Vehicle of the Week: Morrígú Fire Support VehicleDesigned by the Blood Spirits to bolster their forces after the Star Adders decided to turn York into their personal training center, the Morrígú was named by Khan Karianna Schmitt after the Celtic mythological figure and war goddess in reference to her own Welsh ancestry. Also known as the Morrigan, Morrígú's status as being present “wherever there was war” was suitable to Schmitt's own bloody intentions for anyone making war against the Blood Spirits. As of the end of 3067, they were being heavily produced by the York Vehicle Y2 facility and had been deployed with every Blood Spirit Galaxy. In addition, a Star has been reported in the arsenal of Kindraa Mick-Kreese's 22nd Combat Force, a newly-formed cluster, another sign of the ties between the Blood Spirits and Fire Mandrills that would later play a major role in the outcome of the Wars of Reaving.
The basic design of the Morrígú is overall pretty conventional. At 80 tons, they're just barely into the assault tank category, and a tracked motive type gives you a fair degree of flexibility in your choice of terrain. The 240-rated standard fusion engine is bog standard for the Clans and powerful enough to match a Demolisher or the like with a flank speed of 54 kph under normal conditions. (I'll get to that caveat in the next paragraph.) The armor is pretty good overall - 13 tons of standard plate - but given my druthers I might tweak the distribution of 63/41/28/35 a bit to reinforce the turret. The weapons load is very Blood Spirit by featuring their very favorite weapons. A pair of Series 1 ERLLs and two Type XV “Crossbow” LRM 15 launchers are carried in the turret, with four tons of ammunition split between the launchers. Gracing the sides are a pair of SRM 2s. Well, at least you can toss Infernos in there to “discourage” enemy BA. Finally, ECM was added to improve the tank's defenses.
The variant is a bit different. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that, given what the Blood Spirits are looking at in terms of primary combat environments (York), it's also a pretty smart design despite aspects of if that are a little concerning. Why do I say that? Flip open
Wars of Reaving and take a look at York's entry. 1.3 Gs and the weather can get.. interesting. In addition to slowing things down (leaving the Morrígú at 2/3), it affects direct fire missile and ballistic weapons' to-hit chances, so LRMs aren't really an ideal weapon, and the wind component of various weather conditions tends not to help anything in that regard. While I don't know if that had any influence on the design out of character, it's worth remembering when you think about their preference for ERLLs - the sheer reach is enormously helpful in maintaining accuracy at range, and LRMs get something of the same effect relative to other missile weapons. So, perhaps with that in mind, the Blood Spirits created a variant that traded all the launchers, the ECM, and two tons of armor for a third ERLL. Under a lot of conditions, you've just traded away a significant chunk of your damage and the reduction to a 53/35/24/29 armor spread is painful, but as a standoff support platform under conditions that obtain on York, it makes a certain amount of sense.
Employing the Morrígú is a matter of exploiting the weapons range to pour fire out before someone manages to breach your armor. This is a sniper, so use it like one: Find a good spot and pick single targets to take a Point or two's fire at once. The ERLLs have a reach longer than most other standard weapons while the LRMs are going to be your crit-seekers. If someone starts trying to close, try to maintain advantageous targeting modifiers as long as possible - letting a close-range Clan brawler close in is going to hurt.
If you want to kill Morrígú, go ahead and pick your range according to what your own weapons are. It's going to be in range if you are for most guns with the serious potential to do anything about it. The armor's not light, so try to hit the considerably thinner flanks (especially the rear) if you get the opportunity, but otherwise, bring some nice heavy guns, keep your modifiers up to reduce damage, and get ready to do some pounding. LB 5-Xs or either type of class 2 autocannon might be handy to try and do some crit-seeking without needing to close against an enemy who's probably going to start shooting at 25 hexes, so consider bringing some along if you can.
References: The
Master Unit List has most of the information you need, including BattleForce stats, while Jal Phoenix has provided a very nicely painted example from
Omega Galaxy on CamoSpecs.
