This coming session I'm supposed to get Alexander a new BattleMech; the party is planning to break into an outlying outpost of Devil's Tower and steal one. Deciding which BattleMech to give him is both easier in some ways and harder in others than determining Shin's armor. According to the MUL, there are 422 'Mech designs commonly used by the Word of Blake. Of those, 166 were in manufacture during the Jihad era. 122 were introduced before 3074. The Celestial series is primarily deployed to the Shadow Divisions, so those are out. That leaves 80. They're recovering this from essentially an outpost, so I'm going to strike all assault 'Mechs (80+ tons) from the list, bringing us down to 58. That's about all the broad cuts I can make, so now I'll start a closer examination.
The 'Mech we're replacing here is a Black Hawk, a 50-ton Clan OmniMech armed almost exclusively with energy-based weapons, famed for its incredible alpha strike at short range. Something with a large energy weapon bank would be nice, as well as something that's a clear upgrade from the Black Hawk. Perhaps something iconic to the BttleTech franchise. Looking down this list, one element catches my eye: the Warhammer.
The first BattleTech boxed set I ever played had a Warhammer on the front, and back in pre-Clan invasion, it was one of the most fun 'Mechs out there. It carried two PPC as its main battery, which pre-Gauss Rifle was the most single-point-of-impact damage you could get without a number of lucky LRM rolls. The Warhammer has had a ludicrous number of canon variants published (30 according to the MUL), upgraded everytime technology has inched forward. In the mid-3070's, on Terra, that means the Warhammer WHM-8M. Two ER-PPC's, two ER Medium lasers, and a Light Gauss rifle, which the party can either keep there or use to replace the gun on their destroyed helicopter. Its like this 'Mech was designed specifically for this campaign.
I think we have a winner..
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