Sunday, May 31, 2009

TRO: 3063 Update

Hi! Yesterday was a bit of a piss-and-moan apologia for those of you who actually visit this site for news on the TRO. Needless to say, you didn’t get much updating.

Just a few short notes:

- The Bandersnatch and the Nightsky have been replaced by brand new art, courtesy of Eric ‘Eriance’ Ou over at the deviantArt website. I highly recommend him for those of you who are planning similar work, as his drawings are crisp and original, combining the ‘machine’ look of Battletech with just a touch of the fluid ‘Mecha’ anime style. Those of you who find objections to some of Matthew Plog’s earlier work will understand. He, too, is very talented and his work appears frequently in the Company’s publications. However, quite a few of his illustrations were heavily rounded and, to some eyes, lost a bit of the ‘Battletech feel’ as found in the rest of the TROs.

It is a matter of taste, of course. Duane Loose has his detractors as well.

- The Dragonfly and the Werefox AAV have been put to bed. There are just four remaining writeups to finish – the Sabra III, the Werefox Petain, the Werefox ICV (Infantry Combat Vehicle) and the Werefox FSV (Fire Support Vehicle). These require work mostly on the ‘Notable Vehicles and Crews’ section, as well as some updating courtesy of the incredibly detailed FedCom Civil War manual. I recently managed to scrounge a dog-eared copy of this book and found it contained a lot of material that I had never seen online.

- We have pipelined new images of the FedSuns Commando and Centurion, as well as the Lyran Fafnir and Centurion. On deck are the Lyran Griffin and the FedSuns Blackjack. I expect these to appear in the next three weeks.

- The Magistracy of Canopus has a ‘new’ Thunderbolt. I will not post the writeup here; suffice to say it was written by none other than Mark Miller himself, of FanPro/Catalyst Games fame. These machines are not your ordinary heavy ‘Mech. They are relics salvaged from an abandoned First Star League base and in lieu of the standard fusion engine and armor, have been refitted with a diesel powerplant and fairly primitive armor (a uniform twenty points in all locations except the head and back).

There are six operational examples, and I would not normally include this machine in the TRO due to such low numbers. But this is the shape of things to come, if you will; it is a taste of the Dark Age. As such, I thought it an important addition. We have fielded the design on a gaming table against forces likely to encountered on the borders of the MoC. It performs quite well. Slow, but effective.

David White is working on the illustration for this strange bird even as you read this.

That’s all for now. Take care and stop in for more updates as they appear!

Steve

2 comments:

Kiran said...

Hey Steve, did you know your TRO for the BattleMaster BLR-5R has an error. Down where it shows where the weapons are allocated it says the ER Large Laser is in the center torso, but the description clearly reads that it was placed in the left arm. There's also no weapon mount in the CT and a big one on the LA. Makes it look like it has a gun mount with no gun.

Steven Satak said...

Yes, we corrected that one in the Errata list

Thanks for the sharp eye! The original was based on an actual record sheet and mini, and the stats changed somewhere in-between.