Hey kid, wanna line drive a locust into the next zip code?
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.
If you like melee mechs and you haven't tried out this light terror, I highly recommend the Scarabus. It rewards good positioning and a force that it can support with its electronics well, making it far more of a team player than some melee monsters can be. While I'd love to see some new variants with rec guides, free pdfs, and shrapnel going forward, I'm perfectly happy with the performance of the 9T. 9 hatchets out of 10.














