The White Hawke Irregulars
This is a brief introduction to my oldest running Btech unit. The White Hawkes made their first appearance on my kitchen table in 1988 or 89, can’t remember which now. Me and my best friend divided up the folding mech “standies” from the box set I bought. We had played a dozen games or more with 1 or 2 mechs each, so now we wanted to start making our own legends like the Gray Death novels we read.
One lance each per game and we would track wins, losses, and damage. We had a super simple salvage rule: the winner of each game got 50 percent of the tonnage of each destroyed enemy mech in “salvage tons", ie, my destroyed Warhammer earned him 35 salvage tons, but I didn’t lose the Warhammer!! Damage was repaired by the ton: armour was replaced at 16 points per ton, a destroyed Med Laser cost 1 ton, a destroyed PPC cost 7 tons, etc. No need to track exact salvage types or specific item inventories.
We roped in 2 other friends to play generic opponent teams off and on as well. I let him pick first and he chose; the Marauder, the Crusader, the Thunderbolt, and the Shadow Hawk. He called his unit, the “Black Night Brigade” (not a spelling error). I picked my beloved Warhammer, the Archer, Rifleman, and the Phoenix Hawk. And I called them the White Hawk Legion...
Later, we got into the RPG side of the game and we both fleshed out our units, that’s when I came up with the unit's name being a word play on the surnames of the unit founders, and White Hawk became White Hawke and Legion became Irregulars (after a brief and much lampooned time called “the White Hawke Warriors"....). We played these units for years! They grew, changed, were rewritten, and rewritten again! Until my best friend joined the Air Force in 1996 and we never played together again.
Btech stayed in a box pretty much untouched until I once again found a group interested in 2005 or 06 when I dug out my old collection and found my campaign binder. So many awesome memories! Hand drawn campaign maps, mission briefings, mechwarrior RPG character sheets by the dozens!! Most of them long dead... our campaigns were hard on replacement pilots! Pages of background stories written by both of us detailing our units and their members; families, scars, marriages, kids, deaths, revenge, all the crazy soap opera drama we made them go through! I was 13 then I think when we started. I’m 45 now... I still get excited reading those notes. It reminded me why I love this game world.
I played a new incarnation of the White Hawkes in the Dark Age after the clicky tech game came out, so I had to create a background to fill in the gap of missing history between 3132 and 3052 (the last period we played in back in the day), so while my 3025 list and my 3132 list are 100% accurate to the forces as I played them, the 3055 list is based on the mechs I used in my 3052 RPG campaign back in 1996, extrapolated forward to the years after the Clan invasion, and the 3068 list is a modern creation for current games set in the early Jihad, based on the “history" of the lost years I filled in.
Eventually I'll do the Black Night Brigades lists, and if my old friend is on here under a different handle, he'll recognize all this and remember old times as well. Three cheers for Captain Fuggnucker and his Pink Squishies, my friend!!!
*Back then we customized virtual every mech with abandon! Just using the simple mech construction rules to swap out whatever we wanted without regards to in-world difficulty or technical considerations! So instead of loading these lists with custom designs, I’ve picked the official variants closest to what I made back then. Most are pretty close to what I came up with!!
3025 Unit Details
----The White Hawke Legion (Irregulars). One Heavy Lance. No specialization. Founded 3025, Exeter City, Emporia III, Federated Suns.
Major Damien White (CO), 3/2, WHM-6R Warhammer, 70 tons, Perfect condition.
Captain Isabel Hawke (XO), 4/3, RFL-3C Rifleman, 60 tons, Perfect condition.
Mechwarrior Kurt Ravn, 4/3, ARC-2K Archer, 70 tons, Perfect condition.
Mechwarrior Robert Frampton, 2/4, PXH-1 Phoenix Hawk, 45 tons, Perfect condition.
3055 Unit Details
----The White Hawke Irregulars. One reinforced Heavy Company. Objective Raider specialization. Disbanded 3055, Harlech City, Outreach. (Status listed for each pilot after final contract engagement vs Clan Jade Falcon on Sutter's World.)
-Command Lance
Major Isabel White (CO), 2/1, RFL-5D Rifleman, 60 tons, Perfect condition. (KIA)
Lieutenant Amanda White, 4/3, CRD-5S Crusader, 65 tons, Perfect condition.
Mechwarrior Dale McGavin, 4/3, CHP-1N Champion, 60 tons, Perfect condition. (KIA)
Mechwarrior Kanada Isoroku, 4/3, Ryoken (Stormcrow) B, 55 tons, **Mixed Tech (due to lack of Clan parts after salvage, the mech uses Inner Sphere ER Medium Lasers and Inner Sphere Ferro-Fiberous armor and no longer counts as an “omnimech") (WIA)
-Support Lance
Captain Kurt Ravn (XO), 3/2, ON1-K Orion, 75 tons, Perfect condition. (WIA)
Mechwarrior Brandi Baker, 4/3, TBT-5N Trebuchet, 50 tons, Perfect condition. (KIA)
Mechwarrior Galen Kox, 5/4, LGB-7Q Longbow, 85 tons, Perfect condition (WIA)
Mechwarrior Zack DeMarco, 3/3, VLK-QA Valkyrie, 30 tons, Perfect condition. (KIA)
-Pursuit Lance
Lieutenant Robert Frampton, 1/2, GHR-5H Grasshopper, 70 tons, Perfect condition. (KIA)
Mechwarrior Diane Blaine, 3/4, QKD-4G Quickdraw, 60 tons, Perfect condition. (WIA)
Mechwarrior Ross O'Reilly, 4/3, WVR-7D Wolverine, 55 tons, Perfect condition.
Mechwarrior Ban Chung-Ae, 5/4, JR7-D Jenner, 35 tons, Perfect condition. (WIA)
-Combat Lance
Lieutenant Leviticus White II, 4/3, WHM-7M Warhammer, 70 tons, Perfect condition. (WIA)
Mechwarrior Ntala Mbutu, 4/3, MAD-5D Marauder, 75 tons, Perfect condition. (KIA)
Mechwarrior Rose Hathaway, 4/3 CRB-20 Crab, 50 tons, Perfect condition. (KIA)
Mechwarrior Michael Cross, 4/3, PNT-9R Panther, 35 tons, Perfect condition. (KIA)
I will post the 3068 and 3132 lists tomorrow I think, its later over here now! I'm old and I go to bed early these days... ;D
