#Catalyst Game Labs

[tinygiantplasticmonsters]

Catalyst game labs pvc battlemechs, painted up by me in 1st Kestrel Grenadier colors. Devastator and Pillager from the mercs KS, and then the newer Banshee and Sagittaire. Not happy with the black, or the flames, but for table quality, good enough.

[joriboltonpainting]

Finally picked up my copy!

Pretty cool to see my art on the cover of a sourcebook. My cover art for Shadowrun: The Needle’s Eye.

[wuffhammer]

Recent Battletech minis.

I'd be lying if I said I remember all the names of them.

Largely going for this simple camo pattern, because the thought of trying to hide your gargantuan death bot with forest camo is kinda ridiculous.

[gwillwrites]

Another batch of battletech done. This time some mechs from a home brew merc unit I’ve dubbed “Becky’s Barracudas”, led by the tenacious Becky Ebco. Bonus points if you can guess the scheme inspiration before reaching the last photo.

[kasperl-ruprecht]

So pictures are getting out of new plastic Map Scale Dropships, apparently they are coming out with the Mercenary Kickstarter.

Here's the Union...

And the Overlord...

[the-rageaholic]

They came for D&D and I said nothing, for I was not an elf.

They came for Warhammer, and I said nothing, for I was not a space marine.

But they made one mistake: They attacked MY HOME PLANET!

[gort-grundlekin]

New year new game 🥴

Heres a blackjack im in the process of converting to a dark crow

[skullchicken]

Stolen Childhood 2022

Ork-children are forced to grow up fast in the Sixth World...

I won the shadowrun art competition 2022 with this picture in the category "Best Storytelling" (and I am still screaming internally)!

My thoughts on the subject and composition under the cut:

At first glance the picture tracks with the image of an aggressive orc, bloodied and raised bat in hand. But the longer you look, the more it falls apart: she is not the aggressor, she is much younger than she might seem and she's also really, really scared. The background wall shows posters of a lowest-common-denominator-show called "Trogs'n'Hogs", which lives off of the "strong, dumb and violent" orc and troll archetype. So the girl isn't just physically backed into a corner by the advancing humanis policlub members, she's also backed into a corner societally by those who wouldn't look beneath the first impression.

[shadowron]

The Dwarven Decker, a better Dwarf Archetype for Shadowrun (1st Edition)

Wiz art by @skullchicken

In case you haven’t heard, the current managers of the Shadowrun IP, Catalyst Game Labs, announced that they will be reprinting 1st Edition Shadowrun.

Told ya, chummer.

My feelings on this are surprisingly neutral – I already own a couple of hardcopies and so I don’t feel the need to buy it a third time. I’m mostly curious to see what kind of editing they do; after all, even the 1st edition book went through several printings. In addition to some lingering purely typographical errors...

Which made it into my print copy of 2nd edition.

...to editing errors...

The undescribed and elusive Program Enabler was subsequently copied and pasted in the Street Samurai Catalog.

These make sense to fix – they don’t substantively change the game at all. Some did – for instance the underpriced power focus that led to an Instant Death Spell loophole. This was fixed in the 1st edition magic sourcebook The Grimoire.

But then there were a myriad of things that saw changes from 1st to 2nd edition, some of the major ones being:

Damage codes moving to a standard staging of 2

Updated automatic fire rules (which came before 2nd Edition, in the Rigger Black Book)

Addition of Physical Adepts to the core magic rules

But the one I’m going to exploit in this build today is: in 1st edition, there was no cap on the amount of active or storage memory that an off-the-shelf cyberdeck could carry.

Admittedly, this doesn’t sound as exciting as smearing some Aztechnology corpcop across the side of their Pyramid with a Force 21 Mana Dart, but it does greatly increase the ability and versatility of a decker, and maybe shortening some of those Matrix runs which traditionally take as long as a papal election.

So sayeth Pope Elihu I

In the description of how a cyberdeck’s active memory (here called onboard memory, in perhaps another editing flub), there is the sentence:

In real life, there is a limit to how much RAM you can have for a particular computer build. This, like power foci and autofire, was fixed before 2nd Edition was published, as Virtual Realities set a maximum Active Memory of 50 Mp per point of MPCP, but for our purposes here…

What this means is that: our Dwarven Decker here will be able to buy a copy of every possible utility program (there are 13 of them) at Rating 6 and run them simultaneously without having to worry about swapping between Storage and Active Memory. Essentially rendering the Load property of the deck useless.

Attributes:

Body: 4 Quickness: 5 Strength: 3 Charisma: 2 Intelligence: 5 Willpower: 4 Essence: 5.3 Reaction: 5

Skills:

Computer: 6 Computer (B/R): 3 Computer Theory: 6 Etiquette (Street): 3 Firearms: 2

Cyberware:

Datajack Headware Telephone

Gear:

Armor Jacket Fuchi-Cyber 4 (Response Increase 2, Active Memory 550 Mp, Storage Memory 1000 Mp) Programs (All at Rating 6): Bod, Evasion, Masking, Sensors, Analyze, Attack, Browse, Deception, Decrypt, Evaluate, Medic, Mirrors, Relocate, Shield, Sleaze, Slow, Smoke Walther Palm Pistol (Concealable Holster, 20 rounds normal ammo)

Contacts:

Dwarf Technician Elven Decker Fixer Gang Boss

[inquisitorpsyduck]

Mykaelya Stakepoole grew up reading both Harlequin romances and BattleTech novels. When she saw the breathtaking portrait of Ilkhan Alaric Ward, she knew she had to blend both genres into a scintillating fusion of a story that demanded to be told.

[voidwerks]

Haven't posted any minis in a bit, so here's an assortment of Clan Snow Raven's Hawkshead Galaxy mechs! I originally started them both to try a scheme that was wildly different than my others, and to give a home to any stray Clan mechs I had that weren't going to the Falcons. With some proper layering, painting the white armor didn't give me nearly as much trouble as I was expecting. So while these are nearing completion, it also means that the remaining reinforcements shouldn't take too long to add to the roster!

[wujczak]

Succession Wars era Federated Suns mechs

Set of three Archers

Urbanmech

[gwillwrites]

Lyran Guard heavy recon lance and some Savannah Masters for catalystgamelabs battletech

[kasperl-ruprecht]

So this past Monday, 3/25/2024, we had some guests over at Noble Knight, Randall Bills and Loren Coleman from Catalyst Game Labs. The following are the better pictures I took while I was there.

So at 1pm me and one of the guys got there to prep up the battlefield for a simple in and out battle set in the new Draconis Combine and Ghost Bear war. The terrain and dropship are 3D prints using filament from a Prusa XL. The Union dropship printed here is always disconcerting light, you pick up what you think is a bowling ball and find it is a beachball.

At about 3pm Loren and Randall arrived and the festivities began. I was on the Raselhague Dominion side running a Stormcrow Bravo.

There were some gimmes handed out. One was an Operation Reunification 40th Anniversary patch you could get for shaking Randall's hand. The other was donated from somewhere out around the deep periphery; those went quickly. Even handed mine away to make sure they got spread as far as they could.

I would have to leave a bit early, since I start work at 5am CST, so I tried advancing the Stormcrow down field as quick as possible.

One of the guys pointed out that a Catapult had somewhat foolishly perched atop a building. So three of us decided to introduce him to the ground vis-a-vis some impromptu aggressive urban planning.

The guys from CGL also brought some samples of the new products coming out with the Mercenaries Kickstarter and beyond.

There is a Stormcrow Bravo depicted in the Battletech Universe book. This makes me happy.

To wrap things up, I took a picture or Loren and Randall with one of my Stormcrows.

Good FUCKING times were had.

[sharkey-b]

battletech kitbash, actually entered into a sort of contest

[chimeracreations-art]

put out a new video on all the cool and interesting stuff that just drop from the backerkit announcement and the launch date for the next source book for BattleTech, Dominions Divided.