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Let’s Read: D.R.T. Part 10: Would you like some content with your briefings, sir? Chapter 18 DropShip Tracy K, Priate Point 5N/Lu0013Zulu Wolcott System, Draconis Combine 25 July 3057 Who’s up for ending a lovely derail about a nation in BattleTech nobody gives a poo poo about? Me too. Nothing happens this chapter. Rose muses about interstellar travel, but given that he has all the knowledge of a graffiti-covered cinderblock there’s no point to it. Especially since we’ve already gotten our dose of “how JumpShips work” in this book. Instead, we learn that jumping to a pirate point is dangerous. No poo poo. Also, Rose continues to be an rear end in a top hat to everyone on the ship. D.R.T. posted:As usual, the Black Thorns had appropriated the largest mess room on the ship for their de facto headquarters. By ‘largest’ he means ‘only.’ Union Dropships aren’t that big.  Rose conducts a staff meeting. Why am I reading this? It’s like reading CTRL+ALT+DEL except at least that has muddy, washed-out colors to go along with its talking heads. Anyway, Rose does his best to He keeps talking but I’ll be completely honest I’m skipping two pages here. Bets on whether we miss out on anything? Alright, we’re back. Rose is drinking Coffee. We haven’t missed anything. The Black Thorns are dropping into a location that’s 1000 km from any population center. What the gently caress are they trying to accomplish out in the rear end-end of nowhere? Taunting the Clans? A worthy goal, except they’re actually trying to destroy an objective. Two objectives. They’re going to smash Clan factories that are thousands of kilometers away. Rose then says that they’ll probably be fighting “refitted Warhammers, BattleMasters, and Shadow Hawks” and that the tactics for fighting them are the same as fighting their Inner Sphere counterparts. This is loving TERRIBLE advice. 1) No BattleMaster IIC in canon. It’s a weird oversight, but there you go. 2) The Shadow Hawk IIC is actually a good `Mech. 3) Warhammer IICs will gently caress you up. I also guarantee we won’t be seeing any of them. This bit is a red herring that will get some of the Black Thorns killed. Anyway, as the chapter wraps up we learn that the entire purpose of these eight or so pages of nothing loving happening was to set up Rose receiving a space-letter from McCloud. She’s pregnant. Have fun on your suicide mission, rear end in a top hat! Chapter 19 DropShip Bristol (sic), Priate Point 43P/Wo1632Zulu Courcheval System, Nova Cat Occupation Zone 27 July 3057 We’re not on the Bristol. McCloud pining after Jeremiah Rose for a chapter would be interminable. No, we’re on the Tracy K and attacking the Clans! Hours get glossed over in a sentence, but our EVE-esque time dilation ends with six hours to go. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF— Rose decides that the best possible thing to do before a combat drop is to have all the Black Thorns sit on their asses in their `Mechs for SIX HOURS not doing anything so they’ll all be sluggish and exhausted when the combat drop happens. Now, I’ve never been a fighter pilot, but perhaps someone in this thread is military. How often do flight crews get told to suit up and sit on their thumbs for six or more hours before a combat engagement? I could see keeping them nearby, but seriously, what’re they going to do? They can’t use the radio, that’d give away their position. BattleTech doesn’t have any electronics that weighs less than 80 pounds, and some of the Black Thorns are illiterate. Here’s what’s going to happen when you tell Badicus O’Shea to sit in his cockpit doing nothing: He’s going to follow orders for three minutes before getting bored, then he’s going to start drinking those twenty or so bottles of scotch whiskey he hides under his command couch and get sloshed. Then he’s going to jump out of a DropShip in high orbit. There’s no way this can go wrong. Anyway, Rose then holds ANOTHER loving BRIEFING over the comms, because there’s no way stray radio signals will attract Clan fighters or anything. He delivers a line I’ve seen six or seven loving times since the book started-- D.R.T. posted:“Questions?” Rose waited, but the line was silent. I’ve got one. WHY AM I READING THIS AGAIN?! --and after nobody has any questions about the mission we’ve had FOUR OR FIVE BRIEFINGS ABOUT IN THE PAST FIVE CHAPTERS we learn that, oh hey, Chapter ends on a cliffhanger, and so does Part 10 of this review! See you next time for
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Jan 28, 2013 03:01
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Now tell us how you really feel.  That aside, I do kinda wonder why there's no Battlemaster IIC. A lot of fans do, apparently, judging by fan contributions to various things. Like MW4:Mercs.
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Jan 28, 2013 03:16
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T.G. Xarbala posted:Now tell us how you really feel. That is odd. Even a basic conversion where you just go to double heat sinks and upgrade the weapons to Clan standards gets you a pretty fearsome machine. Go all the way with XL, Ferro-Fibrous, and a Targeting Computer? Watch out!
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Jan 28, 2013 03:53
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Some vehicles and a few planes (like the F16) have some sort of AC but given :battletech: and its heat problems the life support must keep them in the roughly habitable zone rather than anything sane. And keeping people in their vehicles is only ever acceptable when you are expecting something bad but don't know exactly when, that's why the F16 has AC, so you can sit in there for hours waiting for orders. Otherwise you put on hour on planning to get everyone sitting pretty and checking their stuff works and depart two hours latter because someone left a spanner in your nose radar.
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Jan 28, 2013 03:57
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PoptartsNinja posted:
They could have just meant the (C) refits, which are much less dangerous. Of course, there's still no BLR-1G (C), so that part still stands.
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Jan 28, 2013 04:09
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You mean ]url=http://www.masterunitlist.info/Unit/Details/303]this?[/url] It exists, sort of. The real confusing part is that there's no Battlemaster IIC, which was a 100ton mech that only used about 85 of its tons in MW2, was NPC controlled (by allied Kell Hounds, because you see ) and only accessible in Instant Action via a cheat.  Andrevian posted:Ask your favorite warhams player why there aren't women space marines. This will be a good education as to other creepy forms of loyalty. Andrevian posted:That is true, yeah. The BT writers can be creepy rapenards. Like what happened with Interstellar Ops, where they back-edited some stuff to add more rape back into the game. PoptartsNinja posted:The Star League was also Space Rome. Holybat posted:Well the picture made it look like the limbs were modular, so maybe she's willing to plop on regular ol' cybernetics after she's done with the catgirl thing? Arquinsiel fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Jan 28, 2013 |
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Jan 28, 2013 04:28
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Arquinsiel posted:Disagree, the Star League was the Space UN Space NATO, but also patterned after the Roman Republic (not Empire. The Star League under Amaris was the Roman Empire, Amaris himself being Caeser attempting to eliminate a corrupt government via installing a more corrupt one yadda yadda).
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Jan 28, 2013 04:34
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Arquinsiel posted:You mean ]url=http://www.masterunitlist.info/Unit/Details/303]this?[/url] It exists, sort of. The real confusing part is that there's no Battlemaster IIC, which was a 100ton mech that only used about 85 of its tons in MW2, was NPC controlled (by allied Kell Hounds, because you see ) and only accessible in Instant Action via a cheat. The other mechs available were the Tarantula (only 4 legged mech I know of) and an Elemental.
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Jan 28, 2013 05:18
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T.G. Xarbala posted:That aside, I do kinda wonder why there's no Battlemaster IIC. A lot of fans do, apparently, judging by fan contributions to various things. Like MW4:Mercs.
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Jan 28, 2013 09:21
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The PP designs have a couple of advantages over those shitpiles: they are from 3067, when there is a wider variety in equipment, and they are from after FASA quit filling TROs with min-maxed boring rear end designs (now they just add an occasional Hellstar). Also the most recent updates of designs aren't two-page spreads in a TRO, but just a few sentences telling you what the latest field refit does. The ONN section in TRO:3085 is like sixty mechs in two pages. People are more tolerant of those because they can have so many of them.
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Jan 28, 2013 10:11
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Calax posted:IIRC even when you loaded it up, unless you had a disk patch, the game would just boot you back to DOS There are actually 19 quadrupedal battlemechs. http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Category:Quad_BattleMechs I've personally got a soft spot for the Scorpion, especially the -1O.
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Jan 28, 2013 10:32
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He means in MechWarrior 2, mate. I could never get the bloody things to work... I'm going to assume because patching, which was not an option in Australia at that time (56k was a mysterious and elusive entity of untold power at the time I played it)
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Jan 28, 2013 10:42
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I was just reading back a bit, and hey guys, don't be mean to someone just cuz they like Davion. He wasn't rah rah or anything, he was nicely explaining why he liked something casually (though loyally) when people were saying that people who liked it were lame/terrible. A lot of those Grasshoppers are close to being taken out... I'm sticking with my prediction of 3-8 survivors for the boss fight, though maybe the upper range was too optimistic. Readingaccount fucked around with this message at 10:57 on Jan 28, 2013 |
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Jan 28, 2013 10:52
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I am personally cool with the Draconis Suns. Because we're well aware that young Theodore ghost-wears the pants in this family.
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Jan 28, 2013 10:56
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Theodore is definitely a strong, awesome character who won't give up on his old state, and I'm curious how he's going to manage to break free. It'll take years before the Clan threat is really dealt with though, so he'll have plenty of time to prepare, though the same goes for Hanse solidifying his new political construct, I guess it depends a lot on how well the war goes... a decisive DS victory and Theodory is going to have a hard time, if the DS ekes out a victory he'll have a much easier time of it, unless the Draconis elements take the bulk of the damage.
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Jan 28, 2013 11:00
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Andrevian posted:Ask your favorite warhams player why there aren't women space marines. This will be a good education as to other creepy forms of loyalty. http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Adepta_Sororitas 
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Jan 28, 2013 15:23
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Calax posted:IIRC even when you loaded it up, unless you had a disk patch, the game would just boot you back to DOS
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Jan 28, 2013 16:29
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Readingaccount posted:Theodore is definitely a strong, awesome character who won't give up on his old state, and I'm curious how he's going to manage to break free. It'll take years before the Clan threat is really dealt with though, so he'll have plenty of time to prepare, though the same goes for Hanse solidifying his new political construct, I guess it depends a lot on how well the war goes... a decisive DS victory and Theodory is going to have a hard time, if the DS ekes out a victory he'll have a much easier time of it, unless the Draconis elements take the bulk of the damage. Assuming that Hans has an heir who survives to take the throne, I'm not certain that Theodore is all that interested in splitting with the FedSuns. The DCMS was decimated by the Clan invasion, and although there's a lot of mystery surrounding the fates of some of the upper ranks of the nobility, there isn't much of an organized command structure to build a rebellion on. Add to the fact that PTN seemed to indicate that Theodore was reigning in the hard-core reactionaries, I think that his long-term plan is to conquer the Draconis Suns from the inside.
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Jan 28, 2013 17:19
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I do wonder sometimes about whether the lords of each nation couldn't have just resolved their differences by intermarrying until there was an heir who had blood from all five of the major families and could sit the throne. I mean, none of the sane ones expected to sit as High Lord in their lifetime (A five-sided pentagonal war with their technology level? No chance), so it was always going to be their kids who inherited - why not just have kids with their enemies? In fact in general the advantage of becoming lord of the whole Sphere seems pretty weakly defined. I mean no one really has the power or reach to alter the culture and makeup of the sphere, so at best it'd be everyone bowing their heads in submission to one person/line/house. Is it all just a matter of pride? European kingdoms went to war pretty frequently, but only when you had someone batshit on the throne did they ever think they could fully conquer multiple European powers, and even if they did it couldn't hope to last. Anyway, if Theodore and Hanse have any sense, they'll try to marry the resulting offspring of the current union to a Steiner and unite the Inner Sphere via marriage.
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Jan 28, 2013 17:53
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Dolash posted:I do wonder sometimes about whether the lords of each nation couldn't have just resolved their differences by intermarrying until there was an heir who had blood from all five of the major families and could sit the throne. I mean, none of the sane ones expected to sit as High Lord in their lifetime (A five-sided pentagonal war with their technology level? No chance), so it was always going to be their kids who inherited - why not just have kids with their enemies? That was basically Hanse's plan in canon. He himself married a Steiner and then he was going to farm out the rest of his kids to all the other (non Kurita)successor states. I can't remember the exact details but I know it was supposed to be something like Victor would marry Isis,Katherine would marry Ragnar and Peter would be married off to one of the Allard-Liaos effectively recreating the Star League by marriage. With the three biggest realms under his thumb and Rassalhauge to distract the Kuritas the plan was to put Candace or Kai on the throne of the Capellan Confederation and then ask the kurita's to surrender or face the rest of the IS united by marriage. (Un)Fortunately first the clan invasion and then his heart attack put paid to any plans he may have had.
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Jan 28, 2013 18:15
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Defiance Industries posted:The PP designs have a couple of advantages over those shitpiles: they are from 3067, when there is a wider variety in equipment, and they are from after FASA quit filling TROs with min-maxed boring rear end designs (now they just add an occasional Hellstar). These dossiers are why there are quite a few completely baffling post-Jihad designs. They were probably designed with MWDA's rules in mind. Cease to Hope fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Jan 28, 2013 |
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Jan 28, 2013 18:35
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Cease to Hope posted:These dossiers are why there are quite a few completely baffling post-Jihad designs, like the Legionnaire with its single RAC/5 for armament, and a targeting computer (which doesn't work with RACs). I always just accepted the Legionnaire as the most Davion of mechs. Nobody loves autocannons and tarcomps like the FedSuns. Sometimes the combination works amazingly well (the BJ-4) and sometimes you get the Legionnaire.
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Jan 28, 2013 18:39
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Two Beans posted:
Sisters aren't space marines, though, because they're "normal" human women, not genetically modified and bred superhumans. It's like calling a regular IS power armor trooper an Elemental.
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Jan 28, 2013 18:40
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Cease to Hope posted:The Hellstar is actually the fault of Wizkids. Its stats were first published on a dossier for a MWDA set, since it was an original design created for that set. The stats on the dossiers were mostly an afterthought. A brick of an energy boat was not a very optimized mech in MWDA at the time, since it was rather vulnerable to fast infantry (which took negligible damage from energy attacks) and was a lot of points invested in a slow mech, making it vulnerable to artillery and VTOLs.
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Jan 28, 2013 18:41
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KnoxZone posted:I always just accepted the Legionnaire as the most Davion of mechs. Nobody loves autocannons and tarcomps like the FedSuns. Sometimes the combination works amazingly well (the BJ-4) and sometimes you get the Legionnaire. Bah, outsped my ninjaedit. TCs and RACs do play nicely together. You just can't make called shots with autofire. Plus, the BJ-4 uses LACs, not RACs. Cease to Hope fucked around with this message at 18:44 on Jan 28, 2013 |
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Jan 28, 2013 18:41
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Cease to Hope posted:Bah, outsped my ninjaedit. TCs and RACs do play nicely together. You just can't make called shots with autofire. The Davions like all autocannons. Some are actually kinda useful.
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Jan 28, 2013 18:51
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Can we see a Hellstar in action at some point ?
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Jan 28, 2013 19:15
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That was a pretty awesome charge.
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Jan 28, 2013 19:26
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Saint Celestine posted:Can we see a Hellstar in action at some point ? We don't go full retard in this thread.
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Jan 28, 2013 19:28
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Defiance Industries posted:We don't go full retard in this thread. Instead we will have to merely settle for a Warhawk C!
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Jan 28, 2013 19:34
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Assuming someone like the Smoke Jaguars ever gets around to designing it.
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Jan 28, 2013 19:35
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Saint Celestine posted:Can we see a Hellstar in action at some point ? On top of being really boring, it's basically just an optimized Warhawk Prime. Most of the things that make it better, like moving PPCs to the torso, stacking heat sinks, and ditching the LRM10 (and its different range brackets and potentially explosive ammo), make it less interesting to play or fight against. The rest is just boring crunchy optimization, like using ES instead of FF, using a sweet-spot weight for engine size, adding and reshuffling armor allocation, and making it a Battlemech instead of an Omni to reduce costs. It's not some unstoppable Mech-God, just a really boring, optimized mech.
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Jan 28, 2013 19:41
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And if you play a Hellstar for one turn of fire, congratulations, you've played every single Hellstar turn that has ever been played.
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Jan 28, 2013 19:45
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The only redeeming factor of the Hellstar is that one of them killed Vlad Ward. That counts for something.
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Jan 28, 2013 19:47
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Defiance Industries posted:We don't go full retard in this thread. We already unleashed the rifleman IIC we are well past full retard.
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Jan 28, 2013 19:53
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Ferrosol posted:We already unleashed the rifleman IIC we are well past full retard. We have not gone past full retard until we field a mech with 4 LPLs + TC.
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Jan 28, 2013 20:06
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landcollector posted:We have not gone past full retard until we field a mech with 4 LPLs + TC. Hastur pretty much IS a targeting computer. The man is a surgeon.
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Jan 28, 2013 20:14
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Ferrosol posted:We already unleashed the rifleman IIC we are well past full retard. A CLPL is only 10 damage, it needs headcapers to be really bullshit.
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Jan 28, 2013 20:19
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KnoxZone posted:The only redeeming factor of the Hellstar is that one of them killed Vlad Ward. That counts for something. It's a good indicator of who is the problem in your group, too. If he fields a Hellstar he's an rear end in a top hat.
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Jan 28, 2013 20:21
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SIGSEGV posted:A CLPL is only 10 damage, it needs headcapers to be really bullshit. Still its 10 damage out to 20 hexes at -2 to hit.
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Jan 28, 2013 20:53
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