Episode 18: Motor City Mayhem

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

In today's episode we talk about Chris and Garner's trip to compete at the Motor City Mayhem Alpha Strike Tournament.

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

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:02

Narc recommended. ECM also recommended.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

I hate that rockshot so much. I love that rock shot so much, especially for how much you hate it.

SPEAKER_02 0:20

You didn't get a bow.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

I didn't get a boat here.

SPEAKER_04 0:46

Welcome to the Odysseus Legion Podcast.

SPEAKER_02 0:50

Hello, hello, and welcome to the 18th episode of the Odysseus Legion Podcast. My name is Nicholas. I will be host for you today, and I want it known already. I know we need to give in and play more Alpha Strike. Joining me as usual is one of the guys I owe Alpha Strike games to, Garner. Hello. My friend Luke, who I played my first game of Alpha Strike with. Hello. And returning guest Chris, who runs our local Alpha Strike League. Hey everybody. That I should probably join.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

Yes, you should. I sense a theme. I sense a theme.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

There might be a theme here. Today we are talking about Motor City Mayhem, an Alpha Strike tournament that Garner and Chris played shortly after our Eastern Assault adventures. But before we get into that, what have you guys been up to, Battletech or otherwise?

SPEAKER_01 1:37

Um, well, so uh my youngest kid uh graduated high school yesterday, so that was big news. We got graduation party this weekend, which is gonna be fantastic. Um, but in battle tech terms, I mean, like you said, uh we've been working on the uh Alpha Strike League, and uh I kind of went through uh this past month and updated a lot of our missions to hopefully give us a little more flavor and kind of bring things up to speed uh on Hexless uh compared to where we were with the Odysseus Legion previously doing it on Hexed. So it's good stuff.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

I am not really doing anything. Um I've just been working as I've been working overnight weekends and uh finally done with that for about a year until I have to do it again next June. Um other than that, uh no, really nothing. I've I haven't been doing any battle tech. I've I've just been kind of mowing my lawn, keeping up on what chores I can and working, and that's my life.

SPEAKER_03 2:48

Luke. Sorry, this is that's just uh that's just an insane like that is the most like I am 40-year-old years old saving my original while. Um joys of owning property. Uh I have been uh touching grass a lot. I'm back from my study abroad project, and I am currently at a seller job uh down near the city. I have found a couple of local battle tech groups, including one that appears to have uh taken some cues from a couple of armor events as running cell or something.

SPEAKER_02 3:28

Oh nice. Cool. Yeah. Did you show up and uh basically show them how it's done?

SPEAKER_03 3:35

No, because I was I that was the day before I got my car. And that was it would have, it would have, I looked at what the bus schedule would have required me to do to get there, and it would have required like four hours of buses and like three different interchanges to get to the event. I was like, no, that's not that thing.

SPEAKER_02 4:01

Yeah, when I when I lived in New York City, I went way out of my way to avoid taking the bus. I I just did not like it.

SPEAKER_03 4:09

Oh, this isn't even this isn't even New York City. Like if this was if this was Port Authority, it would be better. No, no, no. This is this is Palisades New York and uh Likers. Like Hudson Valley area transit as opposed to New York City. So yeah, manages to be manages to be even even worse than. And I understand the buses have gotten better saying that this is not those.

SPEAKER_02 4:39

Uh I've been to be to be to be blunt, like switching to monthly instead of weekly, just feeling that release of pressure uh has been really nice. I've been trying, you know, balancing stuff out, getting some games in here, doing some stuff, and uh living. And uh I've been feeling pretty great. To be honest. So, you know, I got a game against uh I got two games in this current season already so far. Uh playing some more uh I'll talk about my game with Garner at the end of the you know the games played here. So, yeah, some battle tech, catching up some building some gunpla, and living life. That's that's about it. So let's start with the basics. What is Motor City Mayhem? What was it like, and how was it played?

SPEAKER_00 5:33

It was a um 300 PV Alpha Strike event, four rounds. Uh they do not release the missions ahead of time, but they will they're interesting spins on ones that they've done before or other people do. Uh it's mostly run by uh Steve and Paul from the MechBay, or not Mechbay, excuse me. Yeah, MechBay. It is Mechbay. Whoa, whoa, whoa. I had a ray brain part there. Um and then uh a whole lot of people. It's I think probably the second largest Alpha Strike event now behind Southern Assault. I think it was it's definitely the largest one-day Alpha Strike event.

SPEAKER_03 6:21

Um to clarify, Motor City is in Detroit, yes.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

Yes, Motor City is in fact Detroit. This particular one was aerocked at early Republic, which was uh interesting.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

They slowly move the timeline. Yeah, they they do slowly move the timeline.

SPEAKER_02 6:40

How do you feel about both the the aero locking and the not knowing missions ahead of time?

SPEAKER_00 6:46

I was fine with it. Yeah. I like it. I like not min-maxing? Like min-maxing it and running the same lists and stuff. I like I love aero locking. I'm a huge proponent of aerocking.

SPEAKER_01 6:59

Yeah, I I agree. I I like aerocking. It makes you uh have to work to try and find new mechs that kind of do what you want it to do and experiment some. I also like not knowing the missions ahead of time. Uh mostly because uh like it makes you build lists that are able to take quote unquote all comers as opposed to doing that min-max thing where it's like, oh, you know, I know I'm gonna need to do I'm gonna need the 20-inch mover to get a bunker or something like that. You know, it's this this really makes you stretch and think, and you know, most of the missions are they're gonna benefit certain uh list types, so you're you're not you you gotta be vr you gotta have variety in your list. So I like not knowing though.

SPEAKER_02 7:56

Did you think there's a significant difference in knowing the missions in Alpha Strike versus Classic?

SPEAKER_00 8:03

Um I mean, not really. I think it's both the same that you can build your list towards the mission, which is a thing. Not something that I particularly enjoy because I think that promotes like skew list building, as opposed to like take all comers. Agreed.

SPEAKER_03 8:28

So I think I think the other the flip side of that is three hundred points is significantly like the equivalent amount of bodies that you can fill on the field for 300 points, is quite a bit bigger than an equivalent uh uh class.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

Uh depends if you do if you follow the cult of refusing to upskill or not. Um because upskilling costs significantly more in Alpha Strike than it does in Classic, in terms of just percentage of cost. And also effectively, like the way that Alpha Strike is designed, a skill four pilot in Alpha Strike is effectively a skill three pilot in Classic because of how um movement modifier attacker movement modifiers work.

SPEAKER_03 9:23

But regardless, it is still like the equivalent because I I don't remember everything off the top of my head, but my recollection is you can get kind of a midline heavy mech for somewhere between high 30s to low 50s points.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

I'd I would say maybe like 40 to 50, but uh I mean you can get some in the 30s, but they're fairly rare. And and you probably won't find many clan heavies in that range. You'd you'd be pushing the the the 50s or at least high 40s.

SPEAKER_03 10:03

You can get a hellbringer prime for 45 people, so that's not that's not terrible, but that also means you can get what six hellbringers? I'm not saying that's a good list, but would that be called bringing hell?

SPEAKER_01 10:19

That might be like what heiresses? Aren't heiresses also known as hells? Yes.

SPEAKER_02 10:26

A hell, but you'd also just bring a hell. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 10:29

Yeah. Yeah, you could bring a hell, a hell, uh, a hellbringer, hell spawn, um, hellfire.

SPEAKER_01 10:39

A devil. A devil. He would be in charge.

SPEAKER_03 10:43

What in the devil? Yeah, but I think my my my point stands, like, the the number of bodies that you have in an Alpha Strike event at 300 points, you have you have the ability to bring significantly more bodies if you want to. Uh and as a result, you have better access to things, uh, like uh specific keywords that you might be useful to use.

SPEAKER_01 11:09

Yeah, I I think 300 points is uh a good size list to to be able to kind of take all possibilities or you know, you know, have a a tank or a meat shield, have some cav, have some uh a couple back line shooters, and you know, have a speedy boy or two. It's it's enough to kind of do a little of everything. It's I would say you're not gonna run a company. You could if you really pushed it, but it's I I mean I did.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

I built a company. Did you have a company for for motors? I like I didn't do it for this time, but like I've built one at 300 PV, and also, you know, the person that came in like what was it like second or third out of uh the one of the two Coloradans there had what 16 people? 16 units?

SPEAKER_01 12:05

Yes. He did, yeah. That is true. He had a he had a lot of uh vehicles though doing that, a lot of cheap uh units. So but yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:17

I you know just to clarify, it's 300 points and you deploy it all. It's not like it's a reserve or correct. Overall, how how was it run? How did you like the the venue, the city?

SPEAKER_00 12:31

Well, we weren't in the city, so but the the venue was uh different than would normally they were it was last few years have it has been in a church like uh a a church like gymnasium, uh, but they're had uh accidentally double booked, so we had to go find a new venue, and this new venue, I think, was better condition overall, even if it raised the mar uh the price a bit a bit um for venue location. Um it was in a hotel itself. We had and uh we filled the room, the little conference room area that they had there with all uh what was there, 50, 60 of us?

SPEAKER_01 13:19

Uh I'm gonna pull up the Yeah, I wanna say that we're gonna pull up uh I thought it was I thought it was right around 64 for some reason.

SPEAKER_00 13:29

It was the total people that s showed up was fifty-seven. I think there was like sixty-four that were s originally signed up.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

And I I mean while we did fill the room, I think there was room for more. There's room to grow. That was kind of a nice thing about that venue. Yep. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:51

A little bit of room to grow. There was we could maybe get another ten, maybe fifteen people.

SPEAKER_02 13:58

Uh was this just the event, like the Battle Tech event, or is there other stuff going on?

SPEAKER_00 14:04

Just Battle Tech.

SPEAKER_01 14:06

Nice. It was just Alpha Strike. I know uh they've talked about adding in Classic in future years, making it potentially a two-day event. I'll let Steve uh yeah. From my perspective, uh, you know, Steve running that event, uh, you know, he's uh he's got his hands full. I wouldn't begrudge him if he needs to take it a little bit slower, but it would be great if you know he's he continued to grow the event and and expand it to classic.

SPEAKER_02 14:37

Any last remarks about just Motor City itself and the event?

SPEAKER_01 14:42

I thought it was a well-run event. I really enjoyed it. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:47

I had fun.

SPEAKER_02 14:56

So now that we've talked about the event itself, what were your lists? Uh, how did the tournament go overall, and sort of what are some overarching themes and concepts behind what you were trying to get out of your lists and gameplay?

SPEAKER_00 15:11

I am a firm believer in the cult of Narc. I am its greatest champion, and I brought a list that uh kind of went with that. It was a s and it's kind of very similar, it's very similar to the list I brought last year when it was Jihad era. But unfortunately I no longer had access to the Shattered Raven and some other ones, so I had to rebuild the rest that the not core of my force. But uh, so I had the Stalker 5M at skill 3, it's got a Narc, it's got IF, so it can take and SRM keywords, so it can take advantage of the Narc. Um and it is an absolute monster with six medium range shots at I think it's 49 PV base or 52 PV base or something. So after scaling it up, it still fits into the generic take medium range damage divide by PV, and if it's over 10, you're good. Um and then I had a Rock Shassa uh 1AR, which again is just like an I it has IF1, and it's got five short, four medium, so it's a little bit less effective Pv-wise, but the having the two TMM and making things scared of coming near me with my five uh short range and being uh skill three was really beneficial. Uh then I had my commander, because you did have to declare one of your mechs to be your commander, and I brought a de facto clan mech, or clan mech, excuse me, commander mech. Command mech, the archer. I brought the archer 4M2, which is the exact same thing in Alpha Strike as an Archer 4M. There is absolutely zero difference between the two variants. And it is a 3 short, 5 medium, 4 long with IF2, and it has a standard engine, just like that stalker, so they put up a lot, they take a lot more punishment than you really want. Yep. And people are like, oh, but yeah, then you're crippling them and you're getting all these crits on them all the time. Like, yeah, sure, I am, but you still have to put more effort into killing them than you really want to, which is might make something else live an extra turn. Um and then my trusty scarabus, my Twin Scarabus things, also at skill three, zooming around the board. And then so that was my first lance, and then my second lance of mechs was a skill three Kintaro. I totally blanked on what the mech was. It's Kintaro. It's got another Narc with SRM and IF. And uh it is a 4-4-0, I believe. That's the Royal Kintaro, so it's a 19B. It's a 4-4-1, I think, actually. So 4 short, 4 medium, 1 long. And it's a 10-inch mover, so it's got that TMM2 as well. And it was just my it's just there as my second Narc beacon. Oh yeah, the Scarabus, really strong because it has the ECM. Speaking of narc beacons. For my the rest of my lights, I had a crappy little wasp, the wasp 8T. I love that little guy. He did work. Everything but the Scarabis had IF or SRM. Oh, I had the ECM Javelin. Oh my god, the javelin 10N, I want to say.

SPEAKER_03 19:16

Did you mention at the top why narc is important here?

SPEAKER_00 19:20

I have not, and that would be probably because I preach it a lot at every single time we talk about Alpha Straight.

SPEAKER_03 19:27

But not this time, pre not this time pre- Yes, I can I can well while while Garner is trying to fall in this though. The reason that Narc is important here is because one, Narc pods take effects the turn they they hit instead of the turn afterwards, including classic. And two, the way the narc rules work is if you pod something, every vent you have that has the SRM, LRM, or indirect fire keywords, it gets plus one damage at all of its ranges.

SPEAKER_00 19:58

With all of its attacks against whatever its fire range. As long as it has as long as it has at least one damage. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 20:05

So like as long as Oh, but it it includes minimum damage, so if you have your little your little asterisk, it also it also bumps that up to one instead of being on unit.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

It's now one plus a 50-50, actually.

SPEAKER_03 20:22

Oh, is it?

unknown 20:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 20:23

Yes, we were playing that wrong because somebody pointed that out to me while I was doofing around with my Locust 3D, which was one of the little crappy mechs, my little 16 PV, one armor, two structure, zero star, one one, sixteen-inch mover that said, okay, shoot it. It's a locust. And it the locust actually got a real got a headshot on something that it really had no right doing. Oh, that's what it was. It was a bane three. I mean the bane three on I had already ripped through all of the architect. Oh, okay. And most of the struct like it only had, I think, one structure left after that one internal from the damage coming in. But that one I rolled the crit and it was a headshot. Um, so yeah, narcissists. Little guy did little guy.

SPEAKER_02 21:18

Yeah. It it sounds like the the base concept is to you have some forward operating units that try to narc things, and then everything else behind just goes, oh, you're narked! F you nope. No.

SPEAKER_00 21:31

No, not at all. Actually, I had no fast narkers. Oh. I had a medium calker and then the slowest for the slowest thing in my force, the stalker.

SPEAKER_02 21:43

Yeah, the stalker with the narc.

SPEAKER_03 21:44

Because it can just tag anything within like 24 inches. Yep. It is medium range.

SPEAKER_00 21:53

So So the Narc the Narc does work.

SPEAKER_03 21:56

This is this is one of those comical things like The uh in the way the conversion works similar to how everything would be laser interior lasers gets that game dragged all the way out to the edge of their medium range of 12 inches, which is the equivalent of 12 axes, where narc just gets dragged out in the range capability. Well, I guess interscreen narc does, and narc already did. Still funny.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

But uh the uh the narc the so the whole thing is that the whole force is just force multiplying. If I get a narc off, it just runs away with the game. Or not runs away, but like you can do some serious damage that you really shouldn't like. My so it's like so I like my my light lance had the javelin 11b, which was an ECM with the SRM11, it was a 2-2-0 for 26 Pv. This was skill four, and the locust was skill four, and the wasp was skill four. Everything else in my list was skill three. So that way I was taking full advantage of whatever narcs existed. And also let me more reliably get the narc on target.

SPEAKER_02 23:10

So you would frequently find yourself on a narc's target getting what, like four, five, six extra damage to like potential overall.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

Yes, I would actually have seven.

SPEAKER_02 23:23

Seven. Yeah, so effectively two extra units worth of damage, like probably.

SPEAKER_00 23:30

Yep. Yep. And we considering that all of my stuff that almost all my stuff that was shooting was skill three, like it just it force multiplies really heavily. Yeah. Um yeah, that's that's what I brought with me. It was just a really silly narc list, and this time as I was walking around, there were a couple quite a few narc lists, and actually I was getting called out from like adjacent tables, like, hey, how does narc actually work? How are we tagging? How does how does indirect fire work? Can you explain this to me? So that was kind of funny.

SPEAKER_02 24:05

Yeah, you're getting known as the anti-Karnov down guy, but also the Narc guy.

SPEAKER_03 24:09

Yeah, you you become known as the person who understands how the missile tech works, and then that's the only thing that people ever talk to about. Uh, this is true of every version of Battle Tech. The uh the indirect fire rules are apparently some sort of like esoteric mystery that you just need a special sort of brain to understand.

SPEAKER_02 24:32

Yeah. I I almost showed up with an indirect fire list in this Iliad season, but decided not to.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

And I thought he had, by the way, so the one one of the practice games we played, he picked like a wide open map, and I thought he was bringing his missiles, so I was like, no, I picked like the hardest like map to get through to hide behind. He's like, I don't have any missiles. I said, Oh well, oops.

SPEAKER_02 24:56

That was that was a weird game. But so an interesting thing about Narc, right? So I know in Alpha Strike, uh basically every keyword ability is hard costed into the unit. So, you know, like like anything with probe, like the recon, they have or C3 oh so C3. No, C3 is cost. C3 is baked in. Yeah, all everything's baked in. So do you feel like the baked-in cost for Narc or or indirect fire and whatnot, do you feel like they're accurately costed based on the way you play?

SPEAKER_00 25:27

The way that I play, probably not. I think, but if well, okay, actually no, that's a lie. I think that they are probably accurately costed because if they cost any more, you are going to be having problems, and also you can just hard counter narc with ECM and or AMS or combination thereof.

SPEAKER_02 25:53

There we go. Narc recommended ECM also recommended.

SPEAKER_00 25:58

Yes. I actually lost my game last night because I did not realize that my opponent had an ECM, and it's really funny because he's like, you should have known that it was an ECM because you were the one that was hounding me to bring ECM. Because I am also ECM's biggest fan because as well, because I want people to bring it. So I stopped feeling bad for bringing things that can literally just be shut off by ECM.

SPEAKER_04 26:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:26

I I I wanted to bring uh ECM variant of a unit for my current list. It will talk about my list later, but I show I I actively chose not to because I really wanted to go into the har hard into the bird meme theme.

SPEAKER_00 26:42

And there are bird mechs with ECMs!

SPEAKER_02 26:44

I I say that you're not listening. I know there's a variant of a mech I'm bringing that has ECM. It just didn't fit in the cost curve.

SPEAKER_00 26:54

You could have dropped one of your unit of stormbirds.

SPEAKER_02 26:57

I have one stormbird.

SPEAKER_00 26:59

Exactly. You could have brought one less unit of stormbird.

SPEAKER_02 27:05

But it's literally the stormbird list.

SPEAKER_00 27:09

That's not a real bird, anyways.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

Uh all right, Chris. Yes. Uh so while I did bring a narklist like Garner, mine was not quite as good.

SPEAKER_03 27:26

Um much, much, much to learn.

SPEAKER_01 27:35

Uh so I brought uh Russell Hog Dominion, um, you know, Early Republic. Basically, I brought a star of Mechs uh that did lean into the um into the Narc, but just not as heavily. Uh so I started off with my Kodiak 4. He was my commander. Uh I had a uh Timberwolf S uh, which has SRM 333. Or I'm sorry, 3-3, not the third three. Uh then I had a summoner B, which heck of an SRM. Yeah, I know it's special SRM. Um SRM. There you go. Um, so the summoner B, I also brought him. He was my Narc boy. Uh he's he's got LRM as well, so he's got and an SRM special, so he's kind of got all the the ways to to benefit from the snark. Um, and then I brought a cougar D with SRM special and a koshi standard, uh, also with SRM special. And you know, it it works. I love I love Narc. It was great, but to what Garner was saying, I did not have ECM to counter other people's ECM that countered my narc. So it it basically it was for me, it was incidental and uh and a minor benefit, but it wasn't quite as uh good as as what Garner brought. Uh two other units I did bring, I brought in a Pona E um speedy, you know, hover tank. You gotta have one. They're just it's that unit I think is way undercosted for some reason. I mean for 20 because heat is undercosted, yes. 18-inch mover for 29 uh PV 22 uh 0 with a heat 222. I mean, it's just and and it's omni. So on top of him, I mounted uh my rogue bear heavy battle armor, and he basically rode along the opponent, got dropped off. He's shooting an extra three slash two damage on top of the opponent doing two two plus heat of two. So they were they were a nice little tag team going around while everybody else was moving into position or stealing objectives or what have you. I did okay. I I I ended up somewhere in the middle of the pack. Um, I enjoyed my list. I had a great time. Um it's you know, it's it's fun. Um I I enjoyed playing with Narc. I think I may try to find ways to lean heavier into it in the future. Um, that be well the easiest way is to not play. Yeah, that's hard. Um, but yes, yes. Um uh yeah, it was a good list, though. I enjoy it.

SPEAKER_02 30:35

So, Chris, you said you did okay overall, Garner. How did you do?

SPEAKER_01 30:39

I you did okay.

SPEAKER_00 30:41

I did okay overall.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

Yeah, you could have done better. I could have. There's room for improvement.

SPEAKER_00 30:48

Um, I stop making me feel even more strong.

SPEAKER_01 30:55

Sorry, man. So how did you do, Garner?

SPEAKER_00 31:00

I did I did quite well. I got first place tactician. Um technically second, but the person that had more uh battle points than me won best overall, Bill Kim. Person that I have previously seen and interacted with um for uh Warhammer Gaming back when we were playing 40k. Like I'd never played him personally, and I didn't really start talking with him too much until I saw him playing Battletech. And then we just kind of talked, and then we finally got our chance to get our grudge match out in uh round four of uh Motor City this year, where some really funny stuff happened that I will talk about when we get to uh games played actually. Um but yeah, so I ended pretty well overall and I think I was top 10 in most things. I don't have to pull up what came. Nope, I was twelfth overall, but I was seventh in sportsman, technically first in tactician, and which is general or however you want to call it, but then 28th in painting.

SPEAKER_02 32:24

You guys can choose whether or not to go into detail, but how were the missions?

SPEAKER_01 32:28

I thought that they were um so the pros is that they I thought that they were unique in that um I mean they they were kind of fair twists on on other missions that I've played. Um the cons is is that you know this is always the con when you walk into a tournament without knowing the missions ahead of time, is is that it you have to read the the packet or read the mission, and these were full page, you know, of dense, uh not super dense, but they were a full page. They were a full page and you had to pay attention.

SPEAKER_00 33:08

It's no Odyssey billion 150 pages.

SPEAKER_02 33:14

The actual missions I try to condense down to one page, minus the how you play missions section.

SPEAKER_01 33:21

But I I thought the missions were a lot of fun. Um, I thought they were interesting, they helped, you know, um make you do different things. It didn't it wasn't like pure capture an objective and do something with it. It was sometimes you had to have like recon probe or MHQ for size that you know that would influence your size or you know, go after a commander. Um, you know, uh there were the missions were good. We I think we'll go into them a little bit in a moment.

SPEAKER_02 33:56

Anything else about just sort of, you know, your list and sort of like a general tournament report?

SPEAKER_00 34:01

Not really. The the terrain, I th the the trains and everything I thought was pretty very, very good. There was a couple maps that I thought were a little sparse, but it's the same map that I it looks pretty, it is not great to play on, and it's the Nuke map, the uh jihad remnant WAB invasion map.

SPEAKER_03 34:25

Are these like so when you say map, how are these set up? Are they uh I'm assuming this was Hexless?

SPEAKER_00 34:34

It's Hexless, uh four foot by four foot, um, and it's all preset terrain.

SPEAKER_03 34:39

Okay, and it's just like dioramas that the organizers have set up. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 34:44

Okay. I thought it was a good mix of terrain, though, in you know, it wasn't all like cityscapes or it wasn't all.

SPEAKER_00 34:52

Oh yeah, no, it was it was definitely a good mix. It was a lot of variation in like footprints and layouts and biomes. It was it was well done.

SPEAKER_02 35:18

Luke, do you have a gameplay to talk about?

SPEAKER_03 35:21

Oh, I mean uh in a very technical sense, yes, which is there is a local battle tech campaign that I found running out of a community center in Westchester that I joined this uh Monday this week. It was uh it was just like uh a uh a couple of hours of dunking on Jake Falcon with uh with MML Mex.

SPEAKER_00 35:46

Heck yeah. So big fan.

SPEAKER_03 35:48

Uh I brought my my my f yeah, my my favorite my favorite buddy team. You you know them, you hate them, it's the it's the Rock Shassa with the uh the MML7s and the snubnosed PPCs.

SPEAKER_00 36:03

The 1AR.

SPEAKER_03 36:03

Yes, and the Hellspon 10G, which is basically what if that Rock Shassa had a general understudy.

SPEAKER_00 36:10

Um that's actually what I'm doing in Iliad League. Yes. Funnily enough, is it's similar. I checked replace the Hellspawn with the Hellspawn's heavier older brother, the Battle Axe.

SPEAKER_03 36:22

Yeah. But those they're it's it's a really good uh they're a really good cavalry spearhead of just here's here's a bunch of damage that's gonna come running at you at close range, and if you try and complain about it, I'm going to hit you with a billion inferno missiles until you stop complaining.

SPEAKER_00 36:38

Um I hate that rock shasta so much. I love that rock shassa so much, especially because of how much you hate it.

SPEAKER_02 36:47

Every time it's just like, I have to fight that thing, and I look at it and go like, it's only that much BV? Ah, so you're like, I finally kill it or do something, or and it's just like, haha! And you're like, great, uh, it's already paid for itself. And it's like, I know.

SPEAKER_03 37:04

Yeah, it's I mean, oh, you'll be you'll be extra upset with this, uh, with this Nicholas, because that that combination um cut straight through a Fire Falcon and then uh two V1s and headcaps and night gear.

SPEAKER_00 37:23

I love that for you.

SPEAKER_02 37:25

Fire Falcon just died. I've never had one like live.

SPEAKER_03 37:28

Yeah, admittedly the Fire Falcon was the the GM was playing the Fire Falcon as kind of a as kind of a redshirt in this situation, so that wasn't much of a kill, but the Yeah, getting getting danger close with and then and and then Alpha striking on the two SRM mechs that have you ranged is a good way to not have a nightmare.

SPEAKER_02 37:49

Like I guess did you feel a sense of deja vu killing that Nigier? Uh maybe. Because you've you've definitely killed so like at least a couple of mine.

SPEAKER_03 38:02

Well, this was a this was a T, which is a configuration you usually bring the A. I hadn't seen this one before. The T is quite scary. Where it's um it's two two uh flan spec P PCs and LB20 and uh four uh what is it, three medium ball slimers, and it has the sinkage to fire basically all but one of those guns every time. Youch. It is. It is a mean, mean, mean mech.

SPEAKER_02 38:35

Um, it okay, so it's uh Dark Age bird mech, but in in the Il clan it goes to the Star League birds and then everybody else. It doesn't stay with the birds.

SPEAKER_03 38:48

Yeah, you yeah, you're yeah, uh G doesn't get it because it's it's probably not produced on Sedaton.

SPEAKER_02 38:56

Yeah. Yeah, because that is I mean, basically you're replacing like from the A, you're replacing the large pulse with ERP PCs. Yes. And the Ultra 20 with an LB20, so Yeah, it's it's hateful.

SPEAKER_03 39:11

And that was, again, like I think the thing I got the most the most uh deja vu there was uh I was fighting it across a ridge line, and I had positioned by Hells Bawn uh in partial cover, and partial cover beat uh like 25 damage worth of BPC and media blazers. It's the c it's the classic it's the classic. Tiny impotent that never punished for its sins.

SPEAKER_02 39:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:43

Which I know I've I have had that exact experience against your A's.

SPEAKER_02 39:48

Garner, why don't we move into you?

SPEAKER_00 39:50

So, um, I'm gonna go into the uh top table at the final round of Motor City, which was my game against Bill Kim, the best overall. He brought a Jade Falcon list. There's too many of you dirty birds around me.

SPEAKER_02 40:11

Birds are dirty. If you've ever had a pet bird, or no pet pet birds, they're disgusting.

SPEAKER_00 40:16

They are, Jason has one. Um so, anyways, so we ended up matching up, and his list had the maximum amount of ranged heat that you could have, and a lot of uh TMM2, and it was it was very effective. Um the because heat is not properly accounted for in Alpha Strike. And there's not a way, unlike in Classic, where you can kind of cut your damage output to still sink heat. You either are allowed to do something, or you do nothing to sync heat. Which is a large problem. Um so we sit down at the table, we roll off, he wins and chooses deployment. So, by the way, the way the tables are set up is they're on kind of long tables and there's four by fours in the middle. We were on a co edge. We were on an edge of one of these rows. He goes and chooses the short edge of the four by- I say it's weird because it's short edge of the four by four, but he goes and sits in the main aisle.

SPEAKER_01 41:32

Instead of north-south, he goes east-west.

SPEAKER_00 41:35

Uh walk-like he sits in the main walkway heading up the room towards the judge's table instead of in like the normal places of, you know, where you would have a yeah, east-west. Correct. And that was the first time I'd ever seen that happen before. And like, nope, you could technically pick any of them. And he chose that to uh give him the most amount of woods and me the least amount of woods. Um and one of the interesting things that I never really thought about until he did it to me as well, and it didn't come into play really because I was never gonna be shooting at the thing in the woods, anyways. But if you are in woods and you are less than eight inches from the edge of the woods, rules as written in Alpha Strike, you can shoot people, but they cannot shoot back at you. Because anybody in woods can see through the first two inches of woods with no problem.

SPEAKER_01 42:35

I never thought about that.

SPEAKER_00 42:36

So again, I was never going to shoot his Oh my god, what was it? Oh, what was the it was the experimental bird mech. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 42:44

Flam bearish.

SPEAKER_00 42:46

Yeah, flambearish, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 42:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:48

It was a skill two flambearish. I'm like, I'm never shooting that thing. It's on TMM a billion. I'm just not even I'm just ignoring it. I don't care about it. And I just played the whole I played the game and maxed out my points early. And one thing we didn't mention about this game format is that there is Eagle One. Oh, we allowed two passes of Eagle One, which is either a light strike, heavy strike, light bomb, or heavy bomb. And so one of the bonus objectives that you could get in this was a. If you could melee a mech, and he went and heat shut down my Kintaro that had one structure left, and I lost initiative. And he walked up right next to my Kintaro to go kick it. Because it was holding an objective when it shut down. I uh dropped a light bomb on myself to both kill myself and And I think get a crit on him of like fire control or something. Because I had stripped all the armor off of that Stormcrow that was coming in and trying to punch me, and he's like, oh you. Because most people were using their bombs and stuff, like first two turns. Well, I brought on my display board, I had brought two fighter planes and I would leave them on the table to remind myself, hey, I have them, and then I would take them off the table as I used them, so I would remember that I have them to use them, and that like that way I don't have to think about it like later, like, oh, did I already use the bombs? And I can always keep that kind of in my brain case. So I maxed out my stuff myself first. I ended up losing 79 to I think 90 or 89 or something. Or no, 72 to 89. Whatever, anyways, I got like because the way it was set up is that it was 60 points or 70 points in objectives and 30 points in kill. And I maxed out objectives and I think I killed like his uh demon tank and then crippled his Stormcrow. And ended up if the game had if we had if the game had gone to like if the if I had just died sooner, I actually might have won because you don't get to play out the. So if I killed myself sooner, because the mission we were playing, by the way, was one where you had to go pick up objectives. The objectives can blow you up as you walk around and run around with them and jump around with them. So I spent a bunch of turns jumping, running, and stuff to try and blow myself up to end the game sooner. And I did not kill myself fast enough. Um yeah. Much camping was involved. I mean, what that was my game, and it was a really good game. We had a lot of fun and uh I ended up walking away from that with enough points to have the best uh tactician and a battleship from 888 Industry. Uh the company run by uh Gene. And it was a lot of fun. And I still have no idea how I'm going to paint it.

SPEAKER_01 46:37

You and me both.

SPEAKER_00 46:39

Oh yeah, because you have one too. We're battleship buddies.

SPEAKER_01 46:42

Yeah, we're battleship buddies.

SPEAKER_03 46:43

I'm looking forward to painting it, but is the boat just like the de facto prize that you give someone who wins a battle factor in there?

SPEAKER_00 46:53

Is that just Well no, Gene likes to give out these for prize support. Because they are really eye-catching.

SPEAKER_01 47:01

Very much so.

SPEAKER_02 47:02

So I'm just picturing you you two like playing a game, like setting things up, and like showing up, and you've got your both of you have a battleship display board to set like on on the sides of the table. It's like, oh, here's my force. And it's all painted with a mechs on it. It's like, oh, Garner's like, oh, well, here's mine. Sets his down, and you can just see this just this line of mechs on top of battleships ready to face each other. It would be a pretty impressive visual.

SPEAKER_03 47:32

You're all gonna need to find forces that have blue water navies, which I know there's a couple, but it's not many.

SPEAKER_01 47:39

We had talked about doing that.

SPEAKER_00 47:41

I'm going periphery, going to a water planet. Water planet, water water planet, yeah, water planet. Allegro or something, I don't know. But yeah, so that was my game. It was fun. I enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_01 47:54

So I'm gonna talk about my second round. Uh I played a gentleman who had a very similar list to Bill Kim. He had a flambearge, uh uh, a vapor eagle, and uh Cougar and an adder. He had a Lobo, which I had never seen before, but it was a cool little guy with heat. Uh, he had a dasher, he had uh what is a Shamash uh recon vehicle and a skimmer. So, you know, when he when he brought out the recon vehicle and the skimmer, I knew what those were, and um they were just gonna ram me at some point. And uh the the the horrible well, the the cool thing that I found uh uh like hilarious is I tried to drop a bomb. He put them very close in round one, and I tried to drop a bomb on him and blew my roll. So the bomb missed them, didn't kill the the two units. He then tried to charge with the with both of them against my madcat, and basically he whiffed one of them. So my madcat survived, you know, these two basically suicide vehicles coming in. Uh it was it was you know, it was just a uh you know a comedy of errors, if you will. Um, the mission that we were playing was called Deep Rock Interstellar, and I I actually thought this mission was really um, it was a lot of fun and it kind of made you think uh without being too difficult. Basically, one of your mechs starts off with a mining probe and it can't sprint and it gets a max TMM and it can't use jump jets while it's carrying it. But the idea is is that it's kind of a I don't know, push your luck, which was a different mission, but it's kind of a push or luck thing. You're trying to get that probe as far into your opponent's territory or as far down the map as you can, uh, and then you want to defend it and you know hold you know and score points from that. So uh if you put it zero to sixteen inches from your home deployment, you'd get five points, 16 to 32, you'd get 10 points, and 32 to 48 from your home deployment, you'd get 20 points. So that's per round. So it was pretty um you you could build up points very quickly uh with it. So it was it was a lot of fun um kind of gaming it. I ended up winning because I was able to more or less deny my opponent from being able to really deploy or like deploy that probe soon enough so he could build up points. So I you know just more or less outscored him in that regard. Um, you know, I went like 18 inches, like more or less middle of the map, but just over the 16-inch line in a nice little nook, and then just bunkered up on that side with my bigger, heavier mechs, and then used my lighter mechs to harass his probe carrier as much as I could, you know, through some guys in there to kind of assist. Um, and that's it, it you know, he was able to bring his weight to bear towards the end, but I had already scored enough of a of a point advantage that I end up winning. But it was a great match. I mean, like Garner was saying, that flambear is ridiculous. I mean, it's it has no right being able to get, I think he, like you said, like a TMM of six.

SPEAKER_00 51:35

Um it's jump strong.

SPEAKER_01 51:38

Yeah, jump strong two, right. It's a TMM one, right. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:45

It's just and you're just jumping into woods for TMM five on I think it's an assault weapons.

SPEAKER_01 51:51

Uh it's a heavy, but it's a heavy.

SPEAKER_00 51:54

It's a heavy, heavy.

SPEAKER_01 51:55

Yeah, 662 uh with seven armor and four structure. And you know, it like you're you're not gonna throw buckets of dice where we're just gonna miss on every single shot. So, you know, for me, that was my strategy is not ignore it, but try to try to put my mechs in positions where that flamberries couldn't additively bring its you know attacks onto other things and uh try to just whittle down the rest of his list.

SPEAKER_00 52:27

I that's I just ignored it.

SPEAKER_01 52:29

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:30

Just like that, like that is just like it's not worth my time.

SPEAKER_01 52:33

Right. Right. I mean, you could throw 20 dice at it and hit with like two, so not worth it. Kill everything else, then it can't do anything. But it was a great match. I had a great time doing it. But you didn't get a boat. I didn't get a boat here.

SPEAKER_03 52:56

You already have a boat. You don't need to. Well, yeah, what do you do with the boat? I don't need to put the second boat.

SPEAKER_01 53:03

I don't know. I'm still trying to figure out what to do with the first one. It's it's great, but like Garner, you have like holy crap, this is huge, and you're gonna be able to do it.

SPEAKER_00 53:12

I think honestly, what we do is we each paint half a boat and then bring it there together and just because they're cut into pieces, right? Yeah. Like you paint like three sections of it, I paint three sections of it, we just attach it together and we just have one shared display board.

SPEAKER_01 53:34

Not bad. Uh Charner? What? Charner? Yeah. Kristen Garner, Charner. Kristen Garner, Charner.

SPEAKER_00 53:43

I was like, I have no idea what you're Garnus.

SPEAKER_02 53:48

Garnus? Don't know how that works. How that would work exactly. The fusion.

SPEAKER_01 53:53

The fusion.

SPEAKER_02 53:55

Obviously, you'd still be a narcolist.

SPEAKER_00 53:57

Yeah, clearly. Clearly, it would still be a narklist, you're right.

SPEAKER_02 54:02

And uh, we've got enough time where I can talk about my game with Garner.

SPEAKER_01 54:07

Love it.

SPEAKER_02 54:08

So, this Iliad season, I started playing around with some different ideas, trying to make a list that didn't use some of my regular go-tos. We are trying to do a slight variation because a friend of ours is trying to run a tournament as part of Crossroads GT. You're hoping to sometime soon.

SPEAKER_00 54:32

A friend already, we already know.

SPEAKER_02 54:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:34

Everybody knows who the friend out of why you're not.

SPEAKER_02 54:36

I my instinct is to be be vague. Zess. Zess is run running an event as part of a Baltic event's part of Crossroads GT. We're just waiting for some last information before we make like official announcements in force packs. But um what I what we did was we were allowing one advanced unit as part of Iliad and uh adding a pulse limit. So among those constraints, I garner saw a list of mine that had like some Narc tag and I think like uh almost 300 LRMs. Uh that felt a little silly. I ended up going with I call my my my my Thunderbird, my Stormbird list, which is a Jade Phoenix, a Stormcrow, a a uh Vapor Eagle, Stormbird Battle Armor, Ironhold Battle Armor, Ironhold Battle Armor, which are named after the Jade Falcon planet of Ironhold. Uh an Indra It's the home planet of a bird, an Indra um infantry uh carrier vehicle. Indra is the name of a god of storms, I think it's Indian. And so yeah, and a fire falcon. So everything is bird or bird related. Or bird clan bird related. It's it's a it's a jade falcon list, and I just wanted to kind of run into a meme but make it as operatable as possible within the meme. I do wish I had brought an ECM, particularly because you have a very nasty, very effective C3 list.

SPEAKER_00 56:14

You have to actually hit, though.

SPEAKER_02 56:15

You do have to actually hit. Uh yeah, that first practice game we played where your dice did not were not terrible. I obviously I didn't make the best decisions to go going into it, but you just wrecked me. It was awful.

SPEAKER_00 56:31

Then Turn one, I blew off the arm uh or was it turn one or turn two I blew off the arm?

SPEAKER_02 56:36

I think it was turn two, you blew off the arm of the Jade Phoenix. And granted, this was a this was just kind of like uh, hey, we've got like an hour and a half, like I'm waiting for some laundry to be done before I hit my head out. Let's play play a game. So we were trying to play it pretty darn fast, but it just just not my game. That was not my game. And this this I think was probably one of our closest games. Yeah. Uh at the end of it. Like, I got some I got some nasty luck, and you got some bad luck right at the beginning in terms of my Fire Falcon charging forward and infernoing your challenger tank.

SPEAKER_00 57:17

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 57:18

But and your challenger tank whiffing on shots.

SPEAKER_00 57:23

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 57:24

After that, it was a pretty fair back and forth where my battle armor couldn't hit. I was kind of whiffing and hitting a little bit here and there, but nothing was like overly aggressively dead. And I definitely, you know, by the end of the game, uh, two drinks in, was making some misplays. I should have moved my iron hold battle armors more to attack the position. We were playing the supply raid mission. I chose to bring everything except the Jade Phoenix to see how my list functions without the centerpiece, but also maximal sort of board elements to engage, because I thought, oh, you've got your nasty C3, right? You've got an ability to focus down and do things. So I wanted to try to be in a position where I could try to force you to choose different targets where there wasn't an obvious thing to narrow down. Maybe that means you just blast something out, um, but it also means I can try to have more units and outposition you. And it kind of worked. And I definitely think if I had played better and didn't make some of my the m some of the decisions, like if I'd moved the iron holds into position earlier, if I have left my um vapor eagle to move back and be defensive, and number one, the biggest mistake of this whole situation. So for anybody unfamiliar, our supply rate mission, you have six objective markers, two of them could be decoys, four of them are real, and your opponent has to try to capture them to gain points, and if they capture decoy, it explodes. And I sort of set the strategy of putting my two decoys over on one side so I can concentrate my defensive forces and not have to worry about these lakes. Just sort of an offhand the game, I wanted to get the game started. I was del you know, taking a little bit too long to plan some things because the playing this game was entirely a surprise. But I that was just a very impromptu and bad decision on my part because while I was thinking, I don't want to deal with these lakes, I'm setting this over here. I should have also realized if these were real, if these are objectives, he would have to fight through these lakes as well. And I could have potentially been more mobile to engage in defense or leave a less valuable battle armor just defending those points, in which case he would have a much tougher time getting there engaging with it. Instead, I just sort of like, well, you know, bluff it, he won't know, whatever. And I almost got that, but you you figured it out.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:14

And I mean, to be fair, even if you had done that, you didn't really look at like what my list can do. You didn't realize that every one of my mechs jumps.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:23

Oh yeah, your battle axe jumps.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:25

When my battle axe jumped forward 4x, you're like, huh? How did you get there? I'm like, I jumped forward, dude.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:31

It wasn't quite that you no, I was confused. It's like I didn't realize it jumped, so it's like, wait, how did you get there? Because I'm like, I'm I know its movement was like four six, and it's like, I don't think he can walk or I can run there. It's like, oh, he jumps. It's like, oh, okay. Whatever. Um, but ultimately, yeah, like by the end, I was two drinks in. My iron holds, I was wiggling them back between a hill back and forth when I should have moved them forward. I was kind of depending on them to actually deal damage, but they were whiffing on all their shots. And my vapor eagle, I was just playing aggressive. I walked him forward to get in a good position to shoot, and I forgot that your specter was as fast as it was. I didn't quite realize they could jump twice and get to the objective, and I was no longer in a position to buy. I run once, jump, jump a second. Well, two turns of movement get to there. I thought it was three, and I thought, you know, oh, that gives me time to put pressure here and claim this last point. But 88 to what 64. Like, but very close. You know, if if I defended the point and engaged a little bit more, you know, the Stormcrow getting into position to try to pressure on that last point, yeah. Definitely could have gone the other way, but I I make the point here of if I lose a game like that where it's it's fairly fought, it's relatively tough. I think at a certain point, like I was kind of clearly on on the back end after after after a turn here of positioning, but it wasn't it wasn't like a a drastic loss, it was I lost to a player who played more skill for me more skillfully than me. Like, sure, that's fine, that's great, that's a great game. You know, it's not like when you lose to your dice on being uncooperative, which can just feel really bad. So I enjoy losing those kinds of games. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:39

Sorry, I I'm I'm over here just marveling at how long the intra is. Yeah. Like this is this is this is one of the clan, uh, this is one of the clan fire score units of all time. What do you mean it's articulated? It's yeah, we're going into battle on a bendy bus.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:00

I I really bringing it, I kinda did appreciate it. I needed something to move the iron hold battle armor because they're assault, they can't mechognize, but they can be transported. And that thing at a reasonable BV, it can move, you know, for a 35-ton vehicle, it's got decent armor, moves okay, has a plasma cannon and four AP Goss rifles. Like, sure, you know, it'll get the job done, and it did. It survived something like 30 inferno missiles, and Garner's tank survived, didn't survive four.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:40

Yeah, that's the thing with the way Inferno interact with the vehicles. Sometimes the vehicle is just is just built in.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:47

Yeah. Just uh learning experience, seeing some interesting stuff, playing around with not the Jade Phoenix. So overall pretty cool. Now, something to throw out there that we discussed as part of this, I would well like your guys' opinion on. Garner at one point wanted to manually detonate the decoy, which I think we we talked about this, doesn't seem within the rules as written currently, but it's something to consider adding to. So that if your opponent lands a unit next to an objective that you are a decoy that you are defending, you can just hit the explodey button and explode it on you and your unit, or just in general.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:30

You're saying only if you have a unit also within range of the decoy?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:37

You it's it is a booby trap, it is a bomb, right? That you can't you can just man like remote detonate. I see.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:58

And get on it, but also be like, is it actually one? Like, well, I'm like, you should be able to press press the button. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:08

In this situation, it was I moved a unit next to it, and I was going to send a unit somewhere else, but the Garner positioned a unit to block what I was thinking about doing. So I moved the second unit with a a light active probe in position. It detected the explosive, but I had already placed a unit next to it, and Garner's like, oh, I'm gonna I'm gonna blow it up. By the by the way the rules are attended to function, it's processed after a claim. Claims are a may, so by me not attempting a claim on it, it shouldn't detonate.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:39

This was just him trying to keep his iron hold from ever dying in any game period. That's actually what happened. It's because he did not want his dire hold to ever die.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:50

But I think it is an interesting mechanic to consider, both both explicitly ruling out and making it sheer clear, because like the contention was. Because it starts claimed, and the wording is slightly ambiguous of a claimed thing can explode. The the intent as the person who wrote the rules is that it's processed when a c an an attempt claim is made by your opponent, not when it's already been claimed as a starting starting state. But what do you guys feel like about being able to explode your decoys?

SPEAKER_03 1:06:26

I think that sounds funny. Because I was gonna say, I think on one hand, I think that does some interesting things with regards to active probes because one of the um play patterns I've noticed in active probe is someone will just bomb onto an objective that is being defended. Um and then they can just scan around that while also threatening to steal the objective from out from under the defender. So I think that does that does mean that like you can't think necessarily of like a lightly defended point of safe. Um I think it also um it can also turn something into if someone is collapsing a bunch of units into an area on a computer defenu can you do an even better bluff because you hit suicide bomb one of your own units as bait.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:29

I think it also leaves a decoy that's been detected with a probe as a as a feature on the battlefield that you can position yourself around and say, hey, uh, you want to come jump on me with battle armor?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:45

Cool. They're getting boomed.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:46

Yep. You now have a defensive boom that you can you can maneuver around.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:52

So and I I was gonna say, I think that is where like instead of it being like a fully remote boom, you gotta have you gotta have someone there in range. Like maybe you only maybe you don't have to be touching to being contest, but you have to be within a limited range. I I don't wanna say a number because it could be anything. I just on it.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:18

Here's my counter to that.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:22

You are claiming it from a hex adjacent. Why are you not also setting off the tripwires at the same time? Like, if you're in that hex adjacent to it, why why can't like when you leave the objective, the tripwires are now set?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:38

I mean, so the the other thing. So the other part of this, Chris, is the objective detonates if the enemy team like processes a claim on it. So really the only time that this matters is if you, the contesting player, still have units nearby.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:00

Right. Uh uh yes. And that that was my thought, is that if if you and I are contesting an objective, I as the objective owner, the supply owner, um, I could say make it go boom.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:15

That, or I guess you could theoretically just assert dominance, detonate all of your fake decoys, turn one. Yeah. There's no vibe anymore. I just that these are showing you my hand. I'm going to play rock. Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:34

I mean, and I'm fine with it. Like, I don't know, I think that's fine.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:39

I yeah, I I could I could see I see rules as written, you know, the way that it's currently written is is that you can't do your you can't explode your own decoy, but I think as far as like from a narrative perspective, I could see a player choosing to explode their own depots, you know, and and kind of I the remote part I'm not sure about entirely. Like I could see like you know, maybe make it something like uh ECM contested, you know. Like if I have uh communications to it, you might be able to you as the attacker or the other side might be able to intercept with ECM unless I have the ECCO, you know, that kind of a concept.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:27

Like as a mechanic, yeah. Like I uh playing around with the idea of I would have it activated as at the end of the movement phase rather than have have players gain an action during the end phase. That feels kind of weird. So at the end of the movement phase, you may activate the a decoy as long as it's not within a hostile ECM.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:54

Yeah, yeah. That that sounds good to me. I I think that's a better balance. Yes, see, it plays into that too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:08

I would I would avoid like going too deep into like your stuff just because I think the idea here is here is a choice that you can make. And I think the choice itself is powerful enough. I don't think we need to start attaching a bunch of extra lunar game around it.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:28

Just just the as long as it's not in an ECM.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:33

Yeah. Or oh, and here like here's the here's the other thing. You may contesting, I think, is a may. I'll have to double check. So if your opponent goes through and tries to process a claim, you can say, I don't defend I don't defend it. And they can set the bomb off that way in theory.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:58

Yeah, that that might be uh an interesting way of uh handling that too.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:04

I think it's I think it's it like I think the only time it seems like this will ever become actually relevant is if you already have a unit on the objective anyway, and you're just trying to um you're trying to call an airstrike on your own position. So I don't think I don't think we need to we don't need to make it super power like so. No you can you can choose to you can choose to make your own guys.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:27

Yep. And uh I think you know the movement phase thing makes sense to me so that it's prior to certain information and remote prevents an action added to the end phase. Cool. Seems we all are in agreement. We are wrapping up here. Uh so uh yeah. Any closing thoughts about the games you've played or um Motor City Man?

SPEAKER_01 1:12:57

I would encourage everybody out there.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:59

Other than good job, Steve.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:01

Yeah, yeah, great job, Steve.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:04

Maybe he'll listen to our podcast and love us. Maybe he'll read our rules that I sent him a year and a half ago.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:13

Yeah, Steve, Steve definitely doesn't have any other podcasts that he should be thinking about.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:19

No, not at all.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:20

Yeah. No. Hey, people are people are uh people starting to recognize us. We're gonna we're gaining some support, so. Who? People at stuff. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:33

I would the the cooling pod guys, they joke. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:41

Who? You, the listener out there. The listener.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:46

So thank you, listeners, for including you, Jeremy. Is there a Jeremy? I have no idea.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:55

I listen. I I can uh like I should just go through and figure out what the like mean age of a battle tech player is and then just pick the most popular names from that year.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:07

I could look at some of the the lists from Motor City Mayhem and probably do uh an analysis. Davis seems to be popular. David, you, you thank you for listening, David.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:23

Alright, we've we've we've we've just this we've uh descended an absurdity. So, alright, as always, thank you for joining me, Luke and Gardner, and and again, Chris as uh one of our recurring friends. Thank you for joining. And uh everybody listening at home, have a great night.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:41

Have a good one.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:50

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

SPEAKER_03 1:15:36

What the business noise?

SPEAKER_02 1:15:39

Yep. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:40

Yeah, that's the sound of I've been trying to do what I'm not taught and then pleasing.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:47

Look at that mic. Hobby progress, can't interrupt it.