Patrol Squad and Redbull on the scene

My Patrol Squad and Redbull arrived at my house recently. The Patrol Squad looks to have all it's bits in place, but the Redbull unfortunately is missing a leg. I already contacted DP9 and they said they could send an a replacement, question really is how soon. With Gencon just finishing up, I expect a slight delay. That is just the nature of the beast.

The scout's aren't going to be very different than what is found on the box, as they are pretty focused in their battlefield roles, even as members of a Special Ops Squad. I'll play around with the Scouts as my AC for a while and see how I like it, but I also plan on getting another Strike Squad and retooling it a bit.

You can tell that the scouts aren't built for heavy close combat, so my general goal is to keep them buzzing along at all times and getting FO for my Mortars and other AE weapons. The leader of course being more backlines helping with various commands required. Should be an interesting change of pace to go from a charge and kill style I had before to a run and gun style I am rebuilding too.

The Redbull isn't going to be anything special, not even taking veteran bonuses. He is going to also be more or less the box cover shows for him, as the VLRPs give me even more potential rocket coverage. In the end I got him for the AE guns attached to that hulking body. I honestly don't know what to really expect from him in terms of capability, but I'm always willing to give things a shot. Looking at his stats, he's a sitting duck without a spotter and a person escort nearby to ward off any frisky flankers. Even if the Redbull decided to try and keep mobile, it moves so slowly that enemies will still be able to harass it easily. It certainly carries more firepower then the Coyote does, but the tradeoff is fairly massive. Only one way to tell if that tradeoff is worth it though, and that is to get it on the table and killing things.

I also mentioned revamping my Strike Squad. When I created the Strike Squad I had them with some fairly light equipment, and they haven't really ever earned their points back in a game. The Fire Support Squad, with the Cataphract and without, always seemed to do well enough with their firepower, but the Strike Squad seemed weirdly placed as they aren't that good at 'striking'. To me when I think STRIKE I think melee, and that is just wrong. I knew it was wrong when I built my list the first time, but years of programming from other games still had me build the Strike Squad to be lightly geared for rushing forward and assaulting the enemy. My next build will have two of the Strike Squad member lugging around some heavier weapons, and possibly make the Chieftain IV the AC due to his pretty amazing balance of movement speed, modifiers, and EW skills.

Of course this means I am getting even more minis for my PRDF, but I can't say that I don't enjoy the fact I am still coming up with variation after variation of my army after this much time. Eventually I might have triplicates of each minis (although I am sure my wife might have killed me around that point).

On a side note, I got the Heavy Gear Arena rules, and while the game looks interesting to me, the more I read about it, the more I become less interested in it. For some reason to me the scale of Heavy Gear is  lost when it is just humanoid looking robot beating up another humanoid looking robot. I might make up an Arena team at some point, but for now my PRDF is keeping me plenty busy with upgrades and builds.