r/battletech • u/StatsPilot • 9h ago

Tabletop Classic Tabletop Long Range lobber preference

My group is playing an Amaris War era campaign. The good guys are naturally the SLDF.

For the next game, it's recommended to either bring speed or range. My question is: what would the advantage be to bringing an Archer over a Catapault? The archer has LRM 20s to the Catapaults LRM 15s, but not even enough heat sinks to shoot and move. Both are the same speed, but the Catapault has jump jets.

I turn to the wisdom of the crowd if I might be missing something.

23 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

42 comments sorted by

View all comments

11

u/AGBell64 8h ago edited 8h ago

Catapult has slightly less ammo endurance and armor but the weapon layout, low ammo, and jump jets let you do a grasshopper impression once you bin out the missiles. If you can get your hands on an SLDF refit of the archer they are quite good

10

u/AGBell64 8h ago

Now, if assaults are in the table my preference is gonna be a Longbow or a Royal Stalker. The 3Fb is an absolutely solid brick of a fire support assault that basically doubles the long and short range firepower of a Catapult 

3

u/StatsPilot 8h ago

I wish! We are limited to heavies and below. We can win an Assault if we get enough XP

6

u/AGBell64 8h ago

If you're limited to heavies but you can do sldf royals then I'd go for the Archer 100%. The royal Cat is nice but 2Rb is very hard hitting, durable, and runs ice cold 

2

u/StatsPilot 8h ago

Looks like for Royals, it's medium and below.

5

u/AGBell64 8h ago

Well if you're stuck with non-royal heavies I'd suggest seeing if you can get your mits on a Kintaro. If your lance is investing in missiles without streak/artemis guidance heavily then the Narc beacons it packs let you do some very devious stuff.

1

u/StatsPilot 7h ago

Kintaro we have available, but only the 19. Im not sure if it's fast enough at 5/8. My fast choice was going to be the Phoenix Hawk PXH-2 to get the Gaurdian ECM