ScrapYard Armory

2010 was another great year here at the ScrapYard.  I hope you have enjoyed the articles, after action reports, miniatures, terrain, and reviews this year.   Here are the favorite posts from 2010 by page views.  I excluded my GenCon posts this year due to the fact that they were far and away the most visited posts and don’t reflect the normal traffic the site sees.

1. Chaos Campaign Mechwarrior Conversion
2. Reinventing the Big Game
3. Jihad Turning Point Dieron
4. Mechwarrior 4 is Finally Free
5. Black Widow Company Recon Lance
6. Last Stand of the Davion Guards
7. Historical Turning Points Galtor
8. Historicon 2010
9. Battletroops Infantry Recon
10. War of 3039 Update

Along with great posts come great comments.  Here are the top commentators for 2010, in no particular order.  Thanks for all of your input.  Looking forward to hearing more from you and others in 2011.

• Paint it Pink – Panther 6 Actual Blog
• Quigs
• Eastwood DC – Giant Battling Robots
• Noobk
• Reinwood99 – CBT Workbench

I hope you have a great New Year.  2011 is in the chamber and ready to rock!

This miniature is my contribution to the BattleTech Universe Miniature Exchange. What’s a miniature exchange you ask? It’s a simple arrangement where a group of fans get together and paint each other miniatures. Everybody paints a mini for someone else on the list and sends it off.

Besides just good clean fun, it is an opportunity to hone painting skills and give and get critique from someone you don’t know.

Wolves in Exile

This Orion IIC is an attempt at a Wolf in Exile color scheme.  The base for the red is Dark Fleshtone.  The highlights involve increasing amounts of Gory Red and Bloody Red mixed into the Dark Fleshtone.

The Grey is a simple Cold Grey to Stonewall Grey to White palate.

A few GunMetal to Silver highlights are mixed in for good measure on the hip weapon and exposed leg joints.

The base began primed Black which got a heavy drybrush of Beasty Brown followed by lighter drybrushes of Filthy Brown and a Filthy Brown-Dead White mix.  A touch of mixed green flocking finished the miniature.

Something New

New for me on this mini is a special jewel technique.  The effect is an attempt to capture a realistic glare or reflection of the surrounding terrain in the cockpit of the ‘Mech.

To gain some confidence I practiced on a piece of empty spure.  I’m not 100% sold on the result.  I think I need some practice to make it better.  There is a first for everything.

The Green is a shade from Dark Green to Sick Green to Goblin Green to Scrufy Green.  The Blue begins at Night Blue and fades to Magic Blue then Electric Blue.  An attempted fine white line separates the two colors.

I’ll be shipping this little guy out this week to a lucky fan and await what I get in return.  I hope she makes it in one piece and the new owner enjoys it and takes good care of it.

Nobody likes ammo explosions when it’s your ‘Mechs going up in smoke.  But what can you do about it?  Besides loading up on energy weapons or upgrading to CASE there isn’t much that can be done.

But can’t you protect your ammo by carefully placing it within your ‘Mech chassis? For instance I’ve heard that by placing seven items in a side torso you get some measure of protection against critical hits.

This BattleTech myth has strong roots and even some experienced players fall prey to this misguided logic.

Why Doesn’t This Make Sense?

In order to dis-spell this troublesome myth, you have to first follow the letter of the rules when it comes to critical hits.  For each critical hit, you roll two dice, one for the section (upper or lower) and another for the slot.  Whenever you roll an empty slot you must re-roll BOTH dice.  The process starts from scratch.

But if there are six filled slots in the upper section and only one slot of ammo in the lower, a section roll of 1-3 is guaranteed to hit something other than your ammo.  A section roll of 4-6 by contrast has a 5 in 6 chance of requiring a re-roll.

Is your ammo protected?  Yes and no.  The only thing protecting that slot of ammunition is the fact that there are six other things to hit.

By following the rules as they were intended you guarantee that each slot has a 1 in 7 chance of being hit.  To believe otherwise is a classic case of outcome bias.

Show Me!

I wanted to demonstrate this phenomenon to convince even the most skeptical that ammo protection is a busted myth.  I whipped up a small Java application that simulated critical hit rolls where seven items in a torso or arm are available targets.  The program simulates the exact dice rolling protocol as described in Total Warfare.  The ammunition is placed in the last slot and gratuitous virtual dice rolling ensues.  Here are my results.

The numbers speak for themselves.  Using a very large sample, it is obvious that there is no favoritism in the way critical hits are determined.  Every slot every time has an equal chance of being hit as any other.

In fact the only way to protect ammo is to load the section up with heatsinks or other crit soaking equipment.  More targets to hit means a lower probability that the ammo (and thus your ‘Mech) will be the one going up in smoke.