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Definitely. I don't think I've ever seen a HG tourney and that includes Gen Con let alone played in one. While the bazooka was an ultra efficient tool in blitz for the North, I don't think that's the case in NuBlitz though... and I've got a bunch. I like the look and some of my Rpg favs were bazooka gears so I've been sprinkling them throughout...but I'm making sure to also consciously add other weapons as well. The only one I'm missing at the moment is the snub cannon and I have that tentatively planned for a hunter.

A group shot of my force as of today. I somewhat successfully cast a lower detail head for the third jaguar and magnetized it and a normal head for easy swapping as needed. While it isn't as sharp as the original metals, it's better than the picture indicates. I have to stop thinking of the groups as squads as I've been referring to them since they're not actually legal squads. From the 10 models, I can field two legal squads out of the three strike, dragoon, and fire support options. My next trio was intended to be Hunter variants but I think I'll hold off until the new rules come out hopefully next week. Three of the four hunter variants I can build don't actually exist in the current rules and would require significant conversion and/or substitution. I'm hoping some more options open up with the 2016 revision. Alternatively, I could start working on some infantry in the meantime or even start my southern force.

Nice shot. How many Gears are left to build?

For the North, I still have two infantry blisters, four hunters, two cheetahs, a field gun, and two stealth gears. For the south, there are two to three gears of each general class plus two infantry. Plus a strider for each side.

Oh, OK, plenty of stuff!

I'm assuming you'll make a basic (LAC/LRP) Hunter, a basic Jaeger, and the basic Command versions of each? Of the 4 Hunters, that just leaves a Bazooka Hunter and one more specialist Hunter?

Unfortunately, no. All four of my hunters' bodies look VERY different from each other and three of the four don't actually exist in the Nublitz rules. The recon, commando, and armored hunters would have to be converted on top of using counts as additionally. The last blister is a stock hunter that I was either going to build as is or as a predator hunter (snub cannon).

Oh. I think I'd build the one stock, simply to have a bone-stock basic Hunter in the collection. For your purposes, I'd build the other 3 out of the box and play them "count as" under nublitz.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Oh. I think I'd build the one stock, simply to have a bone-stock basic Hunter in the collection. For your purposes, I'd build the other 3 out of the box and play them "count as" under nublitz.

That would end up having three of the four hunters armed with the same main weapon (LAC) and the same secondaries (LRP). There isn't anything per se wrong with that but I've been trying to inject some weapon variability into the collection as well (which is why I was going to use a snub cannon... none of the other models have one and it's not a common southern weapon either). Either way, I'll probably hold off for a bit until I see the new rules and if any new variants were added (and hopefully no changes made to my current ones!).

Oh. I wasn't aware that would be the result.

No worries. Unless you're an old time HG RPG nerd like me, you wouldn't. I appreciate the suggestions though.

The 2016 update to the Heavy Gear rules came out this past weekend. While I didn't have a chance to go over the actual rules in any detail, I did take a look at the army construction chapters. One major change is that the number of different UAs has been significantly reduced. I'm glad to see this seeing as how I both privately (prior to) and publicly (post release) advocated strongly for that unsuccessfully back in 2013/2014. With this latest slimmed down army organization, I decided to see if what I could do with firstly my painted Blitz scale models and then my new Rafm scale collection.

A few years back when I was trying to demo and drum up support for the game, a player commented after an intro game while skimming through my rulebook that he was surprised to see more than just gears in Heavy Gear. At first I was perplexed at the comment but then took a look at my collection at that time (100% gears) and considered the name and cover art of all the books. Since then, I made it a point to include more than just gears in my forces despite my personal interests, especially in the forces I bring to demo. Gears are still the overall main focus of my collection but not the only one. Additionally, I wanted to make sure I brought models that will use a variety of weapons, deployments, stats, and special rules instead of just frontline commandos backed up by backfield bruisers (my initial southern army). If those weren't enough restrictions, space was also limited in my carrying case so all three forces had to fit in mostly a single foam tray. From my collection, here are the various lists I came up with at 132pts (+-1pt) each after evicting some Robotech models from their foam slots!



Starting with the North, we have a Fire Support squad of two Grizzlies (including the CGL) and two destroyer Jaguars. The Jaguars belong honestly more in an old time strike squad but the low tech but devastating explosive brute force weapons can also fit here in the Fire Support squad . They'll likely be deployed up on the front lines guarding the 5th member of the squad, a support unit Cheetah. The Cheetah recon gear is there to provide FO as well as some ECM support for the squad. The second squad is a high tech strike squad of two Arrow missile Jaguars and two laser sniper Flash Jaguars led by a Cheetah. To round out the three activations, I have a platoon of four anti-tank infantry squads. With this force, I've got a representation of indirect fire (guided and normal), some advanced weapons like lasers, infantry and their unique rules, and some solid electronic warfare.



Opposing them is my Southern Republic gear regiment. I went with extremes here in that I took both the most basic gear squad (GP) along with two of the most elite in that army. I have a five many Jager GP squad including some grenade launchers/LAC combo rifles and some bazookas led by a command Jager. This was important to me as I didn't have any "trooper" class gears like the hunter in my northern force. Backing them up is a strike squad of two bruiser King Cobras with their haywire damage causing particle accelerators. Finally, we have a special forces stealth squad of two three various mambas and a chameleon recon gear. This squad utilizes both the stealth and paratrooper rules potentially in a game.



Rounding out the final force is my Nucoal tank regiment. The standard 132pt force consists of two squadrons of missile and laser armed Fusilier Javelin hovertanks backed up by a pair of larger, tougher (but slower and more expensive!) Longfang Hetairoi hovertanks. This covers the previously unused hover mode movement as well as multiaction larger vehicles. For smaller games, I've included two support squad hover gears (Chasseur mk2 gunners) to add a bit of granularity to potential squads at lower point totals.

With these three armies, I've got a variety of weapons represented as well as general classes of gears. Flanking, airdrop, and normal deployment is represented along with special categories of rules like stealth and electronic warfare. Finally, nongears are shown as both infantry as well as tanks are included. I attempted to include support options like turrets, conventional tanks, and aircraft alternatively in the southern force as well as an APC in the north but neither the points nor the remaining available foam slots worked out. I'm also missing a strider in a list as well. I had initially planned to use my Rafm Kodiak as a blitz gearstrider but there are lingering questions about his size relative to the orginal model on top of the fact that couldn't fit in the case without removing more (necessary) robotech demo models. I may eventually revisit that decision though in the future though. Next up will be my Robotech demo lists and models that I keep in the same case.

I like it!

Do you have a Mammoth? I think that is *the* iconic Strider, right?

Also, no recon drones?

Thanks! No mammoths except for the one I recently got in Rafm scale. I used to own a naga, saggitarius, and other vehicles in blitz scale but I sold those expensive resin kits early on and made most of my money back on the big southern lot that I started this blog with. Gears were always what drew me to HG so I focused on that for a while. The northern Scimitar gearstrider actually looks ok to good but I'm definitely not a fan of the Southern Drake or the Nucoal gobot tank either. The ony actual strider I could see myself possibly ever getting for these armies is a Thunderhammer now that it has the pregnant belly APC bits and rules. Realistically, though, I'll probably leave the strider models for a potential small caprice army similar to how I left the tanks for Nucoal. I actually have two visigoths but have held off on rebuying striders due to the resin DP9 costs; the upcoming caprice boxed set though intrigues me since the prices are actually quite reasonable. That should scratch the strider itch for me.

Ironically, I did have two recon drones for the nucoal force as they're very light in that regard (EW stuff). In the past, some of the command upgrades for tanks granted ECM so I didn't need a dedicated recon gear for that (although I did consider using drones). I'm in the process of stripping one drone possibly for use with my rafm scale stuff (they're usually mounted on a gear's outer calf) and the other is done up in northern colors. I'm debating how to put them on the tiny bases like the plastic ones have as well as how to make them not faction specific (all my factions have different colored bases). I also redid the pics posted above because dakka's auto pic filter did a horrible job this time autocorrecting them (and I cropped them while I was at it).

That RAFM Mammoth must weigh at least a pound! Don't drop it on your foot!

The Southern Drake is awful, and I wouldn't buy it at half the MSRP. Really, the Southern Striders are generally bad. I get that they're trying to make the Drake more like the Naga, but the Jager is the iconic look, and HG seems to have abandoned it. The Scimitar is pretty good, and I do kinda like the Hussar. Not a fan of the sprawl-legged Striders like the Thunderhammer, as they're not Gear-like.

I'm thinking a few scratchbuild generic drones on wire stands for my stuff. It's a flying scope - how hard could it be?

Oh yeah, the larger pictures look *MUCH* better. I rebalance and crop anything I'm going to upload into gallery. I suppose if I didn't do that, I'd use the Dakka auto-balance.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
That RAFM Mammoth must weigh at least a pound! Don't drop it on your foot!

The Southern Drake is awful, and I wouldn't buy it at half the MSRP. Really, the Southern Striders are generally bad. I get that they're trying to make the Drake more like the Naga, but the Jager is the iconic look, and HG seems to have abandoned it. The Scimitar is pretty good, and I do kinda like the Hussar. Not a fan of the sprawl-legged Striders like the Thunderhammer, as they're not Gear-like.

I'm thinking a few scratchbuild generic drones on wire stands for my stuff. It's a flying scope - how hard could it be?

Oh yeah, the larger pictures look *MUCH* better. I rebalance and crop anything I'm going to upload into gallery. I suppose if I didn't do that, I'd use the Dakka auto-balance.

I'm actually a fan of the striders NOT looking like bipedal humanoids when possible as it distinguishes them from gears and adds a bit of crunch to the universe in that the mechanics that work at 3-5m tall and X tons don't necessarily work the best at double to triple that height and 5-10x the weight. The generic drones should work ok. I've got a bunch of servo skulls so I'll have to see if those work with some conversion (namely chopping off the actual skulls and replacing them with HG style bits. Possibly using spare heads from unbuilt command models might work! Yeah, I saw how bad those pics were in the post here and reuploaded them to dropbox from my phone and edited them. Usually the autocorrect feature here works pretty well but not this time (the lack of proper cropping though was entirely on me).

Gah! Keep those servo skulls as-is - they're awesome for 40k. Maybe we should do a trade.