r/battletech • u/ValionMalisce • May 16 '26
Meme Me: Existing
My brain at 4am: You will CERTAINLY not REGRET fielding TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY LOCUSTS.
Edit: Well. This blew up way more than I expected. Thank you? Im glad my 4am adhd nonsense brought a smile to so many people.
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u/Paingod556 May 16 '26
but have you considered
FIVE
HUNDRED
SAVANNAH MASTERS
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u/benkaes1234 May 16 '26
What's the hardest part of fielding 500 Savannah Masters in a 2000 point list?
Figuring out how to spend the other 1900 points.
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u/SlaaneshActual Matron of the Magestrix's Children Merc Co. May 16 '26
OFF
MAP
ARTILLERY
Let's see how your savannah masters do against my locusts in a sea of craters.
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u/ChartMuted May 16 '26
I have vague recollections of 1 ton helicopters in one of the earlier editions. Utterly unarmed, but could ram after moving over a hundred hexes...
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u/MyStackIsPancakes Grasshopper for Hire May 16 '26
It's like inventing a ballistic missile from first principles.
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u/ThisMachineKillsWOB May 16 '26
Heh heh heh.
My friend, have you discovered the Skimmer Cruise Missile in Alpha Strike yet?
Kills light mechs 3 times its cost with one charge attack.
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u/Megatrons2nd May 16 '26
Isn't that just a Savannah Master? I mean, that's how I use them.
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u/ThisMachineKillsWOB May 16 '26
No, Skimmers are cheaper. You can get a skill 2 skimmer for about 9 points and turn some poor guys 25 point Dasher into roadkill on a roll of 6.
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u/Captain_Thane May 16 '26
Many, many years ago my friends entered a 3025 tournament that had a tonnage cap and carried over the damage from game to game. The tonnage cap was the only rule to list building. They took 24 Jenners and a single sparrowhawk aerospace fighter. They dominated the tournament and made the organizers rethink their rules.
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u/AHistoricalFigure May 17 '26
Tonnage caps work reasonably well if you also enforce other dropship constraints like # of mechbays.
It's also usually helpful to bound events with a few simple sanity checks like "max 5 infantry teams" or "max 10 units" just to prevent games from having 2 hour turns.
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u/Captain_Thane May 17 '26
My friends exploited the lack of these rules, it was hilarious to see, but only because I wasn’t part of the tournament. I could totally understand why everyone else was mad. 20 years later I wouldn’t even conceive of being that guy now.
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u/AHistoricalFigure May 17 '26
It sounds like the issue was an incompetent TO. If somebody shows up to your event with an obvious troll list intended to create a negative play experience, just tell them they can't run it.
You are under no obligation as an event organizer for a niche wargame to rigidly honor your event to RAW standards if someone is being a bad faith troll.
Ive run a lot of wargaming events. I would give a player who showed up with 24 Jenners ten minutes to draft a new list, and if they didnt cooperate I'd exclude them from the event.
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u/UnsanctionedPartList 3000 Black Stukas of Hanse Davion. May 16 '26
Found Mercer Ravannion's Reddit account.
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u/SlaaneshActual Matron of the Magestrix's Children Merc Co. May 16 '26
Mercer Ravannion couldn't pull it off because you need women for this particular job.
Preferably trans women.
Like, most of the shit people write about trans women is bullshit but it's undeniably true that we do have a biological advantage at mech piloting.
What I'm saying is give me some washed up mercs, let me forcefem them and put them in locusts, ravens, and jenners, and I promise you this time it will go differently.
And yes, I know that my plans are a gross violation of the persons and dignity of those pilots and a crime against humanity but it will work.
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u/UnsanctionedPartList 3000 Black Stukas of Hanse Davion. May 16 '26
Forcing this seems somewhat morally objectional but that's a drop in the succession wars bucket so... approved. Go for it.
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u/SlaaneshActual Matron of the Magestrix's Children Merc Co. May 16 '26
Forcing this seems somewhat morally objectional
On the one hand pilots don't know what's good for them and shouldn't be trusted to make major life decisions. They're pretty good at major death decisions though.
But also, yes, it's extremely immoral.
That's what makes it hot.10
u/UnsanctionedPartList 3000 Black Stukas of Hanse Davion. May 16 '26
So is nuclear carpetbombing.
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u/SlaaneshActual Matron of the Magestrix's Children Merc Co. May 16 '26
I mean nuclear carpetbombing is a lot like forcefem when you think about it considering both make everything hotter.
So really, the WoB was just doing it wrong, but if you let me forcefem the Manei Dominei, I-
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u/Vote_for_Knife_Party Clan Cocaine Bear May 16 '26
What you're suggesting is both grossly immoral and highly unethical... but at the same time, the entire existence of the MD is immoral and unethical, and it probably wouldn't be too hard to slip a few more procedures into the laundry list work order the WoB surgeons get handed every day.
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u/SlaaneshActual Matron of the Magestrix's Children Merc Co. May 16 '26
This is the first time in my fuckin life I've ever considered supporting the WoB.
Damnit, I'm gonna have to build some of them and paint them, just so someone has WoBlies to fight. It's like, an obligation now.
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u/Gorbashsan Quad Jockey May 17 '26
Cmon. I'm certain those pilots have had their basic human rights violated in FAR more more objectionable ways than a little behavioral alteration and skimpy clothing. Even full surgical alteration is probably preferable to being welded into an urbie with a box of rations and a 5 gallon bucket and told they can come out for a shower in a week if they survive on this outer rim shit hole to the end of the contract without having their cockpit hollowed out.
Plus, the rainbow knee socks with kitty faces on the knees add a splash of color and whimsyvto the cockpit with the added bonus of helping to wick and evaporate sweat ehere your calves rest against the seat front and get a heat rash!
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u/_Thorshammer_ WHM-6D > your mech May 16 '26
I am interested, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
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u/SlaaneshActual Matron of the Magestrix's Children Merc Co. May 16 '26
Full details will be provided in the Emma Centrella Memorial University's Journal of Magistracy Studies.
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u/Diam0ndTalbot May 16 '26
No you put trans women in something like a highlander, wraith, or if doing charge of the horde tactics, a spider or something. The ability to double jump is huge for mobile attacks.
While forcefem may seem more useful in an industrial capacity, the relatively low amount of mechwarriors compared to conventional vehicle crews means the improved quality of ‘home-grown’ girls is also worth it. Studies into putting them in a weird psychosexual situation as a means of improving morale and discipline aren’t exactly passing the ethics board anyways, so you can try that as long as you have a control group and take notes.
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u/SlaaneshActual Matron of the Magestrix's Children Merc Co. May 16 '26
The ability to double jump is huge for mobile attacks.
You're so right.
Firestarters. The estrogen of mechs (they make stuff hotter.)
Studies into putting them in a weird psychosexual situation as a means of improving morale and discipline aren’t exactly passing the ethics board anyways
That's nothing that some pleasure circus work involving bribes and blackmail can't fix.
so you can try that as long as you have a control group and take notes.
I always take notes, that's how blackmail works, but you are getting the core concept of me controlling a group of "home-grown" women...
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u/superearthjanitor0 May 16 '26
Maybe I'm missing something obvious but why are trans women better mech pilots?
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u/SlaaneshActual Matron of the Magestrix's Children Merc Co. May 17 '26
TL;DR: We're not, it's a meme. A lot of us like mech games and this has given us a reputation among some folks.
Long version:
People keep accusing us of having an inherent "biological advantage" at certain tasks, which... that doesn't happen on the group level.
Example: take every red car in the world. Compare them to every blue car in the world.
There's nothing about being red or blue that makes any given car inherently better than one of another color. You'll have sports cars, utility vehicles, economy cars.
It is the individual capability of an individual car that gives it an inherent advantage.
An individual will have an inherent biological advantage. Michael Phelps has this weird spine thing that lets him flex in the water like a dolphin. Usain Bolt has just... absurdly long legs, and a very light, thin body.
Some individual trans women just like some individual humans in any other category might have a biological advantage at some things, but there's nothing universal enough about us to give us, as a group, an inherent biological advantage at... anything. They've studied this and it's bunk.
But people keep talking about us in general having a "biological advantage" at certain things, so I like to joke that we have a biological advantage at mech piloting.
It's a lie.
We don't.
The very idea is stupid.
But that's what makes it funny to joke about. But there is also a kernel of truth to the idea.
Part of why it became a meme is that there is some truth that trans girls tend to be really good at mech piloting. But that's because there are a ton of us who like MechWarrior and Armored Core games and have been playing them since MechWarrior 2 in 1995, in my case. And that does make me an experienced pilot for mech games.
But I still regularly get my ass handed to me in 1v1s in MWO by people half my age of every possible gender, because age and experience give me plenty of skill, but I have no inherent advantage. Sometimes it's a better mech or better positioning that give a less experienced pilot an advantage that my skill can't overcome, and sometimes the person has been practicing, knows what they're doing, and just out-pilots me.
And sometimes I'm piloting a mech with a trans pride color scheme and the other team just wants me off the field because that's inherently intimidating to people who've observed it.
I ended up dropping against someone on my friends list, and no joke, someone came on voice and said "Trans girl in the bull shark with the pride flag, I've dropped against her, priority target, if we don't kill her fast she'll kill half our team." My friend egged them on, because he knows I'm dangerous.
I got swarmed with their light lance and pretty immediately missiled to death. And they weren't exactly wrong. That BSK had multiple HAG-40s, and a pretty absurd alpha strike. I did kill two of their lights before succumbing to their entire team's united missile barrages.
But I've been playing MWO since launch, I've been playing mechwarrior games for longer than a goodly chunk of the playerbase has been alive, and so yeah. It's probably smart to take me off the board if you can.
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u/superearthjanitor0 May 17 '26
An entire merc company consisting of Trans Women actually sounds pretty fuckin cool ngl
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u/SlaaneshActual Matron of the Magestrix's Children Merc Co. May 17 '26
I'm trying to put that together in MWO actually, lmao
Or maybe we'll run a tabletop campaign.
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u/superearthjanitor0 May 17 '26
The space port crews will be scratching their heads as to why that drop ship is loading up on industrial amounts of estrogen during resupply.
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u/SlaaneshActual Matron of the Magestrix's Children Merc Co. May 17 '26
LMAO I can see the loadmaster just being like... "Estrogen, Progesterone... wait why does personal lubricant come in 55 gallon drums?"
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u/Messedupotato May 17 '26
Is there a lore precedent for this?
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u/SlaaneshActual Matron of the Magestrix's Children Merc Co. May 17 '26
Not yet!
They won't let me set one!
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u/SerBadDadBod MechWarrior (editable) May 16 '26
Till you come up on a company of Davions in old Blackjacks who enjoy themselves a fine turkey shoot.
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u/Available-Crow-3442 Dominatrixy of Canopus May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
Playing Battletech?
Your opponent needed a regiment, but was too tired to think and took 250 Locusts, and you also have a budget of 108,000BV2?
Try
110 Charger 1A1s
-No other Mechs
-No vehicles
-Just Chargers
You certainly will not regret fielding
ONE HUNDRED AND TEN CHARGER 1A1s
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u/ValionMalisce May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
This is the best post on the Chatterweb today. Ive got some salvaged lostech here in the back of my dropship.. if youll just follow me out back we'll get you sorted
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u/Available-Crow-3442 Dominatrixy of Canopus May 16 '26
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u/ValionMalisce May 17 '26
Of course I have more than one dropship. I was merely referring to my PERSONAL dropship you see
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May 16 '26
[deleted]
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u/Spartan448 May 16 '26
The Nile to Blood
Like... five Blood Asps maybe?
The Invasion of Frogs
249 Elementals and a single unarmed Firemoth to carry them closer
Gnats From the Dust
250 Fleas and we play on a desert map
Teems of Flies or Wild Animals
Uhh... only Wolverines and Bug Mechs and they're all in a C3 network?
The Pestilence of Livestock
500 CattleMasters
The Infection of Boils
Flamers, Infernos, and Plasma Cannons, which is gonna be some weird fucked-up mixtech board that isn't actually scary because of the external heat cap
The Storm of Hail
As many LRM tubes as we can physically fit on the board
Three Days of Darkness
A shitload of Ebon Jaguars and as many smoke rounds as we can carry
Death of the Firstborn
Operation KLONDIKE scenario maybe?
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u/Ananasch May 16 '26
what would be optimal loadout to force surrender from just too many dice rolls?
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u/Inorganic_Zombie May 16 '26
There is no too much dice rolls. No battlemech but my record otherwhere is 102d6 in one go when grouped everything for time management sake. ( also only having 100 6-sides so needed to borrow, my greatest defeat not to have enough dice after boasting)
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u/Ananasch May 16 '26
Mixing streaks, lbx and lrms at least would force looking up multiple tables each round and just having too many different movement speed units with differing pilot skills would bog down quite a few matches to unsolvable lengths during the weekend.
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u/Inorganic_Zombie May 16 '26
There is always next weekend. My local gaming center keep records on system, and table is on cameras, so resetup is fast and on logs it is easy to continue. Hardest part is to book the table as also warhammer people are active here as well.
I am semi active on both groups but some reason there is feud that peace is not option between groups. May Kerensky's ghost laugh at us while toasting with God Emperor
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u/Gorbashsan Quad Jockey May 17 '26
I have a mason jar with 226 d6 in it, it is labeled "Orbital shipyard industrial plasma cutter. Salvage mech mounted"
I had to roll them in a plastic storage tub.
I was allowed to roll it two times and was thereafter banned from doing so again.
5 internet points to the first turbo nerd to guess which system I was playing when I pestered a DM into calculating the damage for that tool based on how fast it could cut through warship armor plati g with a known total points for penetration!
It was hilarious spending literally months of in game time getting my character hired by a shipyard, establishing trust, and doing a little bribery and strategic poisoning of some lunchroom food to guarantee I was the only qualified pilot for that mech on duty when the target was going to be docked for a major refit, then getting to just go to town on their internals for a solid dozen rounds before anyone realized something was wrong.
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u/_Thorshammer_ WHM-6D > your mech May 16 '26
Has anybody actually tried something like this in mega-mek?
Does it work?
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u/ThisMachineKillsWOB May 16 '26
So, what actually happens when you do this is mechs get pinned into a hex by having 6 enemies adjacent. So their TMM goes to 0 and they get shot up. If the surrounding enemies are mechs, they also need to pass 6 PSRs for having the shit kicked out of their ankles.
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u/Past_Search7241 May 17 '26
Wait, how are you getting pinned without the rest of your swarm shifting to pick off one of the enemy mechs until there's not enough of them to do that anymore?
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u/Kilahti May 16 '26
Nothing says "a friendly game" like unleashing a plague of Locust onto your enemies.
And if they complain, you can instead unleash a plague of toads (Battle Armour) against them in the next game.
I still need to workshop a bit to figure out how to represent the other plagues though...
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u/NeedsMoreDakkath Mercenary May 16 '26
Fire Raining From The Sky would be a whole bunch of offmap artillery with fuel-air ammo
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u/Arcalargo May 16 '26
I had MegaMek build an enemy army that had 144 random Locusts. I might have to try 250 next
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u/dmdizzy May 16 '26
If for some reason you find yourself caring about transport space, it's worth remembering that Locusts can fit 2 to a bay. So, y'know. 500 Locusts.
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u/IngenuityIll5001 May 16 '26
That sounds like the "Charge of the Horde" that made the Blackjack Famous.
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u/Malkryst May 17 '26
Yesterday I felt like maybe owning 4 Locusts was overkill. Today I feel like I need more Locusts.
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u/crankypoed May 17 '26
all i hear is flight of the Valkyries as 250 Locusts crests a hill at full throttle.
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u/Hamstah_Fwend May 25 '26
This force is 67,750 BV of Locst-1M's, or 1,750 PV of LCT-1P's, all at Skill 8.
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u/AwesomeX121189 May 16 '26
When you have more locusts then they have Ac-10 ammo. Victory is in the bag
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u/General-Winter547 May 16 '26
My second game ever was me with two atlai and my dad with 10 locusts. He won, but I killed like 7 of them. He killed an atlas in turn 2 by shooting it in the back, but my other atlas killed at least one locust a turn for several turns in a row.
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u/AKoolPopTart May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
Me: this, but urban mechs with minimal armor, speed boosters, and deadman switches that ignite the reactor. Send them all on a charge and if they all explode, well so be it
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u/Silvertip_M May 16 '26
That would be both an incredibly effective strategy and quite tedious. Imagine how long it would be to handle that many units per turn?
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u/datCASgoBRR May 16 '26
Would you like a job in SLDF procurement?
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u/ValionMalisce May 17 '26
Ooh Yeah! I could finally make use of the personal stash of 742 AIV longbows I have being dragged behind my leapord like a barrel of monkeys
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u/Batgirl_III May 16 '26
Given that Locusts all have the Compact ‘Mech Quirk, if your regiment has transport capacity for 250 ‘Mechs, you could actually transport 500 Locusts.
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u/st0rmgam3r May 17 '26
Mw5 mercs with the coyotes mission mod will occasionally throw a swarm of around a dozen locust at you and it can be a problem for certain mechs to deal with, if your mech can't destroy or cripple a locust in a single salvo then you're not going to have a fun time, I can't imagine 250 of them
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u/Gorbashsan Quad Jockey May 17 '26
Uhg. It's gonna take a week to finish the game. Fuck it, I'll just bring 60 defiance fighter in config A and strafe the field with er ppcs till the horde goes down. If I stay at long range the only ones that can touch back are the lrm boys, so focus them first and mop up from there.
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u/BearToTheThrone May 17 '26
I think the Locust is one of the coolest looking mechs, AT-ST vibes. I wish the Gun would come to the Mechwarrior games as it looks like a beefy Locust to me.
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u/Distinct_Ask3614 May 17 '26
They laugh until they get hit with 250 medium lasers in the rear armor
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u/SirArthurIV well bargained and done May 17 '26
I'm done with Locusts My new friends are Fire Moth P with ablative armor mounted elementals.
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u/Mindless-Pop-1173 May 17 '26
Using the interior of the leopard from MW5 I once estimated that you could cram 16 locusts with just standing room with a specialized framework this could easily be double that
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May 18 '26
i come from a warhammer 40k background, with 40k there's free list building websites you can use to figure out how many points and whatnot your army will cost, is there anything like that for battletech?
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u/arcane37 May 20 '26
Kit them right and you have yourself a mech kneecap 3k obliterator that can't be hit.
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u/Due_Sky_2436 May 20 '26
Oh yeah... I love Locusts... and with the right variants and using speed to choose your battlefields, it is not terrible at all.
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u/mattlore The only "Great" house, is the one who pays it's bills May 22 '26
Drop two of those and you have....
500 LOCUSTS
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u/Chromatic36 Jun 12 '26
All Locusts are fine. Now either split or double that amount and split with having Locusts AND Fleas! Mech bug cousins of ANNOYANCE! Locusts are overall faster more known. The Flea are a bit slower but higher hardpoints and overall more firepower. Both chassi have bad, excellent and mediocre variants though.
- Flea enthusiast! of 2004. TRIED to Solo MW4 Mercs with a Flea and 1 x Continious laser. Challenge is an understatement!
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u/ValionMalisce Jun 12 '26
Have you tried again in MW5? Theres some Vicious fleas and locusts you can make there.
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u/HazelAzureus Crab Rave Jun 16 '26
do you think they'll notice if i sneak a king crab in with them if it's on a smaller base and painted very carefully
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u/Vehement_Vulpes Snowy Birbs are best Clan May 16 '26
Honestly not awful, if you use the full variety of Locusts. Get the 1E variant for it's all energy loadout as the main hitter, and then add the classic 1V for machine gunning infantry, the 1S for SRM striking, and the 1M for LRM support.
Have them hunt in packs and support each other, and you have a super quick cavalry force that you can cram into a cargo dropship like sardines. The meme can work!