Red Lancers & Davion Assault Guards

Red Lancers & Davion Assault Guards - Orbisonia 2828

- January 03, 2023

The Capellans get a lot of hate-rade from the Battletech community, mostly as due to there status as the smallest of the great houses and generally on the losing end of most engagements during the succession wars. But in the Second Succession War they turned a a poor choice into a moment of legend, and all it cost them was a Chancellor.

The battle of Orbisonia started out well. On Chancellor Ilsa Liao's direction the premier house units of the Red Lancers and Prefectorate Guard were stripped of there previous Battlemechs and rebuilt almost entirely with Marauders and Warhammers. As a result when the Red Lancers arrived on Orbisonia in 2828 and dropped on a supply depot they took a regiment of Marauders out against whatever the planets garrison had to offer - which turned out to be not nearly enough. On the other side of the city were the Avalon Hussars who moved to engage; but not realizing the Red Lancers were running all Marauders - because who does that besides a Liao - they got chopped to pieces on the meeting engagements. Like wise the Prefectorate Guard engaged the much lighter 2nd Ceti Hussars with much the same result.

Chancellor Ilsa Liao

All seemed to be going well for Ilsa and her merry band of marauder driving Capellans until that night the Davion Assault Guards arrived at a pirate point with murder in mind. The Davion Assault Guards carry a fearsome reputation and Ilsa decided then to pull her troops out, but needed a location to do so in relative security. She choose the Cretaceous Basin due to its demanding choke point terrain.

The Hussars harassed and slowed the retreating Capellans enough to allow the ponderous Assault Guards to grab hold of the quarry. In a desperate last stand Ilsa and her command company of Chancellors Guards of the Red Lancers, all driving Marauders, stood to hold the pass long enough for her command to board there dropships and boost for orbit. It was a legend making performance, that cost the Capellan Confederation there Chancellor.

I had originally read this account briefly in the Liao House Sourcebook and made a note on my sheet of ideas to do this as part of my pilot series, but when I got a copy of the Turning Points: Orbisonia which provides not only a detailed account of the battles but also a nice one page short story at the end describing the Chancellors last stand I knew it was going to be a bigger project.

I intentionally bought Catalyst model Marauders, which look awesome, for this and it took a while to get a couple of box sets and one single unit off Ebay to fill a lance. For Ilsa's ride I wanted something a little more and went with a retro-bot version of the Marauder from Strato-Mini's. Strato makes good stuff, but they are a pain to assemble. This gave me a nice compliment of Marauders for the Red Lancers, but there were no specifics for the assaulting Davion Guards. The short story talks about an Atlas, and so that was the first mech chosen. I had purchased a Comstar box set and am no where near writing on Tukayyid (that's going to be a huge project when I get there...) so I stripped a Highlander and a King Crab from the set. Finally I choose an Awesome as an iconic assault class mech - even though it does not appear in the Orbisonia random assignment tables. Sometimes you need to do your own thing.

Both of these units have awesome paint schemes and I did my best with the Assault Guards using the more modern small stripe version rather than the more classic centered colored scheme. I really like how this looks, but damn if its not intensive to paint. I did enjoy this project and it was the last of 2022 - a good project to end my first year back with the Battletech Universe with.