Battle of Tyrfing

Battle of Tyrfing - 2788

- December 28, 2022

Crystal Valley before the Battle

The Succession Wars evolved over time from power and territory grabs to being more about the technology of the star league and who would control the majority of it at any one time. While the First Succession War focused more on planets and how to make them into radiological wastelands, there were still scrambles for the remains of the Star League weapons and technology depots abandoned by Kerensky's exodus. Tyrfing was one such case - and it was a prize big enough that it degenerated into a five way battle between all the major houses.

Castle Brian

The planet was laid to waste during the Amaris Civil war, with the defending castle brian's reduced to cracked shells by nuclear weapons and orbital fire. The environmental conditions on Tyrfing degenerated, and were only further degraded by the First Succession Wars fighting there. The result is that conventional forces, not sealed inside pressurized cockpits of Battlemechs or Aerospace fighters, died in mass. The result was a battle fought on the worlds alien like terrain only with the Battlemech by the time the final contestant in the form of the Draconis Combine's regiments landed.

Crystal Valley Landscape

Of note was the six day, five way, battle fought in the worlds most picturesque (at least before the battle) terrain feature - the Great Crystal Valley. This natural tourist attraction of huge natural crystal formations was laid waste by the battle, which would spill out in the following weeks into the rest of the planet.

Rather than create five lances of mechs from random assignment tables I choose a different approach for this project to capture the nature of this battle. I choose to do one mech each from the factions, taking the commanding officer of each nations forces and there assigned Battlemech. For this project I created:

Colonel Nikolina Tatarionov; Capellan Confederation Armed Forces of the Prefectorate Guard and piloting a CRD-3L Crusader.

Tai-Sa Hector Fushimi; Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery of the 3rd Sword of Light and piloting a PXH-1 Phoenix Hawk.

Colonel Elijah Mitrovich; Federated Suns Armed Forces of the 4th Davion Guards and piloting a ARC-2R Archer.

Colonel Rodrigo Sullivan; Free Worlds League Military of the 23rd Marik Militia and piloting a MAD-1R Marauder.

Colonel Oscar Kurunta; Lyran Commonwealth Armed Forces of the 7th Donegel Guards and piloting a TDR-5S Thunderbolt.

I added some 3d printed crystal basing elements to reflect the unique nature of the Tyrfing battlefield as well, just to add some flair to the project.

This one was a nice break from the bigger projects I had been doing, it was nice to do one mech per faction for a bit; and let me use a new Phoenix Hawk proxy from Strato Minis. I also used a Strato Minis 'retro-bot' Marauder proxy. I figured the aesthetic differences would fit well with how they might have appeared all factory fresh during the first succession war. And it adds a bit of variety to the sculpts in the collection.

Finally the map is the Crystal Valley map from the Alien Worlds map pack - I am branching out to get some better backdrops for the pictures and this one was particularly fitting.