Savage Coyote

Non-CAV's definitely have a place on the battlefield! They help to expand your numbers and present you with more options. Some vehicles, aircraft, and infantry can perform SA:Pop-up, which allows them to rise up one level higher and fire, then lower back down into cover. Traditional tanks still have to be chewed through, and Jeneki outlined infantry's usefulness as well. CAV was designed to be a fully combined arms game, and just "grabbing some robots and I'll win" doesn't necessarily work in the game!

Howdy howdy, another battle report that will receive a hundred views and no comments! For this one, we were also testing our ability to stream out a battle and/or create a how to play example. We went with 5k just to eat time and give MiniAdict a chance to run the cameras an computer set up. His son brought in his mercenaries: Attack Section 1 2x Chieftains Archer Nomad Attack Section 2 2x Naginatas Poltergiest Nomad Fire Support Section 1 3x Spector B's Spider vs my ADON unit I've started painting on: Regiment 45 "Bone Collectors" Attack Section 1 2xChancellors Mantis Javelin Attack Section 2 Mantis 2x Kestrels Javelin Attack Section 3 2x Commander II's 2x Chieftains. No upgrades, doctrines or CP's were used for the game: Turn one. I got to deploy ALL of my force first due to all of my cards coming up in a row, so after I moved, Brandon got to lob some rockets at me ineffectively. He moved up as well and we got ready for turn two. Turn two: I move first and move my tank up, killing one of the Nomads and maiming one of his Chieftains. In return, he kills one of my Chieftains and damages my poor painted Chancellor. He's rolling lights out with Active Phased Array 2 from the Archer running. My other CAV Attack squad races up the right flank to try and engage his fire support elements. I take a little damage but nothing major. Turn Three It got brutal quick. He completely wastes my poor painted Chancellor with Overdriven PBG's, completely gutting it down to track nine or ten. Just rolling lights out and the Naginatas didn't disappoint. He also killed my second Chieftain that I'd race into his backfield to try and take some heat off of my heavy CAVs. Tanks and flesh are cheap! In return I blow up his other Chieftain and scratch one of the Naginatas, but I'm getting worried that he could turn this flank if he keeps rolling as well as he was. On the other flank my sucide squad reaches point blank but had to use both move actions to do so, so I don't have any shots. They all take some damage but miraculously no one dies. Turn 3-5ish So at this point, due to the recording, talking to a buddy, and whatever else was going on, I forget to use the camera! Oops. There wasn't much to really highlight. We traded a lot of fire on the left flank and his dice finally started cooling off, and my Reinforced, Rugged units were healing like mad. I think all in all I healed something like 12-14 damage over the course of the game. The painted Mantis on that flank was pummeled and then eventually blew up his PBG's with a critical fumble. With all the ECM from the nomad he didn't have much else to do till later in the game. Brandon's Naginatas starts trying to wade closer, but the fire of the Commander II's and Chancellor cuts them down. On the other side of the board the Poltergeist is doing a great job of blasting my light armored speedsters, as is the random strike point missile drops. yet for all that, nothing died! The Mantis in that group probably healed four or six damage throughout the game and eventually put his boot on the throat of the Poltergeist and rendered is much less effective, doing 6 damage in one round to it. Final turns As we near the end game, he pulls his Archer and Nomad back to try and killl the Kestrels and he mostly succeeds. Though one Kestral walks up and kills the Nomad in two over drive shots (and dies for it) while the other Kestrel puts down more damage. With no Nomad he wasn't able block out target locks with his ECM which gave me more bonuses. My Chancellor, guided missile Mantis, and two Commander II's moved up and killed the Archer, a Spector, and the Poltergeist (with an assist from the other Mantis) while the Javelin killed the last Spector. Oh, yeah, killed him by punching him in the cockpit after that Spector thought he'd be cute and force me to look up the close assault rules. Yeah, take your point of damage and like it! After that, one round of focused fire on the Spider and it was game over! Lessons Learned: - READ YOUR SA's! Brandon had four units with FCS and three with Chain fire pod but he never used those things. I remembered about half way through but decided not to remind him so the lesson could be taught at the end. I think he could have probably won the game had he been able to drop strike points down and the suicide squad with multiple hits. Nickel and diming them left them around just long enough to overdrive there way through most of the fire support section. I'm guilty as well, as I forgot my Chancellor and Mantis had Wizzo's till about half way through the game! - MACs go BOOM! With the new Blaster errata, MACs are dangerous. Very dangerous. I landed quite a few hits with the murder machine Chancellor and the two Commander II's. Dropping critical hits left and right really blew though some of the tougher armor Brandon had one the table. Be aware! - PBG's are really hot. I burned out so many times with the new errata rules for PBG's. And yet, my cheap little attack section sewed chaos in the backfield with all the killing they accomplished. I'm worried for the Templars and Thug which all have four PBG designs. We'll see how they shake out. - Rugged makes repair worth it. This SA, and to a limited extent Reinforced 1 and 2, kept my ADON in the game. Just being able to stick around after taking several small points of damage was huge. Brandon said late in the game, "Stop repairing! All that damage I'm doing is being wasted!" I disagreed of course, but it sure was helpful!

Thought I'd post my recently completed pair of Commander II Anti-Grav tanks painted up in the ADON Regiment 45 "Bone Collectors" scheme!

The final unit of the core rewards, the Sovereign III has been rescaled and packed with new details! This 8th Knights Assault Regiment "Antioch Lancers" Sovereign III is ready to add massed rocket and guided missile fire to your Templar or Mercenary fire support sections! Don't miss the CAV Kickstarter III, starting today, September 19th at 12:00pm CST!

The final Malvernin CAV that is included in the core rewards for the CAV Kickstarter III is the Revenant. This super heavy CAV is a huge miniature and will dominate your battlefield. Painted up in the 185th Striker Regiment "Armor of Faith" scheme, this prototype Revenant has some new details added and has been rescaled to fit the entire 10mm line! Don't miss the kickstarter, which starts Wednesday, September 19th at 12 pm CST!

PBG's can wreck anything in the game; I see something with multiple PBG's and I try to kill it from a long ways off (rockets, GM's) before it can wreck my face!

Here's the Shadow, an all new recon CAV for the Malvernis and part of the core eight designs for the upcoming Kickstarter! Sculpted by Tom Buttery and painted by myself in the 66th Regiment "The Congregation," this electronic warfare CAV is able to help your section with target locks and advanced targeting data!

Here's more photos of the Butcher Superiority CAV that comes in the core set of the upcoming CAV Kickstarter III!

So MiniAdict, myself and his son all met at Texas Toy Soldier for a 5k battle. MiniAdict and myself played mercenaries (well, I had an all Ritter force, but it was a little wonky as it doesn't follow "conventional" force structures for the faction.). We fielded: Section one (attack - MiniAdict) 2x Starhawk VI's Duelist Jagaur Javelin Section two (fire support - me) 4x Manticores Tiamet Cougar MiniAdict's son has begun a new force that ISN'T purple! He brought his mercs out to give them a try: Section one (attack) 2x Chieftains 2x Lion II's Archer Talon Section two (fire support) 3x Reapers Talon (proxied with a Raptor) So we set up and I'm super conscious of the Reapers as I've sat behind massed heavy guided missile boats in the past, and even with the reduced abilities, they are still dangerous as they can hit pretty hard. From the outset, MiniAddicts son thought they could fire indirect so he set them up in the corner. My set up was more trying not to get shot with heavy guided missiles in turn one! We created our forces under the CAVCon "tournament" rules where only CAV's and tanks are allowed with no doctrine or battlefield upgrades or strike packages. So we are activating by sections this week, and MiniAddict goes first, moves forward, then his son races his Chieftains forward at max speed. I activate, using an EST lock from my Cougar, drop a strike point on the lead Chieftain with the first Manticore, using the three other FCS, line of site, and ATC1 to help the roll. That strike point connected so I went to roll the combat rolls. I rolled a critical hit, two more hits, and a critical failure. Rolled for ammo and... *click*. I still piled a heap of damage on the lead chieftain. Then I realized the second Chieftain was within three of the first, so I activated the Tiamet and used the first Manticore's strike point via Chain-fire Pod (I had an active target lock on) and brought the rain. The damaged Chieftain was vaporized while I did three damage to the second one. My other Manticores moved up and unloaded on the second one using a strike point roll. Well, the first one did. Cause he killed it. MiniAddict's son got some shots off against MiniAddict's Javelin and did four damage with heavy guided missiles, and the turn was over. So turn two, my Manticores move up and drop missiles on the fire support Talon. Very poor rolling later, he's knocked down and stunned with a couple tracks left (I say poor because my Tiamet and at least one of the three Manticores didn't hit anything on their combat rolls and the other two only hit with like half). One of the Reapers did minimal damage to one of the Starhawks, and the Starhawk returned a little damage in turn. The Duelist did two damage to the lead Lion II and that was it for the turn. On turn three, I went first and shuffled my Manticores around a little and dropped all of my rockets on top of the Archer. By now both APA2's are going strong and it was time to turn his off. I take the archer down to track seven. The Archer will live another turn! MiniAddict's son moves his Lions up, and tries to shoot at my Manticores, but needed tens since his Archer had wandered away and JUST out of APA2 range. He misses, and MiniAddict piles on the damage to the damaged Lion II and inflicts some on the second one. This suppresses the second one so he has a -2 to all rolls and can't move forward, which makes PBG's sad. (Poor Jaguar was afraid to stick it's nose out while twelve heavy guided missiles could connect!) So turn four, MiniAddict's son gets LOS to one of my Manticores (he decided that my Manticores were public enemy number one or something!) and put two damage on it. He missed two of the missiles and barely hit with the other two. I lucked out there. I activated and killed the Archer and Talon with the three Manticores. This was a problem because I didn't have an active strike point to pass to my Tiamet which means he needs a high number to do anything from his position in the back. After factoring in the friendly APA2, I needed a nine to target one of the Reapers. I laughed and threw the dice. Double sixes! So I cackle, and start rolling! And end up doing two damage total. HORRIBLE Combat Rolls! MiniAddict kills off the Lion II's this round as well and the game is obviously wrapping up as the Reapers haven't been able to really contribute to the battle in any fashion. So Turn five kicks off and Brandon activates his Reapers, trying to get shots on my Manticore and the Duelist. He moves them up together trying to use TAG to get his shots off. Not much happens really. Then I activate and MiniAddict points out the PERFECT placement of his Reapers. Activate my damaged, sacrificial Manticore, and hit the strike point roll (yellow German eagle dice in the center of the three Reapers) drop the AoE to two for the Tiamet and then proceed to wreck the already injured Reaper and put solid damage on the other two. The other two Manticores light up the second Talon who'd run up and turned off my Cougar's ECM and jammed him up good. And when I mean light up, I mean they killed him outright with damage to spare. Light armored units beware! MiniAddict dumped more damage into the mauled Reaper and dispatched him. Turn six was the end, and my section activated again and again, I used the strike point and AoE of the Tiamet to damage the Reapers more. Remaining Manticores chipped away and MiniAddict cleaned up for the final kills. So for the final analysis, being able to limit the Reapers impact really really turned the battle in our favor. dropping the Attack section realitivly quickly finished the game off; we just had to roll dice to kill the final targets. I believe if the Reapers were deployed differently it would have effected the outcome greatly, but it's always hard to play the "what if" game and know for sure. Being able to properly support the Tiamet can make it a great beast of a CAV though. Changed my mind about it for sure!

My 2018 CAVCon After Action report is finally here. After a couple days to decompress and process everything, I thought I’d jot down a few notes, share a few photos, and do a few battle reports as best I can. So I was able to attend Thursday evening, Friday evening, and all day Saturday. I live over an hour away, so it’s close enough to drive, but with two small kids and being butted up to Labor Day weekend, I wasn’t able to really attend all day on the two weekdays or Sunday. Had it been a non-holiday weekend, I would have taken off at least Friday, but as a teacher, four day weekends are frowned upon and might have someone checking in on me. So ReaperCon/CAVCon was held at the Denton Convention Center which is also attached to the Embassy Suits. While I didn’t stay there, it would be cool to have a room, be able to shamble down to the Con areas, then shamble back up. The facilities were really nice and it seemed like everyone was having a good time. There was a lot of staff cleaning up, serving food and drinks, and security, so it seemed to run pretty well. I do feel bad for the wedding reception party that came in on Saturday and was passing our tables at the CAVCon tournament. They were a bit weirded out and didn’t realize there was going to be a big event going on at the same time! Opps! CAVBoss was a bit short-handed on Thursday and wasn’t able to get the demo terrain or tournament table terrain set up, so MiniAdict, his son, and myself all sat around and painted. CAVBoss came over after the retail hall shut down and talked with us for awhile and then I had to call it day. I came back the next evening, and the tables were set up. When I got there, MiniAdict and his son had a game just set up so I hopped in and took over one of his son’s sections, a fire support section. The lists looked like this: Malvernis-flavored Mercenaries 4x Chieftains Archer Nomad 2x Naginatas Poltergiest Nomad (my squad) 3x Spector B’s Spider Templar (MiniAdict) Centurion Crusader 3x Duelists 2x Spartans 2x Claymores For this game, there wasn’t a ton to really report on. My first strike point drifted onto a Duelist so I took off three damage tracks, next turn, I drifted one inch, so stayed on the Crusader and messed it up really good. MiniAdicts son lost almost all of his Chieftains in one turn as two of the Duelists and Centurion made short work of them. If you want to run Templars, Duelists can take care of your low armor vehicles and CAVs lickity split with it’s SIX light MAC’s! While this looked to be a nail in our coffin, the Poltergeist finished off the Crusader after another round of indirect rocket loving from myself and the Naginatas put a hurt on the third Duelist who was, well, dueling them. I hurt one of the Claymores pretty bad and the remaining chieftain killed the other one. Our Archer helped tip the balance back with it’s Active Phased Array 2 and insured some good solid hits. One of the Naginatas and the Poltergeist (this guy is scary too!) softened up the Centurion and my fire support section finished it off. In the end game, we lost the Archer, but he only had a damaged Duelist and Spartan left, so I feel fairly confident my fire support section and the Poltergeist could have finished the game. We had six or seven people wander over and start asking us questions, so we had an impromptu discussion about the game and did our best to sell! I arrived bright and early to register for the CAVCon 2018 tournament after stopping by and friends donut shop I don’t get to stop by too often. We got our forces set up, printed out, and verified and got down to business. Due to real life issues, we only had three of the six participants from last year, so the tournament got me two games with a break in between. I went first against MiniAdict’s son and his mercenary force: Section 1 Revenant (CO) 3x Starhawks VI Section 2 4x Chieftains Section 3 2x Poltergeist 2x Nomads My force, drawn from the 5th Marienburg Brigade of the Ritterlich Republic, was ready to do battle! Section 1 3x Rhino’s (one of which was the CO) Cougar Section 2 4x Lion II’s Section 3 Catamount (proxied by a Jaguar) 3x Puma We started deploying and I waited to deploy my big Rhino section till the end. I wanted to see were his stuff ended up, mainly the Poltergeists. I didn’t want them really engaging my little stuff or Lion IIs until I absolutely had to (aka, as close as possible!). This also allowed me to deploy my Rhino’s on the far right side and on turn one, my card came up first and I launched six medium guided missiles at his Revenant and took off a few tracks with some GREAT rolls (maybe two?). Other than that, we shuffled around and moved forward. I got another set of snipes on the Revenant to push it to four damage while also lighting up a Starhawk VI for a few. My Lion II’s moved up behind the central mountain while the recon squad spread out providing ECM coverage all over my half of the board. He got some pot shots on a Puma with the Poltergeists but didn’t kill him. The Revenant slunk away out of LOS of the Rhino’s while the Starhawks moved in, taking a beating along the way. They’d wage their own personal war on that side of the board for the rest of the game with the Rhino’s coming out on top and only suffering two damage. The Chieftains jumped the mountain top to kill a Puma, but in turn, my Lion II’s and one of my Rhino’s killed all four Chieftains, and pop up shots on the Poltergeists kill both of them. The Revenant topped the left side of the mountain and took the fire of four Lion II’s and a couple of Rhino’s before it expired, while one of the rushing Nomads was cut down. He had a Nomad race off the board for a Breakthrough point, while I claimed the Head Hunter point for killing his CO. All in all, the Rhino’s heavier armor, range, the Catamount’s Active Phased Array, and three rotating ECM fields blocking target locks on my forces helped to squish the Starhawk VI’s on my right side. The Revenant concerned me because he healed up a few tracks from early attention, but eventually couldn’t stand up to heavy PBG fire and attention from my three Rhinos. The Lion II’s were great midfielders hiding in the mountains. Their high armor helped the one that ended up getting shot at by one of the Poltergeists (only suffered a single damage) while their insane damage output coupled with an Advanced Targeting Computer 2 and APA 2 sliced through the opposition. So MiniAdict and his son then set about to play their game. While I had been finishing up against his son, a father/son were watching and asking questions. I offered to play a demo game using starter forces and so we played for a while. I wish I could say I “let him win” but my dice decided to land a strike point on both the Terran Talon off a drift, and dead on the Starhawk VI twice. From my Tiamet. The Talon disappeared in the drift and the Starhawk survived due to my horrible rolls, at least the first time, then I mauled him the second. They had to get to their painting class, but I had a fresh Rhino against a half-tracked Thunderbird, fresh Raptor, and track eight Starhawk. Sorry!!! The dropship was also rolled out to the awe and amusement of everyone while the terrain and prototype miniatures were out the whole con. I saw, then it was time to rumble. My second game was against MiniAdict’s Templars. Force looked like this: Section 1 Centurion 3x Duelists Section 2 Centurion 2x Spartans It’s a little wonky because he was trying to get the fully painted bonus points and changed his list a couple times before deciding on this one. I was still worried about the Centurions. If they get close enough, they have four medium PBG’s that have been Pierced so they hit at 7’s instead of 6’s in the pristine track along with an ATC2 and Wizzo. That can really ruin any unit that gets their attention. As with before, I waited on my Rhino’s, but had to place them before he placed his main force. One of the Spartans was hanging out at 62 inches or so. Two of the Rhinos had line of sight and sent some missiles his way, taking him down some while the third ran out twelve inches. Next turn that Rhino went before the spartan section and snipped the Spartan dead, removing one of the ECM counters. Honestly the rest of the game just came down to dice, and MiniAdict could never turn off my APA2 as the dice just didn’t work for him. Ever. Every turn was "and now my Spartan will try to shut down the APA" and we'd roll and, yeah, wouldn't happen. The Lion II’s were again brutal and did a good job punching massive holes in anything that tried to move around the mountain (while being able to pop up and shoot stuff that was a little farther out. The Rhinos did their thing, sending long range fire down range and severely maiming anything unfortunate enough to come into line of sight. All in all my dice rolling went well and I was able to stack several bonuses at a time to help push through a lot of damage. Talking after the event, we both agreed it wasn’t his best list and that hurt him in the end. We all kind of vegged after that sitting around and near the demo area and explaining the game to anyone that came by with questions. I talked to several locals I know from here in the DFW area and we finally set in for the awards show. I received a bronze (I guess I got worse from last years silver?) for my Ritter section of a Cheetah, two Silverbacks, and a Panther. I have plans for next year. Whether I get to them or not I don’t know! I managed to win Best Painted CAV group (and a 100 gift certificate) as well as a 50.00 gift certificate for winning the Tournament! I’ll have some more CAV’s and paints in my near future! At the end of the day I’m hoping that next year we’ll have more people turn out for CAVCon and really get things moving. I think this year was a great point as there was a lot of talk and activity about CAV (and a lot of people buying large amounts of miniatures) so hopefully we’ll see this next year!

The Haunt was really fun to paint up! They are also pretty deadly in packs...

I'll be there Thursday night, Friday night, and all day Saturday. Sunday's a coin flip at this point! I'll talk your leg off if you want :)

All four of the Malvernis CAV's were a pleasure to paint! Looking forward to more!

CAVBoss is undoubtably an expert and will be available for discussion (I like my lists as well for the tournament but admit I'm weak on aircraft and infantry!)

The top turret is separate so there's also room for variants later!

I've posted an article on the Starhawk VI in another section of the CAV site that talks about "force building" near the end. My personal preference is an attack section with three attack, one recon unit with EST/ECM, then sprinkle to taste on a second section with tanks/infantry/fire support. CAVBoss will have plenty of stuff to play with of course! :)

If you own some CAV stuff, put together a 5k force and you'll be fine (or maybe also a 2.5k force.). There will be stuff there to play with as well, though I believe the tournament on Saturday is a bring your own force! There are "tournament points" for painting, but if you just want to play, bring what you have how they are! :)

They worked well for the new model! Enjoyed painting up the four Malvernis models for this!!

Starhawk VI.... happy days!

A large scale Starhawk VI, Cataphract, or Rhino would be something!

Are you going to stick to the Templars and Malvernis or will we see other factions sneak in along the way?

A few nights ago I managed to get a game of CAV in with MiniAddict and is son at Texas Toy Solider in Carrollton, TX. Because of the three player nature we were faced with, his son and I were a team with each of us taking 3k points and MiniAddict taking 6.2k or so points! We set up long ways on the table and the only modification due to the terrain type we had was to play "true line of sight." Our terrain wasn't leveled well as it was more 40k/Fantasy terrain so this seemed to work. Forces were all "mercenary forces" by the rules due to composition/unit types" Templar Mercenaries: 2x Centurion 3x Duelist Spartan Spartan 5x Javelin ADON/Terran Mercenaries: 2x Naginatas 2x Wolves 2x Poltergiests 6x Chieftains Ritter Mercenaries: 4x Lion II's 1x Cougar Catamount (Jaguar model) 3x Puma's (blue Cougar models) Thug We also decided to use individual model activation with the cards as opposed to section activation. So Turn one was pretty much everyone rushing forward and/or moving forward and activating ECM to discourage target lock pot shots. The Templar force was a little more cautious in it's approach than our side I think. Turn 2 was really more of the same, though we had our first suppression with my Catamount suppressing the Spartan that had used it's ECM. One of the Javelins Run 'n' Gun'd and dropped four damage on my Cougar while the heavy tanks dropped a Javelin on the far left side. For all intents and purposes, the game ended on turn three. We were positioned to be able to do a lot of damage and lucked out in the card deck draws. We had five or six cards turn in row. I took charge, activated the Catamount, and fired off his Active Phased Array 2, which netted all of the forward Templar elements. Next, two Chieftains raced up to the center Spartan (he's behind the rock in the center of the board) and killed him with medium PBG's. Next, my Thug moved over to put six damage on the far right Shootist. The Shootist attempted defensive fire and did maybe one damage. Everything else that shot at the Thug missed (honestly I thought I was trading the Thug to severely hurt the Duelist!). My Lion II's move up and gain line of sight to the second Duelist and kill it with one burn out (marked with a yellow 1.). Three chieftains peel left and kill the second Spartan while the other two Chieftains race over the left side Duelist and inflict some damage. Our heavy tanks move forward and kill the brave Javelin, while wiffing on the other. In MiniAddict's defense, his dice were about as cold as you could get. All night. It was painful for him and honestly for us because, in situations he should have inflicted damage or killed something (my Thug should have been dead) he'd only hit once or not at all. The only glimmer of light was one of his Centurions putting six damage tracks on one of my Lion II's. So there was that. My Puma's all used their ECM 2 and we moved on to Turn 4. Turn Four was mainly advancing and cleaning up for our side. My Catamount activated APA2 again while my Thug brought down the Duelist (though he burned out and I retreated back around the corner before his Centurion could engage again. My Lion II's advanced forward and brought the center Centurion down to six damage tracks while follow up Chieftain hits brought it to 12 damage tracks. On the other side, the heavy tanks damaged the lone Javelin and the Chieftains played tag with the left side Duelist slowly wearing it down, though the Duelist did manage to kill one of them and severely damage the other. I lost a Lion II to a Centurion but my other three soldiered on. We called it after turn five, as the Lion II's and three Chieftains finished off both Centurions, the Duelist fell to the LBG of the Puma, and the Javelin was smoked by a Poltergeist or Wolf. All in all MiniAddicts cold dice made this a lopsided game! There were a lot of lessons and questions for this game and we look forward to playing again!

CAV Unit Brief SyRaM Starhawk VI To kick off my first tactical unit run down, I’m going to focus on the Terran Starhawk VI. Each faction has a heavy CAV that I rate as the premium combatant of the force that combines the best speed to armor to firepower to threat value in a package that is truly a superiority CAV. The Starhawk VI is the Terran’s superiority attack CAV in all regards! Lets take a closer look at this unit. Nuts and Bolts I always start off by looking at a unit’s speed and armor. I feel that it gives a good picture as to what the unit should be doing and expected to do on the battlefield. The Starhawk VI has a respectable speed of seven and an armor value of seven. This tells me that it’s slightly quicker than other faction’s superiority CAV’s (say the Rach Dictatoror Ritterlich Cataphract) but sacrifices a little armor to do so. This ties into the over all arch-type that the Terran’s have as a more mobile force. This speed allows for more fluid battlefield control and great Assault movements (which we’ll get to in a second!) Secondly, the armor is also seven. In my mind and experience, seven is the minimum armor total that can survive for any length of time on the battlefield. If you are rocking a six armor, you tend to die just a little quicker. My six armor units tended to get snuffed out much easier than my seven armor units. This is also the point where I start classifying things between a superiority CAV and a cavalry CAV. I’ve made these rolls up in my head of course, but their roles are just a bit different. Most CAV’s with six armor are at least speed eight and while only an inch further, start to outdistance their speed seven brethren. They also have to be careful to not get blown up with relative ease. Finally, the Special Abilities and Attributes can really help a unit shine (or further reinforce it’s roll.) The Starhawk VI has several which will factor into it’s use. An Advanced Targeting Computer One and Wizzo (weapons officer) will grant you bonuses to your attack roll, while Ammo Bin One will save you once if you happen have a horrible roll and run out of ammo. Rugged allows you to always have a critical success, granting you two damage track repairs if you use your damage control systems which is handy if you have a moment on the battlefield to repair yourself. Finally, Assault Two helps to direct the Starhawk VI into it’s roll of attacker. The Hard SA directs your opponent as to which damage value to apply to your unit. Weapons Two Medium MRAC’s and two Medium Guided Missiles give the StarhawkVI very respectable range and damage potential. The MRAC is your standard direct fire, mess up someone else’s armor weapon. Point it at the enemy and pull the trigger. Simple as that. You must have a target lock or someone using TAG for you to fire your Guided Missiles, so keep that in mind when you are choosing your actions! We’ll cover the usage element next though and give some tips on combinations that help the StarhawkVI shine! Using The Thing You noticed I didn’t tell you what Assault Two did right? Good! One of the StarhawkVI’s best attributes is being able to Run ‘N Gun with less penalties. See, when you Run ‘N Gun, you subtract two from your movement value and then double it (so ten for those of you doing the math at home.) Then you fire your weapons. For each weapon you fire, you receive a negative modifier to the roll. So if you fired all four weapons, you’d be looking at a negative four to each roll. Every level of the Assault SA takes away that penalty, so you could Run ‘N Gun the StarhawkVI with a negative two instead of a four, or only fire two of your weapons for no negatives at all while benefiting from the three extra inchs of speed. This can help you dictate range or maneuver for later in the game. But what if you look up and you don’t need the extra movement but want to dump all of your weapons into the enemy? You have a few options. You can target lock and fire, using both of your actions to insure you get the guided missiles into the action. This is the most basic move you can make and it keeps you stationary. Use it when you need to or if you are standing in cover. I prefer to run a unit that uses the EST SA (which allows that unit to share target locks to it’s section) which essentially gives you a free target lock. You can then move and fire all of your weapons. Alternatively, a unit with TAG could paint your target and then all of the friendly guided missiles on the board could fire at it without a target lock while moving, but now you are missing out on your Advanced Targeting Computer bonus. In my mind CAV is about stacking as many bonuses as possible to insure you hit and insure you hit hard. Force Composition The Terrans use a force structure of five, so five CAV’s or vehicles make up a section. This can be difficult to use inside the current standard is 5000 Threat Value, but it’s doable. I like to take two Starhawk VI’s as the base of the list. From there, sprinkle to flavor. I’m a fan of EST and Active Phased Array, so a more points heavy list might include the following: Starhawk VI 590 (heavy firepower) Starhawk VI 590 (heavy firepower) Archer 683 (Active Phased Array 2 = +2 to all shots at enemy models within 30 inches, heavy short range firepower) Falcon 457 (cheap cavalry heavy with good firepower) Talon 274 (EST shares target locks with the rest of unit and also has ECM) This list gives you everything for 2594 threat value. That only leaves you with 2406 for the rest of your force, but you have choices. The other option would be to drop the Archer for another Falcon and field a tight, compact force for 2368 and have over half your points to play with for the other section of five! If you wanted to save even more points, grab one of the OPEN units like the Firedrake (231) or Dart (123) and sub out one of the Falcons. Using the Dart, your first section totals in at 2034. Then for a second section, you could build a “make it shady” fire-support section: Starhawk VI 590 (heavy firepower) Starhawk VI 590 (heavy firepower) Falcon 457 (cheap cavalry heavy with good firepower) Dart 123 (cheap throw away unit to get the Terran model of five into the section but also has some anti-infantry ability!) Talon 274 (EST shares target locks with the rest of unit and also has ECM) Raijin 854 (four batteries of heavy rocket launchers) Raijin 854 (four batteries of heavy rocket launchers) Regent 550 (medium weight fire support) Raptor 347 (light fire support and back up EST) Talon 274 (EST shares target locks with the rest of unit and also has ECM) What have your experiences been with or against the Starhawk VI? What did I get right? What did I miss? What would you like to see covered that maybe I didn't? Questions? Hopefully that gives you something to think about for one of the Terran’s best combat units! I hope this has been informative! Check back next time as we take a look at another unit in the CAV universe!

Mike does a good job of supporting Reaper there (and Ron lets him of course! :) )

Generally, yes. Occasionally, depending on the design, I'll leave off the arms or shoulder weapon launchers so i can get to the torsos (Dictator is an example) and attach after painting.