Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

You might want to go for some hover APCs, or the quads/bikes/hoverbikes, though I don't think they ever made actual GREL versions of those, even if they had the option to use them. The CEF was all about Blitzing, and infantry without some sort of mobility tended to be only useful for defending their starting location. Which was fine for mortar teams, but not so great for others.

GRELS were fun, because unlike human infantry which sort of disappear if a gear looks at them funny, the GRELs took concentrated effort to remove, which always annoyed my opponent.

ferrous wrote:
GRELS were fun, because unlike human infantry which sort of disappear if a gear looks at them funny, the GRELs took concentrated effort to remove, which always annoyed my opponent.

Weren't they over the (xDM) break-point for pretty much all of the anti-infantry weapons, or something like that, and you could still buy armor upgrades for some of the platoons/teams.....
To the point where a Gear grenade was the only reliable way to deal with a group of GRELs.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
The basic Type 6-16 and Type 2-21 (same machine, really, except for the head) are about the same height as a Jaeger or Hunter. They're much bulkier, though - wider, deeper front-to-back and chunkier overall. The Type 2-21 towers over both of those. I've added a couple of quick side-by-side comparisons of the Type 6-16, 2-21 and 2-19, as well as the metal light hovertank and resin tank. The hover APC uses the same chassis as the metal light tank.

ferrous wrote:
Yeah, the hovertanks are expensive, but definitely the most iconic of CEF forces. And they're kind of why the Frames exist as they are, as they are supposed to be fast enough to keep up with the hovertanks. That said, they are visually different, not like some of the polar forces, where you can hardly tell the difference. (I'm looking at you Chassuer)

I guess I need to try to find a way to get some hovertanks down the road. And you hit the nail on the head as to why I was looking at OpFor Frames over Gears - to the novice, the Gears start to all look the same, but the Frames are clearly different.

There was also a discussion about faction models over in the [Heavy Gear 2e/Tactical] Vehicle Discussion: Walker Design & Aesthetics thread here on dakka which did get into a few points about the Frames.

And a short thread about what could be done differently for the Kodiak & King Cobra as in-game/background (fluff) Gears.


Sounds like you're getting a lot of work done with your ruleset, any interest happening in your locale for the change?

 Albertorius wrote:
Hm, this reminds me that I should probably unload a lot of my HG minis to someone who actually plays...

I had one person ask, and thought about it a few other times, but I think so many Tactical-era and now HGB!-era minis are available on ebay or the like for next to nothing it's probably better to not go through the hassle of attempting a private sale.

Or entrusting to the mail; here of late even the tougher white outside/grey inside unpadded plastic envelopes are arriving with tears, if not all but torn open, from handling somewhere along the way.

_
_

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
There isn't a person inside a FLAILS suit - or an F2-xx Frame. Just a GREL brain in a jar.

That's a good concept, but it's crazy why the FLAILs and frames aren't cooler-looking...

Or goofy funny, like a Socket Soldier from Gunnm...


____

 Smilodon_UP wrote:

ferrous wrote:
GRELS were fun, because unlike human infantry which sort of disappear if a gear looks at them funny, the GRELs took concentrated effort to remove, which always annoyed my opponent.

Weren't they over the (xDM) break-point for pretty much all of the anti-infantry weapons, or something like that, and you could still buy armor upgrades for some of the platoons/teams.....
To the point where a Gear grenade was the only reliable way to deal with a group of GRELs.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
I guess I need to try to find a way to get some hovertanks down the road. And you hit the nail on the head as to why I was looking at OpFor Frames over Gears - to the novice, the Gears start to all look the same, but the Frames are clearly different.

There was also a discussion about faction models over in the [Heavy Gear 2e/Tactical] Vehicle Discussion: Walker Design & Aesthetics thread here on dakka which did get into a few points about the Frames.

And a short thread about what could be done differently for the Kodiak & King Cobra as in-game/background (fluff) Gears.

Sounds like you're getting a lot of work done with your ruleset, any interest happening in your locale for the change?

 Albertorius wrote:
Hm, this reminds me that I should probably unload a lot of my HG minis to someone who actually plays...

I had one person ask, and thought about it a few other times, but I think so many Tactical-era and now HGB!-era minis are available on ebay or the like for next to nothing it's probably better to not go through the hassle of attempting a private sale.

Or entrusting to the mail; here of late even the tougher white outside/grey inside unpadded plastic envelopes are arriving with tears, if not all but torn open, from handling somewhere along the way.

Duly noted on GRELs needing to be as tough as a Light Gear - I can do that!

Thanks for the thread pointers - I'll check them out!

It's just my small playgroup dinking around, driven almost entirely by my interest in getting my HG minis quickly & easily playable, along with formally writing a tabletop miniatures game ruleset. Once it's "ready", I'll release for others to muck about. My intent is to finalize my version, and create simple "count as" rules for various HG units, perhaps a dozen per side. I've done a lot of abstraction in my ruleset, so Gears are Gears. A Jaeger is going to be the same as a Hunter, same as any other basic Gear. As I don't intend to own any, I'll leave the Utopian & Caprice conversions to someone else.

For me, if I know I'm not going to play something, I'm not afraid to sell it or trade it. I find that some (but not all) HG minis can be relatively affordable on both eBay and Amazon. I got my frames for a decent price, and will likely trawl eBay for a bit longer. Too bad the Tanks are still kinda expensive... I should probably update my Swap Shop post to clarify what I'd want.

Yeah, a lot of the really basic infantry / anti-infantry weaponry was just not good enough to put much of a dent in them. Anti-personnel charges in particular were ineffective, which are normally the bane of infantry, since they can be put on drones and don't cost an action to fire. Having that AP charge go off and do nothing, and then have the GRELs launch rockets in return was a good shock the first time =)

I actually don't mind the look of the Frames, they sort of look like angular fighter planes crossed with a robot.

I was wondering how useful infantry are in HGB?

I got NuCoal force and a Southern force to battle it out. Was wondering if a platoon for each would be good?

I wanted to give them some protection for APCs but most for each seem to be APC 1. I'm guessing the 1 is how many stands can go in it for transporting.

Pack of 40 guys so you get 6 bases plus some extra. Not very $ cost effective if I can only transport 1 base, 2 in rare cases. (Caiman for south is 25$ for 2)

Thematically, Infantry are made obsolete by Gears, so I wouldn't get a lot of them.

OTOH, a small number of Infantry will show scale, so that it's clear how big a Gear is.

The Platoons seem priced OK; maybe paint one set tan and the other green?

Thanks. I saw they dont do awhole lot. But wanted to check.

Another question i had while reading is armor piercing ammo. Says it does damaged based on the margin of sucess.

For example if a 8 armor gear gets hit by a weapon that is ap and strength 6 but fails to get higher it takes 2 damage still?

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Thematically, Infantry are made obsolete by Gears, so I wouldn't get a lot of them.

OTOH, a small number of Infantry will show scale, so that it's clear how big a Gear is.

The Platoons seem priced OK; maybe paint one set tan and the other green?

Infantry being made obsolete by Gears is only partially true. In-setting, Gears are one-man IFVs, and cheap enough to be deployed in large numbers, so yes, they certainly have replaced infantry in many respects, particularly for stuff that needs speed and firepower, and they also make decent armor bodyguards. Still, there are many jobs that infantry is particularly adept (and boots in the ground are still boots in the ground) and combined with mobility options (bikes/trikes, jump packs, jeeps and the like) they can be quite effective.

Game wise... it will depend a lot on the particular edition of the rules you're using. Current beta they are mostly a speed bump, if that (ranges on their weapons coupled with speed make them mostly irrelevant except when the enemy absolutely must go where they are, and even then, they usually can pick them from afar first). Don't bother with them unless you want to garrison a place on the cheap or if (as JHDD says) you want your game to show some scale (which I love to do, btw: HG games of only Gears without infantry are virtually indistinguishable from SM on SM action).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

str00dles1 wrote:
Thanks. I saw they dont do awhole lot. But wanted to check.

Another question i had while reading is armor piercing ammo. Says it does damaged based on the margin of sucess.

For example if a 8 armor gear gets hit by a weapon that is ap and strength 6 but fails to get higher it takes 2 damage still?

New beta? Hm, let's see. MoS 0+ is a success, so the shot hits. It has Pen 6 and the AP trait, and has hit a unit with 8 Armor. AP is now a rated trait, so it will be AP:X. Rules say that "A Target with an Armor Rating higher than the Penetration Rating of the attack will suffer damage equal to the Margin of Success up to the rating of the trait, or normal damage, whichever is greater".

So, let's say AP:2. Regular damage would be MoS (0) + Pen (6) - Armor (8), for a total -2 Damage, so no regular damage, and MoS is 0, so AP damage will also be 0. So, no damage.

I want Lizard Cavalry, because the models exist. But I also want GREL Infantry. Just because.

And you hit the nail on the head that Gear on Gear looks like SM on SM. Which isn't bad, as BAC / 30k show.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
I want Lizard Cavalry, because the models exist. But I also want GREL Infantry. Just because.

And you hit the nail on the head that Gear on Gear looks like SM on SM. Which isn't bad, as BAC / 30k show.

Oh, I'm not saying it's bad. I'm saying it's not why I play HG (or, well, played). I have 40k for that

Exactly. We don't need more games being 40k.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

str00dles1 wrote:

str00dles1 wrote:
Thanks. I saw they dont do awhole lot. But wanted to check.

Another question i had while reading is armor piercing ammo. Says it does damaged based on the margin of sucess.

For example if a 8 armor gear gets hit by a weapon that is ap and strength 6 but fails to get higher it takes 2 damage still?

New beta? Hm, let's see. MoS 0+ is a success, so the shot hits. It has Pen 6 and the AP trait, and has hit a unit with 8 Armor. AP is now a rated trait, so it will be AP:X. Rules say that "A Target with an Armor Rating higher than the Penetration Rating of the attack will suffer damage equal to the Margin of Success up to the rating of the trait, or normal damage, whichever is greater".

So, let's say AP:2. Regular damage would be MoS (0) + Pen (6) - Armor (8), for a total -2 Damage, so no regular damage, and MoS is 0, so AP damage will also be 0. So, no damage.

Yea, new Beta. Printed off the book and getting ready for a demo game tonight.

Sorry, but I think that confused me more haha. I think it always causes damage?

Target has armor 8, your pen is 6, with AP of 2. So you deal 2 damage to the gear cause you failed to pen normally but your AP of the weapon is 2.

If your margin is 8 also and their armor is 8, you just hope your margin roll is 4+ to still cause 1 yea?

And in the same instance, if your pen total is 9, and their armor 8, you deal just 1 damage cause the AP is ignored because you were successful?

Sorry tis is going way over my head :/

str00dles1 wrote:

Yea, new Beta. Printed off the book and getting ready for a demo game tonight.

Sorry, but I think that confused me more haha. I think it always causes damage?

The trait says that it either does the regular damage or an amount of damage equal to the MoS and up to the AP rating. So no, going by that, it doesn't always cause damage.

Target has armor 8, your pen is 6, with AP of 2. So you deal 2 damage to the gear cause you failed to pen normally but your AP of the weapon is 2.

See above. If you'r PEN is 6, have AP 2 and hit with a MoS 0 to an Armor 8 unit, you wouldn't do any damage regularly. And as your MoS is 0, and when you hit with an AP weapon you do as many damage as your MoS, you'd do no damage from that, either.

If your margin is 8 also and their armor is 8, you just hope your margin roll is 4+ to still cause 1 yea?

AFAIK, yes.

And in the same instance, if your pen total is 9, and their armor 8, you deal just 1 damage cause the AP is ignored because you were successful?

Again, AFAIK, yes.

Sorry tis is going way over my head :/

Hey, no problem. The rule is not the clearest ever.

Heh, so much for streamlining with the new rules =) (though to be fair, the old rules have quite a bit of jank in them)

I preferred having some sort of other vehicles/infantry in my games to get a better sense of scale. Though the only good tank models in the game are CEF, the Pod has always been a bit lackluster when it comes to their vehicle models otherwise, though some of the newer redesigns are at least better than the old ones.

Infantry in the old rules were good for holding ground in rough or urban terrain, and their infantry mortars were overpowered, and could plink at anything with decent chance of success. One good thing I think the new rules did was not let you field infantry without a weapon upgrade, as vanilla infantry with nothing but assault rifles was really pointless. Though I think they still only have nerfed versions of ATM/AGMs for holdover reasons. It's been ages since I checked the new rulebook out, I suppose I ought to do that at some point.

I think if I were you John, I'd think about requiring infantry to come with APCs or be mounted on trikes/orvs/lizards/monowheels/etc. Maybe skip that requirement for the faction that has the super dirt cheap conscript infantry. I think it would make for better gameplay to save people from themselves during army construction. That has always been one of Heavy Gear's big failings, letting people construct armies that will just fall apart against even the most basic of opponents, and is not at all fun to play.

@ferrous - I like the rectangular CEF HoverTanks - they look more like tanks than the wedged-nose versions.

I agree that Infantry should have anti-Gear firepower of some sort.

My game is very barebones, so there won't be that many variants. Or options. Or sides. Very simple. And really, the only reason for HTs and Infantry is to scale it back to what people already know.

Infantry platoons might be my next purchase. As 20$ for 6-7 40mm bases of guys isn't to bad.

Most do have a sort of anti Gear weapon. Usually the light/medium anti tank/vehicle rocket. Which on average is enough to punch through your standard gear with minimal effort. Only caviate is you can only take 2 bases of them in a squad.

So barebones 2 infantry bases 2 anti vehicle bases is about 16 points or so. As mentioned terrain will really be what makes them worth taking or not. I plan to use Dropzone city terrain for some games so figure they can garrison in buildings/behind car rubble.

If you can hide them to avoid being shotting up to pieces and can make the enemy go to them instead of ignoring them directly, they probably will do well enough for the points.

Right now, I only own Gears & Frames, so it'll be Gear on Frame action, and hopefully, I can theme it so it's tough firepower vs speed & agility.

Latest KS Update shows off the test sprue CEF stuff. Frames look good, hovertank is OK, but the Grel Infantry...! Yuck.

They bulked up the frames a bit, and they show a nice contrast image from the white metal frames to the new plastic stuff.

DP9 showed a similar image of the Caprice mounts as well.

Overall, it looks like the scale of the plastic stuff is either more true to the '28mm heroic' scale, or stuff is just getting bigger in plastic. I know it's supposed to be like 128mm scale or some such, but I don't think any miniature company is true to the scale of their game.

Looks the right size to me.

They look OK to me. I could have hoped for a redesign of the FLAILS units, but they're no worse than they were.

I'll be putting all the Frames on 30mm bases, though. They look ridiculous on those 25mm hexes.

Yeah, Flails, well, sadly no improvement, but yeah, the pewter ones were ugly as hell, so, that's a bummer they didn't just redo the design -- no one would have minded. The frames look mostly okay to me, probably some minor size differences, kind of hard to tell too much from that overhead shot. Is that the BF-18 in the back? It looks really big now.

That new hovertank is awful, but that's just the design, not the plastics. It just looks like a lazy design where they just repeat the same pattern over and over instead of making it interesting to the eye like either the HT-68 or 72 are. I get that some tanks are like that these days, but its kind of annoying that every model of Hovertank looks nothing like the others.

The Flails are still bad.

The 2-19 is definitely bigger than before.

I hate the arrowhead tanks. It's boring, unlike the 68 and 72. Too bad they didn't do the big 68 as part of the KS.


Pretty much all Gears should be on 30mm rounds, and the big Gears like the King Cobra and 2-29 should really be on 40mm rounds.


Also, the top-down view is great for showing how the Jump Jets attach to the Frames, because it was not obvious from the single front-on shot that the model is packaged with.

My distaste over the small bases used for HG is pretty large. I think just about all my gears have had their toes chipped. When I bought my NuCoal, I put all my gears on 40mm sized bases. The new GW 32mm bases are just about perfect for many of the gears.

I really don't understand why they continue to use those horrible, hex slotted bases.

 Tamwulf wrote:
The new GW 32mm bases are just about perfect for many of the gears.

I really don't understand why they continue to use those horrible, hex slotted bases.

Thanks, GW 32mm it is!

Those bases are the Pod in a nutshell, clinging on to something desperately old and obsolete, because that's what they did way back when they were relevant.

 Tamwulf wrote:
My distaste over the small bases used for HG is pretty large.
I really don't understand why they continue to use those horrible, hex slotted bases.

Consider who is putting the models together for the blurb.
And, as John pointed out, you also have to factor in a primary Pod characteristic; it's the cheapest option, and any dislike of it isn't ''significant'' enough to be worth noticing by the company.


On another note, I've read through most of the Starship Troopers Miniatures Game (2005) rulebook, which appears to be the inspiration/progenitor for the original (pre-NuBlitz) HGB! scenario and upgrade option (force construction) concepts.
Otherwise, it's pretty much a retread of some 40K edition.

_
_

SST was written by Andy Chambers, who may have been involved in writing some 40k-like games prior to writing SST.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
SST was written by Andy Chambers, who may have been involved in writing some 40k-like games prior to writing SST.

Back in the day (back when I was a redshirt, actually), I was told that Andy wrote the SST system to be the new 40k ruleset, but that the powers that be in GW didn't like it, so he went outside.

It would have been revolutionary to 40k to have changed the rules to the SST set.
SST is about as much a retread of 40k as Infinity.

The 25mm hex slotted bases had a use way, way back when arcs mattered and the models were cast in white metal with the tab at the bottom. The new plastic liberates the models from that metal tab, and allows for much more customization and posing options for the models. I just really, really hope my KS package doesn't come with a bunch of hex slotted bases. Any new player will look at the plastic models and those way too small 25mm hex slotted bases and say "Did they send me the wrong bases? WTF?!"