"Guys, as it turns out, you can make people show up to an ambush by just asking them. Remember, be kind, it pays dividends." - Tex, "Battletech 101, The Great Houses", on the subject of ComStar Vs. The Clans.
To explain Space AT&T: Comstar is basically the Adeptus Mechanicus except instead of governing all machines, they maintain the interstellar communications device(kinda like astropaths) and anyone who doesn't pay taxes loses the ability to communicate planet to planet.
They're a lot less nutty than ad mech, and they worship their founder as opposed to circuitry itself. Mind you, a lot less nutty than the toaster humpers still leaves plenty of room for loose screws and worse. Oh, and they own all the banks, and the C-bill is actually their store credit that everyone else has use for. Also, they run the only standard sphere wide mercenary oversight. So if a merc gets on their bad side, blacklisted from safe reliable business. Not to mention that they can easily hire mercenaries to bring blacklisted people in.
@@cobra29935 Undeniably so. Best case they gun you down, worst case, you escape seeing something you weren't supposed to, and not you and your entire network must be silenced to ensure that no word gets out.
Agreed I've put it in the long request channel in the Discord. Upvote it people we need to have Tex teach the Old Man about Star League, Kerensky and the Black Watch
@@CommisarHood unfortunately discord hates me and refuses to even function, anyway could you or someone else please suggest the flood a modern day apocalypse by Cabezon I think the boss and everyone else would really enjoy it.
Good to see you finally getting around to this lol, I knew you'd like it, Tex has a certain sense of humor and it aligns perfectly. Tex's "Battletech 101: The Great Houses" is a pretty good primer for the Inner Sphere factions. If you end up reacting to more of his stuff, his latter videos have insane amounts of production value; Tons of custom art, animated sequences, music, jokes, and funny shitpost type commercials. Some of my favorites are the pocket hibachi, Discount Dan's various businesses, Steiner Scout Squad, Uncle Bucky's Urbanmech Emporium, and a whole slew of others.
Thing about the clans is that they basically viewed war as a sport. Pick a time, a place, and we'll pick roughly equal forces, let's solve a dispute. That sorta thing. Sadly that goes up poorly against a bunch of mad bastards willing to nuke you and themselves into oblivion for a win, who have been trying their damnedest to win wars for centuries. Clans had better pilots and tech, cause most IS pilots were barely literate madman with bad aim who had to get real close and personal and had very short lifespans, and most of their good mechs had to be downgraded, with most of the production plants nuked and designers in shallow graves. Did I say sadly? I meant luckily! Glory to the Inner Sphere and Periphery! Haha!
I Believe in another TEX video about the clans, at the end he says "Clans play at war, the IS lived total war". One of the reasons is because well for one the structure of their society, and two when you have little resources as it is saying "i'll fight you with just 2 of the 5 things i have is better than using it all and losing/damaging it all". The IS has hundreds of worlds worth of resources to throw at a problem, plus the nuke it, till it glows white was the prime option in the 1st session war and they had another 3 after that.
Tex's Amaris civil war two parter is highly recommended. Rip Black Watch. "Nukes are merely inconvenient." Also worth a look is the the battletech fan animation "Hired Steel". 3eps so far. Tex voices the lance leader. Hail Cargonia! Praise z0rg!
One of us, one of us! In all seriousness, I'm thrilled to see you reacting to Tex, and sooner than I expected. Based on the poll linked in your community tab, I'd have assumed that you'd already be at the best fight of a show that really doesn't seem your speed by the time you covered this. My speed (for about half the volumes), but not yours. Just to be clear, "Death to all mercenaries" is pretty damn insane when the most common role of a player is merc. I was so happy to get the Zhukov reference. Kursk tactics make for good stories of costly victories. Well, the Clans failed to understand what they'd be walking into. Meanwhile Comstar had thoroughly read the entire Clanner playbook, annotated it, and put sticker bookmarks throughout, and metaphorically dropped the thing on the clans' collective foot to start the fight. And Clanner culture and rules are things Tex gets into elsewhere, butt the gist is, the Clanner ideal of war is not actually war, let alone total warfare. It is regulated battle. Akin to a sport as rituualized conflict resolution. One old quote Tex has pulled out to describe their loss here and their failure of comprehension is "Boys study tactics, men study logistics." Clanner violence is usually localized. limited scale, and brief. Grinding attrition was an alien concept when they came back to the Sphere. They have mighty warriors, not soldiers. They have Khans instead of Generals. They have battles and trials (by combatants) instead of wars. A major part of why the Clanners are so messed up is a mythologized selective history. Their founder left out truths he found to be inconvenient when he penned his own story. I was about to say, don't the Black Templars have an "Emperor's Champion" for ritualized single combat? The Clans are stupid by design. Great weapons and skilled warriors using those weapons, but almost no real comprehension of greater strategy and logistics outside of Clan Wolf. Yes, that is stupid hubris, and yes, it is a designed flaw of theirs. Next, I'd recommend his Battletech 101: Great Houses video or the Amaris Civil War part 1. Or you could go to his very first video on his favorite Battlemech, the Awesome. Given how Tex has been ramping up production value and focusing more on the in depth history, I'd recommend Big Red 40k for some more mech videos after you fill up on Tex. Mind you, he's also slowing down as he's making bigger ones, but there are more mech videos for him. He's also done videos on the main weapons and some of the other vehicles. Tex is my go to though.
Battletech lore runs deep. Very deep. As much as I like 40K and its lore, it can't hold a candle to BT, imo. It goes from grimdark to noblebright, turning Grimdark again in a bitter twist of irony. The last stand of the Black Watch, the fall of Star League, humanities decent into fragmented, bickering feudal states -- it's all there. Plus, Tex and the Back Pants Legion deserve every bit of exposure they can get. If you want to get a good overview what this is all about, I strongly recommend watching the Tex' "Great Houses" video.
I'd always heartily recommend Tex's content, and if you want to get a better idea about the Great Houses in the Battltech universe, he's got a good introduction video here: ua-cam.com/video/HQhzlXcmTzw/v-deo.html By the way, if you do decide to take a dive into the "Tex Talks Battletech" rabbithole, don't skip the intermissions or the credits- there's often some damn good additional content thrown in there as well.
Most Tex Talks Battletech episodes are about individual mechs, and the setting/time they came from. Tex also has a primer on the Great Houses, and has promised one about the Periphery States in the near future. You should check out his other videos. This from a Warhammer Fan. The best Heavy Mech of it's tech level, bar none...
If you think that was stupid, the first wave of the clan invasion was stopped by a kamikaze attack that happned to get lucky and hit their supreme invasion commander so they had to pull back their entire invasion force all the way back to the year for months to elect a new one because tradition and honor demanded it. On a side note the clans have an entire line in their official oral history called the " remembrance " honoring the pilot who did that and her bravery.
So a couple notes here on Tukayyid, the clans weren't being *quite* as stupid as portrayed here. The way the clans plan battles involves a system called bidding, where different commanders 'bid' forces they wish to take to the fight with which they think they can win, and they're usually pretty fucking good at knowing what they need to win. Whoever bids the lowest gets to take the fight as winning with less is considered more honorable. Obviously this is risky because it can lead to commanders going into the field without enough support but it's also considered dishonorable to underbid and fail to bring adequate forces to ensure a clean victory as well. Up until Tukayyid the clans had been fighting first minor periphery states and then primarily Rassalhague, the Lyran half of the Federated Commonwealth and the Draconis combine. All of which were using mostly succession wars era equipment, which is very important, up till that point the clans hadn't faced inner sphere forces equipped with things like ER Lasers, Gauss Rifles, ER PPCs, double heat sinks Fero-Fiberous armor, or Endo Steel frames, all of which were lostech from the star league. Most of that tech had been rediscovered decades earlier but it wasn't in mass production yet. The clans had spent a couple years fighting forces that didn't have equipment that was even in the same league as their own, but comstar was different. Comstar had been sitting on vaults full of star league era mechs and even star league era mech factories, and they had an actual war college with libraries of data on star league era tactics and doctrine. Their forces were equipped with weapons effectively two centuries ahead of what inner sphere rank and file had been using up to that point. So when they bid it was like they were expecting their opposition to be sherman tanks and found themselves facing off against M1 abrams, even if they still had even better equipment that's going to throw off your war planning. In addition they didn't know that Comstar had actual trained fighting forces and experienced officers because comstar habitually conceals such assets and pretends to be a telecoms company/cult. So it's not exactly surprising that they lost, nor is it just because they were stupid, they had been lulled into a false sense of superiority by two years of easy victories and had no idea that anyone had equipment capable of threatening them, and even still comstar forces had to completely maul themselves and even resort to kamikaze tactics to win.
Once you're a bit more introduced to Battletech I'd suggest looking at one of Big Red 40k's longer videos. More technical based, but still plenty of lore
Clan battle doctrine is pretty dumb for fairly complicated reasons, but the Clans had a few things leading them off the cliff in this fight. First, Clan equipment is phenomenal in setting. It's lighter, more compact, with better range, and hits harder than all InnerSphere equivalents. It is so good at this point that their bad battle doctrine hadn't significantly bit Clanners in the ass as of yet. Despite routinely bidding away their strength (more InnerSphere disrespect), they had lost only lost three times. The battle of Luthien being the only time they experienced significant equipment losses. So, the Clans were massively overconfident, believing their honor made them stronger than the corrupt barbarians they were invading. Second, the Smoke Jaguars and Nova Cats (Cats being even more complicated) both had very hurt feelings over Luthien at this moment. Luthien wasn't the first Clan defeat; but Luthien was the first defeat the Clans lost hard. They got mangled pretty good. They were extra pissed because one of the deciding factors in Luthien were two regiments of former members of Clan Wolf known as the Wolf's Dragoons. After that stinging defeat, both Clans bid away a ton of strength to get first and second position in the drop order, with Smoke Jaguar bidding away a full third of their best troops before the battle even started. Last was Ulric Kerensky. He was the leader of the Invasion at this point, and he wanted the Clans to lose this battle. Ulric always opposed to the Clan Invasion and pulled every trick he could, short of treason, to blunt it. Ulric's liason for the first half of the Invasion was no one less than Focht himself. For six months, Focht traveled with Ulric, and while the ComStar Martial never saw actual plans, or how OmniMechs worked, Ulric made sure Focht did see exactly how the Clan bidding process worked. Ulric made sure Focht knew which Clans were cruel, and which were stupidly aggressive. Ulric showed the man exactly where the Clan blind spots were, and then gave him every motivation to want it all to stop.
You will like Tex a whole hell 'ova lot, I've been watching the guy for years and he always manages to be funny and informative seemingly no matter the topic. I suggest if you want to continue on with his stuff (which I recommend especially with Star Wars V.S. 40k on Hiatus.) then the next video you should check out should either be Battletech 101: The Great Houses or just watch all of the old short episodes in one go.
If you want to learn about the Great Houses, Tex has a "Battletech 101" video on that. if you want to learn about the various Mechs, I'd suggest starting with the Mackie video. It is a long one, but since the Mackie is the very first Battlemech, the video handily covers just about everything on the basics of a Battlemech. No matter which you choose to react to, Im sure you will enjoy it! I'll certainly enjoy watching.
All of Tex's BT vids are all fantastic. My favorite is the Madcat vid ( the urban mech comes as a close second) and that says a lot because ALL of his lore vids are top notch. And yes he videos on Mechs and has an intro video on the great houses.
Explaining the Clan's approach takes a bit of context. Really their entire thing was about efficiency. They lived in a place that was starved of resources. They'd seen the horrors of total war. They thought it was all pretty wasteful. So the Clan honour system was basically about deciding who's best in a brand of limited warfare. Results would be honoured and both sides would try to preserve resources for the future while contesting objectives in an agreed upon manner. Most of the Clans were equal enough that a duel between warriors, squads or larger formations was a good enough proxy for actually fighting this out. The bidding system played into this, if somebody can take an objective with 2 mechs then they are risking less resources than the guy proposing 3 mechs. The problem with the Clan approach is it only works when the other side is as committed to this honour duel limited warfare approach as you are, bidding down works because the other side is also doing it. The Clans had brutalised the Inner Sphere mainly because all the armies of the Inner Sphere were pointed at each other. They'd slowed dramatically after the Great Houses had made the official decision to kill these people first (the Great Houses literally kept all their best stuff aimed at each other for an hilarious chunk of the Clan Invasion) but the Clans hadn't really had much time to cotton on to what happens when limited warfare, however talented and well equipped your warriors, meets total war as practiced by a vast industrial power. They were treating the new defeats they'd taken like Luthien and Wolcott as aberrations, after all even though the Draconis Combine won those contests their losses were absurd compared to the Clans and if the DC could do this everywhere then they wouldn't stand out so much as major DC victories. In the meantime all their victories had suddenly become brutal slogs where again resources were being burnt at an unsustainable rate. Focht for his part waited until the Great Houses had got their act together before pushing for this plan. Knowing that the Clans would probably still beat the IS given how late they'd stopped treating the Clans as some great ruse from their traditional enemies. They wouldn't be able to beat them after the Comguard had brutalised them on Tukayyid. Victory was not even really the objective, breaking the Clans was. Even victory required the Clans to be brutalised, the Clans got very close to trying to nullify the truce but in the end calmer heads realised they just didn't have the resources to fight anyway. For the Clans part they really abandoned limited warfare as a concept following this. The later lore has the Clans behaving much more like a proper professional force. Of course having a vast industrial base conquered from the IS helped with that.
Interesting, i'm still reading up on the fluff concerning Battletech. The part i'm very interested about is how the Clans adapted to Inner-sphere life after the invasion.
@@Razgriz_01 Honestly that is still even an ongoing process, the current era of IlClan (about a century later) still has developments on this front. The Clans very much like victory to guide right and wrong. Initially there was just hard refusal to accept the defeat. I'd look up the Refusal War as it was one of the pivotal events that covers the immediate Clan response to losing at Tukayyid. The Refusal War was probably the first time the Clans outright abandoned limited warfare. There's 3 novels and a scenario pack covering the Refusal War. After that Operation Bulldog and Task Force Serpent covers the Inner Sphere response to the Clans. The former is only covered by scenario packs and source books. Task Force Serpent has a scenario pack and a series of novels leading up to and including the Great Refusal (Refusal keeps coming up because Clans have a combat trial called a Trial of Refusal which allows somebody to contest a political or legal decision via force of arms) on Strana Mechty, the Clans home world. Beyond that the most interesting parts is how Clan Ghost Bear ends up integrating with the Free Rasalhague Republic and the Wars of Reaving which dealt with the split with invader and home Clans (not all the Clans took part in the invasion, the right to invade was settled via trial by combat like everything else in Clan society). There's a scenario pack that covers the Wars of Reaving. No idea on what covers the period of integration between the Bears and Rasalhague though the recent novel (A Question of Survival) heavily features them and the consequences of their political integration with the FRR about a century after Tukayyid.
@@GMorgan84 Any recommended novels that covers the Clan Invasion, especially at the start of invasion? Currently reading the Grey Death Legion trilogy.
@@Razgriz_01 The Blood of Kerensky trilogy (Lethal Heritage, Blood Legacy, Lost Destiny) covers the Clan Invasion from the perspective of Clan Wolf. This runs from the first encounters in the Periphery through to the Battle of Tukayyid (I cannot recall if the battle itself is covered). Legend of the Jade Phoenix (Way of the Clans, Bloodname, Falcon Guard) covers the history of Aiden Pryde (Clan Jade Falcon mechwarrior) in the run up to Tukayyid. Traditionally Wolf and Jade Falcon are the leading Clans. The two stories somewhat come together in the Refusal War (which is the subject of Mechwarrior 2 if you ever played that) arc after Tukayyid.
best part about the city fortifications? they were designed to let them into the cities, restrict their mobility advantage and THEN kill them in whatever direction they went, if they tried to leave they'd walk into ambushes planned to kill them on the way out. It was such an unfair fight that the clanners had no idea how fucked they were until they were already defeated.
28:05 Bud, it's fine. I don't have access to the source books, so Tex is usually my go-to when my brain clocks out for the day. BTW, the Mad Cat is expensive as Hell. I'd rather have a Highlander.
To be fair i dont think anything could have prepared the clans for the religous fanaticism comstar had. They did kamakazi runs on their drop ships. Refused to retreat and force unwinnable battles to on their side to delay clan forces and make them use every round of ammunition they had. The ultimate take away is that the clans won nearly every battle on tukkayid but would lose their war due to supplies dwindling, forcing them to retreat.
Also part of why the clans just took this fight. Besides being openly challenged, is they’d been steam rolling every innersphere force they ran into, even when horribly outnumbered they crushed every enemy they ran into, Rasualhague put up the hardest fight out of any House, and made the clanners pay dearly for conquering most of their territory. The pilot that kamikazed the drop ship taking out a whole galaxy and their khan. Was a rasulhague pilot. Comstar didn’t order them to kamikaze them. They did it on their own free will. That pilot was also the daughter of a hero of rasulhauge, whose last stand helped them gain independence again. Like 30 years before this. Plus the clans didn’t know that Comstar was using SLDF tech, which was almost as good as clanner stuff, that’s the tech that was the base of clan technology, they had double heat sinks, Artemis stream missiles, of SRM and LRM types, pulse lasers, mechs that had endo steel structure, ferro fiberous armor, one or both of those, he’ll some of the mechs they had were Royal divisions variants, literally the best, most armored and armed mechs. That had the most cooling, most engine they could fit in them. Comstars training was in the beginning from SLDF units after the Amaris civil war and the when the exodus happened, one of the SLDF units that stayed back. Was given to Blake, and SL Comnet, which became Comstar shortly after, to defend and train them. So Comstar though largely untested in war, had the best equipment humanity has made outside of clan tech. And the best training at base level based on the biggest and ugliest, hardest fought war we ever fought, from the side of the victors.
I highly, highly HIGHLY recommend you watch all of Tex's videos. The earlier ones are kinda shit-posty but still enjoyable and the production of the new stuff is epic.
I'd say kind of on the remark about the mad cat being the best mech. I'm partial to the 90-ton MK II variation. Other than that, I'll take a Daishi/dire wolf, the clan equivalent of a king crab.
Sir Mr. Tex is in MHO the best lore man for Battletech. You can't go wrong with his vids. Also their is a playlist in order if your going to do his vids.
Ghost Bear very much coped but did not seethe, we knew how to change and adapt from Tukkayid. First thing to go was the ridiculous supply line from Clan Space to the Inner Sphere, moving EVERYTHING into their Invasion Corridor holdings.
"-Behind every blade of grass" probably refers to the American Militia. EDIT: As in if a foreign army were to invade the US, they'd be faced with a rifle be hind every blade of grass.
Tex is going hard on the propaganda line with this one. He skipped over the part where, at the start, Comstar collaborated heavily with the Clans because they hated the more genocidal and anti star league successor states more. The reckless strategy of most of the clans was not only a result of underestimating the inner sphere, but a failed gamble by them to try to make the increasingly dominant Clan Wolf look weak, for political reasons.
"Guys, as it turns out, you can make people show up to an ambush by just asking them. Remember, be kind, it pays dividends."
- Tex, "Battletech 101, The Great Houses", on the subject of ComStar Vs. The Clans.
10:19 for anyone wondering what that says on the emblem it's Comstar's unofficial motto which translates to "Pay your bills Fucko."
To explain Space AT&T: Comstar is basically the Adeptus Mechanicus except instead of governing all machines, they maintain the interstellar communications device(kinda like astropaths) and anyone who doesn't pay taxes loses the ability to communicate planet to planet.
They're a lot less nutty than ad mech, and they worship their founder as opposed to circuitry itself.
Mind you, a lot less nutty than the toaster humpers still leaves plenty of room for loose screws and worse.
Oh, and they own all the banks, and the C-bill is actually their store credit that everyone else has use for. Also, they run the only standard sphere wide mercenary oversight. So if a merc gets on their bad side, blacklisted from safe reliable business. Not to mention that they can easily hire mercenaries to bring blacklisted people in.
@Bthsr71 may God have mercy on your soul if your mercenary band comes across a squad of mechs in all white with no discernable markings on them.
@@cobra29935 Undeniably so. Best case they gun you down, worst case, you escape seeing something you weren't supposed to, and not you and your entire network must be silenced to ensure that no word gets out.
Yes tex talks battletech now you need to watch the Amaris civil war it is battletech’s equivalent to the Horus heresy.
That or the great house video
@@bthsr7113 how about both?
Agreed I've put it in the long request channel in the Discord. Upvote it people we need to have Tex teach the Old Man about Star League, Kerensky and the Black Watch
@@CommisarHood unfortunately discord hates me and refuses to even function, anyway could you or someone else please suggest the flood a modern day apocalypse by Cabezon I think the boss and everyone else would really enjoy it.
@@CommisarHood also community tab poll on UA-cam. As a fan of RWBY, bump it out of the running, please. Tex is more the old man's speed
Good to see you finally getting around to this lol, I knew you'd like it, Tex has a certain sense of humor and it aligns perfectly.
Tex's "Battletech 101: The Great Houses" is a pretty good primer for the Inner Sphere factions.
If you end up reacting to more of his stuff, his latter videos have insane amounts of production value; Tons of custom art, animated sequences, music, jokes, and funny shitpost type commercials. Some of my favorites are the pocket hibachi, Discount Dan's various businesses, Steiner Scout Squad, Uncle Bucky's Urbanmech Emporium, and a whole slew of others.
Uncle Bucky, Star League Auto, and the Pocket Hibachi are probably my favorite one offs.
Good ol' Tex! Glad to see you're checking his stuff out, cause damn it's good.
Thing about the clans is that they basically viewed war as a sport. Pick a time, a place, and we'll pick roughly equal forces, let's solve a dispute. That sorta thing.
Sadly that goes up poorly against a bunch of mad bastards willing to nuke you and themselves into oblivion for a win, who have been trying their damnedest to win wars for centuries. Clans had better pilots and tech, cause most IS pilots were barely literate madman with bad aim who had to get real close and personal and had very short lifespans, and most of their good mechs had to be downgraded, with most of the production plants nuked and designers in shallow graves.
Did I say sadly? I meant luckily! Glory to the Inner Sphere and Periphery! Haha!
I Believe in another TEX video about the clans, at the end he says "Clans play at war, the IS lived total war".
One of the reasons is because well for one the structure of their society, and two when you have little resources as it is saying "i'll fight you with just 2 of the 5 things i have is better than using it all and losing/damaging it all". The IS has hundreds of worlds worth of resources to throw at a problem, plus the nuke it, till it glows white was the prime option in the 1st session war and they had another 3 after that.
Tex's Amaris civil war two parter is highly recommended.
Rip Black Watch.
"Nukes are merely inconvenient."
Also worth a look is the the battletech fan animation "Hired Steel". 3eps so far.
Tex voices the lance leader.
Hail Cargonia! Praise z0rg!
One of us, one of us! In all seriousness, I'm thrilled to see you reacting to Tex, and sooner than I expected. Based on the poll linked in your community tab, I'd have assumed that you'd already be at the best fight of a show that really doesn't seem your speed by the time you covered this. My speed (for about half the volumes), but not yours.
Just to be clear, "Death to all mercenaries" is pretty damn insane when the most common role of a player is merc.
I was so happy to get the Zhukov reference. Kursk tactics make for good stories of costly victories.
Well, the Clans failed to understand what they'd be walking into. Meanwhile Comstar had thoroughly read the entire Clanner playbook, annotated it, and put sticker bookmarks throughout, and metaphorically dropped the thing on the clans' collective foot to start the fight.
And Clanner culture and rules are things Tex gets into elsewhere, butt the gist is, the Clanner ideal of war is not actually war, let alone total warfare. It is regulated battle. Akin to a sport as rituualized conflict resolution. One old quote Tex has pulled out to describe their loss here and their failure of comprehension is "Boys study tactics, men study logistics." Clanner violence is usually localized. limited scale, and brief. Grinding attrition was an alien concept when they came back to the Sphere. They have mighty warriors, not soldiers. They have Khans instead of Generals. They have battles and trials (by combatants) instead of wars.
A major part of why the Clanners are so messed up is a mythologized selective history. Their founder left out truths he found to be inconvenient when he penned his own story.
I was about to say, don't the Black Templars have an "Emperor's Champion" for ritualized single combat? The Clans are stupid by design. Great weapons and skilled warriors using those weapons, but almost no real comprehension of greater strategy and logistics outside of Clan Wolf. Yes, that is stupid hubris, and yes, it is a designed flaw of theirs.
Next, I'd recommend his Battletech 101: Great Houses video or the Amaris Civil War part 1. Or you could go to his very first video on his favorite Battlemech, the Awesome.
Given how Tex has been ramping up production value and focusing more on the in depth history, I'd recommend Big Red 40k for some more mech videos after you fill up on Tex. Mind you, he's also slowing down as he's making bigger ones, but there are more mech videos for him. He's also done videos on the main weapons and some of the other vehicles. Tex is my go to though.
Average Clansmen after Tukayyid: *Traumatized*
Average Imperial Guardsmen: Get used to it fucko welcome to War.
Then there's the WOB weirdos saying, "I want more, and I want it hotter!"
The Timberwolf (Mad Cat) is also my favourite clan mech, and Tex has a great video on it.
Battletech lore runs deep. Very deep. As much as I like 40K and its lore, it can't hold a candle to BT, imo. It goes from grimdark to noblebright, turning Grimdark again in a bitter twist of irony. The last stand of the Black Watch, the fall of Star League, humanities decent into fragmented, bickering feudal states -- it's all there. Plus, Tex and the Back Pants Legion deserve every bit of exposure they can get. If you want to get a good overview what this is all about, I strongly recommend watching the Tex' "Great Houses" video.
I'd always heartily recommend Tex's content, and if you want to get a better idea about the Great Houses in the Battltech universe, he's got a good introduction video here: ua-cam.com/video/HQhzlXcmTzw/v-deo.html
By the way, if you do decide to take a dive into the "Tex Talks Battletech" rabbithole, don't skip the intermissions or the credits- there's often some damn good additional content thrown in there as well.
Yeah, Goat's songs and the intermission trivia are nice.
Some of my favourite bits are in the intermissions, god bless Tex and Mike.
Most Tex Talks Battletech episodes are about individual mechs, and the setting/time they came from. Tex also has a primer on the Great Houses, and has promised one about the Periphery States in the near future. You should check out his other videos.
This from a Warhammer Fan. The best Heavy Mech of it's tech level, bar none...
You have offended the Marauder and he has removed your cockpit.
@@BigSeth1090 Your hot box missed, and my better cooled guns returned the favor.
Ah, yes, ComStar. My favourites :D Because what's not to like about insane quasi-religious omni-present space AT&T?
If you think that was stupid, the first wave of the clan invasion was stopped by a kamikaze attack that happned to get lucky and hit their supreme invasion commander so they had to pull back their entire invasion force all the way back to the year for months to elect a new one because tradition and honor demanded it. On a side note the clans have an entire line in their official oral history called the " remembrance " honoring the pilot who did that and her bravery.
Kapten Tyra Miraborg of Free Rasalhague has a name.
And she almost killed her ex bf while doing it
So a couple notes here on Tukayyid, the clans weren't being *quite* as stupid as portrayed here. The way the clans plan battles involves a system called bidding, where different commanders 'bid' forces they wish to take to the fight with which they think they can win, and they're usually pretty fucking good at knowing what they need to win. Whoever bids the lowest gets to take the fight as winning with less is considered more honorable. Obviously this is risky because it can lead to commanders going into the field without enough support but it's also considered dishonorable to underbid and fail to bring adequate forces to ensure a clean victory as well.
Up until Tukayyid the clans had been fighting first minor periphery states and then primarily Rassalhague, the Lyran half of the Federated Commonwealth and the Draconis combine. All of which were using mostly succession wars era equipment, which is very important, up till that point the clans hadn't faced inner sphere forces equipped with things like ER Lasers, Gauss Rifles, ER PPCs, double heat sinks Fero-Fiberous armor, or Endo Steel frames, all of which were lostech from the star league. Most of that tech had been rediscovered decades earlier but it wasn't in mass production yet.
The clans had spent a couple years fighting forces that didn't have equipment that was even in the same league as their own, but comstar was different. Comstar had been sitting on vaults full of star league era mechs and even star league era mech factories, and they had an actual war college with libraries of data on star league era tactics and doctrine. Their forces were equipped with weapons effectively two centuries ahead of what inner sphere rank and file had been using up to that point. So when they bid it was like they were expecting their opposition to be sherman tanks and found themselves facing off against M1 abrams, even if they still had even better equipment that's going to throw off your war planning. In addition they didn't know that Comstar had actual trained fighting forces and experienced officers because comstar habitually conceals such assets and pretends to be a telecoms company/cult. So it's not exactly surprising that they lost, nor is it just because they were stupid, they had been lulled into a false sense of superiority by two years of easy victories and had no idea that anyone had equipment capable of threatening them, and even still comstar forces had to completely maul themselves and even resort to kamikaze tactics to win.
When you go to a gentleman fencing duel and the other guy walk up with a shotgun.
Once you're a bit more introduced to Battletech I'd suggest looking at one of Big Red 40k's longer videos. More technical based, but still plenty of lore
12:54 It'd be closer to say if Creed was an Iron Warrior that was Perturabo's best and favorite boy...
Not sure the timing on this video could been much better considering Tex is recovering from a channel hack right now.
Clan battle doctrine is pretty dumb for fairly complicated reasons, but the Clans had a few things leading them off the cliff in this fight.
First, Clan equipment is phenomenal in setting. It's lighter, more compact, with better range, and hits harder than all InnerSphere equivalents. It is so good at this point that their bad battle doctrine hadn't significantly bit Clanners in the ass as of yet. Despite routinely bidding away their strength (more InnerSphere disrespect), they had lost only lost three times. The battle of Luthien being the only time they experienced significant equipment losses.
So, the Clans were massively overconfident, believing their honor made them stronger than the corrupt barbarians they were invading.
Second, the Smoke Jaguars and Nova Cats (Cats being even more complicated) both had very hurt feelings over Luthien at this moment. Luthien wasn't the first Clan defeat; but Luthien was the first defeat the Clans lost hard. They got mangled pretty good. They were extra pissed because one of the deciding factors in Luthien were two regiments of former members of Clan Wolf known as the Wolf's Dragoons. After that stinging defeat, both Clans bid away a ton of strength to get first and second position in the drop order, with Smoke Jaguar bidding away a full third of their best troops before the battle even started.
Last was Ulric Kerensky. He was the leader of the Invasion at this point, and he wanted the Clans to lose this battle. Ulric always opposed to the Clan Invasion and pulled every trick he could, short of treason, to blunt it. Ulric's liason for the first half of the Invasion was no one less than Focht himself. For six months, Focht traveled with Ulric, and while the ComStar Martial never saw actual plans, or how OmniMechs worked, Ulric made sure Focht did see exactly how the Clan bidding process worked. Ulric made sure Focht knew which Clans were cruel, and which were stupidly aggressive. Ulric showed the man exactly where the Clan blind spots were, and then gave him every motivation to want it all to stop.
You will like Tex a whole hell 'ova lot, I've been watching the guy for years and he always manages to be funny and informative seemingly no matter the topic. I suggest if you want to continue on with his stuff (which I recommend especially with Star Wars V.S. 40k on Hiatus.) then the next video you should check out should either be Battletech 101: The Great Houses or just watch all of the old short episodes in one go.
For learning about mechs I recommend big red 40k he makes excellent mech videos
Sven van der Plank, Madcat529 & critical rocket do good battletech lore dumps
If you want to learn about the Great Houses, Tex has a "Battletech 101" video on that. if you want to learn about the various Mechs, I'd suggest starting with the Mackie video. It is a long one, but since the Mackie is the very first Battlemech, the video handily covers just about everything on the basics of a Battlemech.
No matter which you choose to react to, Im sure you will enjoy it! I'll certainly enjoy watching.
Have you seen the StringStorm song about the grey death legion yet?
Clanners: "The trees are speaking Telecom!"
Tex has A LOT of great vids on the mechs and history of Battletech
All of Tex's BT vids are all fantastic. My favorite is the Madcat vid ( the urban mech comes as a close second) and that says a lot because ALL of his lore vids are top notch. And yes he videos on Mechs and has an intro video on the great houses.
Glad you liked it.
Explaining the Clan's approach takes a bit of context. Really their entire thing was about efficiency. They lived in a place that was starved of resources. They'd seen the horrors of total war. They thought it was all pretty wasteful. So the Clan honour system was basically about deciding who's best in a brand of limited warfare. Results would be honoured and both sides would try to preserve resources for the future while contesting objectives in an agreed upon manner. Most of the Clans were equal enough that a duel between warriors, squads or larger formations was a good enough proxy for actually fighting this out. The bidding system played into this, if somebody can take an objective with 2 mechs then they are risking less resources than the guy proposing 3 mechs.
The problem with the Clan approach is it only works when the other side is as committed to this honour duel limited warfare approach as you are, bidding down works because the other side is also doing it. The Clans had brutalised the Inner Sphere mainly because all the armies of the Inner Sphere were pointed at each other. They'd slowed dramatically after the Great Houses had made the official decision to kill these people first (the Great Houses literally kept all their best stuff aimed at each other for an hilarious chunk of the Clan Invasion) but the Clans hadn't really had much time to cotton on to what happens when limited warfare, however talented and well equipped your warriors, meets total war as practiced by a vast industrial power. They were treating the new defeats they'd taken like Luthien and Wolcott as aberrations, after all even though the Draconis Combine won those contests their losses were absurd compared to the Clans and if the DC could do this everywhere then they wouldn't stand out so much as major DC victories. In the meantime all their victories had suddenly become brutal slogs where again resources were being burnt at an unsustainable rate.
Focht for his part waited until the Great Houses had got their act together before pushing for this plan. Knowing that the Clans would probably still beat the IS given how late they'd stopped treating the Clans as some great ruse from their traditional enemies. They wouldn't be able to beat them after the Comguard had brutalised them on Tukayyid. Victory was not even really the objective, breaking the Clans was. Even victory required the Clans to be brutalised, the Clans got very close to trying to nullify the truce but in the end calmer heads realised they just didn't have the resources to fight anyway.
For the Clans part they really abandoned limited warfare as a concept following this. The later lore has the Clans behaving much more like a proper professional force. Of course having a vast industrial base conquered from the IS helped with that.
Interesting, i'm still reading up on the fluff concerning Battletech. The part i'm very interested about is how the Clans adapted to Inner-sphere life after the invasion.
@@Razgriz_01 Honestly that is still even an ongoing process, the current era of IlClan (about a century later) still has developments on this front. The Clans very much like victory to guide right and wrong. Initially there was just hard refusal to accept the defeat. I'd look up the Refusal War as it was one of the pivotal events that covers the immediate Clan response to losing at Tukayyid. The Refusal War was probably the first time the Clans outright abandoned limited warfare. There's 3 novels and a scenario pack covering the Refusal War.
After that Operation Bulldog and Task Force Serpent covers the Inner Sphere response to the Clans. The former is only covered by scenario packs and source books. Task Force Serpent has a scenario pack and a series of novels leading up to and including the Great Refusal (Refusal keeps coming up because Clans have a combat trial called a Trial of Refusal which allows somebody to contest a political or legal decision via force of arms) on Strana Mechty, the Clans home world.
Beyond that the most interesting parts is how Clan Ghost Bear ends up integrating with the Free Rasalhague Republic and the Wars of Reaving which dealt with the split with invader and home Clans (not all the Clans took part in the invasion, the right to invade was settled via trial by combat like everything else in Clan society). There's a scenario pack that covers the Wars of Reaving. No idea on what covers the period of integration between the Bears and Rasalhague though the recent novel (A Question of Survival) heavily features them and the consequences of their political integration with the FRR about a century after Tukayyid.
@@GMorgan84 Any recommended novels that covers the Clan Invasion, especially at the start of invasion? Currently reading the Grey Death Legion trilogy.
@@Razgriz_01 The Blood of Kerensky trilogy (Lethal Heritage, Blood Legacy, Lost Destiny) covers the Clan Invasion from the perspective of Clan Wolf. This runs from the first encounters in the Periphery through to the Battle of Tukayyid (I cannot recall if the battle itself is covered).
Legend of the Jade Phoenix (Way of the Clans, Bloodname, Falcon Guard) covers the history of Aiden Pryde (Clan Jade Falcon mechwarrior) in the run up to Tukayyid.
Traditionally Wolf and Jade Falcon are the leading Clans. The two stories somewhat come together in the Refusal War (which is the subject of Mechwarrior 2 if you ever played that) arc after Tukayyid.
@@GMorgan84 Oh damn, thanks for the recommendations. Definitely gonna check them out, thanks.
You need to watch rest of Tex Talks Battletech and watch those videos until end.
best part about the city fortifications? they were designed to let them into the cities, restrict their mobility advantage and THEN kill them in whatever direction they went, if they tried to leave they'd walk into ambushes planned to kill them on the way out.
It was such an unfair fight that the clanners had no idea how fucked they were until they were already defeated.
Tex just did a prequel/sequel of this Tex Talks Battletech. You should check it out some time.
You should watch his Tex Talks Battletech videos ALL THE WAY THROGH, because it's awesome!
28:05 Bud, it's fine. I don't have access to the source books, so Tex is usually my go-to when my brain clocks out for the day.
BTW, the Mad Cat is expensive as Hell. I'd rather have a Highlander.
Split the difference with a Highlander IIC?
To be fair i dont think anything could have prepared the clans for the religous fanaticism comstar had. They did kamakazi runs on their drop ships. Refused to retreat and force unwinnable battles to on their side to delay clan forces and make them use every round of ammunition they had.
The ultimate take away is that the clans won nearly every battle on tukkayid but would lose their war due to supplies dwindling, forcing them to retreat.
Also part of why the clans just took this fight. Besides being openly challenged, is they’d been steam rolling every innersphere force they ran into, even when horribly outnumbered they crushed every enemy they ran into, Rasualhague put up the hardest fight out of any House, and made the clanners pay dearly for conquering most of their territory. The pilot that kamikazed the drop ship taking out a whole galaxy and their khan. Was a rasulhague pilot. Comstar didn’t order them to kamikaze them. They did it on their own free will. That pilot was also the daughter of a hero of rasulhauge, whose last stand helped them gain independence again. Like 30 years before this. Plus the clans didn’t know that Comstar was using SLDF tech, which was almost as good as clanner stuff, that’s the tech that was the base of clan technology, they had double heat sinks, Artemis stream missiles, of SRM and LRM types, pulse lasers, mechs that had endo steel structure, ferro fiberous armor, one or both of those, he’ll some of the mechs they had were Royal divisions variants, literally the best, most armored and armed mechs. That had the most cooling, most engine they could fit in them. Comstars training was in the beginning from SLDF units after the Amaris civil war and the when the exodus happened, one of the SLDF units that stayed back. Was given to Blake, and SL Comnet, which became Comstar shortly after, to defend and train them. So Comstar though largely untested in war, had the best equipment humanity has made outside of clan tech. And the best training at base level based on the biggest and ugliest, hardest fought war we ever fought, from the side of the victors.
TTBT is great, I recommend watching his videos on the civil war.
I highly, highly HIGHLY recommend you watch all of Tex's videos. The earlier ones are kinda shit-posty but still enjoyable and the production of the new stuff is epic.
Tex really does have a way with words.
I'd say kind of on the remark about the mad cat being the best mech. I'm partial to the 90-ton MK II variation. Other than that, I'll take a Daishi/dire wolf, the clan equivalent of a king crab.
Tex reminds me of a few E-5 and E-7s i worked with no nonsense and told you how it is with a bit of sarcasm
Tex has had many hats, but none in the military. A lot of his friends in the BPL are vets though.
@@bthsr7113 lol not saying he was in the military just saying he had the same tone and way of looking at how dumb some of the higher up were
@@matthewdougherty1159 Okay. Didn't know for sure, so I opted for informative.
26:25 Incorrect. Dorn did almost the exact same thing when Perturabo challenged him.
Sir Mr. Tex is in MHO the best lore man for Battletech. You can't go wrong with his vids. Also their is a playlist in order if your going to do his vids.
Thankfully his TTB vids were the first recovered after his channel was hacked.
@@bthsr7113 Indeed it would have been a tragedy if not.
Long live Tex and the Black Pants Legion!
@@cpaul562 Very true.
Still trying to watch and rewatch his other vids though. Left mousing for the beep boop to be happy about his channel.
Check out his mech videos you’ll like his rifleman and inner sphere videos
Ummmmm. That MadCat comment at the end. You need to react to Tex's MadCat video
Cope and Seethe Clanners!
Ghost Bear very much coped but did not seethe, we knew how to change and adapt from Tukkayid. First thing to go was the ridiculous supply line from Clan Space to the Inner Sphere, moving EVERYTHING into their Invasion Corridor holdings.
And in these comments, we have clanners making excuses for why their test tube baby fursona enthusiasts got absolutely wrecked.
Tex has a way with words.
Swear Words i particular. :D
"-Behind every blade of grass" probably refers to the American Militia.
EDIT: As in if a foreign army were to invade the US, they'd be faced with a rifle be hind every blade of grass.
It's a reference to Isoroku Yamamoto advising against the invasion of America during WWII.
@@gregoryfolsom7882 true.
Why is this a thing...just watch Tex's Video and forget people who leach off of him.
Tex is going hard on the propaganda line with this one. He skipped over the part where, at the start, Comstar collaborated heavily with the Clans because they hated the more genocidal and anti star league successor states more. The reckless strategy of most of the clans was not only a result of underestimating the inner sphere, but a failed gamble by them to try to make the increasingly dominant Clan Wolf look weak, for political reasons.
the white stick nodes zombie animation part 1-3 reaction plz