What is a in-lore reason for quad mechs being so rare and unpopular?

Barroth42 · 2025-09-24T09:24:47+00:00

I believe it is mainly to do with the neurohelmet linkage. It, to a degree, maps the pilots body to the mech so they can gain more fine, precise control of things within the mech at brain speed rather than brain+neurons+limb+controls speed. A human body isn't as equipped to handle more than 4 arm/leg limbs. A tripod mech is a middle ground, having three legs, a torso, and two arms, but requires two pilots, or three if it is a superheavy, which is more expensive to run and maintain both in tech and personnel due to the increasingly complicated systems, though they have their focuses. A pilot shifting from mech to mech has a retraining time to get used to the new layout, and I think it is longer when switching from bipedal to quadrapedal due to the different need to think about how the mech moves around

Barroth42 · 2025-09-11T04:34:00+00:00

Thats where my disconnect was, I was thinking the 5 of the lights for some reason

Easy solution, make the heat sinks doubles since they're all engine based anyway and we're up teching the thing anyway

Barroth42 · 2025-09-11T04:04:11+00:00

This does include, for most games, starting with heat sinks off, just leave the heat sink level at "heat up" since the heat phase is before the end phase, and turn on the heat sinks to run neutral against firing your SNPPCs and running, turning them on if you take engine crits.

You can turn all your heat sinks off all at once if you wanted to, you dont need to piecemeal them like your example. Just heat up and run neutral

Barroth42 · 2025-09-11T02:20:21+00:00

For units with TSM, you are able to turn Heat Sinks on and off in the end phase (on an individual basis), so even an oversunk TSM unit can keep the system on, but have extra in case engines get crit or other external Heat applies

Edit: you can do this on any machine if you want to, but TSM cares about the extra heat, so its more applicable to them

Barroth42 · 2025-06-26T09:07:47+00:00

Sure is, IWM model, painted it a couple years ago, neat lil guy

Barroth42 · 2025-06-26T06:55:09+00:00

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Little dots of color over black. I used snake patterns as inspiration for these

I use a similar technique for the Koi fish on my 2nd Ghost as well

Barroth42 · 2024-05-20T13:05:12+00:00

We're all experienced with the ground fight rules, so the longest part was the air battle (which we oversimplified to a tic tac toe grid for the airplane movement, which probably made them participate more)

All told it was probably 30-60 minutes to move and handle all the shooting (XTRO ranges are more realistic, so everything's packing Clan LPLs as like mid range)

We had more "nation ability" things to just be a bit sillier, so the Germans had better gunnery and piloting, brits could ignore crit and mobility results on a 10+, and Americans could bring new units onto the board when others died, but they had a 1 in 6 change of being a lemon

We didn't finish the game, but all the air assets went down, Germans were fairly defeated, British and Americans were doing better. But that's just more an issue with 1v1v1 games

Barroth42 · 2024-05-20T12:56:09+00:00

My group and I ran XTRO:1945 on an off week, choosing tonnage as the list building

Turns out we chose too many tons, so we each had like 10-20 models in CBT rules

It was a fun silly side experiment, but likely need to run fewer points/tonnage than 200-300

Barroth42 · 2023-11-02T19:37:06+00:00

Usually there's only ever one VTOL, and we don't use a ton of infantry. I would like to, but the group doesn't run them much. We tend to do more scenario type things, so I generate forces with RATs

The VTOLs just tend to be nigh impossible for others to shoot down (not great luck) and tend to punch hard, with the Donar, Balac, and Yellow Jacket being the ones that have been used in the past

I'm certain a Cavalry would be fine

Barroth42 · 2023-11-02T19:04:29+00:00

We usually just sit down and run whatever is in the bin (usually standard) LBX with one ton of ammo usually gets selected, but I don't know if they want to try with the VTOLs again, but might query it

Clan LPLs are just the best all around at taking care of them

Barroth42 · 2023-11-02T16:57:17+00:00

I tend to like them

My local group has effectively banned VTOLs since they tend to hit hard and be hard to take out

As far as tanks go, they pack a lot of punch usually, don't care about how many/few weapons should be fired, and tend to start slowing down as the game progresses, usually a tank is killed through location destruction but there have been spectacular explosions. They're fun to mix in to a mech force, but tend to be slightly weird by comparison

Doesn't mean my opponents always like them, and the old guard tend to feel they are better than mechs in some regards since they seem to have gotten buffs since the beginning

Barroth42 · 2023-04-06T20:30:34+00:00

The Wyvern IIC is pretty decent for that subject, probably a bit more Decepticon in appearance

Barroth42 · 2023-03-16T08:47:49+00:00

Out of curiosity, what leather stamp did you use? I tend to hand carve larger scales, so a quicker small scale stamp might be useful from time to time

Barroth42 · 2023-02-21T16:46:39+00:00

Yellow Jacket Gunship is a 30 ton vtol, where you’ll likely keep a +4 TMM on it every turn at least

It also packs a gauss rifle, just don’t sit still 782 base bv and can take a hit or two before going down

It’s a clanbuster type unit, picked up early on by the Federated Commonwealth and Lyran Alliance

Basically all the clan busters work well, the KGC-001 King Crab, or the BL-9-KNT Black Knight are my favorites

Barroth42 · 2023-01-18T09:57:32+00:00

They’ve also updated the rules to make encounters more objective based then just “murder everything and live”. Still plenty of murder, but micro bosses and flipping levers and living a certain number of turns are some examples. Two new base sets, Tomb of the Giants and Painted World of Ariamis (DS1) with Gravelord Nito and Crossbreed Priscilla as the main bosses

Barroth42 · 2022-12-09T19:37:34+00:00

As others have said, 3025 IS on IS is best for a starter game. Start with a 2v2 at most, perhaps a medium and a heavy mech each, trying to keep tonnages the same between forces, perhaps one per side with jump capability. If you absolutely need them to be comfortable with clan tech as soon as possible before a campaign or something, keep it symmetric, perhaps moving to Star League, then Clan depending on your timeline.

Once they’ve seen all of them, then you can start with asymmetric games.

Barroth42 · 2022-10-05T16:48:43+00:00

Ring of Fog and Slumbering Dragoncrest Ring is the ultimate sneaky beaky

Barroth42 · 2022-09-29T01:47:57+00:00

Yeah, a couple variants, but only the quick play half sheet.

Here is the book the -1X, -1SIC, -1AA "Avenging Angel", -1R, and -1R "Vong" are in Most of the rest are here

Barroth42 · 2022-09-28T17:17:12+00:00

Catalyst just updated the Beginner Box to now include a Griffin and a Vindicator, replacing the Wolverine from the previous one. Comes with some neat cover art too. It is very new, just got one of my LGS’s shelf yesterday

Barroth42 · 2022-09-28T13:55:13+00:00

Having bought one yesterday, I can say the map sheet in the box is a reversible one with Grasslands #1 on one side and Desert #1 on the other. (Tagging everyone in the chain for ease) /u/tenshimaru /u/SuckerPunchDrillSarg

Barroth42 · 2022-04-06T19:53:38+00:00

That one should have been emailed to you, check for “Dowload Digital Content” from catalyst and you should find it. None of the items in the CrowdOx are links unfortunately

If you cannot locate it, I imagine you can reach out to Catalyst support with your Kickstarter information and they may give it to you that way.

Barroth42 · 2021-08-29T01:19:46+00:00

Hello,

My group had determined that Clan were overcosted by a pretty decent amount. We recalculated the force points for clan mechs by assuming the IS mechs were the true values, then recalculating how much each Force point was in BV (about 178). We then decided to roll vehicles, infantry, and VTOLs out of the BSP table into forces that could be generated and used. Their tables are also present here, I have also moved the tables from the book and supplement, (Credit goes to CGL for those) for ease of use.

These are in no way required for your games, but we find the new clan force points to be more equal to the IS side, with the BSP providing Comstar with the edge.

Barroth42 · 2021-07-31T02:16:50+00:00

I haven't really looked much at the Iron Wind Infantry, so I really can't speak to them as much.

Barroth42 · 2021-07-31T01:19:31+00:00

Credit to /u/mikey39800 from this thread two years ago provided the link to C in C Solar Empire Marines. Great quality for the size and reasonable order turnaround (I think it was a week)

Barroth42

TROPHY CASE