How To Build A Crucis Lancers Company

 Hey Folks, we’re back to work on Force Construction again. This is part five of the series, but we’re starting a new project for the fans this week.  Last week we finished up Doretto’s Company of the 1st Argyle Lancers, so today we’re going to start a company of the Crucis Lancers.  Now, this will have less explanation of why i make the choices made and the process, so if you get confused at the process, feel free to check back with our earlier articles (Collated here for easy reference).  Let’s see what the Crucis Lancers have for us today?

Step 1 Select BV or PV total

For this project, I'm setting a hard BV Ceiling of 15K (I’ll let you know what it shakes out into for PV when we’re done)

Step 2: Choose an Era

Early Clan Invasion (mostly for a spice of life)

Step 3: Choose a Faction

Federated Suns (We’ll look at Draconis Combine stuff in a couple weeks)

Step 4: Choose a Combat Command

This one was a tough one, because i had decided i wanted to do a Crucis Lancers command, but there’s a bunch of those. It came down to the 2nd and 4th for me, since I'd already done a Veteran command, i settled on the 2nd Crucis Lancers (The Kestrel Lancers, who i just remembered have a DLC for Mechwarrior 5 named after them).  

I’ve also put the Org card for the Kestrel Lancers here as a reminder

Step 5: Build a Company

The Kestrel Lancers are a medium weight formation, (as shown above), so I have some choices for what lances i want to run,  House Davion has a unique Autocannon formation, so I'm going to include a Rifle Lance. I’m going to add in a Striker Lance, and to round things out, a Battle Lance.  

Lance 1: Rifle Lance

The Rifle Lance in the early clan Invasion comes stock with a Victor, an Axman, a Hunchback, and an Orion.  That’s a little heavy for the unit brief i have, so i will swap in a Centurion for the Victor (Succession Wars Era), an Enforcer (Succession Wars era)  for the Axman, and a Hatchetman (Succession Wars Era) for the Orion.  (BV calculations will come in a bit).  I’m not upgrading any of the pilots, so they’re all regular skill ratings.

Lance 2: Striker Lance

Stock Striker Lance for this Era is Dervish, Ostroc, Enforcer, Griffin.  Because it makes me chuckle, i’m going to swap out this entire lance for the Succession Wars era Striker Lance.  (Though i am using the Griffin 1DS instead of the older version.

Lance 3: Battle Lance

Stock Battle Lance is Wolverine, Caesar, Centurion, and Marauder.  I’m going to swap the Cesar for a Warhammer (I have more Warhammers than Caesars) and a Dragon for the Marauder.  Otherwise, this lance runs as is.  

BV Totals

Rifle Lance 3,887

Striker Lance 4,533

Battle Lance: 5,138

Total BV 13,558 (1,422 Under my hard cap)

Assign Special Pilot Abilities

I’m going to assign Tactical genius to the Company Commander, (The Mechwarrior piloting the Centurion in the Rifle Lance).  

I need to record everyone’s special abilities on the Company Sheet, which i will have an update for on next week.  

However, we have a complete unit of 12 mechs.  The Dragon is the only rare mech in the unit, while the Hunchback is the only Uncommon.  This keeps me under my cap of how many of those units i can take.  I have four upgraded mechs (given the Lancers C rating) and everything else uses the older tech from the Late Succession Wars table.  

That’s the quick and dirty company build.  I’ll put the sheet up later this week, and let you know when that update goes live. However, that’s a 2nd company built. I picked the Crucis Lancers because i plan to showcase how the new BattleTech paint set works out (I have the smaller of the two new sets, mine is from the Kickstarter).  That’s it for us today, look forward to our unboxing of the Mercs Boxed Set for Wednesday.