my favorite mechwarrior

By: Unknown on 17:24

From FASA's original BattleTech Technical Readout 3025:

MechWarrior Donald Vincent
Vincent is a roving adventurer. When the Crimson Ace Dragoons, a small mecernary force, was destroyed on Tiber in an assault against House Marik, he managed to escape with his 'Mech intact. Since then, he has served a variety of petty lords and landholders, but his moody nature and violent temper have often cut his employment short. He is most famous for walking his 'Mech through the palace of a former employer after a wage dispute.

Vincent pilots a JagerMech, a 65-ton autocannon platform of a machine that is utterly unsuitable for solo operations. It doesn't have hands, its shortrange weapons are limited, it needs a constant supply of ammo for its for autocannon, and it has the weakest armor plating of any known heavy mech. You can find mechs less half its tonnage with the same armor rating as a Jager. Every member of my old B-Tech crew from high school thought I was throwing my money away when I bought a JagerMech miniature.

And yet this guy Don Vincent managed to be the only one of his unit to make it out of Tiber in one piece. Dude may have a legendarily short fuse but he's clever enough to escape a massacre while piloting a crap ass mech. And he somehow manages to make something resembling a living as a one man merc unit. That combination of apparent foxlike cleverness, berserk fury, a dangerous past, a sleazy present and a lousy giant robot has appealed to me for over twenty years.

I've often thought that if I ever tried to run MechWarrior again I would position the PCs as new recruits for Vincent's attempt to reconstitute his old unit. The Crimson Ace Dragoons would probably have uniforms (at least as soon as they could afford them) based upon the Crimson Guard from G.I. Joe.


The headgear would be optional. Also, instead of a snake mascot, the Crimson Ace Dragons would have as their emblem a spade from a deck of cards, but red instead of black. Maybe something like this:


But the BattleMechs would probably have something more like this painted on them: