Howdy Mechwarriors and welcome to another Goonhammer BattleTech Tournament Report! Peri, myself and the same pair of our idiot buddies made the trip on out to Durham NC for the yearly BattleTech Classic Tournament at Atomic Empire and had a time! A day of good games, fun opponents, some familiar faces and great competition awaited us! Great thanks to all who took part in setting it up and everyone who said hello while we were there!

I said last time that I ‘love competition in nearly all of its forms’ and I stand by that. Much as I may love my regular pickup games with friends at the game store- or at someone’s house over a couple drinks -there’s a different vibe to it than taking the time to really think my way through building a list and running it at a tournament. Give it the time and thought to really apply everything I’ve got to coming out the other side of it as close to on top as I can manage!

Tournaments are, naturally, about the competition and putting your mettle to the test. But! Tournaments are also, as much as games with friends, about having a good time with new folk over something you both share a passion for! That shared passion can really help to push the both of you to be your best and I think that’s a wonderful thing. Sure you might have a bad time and drudge up a few goose eggs or maybe you’ll go on a tear and stomp your way through everyone you’re up against! But remember: at the end of the day you came out to play and compete. So why not have a good time doing it!

We spent as much time prepping for this one as we did for the Richmond Open and came up with some real dumb hateful lists! A great event we went to back in May for which we’ve got our overview and prep articles up so if you haven’t read them I’d thoroughly suggest it, it was a great time!

The Atomic Empire Classic BattleTech Tournament: 2025

The tournament at Atomic Empire is a good sized tournament, especially for a game store, with a healthy roster of 36 competitors! That’s around about as big as the Richmond open was I believe so there’s a good breadth of lists we could run into!

The tournament was on Saturday but is well over any reasonable one-day-round-trip away from home so we drove in the day before and stayed at an Air BnB which was… interesting. It was certainly a very charming house at one point and had the feel of a home that had been lived in for a long time, filled with love, care, and life… before being painted over in the usual monotonous millennial-gray and being adorned in the cheapest fixtures and decor that could be found.

Not letting this drab decor stop us, Peri, the idiots, and myself set to drinking gin mixed with all manner of shit we’d gotten from the convenience store out of these little ace hardware buckets, eating burgers, hot dogs, fries, and ‘Jalapeno Popper Tots’ from a local joint while managing to get 4 episodes deep into the BattleTech animated show. It’s… if you’ve not watched the BattleTech show you should do that- particularly with friends and drinks. Mind you that’s not because it’s a grand work of animation but because it is hilarious if you know how BattleTech actually works and spawns such masterpieces from boozed up Peri as:

“I saw Adam Steiner’s ass and it sucked.”

Peri: It does.

“WOLFHOUND!!! IS THAT A CHAMPION??? WHAT BTECH WRITER IN ‘92 WAS LIKE ‘OH I NEED TO HAVE MY FAVORITE LITTLE BLORBO WITH HIS FUCKING NO GO ARMS?’”

Peri: I have no earthly idea what “No Go Arms” means here. I will also point out that there was a level of intoxication a few episodes in where I was just screaming “GREEN” every time there was something green on screen.

There are other good quotes but they are not BT related and as such you don’t get to have them. Nerd.

Now, back to the actual topic at hand:

Unfortunately the only event this time was the tournament itself so we didn’t get to do any grinder or narrative event shenanigans and instead go straight into the tournament itself!

For breakfast we stopped at a Waffle House- a restaurant we actually go to more than I think any of us would like to admit, even if it is entirely my fault as I am a slut for reasonably priced breakfast foods. I get the same thing I get whenever we go to Waffle House: an All Star Special with Sunny-Side-Up Eggs, Hashbrowns, Texas Toast, a Chicken Breast, and a plain Waffle.

Shit’s good. God I love breakfast food.

—

Peri: I genuinely spent the first half of this event fighting off one of the top ten worst hangovers of my life, it was miserable. Please learn from me and don’t drink like a third of a bottle of gin the night before a tournament. It is bad for your win rate.

—

After we squared our plates and paid our tabs, which I think they undercharged me for, we got underway back towards the event. This is when we first ran into the fact that apparently Durham is hell, and hell of course contains 84% roadwork by volume. The main road the GPS wanted us to take was not just under maintenance- it was fully closed, roped off, coned, signs up all over the place with active work going on and everything. Also there was a very impatient man in a pickup towing a trailer plastered in yard service stickers honking at us as we waited to be able to pull a U-turn. Once we did he promptly drove into the construction site and got shouted at for not reading the signs.

Only vaguely late we walked in while the T.O. was giving the opening run down and managed to set our stuff down just in time for a head check and first assignments! I grabbed my mini box and sheets and got on over to my table.

Now, let’s see what was in the box.

The List

At the end of the last Tournament Report I made a commitment of sorts for this tournament: Cowboy Time. Now it’s time I expand upon what I meant by that.

For those of you who keep track of who writes which articles you’ll have noticed that I put small vignettes in front of mine and the faction most represented amongst them are the Rasalhague Dominion and my beloved Colonial Marshals of the Fronc Reaches. I spent a long time trying to beat the Fronc Reaches into functioning for the Richmond Open and was ultimately stymied by my unwillingness to contend with what I had perceived to be major flaws in the lists I was coming up with. In hindsight all of those lists would have done just fine at the Richmond Open, perhaps not so well as the Corporate Enforcers but enough to be fun. So why was I so confident in my ability to run them in the Atomic Empire Tournament?

Two words: Precision. Ammunition.

So what exactly does this allow me to do that makes the Reaches so much better? Well, for those that don’t know, precision ammunition takes up to 2 TMM off an enemy unit, or 1 if they only built 1 TMM. This makes autocannons far better at putting things down. But why did I need this for the Reaches?

Simple.

B I G    I R O N S

The Reaches have a lot of AC/20s mounted up on big, tough frames in their MUL across all eras so the fact that this tournament allows you to take anything, within Standard or introductory rules, that a faction has ever had can lead to a very fun concentration of them. So, what then did I build with this, dear reader?

I’m so glad you asked.

Meet Task Force Stampede. A brick of hate, firepower, armor, and half ton shells.

Longhorn: A Cyclops CP-10-Z with a 4/5 pilot; usually a joke of an assault, this packet turns it into a hard charging hate machine with a big gun and more structure on the arms than armor that has the ability to weather incoming fire for just long enough to have a chance at making it out of the other side.

Locomotive: A Thunder THR-1L with a 4/5 pilot; an absolute freight train of a mech that will be on top of you before you know what’s coming. While the XL engine can be a detriment, the rest of the Thunder is genuinely worth the risk. Interestingly this is one of two 5/8 ‘mechs with a basic AC/20 in all of Battletech, that I’ve managed to find at least, with the other being the Argus 6F! Also, all of the Thunders are genuinely unhinged, you should go look at them, they’re hilarious.

Peaches: A Charger CGR-1A5 with a 4/5 pilot; so named for a very angry cow we’d had at my fathers place when I was a kid. The 1A5 is another hard charging AC/20 mech with a pair of SRM-6s to nibble on the delicious insides of ‘mechs she’s gored open.

Pointman: A Marshal MHL-6FR with a 4/5 pilot; it’s the Costco brand Vapor Eagle and a genuine Machine-That-Hates. So named for the cowboy at the head of a cattle drive!

Wrangler: A Spider SDR-9M with a 4/5 pilot; it’s a legal pair of MVSPs that jump 8 hexes and crave to carve the kidneys out of any ‘mech that dares to ignore it. So named for the cowboy that takes care of the animals on a cattle drive!

Drag: A Spider SDR-8M with a 4/5 Pilot; it’s another cheap 8 hex jumper that’s just a little guy! So named for the newest cowboy in a cattle drive, the 8M is truly a ‘fresh lil guy’ kind of ‘mech in my mind. Ready and raring to go at the world!

Now, of note is that the Cyclops and Thunder each have excess ammunition in them that could well spell disaster as I can’t reasonably empty them in a game. Unless of course the TO allows us to choose bins to empty at the beginning of the tournament. Which they did! So, with that in mind, the Cyclops is ditching its LRM and SRM ammo while the Thunder is leaving the LRM ammo behind!

With this in mind we come to the challenge for this tournament. In the last article I’d outlined that I like to give myself a challenge for tournaments and this event is no different! Last tournament I challenged myself to do well with a force composed only of ‘mechs built by my beloved General Motors, which did quite well. This time the challenge is simple: See how far we can get while using one of the Periphery’s many forgotten little blorbos armed only with short range weapons, thick armor and a deep hatred for damnable Pirates.

So, the cattle drive is prepped, ready, and set. The cannons are loaded and raring to go. The armor is fresh, painted, and shiny.

Sounds like all that’s left is to get to it.

—

Peri: My first note here is that that list was insanely, unreasonably fucking mean. It is by most standards a terrible list, slanted really hard towards point blank ranged weapons on junky intro-tech loserbots. For this packet though, it was basically perfect. Every mission in this packet incentivized a fight at point blank range with the biggest, dumbest mechs you could manage.

There existed literally a single piece of counterplay against this list, if you ran up against it with these missions. That is to simply stand still, accept you are going to get hit by multiple AC/20s every turn, and try to trade with his heavy mechs as evenly as possible. Once the heavies are dead or out of AC/20 ammo the list is much easier to manage. Trading even here is still very difficult, but in testing we found that a lot of the big Clan assault mechs could trade even or up into this if they just parked and tried to slap them. Very mean list to crack, and I hated playing against it during test games.

My list for this event was very similar to my list at the last event in terms of structure, being built around a pair of assault mechs, a pair of Spiders, and a pair of BA squads. I did manage to find some nasty shit on the Draconis aval though.

First off was the Iron Cheetah B. This is a 3303 BV 100 ton clan assault mech. It has 4/6/4 movement and max armor, and the weapon load is fucking horrible to play against, with 2 LPLs, 6 MPLs, and a targeting computer. This is just an unbearably good assault mech, one of the very few that earns a price tag above 3000 BV. I genuinely give this thing an S+ on the Goonhammer ranking scale, it is fucking unbearable to play against.

Secondly we had the Tenshi OA. This 1800 BV beater did really well for me at the Richmond Open, and it seems a few of you read that article and took note because there were 4 of them at the event, counting mine. LVSPs are good and remain good.

For the Spiders, its the same set as last time with a 9M and an 8M. These are just annoying 8/12/8 pulse jump mechs to run objectives and annoy enemy light mechs. Solid pair of mechs, but I wish I had the BV to upgrade the 8M to a 7K.

The BA were a pair of Thunderbird suits, functionally just upgunned elementals that can’t make anti-mech attacks. One squad had an SPL on each suit, the other had an ERSL on each suit. Both are perfectly good, but the ERSL one was 100% better. These mostly just existed to fill activations and drop off my big omni-mechs to provide some extra firepower. They didn’t manage a whole lot in any of my games after the first one, because they either died instantly or were too slow to participate in a moving game.

This was a very mean list, with the Iron Cheetah B being an actual hate crime of a mech. The high price tag is extremely risky though, and could bite me in the ass if someone gets lucky with a big gun, or if I position it poorly.

—

The Fit

I said last time that if you ask my friends they’d tell you I’m gigantic and that I do nothing in half measures. I also stated that I had plans for all four of my forces on what to wear if I were to use them for the tournament and the Marshal option was, obviously, to dress up like a lawman from an old western.

Apparently I missed the mark as, according to Jason Hansa’s youngest who was also along to the tournament, yes that Jason Hansa, who said: ’So, Liberty’s HUGE, and he dresses SO DAPPER. Like an old west gambler!’ I suppose I am out here just spinning to win and hedging bets on landing AC/20s so it can’t be that far off for the vibe after all.

So what makes a dapper ‘Old West Gambler’ outfit?

Well, to start, styled up facial hair! I’m talking handlebar mustache and pointed beard kinda shit. Matched up with a good pair of boots, some faded work jeans, a handmade leather belt, a bloused white button up clad in a textured vest, a dirty great big old great coat- yes I know it’s the middle of summer, trust me I noticed, it was hot as all hell but worth it for being fly as fuck and getting compliments all day -and a properly fitted black Stetson Bozeman.

Maybe I should get a poncho instead… go for that ‘Man with no name’ vibe if I wanna be a gunslinger. Seems like I’m giving off more ‘Angel Eyes’ than ‘Blondie’ right now.

Honestly? It was quite comfortable! It’ll be a lot better when it’s not 90 degrees outside and humid as the Louisiana Bayou but I figure it looked pretty good! I had wanted to get a holster for a little prop gun or something to complete the vibe but didn’t end up finding one that didn’t look like a kids toy or cost an arm and a leg by the time we were on our way. Shame.

Well, with me all gussied up, confident, fed, and medicated…

It’s Hog Killing Time.

—

Peri: Out of respect for the man I won’t post any pictures but I can’t overstate enough that Liberty looks like he could pick you up and spike you into the ground. This is because he almost certainly actually can pick you up and spike you into the ground.

—

Round 1: Get Three Coffins Ready

The first round of the tournament was on the Alpine neoprene mat. An icy, frigid hell of high elevations, cut channels, and thick woods. With all of this terrain we’ve got the chance for some real movement shenanigans that could leave the relatively slow-mid speed core of my force behind.

Luckily this round’s game mode is ‘King of the Hill’.

My opponent for this round is playing a Raven Alliance reinforced Star composed of a Linebacker I, with the machine gun arrays turned off, a Crossbow J, a Phantom E, and a Wasp WSP-3A. In support of these ‘mechs they had also trotted along a pair of Callisto Battle Armor squads, namely the Bearhunter and HMG setups. Unfortunately neither myself nor my opponent knew that Callistos did not have a cERML per suit and that it was actually a squad support weapon meaning each group only had one.

This was a mild problem but not what caused the issue that nearly lost me this game.

The round starts with me losing initiative and choosing my deployment edge so that I had good routes to dive my ‘mechs across the ridge and into the zone. The boys go up and over the hill and charge in, securing points early while my opponents ‘mechs still have to run into position from around the edge of the ridge on their side of the map.

Not much happens in the first round beyond speculative shots and the Cyclops landing a longbow AC/20 shell on target against the Linebacker which tears up a torso. Then in round 2 the Linebacker runs up and triple headshots the Thunder with Machine guns, knocking it unconscious and taking the AC/20 offline. It falls over, after landing all of its shots into the linebacker in return and takes another automatic pilot hit. The Cyclops gets hit in the head once and goes unconscious and falls over. The Phantom then runs up next turn and aimed shots the head off the thunder while the Callistos eat the Cyclops’ lunch with all their extra cERMLs, killing it by ammo explosion.

This angers the Charger, Spiders, and Marshal who all decide enough is enough and capitalize on the damage the Thunder and Cyclops had managed to do before going down, chewing apart the Linebacker and Crossbow over the next few turns, finally putting both of them down by engine destruction while they manage to put down the Spider 8M by CT destruction and tear the absolute shit out of the Charger, getting the crippling points out of it.

In the last turn a kick lands into the Charger’s leg, popping both of its leg actuators and sending it to the ground. It fails the seatbelt check, taking the Pilot hit which it subsequently fails and goes unconscious. If he’s asleep I do not score my capture points as it would be tied, making the game pan out at 58-60. This tournament, much like the Richmond Open, allows one use of edge for the entire tournament, once you burn it it’s gone.

I burn it to reroll the 7+ consciousness check and pull a 10, securing the Charger as still being an ‘active’ ‘mech, getting the score for the point making the final score for this round 68-60, my favor.

Well that was fucking close.

Congrats to my opponent for this game, it was tight and tough! That list is incredibly mean and went hard in the other direction of what I was doing, instead of relying on big heavy hits to smash out armor it was looking for grabbing head hits and TACs as much as possible which is another way to get through a win! Eventually statistics are just on your side and you’ve just gotta roll it out and man this list definitely had statistics on its side. I wouldn’t do this in pickup games unless you have a good method of fast dicing all those hit rolls and resolving where they go!

—

Peri: Meanwhile, my game one was against our buddy Conner who had driven there with us. His list was very similar to mine, with a pair of cheap light omni-mechs, a Tenshi OA, a Mauler 4R, and some Thunderbirds. We ended up on this horrible map, with the hill basically right up against some weird terrain that fucked with line of sight pretty heavily.

The game started out pretty even, but Conner ended up focusing down my Tenshi instead of my Iron Cheetah, allowing me to trade up into his Tenshi and Mauler with the Iron Cheetah B. I cannot overstate enough how unpleasant it is to play against an Iron Cheetah B. It simply hits you for as much damage as it wants every turn and can’t be stopped or slowed in any way. The only thing keeping it from being perfect is that it can’t flip its arms. The Tenshi OA is probably my single favorite tournament assault mech for these packets, long edge deployment plus centerline objectives means that it only takes it 1 or 2 turns to start getting decent shots into enemies, and its a big chunky weirdo of a mech that draws fire like you wouldn’t believe. Also an S+ assault mech, if it is legal at an event you should consider honoring the dragon to gain access to it, thing is nuts.

This was overall a low scoring mission, Liberty can correct me but my score was somewhere in the mid 60s as well. By the end of this game my hangover debuff had mostly wore off and I could think straight again, but I was still unsteady on my feet for a while after this.

—

Lunch

We are still full by the ministrations of the House of Waffles and as such just lounge about having a good time chatting about our games and having some light snacks. Great time as well looking at the offerings in the force parade, some absolutely beautiful work all over the place from the participants!

I also found another Colonial Marshals player that had brought a fun looking list for them and thanked me for turning him onto the Marshal 6FR from the Battle Report Peri and I did a little while ago which was awesome to see! Gave him one of the Colonial Marshals challenge coins I’d brought along for opponents and friends!

—

Peri: I was way too hungover to eat my tournament spaghettios, which I did have. I have been avoiding red meat as much as possible lately, so I hunted down some chicken spaghettios and meatballs to eat mid event, but I ended up eating them after getting home, just because my stomach was not feeling great.

I love gin but I don’t think gin loves me.

—

Round 2: Alive or Dead? It’s Your Choice

This round I was on the ‘Grasslands D’ map with the ‘stand on boxes’ scenario Peri outlined in the tournament prep article from the Richmond Open! This map is open, allows for a lot of movement and sets up long range engagements if you do it right which could be a big problem for Task Force Stampede’s all short range setup. A concerted effort to keep range on me could spell disaster if I’m not careful in cornering the opponents long range hitters.

I’ll be honest, I almost didn’t actually get to play this round.

My opponent, a local that was both incredibly nice and a Goonhammer reader, had to run home to take care of their dog! Unfortunately this took a while and almost resulted in me getting a bye round which I would have preferred not to have taken.

15 minutes in and I’m watching reels of seals on Instagram while Peri fights my first round opponent at the spot next to me. The TO comes around to tell me he’ll give an extra 15 on the back end of our game should the opponent show up. 20 minutes in and he tells me I’ve got the buy if I want it. I tell him I’d rather not and he tells me he’ll give it another 15. 30 minutes in and my opponent sits down, visibly having been running about and frazzled, before apologizing for being absent and telling the TO he’s okay with me just winning. I say I wanna play the game out and he agrees but tells the TO that he thinks I should get the win. The TO agrees and I jokingly ask ‘If I get past 100 points can I keep the overage’ to which the TO laughs and says ‘sure’ before going off to keep track of the rest of the tournament.

This guy was a great sport and relatively new to the game! Absolute joy to play with when he got back and had a very fun, and on theme, St. Ives Compact Reinforced lance! Soldiering onto the field he had a Striker STC-2S, a Victor VTR-9B, a Vulcan VL-5T, a Cicada CDA-3C, a Locust LCT-1V (I’m not sure on this one, forgot to write it down) and a Mongoose MON-67. Very on-brand gaggle of IS ‘mechs for the old St. Ives Compact!

I lose the first initiative roll, getting placed as the defender and thereby picking my map edge. For this the map didn’t really lead to having any amount of real difference for the ingress on the objectives so we just played it how it lay when we sat down and set to killing each other! Both of our forces are filled with some aggressive close ranged bruisers that want nothing more than to get in each other’s faces and start slugging it out like it’s the end of the world.

Turn one the bulk of the forces slam into each other in the center while my 8M spider goes to the wide right edge of the map while his locust swings in on the left hand control point, coming in on good TMM in a stand of woods. He had a good plan to use a fast mech like the Locust to be his objective snatcher while your big boys get in the thick of it in the hopes of grabbing some points and doing some skittish run about work to keep it scoring where it can.

Unfortunately the Spider 9M exists and takes great offense to this plan, an offense it resolves by ripping one of its little chicken legs off in the first turn, preventing it from scoring.

Ouchie.

The absolute furball going on in the center continues for a little while as he skirts his longer ranged assets like the Cicada around to try and poke at their backs while my big boys do everything in their power to hammer through the Striker and Victor. Eventually cumulative damage starts bringing things down with the Striker falling to a significant AC/20 beating as it slams an AC/10 shell into the Cyclops’ head, critting the sensors. This was not the cockpit and therefore Mr. Longhorn has not heard any bells and has decided its time to put fists to mechs about it.

Shortly after the Mongoose is turned inside out by the Thunder feeding it an AC/20 clean through one of the rear torsos, tearing it in half. The Victor is also drug down into the depths while the Cicada is turned inside out along with me finishing off the Locust. My force comes out the otherside down a Cyclops and with a Thunder that is crippled and very nearly dead but still upright and kicking.

I don’t quite manage to finish off the Vulcan by the end, sending the ‘mech home crippled but alive.

I win with maxed objective points and nearly maxed kill points at 136-23.

This was an absolute rout but my opponent was in good spirits about it and thanked me for a great game and a few lessons learned! Hopefully I run into him outside of a tournament some time because I’d love to sit down and play a normal game with him, a great opponent and fun person to chat with!

—

Peri: In this game I played against Liberty’s turn one opponent here, we had a weird amount of people and someone was getting matched up down. This time, it was me. His list was fucking nasty, built around hunting for head hits and TACs with machine guns, ERSLs, and all sorts of other piddly little hits. This is actually an incredibly viable strategy, but holy hell it sucks to play against. The issue here is that resolving all those little hits takes quite a bit of time, so I would suggest bringing a box of death or some other fast dicing method to resolve them quickly. That said, even rolling 20 machine guns 5 at a time, we still finished ahead of schedule here, so it wasn’t that big of a deal.

This is a game where I made one of the most tragic, event-fucking misplays of my entire life. He had a Crossbow with a bunch of ERSLs and an iHLL. I forgot about the iHLL and went to bait using the back of my Iron Cheetah, knowing that he didn’t have the movement to get closer than 5 hexes while staying in my back arc. I was hoping he would go for it, fire some ERSLs at long range, and miss, buying me some tempo while I worked on killing his Linebacker. I was instantly punished for not paying close enough attention, and got hit directly in the rear CT with an iHLL, which, of course, critted the Gyro. This basically pinned my Iron Cheetah in place for the rest of the game, and eventually gave my opponent a huge amount of victory points off of crippling it with a follow-up attack run on its back, tagging 2 engine hits off of that open rear CT.

This was purely my fault, and the game was insanely close otherwise. The 16 points gained from crippling my Iron Cheetah were genuinely game-deciding, and my opponent did the exact right thing to punish me for misreading his sheets. Was a genuinely good loss, I learned a lot.

—

Round 3: Those with Loaded Guns and Those who dig

Round 3 was on the same map as last round but now with the pickup boxes mission.

My last opponent for the day was one of my fellow podium winners at the Richmond open! Running a Rasalhague Dominion Star with some nasty options in it I could see how this could go bad for me fast. A 3/4 pilot Nova Cat M, a 3/5 Viper M, a 3/5 Fire Moth H, and a pair of 4/5 Elemental Squads, the laser and miPL ones, make for a real angry force to deal with!

If I’m not careful with my movement that Nova Cat can jiggle range bands on me well enough to force me into medium while still being at short which would be a problem, especially if it doesn’t build 2 TMM to even the numbers out at least. The Viper and Fire Moth have more than enough speed in them to either out run, or hunt down, my Spiders depending on who gets the boxes and this big open map could quickly turn into a shooting gallery with the cERML’s better range over literally anything in my list but the Marshal’s Snub.

My opponent is the defender this time, having to move on first, and he pushes his Fire Moth up into a stand of woods to grab the first box and drop its Elementals, getting a response from my Spider 9M while my Spider 8M jumps across the map to grab the other box. The Viper pushes up to the center box, dropping its Elementals, while the Thunder bears down on it like a locomotive, bringing the AC/20 and trio of IS MPLs to bear on the target as the Cyclops moves to support. The Nova Cat pops in between the center and left hand point, eliciting an incoming bugle charge from the Cyclops and Marshal who come careening down the line at it.

The 9M rips the Fire Moth up pretty well, shearing a torso off, getting half points for a crippling, while receiving no return fire before the Fire Moth shoots off across the map with his booty. The Viper tanks an AC/20 and some pulse from the Thunder, popping a jump jet, and fails the PSR, thereby failing to acquire the box. The big boys thundering down the middle exchange fire at the Nova Cat, landing no real shots in either direction.

From here things start devolving into madness as the Nova Cat back pedals away from the coming tide of a Cyclops and a Marshal charging directly at him, and a Charger which has decided to bypass the objective and just press in on the expensive machine in the back line. The Viper blows past the Thunder, seeking the Spider with a the box, leaving his Elementals standing alone on the point. The Thunder gives chase while the Spider 9M moves to assist before ultimately heading to the center point to grab the leftover box, risking an ankle grabbing from the waiting Elementals.

By turn 3 the Nova Cat’s CT is open and shortly after it dies to overwhelming AC/20 applications as they rip a side torso off and the Charger’s SRM packs pop an extra engine crit in the CT by turn 4 or 5. In this time the Cyclops has been declared ‘God’s Favorite ‘Mechwarrior’ as old Longhorn here has managed to dodge somewhere between 5 and 7 LB-20 Solid shells that have been fired at it with only one connecting to the left torso. Statistics making up for my earlier triple head shot fuckery I suppose.

With the Nova Cat down the Viper completes its Spider hunt and knocks the 8M with the box’s leg off before taking billy big steps away from the chasing Thunder as fast as it can, leaving the Elementals the Fire Moth dropped off to clean up its mess. Through concerted fire from the big guys I manage to put down one squad of the Elementals and score full points on the boxes leaving me with a win of 105-76.

By the end of this the Spider 8M is dead and the Cyclops and Charger are not looking good while the enemy Nova Cat and laser Elementals are dead and the Fire Moth is crippled but still up and about on the far side of the map.

That’s 3/0 again, with the Colonial Marshals taking all who stood to challenge and putting them down in brilliant displays of muzzle flash, missile contrails, and searing laser beams.

The Force Marshal will be proud

—.

Peri: I had a bit of a rough game here. I won, but me and my opponent had very different mindsets about battletech, tournaments, and competitive wargaming. The clash of mindsets there made for a bit of a rough game, but I still enjoyed it. He had a lot of mechs that I really considered bringing, namely the Avatar OH, Legionnaire, and the Argus 6F. If you haven’t read Jack’s recent article about the Argus, the 6F is one of the funniest mechs in the entire game. Such a hysterically funny shitbox. As for the Avatar, I love him, he is my precious child, and the fact that we are getting one in plastic fills me with a level of joy I should not be allowed to feel.

This mission was one of the ones my list was very good at. My opponent did a pretty good job of playing against me, killing one of my spiders and later disarming the other one to deny me points from 2 of the boxes. My Tenshi and Iron Cheetah were able to outbrawl his Avatar and scoop up the third box though, and I held it long enough to max primaries. The map was a little bit rough, with a massive firing position on his side of the table that let him overwatch most of the map, but the nature of the center of board objectives meant that he couldn’t just camp it to win, and he correctly identified that. This would have been a genuinely heinous map to play a kill mission on though, good luck attacking up that hill!

—

The Awards

I won again! First place with 309 out of the possible 420 points. Now, I didn’t get any sportsmanship or painting awards this time but considering some of the competition were well known painters I don’t mind at all! And the winner of Sportsmanship was Peri’s first and my last opponent from Richmond who’s an astounding opponent, fun guy, and a great person to play with! Congrats bud, looking forward to seeing you again next year at the RO!

All in all for my position in first I got a 25$ gift card, a salvage box, and a cool trophy with a Marauder on it; apparently it’s Maximilian ‘Mad Max’ Liao’s! I took the gift card and used it to knock a little off the things I intended to pick up from the store, namely another neoprene mat, an Inner Sphere Heavy Battle Lance because I cannot restrain myself around Nightstars, and an Overlord-C model for my Rasalhague Dominion forces!

So, where did Peri and our buddies place? Well, Peri lands in 8th overall with 2 wins and 1 loss and 270 VP! If this was just on VP they’d be tied for third with the person who came in second out of the 3/0 crowd! Jessie came in 23 with 206 points going 1/2 and Connor came in 25th with 158 also going 1/2!

—

Peri: I am still grumpy about the trend of me and Liberty playing against the same person, with him winning and me losing. This man has been playing BattleTech for, no joke, about 1/15th as long as me, its unfair that he is, at current, empirically the better Competitive BattleTech player!

Jokes aside, the event was a decent enough time, and I learned a lot. Namely, that the Iron Cheetah B is completely fucking unfair, and that the Tenshi OA is a genuine competitive staple mech if it is allowed. Also, spamming SRMs/machine guns/LB pellets/whatever other tiny random bullshit is a great way to generate TACs and also annoyance in your opponents, so if you are a TO you might want to cap the amount of those things at an event, just for the sack of time and your player’s sanity.

Also, for prizes I got a metal Night Gyr, a mech I have been meaning to grab for a while, and a metal Rifleman kit that can build a 3C. The 3C Rifleman is a mech that I just adore, anything with paired AC/10s is fantastic in my eyes. Love it.

—

Once again another great day of fun competition, good conversations, new friends, and acceptable breakfast foods! We will definitely be back to have another good time next year! Now that the games are over, the ‘mechs packed away, my winnings spent and a few good conversations had it was time for dinner.

And I felt like starting a tradition.

Dinner

When I won in Richmond we went and got Longhorn, mostly because of the giftcard but also because I really wanted a steak. Well this was no different as we went to a place called ‘Ted’s Montana Grill’ and got a delicious NY Strip with mashed potatoes and roasted broccoli.

After a day of nibbling on snacks out of my BattleTech box and sipping from my water jug this tasted like heaven on earth. The appetizers were astounding, the drinks were cold and refreshing and dinner was a treat spent talking with friends over how our tournaments had gone and what we wanted to try for next year!

—

Peri: I had a chicken sandwich at the steak shop, because of the red meat thing, and it kinda sucked. The real thing that fucking rocked at that place were the Onion Rings and homemade potato chips. Both came with some really good sauces, and in huge fucking amounts. If we go again I might just order the onion rings and make myself very, very sick eating them all.

—

Final Thoughts

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Tournaments, and competition, are fun! I have a great time doing them whether they’re going well or going poorly, I’m just happy to have a good time and get some good, clean, serious games in. Running silly lists that want to do dumb shit like a Periphery state that’s just ‘oops all precision AC/20s’ at people is an absolute joy at a tournament because it instills a genuine feeling of fear when someone realizes what they’re up against.

So, now that we’re at the end of the day we once again ask the question: Can you win, or do well, at a tournament using a weird blorbo Periphery power and all the oddball shitbuckets they can muster?

Yes! The Colonial Marshals absolutely killed it and managed to pull some good, knockdown drag out fights from everyone I faced, owing both to the guns and the concentration of absolute bricks on display.

I’m still firmly of the belief that the best way to have fun at a tournament is to grab your favorite bunch of blorbos and beat them into functioning around whatever rules you’ve been given for a tournament. Then murder everyone that stands in your way with a smile and a kind word! It can be done.

More importantly it can be done and work well if you go at it with a plan and a level head of the mind to have a good time! If you do go for it then I’d love to hear what you get up to! Let me know what stupid gimmicks you put together and run, let us know how it goes and how you did!

Competition is, to me, all in the spirit of fun! A spirit I love dearly and nowhere is that spirit greater than amongst people who are giving everything their all! Get dressed up, have a good time and commit to every bit you can! Trust me, it makes the day all the better and plenty more satisfying! Dress up as a cowboy, a merc ‘mechwarrior, a dirtied up ‘mech-tech, a house dignitary, a backwater pirate, or a clanner from your preferred funny animal house! Make trinkets to give to your opponents, get yourself a little mascot friend and some swag made if you can! Really get into it and have a time! But, most of all have fun with it and knock some heads because that’s what BattleTech, and tournaments, are all about!

Killin’ folk dead.

—

Peri: Meanwhile I just showed up to hit people with pulse lasers a whole lot and I also had a great time. I had designs to play industrial mechs, or Solaris 7 weirdos, but the tournament rules kept me from doing either of those, to my great frustration. I do love playing Draconis Combine though, they are such a fun faction, with high quality assault mechs and light mechs that combine together to make very fun, very natural feeling lists. I think that Liberty found what might have been the literal only good Fronc Reaches list in this tournament format, and if you can make that happen, it can be very satisfying. In my opinion though, there is no shame in just grabbing a strong MUL list like Hell’s Horses, Merc, or Marik and going nuts with all the broken bullshit that you can smash together with them.

Sometimes, the narrative is that my guys are well equipped and competently lead and either win or bleed you dry on the way down. This is a perfectly valid narrative for a force, and thinking about your dudes as the top of the line, hardened core of your faction, kitted out in the best that money can buy and here to crack heads and take names is a fun fantasy to play around with. You can always go for the junkbot patrol, and the junkbot patrol can be insanely strong if you build it right, but there is no shame in taking good mechs and playing well.

—

Keep an eye out for our next set when we go to Southern Assault V for their new Classic Tournament! The packet isn’t out yet but we know a few things and let me tell you, I intend to make Southern Assault into a whole new country.

Bear Country.

Remember, even with this copious talk of tournaments, my adoration of competition, and gunning for a win, what matters is having a good time and doing it all with a smile on your face. All the ‘mech reviews, the pretty plastic and the shiny mathrocks aren’t worth a damn if you don’t use them to have fun with friends! So go grab a drink, a good pack of snacks, your favorite game partner(s), a box of funny ‘mechs, a cozy spot, and a fun map then get to making some good memories, at home or at a tournament!

Until next time! Fair weather, good seas and happy gamin’! Go tear shit up out there and have fun!

Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.