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Ghaz wrote: I'm interested in the Northern gears and don't want to end up buying something that I won't use if I happen to pick something up next weekend.

One word of warning - Blitz has an incredible variety to the way armies can be composed, and the North is second only to the Leagueless in flexibility. If there's a North Strike Squad or a North Fire Support, feel free to pick it up, but the GP Squads are not necessarily the best choice. If you like, I can comment on the North pretty reliably - I post frequently on the HG forums and haved played around 10 games of the North. Let me know if you want to know anything in particular.

Balance, I didn't know you were a 'Nid kind of guy

Edit: BTW, I'm in Columbus and haved played down in Fairborne a good bit. School makes my schedule a bit rough, but if you would like a demo I can probably arrange something with some advance notice. THe guys in Fairborne are doing demos this Saturday as well - it would be a really good time to visit if you're interested.

I'm not sure, to be honest. One thing of interest is that many squads (and faction-specific rules) contain downgrade options... For example, a common idea is to swap Jaegers for 'Stripped Down Jaegers' (In canon, a variant with armor plates replaced by ballistic cloth, so it's faster but less armored. It's a suicide machine no sane pilot would really want...) because like most games with alternating activations, there's merit in having some sacrifice squads to act first so the army is more responsive.

I am favoring minimal upgrades myself. Bumping skills has diminishing returns: The effect of moving a skill from 2 to 3 is good, but 3 to 4 is smaller.

For weapon swaps it depends. Again, I'm trying to keep things from going overboard as an expensive unit can turn into a fire magnet. Some of the weapon swaps are complex decisions: trade a weapon that has reloads and such for a limited-shot weapon with an area of effect or other special perk.

However, there are exceptions. Infantry are close to worthless without a heavy weapon, so adding at least an anti-gear rifle is pretty common.

Also interesting is that the new Black Talon Gears and CEF Frames generally come with only 1 weapon (and possibly a melee weapon) so it may make sense to upgrade them. Most units only have 1 action so can only fire 1 weapon a turn anyway, but the new BTs have two.

malfred wrote:So is it generally better to modify the squads with upgrades or can you run "naked" lists
with no problems?

It very heavily depends on the particular squad, and how it fits into your army. A South GP Squad, for instance, benefits heavily from all of the LBZK options if your regular opponent(s) are gears. A South Fire Support squad benefits heavily from 'downgrading' the Spitting Cobra to have fewer weapons, making you more efficient at the roles you (as army commander) select. Airborne squads can typically get buy without any upgrades, as can Opsec squads, but otherwise you're probably going to want to tweak at least a little bit. The best advice I can give you in this regard is that the more 'generic' a squad is, the more likely it needs to be tweaked to be useful, and the more specialized a squad is, the less likely.

These are helpful guidelines, thanks.

Since this thread seems to be moving along, I'll ask here. For the squad painting competition, what does 11:59 Mountain Time mean, exactly? 11:59 AM or PM?

It's pretty clear that it means PM as one minute later would be the next day.

PM, and if you're a few minutes late, I'll probably let you through. I just don't like having peopl submit stuff aprtway through the day we're judging.

-John

There's been some pic released of the FLAILs... The CEF Earth Force's new upgraded infantry:


For those who remember some of the older Heavy Gear canon, the FLAILs replace the SLEDGEs, whichw ere deemed "kinda goofy' and not fitting. Basically, the CEF has no real desire to create super soldiers that look like normal people as they want the super soldiers to be treated as machines, not people.

These guys are more the existing GRELs upgraded with powered exoskeletons of unknown manufacturer. There's also FLAIL upgrades for the hovertanks. Oddly, the FLAILs never seem to leave their vehicles of hover tanks...

These are a form of infantry, and would probably be similar in height to Grots.

Cute.

Are they resin models or are these the originals?

They're resin originals (or master copies, I'd guess).

The two on the left are 'Mordred' class FLAILs. The 'normal' Mordred GRELs are used as shock troopers... Fearless infantry big enough to fire heavy weapons easily or crush opponents in melee. Upgrading to FLAILs seems to maintain these attributes, but they're a bit more fearsome. Note that they appear to now deploy in small handfuls instead of squads.

(In HGB, normal Infantry are an example of a 'Combined Model' which means they have three bases holding a total of 10 infantry. They have to maintain coherency and act as a single model. It looks like the FLAILs are going to be 3 bases each with one model, still Combined Models.)

The rightmost model is a Morgana Commando FLAIL. The Morgana GRELs are used as specialists for both battlefield assaults and off-the-battlefield missions like sabotage and assassination. They generally work alone, which makes them vulnerable but they do have high stealth and similar.

The Morgana FLAIL is presumably more focused on battlefield assaults, as I really can't see these monsters sneaking through security checkpoints.

The FLAILS have armor in a class similar to most trooper Gears. They're still limited to infantry weapons, but can fire heavy weapons while moving at Combat Speed. The Morganas do have a Vibroblade that could threaten light vehicles, even light Gears, but it's a longshot. Both classes of FLAILs also have Hover movement: jets capable of providing enough lift to skate around the battlefield.

As I said earlier in the thread, Infantry in Blitz can be surprisingly resilient. It's certainly not the throw-away minor nuisance I remember it being in Battletech. They're capable of threatening big units so they can't be ignored but they're slow and need to fight from cover to be effective.

I don't know how the FLAILs will fare on the battlefield. They're pricey: A squad of FLAILs works out to cost more than most trooper Gears, but they're very well-armored. Maybe they're good objective-grabber types, as they can zoom in guns blazing.

Here's a pic of the painted FLAILs:



(The guy on the left is a normal non-upgraded GREL.)

It's been kind of a quiet month for HGB. I think it's kind of a post-big-release lull. The main sculptor did finish a few products to be released soon, including some long-awaited 'jeep-like vehicles':






These are essentially an upgrade for infantry and don't count as 'vehicles' per se. They're the next step up from the ATVs (Quads or motorcycles) infantry can take, and provide a stable weapon platform (Basically, they change heavy weapons from 'move or shoot' to 'move and shoot') in addition to mobility.

Each pack comes with 3 wee little vehicles (They're 1/150th) and thw pieces for the back covers and weapons.

Balancetor: You may have answered this upthread and I missed it, but here goes. What's the difference between Heavy Gear Blitz and the L&L update you folks have released? Does the update also invalidate, like an old codex, the Hammer of Faith and Swords of Pride books as well? Lastly, do you know of any folks playing Heavy Gear in the South Eastern US?

Locked & Loaded is a new version that replaces the old books. The one L&L book has all the old army lists in it in a new and updated format... There's a ton of possible lists as there's the polar nations, the individual leagues, the Badlands forces, and the leagueless all in one book.

As for players in the SE, you might want to try the DP9 Forums as we do have a player finder thread.

August has been a quiet month as the guys are off to GenCon and there's been some product slippage... The lead developer just moved, DP9 moved it's office to a different suite in the same building, and their web guy (me!) might be moving into a house soon. September should be a fun month though, as there will be some new stuff as well as some repackaged and upgraded models to resolve some molds that weren't working well.

For example, a lot of the bigger tanks are moving to resin main hulls to increase detail and lower weight.

How does the Return to Cat's Eye fit into this? Would that be considered a supplement? And reading the website some more, it seems you guys are switching printers and building an updated L&L book for when that happens. Would it be worth my time to wait for that? Or are the updates small enough in nature that the won't affect the core gameplay?

Resin is quite exciting, I love working with it.

return to cats eye just has the CEF, black talons, and caprice factions. They have updated data cards in it, but you can get them off DP9.com for free. Unless you want to play one of those factions, I don't think its worth it.

RtCE is focused on the CEF, Black Talons, and Caprician factions, but there's a little something for everybody. I do mean 'little'... Some old factions may get a couple new weapon options, for example.

Essentially, RtCE is kind of a 'storyline' book in that it's describing the period of Heavy Gear's story where the interpolar war has paused (Due the the 'big event' that was the start of the HG2 computer game which I'm applying spoiler protection on for some reason) and everyone is gearing up for the inevitable CEF invasion... And at the end of the timeline described, the CEF returns to Terra Nova with a vengeance!

The 'New' CEF essentially uses warships to clear the way, then drops tons of troops from skeletal drop-pod carriers (Hexagonal drop pods, and the carriers have a central spine with pods a couple layers deep on them). The troops committed to the assault are pretty massive in number, and have Hovertanks and the new Frames.

As this is a 'timeline' book it's minor, and the needs of storytelling mean some units don't get massive upgrades. The ESE and WFPA, for example, are both dealing with internal politics and don't get particularly massive upgrades: (The ESE is, as always, dealing with internal politics and only gets to take advantage of new toys via the Emir's ties to other factions; The WFPA is refurbishing and recomissioning even more old, obsolete Gears. The WFPA does get a cool option to mount a VLFG on the old Mad Dog chassis).

A lot of the book is background and storyline.

It's not an 'essential' purchase, but I think most people interested in the game will want it eventually. The Pod is switching to a new printer so RtCE will be changing formats slightly to either all B&W or full color soon.

Well before I played 40k, I played Battletech. Every book they came out with basically had a bit of story in it. I'd be fine picking that up. In fact, since its hard for me to get a game in of BT, I only buy'em to read the story.

You'll hopefully like RtCE then... There's about 30 pages and the storyline has actually extended beyond what was published in the old Storyline books. (Note that all but the first two storyline books have been rendered non-canon.)

The new lists are interesting. Both the CEF and BT kind of lean towards being 'Quality over Quantity' lists, as they're focused on expensive but powerful units.

By the way, the Heavy Gear Blitz schedule got a little weird for a couple months as some large and slwo projects are underway, we're between books, etc.

However, there's some new stuff! the guys are playing with some very limited 'bits' service, witht he following three items available for order:

Left and Right Medium Rocket Pods sprue. (Previous, the few setups that needed reversed missile racks had to improvise.)


Left and Right Anti-Gear Missiles sprue from the updated Jaguar. (These are angled missile racks instead of the normal flat racks.)


And Light and Medium Rifles: (They'd probably be somewhat chunky looking 'heavy rifles' on 28mm minis.)


This is kind of an experiment. Each sprue is $2.00 and only available online, but I hope more will be added if these sell well.

These items where part of a build-up to recasting a bunch of old minis! The Jaguar, Grizzly, Black Mamba and Spitting Cobra have been re-cast with two-piece leg assemblies as there were complaints about molding problems with the old versions, and extras int he box sets have been rejiggered to be more useful. (We have parts images up at the online store.)

There's new releases coming in November, including a couple I don't think I'm allowed to talk about yet.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh yes: There was also a 1.1 edition of the rulebook, and the FAQ and updates to get the 1.0 in line with it have jsut recently been posted.