#scarabus

The Scarabus is one of those mechs that barely avoided slipping thru the cracks that were TRO:3055--not old enough to carry the nostalgia of the 3025 or the bombast of the early clan invasion in TRO:3050, while also never appearing in the video games and lacking the later era recognition of the rec guides. The only thing saving it from the relative obscurity of TRO-mates like the War Dog, Battle Hawk, and Grim Reaper is a 12 damage bonk stick and a dream.

In-universe the Scarabus is the product of Vining Engineering and Salvage Team, a small batch constructor on Solaris 7. Intended as an iteration on the long suffering Lyran light, the Commando, the SCB-9A was built to be a long distance raider and scout. While VEST was happy with their design, they lacked production facilities for their plucky little light beyond a few cramped workshops to hand build new chassis, so they shopped around for a Fedcom manufacturing interest to license build the Scarabus. Coventry Metal Works, the Commando's original builders, snapped at the offer and began construction of the mech in 3053 as a showpiece of the super power's technical capabilities. Despite its Lyran origins and builders, the Scarabus proved more popular in Davion light cavalry units--many elite Steiner units chose to use their allotments of the mech to horse trade with local militias for assaults and heavies that their doctrine preferred, leading to many a high tech Scarabus leading raids and patrols backed up by centuries-old Locusts and Stingers piloted by levies and part time mech warriors.

As far as production variants go, the Scarabus only has two, with one being a nearly direct upgrade of the factory original. Built on a 30 ton Small Bug-B endosteel skeleton wrapped around a mamoth Vlar 300 XL fusion plant most often seen in mechs triple its weight, the Scarabus 9A is capable of a truly breakneck 160 kph top speed. The armor is light mech armor but well distributed enough, with 5.5 tons of ferro-fibrous cladding that will protect most locations from anything short of a gauss rifles connecting with the little asshole. All of these advanced materials also mean that despite being extremely fast and well protected, the Scarabus still has nearly a quarter of its tonnage to spend on payload. A pair each of medium and small lasers are mounted in a left arm pod while the Solaris staple hatchet is mounted on the right, giving the mech a reasonable bite that can be easily managed by it's 10 single heat sinks. For scouting, a Guardian type ECM suite is mounted in the center torso and a TAG laser designator has been placed in the cockpit. The 9T is the only meaningful variant that ever saw production, simply replacing the 9A's myomers with triple strength equivalents that allow the mech to take advantage of its compact laser array (note: remember you can temporarily disable sinks to build up to 9 heat in one turn) to double the damage of its hatchet into certifiable head cutting range and increasing its speed even further, making it an even deadlier close combatant.

Now how exactly do you use a Scarabus? Well, aspiring mech warriors, have you ever heard of the old Terran video game Team Fortress 2? The Scarabus isn't just a scout, it's *the* Scout. This is a mech that is built to create problems and run away from consequences at mach idiot broadcasting profanity and and taunts over the PA and every open radio channel. Overshoot the enemy's front on a flank and pants any lone mech or vee that got left without a buddy. If the enemy blobs up to deal with you, keep them herded up for your own battle line to get there while you take their electronics offline and mark targets for your LRMs, then dove something expensive to try and take it out of the fight. The XL engine and arm mounted weapons do mean that you really don't respond well to concentrsted fire, so avoid at all possible, but if you do lose your heat control from the lasers/engine hits, you always also have the backup option of backing up and taking a 17 hex run in on someone with a charge for a truly unkind ammount of damage as a last resort.

The Ilician Lancers Command Lance is a new Barnes and Noble exclusive box. Like the 21st Centauri lancers box before it, you get two new mechs and two mechs with existing plastic models.

Starting off with the new mechs we have the Ostwar and the Scarabus. The Ostwar is a 65 ton line mech is built around a mixture of long and short range weapons with a greater emphasis on missiles than the other offerings by Ostman industries. Similar to the Shockwave 99% of the time I'd consider this a "TV Static" mech--it's perfectly servicable but doesn't really have any X-factor that wows me over the competition. The Cylon-esque cockpit is distinctive and different next to its sister designs.

The Scarabus, on the other hand, is all about the gimmick. An incredibly fast (as in can pace a fire moth fast) and well armored 30 tonner, the Scarabus's shtick is that it's a light melee mech with a head chopper it can turn on with TSM. A fist full of lasers and single heat sinks goves it deceptively OK temperature management and at full heat the axe swings for 12 damage. ECM and TAG also mean that this little dingus can pull double duty as an ewar unit and forward observer. 12/12 hatchets, would definitely bonk again.

And now the bad. The new Ostsol is rough. I don't know if I got a bad casting or if this is just gonna be typical for the box but the mold slip line running bicep to bicep and through all of the main guns is *rough*. The PPCs are pretty bad too- the emitters aren't properly centered on the fronts of the barrels and the detail in general on the guns is kinda doughy. Most of this can definitely be fixed with an Xacto knife and some patience but I'd gotten used to these merc command boxes having better quality control than this; it's nearly as bad as the Armored Combat mechs :(

Variant-wise this Ost is another weirdo, the 9R. Uncharacteristically heavily armed for an ostsol and as slow as many mechs 30 tons heaviers, this thing is what you bring when you want an assault mech grade of guns but can't afford assault mech frames.

The Ostroc, on the other hand, is fine. As far as I can tell this is just a running repose of the basic 2C variant, and there's some nice motion here. Not much else to say with it.