Howdy everyone and welcome back to Mech Overview. Yes, there is no short story here; I am not, in fact, dead. There is no point in delaying or yapping, you saw the article name. We are talking about the Dire Wolf, a mech that casts a very long shadow, a mech with a Dire (heh) reputation.

The Dire Wolf (or Daishi to the older generation) is a mech that we can’t just talk about as a statblock. Coming in as part of the very first wave of Clan Invasion Omnimechs in 1990’s TRO: 3050 (go look at the tubby Mad Cat on the cover, I love him), the Dire Wolf represented the absolute top end of the game at the time. At 100 tons it broke all of the pre-Clan rules for BattleTech. It didn’t seem to make choices. It had all the armor of an Atlas, at the same speed, and it got to carry an entire heavy lance’s worth of firepower with a whole 50 (and a bit) tons to spend on highly efficient Clan guns.

I wasn’t alive at the time, but from everything I have gathered the Dire Wolf is, on its own, basically the canon event for every old person who will only play 3025 nowadays. Nothing else could cram the same volume of firepower into a single mech at the time. The Dire Wolf is a towering mountain of excess, expensive, overloaded with guns. It’s original name was bad Japanese written by Americans, but the intent of that name, Great Death, says a lot about how the developers intended for it to be perceived. It brings death, autocannons beating the drums of the underworld, a grim psychopomp callously dragging whole lances to the depths of hell.

To a lot of people it is still the ultimate assault mech, the primary example of how broken the Clan tech-base is.

There is some truth to this, but it is distinctly not BattleTech’s apex predator anymore.

I am going to lay my cards out up front here: I have incredibly mixed feelings about the Dire Wolf. I feel bad saying this, because the Dire Wolf is such an iconic mech. We have had 35 straight years of improvements in design theory and the things that made the Dire Wolf special (Clan XL engines, lightweight Clan guns, the genuinely horrible field when it comes to pre-invasion assault mech quality) aren’t special anymore, or unique to this mech. BV tends to be pretty kind to the Dire Wolf, with a lot of them being cheaper than you would think for all the gun you can cram in to the damn thing. The category of “2500-3500 BV Clan Assault Mech” is a very competitive one though, and the Dire Wolf is no longer the uncontested top dog of the game, with plenty of other monsters roaming around that can jam it in the ground.

The wild thing is that the Dire Wolf can still very much be worth taking, even in a forest full of bears, lots and lots of bears, because, as much as I hate to admit it, a lot of these things can put out some insane damage for less BV than you would thing.

Chassis

Let’s start this dissection with the core, underlying musculature of the Dire Wolf. It is a 100 ton assault mech with 3/5/0 movement at base. It carries the maximum efficient armor load for a 100 tonner at 19 tons, and it is competently laid out, unlike some of the other invasion era omni-chassis. It has standard structure and armor, which means that it has more crit slots open for guns, and it uses an XL engine to give itself 50.5 tons open for guns. That is a huge amount of free space for guns, enough that the primary limiter on a Dire Wolf config is usually crit slots, not tonnage.

Your mind might race with the sheer amount of Gauss Rifles, ER PPCs, and other such guns you can cram in to that 50 (and a bit) tons, but the size of spare heat sinks, ammo, and bulky ballistic weapons tends to rapidly exhaust the 41 available crits in this machine. It also has 3 hard mounted heat sinks that are not contained within the engine, one in each side torso and one in the left leg. This is annoying, but honestly most configs are going to be perfectly happy to have them. I would rather they had filled both legs and the center torso, it’d be less disruptive to your ability to carry larger weaponry, but the majority of configs are going to want at least 15 heat sinks anyway.

The issue with this is that no mech needs 50 (and a bit) tons of fucking guns. That is enough room to fit a pair of Improved Heavy Gauss Rifles with 10 tons of ammo and enough tonnage left over for an ER small laser, for some fucking reason. Nothing in the game that isn’t a gimmick mech like the Fafnir needs that much tonnage. The Fafnir is an interesting comparison, as it manages to squeeze, coincidentally, 50.5 tons worth of guns and equipment onto a 100 ton chassis, just like the Dire Wolf, without having to have an XL engine. It does use Endo Steel, which makes the crit crunch even worse, but due to lacking the hard mounted double heat sinks it only has 4 less crits than the Dire Wolf. The Fafnir is, to repeat, a gimmick mech designed to carry the two biggest guns in the game. For normal, non-gimmick use, this is an insane amount of pod space.

Towards the start you might remember me saying that the Dire Wolf didn’t seem to be making any choices? That was a lie, and it was only the limited information that existed in 1990 that made it seem that way. The Dire Wolf is 3/5/0 with an XL engine. Clan assault mechs can either move 4/6/0 (Kodiak, Iron Cheetah (foreshadowing), Kingfisher, Hellstar) or use a standard engine (Stone Rhino, Regent, Highlander IIC) using only tech available during the initial wave of Clan mech releases. They can do this while still having more than enough tonnage to fit as much hate as you could ever want. Fuck, you can even make a pretty functional Clan assault mech that is both faster and has a standard engine, due to the extremely high tonnage efficiency of their energy weapons.

The Dire Wolf makes what is, in hindsight, a conscious choice to favor firepower over everything else. Clan 100 ton mechs nearly always have 300+ points of armor, so that is not unique to it. The Dire Wolf is by no means fragile, but it chooses to sacrifice some practical durability by taking an XL engine so that it can cram in more guns, without any increase in speed. When you look at an Iron Cheetah (has 4/6/0 movement, carries 39.5 tons of gear, 40.5 if you count the extra fixed heat sink compared to a Dire Wolf) or a Stone Rhino (42 tons of space remaining after buying 5 heat sinks to match the Dire Wolf), it is extremely hard to say that either of those mechs are underarmed or lacking in pod space.

But whatever. There are bad Omni-Chassis that are completely saved by good configs, like the Kingfisher. BV is all that matters after all, tonnage means absolutely nothing. So what does the Dire Wolf get up to with 50 (and a bit) tons of pod space? Will my mind be changed, its inefficiencies melting away in a wave of well thought out variants?

Variants

These monuments to Slaanesh-tier excess have all been reviewed based on a standard F through S scale, which you can find described on our landing page here (along with all of our other ‘mech reviews, the name of the box you can buy to get any of the mechs we have covered, and our general methodology).

Prime

Weighing in at a much cheaper than you would expect 2712 BV, the Dire Wolf Prime is a functional but slightly frustrating mech. For weaponry, we have 4 ER large lasers, 4 medium pulse lasers, 2 UAC/5s, and an LRM-10 for reasons that confuse me. The issue here is with heat, one of the ER large lasers cannot be fired without overheating the mech. There is a reasonably decent firing pattern though, consisting of 3 ERLLs, the UACs on double tap, and the LRM-10, that only builds movement heat. 60 potential damage, or ~50 ish on average given cluster charts, is pretty decent output. Once you get up close, you can easily drop one ERLL and the LRM-10 to throw in the MPLs. TBH, I would gladly swap that vestigial ERLL for a pair of extra MPLs, but overall this is not a terrible way to fill up all this pod space.

At this price I would much rather have a Regent B, but the Dire Wolf Prime’s pulse lasers do make a decent argument for taking it. My principle complaints are, in order, the vestigial ER large laser is annoying, I would really prefer to have more MPLs instead of the LRM-10, and I wish one of the extra DHS was in the right leg to make it less likely to take a hip crit. These are nitpicks though, and in all honesty, 2712 is not an unreasonable price for this. 2712 BV is a lot to spend on a single mech, but my feelings about Clan assaults in the 2500-3500 BV range have softened quite a bit lately due to getting a lot more hands on experience actually using them. Unless you get your head scooped out, the Dire Wolf Prime will probably manage to extract its BV out of some enemy heavy mechs before it dies. Due to the flexibility of the config, there are very few situations where the Prime is straight up the wrong choice.

The Dire Wolf Prime also shows off one of the primary ways that you can work around the Dire Wolf’s unoptimized chassis with way too much free tonnage, fill it with UAC/5s. Ultra AC/5s are really fantastic ways to drink up spare tonnage on Clan mechs while costing a reasonable amount of BV and contributing a meaningful amount to the mech’s offense. UAC/5 plus efficient energy weapon load is a fairly good way to build any given Clan mech, tbh.

Peri’s Rating: B-. It’ll make the BV back, but as mentioned about, this price range is insanely competitive when it comes to high end Clan mechs, and the Dire Wolf Prime doesn’t stand out from the pack nearly as much as its reputation might lead you to believe.

A

The Dire Wolf A is an extremely mean mech with some extremely funny design quirks. For the mean part, it carries a gauss rifle, triple Clan large pulse lasers, a pair of streak SRM-6s, and an anti missile system (AMS). This is an insanely mean weapon load, and it is totally heat neutral, even with the streaks. At 2855 BV this is a reasonably good deal and will thump people to death pretty hard, but there is one major issue with this mech and one very funny issue. The funny one is that there are 3 tons of gauss ammo in here for our single, lonely gauss rifle, so you can shoot it 24 times in a row if you manage to get a game that goes that long. The significant problem is that it has 3 tons of AMS ammo in the right torso. AMS used to burn through a lot more ammo than it does now, and this is a grotesque amount of ammo. I’d recommend dumping 2 tons of AMS ammo, if not all of it, in most games. It just doesn’t do a ton for you.

This is a decent mech other than that intensely funny quirk, it is really hard not to be good with a gauss rifle and three LPLs.

Peri’s Rating: B, very solid for the price with good damage output, only let down by being full of AMS ammo.

B

The B is very funny, for a lot of very funny reasons. At 2609 BV it is pretty expensive for the firepower it brings, but the sheer comedy of that firepower might make you take the thing anyway. With quadruple UAC/2s, an LB-10X, a pair of CERPPCs, and a pair of MPLs, an ER small laser FSFR, this is an incredibly funny configuration. The PPCs, MPLs, and LBX give you adequate but not amazing firepower, and the UAC/2s will annoy the hell out of your opponent, acting almost like a super long range SRM-6. The long range crit hunting potential of this mech is hilarious, and it can even open holes itself due to the CERPPCs it carries as primary weapons.

The problem here is heat. It can only fire the PPCs at neutral, meaning that it would build 12 heat at a run shooting everything but the MPLs, 20 if you want to use those too. This is extremely not great, and in practice means you have to pick between firing both PPCs, or firing one PPC, all the ballistics, and an MPL. The heat issues are a huge letdown here, if it didn’t have them I would be singing this thing’s praises because god damn it is funny for the price you pay for it. As is it reminds me of a Mauler, and I mean that as a slur.

Peri’s Rating: Somewhere around C, I am torn. The floor here is just an over priced and slow pair of CERPPCs, and a pair of CERPPCs with enough heat sinks is always at least barely adequate, regardless of price. I could see this at C- or C+, so C feels right.

C

3609 BV.

Good lord 3609 BV. That is a fucking insane amount of BV and I 100% understand why this abomination costs that, even if I would never in a million years use it. For guns we have 2 CERPPCs, 4 MPLs, 2 ATM-6s, a single shot streak SRM-4 for some fucking reason, and an ECM. The direct fire guns are linked to a targeting computer, and that is where the price comes from.

Also it jumps.

At 3/5/3 the C isn’t exactly mobile, but jumps are always nice to have, especially with a Tcomp. Add on the fact that it can fire all of the energy weapons while only building movement heat, and you have a very nasty mech. It just isn’t 3609 BV nasty. It is maybe 3100 BV nasty. The Iron Cheetah B is out there if you want 100 ton jumpy-pulse and I struggle to justify the increased price of the C over that mech. Having the ATMs to switch to up close for damage is nice, but you are going to want to fire your guns that get a to-hit bonus 9 times out of 10.

3609 BV is just so much BV.

Peri’s Rating: D+. It is certainly a scary record sheet and it’ll feel cool to shoot people with, but I don’t think that that 3609 BV price tag gets you enough here.

D

The D Dire Wolf is another funny Dire Wolf. At a frankly insane 3403 BV, the D carries 2 HAG/40s, 2 MPLs, a streak SRM-6, and an ER small laser because this thing has that extra half ton of pod space for no fucking reason.

This is actually pretty close to my hypothetical use case of cramming 2 heavy gauss rifles in this thing. HAG/40s are terrifying guns and if you can land them this mech will do some unacceptably high damage. The issue here is really entirely the price. Once you pass 2000 BV you have to be pretty good or remarkably tough. Once you pass 3000 you had better be ready to kill an entire list on your own. While the D does have some extremely funny damage and range, you can “downgrade” this mech to a fucking Kodiak and save BV. You can probably get use out of the D on an open map with a good sightline for it, but it is going to struggle to make its points back in most games.

Peri’s Rating: C+? HAG/40s are insanely strong guns that put out horrifying damage, but the price here is too high.

E

I feel comfortable saying that the Dire Wolf E is one of the best omni-configs ever made. It perfectly nails what makes good Dire Wolfs (BattleTech’s fucked up plural’s strike again.) good, that being big ballistic weapons and a heaping pile of pulse lasers.

At 2814 BV the Dire Wolf E is about 200 BV cheaper than a lot of the other Clanbomination mechs we talk about a lot here. For that price you get octuple fucking MPLs, a Streak LRM-10, and a pair of LB-10X autocannons. Also you get a Watchdog CEWS so you can force your opponent to look up what that does, I guess. This is one of those Rec Guide variants that perfectly matches the artwork and the miniature, lining up exactly with the Prime. The Prime is already a fairly decent config, but the E is just… There are 8 MPLs on this fucking thing. It is heat neutral at a run firing all of them. That is a pretty terrifying amount of firepower out to 12 hexes, which is some pretty good range. The LBX’s can help crit seek or chip in some damage on easy shots if you drop one of the MPLs, and the Streak is here if you want to not shoot MPLs like a loser.

Also the arms are flippable, and have all that gun in them. And we have CASE II to protect the shit-ton of LBX ammo that is in this thing.

The game plan with the E is pretty clear. Walk towards the enemy, shoot LBXs and the LRM outside of 12 hexes, then shoot them with MPLs until they die or you rip open an important hit location, at which point you start spinning to win with LBX Autocannons. Phenomenal mech, fantastic consistent DPS out to a decent range for a price that is actually justifiable.

I hate how much more I like Dire Wolves than I did a few months ago. Playing with so many expensive Clan assaults has broken my brain.

Peri’s Rating: A, nearly an A+. This is about as good as you can possibly make this chassis.

H

The H is a heavy laser one, and it is, honestly, one of the better heavy laser configs. At just shy of 3000 BV you get a pair of gauss rifles, a pair of heavy large lasers, a medium pulse laser, a flamer for some fucking reason, and a targeting computer. It even has enough heat sinks to fire all the big guns and be heat neutral on a run. 3000 BV is about right for 4 headchoppers on rate, but the Hellstar and a handful of other quad headchopper mechs at 3000ish BV outpace it due to the short range on the heavy large lasers compared to the gauss rifles or CERPPCs that are more common on those mechs. Having a to-hit bonus on the Gauss is nice though, and this is far from a horrible mech. It is one of the lesser quad headchop mechs, but quad headchop mechs are, for the most part, extremely fucking strong.

Peri’s Rating: B+, lots of fun if you like Heavy Lasers. In an event with pulse laser limits in place, this is a good thing to swap out a Widowmaker for.

S

S variants are usually super weird, and the Dire Wolf is not really an exception. Moving 3/5/3 and coming in at 2985 BV, the S has an extremely mean weapon load. We have an LB-20X, 2 machine guns because of that extra half ton, a pair of Streak SRM-4s, and a menacing pulse laser load of 1 LPL and 5 MPLs. The funny thing about this mech is that it actually manages heat pretty well, only heating up significantly if both streaks fire. The damage here is pretty good, you are trading a couple of the E’s MPLs to grab an LPL, get a lot more expensive, and consolidate the LB-10s into an LB-20. Having machine gun ammo is a bummer, but overall it is still a pretty high quality assault mech only let down by a lackluster movement speed.

Peri’s Rating: A-, one of the best Dire Wolfs.

T

Another variant that matches the original artwork, the T is less good than the E. It costs 3317 for a start, and has a less focused weapon load, with 4 ER medium lasers, 4 MPLs, a pair of HAG/20s, a Streak LRM-10, and a light active probe so your big boy can scout. Speaking of scouting, we have a supercharger in the T to let it run a mighty 6 hexes, which is genuinely nice to have on such a big and slow mech. 4/6/0 is a lot better than 3/5/0, so having the option is nice, but it absolutely is driving costs up. The damage output here is a fair bit higher than the E in theory, but the increased price and decreased accuracy makes this a much worse config than the E.

Peri’s Rating: Cish, just take the E.

U

The U is an underwater variant. It is cool if you want to play underwater, if not it is a waste of time. It has Torpedos and Harjel and all the other super wild and weird underwater things.

U just means unusual environment btw, not specifically underwater. There is a really good U variant for the Firestarter Omni that can really mess things up with pulse lasers, and has a sword for fun and activities. Use that instead, its cooler.

Peri’s Rating: N/A

W

Oh god W usually means the Wolf’s Dragoons have been here, and they always make such shit variants. At 2951, the W is a heavily unfocused assault mech. It carries an Ultra AC/20, a gauss rifles, 2 MPLs, an LRM-20, and an ER small laser because 50 tons wasn’t enough space. The problem with this mech really is just that it is heat neutral but these guns don’t work well together, meaning that it never will really be super efficiently using its various range bands, as it is better to just dump everything every turn and pray that you hit. It isn’t like these are bad weapons to have either, I just kinda wish the space had been used better, and there are much more focused Dire Wolfs out there that you can use to actually be good at fire support or brawling, splitting the difference like this is not necessary.

Peri’s Rating: C-. Fine but the BV is better spent elsewhere.

X

Oh god what the hell is going on with this sheet, why… how??

Ok, so the Dire Wolf X is a mess of a fucking mech and I have no idea why it is like this. At a reasonably affordable 2645 BV, the X carries… Let me bullet point this.

• 1 large pulse laser
• 1 UAC/10
• 1 medium heavy laser
• 1 ATM-6
• 1 LRM-15 with artemis IV
• 1 SRM-4 with artemis IV
• 1 streak SRM-2
• 1 LB-5X autocannon
• 2 ER micro lasers
• 1 targeting computer so you won’t miss some of these guns.

I have no words. What the actual hell is going on here and why do we need one of every weapon on earth? There are 4 different kinds of missile on this stupid thing. There are some firing patterns that are reasonably easy to figure out here, but overall this is a Loki tier pile of nonsense. I am sure you could get adequate work out of it if you tried at that price, it seems like it could do around 60 damage decently consistently without overheating if I am reading the bullshit correctly. There are just easier Dire Wolfs to use though, like the E and Prime.

X usually means experimental but the only thing they were experimenting with was how many weapon lines you can cram on a single record sheet.

Peri’s Rating: Tentative C but I really have no idea what this thing wants to do, let me know in the comments if you can think of anything.

Widowmaker

So the Widowmaker might seem like a unique variant of the Dire Wolf, but this is actually a standard variant. It is just named after Natasha Kerensky, who liked to lay out her mech like this apparently, and all the other Clans copied her homework because Widowmaker is a nasty, nasty assault mech.

At 3041 BV, the Widowmaker is one of the best Dire Wolfs, and one of the better 3/5/0 assault mechs at this price range. It carries a pair of CERPPCs, 2 LPLs, an UAC/20, 2 ER medium lasers, and an ER small laser for some fucking reason. The secret sauce of this mech is the heat sinks though, with enough to fire the CERPPCs and LPLs while only building movement heat. This gives it pretty decent long range damage that is fair consistent and in nice, big hits, and up close it can drop a PPC to chuck on the UAC to start dumping damage into this. I have personally used Widowmaker a few times, and fought against Widowmaker many more than that. This is a genuine top of the line assault mech, and the only other Dire Wolfs that come close are the E and the other special character models, which are actually unique.

Widowmaker will serve you well, and has been breaking knees on tables since it was first released…. I think in 2011? It is a little hard to tell with these things. Genuinely wild that this isn’t tagged unique, but I am glad that it isn’t.

Peri’s Rating: A, strong at long range and up close, probably the platonic big clan 3/5/0 assault mech

Prometheus

Prometheus is the one that you can get as a pre-paint, and it is a pretty decent config all things considered. At 2900 BV it is, like all Dire Wolfs, pretty expensive, and it has a bit of a weird weapon load, with an Ultra AC/20, 3 LPLs, 2 ER large lasers, and an SRM-6. You can fire 4 of the lasers, depending on what has the best shots, without building head, and up close the LPLs and UAC can fire together and be heat neutral. This is a bit of a downgrade compared to the Widowmaker, trading long range damage for extra lasers it can’t use and an SRM-6 it doesn’t need, and it is overall basically a -1 version of that config. That said, it is still a fairly mean mech in its own right, and if you have it you can get good use out of it without feeling disappointed.

Peri’s Rating: B+, less good than the Widowmaker but not a terrible mech at all.

Hohiro

At 3048 BV the Hohiro is a really interesting side-grade to the Widowmaker, but it still feels a lot like that mech. In terms of gun we have a Gauss Rifle, CERPPC, triple LPLs, an ER small laser because Dire Wolf, and a streak SRM-6. Compared to the Widowmaker it trades the UAC/20 out for an extra LPL and some missiles, while swapping a CERPPC out for a gauss rifle to help with heat. This is a really incredible trade if you are expecting to fight on a more open map, or at longer ranges. The Widowmaker is more flexible and better up close, but no reasonable person would look at 3 LPLs, a CERPPC, and a gauss rifle and think it needed to be much better up close than it already is.

This is overall one of the best uses of the platform, and manages to be a near perfect side-grade to the Widowmaker, more long range focused and with less point blank burst damage, but the consistent 10 damage from the LPL is very nice to have.

Peri’s Rating: A, will outshine the Widowmaker on some maps, will lose on other. Genuinely a wash.

Conclusion

Traditionally I have not been a fan of the Dire Wolf. It is big, expensive, slow, and maniacally overgunned. The key realization to make here is that, while it is extremely expensive, most of the other things in the same price range as a given Dire Wolf config will have a lot less firepower. That is really what you are paying for with a Dire Wolf: Raw damage numbers. A Kingfisher will last longer under fire, an Iron Cheetah is faster, and a Regent is dirt cheap, but the Dire Wolf has just so much gun on most variants. If you can make that work for you, getting long sight lines and ripping people up as they close before swapping to the second assault mech worth of close range guns that some variants cram on, the mech will do pretty well. If, like 90% of the people I have ever seen using one of the things, you over-estimate it and run it forwards at maximum speed, then get surprised when it is overwhelmed, outmaneuvered, and killed by a mech half the price, it won’t do you any good.

It is still probably too expensive for a lot of use cases, being perfectly honest, and I hate to be nice to the Dire Wolf after making fun of it off and on for years, but if you can avoid the random brain death that this mech causes sometimes and use it correctly, it can do well for you.

I hate being nice to mechs. It’s still too expensive; drown people in Banshee’s and Thunderbolts and laugh at them.

Cheers.

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