Stark white flurries danced through the beams of Phantom’s flood lights, floating on the disparate breeze for a moment before disappearing into the black of the night once more. The trodding crash of metal feet on old asphalt crushed under me as we advanced towards Alpha checkpoint. The rest of Spectre Lance was close at my back, the bobbing beams of their own lights casting the fresh snow in vibrant white light. 

I reached up as we rounded the bend, tripping on the Dalban set. “Spectre Lance, give a ready report and go weapons hot.” 

“Beowulf. Ready op.”

“This is Scrapper. Ready op.”

“This is Hannibal. Ready op.”

“Castle, Spectre Lance is Ready op.”

“Roger, Commander. You’re a little over a kilometer out from the first checkpoint. Their ground radar will pick you up before you spot them. Make your best speed to Alpha.” Castle informed me, a string of targeting locations filtering into Phantom’s systems. 

“Acknowledged. Moving on Alpha, full throttle.”

“Contact! 900 Meters.” Scrapper shouted, the pulsating beams of Yard Arm’s twin pulse lasers lashing out through the night.

“Somebody was snoozing at their radar. Take out the command tent and barracks first.” I laughed, banking Phantom out and around as her computers worked to dredge up good solutions on the missiles through the pall of snow. 

“Roger” Beowulf chirped, him and his Osiris flitting past my left while Hannibal banked his Chimera out wide on my right.

“Try not to get in a crossfire with those turrets and tanks, people. Here we go! Enemy ‘Mech at Alpha.” 

“You have violated a Halloran Protectorate outpost. You are ordered to power down and surrender your ‘Mechs.” The unfamiliar voice commanded over an all-band channel as the approaching Owens bobbed back and forth, ducking and weaving through the hail of fire that flew past it. 

“Spunky little fella, don’t you think?” I mused, lining up Phantom’s targeting system on the approaching light ‘mech.

“Roger!”  Beowulf chuckled before swinging in on the approaching ‘mech, sending a salvo of vibrant red lasers scorching through its side, melting away slabs of armor. A billowing plume of smoke poured from the rended hole, mixing with the snow on the wind as Phantom shuddered beneath me, sending out a twin flight of missiles that corkscrewed through the air before they came crashing down on battered light.

The rest of the lance fell upon the checkpoint, scything through the defenders like a hot knife through butter. An untouched Hellspawn stood stock still beside the outpost, small banks of snow gathering in its joints and armor plates.  “Looks like that Hellspawn came up minus a pilot. Leave it for salvage.”

“Kick ass!” Scrapper exclaimed, swinging his Cougar’s barrel up in the air in triumph, earning a small laugh of amusement from Hannibal as I keyed the comm to hail Castle.

“Checkpoint at Alpha has been eliminated. Moving to Beta.”

We weren’t done just yet.

– MechWarrior Spectre, Spectre Lead, Halloran V, April 3067

–

Howdy Mechwarriors and welcome to another Mech Overview! This time around we’re looking at the Hellspawn! The Hellspawn is honestly one of my favorite medium ‘mechs in the game, I absolutely adore these things both on function, cost and vibes. I mean just look at ‘em!!! Just weird little guys built out of rectangles and triangles who wanna run around shootin’ at stuff all day! There is a-nother reason I love the Hellspawn though…

General Motors.

As per usual I must point out any and all machines that are made by General Motors, especially the ones built just up the road from the General Motors Generalist Mercenaries base on Talcott! Lovely place, humid as shit, rainin’ all the time, roads get washed out every other weekend, the trees reach higher’n all hell, and of course the marshes are no joke. Granted the boys on patrol down there love jumpin’ over those trees in their Hellspawn though! Then they end up landin’ in some Marsh and need to call the Muckrakers out to get ‘em unstuck. Helluva day every time but I digress.

The Hellspawn always struck me as something that should be an omni-mech. It’s just got that look to it! All blocky and square like it is it really feels like the kind of super industrial design that permeates those early IS omnis.

Anyhow, on to the ‘mech!

Chassis

Hellspawns are all 45 ton Medium ‘mechs with widely varying armor loads and weaponry choices but- largely -they carry a fistful of energy weapons and some form of missile rack. They do all share the same movement profile, all moving 6/9 with a jump of 5-6 hexes given to them by an XL engine that’s standard across the frame. As well they all carry the same 10 double heat sinks, except for the custom variant.

These traits largely make the Hellspawns all want to be midline skirmishers that reach out and tap people a bunch from range before dipping back out to reposition. Thusly Hellspawns fall into one of my favorite categories: The Little Bastard! But, most importantly, all these traits also means something else about the Hellspawns.

They’re not exactly expensive.

The most expensive regular Hellspawn is only 1,411 BV while the cheapest is 1,118 BV. For a fairly mobile light medium with an alright spread of weapons these are some pretty fair prices and make for a somewhat alright list filler when you need a weird ‘little-bastard’!

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).

7D

Just a Racoon staring at you out of a dumpster waiting for you to drop your bagel (lose armor).

I love the 7D, this thing isnt terribly cheap for a 6/9/6 medium ‘mech with largely real guns but it is still useful. At 1,220 BV the 7D hauls in some pretty acceptable guns that work quite well with its movement profile, giving it the capacity to do both skirmish work and little bastard work!

Toting a trio of Medium Pulse Lasers, a Guardian ECM and a pair of LRM 10s with two tons of ammo the Hellspawn has a relatively well rounded loadout that if you find a target- or pair of targets -to loose the full payload into will only build movement heat.

The armor is… not great, only coming in at 15 pips on the legs, 14 on the CT, 11 on sides, and swinging all the way down to 9 on the arms. Yikes.

But in reality that’s largely fine, the 7D doesn’t want to be getting in close and instead wants to spend all 24 salvos of its onboard LRM fire behind, or amidst, your lines slinging LRMs into good targets while being poised to bounce into position on some other target of opportunity.

This is peak Little Bastard work as a 7D, even for the price, is really rarely annoying enough to make a target of priority. Sure it’s not hard to kill but it’ll be just annoying enough to take an actual concentration of fire that would likely be better served being pointed at a real threat. That means Mr. Hellspawn gets to keep scampering away with impunity, always ignored in favor of their bigger Marauder line brothers, content to sling salvos of LRMs until your enemies are broken and shattered to pieces upon the ground.

Liberty’s Rating: C. Great little skirmisher medium for the cost that has a capacity to defend itself while also slinging out acceptable long range damage! Only thing that’d make it better is if we could get some concentrated damage rather than the splashing of LRM fire it’ll end up delivering.

8E

There’s computers in here just doin’ shit.

The 8E is a 7D that has dropped two Medium Pulse Lasers in exchange for ER Medium Lasers and Artemis IV fire control systems on the LRM Boxes. This is a small, but acceptable, change that helps the Hellspawn do a little bit more reach out and touch work while also making the LRMs get more consistent missiles on target.

Firing both ERMLS and both LRMs on the run nets neutral heat which means the 8E is happy to run about slinging them all off, even if the ERMLs are on bad shots. That said the loss of the trio of MPLs really dampens the 8E’s capacity to defend itself which isn’t great.

For 1,341 BV this is a touch more expensive than the 7D but not necessarily in a prohibitive way. If you’ve got the space for it it could be a worthwhile change!

Liberty’s rating: C-. A touch more expensive than the 7D for a downgrade in effectiveness.

9F

I’ll try missiles, that’s a neat trick!

The 9F is a weird one as far as Hellspawns go. Dropping both LRMs, an MPL, and a half ton of armor to pick up a pair of MRM 20s with a ton of ammo for each launcher. Retaining the normal 10 double heat sinks the 9F goes up movement heat on an alpha strike which isn’t terrible. This could be a relatively effective skirmisher but man are MRMs unfortunate with that inaccuracy malus.

This is an odd change but certainly makes the 9F a very funny ‘mech. Not a great ‘mech but certainly a very funny one. Especially because it makes it the cheapest Hellspawn at 1,118 BV! This is a pretty acceptable price for ‘shitbucket close range medium’ ‘mech but it’s not astounding for what it actually manages to do.

Liberty’s Rating: D+. Cheap as all hell but damn is the lack of armor and sadness of the MRMs holding it back from what it could be. An equivalent weight of SRM-6s or MMLs and heat sinks would be hilarious.

10G

This is what I get for vacationing so close to the company. Fuckers bugged my walls again.

Departing from the usual 6/9/6 movement profile the 10G goes 6/9/5. The 10G also beefs up the armor to 7.5 tons which is a marked increase in armor coverage up to 83%! This means it has 15 on the legs, 20 on the CT, 16 on the sides and 10 on the arms! A good clip more of survivability which certainly helps.

Armament wise the 10G drops the LRMs and one of the medium pulse lasers to instead pack on two MPLs, one light PPC and a pair of MML7s with a total three tons of ammo!

There are some quite effective firing bands available here with a running alpha strike sending the 10G up 3 heat. That said the LPPC and the MPLs don’t work great together considering minimums and whatnot so in reality the choice is between the MMLs set to LRM and the LPPC or the MMLs set to SRM and the MPLs; either of them will leave the 10G down on heat which is nice. For 1,188 BV the 10G is probably the most efficient use of the platform thus far and considering it’s the second cheapest variant in the lot I don’t see any of the others being any better.

Liberty’s Rating: B-. Honestly a great use of the platform. Giving it the extra armor, even if sacrificing that last hex of jump for it, is a great choice. Having a spread of weapons, including my beloved dual purpose MMLs, makes me quite happy about it as well.

10SR

E-WAR is the best war.

The 10SR is a very fun take on the Hellspawn for a few reasons. For one it drops all of the original’s armament and then packs on 94% of the armor it can carry, making it a touch harder to actually put down over its contemporaries. This is a pretty thick lad of a Hellspawn!

Equipment wise we’ve got a Light PPC supported by an ER Medium Laser in each arm backed up by a TAG, a Guardian ECM and a Beagle Active Probe! This is all well and good but even with all that we’re missing a few tons! Wonder where they went?

Oh! 8 IJJs! Well that’s fun.

This is the most mobile Hellspawn and by a longshot but unfortunately that, for some reason, necessitated losing our pulse lasers which means it can’t do any effective light hunting.  At 1,411 BV this is the second most expensive Hellspawn which is unfortunate because it is rather entertaining. I see a very good place for this in campaign play for use as a thick scout, zippy harasser that can take return fire, or a good forward spotter for your artillery complement. That said, in a normal game I feel like Mr. 10SR is going to explode in a painful way without doing a whole lot.

Liberty’s Rating: D. Incredibly funny and very mobile but man is this thing hard to justify outside of a world with hidden units, guided artillery, or amassed indirect fire and whatnot. On the other hand, if you’ve got a campaign going on post 3081 pick one up and use it to drop warheads on foreheads!

Halperin

Bandits. I hate Bandits.

The 7D Halperin is a custom ‘mech belonging to one ‘Greta Halperin’, one time member of the Crucius March Militia that went bandit after deserting. It retains the usual 6/9/6 movement profile but replaces the standard gyro with a compact and uses the extra space to pad out the CT with a pair of Jump Jets and an Angel ECM.

Stacking up at 1,431 BV the Halperin is clad in 9.5 tons of armor, a full 99.35% of its possible load and packs on quite the armament! A pair of Rocket Launcher 20s and four IS ER Medium Lasers fill out the arms while a pair of ER Small Lasers point backwards.

With 12 double heat sinks the Halperin goes up 8 heat on a run if you fire all the forward firing weapons, including the RLs, at something. Now, once the RLs are expended the Halperin only makes 22 heat at a run, down 2 from what it can sink which begs a question.

Why the fuck does this thing have three coolant pods in it?

I don’t know why?

I can’t figure it out but they’re there at least! I suppose you could use them for some good jumping alpha strike hits which is all well and good?

Liberty’s Rating: C-. There are a lot of things that do basically this but better or cheaper.

Conclusion

The Hellspawn is a fun ‘mech with a few acceptable variants and one quite funny one! For the most part there’s bound to be something better at the job than it is but it’ll still do the job.

In the end you’ve got plenty of choices for using the Hellspawn on the table but I think the standout is the 10G and it’s not particularly close. That price with the flexibility of the MMLs makes for a ‘mech that can pitch in a little bit of work in the skirmish and then dive in on something that’s got some open locations to try and secure some good crits.

Above all that though… He’s just a little guy and I love him dearly. Lil’ cuboid bastard. Unfortunately I’ve not yet managed to get one into GMGM-D paint but I’ll cherish him like the lil’ guy that he is once I do!

Until next time! Fair weather, good seas and happy shitbucketing!

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