Vehicle of the Week: Gürteltier MBTSome tanks are small, fragile, weakly armed things, ill-suited for the combat usage of Real Men like Thomas Hogarth or Caesar Steiner. Aware that as a nation of Real Men, they needed another Real Man's Tank for open field combat that wasn't
castrated differently reproductively abled by anti-missile systems, the Lyran quartermasters submitted a range of requirements to Defiance Industries as it rebuilt; the fact that they bear a suspicious similarity to a Challenger variant is the sort of thing a Real Man wouldn't concern himself with. Looking upon Defiance's work and pronouncing it good, the LAAF named it Gürteltier for a Real Man's Roadkill, the noble armadillo, an animal of thick shells that still somehow manages to get itself turned into street pizza all the time in Florida. Most frequently assigned to Real Men in the Royal and Lyran Guards units, it is not given unto the poorly-funded and fumble-fingered men in the militia and has proven itself in combat with the Wolves. Sales have been made to the Republic of the Sphere and the Federated Suns, also nations of Real Men thanks to their ties to the glorious Lyran
Alliance Commonwealth.
Because this is supposed to be an assault tank, you already know it's going to be big, and Defiance didn't bother doing anything but going straight for the gold with a 100 ton tracked chassis. The power plant is the same Vlar 300 XL we've seen recently on the Moltke and on classic Real Man's 'Mechs like the
Devastator, the
Thunder Hawk, and the
Atlas. It might have even saved them some retooling costs since it was probably the same one the Blakists were using in the Thunderbolt-armed Demolisher IIs. The armor is absolutely staggering, 19 tons of StarSlab/4 heavy ferro-fibrous arranged 109/75/50/67, the sort of thing you test by dropping a Crockett nearby to see what breaks. CASE was included, too, because a Real Man should not be troubled by minor trifles like ammunition explosions. The firepower isn't quite as overwhelming as the armor levels - it resembles something those of us who aren't Real Men would call sane - but it's definitely making an impression. The main guns are an ER PPC and a Gauss rifle with a generous 24 shots, backstopped by an MML 7 with its own three tons of ammunition. The sides and stern have machine guns fed by a half-ton of ammo to clear away those annoying crowds that always show up when Real Men pull up to the curb at the flip of a switch. (Hoses to clean the mess up not included.) The reason all of that firepower looks a bit light? There's a targeting computer. Yes, a targeting computer for a Gauss rifle and an ER PPC. Real Men don't miss, and they really don't miss with a C3 slave. After all of that, the Guardian ECM suite is almost blasé.
But Real Men know that a C3 slave isn't worth much by itself and the masters to control them must also be mounted in a Real Man's Tank if they're to survive in a Real Man's War. So they sent the pencil-necks back to the drawing board until they built the next model. The only changes are the removal of the Gauss rifle for an LB 10-X, upgrading the C3 slave to a master computer, with some additional savings from the targeting computer and turret assemblies getting lighter invested into a forward-mounted machine gun and Artemis IV for the MMLs.
Unmentioned in the list of variants in TRO3085 (probably due to a desire not to reduce the sanity of readers, a petty concern this author does not share) was the Rosa Gürteltierfee, the personal sports car of Thomas Hogarth. Lesser men were not meant to know the stats of a Real Man's Sports Car and Herb in his wisdom has not chosen to release them.
Once you've paid your Real Man's Bill for your new Real Man's Tanks, you need to use them like a Real Man. Anyone with track-killing weapons - LB-Xs, SB Gauss, SRMs, and other little joys - should be introduced to the business end of the Poland Main Model A on the turret posthaste. Even so, with the shell these things are wearing, getting critted out is a larger problem than actual unit destruction, so move aggressively into commanding fire positions and rely on the long range and C3 network to give you the numbers you need to prove why Real Men are so dangerous. Then pick your target, beat it to the ground, and repeat this process until no one's obliging enough to wander into range. You may want to consider a ton of special munitions for the MMLs depending on the situation; popular choices are going to be Infernos or fragmentation SRMs but Thunders may be useful if you foresee a need to shape a battlefield with a lance's worth of MML fire.
Okay, so you're not a ridiculous parody being ridden into the ground by some hack writer, but you've got to deal with someone who is. Gürteltiers are unreasonably tough but not difficult to hit or immobilize. This means that your best bet is to try and disable it quickly in some position where it can't readily contribute fire, then either just leave it there, pound it with indirect fire (including artillery), or come back and finish it after eliminating other problems. If you don't mind risking the VTOL, a Cavalry with Infernos has a good chance of inflicting the necessary movement hits, while an SB Gauss can keep you at arm's reach and generate enough clusters to do the job. Minefields may be useful for keeping them out of ideal firing positions while you're getting ready to stop them, although you'll probably need Thunders to get the necessary fast response if you're not able to prepare the battlefield ahead of time. The armor level is high enough that it's far from unreasonable to suggest orbital bombardment or tacnukes as the proper solution to a company of them clustered together. One thing not to do is letting a lance them operate in a network and giving said network a clear shot - one mistake like that may not destroy a heavy 'Mech outright but a second time for the same lucky 'Mech is going to be difficult to survive. Unfortunately, if you're playing with ECCM rules, jamming them is easier said than done (although jamming a detached spotter is more viable), and the weapons load means they don't have to get that close to have better shots with the main guns than you really want to contemplate.
References: Because typing an umlaut is a little complicated for many people, it's easier to find the Gürteltier's MUL entry
with a link. To date, as far as I can tell, no miniature has been produced.
