing first. We mentioned it. Karnov Down was played, and I hated it. Carnov down was played, and I rescued a VIP with an urban mech. That'd be a good idea. That was fine. Uh I managed to claim both Karnovs and three of the VIPs. Alright. Very impressive, but we we need to side off. Well done. No. No. Right. I, as showrunner, am wishing all of you into the cornfields, even though Nicholas is the one who's running this, because I need to sleep. I have an exam tomorrow. All right. Good night, Luke. Good night, everybody. Talk to you guys soon. Yep. Good night. Good night, everybody. Glory to Merrick. Glory to Merrick. Nice. Glory to Merrick. Yep. Good night. Have a good night, all. Alright. Good night. 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. 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