ScrapYard Armory

Iron Wind Metals has a lot of surprises on it’s website.  One item you won’t likely see in your local gaming store is the new Interstellar Radar Dish.  To the regular Battletech player the image is iconic.  It’s not some run of the mill radar dish, but a Hyper Pulse Generator station.

The sculpt looks stunning.  I picked mine up at Cold Wars in Lancaster Pa at the Iron Wind Metals booth.  You can get your own on the Iron Wind Metals website.

The full kit is made up of resin and pewter parts that come together to form the full terrain piece.  The resin pieces seem to be cast from an original that was made in a prototyping machine.  There are long concentric rings around the dish that are very obvious up close.  Not a huge problem although I can see how those rings would be accentuated by dry brushing.  Keep this in mind when you paint yours.

The pewter pieces come together rather easily.  The only issue besides the obvious flash and casting trim is the center dish antenna.  It is made up of two pieces that don’t come together as cleanly as one would hope.  You will need some green stuff in order to patch up this defect before priming and painting.

The dish counterweights (the round things sticking out the back) were a bit tricky to glue together and were also two pieces.  In the end, I used a wad of green stuff to stick them together.

I painted my own piece rather quickly and am only marginally satisfied with my work.  The primer coat was not ideal, but I pressed on so I could finish the project.  No sense keeping such a fine sculpt on my desk collecting dust.  I’ve got plans for this little dish after all.

The HPG terrain piece can be used as mere decoration or as something more elaborate as a centerpiece of an objective based scenario.  Here are a few ideas on how to incorporate this terrain in your own games.  Use the large base for hexless terrain games but do without on a standard hex map.  Both styles look great and accommodate large and small games alike.

• Scan the Target / Send a Message

The attacking force needs to send a message out and to get a ‘Mech within communication distance (usually 3 or 4 hexes, 6 if the ‘Mech has an active probe) for two consecutive turns in order to transmit the data to/from the station.  During those turns no ranged combat attacks may be made by the scanning unit.

• Seek and Destroy

The HPG must go down.  Give it a hefty construction factor ( > 100 CF) and send in the troops to either defend it or destroy it.  As an interesting twist, use the shielding rules from Tactical Operations (page 19).  Another option is to impose a rule where the attacking force may NOT target the HPG if there is an enemy ‘Mech in range with a to-hit number of seven or less.  This kind of rule will result in some interesting decisions by both Attacker and Defender.

• Extraction

You have a spy on the inside and he needs to get out before his cover is blown.  Your force is tasked to get him out in one piece.  Follow the extraction scenario in Total Warfare (page 260) but limit the spy placement to within 6 hexes of the HPG.

Unique terrain is a great way to spice up your games.  I’d love to hear your ideas on how to use this piece in a campaign or scenario.