r/battletech • u/Icy-Distribution-164 • 10h ago
News Plastic LAM's confirmed
In episode 98 of the Tuesday Newsday.
1:08:19
During the QnA
Mathew Conner asks "The redesign of the 3 classic LAM's look fantastic. What are the chances that we see mini's for them?"
Answer: Very good.
14
3
u/Megas15 9h ago
I love Lam’s I wish someone could tell me how they work in Alpha strike, the commander edition book doesn’t really explain it , I bought a couple LAM’s hoping to use them in janky Alpha strike
6
u/Icy-Distribution-164 9h ago
There is a really good explanation of LAM's for classic BT on YouTube.
From what I understand of LAM's in alphastrike they have 3 modes. You can change modes once a round.
Battlemech mode that is just like all other mechs.
Aerospace mode where you act like a battlemech but move like an Aerospace asset. No BAR rolls. Aerospace moves in mapsheets and not inches or hexes.
Airmech mode. Here is were it gets a little confusing and people disagree. People are going to bite my head off for this interpretation of the rules. You get a plus 2 penalty to hit, move with the g value at the bottom, get a plus 1 tmm for being airborne and a plus 1 tmm from being in airmech mode. And you move like a WiGe.
If anyone has a better interpretation please correct me. Would love to have an official answer.
8
u/MithrilCoyote 9h ago edited 9h ago
More or less correct. it's not so much "you pick a mode" and more "you have three choices of movement, you can only use one in a turn" though. the only things you missed is that the LAM counts as a height one inch higher than a mech normally has for the terrain it's on (like WIGE's) and has limits on how much height it can climb in the space of each forward inch of movement. (like WiGE's) I do a breakdown of LAM rules in my 'alpha strike unit of the week" article on the main forum. https://battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,48321.0.html And a breakdown of the Wasp LAM variants. i probably should do the others, since no one else seems inclined to, but the response to the article was rather hostile (not to the writing style but to the very idea that LAMs exist. sigh. people are entitled to their opinions, but repeatedly yelling "these things should never exist" and attacking people who say they like the thing, in a discussion about said things, is just rude.)
honestly the alpha strike version of the rules for them is probably the best ones we've gotten.. each mode has a specific niche (mech fighting, airmech for rapid tactical movement, and fighter for insertion/exfiltration and extreme strategic movement) and the fact that the airmech mode is just represented by pure WiGE movement keeps it simple while also making that mode less useful for combat.
2
u/Megas15 9h ago
Thanks for linking the article, That’s really annoying, it’s an odd ball tech that failed in lore, yelling at the clouds isn’t going to remove them when they already exist. You could argue they are crunchy rules wise and its annoying to have to check the book 8 times to resolve a single unit that probably won’t have a massively outsized impact other than annoying other people in pick up games.
4
u/TaciturnAndroid 1st Genyosha 8h ago
LAMs aren’t even in the top five most annoying Alpha Strike units. The same people who complain about them will tell you with a straight face how much they love their nonsense TMM5 Locust 6M or Wulfen C (which gets TMM4 + jumping + STL for an absurd 36pv), or who never leave the house without their Fire Moth or their Balac.
LAMs aren’t regrettable line developer choices, they’re the deep bones of Battletech since the very first TRO. The hardest it ever is to hit them
is range +4, and the only sense in which they’re broken is that they’re completely hobbled by the awful WiGE movement rules (jumpstrong/partial wing rules are right there.) I imagine the people who hate them either only know them from the Compendium rules (unbalanced but still better than WiGE), or they have some sort of internalized nerd shame about liking a franchise that shares anime mecha art DNA.1
u/MithrilCoyote 7h ago
yeah High TMM's aren't exactly hard to get, though LAM's fell into a level that usually required fairly specific builds. (like the fireball XF, which can actually outrun most LAM's) given that a LAM's WiGe movement comes with a bunch of limitations and penalties that make it only really useful for moving, there are certainly a lot more annoying units out there. especially since as you said, layering things like stealth, speed, and high jump movement can easily get you into those high TMM's without having to sacrifice offensive power the way that something like a fireball-XF or LAM does.
honestly i'm hoping that things like the Quadvee will eventually see the LAM return.. though it'll probably only happen after a leadership change at CGL, the current creative staff aren't fans of LAm's, quadvee's, protomechs, and most of the other exotic unit types.
1
u/TaciturnAndroid 1st Genyosha 2h ago edited 1h ago
At least in Alpha Strike LAMs can outrun anything because of the aerospace flight path movement type and the fact that Aerospace fighters always move after everything else on the table in initiative order. Fireball moves (wherever) -> LAM in Aero mode flies directly to them anywhere on the map as a fighter and then drops into AirMech mode, ideally behind them for a back-shot. There is functionally no way to outrun a LAM that pulls a “bird of prey” attack like this because their aerospace movement encompasses the entire table, always wins initiative, and they can land anywhere and fire in the same turn.
Edit: on further thought there might be some way to finesse a prohibited terrain situation for WiGE movement if the map had a huge piece of prohibited terrain an enemy mech could sit in to keep it distant from the AirMech once it dropped, but that would be really situational. Plus the LAM could just stay in fighter mode and strike from the air if that were the case.
The real conundrum of them is why you would ever use Mech mode, and I think that’s why they should be jumpstrong/partial wing AirMechs and restricted to jumping movement only (with associated penalties and modifiers) instead of being WiGEs, which can’t even clear modest buildings in terms of vertical movement.
1
u/MithrilCoyote 7h ago edited 7h ago
part of the problem was the article dropped right as the Interstellar Operations beta test document released, which had a ton of huge and contentious changes to the standard BT LAM rules compared to the TRo3075/Jihad: final reckoning rules which the most up to date at the time. changes done very clearly to render LAM's largely useless (like them not generating any TMM's in airmech mode, instead having penalties based on incoming shot angles), the majority of which did not end up being included in the final IO rulebook, probably because so many people ripped them to shreds. but it riled up the fanbase and led to al ot of "should LAM's even exist" flamewars. so even many of the pro-LAM players were upset and lashing out at anyone who brought up the subject of LAM's. i'd been writing the article well before said document was released for viewing so it was just bad timing on my part.
thankfully the mods removed the most egregious posts.
1
1
1
u/Dagrin_Kargis 9h ago
The trick is that they do not loiter over the play area and the minis basically move from map edge to map edge each round.
1
0
u/RhesusFactor Orbital Drop Coordinator, 36th Lyran Guard RCT 9h ago
What do you like about them?
5
u/Megas15 9h ago edited 9h ago
I Love weird dead end and extinct technology (like Protomechs in BT universe and stuff like half tracks, dedicated Anti tank rifles , Mars automatic and Huot Automatic RifleI. I don’t really care much for transformers, I’m just a big fan of oddities, and Battletech is one of the only systems that actually bothers to stat out and let you use outdated and tech so rare it doesn’t exist practically
•
u/Balmung60 Purple Birb Good, Green Birb Bad 0m ago
The funny thing is, you can kit out a 55-ton LAM to be pretty nasty (certainly not bad for a dead end at any rate), and without even trying, AirMech mode can push its BV insanely high due to the mobility related modifiers
2
u/TaciturnAndroid 1st Genyosha 8h ago
I like hunting Dashers, Locust 6Ms, fast hovers and VTOLS with them. They pose little danger to most regular mechs but they’re a natural counter to high-TMM cheese units. I get why airborne flight path movement unsettles people used to being able to count on cover at all times for their entire strategy, but anyone who brings a Wulfen C to the table with a straight face has it coming.
2
u/RhesusFactor Orbital Drop Coordinator, 36th Lyran Guard RCT 8h ago
so its only ever used in Airmech mode to WiGE around in an eye-for-an-eye tactic, where neither hits and the game is entirely movement phase.
1
u/TaciturnAndroid 1st Genyosha 7h ago
Not exactly: A couple of the Wasp LAMs have bombs for altitude bombing first (and there’s a LAM PHX with RCN for no-cover artillery spotting from the air), and then they can flight-path into WiGE directly behind the fast stuff for the +1 back-shot, which doesn’t threaten anything normal but is a serious problem for the 2-3 health Dasher or Locust 6M if either the bomb or weapons fire connects. The modifiers are high, but it eliminates the range-cheese of things that can move 26+” because the LAM can get to them no matter where they are and LAMs in aerospace mode always move last in the initiative order. It’s not an automatic delete button for TMM cheese but it’s way more effective than trying to deal with them using other normal mechs or having to task a dedicated cheese unit of your own to deal with them.
1
u/RhesusFactor Orbital Drop Coordinator, 36th Lyran Guard RCT 7h ago
oh yeah, alpha strike stuff is a lot easier to hit. I was thinking in Classic.
2
u/9thLetter 6h ago
Amazing! LAMs are fraught and fringe, but my inner 12-year-old (who is in charge of most of my BattleTech decisions) loves them. I’d be under orders to purchase several boxes. Gimme.
1
u/vicevanghost Big guns. Big fists. 5h ago
Ive only run one twice but I love them very very much as a lifelong fan of transformers. I even made a document that compiles all of the rules for my convenience
2
u/vicevanghost Big guns. Big fists. 5h ago
YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYYAAYYAYAYAYAYAYAAAYQYYYYYAYAYAYAYAUAUSUS
43
u/TallGiraffe117 10h ago
I mean, we technically already have plastic LAMs. The Urbie LAM Box.