Incredibly fast and prone to overheating, the Gunsmith is a Dark Age era light mech found in the House Davion Cavalry Lance. While it seems like something that would be from the clix game with a huge canopy and somewhat sleeker appearance than a lot of mechs, I can’t find any evidence of that being the case. It’s a bit of a strange choice for the forcepack, with only two variants, but I’m really glad to see the trickle of later timeline releases rather than constant Succwars and Clan Invasion releases.

It’s a very polarizing mech that rewards player skill – used well it can be super effective, but misplays will see it accomplishing very little and evaporating.

Chassis

The Gunsmith is full of weight saving tech, which it needs to be at only 25 tons with a pretty heavy weapon load. An XXL engine pushes it up to 10/15, boosted further to a 20-hex run with a MASC system. More weight savings come from the XL gyro, which is very much not an issue here with how many crits you’re spending on the engine. If this mech takes crits, it’ll be very unhappy, but the goal is to just not get hit (or at least not have hits go internal). It’s actually running a full load of reflective armor, vital to countering the pulse lasers that are its main predator.

Variants

These mechs 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).

CH11-NG

Taking that base high speed chassis, this slaps four medium x-pulse lasers on, two in each arm. Unfortunately those arms do have lower arm actuators, which can be a detriment to building full TMM, but it still has a ton of mobility. With MASC on you really want to try to move 18-20 hexes, so don’t have a ton of room for turns, and being able to flip arms would help here.

Where this gets challenging is heat – it sinks 20, but firing everything at a run builds 30, giving you a -2 MP penalty. That makes it a mech that’s going to bounce in and out of a fight to cool off, as that slowdown takes away a lot of defenses. Optimal play is often going to be to avoid using MASC on your run in, turning it on to maintain speed while hot on the way into cover.

Four Medium x-pulses that can position essentially wherever they want is a very strong offense, especially against smaller targets – it’s going to strip rear armor at minimum against most mediums. It’s also enough speed to react to other lights extremely effectively, and particularly in early turns the gunsmith should be held in reserve to threaten your opponent’s flankers. 1,465 BV is a lot for a light mech without clan guns, which is part of what makes it a complex mech to use. If you screw up movement and eat a bunch of shots it’s likely to die without accomplishing much, but if it can keep movement up it’ll eat other lights and then threaten everything heavier than it.

Jack’s Rating: A+

CH11-NG ‘Cinderella’

This custom variant drops the XXL engine, reducing it to only 8/12 movement, and gets rid of the MASC. In exchange, it’s running four clan medium pulses and a laser AMS. Still overheats, especially if that laser AMS fires, and it doesn’t have the movement speed to mitigate the light mech fragility anymore. While it does have somewhat better damage, the range increase on the clan pulses is less than the additional movement from the standard variant, and this increased to 1,519 BV.

Jack’s Rating: C

Conclusion

Wow, that sure was a fast overview. Almost as fast as the mech. I’d love to see some more variants, particularly as we know from the Alpha Strike cards that a CH11-NG-A variant exists on some developer’s computer (though it has exactly the same stats). Though expensive, it’s a fantastic light striker able to deliver good damage anywhere it needs, while not being as frustrating to play against (or undercosted) as the Fire Moth P.

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