There are two things on needs to know about Clan Jade Falcon. The first is that they are a Clan force, and the second that they are called the Jade Falcons. Please excuse the Black Adder referential joke, but that pretty much sums up what I knew about the Falcons when I acquired some MechWarrior Clan mechs.
As a diehard in the wool (!?) OSR BattleTech player, the Clans have a lot of baggage for me, which is doubly ironic given that I got the chance to write and design the stats for a whole bunch of Clan mech designs on the 3055TRO. However, the rules for MechWarrior clix game focus on combined arms command & control, which means that the disparity in tech between the Clans and the Inner Sphere forces is less intrusive. That is not to say that Clan tech is less superior, as quite frankly I don't know, as I've not played enough games of MechWarrior, or spent enough time taking apart the mechanics of the game to say.
What I will say is that the Jade Falcon "totem" mechs look way cool, which is enough for me at this time.
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The Falcon's were one of the things I just didn't really care for. The mechs looked alright, but in game terms were victims of an expansion based on some sort of twisted reverse arms race...so most of them never saw use in public. I just thought the obsession with death from above seemed an odd direction to take the clan as if it was designed with that in mind... which it oddly wasn't back in the day.
ReplyDeleteOverall I wouldn't say the clan mechs were much better in the game though...once I got my highlander Zeus I used little else for a long while.
I'm still getting my head around how the game plays, let alone the intricacies of the different click dial combinations of colours and values.
ReplyDeleteNot sure I understand the "Reverse Arms Race" comment either, as all the mechs I've got so far seem to be playable as they stand, which is not to say that I haven't noticed that some are better than others.
The weird thing about the dials is that battletech is based on solid numbers. In mechwarrior the used effects and numbers to simulate behavior. So you often got identical units with entirely different stats...so the clan mechs lost a lot of edge. And by reverse arms race, just compare the Falcon's Prey mechs against mechs from any other set. They decided to try and make the game more "realistic" to the board game and made the mechs easier to hit. Bad thing to do in a game like that.
ReplyDeleteCJF was released in their own big expansion but then the Age of Destruction rules came out right after. AOD allowed the use of gear and pilots in the dials, and much of CJF w/c was released one expansion earlier cannot do so.
ReplyDeletethankfully this was corrected when they released many more CJF units in later expansions. it bruised the CJF players a lot when this happened. wounds healed, but it did sting for a couple of months...
the Jade Falcons are one of the most aggressive factions in MW. their Merciless DFA, highest average attack and speed for all factions, and prevalence of mid-dial accuracy made for swift battles. Merciless DFA allowed you to hit nearly ANY high defense unit in the game reliably. this matters because high defense as well as defensive was one of the dominant army archetypes in the game.
love your minis btw :-)