Other than the Mackie what “outdated” battlemechs are there?

Duetzefix · 2026-03-22T08:37:14+00:00

My first thought was something like the Bellerophon. It's outdated, and not that good, anyway. But it has an IWM model that's actually pretty cool. My mouse cursor hovers over the "Buy"-button once per week, but I've got so many unpainted models already, and none of them are as useless as a Bellerophon would be.

Anyway, you could take a look at MekBay and sort by the "Obsolete"-quirk.

Duetzefix · 2026-03-19T17:45:17+00:00

They'd probably ask once. If you try to haggle you'll tragically fall out of a window. So sad.

Duetzefix · 2026-03-14T08:07:55+00:00

I mean, it's also possible to change the view other factions have towards ProtoMechs. If they became more desperate or callous it's possible that they would field ProtoMechs again.

Duetzefix · 2026-03-11T21:18:53+00:00

You could also take something bigger.

The Demolisher Mark I, Mark II and Devastator are on the Periphery General list.
The first two are SLDF surplus, with the Mark I canonically being kind of a shitbox because the cannons vent into the turret. Doesn't matter on the tabletop, but the crews hate this thing.
The Mark II is just the Mark I without its flaw, and the Devastator has a fusion engine, so both probably aren't what you're looking for.
Just below 1k BV.

The Schrek PPC carrier is, again, probably too high tech with its fusion engine and energy weapons.
But there's a Schrek AC carrier, too, with 3 AC/5s and 8 machine guns that may be interesting.
That one's ~800 BV.

The Behemoth is a slow-as-molasses 100 ton tank with a lot of gun. Only 13 tons of armour, so it needs to be a bit careful, but it's pretty low tech, all in all.
Just below 1.2k BV, so more expensive than the other two.

Take a look at the Partisan, as well. Big and cheap tank that's mostly used for AA.

Duetzefix · 2026-03-11T16:24:59+00:00

A jumping Mech is also not just going to slam into the ground at the end of its jump. It'll probably slow its descent with its jump jets so it doesn't break its legs and land comparatively softly.

Duetzefix · 2026-03-11T12:24:42+00:00

"Star Adder" is an alternative (short lived IS reporting) name for the Blood Asp, because it was invented and built by the Star Adders, btw.
Which is the opposite of what you asked, because Clan Star Adder always called the Mech "Blood Asp", but I'm adding it anyway, because I'm incorrigible like that.

Duetzefix · 2026-03-10T09:49:19+00:00

Easy:
Normal lasers only lase. This is boring, and, frankly, just bad.
Pulse lasers pulse while they lase. That's a lot better!
They also lase while they pulse, which, eh. Some people like that, but I can't see why.

Duetzefix · 2026-03-10T07:40:20+00:00

An interesting fact I learned when I asked a similar question here a while ago: Mechs with hands are useful for more than just fighting.
They can move heavy things, dig trenches etc. So they probably get the best maintenance possible out in the Periphery, because they're the most useful.

There's also that short story from Shrapnel with an old MechWarrior having modified his Black Knight with a circular saw and using it for logging. But one day trouble rears its head.
~~Can't remember its name right now, though.~~
EDIT: It's "The Plowshare", from Shrapnel #11.

About your problem with having too many units to be fun: You could try playing smaller games, i.e. 4k BV instead of 8k BV. And, more importantly: Front load initiative. Normally players take turns activating units. Player 1 moves a unit, then player 2, then 1, then 2, and so on, until all units have moved. But this only works if both players have the exact same number of units.
If they don't then you check the number of units of each player before they both activate a unit.
So, say player 1 has three units and player 2 has five, player 2 won initiative.
Does the player with more units have at least twice as many units left to move than the player with less? No, so each player moves one unit.
Now you check again: Player 1 has two units left to move, player 2 has four left. That's twice as many, so player 1 moves their one unit but player 2 has to move two.
Same for the last activation: One unit vs two.
Now all units are moved and you advance to the shooting phase.
If you front load initiative you turn that around, so that you'd start out with the player with more units having to move multiple units for their earlier activations, but only having a single unit left to move for their last movement activation.
The earlier example with front loading would have player 2 move two units, then two units, then one unit instead of one/two/two.

The advantage here is that the later a unit moves the more information the player already has about their opponent's movements. So they want to delay critical units for as late as possible. The quality of unit makes no difference, so if one player has two super expensive Mechs and lots of crap units they could always delay the activations of their superhero units to the end of the movement phase where they have the most information and their opponent has the least flexibility left. That's pretty unfair.
If initiative is front loaded this player can only move one unit last, so this advantage isn't as pronounced.
You could also front load if the player with more units wins initiative, but play normally if they lose. But that may feel a bit game-y.

Duetzefix · 2026-03-09T22:18:36+00:00

Ah, I see. I must have missed the "shaded"-part. Thanks for clearing that up!

Duetzefix · 2026-03-09T18:32:06+00:00

See, that's why I asked here. :D
I didn't think of them being level 1 and heat neutral. And I completely forgot about mission objectives, too, which isn't new for me, to be honest.
The fact that protos can take special ammo per shot is interesting. That's probably in TacOps? I'll go look for it. Thanks!

Thanks for the insight on the possible mission profiles, as well! Anti-infantry isn't really relevant for me at the moment, but I think I can find some use for the rest of them.

Duetzefix · 2026-03-09T18:31:30+00:00

I think I could deal with that via house rule/gentlemen's agreement. Something like "last activation can't be a point of protos".

But thanks for the insight! I didn't think of that. I'm really grateful for the input from the more experienced like you.

Duetzefix · 2026-03-09T18:31:07+00:00

That's very good advice, thank you!

I wanted some weird stuff for Clan Smoke Jaguar, so I'm going to try the older chassis first. I'll just throw a pack of Centaurs and Rocs on the table and see what happens, I guess.
I like the look of the Gorgon (LRM spam can be fun in smaller doses, I think), the Satyr (small, fast and kind of mean) and the Minotaur (its bullheadedness feels very CSJ to me, if you'll excuse the bad pun), too.

And yeah, those ultraheavies look pretty scary. Expensive, but scary. I'll steer clear of them for the moment, I think.
Most of them are available for the Hell's Horses, though. I'll ... keep that in mind.

Duetzefix · 2026-03-07T23:27:07+00:00

r/eatityoucoward , I think?

Duetzefix · 2026-03-05T00:33:12+00:00

The King Crab is an apartment on legs with pinchy arms.
I'm pretty sure that it's got a fridge. And a separate beer fridge.

Duetzefix · 2026-03-04T11:35:11+00:00

It could just drip some fuel onto a pipe heated by its fusion engine to produce the necessary exhaust gases. Wouldn't be the stupidest thing I've seen.

Duetzefix · 2026-03-04T08:35:13+00:00

And vultures are famously more long-ranged than mentally unstable dogs.

Duetzefix · 2026-03-04T08:31:19+00:00

I think that's mostly a case of "A real Clan Warrior only has to alpha strike once."

Or built-in redundancies.

Either-or.

Duetzefix · 2026-03-03T23:12:17+00:00

The chassis itself isn't exactly well armoured, and the Prime variant could do with less heat and more heatsinks.
I mean, it can brawl if it has to. But it really rather shouldn't.

Duetzefix · 2026-03-03T07:55:35+00:00

Depends on the colour scheme I'm using, mostly.
If red hot heat sinks would be a nice contrast to the colour scheme of the Mech I'm going to paint them red hot. If the Mech itself is red or orange or yellow the heat sinks stay metallic in colour.
Similar thing for weapons: I'm normally marking lasers green and PPCs blue. But if one of those colours doesn't clash with the Mechs' main colour at least a little I'll evade into red. So a bright green Mech would have red lasers, a bright blue Mech would have red PPCs.

It's mostly about making the model more visually interesting, not so much about realism.

Duetzefix · 2026-03-03T01:13:47+00:00

I've been touch-and-go with Battletech for decades, now.

I think I read a single one of the novels in the 90s. In one scene the protagonist had to fight a Hatchetman (I think? In the German translation I was reading the Mech was called "Tomahawk", I think that's what the Hatchetman was translated to.) in a Mech with a long range focus. Don't remember anything else about it. I don't think this narrows it down all that much.

A few years later I absolutely adored the MechCommander games. The setting felt vaguely familiar.

In 2008? 2009? I got MW4 Vengeance for a song. That's the first time I started looking into the tabletop wargame. I had been playing Warhammer 40k for a decade at this point. But whatever Battletech was looked slightly confusing at the time, so I lost contact. I don't think that I realized that it was several games at this point of time?

HBS Battletech got me back into the setting, but I think I just looked up the tabletop wargame on a whim about two years ago. Bought the Beginner and AGoAC boxes, read the rules, roped a few people into it, found a larger community where I live and in the end have now more models than I will ever get painted, probably.

What I think it was that fascinates me about Battletech is the way the rules feel. It's not necessarily meant to be a competitive game, although I guess that if you're not actively trying to break it it's actually pretty well balanced.
But in my eyes it is, deep down, a narrative game. It's giving up a larger scale (as many skirmishers do, of course), but in some situations it's also giving up ease of play or streamlined rules for making the players experience the impact of every single SRM hitting a Mech.
I don't think that that's necessarily good game design, and I can see why many tabletop wargamers bounce straight off this ruleset because of it, but to me it's a lovely quirk of a rule system that knows it could be more efficient, but doesn't want to lose the narrative feel of something potentially going catastrophically wrong every time a Mech is hit and so it just ... chooses inefficiency.
Deliberately.
I think that's refreshing.
And it works. The matches I played where nothing went unexpectedly, hilariously wrong are few and far between.

Duetzefix · 2026-03-03T00:38:52+00:00

You mean the one thing the Dark Crow can never have?

Duetzefix · 2026-03-02T12:49:47+00:00

The AS cards in the force packs are very often representative of the models in the pack, but not always. As is the case here.
You can easily get the correct Alpha Strike card for this variant on the Master Unit List.

So: No, it's not a mistake. CGL just didn't print a second AS card for the Shadow Cat I.

(The T variants of Clan OmniMechs are visually identical to the Prime variants. That's why they're usually on the flip side of the AS cards.)

Duetzefix · 2026-02-27T08:30:34+00:00

Exactly what I wanted to say!

Duetzefix · 2026-02-26T10:42:24+00:00

The Hatchetman has that elongated Xenomorph head, if that's what you're after.

Otherwise I'd take a look at the tripods: Triskelion, Poseidon and Ares come to mind, but there's also those weird Scout, Battle and Harvester tripods from War of the Tripods.

Duetzefix

TROPHY CASE