I am an ok battle armor user and a smoker. For dropping BA off at your opponent’s feet. Drop down a heavy smoke screen to block LOS. This tactic is ecstatic with mimetic armor. Good video, good breakdown, and good job.
Flamers on battle armor is so underrated. We did a trial for operation revival in our campaign. I surprised everyone with how effective they were, shutting down or reducing the offensive capabilities of many mechs during the trials. One even exploded because the other commander forgot how overheated he was. Amazing!
For innersphere players there are some great wolves dragoons omni vehicles that are good for deploying battle armor. A Badger with a unit of IS Standard BA inside the infantry bay and riding on the outside is around 800BV and is fairly quick at 6/9 movement.
@@DIEGhostfish Most IS Bandit variants have 4 tons of internal carrying capacity, all clan Bandit variants have 5 tons, enough for one point of their respective BA. (There's an IS Bandit that drops weapons to up the infantry bay to 8!) Its just the bandit is an omni-hovercraft. BA can latch onto omni *units* not just omni mechs (there just aren't many non-mech omni units)
My favorite IS battle armor all come from the CCAF. The Fa Shih is great because it's cheap, the man-portable plasma rifle is a better flamer, they have mag clamps, and they have mines. The Shen Long and Ying Long are also great, but need specialized transports. Also another point, swarm attacks against vehicles are extra brutal because you get an innate +2 bonus to hit them with it and the vehicle critical hits table is very unforgiving.
Artillery cannons are always a way to clear locations of BA that lack reactive armor. The inferno rounds are effective unless the BA are fire proofed. Then I am just making them concealment.
This is a good vid I wish I had early in my btech journey. Agreed swarm sucks.i usually use ba like this: Elemetals- tanky. They hold objectives. Cheap ba (space eles, sarillas, is srm, etc) upskill to 3/2 for leg attacks. BUT! Ba with longer range attacks (Ele with AP Gauss, Corona, fenrir, Djinn David gauss)- shooty crit seekers. Take the ap gauss eles for a spin against IS opponents- crit seeking hell! Looking forward to more videos~ Pirate
I've recommended this video to a couple of our new/er players to the game to give them an intro to Battle Armor. Well done and Thank you for making it!
If you want a good BA carrier for inner sphere forces, there are a couple of Men Shen variants that stuff all their guns in the arms that are very solid at carrying BA squads in and then supporting them!
You can use Undine battle armor to attach 'Mechs that are in or around water. They also have LRMs, which you can load with Multi-Purpose Missiles (LRM/T) to damage their legs before you close in, or with Thunders to lay down a minefield on their escape route.
Space Toads are another way. I like the idea of using Thunder LRM's to soften up the mechs legs. I have yet to play any Undine as swamp, river, or beach and water maps are rare when I am playing clans.
I think Longinus needed a shout out. Transportation of some kind is mandatory (because of its IS SRMs), even if its a conventional ground vehicle. But you get very similar capabilities to Elementals
@@TrailblazerBT Yeah they're fine, just a solution to a problem that doesn't have a very convincing in-universe reason for existing imo. I will say that different force composition from IS BA potentially having to be moved in APCs is interesting and valid. Badgers, Bandits and Maxims are cool, among others.
I've had great results with the Kage Light Battle Armor on the IS side. Incredibly cheap at like 130 BV at 4/2!! They're arguably worth it for just being an initiative sink, but they jump 4 and can still do Leg Attacks at full strength 4 armor 1 structure, but that is STEALTH armor which helps them close. They often only have one small laser or flamer or tag or even no weapon and just a 1 hex ECM bubble, but they're incredibly cheap I used them in a D-day tournament, using a boat to bring them onto shore on offense to be annoying and contest objectives and on defense to Crit enemy legs and slow them down enough so that they are unable to reach the objective within the tournament turn limit.
Another recommendation for a good version of the IS standard battle armor is the the light rifle variant, it gets you a 2/4/6 range 2damage primary weapon and the anti-personnel weapon like the elementals but still 15 bv cheaper per suit than a toad. Its not as efficient but the range does help it. That or magnetic IS standard for infantry bullying and objective securing. Using two fast light mechs with at least one carrying a squad of magnetic IS armor is a great way to secure an objective that requires you to load the package.
I avoided using battle armor and vehicles because I felt they slowed down an already very slow game. However, now that CGL has included support cards instead of record sheets, I may start using them. It works great with vehicles.
18:40 atlas on its own is vulnerable. Two mechs versus one even of same total weight have the advantage of flanking and enemy splitting fire penalties.
Light BA and VTOL BA are solid to self transport after a certain point, especially in alpha strike Medium BA rely on your mechs and armor to get in and do their job, but they can carry themselves forward Heavy BA need mechs to set them in a single position to shoot at enemies and sit still Assault needs combined arms support to deliver, but offers incredibly Tanky BV efficient turrets with crazy weapon loadouts. Looking at the LBX loadouts.
I personally use mag clamps on mechs that have improved jump jets, like the Uziel 8S, which allows my mech to be as effective as it should be and leaves a surprise for my foes
This is a nitpick, but I was looking into battle armor rules and found something interesting. Battle Armor of all kinds can survive being submerged in water up to depth 15, they're just considered effectively disabled because they cannot move on their own unless they have UMU, like the Undine.
I use Achileus with TAG to spot for semiguided LRMs, which is a fantastic combo since Achileus are hard as Hell to hit. Longinus Magnetic make swarm attacks worth it. The clamps make it easier to hold on and a full squad does a 20 point hit.
Remove the small laser. install a Semi-portable heavy laser. 2 points damage instead of 3 points. BUT, 22 hexes of range! SAME WEIGHT! For added fun, take a Savannah Master, remove the Med laser, 1 ton. Now you have 1 ton of cargo space. How much does a Elemental weigh? 1 ton. Now the Elemental sits where the Med Laser was, can shoot as anything that comes into range, (22 hexes), while the Savannah driver (not having to worry about shooting anything, can now spot for artillery and drive!)
Standard with the LRR are my go to if I am running IS Standard. Still cheapish, but able to doing something if your opponent refuses to go exactly where you expected them to. Of course, those are Civil War era, as are most of the fun designs that aren't crazy. You also didn't really touch on their uses as spotters or bodyguards for fire support units, especially Omnimech fire support units. Big fan of the Slyph, VTOL and BA with a decent base TMM makes them real annoying unless flak is on the field.
@@TrailblazerBT That would explain it. For some reason I always assumed the IS Standard had torso-mounted SRMs like on the Elemental, but on double-checking they're part of the modular arm weapons. I usually go with the Gray Death series or faction-specific models when I use BA, so I'm not that familiar with its statline.
It's been so long since I actually played with BA that I don't have much useful feedback. Everything sounded good tho. I guess my local group is odd, lots of just mech games and sometimes mech and tank games, not often battle armor or infantry.
So clan omni fast mechs with arm mounted omnipods only zip in and fire plus deploy elementals who can attack same turn or next turn? I am a trooper noob.
Would you have armoured troops jump onto breached torsos like an armour patch?hunchback left torso covered up so right side AC keeps firing? Or is it mounted vs unmounted all areas covered and cant fire?
Thanks for the breakdown. I never liked Battle Armor because they make it effective by cheating. I mean they "created new rules" but so many of those rules boil down to "the rules say so". Why are Elementals harder to hit than other infantry (despite having the same mobility)? The rules say so. They clearly do not have mech scale machine guns so are they classed as such? The rules say so. How they possibly have a mech scale flamer when it's impossible for them to carry enough fuel? The rules say so. Same thing applies to Inner Sphere vs Clan. Why does Inner Sphere armor have one less point which allows weapons to hit breakpoints needed to one shot them but not Clanner armor? The rules say so. Why hasn't the Inner Sphere caught up to Clanner tech despite the cannon moving ahead by decades? The rules say so. Worse still this mentality regarding Elementals directly fed into Protomechs which are so stupid I won't allow them in any game I'm playing.
Squad-sized conventional infantry units also have the same +1 to hit! It's about the unit being spread thinly through the hex. I don't like protos either
And IS battle armor tech, aside from the weapons, is not only on par with clan tech, but actually superior. IS BA are more streamlined, wasting less mass.
@@briane8627 No joke. I'm working a home brew game with some friends playing Shadow Empires. Megamek for the engine, experimental tech, IS hybrid as the standard, all units from infantry to dropships are hand designed. Some designs I've put together for one of the nations won't work as a pure clan tech or clan-hybrid. The tech MUST be IS core for the design to come in at weight.
I think it's simpler then that. Some of the player base has an anti vehicle bias. You'll see them in comment sections saying brainrot like "Don't put tanks in my mech game"
I think it's just that BA are the easiest combined arms unit to learn the rules... also Clan vs IS with no BA allowed is pretty hard on the Clans as a flipside to what you're saying
I am an ok battle armor user and a smoker. For dropping BA off at your opponent’s feet. Drop down a heavy smoke screen to block LOS. This tactic is ecstatic with mimetic armor. Good video, good breakdown, and good job.
@@Magermh Smoke makes everything easier (except long range sniping)
Flamers on battle armor is so underrated. We did a trial for operation revival in our campaign. I surprised everyone with how effective they were, shutting down or reducing the offensive capabilities of many mechs during the trials. One even exploded because the other commander forgot how overheated he was. Amazing!
For innersphere players there are some great wolves dragoons omni vehicles that are good for deploying battle armor. A Badger with a unit of IS Standard BA inside the infantry bay and riding on the outside is around 800BV and is fairly quick at 6/9 movement.
🫡
And the Bandit is a max armor 8/12 omni transport!
Wait the inner bay's big enough for a second squad?
@@DIEGhostfish Most IS Bandit variants have 4 tons of internal carrying capacity, all clan Bandit variants have 5 tons, enough for one point of their respective BA. (There's an IS Bandit that drops weapons to up the infantry bay to 8!)
Its just the bandit is an omni-hovercraft. BA can latch onto omni *units* not just omni mechs (there just aren't many non-mech omni units)
@@Andrewlik I knew about the external.
My favorite IS battle armor all come from the CCAF. The Fa Shih is great because it's cheap, the man-portable plasma rifle is a better flamer, they have mag clamps, and they have mines. The Shen Long and Ying Long are also great, but need specialized transports.
Also another point, swarm attacks against vehicles are extra brutal because you get an innate +2 bonus to hit them with it and the vehicle critical hits table is very unforgiving.
Do the man portable plasma rifles act like flamers??? I didn't know that!
3:25 artillery is also a good option to remove them , it'll hit all of them at once
Artillery cannons are always a way to clear locations of BA that lack reactive armor. The inferno rounds are effective unless the BA are fire proofed. Then I am just making them concealment.
@@Magermhbeing fair, Arty Party and the Applied Chemistry and Mathematics is a good answer to a lot of problems in this game...
Thumper has joined the chat.
This is a good vid I wish I had early in my btech journey. Agreed swarm sucks.i usually use ba like this:
Elemetals- tanky. They hold objectives.
Cheap ba (space eles, sarillas, is srm, etc) upskill to 3/2 for leg attacks.
BUT! Ba with longer range attacks (Ele with AP Gauss, Corona, fenrir, Djinn David gauss)- shooty crit seekers.
Take the ap gauss eles for a spin against IS opponents- crit seeking hell!
Looking forward to more videos~ Pirate
Thanks homie!!
One other aspect to keep in mind about Elementals: they absolutely *chew* on infantry and vehicles with those flamers.
I've recommended this video to a couple of our new/er players to the game to give them an intro to Battle Armor. Well done and Thank you for making it!
@@bruceford6133 Thanks for passing it on!!
If you want a good BA carrier for inner sphere forces, there are a couple of Men Shen variants that stuff all their guns in the arms that are very solid at carrying BA squads in and then supporting them!
Great breakdown
I am just building my Wolf-in-Exile force, so it's particularly timely
You can use Undine battle armor to attach 'Mechs that are in or around water. They also have LRMs, which you can load with Multi-Purpose Missiles (LRM/T) to damage their legs before you close in, or with Thunders to lay down a minefield on their escape route.
Space Toads are another way. I like the idea of using Thunder LRM's to soften up the mechs legs. I have yet to play any Undine as swamp, river, or beach and water maps are rare when I am playing clans.
@Magermh when they hit retail, buy the Savannahs map set. Undine and Hauberks LOVE those maps
Always love the firemoth D & BA Combo. Ablative armour and then if any survive attack
I think Longinus needed a shout out. Transportation of some kind is mandatory (because of its IS SRMs), even if its a conventional ground vehicle. But you get very similar capabilities to Elementals
@@AbokaseeRed Yeah I should have brought up that suit
Houseruling standard mechs to be able to carry battle armor is warranted IMO. If they can hang onto an enemy they can hang onto a friendly.
They hang onto enemy mechs by damaging them with their claws. Its not exactly the same as using purpose built hand holds.
@@samuelbaldwin2184 Be that as it may, grab bars are a trivial external modification.
Cool house rule, I do like magclamps as well though!
@@TrailblazerBT Yeah they're fine, just a solution to a problem that doesn't have a very convincing in-universe reason for existing imo. I will say that different force composition from IS BA potentially having to be moved in APCs is interesting and valid. Badgers, Bandits and Maxims are cool, among others.
The IS has omnis too. Raptor, Blackjack, Firestarter, Owens, Strider for the fast ones in the clan invasion
I love using Flamer Battle Armor!
I've had great results with the Kage Light Battle Armor on the IS side. Incredibly cheap at like 130 BV at 4/2!! They're arguably worth it for just being an initiative sink, but they jump 4 and can still do Leg Attacks at full strength
4 armor 1 structure, but that is STEALTH armor which helps them close. They often only have one small laser or flamer or tag or even no weapon and just a 1 hex ECM bubble, but they're incredibly cheap
I used them in a D-day tournament, using a boat to bring them onto shore on offense to be annoying and contest objectives and on defense to Crit enemy legs and slow them down enough so that they are unable to reach the objective within the tournament turn limit.
Another recommendation for a good version of the IS standard battle armor is the the light rifle variant, it gets you a 2/4/6 range 2damage primary weapon and the anti-personnel weapon like the elementals but still 15 bv cheaper per suit than a toad. Its not as efficient but the range does help it. That or magnetic IS standard for infantry bullying and objective securing. Using two fast light mechs with at least one carrying a squad of magnetic IS armor is a great way to secure an objective that requires you to load the package.
Nice rec! I hadn't actually checked that one out
I avoided using battle armor and vehicles because I felt they slowed down an already very slow game. However, now that CGL has included support cards instead of record sheets, I may start using them. It works great with vehicles.
18:40 atlas on its own is vulnerable. Two mechs versus one even of same total weight have the advantage of flanking and enemy splitting fire penalties.
Light BA and VTOL BA are solid to self transport after a certain point, especially in alpha strike
Medium BA rely on your mechs and armor to get in and do their job, but they can carry themselves forward
Heavy BA need mechs to set them in a single position to shoot at enemies and sit still
Assault needs combined arms support to deliver, but offers incredibly Tanky BV efficient turrets with crazy weapon loadouts. Looking at the LBX loadouts.
Thanks for this! Could you do one on other infantry units. Our group is confused about artillery.
I personally use mag clamps on mechs that have improved jump jets, like the Uziel 8S, which allows my mech to be as effective as it should be and leaves a surprise for my foes
This is a nitpick, but I was looking into battle armor rules and found something interesting. Battle Armor of all kinds can survive being submerged in water up to depth 15, they're just considered effectively disabled because they cannot move on their own unless they have UMU, like the Undine.
Ah yes, I was being imprecise when I said they died down there
I use Achileus with TAG to spot for semiguided LRMs, which is a fantastic combo since Achileus are hard as Hell to hit.
Longinus Magnetic make swarm attacks worth it. The clamps make it easier to hold on and a full squad does a 20 point hit.
17:37 funky render
Remove the small laser. install a Semi-portable heavy laser. 2 points damage instead of 3 points. BUT, 22 hexes of range! SAME WEIGHT! For added fun, take a Savannah Master, remove the Med laser, 1 ton. Now you have 1 ton of cargo space. How much does a Elemental weigh? 1 ton. Now the Elemental sits where the Med Laser was, can shoot as anything that comes into range, (22 hexes), while the Savannah driver (not having to worry about shooting anything, can now spot for artillery and drive!)
Standard with the LRR are my go to if I am running IS Standard. Still cheapish, but able to doing something if your opponent refuses to go exactly where you expected them to. Of course, those are Civil War era, as are most of the fun designs that aren't crazy.
You also didn't really touch on their uses as spotters or bodyguards for fire support units, especially Omnimech fire support units. Big fan of the Slyph, VTOL and BA with a decent base TMM makes them real annoying unless flak is on the field.
@@135forte Ah good call, especially re spotting. I had the feeling I was leaving something out
I've been trying to figure out if power armor units are weak to machine guns like infantry unit. Is that the case?
They are not. They have no special rules when it comes to taking weapons fire.
No
u could stopped them.only one thing they will jump and attach u.
@@ero9841 infernos kill them pretty bad though
Plasma. Anything that says plasma, makes battle armor pop -like- corn.
Isn't there also a rule that IS BA can't jump while their SRMs are loaded?
@@gilbat1 Only if the missiles are torso mounted like on the Longinus
@@TrailblazerBT That would explain it. For some reason I always assumed the IS Standard had torso-mounted SRMs like on the Elemental, but on double-checking they're part of the modular arm weapons. I usually go with the Gray Death series or faction-specific models when I use BA, so I'm not that familiar with its statline.
It's been so long since I actually played with BA that I don't have much useful feedback. Everything sounded good tho.
I guess my local group is odd, lots of just mech games and sometimes mech and tank games, not often battle armor or infantry.
So clan omni fast mechs with arm mounted omnipods only zip in and fire plus deploy elementals who can attack same turn or next turn?
I am a trooper noob.
Ok. Drop off vulnerable. No attacks or movement bonus
@@robertbyerlay5040 Exactly
@@robertbyerlay5040 Exactly
Would you have armoured troops jump onto breached torsos like an armour patch?hunchback left torso covered up so right side AC keeps firing? Or is it mounted vs unmounted all areas covered and cant fire?
@@robertbyerlay5040 Each trooper goes to a specific location, so if you've lost the right trooper in a point your right torso weapons will still work
Thanks for the breakdown. I never liked Battle Armor because they make it effective by cheating. I mean they "created new rules" but so many of those rules boil down to "the rules say so". Why are Elementals harder to hit than other infantry (despite having the same mobility)? The rules say so. They clearly do not have mech scale machine guns so are they classed as such? The rules say so. How they possibly have a mech scale flamer when it's impossible for them to carry enough fuel? The rules say so.
Same thing applies to Inner Sphere vs Clan. Why does Inner Sphere armor have one less point which allows weapons to hit breakpoints needed to one shot them but not Clanner armor? The rules say so. Why hasn't the Inner Sphere caught up to Clanner tech despite the cannon moving ahead by decades? The rules say so.
Worse still this mentality regarding Elementals directly fed into Protomechs which are so stupid I won't allow them in any game I'm playing.
Squad-sized conventional infantry units also have the same +1 to hit! It's about the unit being spread thinly through the hex.
I don't like protos either
And IS battle armor tech, aside from the weapons, is not only on par with clan tech, but actually superior. IS BA are more streamlined, wasting less mass.
@@briane8627 No joke. I'm working a home brew game with some friends playing Shadow Empires. Megamek for the engine, experimental tech, IS hybrid as the standard, all units from infantry to dropships are hand designed.
Some designs I've put together for one of the nations won't work as a pure clan tech or clan-hybrid. The tech MUST be IS core for the design to come in at weight.
@@briane8627 Then what about the comment about armor?
@danmorgan3685 oh, he's right about 10+1 armor vs 9+1. Big difference. But there are plenty of IS suits with 10+ armor.
I think only allowing BattleArmour and Mechs massively changes the game ....... I would automatically assume a pro Clan TO or at least pro Clan bias
I think it's simpler then that. Some of the player base has an anti vehicle bias. You'll see them in comment sections saying brainrot like "Don't put tanks in my mech game"
I think it's just that BA are the easiest combined arms unit to learn the rules... also Clan vs IS with no BA allowed is pretty hard on the Clans as a flipside to what you're saying
@@TrailblazerBTYeah before BV the odds would be 1 clan mech + 1 elemental vs 2 IS mechs