Black Watch – Hark hark the Star League Mark 2 is calling!
Background
In the late 3050s and early 3060s there was a worrying new feeling in the Inner Sphere. Optimism! The Second Star League had been formed to fight the Clans and defend the Inner Sphere from their onslaught and Houses who had long been bitter and bloody enemies were now turning their swords from one another to their real and mutual enemy. The militaries of the Houses were rebuilding, re-arming and technology long since forgotten was spreading across the Inner Sphere, sparking a veritable renaissance for the Houses and their civilians. The promise of a Second Star League that could maybe bring back the ‘good old days’ of the original seemed very bright indeed.
Part of this also saw the reactivation of the Royal Black Watch, the traditional guardians of the First Lord as well as a desire to create a Mech that would defend the Star League against the Clans with contributions from most of the Houses going into its construction. It was an obvious choice to name this mech the Black Watch.
A joint effort between Cosara Weaponries and the Northwind Highlanders (who would form the Black Watch) was also designed in part by Combine and Davion teams whilst Cosara would finally give the Highlanders their own Mech factory like those enjoyed by the Wolfs Dragoons and Kell Hounds.
DesignThe Kuritan part of the design team voiced their admiration of Assault Mech’s (and we can only imagine any Lyrans nearby might have nodded at that) and suggested they base the design on an already existent one, in this case the 85-ton Crockett/Katana and this was happily accepted by all involved as the Crockett was easy to repair and had a good history of service and thus served as the basis.
And they REALLY did copy the Crockett design for the Black Watch. With the same engine a 225-rated standard powering it the Black Watch isn’t speedy, and will quite happily lumber along at 56kph, whilst a trio of jump jets will let it leap up to 90 meters at a time. The engine and jump jets are supported by an endo-steel skeleton to save some weight the 15-tons of standard armour are well laid out and give the mech solid if not full protection across its frame.
Fortunately, the design does also feature double heatsinks, but only the 10 built into its hull.
So, slow, sturdy and well armoured, gotta have a lot of guns right….right?
VariantsBKW-7R – Nope! This things not actually got many guns. The standard engine eats up a lot of weight and then the designers put a trio of heavy weapons on it instead of opting for a more diverse weapons load, but the weapons load is still quite diverse and really shows off its joint production nature. From the Free Worlds League, we get the Mech’s main punch with a Light Gauss rifle living in the left arm and an Ultra-10 in the right. The Gauss has a single ton of ammo whilst the Ultra has 2-tons of ammo for adequate but not great endurance.
For mid to short range a HUGE MRM-40 donated by House Kurita lives in the left torso and this too draws from a 2-ton ammo bin, but here’s the worrying part. All that explodium is stored together in the CASE protected right torso. And as there’s
NO other crits to pad it out, the
ONLY thing you can hit if you penetrate the right torso is 4-tons of explosive ammunition and some inert gauss slugs. Losing the right torso basically kills the Mech as it has NO other weapons. Also, from the Combine a C3 slave system is safely mounted in the head as part of its electronic wizardry but that rounds out the 7R’s war load. You’ll only start overheating if you jump and do a full alpha, otherwise you can’t overheat at all, so at least it runs cool, but that 4-ton ammo bomb is a terrifying flaw.
BKW-9R – Coming out many years later during the Jihad the 9R is a bit more rounded a combatant and might seem a tad boring because of it. One big change though is the armour’s increased to 16.5 tons of armour, with a greater emphasis on forwards protection than rear as well as carrying the maximum its frame can support. This Mech isn’t really designed to operate as part of a ‘lets hold lands and be friends’ Lance of SLDF Mk2 Mechs, but instead it’s a bruiser and its weapons and armour layout show that. The original weapons load is gone but is kind of replicated. The light gauss is stripped out and replaced with a standard gauss, but somewhat worryingly, its only got 1 ton of ammo. The Ultra’s gone too and replaced with a heavy PPC for long to mid ranged power punches that mesh well with the punch of the gauss. The MRM’s been replaced with a pair of more flexible MML-7 launchers, each with two tons of ammo. Which is all safely stored together in the same torso (the Left)
WITH NO CASE!? Oh, and there’s a TAG there too in the head in place of the C3 slave. So, this takes the issue with the ammo bomb on the 7R and looks at it dismissively before simply saying “Weak.” Oh! And there’s two extra heat sinks, meaning this thing still runs cool.
Thoughts and using oneAn interesting If somewhat unfocused design that the 9R kind of fixes the 7R can do adequately at its job but its firepower is disjointed. The range brackets don’t work as the Ultra’s got a longer range than the MRMs and the Light gauss has a HUGE range over anything that’s not an AC-2 or artillery. This means you can’t really sit at a specific range where all your weapons just work. The MRM’s short-range bracket is a measly 3 hexes meaning you’re at medium range (it does what it says on the can I guess?) for the rockets and ultra, but you’ve got that nasty +1 penalty to hit with the MRM’s. So do you get in close or what..and then getting in close is a challenge because this thing is slow.
The 9R is far more sensible but also far more lethal to its pilot. The gauss rifle and heavy PPC work well together and can rip great bloody gouges in a target which you can fill with MML explosive goodness. And then Mr Murphy and Sod of law come along, doft their caps and smile before you get a crit in the left torso. At which point there’s an earth shatteringly loud explosion and no Black Watch 9R left save some smoking debris and its foot actuators. Clearly built for the brutal fighting of the Jihad, the 9R is a good way to do damage and get pilots killed at the same time.
Of the two, the 9R is the better of the two designs, its more conventional, its weapons work better together and have more useful range brackets, but that torso bomb is just asking to be hit. And if you’re fighting a Black Watch, go for the left torso, you’ll kill the 7R with one crit even if the Mech survives as it will only be able to kick and punch you and you’ll just reduce a 9R to a debris field.
I really wish I could say much more but there’s not much to say, as a Mech its perfectly fine, its not great, and it has a huge glaring weak spot you want to hit for maximum damage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhih9Pxkqpo - March of the 1st Royal Scots aka The Black Watch.
https://imgur.com/gallery/6lVuX0J - Colourized footage of a Black Watch 9R taking part in fighting on Tharkad.
as always, thoughts, comments etc are most welcome!
