Heavy Gear Upate: New South Units, Battle Reports

2023-03-20 batrep / heavy gear / hgb-south / hobby /

A groupshot of my Heavy Gear Southern Republican army as it currently stands, fully painted and based and varnished. There's only a handful of other units I can see myself adding to it, and it's plenty large and diverse enough for a wide variety of task force compositions.

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Caiman APCs

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I love the shape of these, chunky and bubbly like something out of a 90s anime like Domion Tank Police. I've been hurting for a way to move infantry, so some APCs really open up the flexibility of my non-mech units. Turrets are magnetized, of course.

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Titan Attack Helicopter

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Doubles as an infantry transport. But primarily a fire mission platform supporting ground forces. I'm mostly happy with how it came out. The wash got a little out of hand with me on the body; I think the dregs of the bottle I've been working with have gone bad, or precipitated or split or something because it's not behaving like it used to. Binned.

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The canopy looks fine in photographs, but up close in person you can see the clouding in it. The Molotow chrome pen couldn't seem to settle into the perfect mirror surface like it used to. ... And then I literally put my thumb in it while looking at the model (that stuff has a really long curing time, note to self, overnight from now on). I had to paint back over it again and it started to really build up so I'm learning to love it as it is before I absolutely ruin the whole model.

Blades are magnitized because I was 100% certain I'd snap them off if they weren't.

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Hydra Strider Tank

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I thought he'd be bigger than a Naga, but he's basically the same exact size just with lots of little differences in the hull configuration. The dual rotary cannons on the bottom are a really weird and awkward connection, just hanging off a ball joint of the cannon. There's got to be better ways to model that, but I wasn't up for that drastic a conversion this time.

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I'd been forgetting to base him for weeks, so decided to make a sub-project of it. I chopped up a spare plastic Hunter gear, and used him as a test piece for the technique I want to use for my CEF tanks (spoilers?). I basecoated him in silver, speckled on some rust colors, waited for it to cure, then gloss varnished it. Waited a day. Chipping Medium. Then a two-tone brown color with some simple details, wait a bit, have at it with a wet toothbrush and toothpick.

Pretty chuffed with how it worked. But glad to have learned on something less impactful than a great big tank.

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I just realized that I forgot weathering pigments on the wheels, skid plates, and general undersides. Have to go back and add those now.

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Recent Heavy Gear Blitz Games

2023-02-25 SRA vs Temple Heights vs Caprice

6x4 table using two mats and some of my recently built new buildings and urban scenery. Still working on more of it, post when done.

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The Hydra's first (pre-basing) outing. Swatted some Megidos before facing the apex predator of tanks, the Ammon Quasar.

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Jagers and infantry holding a solid quarter of the map and just stubbornly refusing to die fast enough.

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Accos hanging off a building for better cover and elevation bonuses.

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DocTree's Titan, assembled and painted at least a full month before mine. We shall have airwar soon, chopter on chopter.

After Action Report

The heavy Caprice models are well worth their points, especially the Quasar. NuCoal struggled to kill infantry surprisingly, though that was mostly down to range. My Flame Cobra had another bad day, dying before he could close to his optimal range (hell, before max range).

This was the most defensively I've yet played the South, and damned if it doesn't really work. I just don't know I can enjoy that more than occasionally.

2023-03-04 ESE vs Temple Heights vs Caprice & Eden

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Tree got an interesting new mat. Shoals, swamp, tidal pools, something like that. We wanted to try a map with more water. Water is surprisingly trivial for gears, at least the shallow kind like this.

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Eden hits HARD when it gets into melee. My trooper gears had their best showing yet, but ultimately got tabled once they got flanked.

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After Action Report

Water was kinda disappointingly not as much trouble as we thought it would be. That could be solely because we treated it as shallow water, which has basically no penalties whatsoever to 'walker' models. Might try again with default deep with agreed upon narrow points.

Hydra almost got the Quasar this time. They crippled each other in their first exchange, but that beast has TWO railguns so was able to finish the job before I could get a second shot.

Eden is a puzzle I need to solve. But a similar puzzle to Nucoal, in that their mobility is key to their effectiveness. I had hoped to run a melee duelist into them to hold them while the Jagers shot em up, but my dice failed me spectacularly; Ty rolled an 10, I rolled a 5 and then rerolled into a 4, both of us Precise Brawl:3 Pi:3.

My Gila had a good day. He was able to run along the edge of the table sticking to cover until he could get into optimal SMG range and then uloaded on 'The Twins' as I've come to think of the pair of Jannite pilot Cuirassier Lance Duelists (Age Gunner, Precise). He got shot in the back by a Megido for it, but it was worth it.

Future Plans

Black Talon are almost done, currently edge highlighting 5 more, which is 80% of all the painting effort they require. More buildings and CEF, as mentioned above, those'll get their own posts. More games, probably some Dropfleet. And if I can make it down to Houston, maybe even some Dropzone with a friend from there.