#megamek

Right so the story.

It should maybe end with a funny joke about what I bid, but at the same time... A voice came to me, and it asked a simple question...

And, like, I took that personally.

For those that don't think about 80s wargames lore all the time... The fuck are we even talking about?

A batchall is the Battle Challenge, get it, issued before a Trial in Clan "Culture."

The clans are a group of space weirdos who left Earth after pulling a Space Middle East, leading to a Galactic war that left hundreds of worlds burning and hundreds of trillions dead. After they almost killed themselves in the same way that the poor bastard they left behind had, the worst son of the greatest military leader mankind ever had, came up with the "perfect society" to never have that threat happen again to the human race... Except he created the very thing that would lead to happening four more times. Trail of Annihilation, which you know the Wolverines were right, the Clan Invasion, the War of Reaving, and the Conquest of the Republic. Not my Ilkhan.

A Trial is an honorable combat to settle a dispute between Clans and inner Clan disagreements. There are six, and they grow in severity, ending with Annihilation. You can't have a Trial without a Batchall.

In this case, the Trail of Possession to Call a bug looking mech a bug, https://www.tumblr.com/gort-grundlekin/739688789810823168/bug-type-mech

Normally, a Batchall would start with me issuing the challenge and declaring what I think this attack should cost; my opponent would then state what they are bidding in defense. If I was cool, and I am cool, I would counter-bid with a lower force than my opponent. Then my opponent, being a cool person, would counter-bid lower. Then, because, as stated, I'm cool, I would counter a lower force. And then... You get the idea...

The idea is to get to the lowest cost possible for the conflict, agreed to by both parties. Mind you, this is expected to cost human life; the question is, how good is my human life to be able to beat the other person's human cost.

Which brings us to the Bid;

One War Hawk, an 85-ton gun platform, smashed into the IS forces of the DCMS so hard they named it Masakari because it hit like an ax and split forces in two. There is not a bad variant of this; all of them hit like a MACK truck, and none of them are fun face down.

Three Horned Owl Light mechs. Relatively lightly armed, the Horned Owl makes up for it by having speed, dexterity, and staying power, unlike most clan designs. The Clan Weapons easily make this one able to punch into the Medium Tonnage, but this guy is sharing the tonnage ranking just before you get medium and is basically, in some ways, a clan Panther.

Fun fact; this mech was based on the Zaku from Gundam, and you can see it with its mono-eye cockpit.

Finally, a star of Elementals. Imagine Astates in a hard Sci-fi setting instead of a Space Opera one, and that's the Elementals. Genetically engineered super soldiers clad in advance power armor, allowing them to rip apart tanks and mechs while moving faster than

In a bit of humor, the two clans that have championed this fight, the Goliath Scorpions and the Coyotes, are more responsible for the Elementals than their credited creators, Clan Wolf. All they did was steal better ideas for themselves; it is almost as if that will be the trend for their narrative...

Thanks to the Goliath Scorpions' creation of underwater suits known as Water Elementals to complete complex tasks at incredible depth, the Elemental Suits have incredible armor and a flexible chassis.

However getting any weapon systems or the amount of options that are fielded by the Elementals would not be possible without the OMNITECH created by Clan Coyote. The "Hey man, if you keep changing your fucking work order every five minutes, I'll brain you, warrior caste or no warrior caste" clan. Coyote Tech Caste created the flexible slot system to allow a greater amount of customization in payloads which allowed for rapid force changes in battle and easier repairs to a degree.

Additionally Clan Hell's Horse created the genetic template that would become the Elemental people. The first drafts were so good without the elemental suits they almost won against normal Clan Wolf Dudes in the power armor.

That is a good Star, strong punch, movibility and a surprise waiting at your feet.

My Rebuttal Bid:

Savage Coyote is an 85 ton Assault Mech built to showcase two weapon systems; Omni-Tech Advance Tactical Missiles or the Clan ATM, all the fun of LRMs with SRM fun. Thanks to a XL engine this bad boy is stuff with armor and weapons. Built to bring the Coyotes in tho the post Golden Century Swinging.

An oldie but a classic, the Coyotl is the first Omnitech. However, built to prove the concept, it is a capable machine. All of its variants are built to have a solution to any problem.

The Rabid Coyote is a medium mech designed to serve as backup to slower mechs. It's moderately armored, but its pulse laser ensures its deadly accurate and carries a mixed tonnage of ATM ammunition. It is more than able to punch up from its modest 55 tons.

To round this out, I have also taken;

TWO ELEMENTAL STARS!

The total of my Bid is 180 Tons vs 195. Kids never play tonnage, however, since everyone was Clan... It was the only way to do this. However surprisingly?

Pretty close in BV.

Right, so let's get to the actual fight:

For the purpose of not knowing and also keeping things relatively interesting, I decided I would use late-era mechs, mostly Jihad mechs.

Also Clan Coyote stops being important in the Clan Invasion and suffers from the "Don't want to write a complex Clan narrative anymore" that CGL blessed us with in the War of the Reaving. There are a lot of reason people hate the Jihad, and besides its name, this is one of the reasons.

Lamba Galaxy is generally my go-to pick for Clanners. Coyotes and I like our mechs experimental and they have a neat paint scheme in the lambas. Seen here on a group of bois I need to touch up at some point:

Clan Coyote will also join the Society in a big way; Lamba Galaxy almost completely defects to them during the War of Reaving. The Society was a revolt from Clan Scientists Caste who was tired of Collage Jocks making all the big choices because dying young is a big clan ethos for Warriors. So they threw out a bunch of tech and advanced battle mechs to maybe save the clans from their ways. They lost, big shocker right?

Clan Coyote however gets to stay in the Tree house and disappear from the game's story. Possible forever... Fucking Jihad.

The Savage Coyote Variant was one such model built by the Society, with a HAG, targeting computers and Imporved ATM its a tough nut with a great punch.

The Coyotl, like wise was a bunch of tech from later than the Golden Century but felt right as a good addition to my bid.

Finally I brought a regural Rabid Coyote default, because 3 pulse laser should kill Elementals dead. It is why the Komodo has 9 fucking Medium lasers after all.

Clan Goliath Scorpion got kicked out of the tree house and is running around the Deep Periphery kicking ass and taking names. They, too, lost the War of Reaving, but they aren't bitches like Jade Falcon, Wolf, and Ghost Bear. Ultimately, it looks like they are going to pull a Clan Invasion 2.0. It's going to be more Revenge of the Periphery than Attack of the Clans though, I'm hyped for it. So the Scoripon Empire moves on closer and closer to the Inner Sphere.

For the Warhawk, I picked the mixed tech Alternate Configuration T to reflect this era. This does drop the long-range murder effect to a degree but it gives it two PPC that are also flamers, which for a clan mech is murder on the wheel, they run hot, and it also kind of better puts it in the timeline for a dust up of Clans in a late-era that aren't just Sucessor States that were once Clans... Fucking Wolf Empire.

For the Owls I pick two later eras ones and one default. The Default is murder; the other ones are just fun. I do this when I field a bunch of the same much, take variants, and they stacked up well enough to help each other out and make so I can't quite use the same tactic on all three.

But I made creative choices that might not be made if we did this for real.

BV and tonnage works out. Sadly I didn't have any friends online, so I had to resort to Princess, megamek's ai, and since this will be a quick game, brawler seemed good (maybe I shouldn't have had the Run Away so high in hindsight.)

Default victory I used with my friends is 40% BV lost, which is a good place for a friendly fight. Also so it doesn't last forever which can happen with bad dice.

For Pilots, I set all to the Clanner Default, 3/4 for everyone.

I picked the terrain.

A good mix of hills and vegitation. Flipping a coin, I was north, and my opponent south.

The fight was pretty fast. we moved quickly towards each other and started blasting, mostly missing. My Rabid Coyote got caught in the open and was knocked down, but the pilot managed to get her up and moving next round.

Then we slammed into each other, and the first blood went to the Scorpions.

The Coyatl has ECM, but it really didn't do much. It was funny. The Owls proved to be deadly, swarmed my Rabid Coyote and just sliced him to pieces. Managed to knock one of the Owls down.

The Toads jump in behind.

The next phase, I pulled back into the forest, and as my Coyotl pulled rapidly back trying to catch the Owls in a better firing line. The Owls that could jump far and wide, with one finding my rear armor of the Savage open to their pulse weapons. The owl, knocked prone, made an effort to go hull down, unable to get back up the next round.

The Warhawk fell back and opened fire on my Savage as well; with the high advantage and those long-ranged guns, it was the smart call.

In the firing phase saw my Savage tooke nearly 120 damage. Luckily no punches through the armor for the Warhawk and some how under the pulse lasers the back armor held.

Thanks to that barrage, my savage was knocked down, but the pilot pulled a hull down, allowing it to stay fighting.

Since this massive exchange happened in rapid order and heat was running red for both of us. I couldn't get the Savage moving too much heat, but to my dismay, the Warhawk bet heavily on that attack as well and was left unable to move and, worst, exposed on that hill.

Moving my elementals I forced them to get the Owls off the Savage while moving my Coyotl into minimum range bracket for all its weapons. This allowed me to pour fire from both the Savage and the Coyotle, scoring two engine hits despite not punching through the massive armor. The Warhawk had been cripple and couldn't likely survive another attack with that savaging, and with its engine compromised, so too were the heat sinks.

The Warhawk had to pull back and try and get off that hill.

Meanwhile, the Owl knocked prone manage to get up and turn on my Coatyl near it. However, thanks to the coyotes movement, I was able to win that fight and knock out that Owl.

In the moving away from the Toadies one of the other owls messed up a jump roll and was forced off the game, considering it retreated bummer...

Unable to get the Warhawk moving, the AI punched it out as well.

Finally with the toadies in range the real fight got started as the last owl jumped in to finish off my Savage, but my elementals were waiting and pounced on the light mech begingin to swarm as their elements closed distance and proceeded to bloody my other elemental unit.

And the game ended because a lot of BV was scraped off the board.

So I win.

And as my right to decide... It's a bug mech, the king of all bugs even. Realized now, after writing this 3 hours later, that the Trail was for our Gender... Does this make your pronouns my bond servants?