Elementals (Toads) and other Battlearmor




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I’m going to be honest, when I was really into Battletech 20+ years ago I thought the Clans were awesome. I wanted to play the Inner Sphere against the (I liked the underdog even then), but I thought they were pretty cool.

My opinion of the clans has become less favorable for what it did to the whole setting. Even so, one of the things I thought was cool was the Elemental, or Toad in Inner Sphere parlance. A group of five infantry in power armor, each armored well enough to withstand a medium laser, they were my introduction to a whole sub-genre of science fiction that was established by Heinlein in Starship Troopers and expanded on in John Steakley’s Armor.

They were so cool that when my brother (12 years younger than me) saw the Toad toy from the animated series for sale, he called it an elemental and insisted on getting one. That led me to collect all of the toys, but that’s another story.

Mobile Frame Zero actually has a simple way to deal with miniature power armor in Intercept Orbit. In IO they basically use whole companies of frames as one unit with a modified Soldier system loadout. To translate it into Rapid Attack, I’d treat each point like a frame with three systems, maybe with Claws and Small Lasers, Power Armor, and Spotting Lasers as the systems - 2RH/1B/1Y/1Gd8/2W, the Mini-Soldier loadout. For the LEGO model, build it like a frame company in IO. Just like in IO, put little colored studs on the base to show what systems and dice it has left. Every time it takes a hit, remove one of the little guys and one of the studs representing either a system or white dice.


(Just to be clear, I’m not automatically including the Ace rules from Intercept Orbit.)


Other power armor like the Infiltrator and Sloth can be created by changing the system loadout. I probably wouldn’t give a squad or point more than three systems, and for an Inner Sphere squad I’d give it fewer soldiers and fewer systems. That way It follows the MFZ rule that nothing is better than a frame at doing what they do. For example:



Infiltrator: Grenade Launcher, Stealth ECM System. 2RH/1B/2Gd8/2W.



Sloth: Laser Cannons, Pop-Up Mines. 2RD/2RH/2W.

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