Honour's Gauntlet - SPOILERS ahead

[Jaim Magnus]

Just thought we could move the discussion here.

[Jaim Magnus]

Obviously the big take away is March 3151, Terra.

I'm letting my thoughts on the rest of the novel percolate and will eventually post them here.

[Fat Guy]

Given the dates, the mystery objective wasn't much of a mystery.

The Wolves needed the Dragoons to rendezvous with them no later then February 5th.

[MarauderD]

Yep,

So Wolves jump in January (with or without Fidelis helping), and by March we have the Falcons jumping in.   While I don't see them contributing in any meaningful way--it opens the door to Capellans and Kuritans jumping in as well--how crazy would a 4 (5?) way fight for Terra be?

[Jaim Magnus]

Yep,

So Wolves jump in January (with or without Fidelis helping), and by March we have the Falcons jumping in.   While I don't see them contributing in any meaningful way--it opens the door to Capellans and Kuritans jumping in as well--how crazy would a 4 (5?) way fight for Terra be?

That's something that I would really like to see.

[hf22]

So my big take outs are:

1. I hate even the moderate Jade Falcon characters, whose objections aren't to civilian mass-murder per se, only to civilian mass-murder which doesn't actually help achieve objectives. Malvina Hazen has certainly moved the Overton Window within her Clan - They are dark age Wobbies at this point.

2. The Falcons look like they are over-committing to Terra with everything available, and even the Lyrans are managing to take back worlds behind them. Whatever Falcon forces survive the battle for Terra might not have much of a path left back to their occupation zone.

[Wrangler]

Still reading. Be back. Enjoying the new fiction before i go back to rereading old stuff again.

[Wrangler]

Has one determine if that Quad CargoMech that was ramming Archer's machine was using ramplate?

[DarkISI]

So my big take outs are:

2. The Falcons look like they are over-committing to Terra with everything available, and even the Lyrans are managing to take back worlds behind them. Whatever Falcon forces survive the battle for Terra might not have much of a path left back to their occupation zone.

Sounds exactly like something Malvina would do.

Has one determine if that Quad CargoMech that was ramming Archer's machine was using ramplate?

Definite no. Ram Plates are military technology. You aren't talking military equipment here.

[Geg]

Yep,

So Wolves jump in January (with or without Fidelis helping), and by March we have the Falcons jumping in.   While I don't see them contributing in any meaningful way--it opens the door to Capellans and Kuritans jumping in as well--how crazy would a 4 (5?) way fight for Terra be?

You forgot the Davion's.   After Stone bailed out Julian with his expeditionary force.   You gotta assume he's going to cash in that chit.

[Wrangler]

Sounds exactly like something Malvina would do.



Definite no. Ram Plates are military technology. You aren't talking military equipment here.

Yep, guns at your back tend to be prime motivator to keep going forwards.

[Decoy]

You forgot the Davion's.   After Stone bailed out Julian with his expeditionary force.   You gotta assume he's going to cash in that chit.

Which is basically the return of three regiments worth of battle hardened troops by now. Throw in whatever the distraction value of retaking New Avalon is.

[MarauderD]

I would be stunned if Davion spared troops to fight on Terra, even if they were honor bound to do so, before they retook New Avalon and the 'Dragon's Tongue' worlds.  I can see Julian feeling like he owes Stone the troops.  I just can't see the AFFS spreading themselves even thinner than they already are, with so many occupied worlds in the Crucis March.  Just my  $.02

[FaithBomb]

I think most of our questions from the book re: Terra and such have been answered with the release of HotW, so I wanted to touch on some of the reasons why this is one of my favorites of the new novels, if not my outright favorite.

1) I think it does a really good job with the "good" Jade Falcons. It's one of the problems with the Mongol Doctrine from a character standpoint, the fact that you have an absolutely horrible regime that routinely commits war crimes. You have the small minority who do not agree and do their best to avoid falling into the depths of depravity of the rest of the Clan. I think with Archer and his unit, we get a clear enough picture of it, in that their involvement isn't sugar coated. It sets up what I think is going to be an interesting problem to deal with in the post-HotW novels for the Jade Falcons. No matter how opposed these characters were to Malvina, the fact remains that they WERE a part of the regime and there will have to be some kind of a reckoning and soul searching.

2) Scale: One of the troubles that a lot of the MWDA novels in particular suffered from was that the scale of actual combat was so small. In HG, we get a relatively small scale combat, but it doesn't FEEL small. There is enough meat on the bones of the mech combat, and combined with the larger political overtones, it feels like the novel has meaning within the scope of things.

3) We get a main character who is a different kind of clanner. He smiles! He curses in Spanish! He is a lot more thoughtful and a lot less brute force than your typical clanner, especially a Jade Falcon. He also seems to have a relationship with the troops under his command that's more akin to a Spheroid commander, he seems to know and genuinely care about them, and you get the feeling that this serves him well in that he has to worry far less about a knife in the back to take his job than your average clan commander.

4) Space lesbians! It's not the first LGBTQ+ reference that we get in BattleTech print, but it's still awesome to see continued inclusion!