Thats cool. I'm glad you pointed it out. Its like that #### nova cat symbol on that one gear card that everyone thinks they can use freely. Wizkids and their dirty tricks. I didn't really see how it could have broken anything serious, using evade on a quad. BUT rules are rules and thats how I roll. Make the rule Gods angry, and your dice will betray you.

Provisional Recon Star Tango
Location: 6 klicks south-southwest of LZ Carolina.

Star Commander Reno could feel the sweat drops trickle down the back of his neck and pool at the collar of his coolant vest. His Jade Hawk was far from hot; he hadn't even fired his weapons since the unopposed landing, but some trick of genetics in his codex predisposed him to perspire under stress, be it good, bad or other. He twitched his head to the side, both to dislodge the sweat and to glance at his right flank. The Jaguar, with Star Commander Luis, was still on his heels. To the left was the Elemental Battle Armor in the Saxon APC. Ahead of the main body were two more Saxons, one loading a squad of Fenrir, one with a squad of Raiden. They were both his tripwire and a source of potentially surprising firepower.

The radio crackled as someone clicked a mike open, "Captain, this is Charlie." That would be the wide-ranging Sylph Battle Armor point acting as Reno's eyes in the sky. "We have a potential contact three klicks ahead of your position, on your line of advance."

"Aff Charlie," Reno replied. "Take thirty seconds to confirm and then return to the main body. Echo, Foxtrot, pull back to Alpha and Bravo."

"Aff," chorused the provisional points. Then there was another burst of static, "Captain, this is Echo. Confirm one heavy mech, probably a Nova Cat, moving with multiple squads of infantry."

"Aff Charlie. Have they spotted you?"

"Aff sir."

"Bring it home. All points, prepare to deploy. Falcon Command, this is Provisional Recon Tango. We have located enemy force."

"Aff Tango, do you think you can take them?"

Reno grinned his peculiarly unpleasant grin, "Aff sir."

"Good hunting Tango. We will dispatch Heavy Star Juliet to follow up."

"Aff Command. All right Tango, we hunt."

Reno kicked his heavy mech into motion, closing on the position Charlie had marked on his map. It was time to fight.

PRS Tango

Alpha: Blitz/Amir/CJF

Bravo: Jaguar/Star Commander

Charlie: Sylph BA

Delta: Elemental BA/Saxon

Echo: Raiden BA/Saxon

Foxtrot: Fenrir BA/Saxon

Total: 450

Pretty classic blitzkrieg army. Blitz acts as a DFA problem, the Jag is support and threat all in one. Six basers (three Saxons and the three infantry) acting in concert with a Sylph should give you the tools to take out any problem you run into (feel free to swap in a Trackbike instead of the Raiden). AP, Pulse, TSEMP and MDFA should give you the answer to any problem you find yourself running into.

Ouuuch... That's pretty vicious - sub the EBA for a second RBA, then downgrade the CJF StarCom to an Albion and you can mount Anti-Personnel on the JGR for 450 exactly, too. :devious:

Thanks. I'm thinking about making it my primary blitzkreig option and building from it. It has a nice collection of options; DFA, charge, drop, basers. Doesn't really fear artillery because it is way, way too fast. It has enough basers to make people unhappy and has a drop for any occasion. Another possible downgrade is to turn the EBA into a RBA or Trackbike and give Blitz Command.

New strategy: don't annoy WizKids managers. I think that'll work.

Ok, I have to ask, Why?

Quote from KevinG on the WizKids site:

dierache:
Kevin, you say it is not an old faction but a new one. So are you saying that Wolf is not coming into the game. Just what to know so we Wolfs players can start to spend our money elsewhere. Sorry to be blunt but I think we have waited long enough.

KevinG:
So if we were to introduce Clan Wolf, would you buy more? Because to be blunt, if you spread you're attitude around you'll never see Clan Wolf or any other factions. As I've said in the past, DO NOT put faction loyalty ahead of loyalty to the game. Do that, and you will not have a game for much longer.

Unfortunately, dierache, annoying twit that he is, is still likely to get something reasonably soon, because WizKids is forgiving, but it's nice to see that even the professionals are getting sick of the Puppy attitude.

hahahah that quote just made my day. Everytime I see a puppy complaint, I'm like SHUT THE F*** UP, samuel jackson style. I'm going to print/frame that. He said it best. Loyalty of the game first, then faction. AMEN KEVING.

I know that you guys get tired of complaints and all but I respectfully ask that you do not bash DieRache. He is a good guy and he is fun to play against even if he schools me more often then not. :grin: Personally I think it is a rip that they have sat out as long as they have and that come next year their forces with be severely reduced. Other factions have gotten some love to keep their numbers up so I could see how the Steel Wolves players can be getting erked off about it. As it stands I am in the market for a backup faction so that if and when CJF get the long MIA I can still play with other units. But that is besides the point, Should the steel wolves keep hounding wizkids? Probably not the best idea. Should they feel the way they do about sitting out and watching every one else get re-enforcements? They wouldn't be gamers if they didn't. :grin: So I ask again please don't bash DieRache for voicing his distain for the lack of steel wolves.

Thank you,

I'm not bashing anyone, I would be pissed to. But I thought very strong of what he said. loyalty to the game, so the game may continue period. I picked up House Kurita with firepowers release, so I can have an alternative to Jade Falcons in case the same thing happens. I was just stating that I love mechwarrior, not just jade falcon. I move with the times. No bad feelings on your bud though. If I were him, to much of his dismay, I would pick a new faction like the Rasalhague Dominion, because atleast he can guarentee that he will atleast be getting pieces for one, while the other sits out. :)

I know you weren't but I just wanted to head things off before this thread became a warzone.

Without touching on dierache one way or the other (I'm simply going to note that on the internet no one knows if you're a dog and likewise no one can be expected to know what you are other than what you present yourself as) I am going to touch on the Wolf myths. Since you're sort of implicitly accepting them, let me go over the current ones I'm aware of.

Myth 1: Only the Wolves have been treated so badly.

This one is pretty common. 'No other faction has missed as many sets as we have!' This was also one of the first myths challenged. In fact, it's been challenged so often and so successfully that the current Wolf lament is 'we're the only one of the original six under fifty units to have missed as many sets!' Yeah, well, with two modifiers in there, you better be.

RotS has missed lots of sets, same with Stormhammer (and, by proxy, Steiner). CJF has missed five (DA, FFE, DFA, LI, CA).

Wait, but SH and CJF weren't introduced till later! (They had to leave RotS out because they'd lose that one; they're ignoring Levin.) Yeah, but since another argument is 'we've got so many fewer units' isn't accounting for sets where you got or failed to get units a viable issue? Even if you only count legal sets, SW and CJF end up in a tie (CJF: FP, AoD, Firepower. SW: LI, CA, AoD). This will change in January, don't mistake that. But when both sides have gotten three sets, maybe it's not such a disparity.

Myth 2: We don't have any units!

To segue from the above....

Last I checked, CJF clocked in at 61 units. SW is somewhere about 40 (plus or minus, I haven't done an accurate count; it's much easier when your faction has no retired units). Bear in mind that this only applies in Restricted events, not Unrestricted. Wolves don't like to bring up the disparity in Unrestricted. However, since AoD rules changes have done major changes, we'll give them the Unrestricted and just keep our eyes on the legal units. So, CJF with 21 extra units is clearly more loved than SW.

Hmm. But wait, let's look at a category or two and see what we see. Let's start with light mechs.

CJF:
Spider
Stinger
Koshi
SalvageMech MOD
Blade
Mongoose
Panther
Ocelot
Jaguar
Eve Buhallin
Lyza Helmer
Vincent DeLeon

That's 12 mechs in the light category.

Wolf:
MiningMech MOD II
Wasp
Crimson Hawk
Kris Wolf
ForestryMech B
Valiant
Blade

So, right there is a six unit swing. Not too shabby. But...

When was the last time you deployed a Stinger? Or a Spider? Or a SalvageMech? Does having them in any way help you? For me at least, a gamer, they just took up space in my box till I culled them out and stored them. So, uh, what do people use?

CJF:
Jaguar

SW:
Blade

Or, roughly, one versus one. Sure, there are other units, usable (Ocelot, Blade, Panther for CJF, Crimson Hawk, Valiant for SW) but there's a fair amount of drek hiding in there. So suddenly that massive six unit swing isn't so massive. What's the point of having the CJF Spider, a unit more useless than Flavio? Is that an up? Does that mean WizKids loves us more? God, I hope not. On the other hand, you only hurt the ones you love...

Same thing in heavy tanks.

CJF:
Mars
Glory
Sekhmet
Hanse
Kelswa

SW:
Hanse
Morgan

Duplication of abilities. CJF seems to have some unholy love for assault tanks. Who knew?

So, let's think. Would the SW players be any happier if they did have twelve more units and they were all worse than the Blade or Thunder Fox (another powerful piece SW has)? Or would they be complaining that they didn't get what they really wanted? In a head to head comparison, CJF comes out better in infantry (we really do have killer infantry), possibly in attack VTOLs (assuming the Sylph as an attack VTOL), assault mechs (Zeus and BR vs. Geoff Bekker) and arty. SW comes out ahead in heavy tanks (the Hanse is just bad news), cap 3s (Zahn), light, medium and heavy mech classes.

But WizKids loves us more, doncha know.

I have no issue with the rational Wolf players. Wantec, for instance, is a rational person and a shining beacon of calm in the storm (moreso than I am, say). But there is a loud and growing contingent that claims they have some mystic entitlement not only to get units they want when they want them, but to dictate the exact type of unit (the Timber Wolf) and in the manner they desire (no Mad Cat IV, it's not ideologically pure). WTF?

Wolves are as powerful as CJF is (with the accepted exception that CJF has a couple of units that SW can't match, like the Shamash and our small APCs, and with their cap 3 thrown into the mix). They have units that are as useful as CJF. They don't have a lot of useless dupe units. They haven't been left out of an impossible number of sets (tell any old school RotS players that SW is hurting and they'll point and laugh). What they have done is spawned a concerted effort that has riled the design staff, a group of professionals paid money to deal with gamers, to the point of publically chastising them for their attitude issues. That's impressive, in a sort of counterproductive manner.

There ya go, rant over. For now. :)

Well I build forces based on alliances from time to time. In AoD my Wolf/Cat alliance had more competitive Wolf infantry than Cat infantry, more competitive Wolf vehicles than Cat vehicles and ... Geoff Bekker.

The Cats get into every set. And boy do some of the pieces stink. Oh NO!! NOT ANOTHER F-ING SHODEN ASSAULT VEHICLE FOR SPIRIT CATS! And there are many more piles of trash the Cats got.

I'd rather they'd been left out of the odd set and got 4-5 usable units like the Wolves did, to be perfectly honest.

But do I complain about it? This is the first you've probably heard about it ....

What he said. :)

OH NOOOO Sneak peaks are up, and they have an SA with bansons raiders?!?! WTF mate? Seriously, the falcons and bannon's on the same team is blasphemy. Thank god they added the flavor text "We will use them and then discard them.” I'm hoping its the JF thats saying that. Seriously. Also, who is going to pay 30 points for a SA, that only works with ciritcal misses. SON OF A, MOTHER OF, ...BURN IN.....sigh. (theletterv beings to take Kurita units off the shelf, in embarrasment that the best clan ever to exist, would ally with BR *cough* *vomit*)