3085 Clan Forces

[Ladob]

Building upon the impulse from the Hell Horse's lance thread I thought: "why not let the community bring on some interesting units for my next mini-campagin?"

In short: in April I will field another mekwars rp mini-campaign in 3085, a follow up to the succesful Filtvelt Campaign one. It will have as main theme the intense border conflicts between Horses, Falcons and Wolves.

It will be a short event, and I imagine that one supernova trinary per side will be enough (sort of 9 novas, i.e., 9 players, a reasonable ammount).

If you're a Wolf, or JF, HH fan.... what would a Nova of yours look like? Please keep to the 3085 RATs or MUL information.

[Diplominator]

Well, I'll bite. I'm most familiar with the Falcons, so here's a couple possibilities:

If it's a front-line, well-equipped unit and it's very well-integrated with the BA assets, I'd go with

Night Gyr
Flamberge
Flamberge
Summoner
Nova

That makes for a fairly tough and extremely mobile force. The specific variants can change that, though. You can use slower Flamberges and have 4/6/4 be the norm with the others as fast flankers. Alternately, you can make a jump of 5 or 6 the norm and keep the Night Gyr back as a sort of fire support unit, although against other Clans "fire support" isn't necessarily a meaningful concept.

And then five points of APGR-toting fireproof Elementals. The Falcons do have other options there, although I'm less fond of them.
-Regular Elementals do get more SRMs, but fireproof BA is also really nice. Plasma rifles are not uncommon these days.
-APGR and Interdictor Afreets can be kinda cool too, and the jump of 4 lets them keep up, but they're sooooo fragile.
-Salamanders are also pretty fragile by Clan standards, but they're not a bad choice. Might do to mix a point or two of them with other stuff.
-Ironholds and Fironholds are awesome but really just way too slow. It doesn't help that the Falcons don't have any decent BA transports. Yes, I know about the BA Indra. I said "decent," not "slow and terrible."


If it's a less well-equipped star, and Omnis aren't the order of the day:

Jupiter
BLR-4S BattleMaster
BattleMaster C
Thunderbolt IIC
Thunderbolt IIC


If you can't carry BA, it helps if you aren't really much faster than the BA. Still, it might be a good idea to attach Afreets to this star so they have less trouble keeping up. Fluff-wise, this would be a star set up to combat-test the Thunderbolt IIC. Support them properly and they can do pretty gruesome things. The BattleMasters are fine against other 'Mechs, but they're very good against BA what with the piles of medium lasers. Oh, and the HAG on the clan version. And then a Jupiter because I like Jupiters and they kill everything super dead.

[Prydefalcn]

I will totally design your JF force for you, Ladob :X (waiting to call dibs for your next mini-campaign)

There are many options you can go with, the important questio I suppose is what Diplominator touched on in his post.

Are you looking at front-line or second-line?

[willydstyle]

My Nova from the other thread (oh why oh why are so many cool Clan vees archived?):

Star 1:
Nova Prime
Stormcrow B (because who doesn't want a little UAC20 love?)
Fenris H
1 point Enyo Strike Tanks
1 point Epona Pursuit Tanks (one prime, one C for ECM)

Star 2:
1 point Afreet
2 points Gnome (since they're pretty iconic)
1 point Salamander
1 point Elementals

[Hellraiser]

Wolf Heavy Star.  (No idea if this fits 3085 RAT or not)

Gargoyle-A
TimberWolf-A
LineBacker-A
MadDog-Prime
IceFerret-Prime

3 Points of Elementals,  2 Points of Medium Clan BA.

[jymset]

-Ironholds and Fironholds are awesome but really just way too slow. It doesn't help that the Falcons don't have any decent BA transports. Yes, I know about the BA Indra. I said "decent," not "slow and terrible."

"Fironhold", lovely!

And the 2nd part of that is sooo sig-worthy! May I?

[Deadborder]

Wolf Heavy Star.  (No idea if this fits 3085 RAT or not)

Gargoyle-A
TimberWolf-A
LineBacker-A
MadDog-Prime
IceFerret-Prime

3 Points of Elementals,  2 Points of Medium Clan BA.

There are Omnis in it so it doesn't.

[Pa Weasley]

Quickly flipping through the Wolf rosters and RATs from FM: 3085 going to disagree and say yeah, it's reasonable. While they're understrength, most of the front line clusters have high (often 100%) omni ratings. Four of the five omnis listed to show up in the Wolf's RAT and the outlier is has Jihad/Dark Age "IS Clan General" availability.

[Deadborder]

More of a joke then anything else; though if you read the fluff in 3085, it suggests that the Wolves are running very short on Omnis. And, while yes, all of the above appear on the Wolf RATs, the heavy table is very skewed towards non-Omni mechs.

[Pa Weasley]

True, I'm just saying that Omins in Clan Wolf aren't dead yet so the proposed nova is possible.

[willydstyle]

Never make the mistake that every mech you use has to appear on the RAT in order for your proposed force to be fictionally appropriate.  The RATs are for making a quick, flavorful force, they do not have the force of canon behind the weights they give to certain units.

[Hellraiser]

-Ironholds and Fironholds are awesome but really just way too slow. It doesn't help that the Falcons don't have any decent BA transports. Yes, I know about the BA Indra. I said "decent," not "slow and terrible." 

Off the top of my head,  every Clan has access to all of these....
Svantovit ?   Cobra ?   Anhur  ?    Maxim-C  ?   Bandit-C  ?
All of which deliver a point or more of BA and do it very quickly.

[willydstyle]

I dig the Anhur a lot, and the Battle Armor variant can carry a full point of assault battle armor, even if you play with the tac ops carry capacity rules.

[Diplominator]

"Fironhold", lovely!

And the 2nd part of that is sooo sig-worthy! May I?

By all means!

Off the top of my head,  every Clan has access to all of these....
Svantovit ?   Cobra ?   Anhur  ?    Maxim-C  ?   Bandit-C  ?
All of which deliver a point or more of BA and do it very quickly.

Okay, fair enough. The Bandit in particular looks nice. Part of it is that two-vehicle points of carrier tend not to match up neatly when you only have one star of infantry. You either get an empty transport or a mixed point of a transport and something else, neither of which is especially elegant. On top of that, the objective is to make a Nova, i.e. integrated 'Mechs and battle armor. If you also need vehicles to move your BA around, it becomes something else entirely.

The BA Anhur and the Cobra are IMO the best way to shuffle around BA, but only the Horses get the former and the latter is apparently limited to WoB/C*.

[willydstyle]

According to the MUL, the Anhur (standard) has Clan General availability.

[Diplominator]

According to the MUL, the Anhur (standard) has Clan General availability.

And with only seven tons of cargo, it can only carry a single point of BA.

[Hellraiser]

Part of it is that two-vehicle points of carrier tend not to match up neatly when you only have one star of infantry. You either get an empty transport or a mixed point of a transport and something else, neither of which is especially elegant.

 

The BA Anhur and the Cobra are IMO the best way to shuffle around BA, but only the Horses get the former and the latter is apparently limited to WoB/C*

And with only seven tons of cargo, it can only carry a single point of BA.

The comments above seem to be contradictory.
You didn't want to split up points into APC+Tank but at the same time want 2 points of BA in a single APC ?

On top of that, the objective is to make a Nova, i.e. integrated 'Mechs and battle armor. If you also need vehicles to move your BA around, it becomes something else entirely.

Well there is such a think as a Vehicle + BA nova.
2nd Line Units use that option more because the mechs are rarely Omnis.


That said, a couple formations you can consider.

1.  3 APC points + 2 Tank Points + 5 BA Points allows for only 1 empty transport & allows for points that are not "mixed"........... or, this also allows for 1 mixed point which is really good for using a fast moving ECM to put a bubble over the APCs & protect them a little on the run in.

2.  Two BA Stars + 1 APC Star = 10 Full Transports,  this configuration is mimicking the Scorpion "Airborne" Trinaries of Kirghiz-C's........ its also my favorite option.

[Diplominator]

I like option 2 as well. I just don't think it makes for an especially iconic Falcon Nova is all.

As for the transport capacity thing, I guess if I WAS trying to move assault BA around I'd want fewer, bigger transports so I could have more escorts. I admit I wasn't making a lot of sense.

[Hellraiser]

I like option 2 as well. I just don't think it makes for an especially iconic Falcon Nova is all.

Well the 2nd Option isn't a Nova at all really.
Technically, Its a Mixed Trinary of 2 BA Stars & 1 Tank Star.
But I like it and used it (with grunt infantry) when I was making up a non-canon unit.
Its a "ground" form of the Scorpion Kirghiz formation and while not a Nova is just a great way to move solid #s of BA/Infantry around, IMHO.
50 Elementals &/or 250 Grunts can hold some terrain for sure, and 10 fast IFV's is some solid firepower & good redeployment speed.


As for the Assault BA thing, its only in TacOps that they cost more tonnage.
Basic TW charges everyone the same so while I like the TacOps realism, for basic games 5 Tons is all you need to move anything from PA(L) to Assault.