No. I’m not going to talk about funny green ogres. Today’s Alpha Strike ‘Mech of the Week is a…vehicle. The Schrek and its variants, including the Narukami.
Everybody (in the Inner Sphere) has Schreks. Schreks were an early Succession Wars invention, so the Clans didn’t have any to take with them on their Exodus. But everybody in the Inner Sphere during the Succession Wars has Schreks. Even way out the Periphery.
All Schreks are long range assault tanks. Fill out Fire Lances with them. They’re going to sit in place and fire away at whatever you need to be destroyed. Once the enemy has given up on whatever location they are at, they’ll then lumber on over to whatever piece of real estate you want next. But they are not Juggernauts. They are Snipers. An enemy can rush them and destroy them, they have relatively light armor. Range is a somewhate adequate protection. If using the Hull Down advanced option from the Companion, that’s helpful too. Schreks generally carry all their firepower from turrets and like to sit still. That goes great with a fortified position, but only one that allows a view of the battlefield. Avoid built up cities and large forests. A flat plain is good. A flat plain where the enemy has to cross half flooded and marshy is even better. Or even use other units to keep the enemy off your Schreks. Whatever you can do to keep the Schreks firing for longer is good for the Schreks.
If those options all fail you, you will be flinching every time they are fired at. Four armor on an assault unit, and only four structure behind it. Riflemen and Warhammers are snickering at the Schrek’s “toughness”.
That lack of speed and armor does mean one good thing. Schrek’s are pretty cheap. A single Atlas AS7-D, or a pair of Schreks. Six damage per turn from those Schreks at long range will hurt. And you can happily “move” them first, saving your initiative for moving units that really care where they are going.
Our general Alpha Strike Special Ability of the Week note. Turrets (TUR). Schreks carry all their weaponry in their turrets, making them a good reason to talk about the turrets. Turrets allow a unit to attack in its rear arc. That may seem redudant with the (newer) REAR special ability. Both allow you to target the rear arc. REAR, as a special ability, is actually slightly better in that it is at least possible to attack to the rear and the front. But you end up losing damage from your standard (front) attack in order to also do the REAR attack. Turret can't do that. But Turrets are usually more effective because of "behind the scenes" construction. Rear weapons are permenatantly rear mounted and only fire to the rear. Turret mounted weapons get counted for standard/forward damage as well as turret. So you get to use all your (turret-mounted) weapons no matter if you are firing forward or backward. So Turret damage values tend to be much higher than REAR damage values.
On the Schrek, for example, it carries three PPCs. 3/3/3. With a Turret, it can fire all three of them to the rear, still 3/3/3. If it wanted to use the REAR special ability instead of a turret, it would have to permenantly mounted one of those PPCs to the rear, and presumably the other two to the front. That would give foward firing 2/2/2, and REAR1/1/1. So yeah, you could fire the 1/1/1 REAR, and subtract one to fire 1/1/1 to the front... Not all that exciting.
One great use of turrets is anti-air. They're going to come where you least expect it, but with turrets, you can fire back no matter what direction they attack from, as long as their flight path is in range. There's not much an aerospace fighter can do to avoid a turreted anti-air tank.
If a TUR has a special ability listed within its parantheses, it can also use that special ability in the rear arc. If it's not listed within the TUR special ability, then you can't.
One note that does not apply to Schreks. If the unit is large enough to have multiple firing arcs (mobile structures, large support naval vessels), then it's turrets are additional attacks. Otherwise, turrets are instead of normal (forward firing) attacks.
Succession Wars
It’s all about the three damage at long range. Or any range. You do three damage and the enemy will hurt. The 3 is adequate at medium and short range, but if you plan on fighting at medium and short range, there are options that can do that and have more armor or more speed. You paid (25 PV) for a long range of 3.
Behind the scenes, we dropped some armor for some minor anti-infantry weapons. All that really means is we lost a point of armor. If you really need to save 2 PV, maybe to pay for Skill upgrades, here you go. Considering the number of Succession Wars era units with two long range damage, I like having that fourth point of Armor to keep me from taking crits on the second hit. If you’re fighting against the Clans, the armor is worthless, take the extra Skill!
Blasphemy! This model replaces the PPCs with autocannons. Presumably because the Pike hadn’t been invented yet. It does have more armor, but it loses long AND medium range damage. The real point of this model is the AC special ability. Precision AC ammo is great for dealing with pesky, hard-to-hit Scouts and Strikers. Flak AC ammo to deal with aerospace. If you’re not using alternate munitions, then this variant is a horrible idea. If you are, and need something to deal with fast bugs (those on the ground or in the air), then this is a pretty rare AC with 2 at long range variant.
JihadNow we skip to the Jihad. Yes, we skipped the entire Clan Invasion and Civil War eras. Nobody updated the Schrek. Three PPCs is always a good idea, and vehicles never got the ability to use double heat sinks. The good old Schrek PPC Carrier remained the good old Schrek PPC Carrier. By the Jihad, people were starting to feel like they _should_ be able to make the Schrek better.
The first Jihad variant went directly at the main problem, armor. Using advanced armor, they got another point of Armor on the Schrek, without giving up on anything else. If you got access to it, go for it. If you don’t, you’re not missing much. Keep the extra three PV this variant costs, and up your Schrek’s Skill rating and feel confident your armor corps is just fine as is.
The second variant finally does something noticeably different. Behind the scenes, we exchange one PPC for a new light PPC. Alpha Strike conversion rounding keeps our long and medium and 3, but the reduced light ppc damage does hit at short range, dropping it to a 2.
Why did they do this? Because we want a C3 Master, and ECM to protect it from jamming. For a long-range Sniper, this is an awesome idea. Anything that helps us hit with our three long range damage is a great idea. Unfortunately, our PV jumped to 34. But we only need one master per lance. Unfortunately, nobody ever made a Schrek with a c3 slave (until a later era). You’ll have to look elsewhere for c3 mates.
The really unfortunate part is that we are now drawing more attention to a unit that still has only four Armor. Can it take that attention? Not for long. And then our c3 network is gone along with our Schrek. The addition of AMS is not really going to save us from any real effort to take it out. But I’ll give this one credit for its ability to scare an opponent. They will come after it.
The Jihad also brought us an experimental Schrek. The Schrek II-X is better at what a Schrek is all about. We hit a sweet four damage at long and medium range! And we pack more armor (6!). And only jump the PV to 32. It’s just better at being a Schrek. Go hog wild and get all you….wait. It’s unique. It’s got an XXL engine, and the Inner Sphere just wasn’t capable of mass production (yet). By the time they got XXL’s going, they had forgotten about the poor Schrek II-X.
Early Republic
Post Jihad, the Draconis Combine renamed their new Schrek, the Narukami. They poured some money in to giving the Narukami an XL engine (always good for tanks), freeing up a good amount of tonnage. It slightly improves the damage, giving it a 4 and long and medium range. But mostly the Narukami is about armor. Nine points of armor, CASE, critical resistance, and AMS shows the focus of the improvements. The Narukami is no longer afraid of the enemy, and is willing to take on even Davion assault tanks head on. Drawbacks? It’s still slow, so we’re still a Sniper. And the 41 PV shows the costs of that protection.
The Combine also provide us with one variant on the Narukami. The BC3 is a boosted C3 slave variant. If you have a c3 network, the 2 PV is negligible for the benefits of the c3. Quite simple, take the BC3 if you have a c3 network.
