Comstar: [jumps into the space over Clan Smoke Jaguar's homeworld] Uh...hi? The Clans: Congratulations, contestent! This concludes the portion of the campaign setting where you continue to live.
@@eddapultstab2078 Or, in all honesty, they shouldn't have been made in the first place. They're a cool idea, but why bother if all they get is two seconds on the stage?
@@derekburge5294 I'm a staunch believer that Harmon gold put a major wrench in the story for the lawsuit. It forced fasa to use a time skip and use convenient but sloppy writing to explain a bunch of designs disappearing. Alot of rewriting had to be done later but it was necessary to keep the franchise going. I am sure they wanted to do more with rasalhauge and other concepts but just didn't have the time.
@@eddapultstab2078RASALHAGUE LIVES, the Rasalhague Dominion. The Ghost Bears have said "Fuck Clan Society" took custodianship of the Rasalhague remnant, intergrated their cultures and militaries. So now the two Viking cultures with samurai trappings have merged.
@@dmtribaltyphoon5001 The planetary authorities found out that you can buy Van Zandt mercenaries by shipping them Brisket in equivalent tonnage to their mechs. After that, it was a simple case of loading up the jump ship with beef and bringing back the hired guns to throw at the next wave of Elementals.
So, that part where the clans have to stop the invasion and go back home because their leader died actually has a historical equivalent. Allegedly (as in according to some historical sources but we don't know if it's true) the Mongol invasion of central Europe suddenly halted because Great Khan Ögedei accidentally drank himself to death. Because of this all the Khanate princes had to go back to Mongolia to elect a new Great Khan, which were great news for Europe since the Mongols had been kicking ass straight through the middle east and Eastern Europe and had made it all the way to the Holy Roman Empire at that point. I'm assuming this was a direct inspiration for the event in Battletech since the Clans pretty much seem to be blatant Space Mongols in general.
The Smartest Clan during the Bid for the Invasion Bid Their Whole Clan. Clan Star Adder Knew that the ONLY way they could conquer Inner Sphere was if ALL CLANS Invaded. The were Mocked for refusing to Lower their Bid. Khan Ulric of Clan Wolf looked at their bid an UPPED his Resources carried to the Inner Sphere.
Clan Wolf’s revenge on their follow Clanners happens twenty years before invasion, because the Wolf Khan ordered Wolf’s Dragoons to go native and quietly prepare the Inner Sphere. The Dragoons went so native that when the ilKhan recalled them at the start of the Invasion, only one member answered. They quietly supported the Inner Sphere during the Invasion until said ilKhan was killed and took part in the Battle of Luthien, which was a big deal thanks to the massive blood feud between the Dragoons and the Draconis Combine. The two hated enemies fought so well together against Clans Nova Cat and Smoke Jaguar that buried the hatchet between the two, said hatchet was buried deep into said attacking Clans. When you guys come back to Battletech, I recommend a video on the Wolf’s Dragoons.
Wait? Wasn't the only one who travelled back after the call for ALL BLOODNAMED to return to Strana Mechty the only surviving Blood Named mechwarrior left alive from the dragoons (Forget It, this is the Cliff Notes history. You want to listen to Tex if you want the History Channel [with violence] version...)
@@tehpw7574 Natasha Kerensky was the only bloodnamed warrior. Back around 3012-3019 the Dragoons were tasked by the Khan to prepare the IS for war. That was during their last supply run, they already had warships and prestine mechs. Also then current omni-mech diagrams, etc.
All of the Clans were named after animals on Strana Mechty. So if you want to blame someone for the juvenile names, look no further than Nicholas Kerensky. Another thing worth mentioning about Wolff's Dragoons: they had much better Mechs than anyone else in the Inner Sphere (except ComStar) when they arrived. Pristine Star League era equipment. The planet where Jade Falcon got smashed (and lost the Falcon Guards) was Twycross. But it demonstrates one of the things that most frustrates me about the BT novels; almost all of the named characters are absurd Mary Sues. The Summoner should have blown the Hatchetman to pieces pretty much instantly, but because Kai Allard Liao was sitting in the cockpit it had godmode enabled. The three Clans that joined the invasion after the election of Ulric Kerensky were Diamond Shark, Steel Viper, and Nova Cat if anyone is interested.
My understanding is IS aerospace pilots are a sort of crazy Clanners can't keep up with. Add in that IS pilots fight more, and they can hold their own or better despite the tech gap.
Clanner aerospace pilots are boring by the books fighters. IS aerospace pilots are mad bastards that you would only be able to distinguish from escaped asylum patients because they would be insulted by the implication that someone could shove them into an asylum in the first place.
They play whatever they want, and only (rarely) accept criticism on their taste in music with other pilots. They are the military demographic that is second most prone to getting into bar fights in the IS, riding in behind Hunchback pilots; Hunchback pilots are made of crazy and the ones that live for longer than five engagements tend to start being stubborn in their opinions. Source: I’m a Hunchback pilot, try to disprove my statements and I will start throwing hands to prove why you are wrong 😂
Actually for the most part Clan pilots flew circles around IS pilots 10 times out of 10. That one (no, not all of them.) named characters from the novels had he fighter run out of ammo and I believe was fatally injured decided to go kamikaze and just happened to fly into the bridge of what happened to be the flagship of what happened to be the main fleet that happened to have the ilKhan on board that happened to be on the bridge at the time... Seriously guys it's fiction they won because the writers said so, not because it made sense. Clan aerospace pilots are one of the more extreme genetically modified warrior phenotypes, they look like friggin aliens and are better at literally everything involved in flying a fighter than any human could ever hope to be.
Hell's Horses are also a damn cool clan for the simple fact that they fully embrace combined arms warfare and use vehicles in a way and amount that most other clans deem as outright dishonorable.
Okay, as someone who went through my Rasalhague phase ("They're a nice faction because they didn't exist long enough to do war crimes!") I am utterly aghast you say "it wasn't a fight". It was most definitely a fight, those Clanners had to spend lives, blood and metal they didn't expect to simply because Rasalhagaugans refused to lay down and die. There was no doubt to the outcome of the fight, but the Clanners walked away with a broken nose from the sheer courage and defiance those Japanese-Scandinavian-Germans showed. EDIT: Tyra's badassery gets even better. She not only gets named and called out in the goddamn Remembrance, their historical epic... THEY NAME AN ASSAULT DROPSHIP AFTER HER!
Not just a DropShip, the entire class is the Miraborg class. She also recieved an entire verse in The Remembrance of The Clans, essentially the Clanner equivalent of receiving a Medal of Honor or Victoria Cross.
Entertaining. Now for nitpicking. As mentioned in other comments, most of the Clan names were named after predators. Smoke Jaguar, Star Adder, Ghost Bear, etc are all deadly animals with some aspect they wanted to reflect in the Clans. You got bidding backwards, too. The bidding would start with the *highest* amount and the clans would bid *away* forces - it's kind of like "Name that tune." "I can name that song in five notes!" "i can name it in three!" So, yeah. The clans would start with massive forces and just keep bidding away, say, WarShip support, this star, that cluster, and there'd be more honor in winning with fewer forces (to a point.) Under the Clan way, you could quite literally conquer a world by challenging the owner to a fistfight. (Which I want to say Clan Wolf did, almost. Don't recall the details, but they sent a single person - Jaime Wolf, formerly Kell, I think, who'd been captured in battle - and conquered a world.) The point of this? They'd just come through the Star League civil war, saw what total war was like, had it affect their OWN worlds, left, came back, and wanted to limit the damages. Which is great with the little "honor fights" and challenges in Clan life. But, paraphrasing Tex in the BPL, while the Clans were having hundreds of years of honor slapfights, the Inner Sphere was having *wars,* and once they got back on their feet, reminded the Clans what a real war looked like. Last. As far as "Why did the IlKhan let that ship so close?" Tyra Miraborg was a fighter pilot. She didn't fly a giant warship at them - she crashed into the bridge with her fighter. (Think the A-wing crashing into the super star destroyer at the end of Return of the Jedi.) Doesn't matter if it's small, if it's got speed and mass, it's going to hurt when it hits. And she aimed for teh bridge.
The single person you are thinking of is when they sent Phelan Kell to negotiate the surrender of Raselhague, no? The Clans wanted to earn the honor of “first blood”, and Ulric Kerensky put forth the unmatchable bid of a single MechWarrior.
"Smoke Jaguar" is actually a reference to a real world Aztec god, Tezcatlipoca. The name is usually translated as "Smoking Mirror" and his animal avatar is the jaguar. "Jade Falcon" is probably a reference to Garuda, a bird-like deity common across Asia. And jade is considered special in most of those cultures. The Mongolians call him Khangarid.
Two notes from a year later: one, Rasal-hage, not rasal-hog. The "u" is after the g. Second, when this storyline was taking place, there was a lot of real-life confusion as well. This was before the internet, so the only way to find out what was going on was if someone at your game club had a subscription to a Battletech magazine. So hearing what the Clans were doing was coming either second or third hand. The fandom was in confusion everywhere, just like the Inner Sphere was. Funny thing is, depending on where you lived, the formation of the Rasalhague Republic was the newest thing. Then, to hear third hand how they were almost completely destroyed in the first year of this event had everyone confused. When the one year break occurred in the universe, it happened in real life as well. It gave us a chance to get real information as to what was going on. Sure, the Compendium had come out, but all it really gave us was cool new toys, no actual backgroundnas to who the Clans really were. The Jade Pheonix series came out midway through that first section, so for most of us, that was the first introduction we had to what the Clans were really about. In many ways, it was the perfect way to introduce a new faction.
@n8zog584 it actually was. I miss those days when a franchise could do something like that, and not have an "insider" spoil things by leaking information for everyone to see 2 days later.
One aspect of the Battletech/Mechwarrior universe I've always struggled with is the heavy handedness the Clans who would later take up the Warden philosophy, I'm looking at you Clan Wolf, when they annihilated Clan Wolverine. The Clan served as an example of the greatness that the Clans could achieve, if it hadn't been for the ego driven cult of personality mindset of Nicholas Kerensky.
Wasn't good ol' Nikky K. at the head of Clan Wolf when kerfuffle with Wolverines happened? That explains a lot, no? Can't have the authority challenged.
Thing is that Wolf was established as the "good guys" before they switched from "Nicholas Kerensky, the inspired son of General Kerensky." to the "Whoa, this Nicky guy was an insane cult leader !!!"
The myth of the Wolverines is ridiculous. They wouldn't exist if they weren't all insane enough to follow some guy into a second exodus just because his dad was famous. They were cult members like all the other clans, and just as bad and crazy as all the other clans. Remember, Nikki K wasn't even in the SLDF and wasn't a battlemech pilot in the war; he was a child hiding in Russia with his brother and mom. There is zero chance that Nick passed his own strict warrior testing program, which further shows all of his cultists were batshit insane, including the Wolverines.
The Clans' fate became sealed the moment Nick got his brother killed. With experience, Andery would've been a worthy successor to their Father. Nick OtOH, was unironically 'mad'; power, did not help his condition. Amusingly, even Wolf 'reverses course' (to a degree) after Nick kicked the bucket. They could not deny the Societal Benefits that other 'more liberal' Clans were experiencing.
yeah as many pointed the name of the clans are taked from actual creatures that existed at the time of the clan's inception, with the exception of clan Blood Spirit. To count: -Hell's Horses are horses with extra legs and a NASTY temper, making them flat out impossible to tame -Ghost Bears are ambush predators that hide under snow before pouncing on their prey. they also have an extra pair of limbs -the Sea Fox is just that, a fox-like sea predator. The Diamond Shark was in turn a genetically engineered animal made to hunt sea foxes to extinction, and the clan gave that move the middle finger when they took the diamond shark ment to murder their namesake as their new namesake, at elast until much later when sea foxes were brought out of extingction and they went back to their old names dunnmo much about the others, but you get the idea. Even the wolves clan wolf got its name from werent the wolves of today, but absolute units that made current day wolves look like pansies. also a LOT of the clan doctrines of batchalls and of avoiding waste as well as having a weaker industrial base can be directly linked to the clans being settled on worlds that are overall poor on ressources, meaning they try to make the absolute best out of what they have and simply cant bet on numbers. About the range: yeah clans have massive range, but they disdain artillery. Basically for them its honorable as long as you have line of sight, no matter from how far, but if not thats playing dirty. Lastly, something worth mentioning: its Clan Wolf that told Comstar that Terra was the goal of the clans, in an extra dickish more to mess up the invasion. in exchange, Clan Wolf KNEW full well what Tukkayid was going to be, and prepared accordingly, making the the clan that got off the least bloodied and the ONLY clan to have completer both of their assigned objectives on Tukkayid.
41:45 - I'd say Clan Wolf was more "if we're going to be forced to do it, we're doing it right". All told, I saw it as a win-win-win situation, if they did it this way and got to Terra, then they'd either be grudgingly acknowledged as the victor... OR... the other Clans would prove themselves unworthy by finding a pretense to declare "nuh uh, doesn't count!". And if they don't make it to Terra and someone else pulls out ahead? Chances are they did it by being so reckless they can't HOLD it. (A century later, and this pretty much got proven right with how badly Clans Wolf and Jade Falcon rushed to take Terra. Everywhere they HAD been was left basically open for people to take back, so one of those two got to be ilClan... but "you got what you wanted, but you lost what you had".)
24:10 Mind-numbingly stupid is a very charitable way to put it. The Auction process involved bidding as LOW as possible, in accordance with the Clan tradition of Batchall and their desire to minimise losses, as well as the honor and glory of winning a contest with as little as possible. Smart people would have maybe paid attention when the famously realistic, practical and patient Clan Star Adder decided that the best bid possible was EVERYTHING THEY HAD, and refused to cut it down. But as Tex once put it, the Clans are not led by particularly smart people. Just tough ones. Most of the Clan names are derived from genetically engineered animals that the Star League Defence Force took with them as part of the Exodus, or native creatures on planets they found. The Ghost Bear for example, is a six-limbed nightmare of a modified Polar Bear; the Sea Fox (the original name for Clan Diamond Shark) is a carnivorous sea creature that seemingly bows to its prey before striking; and the Snow Raven is an opportunistic predator and scavenger capable of even consuming the bones of a kill, leaving nothing behind. 46:00 An act of such daring, glory and utter badassery that the Rasalhague Republic renamed their highest military honour after her (the Miraborg Gron), and named their next military academy after her. Even more insane, the Clans named their next generation Aerospace Dropship after her and gave her an entire passage in their poetic history, The Remembrance. Only the most glorious, badass and absolutely legendary heroes of a Clan can even dream of getting so much as a line in their Clan's version of The Remembrance, and yet the Grand Council agreed to give one of their enemies SEVENTEEN in the shared sections. And when the Ghost Bears settled merged with the Rasalhague Republic to form the Ghost Bear Dominion, Miraborg and her lineage became a new Bloodname. 56:30 For those who are curious, there were two main reasons for this squabbling. First was because Clan Smoke Jaguar were bearing the brunt of the fighting on the Draconis front, and they're basically all the worst elements of the Clans distilled into one toxic and extremely stupid package. Their treatment of the lower castes was barbaric at best, and they treated all their 'allies' with outright contempt, saving a special flavour of that contempt for the Clan who were supposed to be reinforcing them, the egalitarian and mercantile Clan Diamond Shark. The other reserve Clan, Clan Steel Viper, are a bunch of hidebound, holier-than-thou jerks, and they were supposed to be reinforcing the Emerald Parakeets themselves, Clan Jade Falcon. While the Falcons are also intensely conservative in their approach to Clan tradition, they're also proud and hot-blooded to the point that other clans make jokes about how absolutely fucking crazy Jade Falcon warriors are. So the arrival of reinforcing elements on either front was seen by the existing forces there as little more than an excuse to grab free stuff in Trials of Possession. The Diamond Sharks sorted this out by just selling a whole bunch of hardware to the Jaguars, in return for mineral and agricultural rights on taken worlds (because the Jags didn't give a damn about that, again, Clanners are stupid and the Jaguars were the stupidest of all). The Vipers, on the other hand, wound up grabbing their bat and ball and going home later on, and adding an entire chapter in their Big Book of People We Hate dedicated to the JFs.
As someone who is a Smoke Jaguar I will say this about the bidding process. Everyone seems to not understand the point of why the Clans do it which is to avoid destruction as much as possible in a "perfect" battle by organization however the thing with the Clans I don't agree with is that the Batchall only works with other Clans because they respect what the Batchall is. All of the Zellbrigen should of been set aside during the invasion. Ergo, Wolverine was right.
And then out of a sheer act lack of object permanence, steel viper got their entire clan removed from the gene pool in a misguided attempt at political grand standing.
Im going to say this is a great video to watch with Tex Talks Battletech episode on the Battle of Tukayyid. You both do an amazing job talking about the clans and the events surrounding the battle and putting them in the same playlist is just a treat to listen to. Great job!
They had to make an Inner Sphere Mary Sue the point of view character for Clan Wolf to tone down Clan Wolf's plot armor enough to write a story. Lupus Delenda Est.
There was a fourth reason that drove the clans to invade. This was the fact that the Wolf's Dragoons cut all communications with the clans and were assumed to have gone native, which they totally did.
9:15 Turns out, they'd done both. There's only one piece of Battletech lore I knew before the year 2023. The clans coming back, specifically from a quote on TvTropes, where not everyone has quite caught on yet that, no, Kerensky and the Star League isn't coming to save them. Kerensky and the Star League are *already here.*
Concerning Ramming, you may want to look up the Naval battle of Lissa, fought in 1866, it was a major engagement in which the Austro-Hungarian navy decisively trounced the Italian Navy. Notable outtakes include: --A croat sergeant jumping from the Austro-Hungarian flagship as it was ramming the Italian one, and yoinking the Italian banner --The aforementioned Austrian flagship, Erzherzog Ferdinand (Mad) Max, conducted no less then 3 succesfully ramming attempts --An Austrian wooden ship (Kaiser) matrix dodging 2 ramming attempts for Italian battleships, only the then UNO reverse card and counter ramming an Ironclad, doing sizeable damage --Kaiser reported itself fit for duty on the next day --It was also responsible for ramming spikes being part of major warhsip designs for the next 50 years
It's saddens me, to watch clan Wolf being praised, while they literally genocided clan Wolverine, for being too humane, and treating naturalborns as equals (actually because they were becoming too successful because of those practices, but clanners so dumb so they can't follow consequences from causes), then adopted Wolverine's practices themselves and become powerful and praised.
Wolverine decided to nuke a genetic repository and it was voted by clan council for a trial of annihilation and they were denounced, forever to be referred to as the not named clan, where as clan widowmaker was wholly absorbed and adopted which then in turn provided Wolf with the second Kerensky bloodname, Natasha and Ranna Kerensky descended from widowmaker genes....
46:06 Poor Tor...man just couldn't catch a break,his lower half got crippled bad during the Ronin War (We merc pilots witnessed),then his one and only family sacrificed herself to stall the Clan's invasion,man has my Sympathies.
Clan wolf was not a pacifist clan, they where wardens. This means they were part of a faction who believed they had a duty to protect the Inner Sphere (even from itself and the clans). The counter to this was the crusaders who believed they had a duty to rule the Inner Sphere, thus protecting it from itself. Unfortunately there was a crusader faction within clan wolf resulting in a civil war that greatly weakened them for a time. Combine this with a traitor of a Steiner who decided the best way to come out on top was to betray the Inner Sphere and seduce her way to the top of clan leadership. It did not look promising for the Inner Sphere. Fortunately Kurita and Davian leadership as well as Comstar leadership where willing to sacrifice everything including themselves to protect the Inner Sphere from the clans or the invasion would have been much shorter and ended rather different. (I am not so sure Marik belongs on the above list) For the Record I have been playing since 88... I am a part of the faction that looks at the Dark Ages Clix game and says "WTF??? Who in their right mind would say "we have a 100 year armistice... lets all dismantle our combat technologies, abandon fusion power in favor of diesel, and sing kumbaya."" It is a bit of BS that came about when battletech was briefly owned by a company that had a very different idea of what they wanted to produce for a game. Fortunately topps sold the game to Catalyst and it appears to be returning to the story that was in the works originally with writers having to employ some strong suspension of disbelief to deal with changes to the story ark by Wizkids without straight up saying "hey we are retconning that BS.
❗️1:At least the FRR and Ghost Bears ( CGB/ Rasalhague Dominion ) merged to be arguely the best state of both IS and Clan with some struggle but overall, highly value family, tradition, sound plans and military aesthetics. ❗️2:The reasons for the " silly " clan names is due to the behaviour of the native animals of the clan homeworlds and genetic altered ex-Terra animals brought with them on the exodus. ❗️3: Clanners are "smarter" ( at least the science caste ), they just got hampered by all the batchalls! It would require 10x more logisticial and military power to ENCIRCLE the entire Inner Sphere! They would be too fragmented!
My favorite attempt at the Clans' ways was when an Inner Sphere planet issued one without an intact military asset to their names. What they did instead of challenging the Clan they were facing to a battle, they challenged them to a game of American football, and the loser would surrender. One problem, they were facing Clan Ghost Bear, who loved that game more than all the rest of Clan society, and they also stacked their team with the unarmored version of their Elementals, who were the "ten-foot Amazons" mentioned in the first video. They were also the ones to take on Rasalhague and respected the fighting spirit of those Space Vikings and added all surviving bloodlines to their existing Clan-ordered castes where each person would fit, likely also writing down all those family names as potential blood names.
I literally thought laughing sounds at the way they sounded recorded through an x box live mic were Steve crying in pain as you were torturing his broken back.
You will have to ask the forgiveness of the celestial wisdom when you get to operation bulldog. As for how the capellans supported the war effort/ why they couldn´t use it for their own benefit, their main contribution was selling good, modern raven battlemechs for cheap to the frontline forces. The FedCom Alliance had stolen the raven blueprints and factories previously but had developed it from a designated EW platform into a mediocre light mech. The capellans meanwhile gave it ALL the lovely little support thing like TAG or NARC which allowed the inner sphere to REALLY make use of their artillery advantage.
Clans typically bid down, not up. The most efficient in this case being the least amount of equipment and personnel risked, the better. HOWEVER. Efficient being the key bid point. Of course, outside of Wolf and I think Nova Cat, strategy and logistics were typically a non factor, thus the fact that the Clans as a whole lost on Tukayyid. Wolf did not.
As a clan hater, I am ashamed to say that when I first opened my battle tech box and we all chose which little symbols to put on our little paper mechs.I chose the wolf dragoons.
I dont know if this has been mentioned (looked through some comments, didn't see it), 44:27 "the il-khan and his flagship the Dire Wolf..." The "Dire Wolf" was the Clan Wolf flagship, not a Smoke Jaguar ship. The il-khan ("something" Showers if memory serves ?) was just visiting as he was trying to put the brakes on Clan Wolf, as they were sooo far ahead of everyone else :) Or was it because Clan Wolf made a "not so subtle dig" at their fellow clans demanding a meeting in their invasion corridor, light years ahead of the others... gah, i gotta read the books again, its been a decade or two....lol :D
Have to say the way you keep ragging on Ghost Bear its clear ypuve never actually been in the woods or tundra and have those things pop up out of nowhere. Honestly with how quiet and well camouflaged a Polar Bear is I can fully appreciate Ghost Bear. It also sounds a lot better than I wet myself when scary murder machine popped up out of the bush next to me.
I thought you played MW5 D: Tyra Miraborg sounds like Tyr's Daughter - the Rasalhague man who was too angry to die after he got abandoned by the Dragon's Breath mercs
Lyran as in a Lyre, like the music instrument, not leer. The choice of the Lyre was made as it was a name/symbol not associated with any of the cultures of the three groups that formed the Commonwealth; the Tamar Pact, Federation of Skye and Protectorate of Donegal.
Tyra was flying a Shilone Starfighter, when she kamikazing into the "Dire Wolf" killing the IlKhan. So yes, the clans didn't see her comming until it was to late.
The true reason why the clans failed was because they made one mistake, they invaded my home planet. The clans were defeated by a crappy cartoon making fun of them!
BTW... For those who are unfamiliar, clan culture has it's conceptual roots in the Mongol invasion, thus the leaders of the clans are the Khans, the first among the khans is the Il Khan. Same as it was when Genghis invaded the western world in real earth history. As for the killing of the il khan... It was largely arrogance, and a LOT of plot armor. You had a small fighter who was doing a strafing run on the flag ship. that flag shop could soak everything she was throwing at it... they did not expect something so dishonorable as to suicide into the bridge til the last second. IMO, it was simply some plot armor given to her so as to be able to further reinforce the connection between the story of the clans and the mongol invasion. After all when Genghis died, the mongols withdrew to their home lands to elect a new khan.
So I see where the next video is going but man you got to bring up the football game that happened during the invasion cause your buddy will get a kick out of that one.
Some of the misinformation in this is a bit painful. It is a good start for people but there are some errors that irk me as a LONGTIME Battletech fan....I may have to issue a batchall...
Why didn't the Clans invade the IS from all directions? Because they couldn't. First, there's the issue of transit time. It takes 8 months to travel from Clan space to Terra, at the rough center of the Inner Sphere. It'd be months more to cross the IS "south" of Terra. And that's the shortest route, fastest route. It would be through heavily populated and patrolled systems, pretty much guaranteeing the Clans being discovered before they can launch the invasion. It also means that the Clans that were to invade from the points farthest from Clan space would only have what they took with them and could not be reinforced. Any attempt to do so would be either too late or intercepted once the invasion began. Second would be they would be almost guaranteeing being defeated in detail. The Clans just didn't have the numbers or resources for it to even be possible. There were 17 Clans, but not all of them were equal. Add in that the Clan homeworlds _suck._ They are resource poor compared to the IS, and barely habitable. By focusing on one section, they maximize their forces and resources. By keeping other Clans back home, they minimize losses and wasted respources.
The proverbial straw came in September 3048 when Outbound light, a ComStar exploration ship, appeared suddenly over the Smoke Jaguar homeworld of Huntress. The ship was seized by the Smoke Jaguars, its crew interrogated and databanks sifted through, but Khan Leo Showers did not immediately bring the incident to the other Clans' attention. He waited until November to alert the Grand Council to what had taken place, presenting the information gained in such a way as to make several points: the Federated Commonwealth was growing in power and threatened to restore the Star League under their rule; the discovery of the Helm Memory Core and other Star League artifacts was helping the Inner Sphere to recover its lostech and erode one of the Clans' major advantages; and most distressingly, that ComStar was close to discovering the location of the Clan Homeworlds, leaving the Clans open to invasion.[4][5] www.sarna.net/wiki/Clan_Invasion#Prelude
Everything about Battletech is objectively dumb and that's WHY we like it. Especially anything having to do with the Clans. Clan Mongoose was technically absorbed by the Smoke Jaguars but in practice were functionally eradicated in the fighting of their Refusal attempt. Hells Horses are named after a failed experiment to adapt terrestrial horses to the Clan homeworlds. "A kindhearted warrior" chose to release the test subjects rather than euthanize them as was planned because someone said "why the f+++ are we even making hyperagressive, carnivorous horses in the first place?" Then some genius named Little Nicky decided they should be the totem mascot of an entire clan. The Horses were notable for first developing Elemental (10 ft Amazin GF) bloodlines and also preferred to use actual tanks heavily alongside mechs (operated by mechwarrior genotypes). The Capellan fans hate everyone. Including themselves. If they didn't hate themselves they wouldn't be Capellan fans. Emotional sadimasochism is a requirement to root for anybody that pathetically bad at being the villains. And It's Tukayyid. YID. I don't know how or why you get to pronouncing it "yAd," but it drives me nuts.
Each of the Clans were named after a Totem animal, most of these animals are bonkers, for example Clan Ghostbear totem animal is the apply named the Ghost Bear, think a Polar Bear on Steroids with the Stealth of the Predator.
You forgot to mention that the pilot who rammed the flagship was thought to be so badass by the clans that they gave her and her actions several lines in "The Remembrance" their official oral historical epics which all clan warriors must learn to recite accurately, there she is viewed heroic badass figure, they also named a warship class after her later on. Sure clans are shit but they sometimes know to give respect when its absolutely deserved.
Maybe should read up on Clan Ghost Bear instead of shitting on their name. Ghost Bear is a real animal in the Battletech Universe. And they are pretty badass. Reason why the clan named themselves after it. Also, how the clan was founded is pretty cool. Also, they made some of the better Clan Mechs for a time. So much so. Other clans fought them for the rights to use them. Which the held on to some. Lost others. Overall. Did pretty well.
These guys jest at the clans taking time to reelect a Illkhan but the IS spends 300+ years blowing each other back to the stone age. While comiting mass genocide & gassing entire planets making AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU look like childs play. Meanwhile the IS is holding mechs together with bubblegum & duck tape. Also this guy misses a lot of key points throughout the novels. Though some research was done. Lethal heritage would be a good source point for a vast majority of knowledge. Looking forward to Pt. 3 to see if he gives Clan wolf the proper respect for handing space AT&T w guns their ass on Tukayyid.
So the Totally-Not-Space-No-No-Germans™ looked at the Inner Sphere, had this reaction: "We have only to kick in the door,” the crusader Clans said, “and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down." And then what happened to the Actual-No-No-Germans™ ensued when they had the same reaction to the Soviet Union?
As someone whos been a Clan Wolf fan since the early 90's, I love the hate. The Wolves superpower is just that they dont subsist on a diet of leaded paint chips.
"Not a single brain cell shared between them" - Science Insanity Put that on a T shirt if you ever decide to sell some merch. Have one of the dumbest clan mech designs on the T shirt and that quote over it.
to be fair, their form of honor combat was to not cause the total destruction of the world's population and infrastructure, meanwhile, the centuries of combat in the innersphere was so close to nuking from orbit and annihilation that their tech and weapons were what they were upon the clan invasion.
then again I wonder how much of it is actually deserved due to clan wolf being less stupid than the other clans when it comes to honor (and realising from the get go that spheroids do NOT care for clan rules), not thinking logistics or collecting intel are for wimps (hell without clan wolf the clans would have invaded 100% blind into the sphere), adopting some of the doctrines that made the wolverines successful (ironic) and at the same time having all the advantages of superior tech and training the other clans have. Overall i wish most clans acted more like clan wolf rather than the opposite, at least during the invasion era (cant speak much for later eras, as from how little I know yeah they went full mary sues, what with clan wolf in exile and main clan wolf just being buddies again in the snap of a finger, and their ungarrisoned empire being untouched in the book that was supposed to be all about a landgrab against clan wolf... though their position as the big bad of the setting for the ilclan era tells me they will eat defeats sooner rather than later to preserve the status quo)
@thorveim1174 To be fair it is not just the Clan Era. They are Mary sues because they can do no wrong in every Era including the Fedcom Civil War, the Blakist Era, the Dark Age and shocker of shocker they are now the IlClan. Like I get how they can be dominant in one Era but in every single one they have Teflon. Definition of writers pet imo.
@@gabrieliacoboni6951 to be fair I dont hear much about clan Ghost Bear doing much wrong either (though they sure arent as influential)... Also for the ilclan era, yeah they definitely do wrong here. Giving the middle finger to the wolf's dragoons for no real good reason after they helped them take Terra is sure to bite them in the ass later... And the current leadership of clan wolf is a clear asshole, painting him as a clear target for everyone else in the setting. Doubt the wolves will go the way of Comstar and die completely, but they sure as hell are poised to get kicked in the nuts repeatedly with an iron boot, not only by the sphere but also maybe the clans that never moved to the sphere and may consider the taking of terra by a spheroid clan a complete travesty.
@thorveim1174 I do agree that eventually Clan Wolf will lose simply to keep the setting going but consider how Clan Wolf got to Terra. Said asshole leader somehow outsmarted everybody which seems to fit a pattern with Clan Wolf always outsmarting people. And as for Clan Ghost Bear, they are going through a Civil War while Clan Wolf isn't even denied. For clarification I am speaking of the Wolf Empire and Clan Wolf as separate because yes the Dragoons did kick the Wolf Empires buts. But that doesn't even hurt the Wolves proper on Terra who somehow kept finding forces over and over again to win again and again. I don't dislike the wolves as a faction. I dislike they seem to be a writers pet and have not been handled well since the 90s.
Comstar: [jumps into the space over Clan Smoke Jaguar's homeworld] Uh...hi?
The Clans: Congratulations, contestent! This concludes the portion of the campaign setting where you continue to live.
Raslahague: I'm born of a fascinating fusion of cultures! Fans will love me and the writers will make me matter!
Clans: Hey.
Rasalhague: Oh no!
They were gone too soon
@@eddapultstab2078 Or, in all honesty, they shouldn't have been made in the first place. They're a cool idea, but why bother if all they get is two seconds on the stage?
@@derekburge5294 I'm a staunch believer that Harmon gold put a major wrench in the story for the lawsuit. It forced fasa to use a time skip and use convenient but sloppy writing to explain a bunch of designs disappearing. Alot of rewriting had to be done later but it was necessary to keep the franchise going.
I am sure they wanted to do more with rasalhauge and other concepts but just didn't have the time.
@@eddapultstab2078 Yeah, that sounds about right. FRR Enjoyer's Face When... You'll never hear what swedanese sounds like.
@@eddapultstab2078RASALHAGUE LIVES, the Rasalhague Dominion. The Ghost Bears have said "Fuck Clan Society" took custodianship of the Rasalhague remnant, intergrated their cultures and militaries. So now the two Viking cultures with samurai trappings have merged.
"What in the the cinnamon toast fuck is a Batchall?"~ Some poor Mechwarrior upon meeting his first Timberwolf.
That pilot must of come from Van Zandt....
@@dmtribaltyphoon5001 The planetary authorities found out that you can buy Van Zandt mercenaries by shipping them Brisket in equivalent tonnage to their mechs. After that, it was a simple case of loading up the jump ship with beef and bringing back the hired guns to throw at the next wave of Elementals.
Same mechwarrior: My targeting computer can't decide if it's a Maruder or a Catapult and keeps flashing MAD then CAT!
"Hey, look what I found behind the Goldencoral. It's a Urbanmech with a nuke" some random guy on Van Zant
The ComStar Explorer Core vessel did in fact appear over Huntress, Smoke Jaguars Homeworld. Unfortunately for them…
That was the final staw for the clans
@@thejadedkiller No.... that's what you call... Opportunity.
Clan smoke jaguar? More like clan rabid Rottweiler!
Smoked jaguar*
Fun fact; Post Tukayyid they were Clan Smoked Jaguar.
So, that part where the clans have to stop the invasion and go back home because their leader died actually has a historical equivalent. Allegedly (as in according to some historical sources but we don't know if it's true) the Mongol invasion of central Europe suddenly halted because Great Khan Ögedei accidentally drank himself to death. Because of this all the Khanate princes had to go back to Mongolia to elect a new Great Khan, which were great news for Europe since the Mongols had been kicking ass straight through the middle east and Eastern Europe and had made it all the way to the Holy Roman Empire at that point. I'm assuming this was a direct inspiration for the event in Battletech since the Clans pretty much seem to be blatant Space Mongols in general.
The Smartest Clan during the Bid for the Invasion Bid Their Whole Clan. Clan Star Adder Knew that the ONLY way they could conquer Inner Sphere was if ALL CLANS Invaded. The were Mocked for refusing to Lower their Bid. Khan Ulric of Clan Wolf looked at their bid an UPPED his Resources carried to the Inner Sphere.
Clan Wolf’s revenge on their follow Clanners happens twenty years before invasion, because the Wolf Khan ordered Wolf’s Dragoons to go native and quietly prepare the Inner Sphere. The Dragoons went so native that when the ilKhan recalled them at the start of the Invasion, only one member answered. They quietly supported the Inner Sphere during the Invasion until said ilKhan was killed and took part in the Battle of Luthien, which was a big deal thanks to the massive blood feud between the Dragoons and the Draconis Combine. The two hated enemies fought so well together against Clans Nova Cat and Smoke Jaguar that buried the hatchet between the two, said hatchet was buried deep into said attacking Clans. When you guys come back to Battletech, I recommend a video on the Wolf’s Dragoons.
Wait? Wasn't the only one who travelled back after the call for ALL BLOODNAMED to return to Strana Mechty the only surviving Blood Named mechwarrior left alive from the dragoons (Forget It, this is the Cliff Notes history. You want to listen to Tex if you want the History Channel [with violence] version...)
@@tehpw7574
Natasha Kerensky was the only bloodnamed warrior. Back around 3012-3019 the Dragoons were tasked by the Khan to prepare the IS for war. That was during their last supply run, they already had warships and prestine mechs. Also then current omni-mech diagrams, etc.
A lot of Clan Wolf's brilliance is actually a series of retconns to make them the good guys.
All of the Clans were named after animals on Strana Mechty. So if you want to blame someone for the juvenile names, look no further than Nicholas Kerensky.
Another thing worth mentioning about Wolff's Dragoons: they had much better Mechs than anyone else in the Inner Sphere (except ComStar) when they arrived. Pristine Star League era equipment.
The planet where Jade Falcon got smashed (and lost the Falcon Guards) was Twycross. But it demonstrates one of the things that most frustrates me about the BT novels; almost all of the named characters are absurd Mary Sues. The Summoner should have blown the Hatchetman to pieces pretty much instantly, but because Kai Allard Liao was sitting in the cockpit it had godmode enabled.
The three Clans that joined the invasion after the election of Ulric Kerensky were Diamond Shark, Steel Viper, and Nova Cat if anyone is interested.
My understanding is IS aerospace pilots are a sort of crazy Clanners can't keep up with. Add in that IS pilots fight more, and they can hold their own or better despite the tech gap.
They keep playing the intro of top gun when ever they get ready.
They play free bird solo and kick start my heart on repeat while in the cockpit.
Clanner aerospace pilots are boring by the books fighters. IS aerospace pilots are mad bastards that you would only be able to distinguish from escaped asylum patients because they would be insulted by the implication that someone could shove them into an asylum in the first place.
They play whatever they want, and only (rarely) accept criticism on their taste in music with other pilots. They are the military demographic that is second most prone to getting into bar fights in the IS, riding in behind Hunchback pilots; Hunchback pilots are made of crazy and the ones that live for longer than five engagements tend to start being stubborn in their opinions. Source: I’m a Hunchback pilot, try to disprove my statements and I will start throwing hands to prove why you are wrong 😂
Actually for the most part Clan pilots flew circles around IS pilots 10 times out of 10. That one (no, not all of them.) named characters from the novels had he fighter run out of ammo and I believe was fatally injured decided to go kamikaze and just happened to fly into the bridge of what happened to be the flagship of what happened to be the main fleet that happened to have the ilKhan on board that happened to be on the bridge at the time...
Seriously guys it's fiction they won because the writers said so, not because it made sense. Clan aerospace pilots are one of the more extreme genetically modified warrior phenotypes, they look like friggin aliens and are better at literally everything involved in flying a fighter than any human could ever hope to be.
Hell's Horses are also a damn cool clan for the simple fact that they fully embrace combined arms warfare and use vehicles in a way and amount that most other clans deem as outright dishonorable.
They also invented the phenotype for elementals in a bid to create the ultimate foot soldier.
Okay, as someone who went through my Rasalhague phase ("They're a nice faction because they didn't exist long enough to do war crimes!") I am utterly aghast you say "it wasn't a fight".
It was most definitely a fight, those Clanners had to spend lives, blood and metal they didn't expect to simply because Rasalhagaugans refused to lay down and die.
There was no doubt to the outcome of the fight, but the Clanners walked away with a broken nose from the sheer courage and defiance those Japanese-Scandinavian-Germans showed.
EDIT: Tyra's badassery gets even better. She not only gets named and called out in the goddamn Remembrance, their historical epic... THEY NAME AN ASSAULT DROPSHIP AFTER HER!
Not just a DropShip, the entire class is the Miraborg class. She also recieved an entire verse in The Remembrance of The Clans, essentially the Clanner equivalent of receiving a Medal of Honor or Victoria Cross.
Entertaining. Now for nitpicking.
As mentioned in other comments, most of the Clan names were named after predators. Smoke Jaguar, Star Adder, Ghost Bear, etc are all deadly animals with some aspect they wanted to reflect in the Clans.
You got bidding backwards, too. The bidding would start with the *highest* amount and the clans would bid *away* forces - it's kind of like "Name that tune." "I can name that song in five notes!" "i can name it in three!" So, yeah. The clans would start with massive forces and just keep bidding away, say, WarShip support, this star, that cluster, and there'd be more honor in winning with fewer forces (to a point.) Under the Clan way, you could quite literally conquer a world by challenging the owner to a fistfight. (Which I want to say Clan Wolf did, almost. Don't recall the details, but they sent a single person - Jaime Wolf, formerly Kell, I think, who'd been captured in battle - and conquered a world.)
The point of this? They'd just come through the Star League civil war, saw what total war was like, had it affect their OWN worlds, left, came back, and wanted to limit the damages. Which is great with the little "honor fights" and challenges in Clan life. But, paraphrasing Tex in the BPL, while the Clans were having hundreds of years of honor slapfights, the Inner Sphere was having *wars,* and once they got back on their feet, reminded the Clans what a real war looked like.
Last. As far as "Why did the IlKhan let that ship so close?" Tyra Miraborg was a fighter pilot. She didn't fly a giant warship at them - she crashed into the bridge with her fighter. (Think the A-wing crashing into the super star destroyer at the end of Return of the Jedi.) Doesn't matter if it's small, if it's got speed and mass, it's going to hurt when it hits. And she aimed for teh bridge.
The single person you are thinking of is when they sent Phelan Kell to negotiate the surrender of Raselhague, no? The Clans wanted to earn the honor of “first blood”, and Ulric Kerensky put forth the unmatchable bid of a single MechWarrior.
"Smoke Jaguar" is actually a reference to a real world Aztec god, Tezcatlipoca. The name is usually translated as "Smoking Mirror" and his animal avatar is the jaguar.
"Jade Falcon" is probably a reference to Garuda, a bird-like deity common across Asia. And jade is considered special in most of those cultures. The Mongolians call him Khangarid.
Seyla
Two notes from a year later: one, Rasal-hage, not rasal-hog. The "u" is after the g. Second, when this storyline was taking place, there was a lot of real-life confusion as well. This was before the internet, so the only way to find out what was going on was if someone at your game club had a subscription to a Battletech magazine. So hearing what the Clans were doing was coming either second or third hand. The fandom was in confusion everywhere, just like the Inner Sphere was. Funny thing is, depending on where you lived, the formation of the Rasalhague Republic was the newest thing. Then, to hear third hand how they were almost completely destroyed in the first year of this event had everyone confused. When the one year break occurred in the universe, it happened in real life as well. It gave us a chance to get real information as to what was going on. Sure, the Compendium had come out, but all it really gave us was cool new toys, no actual backgroundnas to who the Clans really were. The Jade Pheonix series came out midway through that first section, so for most of us, that was the first introduction we had to what the Clans were really about. In many ways, it was the perfect way to introduce a new faction.
That is actually genius
@n8zog584 it actually was. I miss those days when a franchise could do something like that, and not have an "insider" spoil things by leaking information for everyone to see 2 days later.
One aspect of the Battletech/Mechwarrior universe I've always struggled with is the heavy handedness the Clans who would later take up the Warden philosophy, I'm looking at you Clan Wolf, when they annihilated Clan Wolverine. The Clan served as an example of the greatness that the Clans could achieve, if it hadn't been for the ego driven cult of personality mindset of Nicholas Kerensky.
Wasn't good ol' Nikky K. at the head of Clan Wolf when kerfuffle with Wolverines happened? That explains a lot, no? Can't have the authority challenged.
Thing is that Wolf was established as the "good guys" before they switched from "Nicholas Kerensky, the inspired son of General Kerensky." to the "Whoa, this Nicky guy was an insane cult leader !!!"
@@rotwang2000 Considering the whole Clan way of fighting and viewing the world, it was Insane Cult TM from the get-go.
The myth of the Wolverines is ridiculous. They wouldn't exist if they weren't all insane enough to follow some guy into a second exodus just because his dad was famous. They were cult members like all the other clans, and just as bad and crazy as all the other clans. Remember, Nikki K wasn't even in the SLDF and wasn't a battlemech pilot in the war; he was a child hiding in Russia with his brother and mom. There is zero chance that Nick passed his own strict warrior testing program, which further shows all of his cultists were batshit insane, including the Wolverines.
The Clans' fate became sealed the moment Nick got his brother killed. With experience, Andery would've been a worthy successor to their Father. Nick OtOH, was unironically 'mad'; power, did not help his condition.
Amusingly, even Wolf 'reverses course' (to a degree) after Nick kicked the bucket. They could not deny the Societal Benefits that other 'more liberal' Clans were experiencing.
yeah as many pointed the name of the clans are taked from actual creatures that existed at the time of the clan's inception, with the exception of clan Blood Spirit. To count:
-Hell's Horses are horses with extra legs and a NASTY temper, making them flat out impossible to tame
-Ghost Bears are ambush predators that hide under snow before pouncing on their prey. they also have an extra pair of limbs
-the Sea Fox is just that, a fox-like sea predator. The Diamond Shark was in turn a genetically engineered animal made to hunt sea foxes to extinction, and the clan gave that move the middle finger when they took the diamond shark ment to murder their namesake as their new namesake, at elast until much later when sea foxes were brought out of extingction and they went back to their old names
dunnmo much about the others, but you get the idea. Even the wolves clan wolf got its name from werent the wolves of today, but absolute units that made current day wolves look like pansies.
also a LOT of the clan doctrines of batchalls and of avoiding waste as well as having a weaker industrial base can be directly linked to the clans being settled on worlds that are overall poor on ressources, meaning they try to make the absolute best out of what they have and simply cant bet on numbers.
About the range: yeah clans have massive range, but they disdain artillery. Basically for them its honorable as long as you have line of sight, no matter from how far, but if not thats playing dirty.
Lastly, something worth mentioning: its Clan Wolf that told Comstar that Terra was the goal of the clans, in an extra dickish more to mess up the invasion. in exchange, Clan Wolf KNEW full well what Tukkayid was going to be, and prepared accordingly, making the the clan that got off the least bloodied and the ONLY clan to have completer both of their assigned objectives on Tukkayid.
Capellans: I'm part of the team guys!
Also Capellans: Kills Hanse Davion
Fun fact; Post Tukayyid they were Clan Smoked Jaguar.
The Clans named a dropship after her and put a line mentioning her in the Remembrance.
41:45 - I'd say Clan Wolf was more "if we're going to be forced to do it, we're doing it right". All told, I saw it as a win-win-win situation, if they did it this way and got to Terra, then they'd either be grudgingly acknowledged as the victor... OR... the other Clans would prove themselves unworthy by finding a pretense to declare "nuh uh, doesn't count!". And if they don't make it to Terra and someone else pulls out ahead? Chances are they did it by being so reckless they can't HOLD it.
(A century later, and this pretty much got proven right with how badly Clans Wolf and Jade Falcon rushed to take Terra. Everywhere they HAD been was left basically open for people to take back, so one of those two got to be ilClan... but "you got what you wanted, but you lost what you had".)
I’m crying “to break glass apply clanner” 😂😂😂
After this video, Clan Wolf has become my favorite clan.
24:10 Mind-numbingly stupid is a very charitable way to put it. The Auction process involved bidding as LOW as possible, in accordance with the Clan tradition of Batchall and their desire to minimise losses, as well as the honor and glory of winning a contest with as little as possible. Smart people would have maybe paid attention when the famously realistic, practical and patient Clan Star Adder decided that the best bid possible was EVERYTHING THEY HAD, and refused to cut it down. But as Tex once put it, the Clans are not led by particularly smart people. Just tough ones.
Most of the Clan names are derived from genetically engineered animals that the Star League Defence Force took with them as part of the Exodus, or native creatures on planets they found. The Ghost Bear for example, is a six-limbed nightmare of a modified Polar Bear; the Sea Fox (the original name for Clan Diamond Shark) is a carnivorous sea creature that seemingly bows to its prey before striking; and the Snow Raven is an opportunistic predator and scavenger capable of even consuming the bones of a kill, leaving nothing behind.
46:00 An act of such daring, glory and utter badassery that the Rasalhague Republic renamed their highest military honour after her (the Miraborg Gron), and named their next military academy after her. Even more insane, the Clans named their next generation Aerospace Dropship after her and gave her an entire passage in their poetic history, The Remembrance. Only the most glorious, badass and absolutely legendary heroes of a Clan can even dream of getting so much as a line in their Clan's version of The Remembrance, and yet the Grand Council agreed to give one of their enemies SEVENTEEN in the shared sections. And when the Ghost Bears settled merged with the Rasalhague Republic to form the Ghost Bear Dominion, Miraborg and her lineage became a new Bloodname.
56:30 For those who are curious, there were two main reasons for this squabbling. First was because Clan Smoke Jaguar were bearing the brunt of the fighting on the Draconis front, and they're basically all the worst elements of the Clans distilled into one toxic and extremely stupid package. Their treatment of the lower castes was barbaric at best, and they treated all their 'allies' with outright contempt, saving a special flavour of that contempt for the Clan who were supposed to be reinforcing them, the egalitarian and mercantile Clan Diamond Shark. The other reserve Clan, Clan Steel Viper, are a bunch of hidebound, holier-than-thou jerks, and they were supposed to be reinforcing the Emerald Parakeets themselves, Clan Jade Falcon. While the Falcons are also intensely conservative in their approach to Clan tradition, they're also proud and hot-blooded to the point that other clans make jokes about how absolutely fucking crazy Jade Falcon warriors are. So the arrival of reinforcing elements on either front was seen by the existing forces there as little more than an excuse to grab free stuff in Trials of Possession. The Diamond Sharks sorted this out by just selling a whole bunch of hardware to the Jaguars, in return for mineral and agricultural rights on taken worlds (because the Jags didn't give a damn about that, again, Clanners are stupid and the Jaguars were the stupidest of all). The Vipers, on the other hand, wound up grabbing their bat and ball and going home later on, and adding an entire chapter in their Big Book of People We Hate dedicated to the JFs.
As someone who is a Smoke Jaguar I will say this about the bidding process. Everyone seems to not understand the point of why the Clans do it which is to avoid destruction as much as possible in a "perfect" battle by organization however the thing with the Clans I don't agree with is that the Batchall only works with other Clans because they respect what the Batchall is. All of the Zellbrigen should of been set aside during the invasion. Ergo, Wolverine was right.
And then out of a sheer act lack of object permanence, steel viper got their entire clan removed from the gene pool in a misguided attempt at political grand standing.
@@Seriona1also despite all the honor, smoke jaguar still pulled massive hissy fits and nuked cities over infractions.
Im going to say this is a great video to watch with Tex Talks Battletech episode on the Battle of Tukayyid. You both do an amazing job talking about the clans and the events surrounding the battle and putting them in the same playlist is just a treat to listen to. Great job!
Ahh even in the beginning Clan Wolf already an op faction. Lupus Delenda Est. Great video btw
Someone has to be "The Protagonist" right? Lupus Delenda Est.
They had to make an Inner Sphere Mary Sue the point of view character for Clan Wolf to tone down Clan Wolf's plot armor enough to write a story.
Lupus Delenda Est.
Lupus Delenda Est
The Clans only made one mistake.
They attacked MY HOME PLANET
There was a fourth reason that drove the clans to invade. This was the fact that the Wolf's Dragoons cut all communications with the clans and were assumed to have gone native, which they totally did.
9:15 Turns out, they'd done both.
There's only one piece of Battletech lore I knew before the year 2023.
The clans coming back, specifically from a quote on TvTropes, where not everyone has quite caught on yet that, no, Kerensky and the Star League isn't coming to save them. Kerensky and the Star League are *already here.*
Concerning Ramming, you may want to look up the Naval battle of Lissa, fought in 1866, it was a major engagement in which the Austro-Hungarian navy decisively trounced the Italian Navy. Notable outtakes include:
--A croat sergeant jumping from the Austro-Hungarian flagship as it was ramming the Italian one, and yoinking the Italian banner
--The aforementioned Austrian flagship, Erzherzog Ferdinand (Mad) Max, conducted no less then 3 succesfully ramming attempts
--An Austrian wooden ship (Kaiser) matrix dodging 2 ramming attempts for Italian battleships, only the then UNO reverse card and counter ramming an Ironclad, doing sizeable damage
--Kaiser reported itself fit for duty on the next day
--It was also responsible for ramming spikes being part of major warhsip designs for the next 50 years
Slight correction, the clan invasion followed the Exodus route, they didn't invade Japanese Space Finland on purpose
"Bombed back to the stone age or fighting a continuous building war for 400 years"
Inner sphere: WHY NOT BOTH!
I cannot see but I shall walk through this minefield knowing my legs can take it - Atlas Pilot before murdering everything before them.
And then Fredrick 1 took a step
It's saddens me, to watch clan Wolf being praised, while they literally genocided clan Wolverine, for being too humane, and treating naturalborns as equals (actually because they were becoming too successful because of those practices, but clanners so dumb so they can't follow consequences from causes), then adopted Wolverine's practices themselves and become powerful and praised.
That's just propaganda from the Minnesota tribe
Wolverine decided to nuke a genetic repository and it was voted by clan council for a trial of annihilation and they were denounced, forever to be referred to as the not named clan, where as clan widowmaker was wholly absorbed and adopted which then in turn provided Wolf with the second Kerensky bloodname, Natasha and Ranna Kerensky descended from widowmaker genes....
46:06 Poor Tor...man just couldn't catch a break,his lower half got crippled bad during the Ronin War (We merc pilots witnessed),then his one and only family sacrificed herself to stall the Clan's invasion,man has my Sympathies.
Clan wolf was not a pacifist clan, they where wardens. This means they were part of a faction who believed they had a duty to protect the Inner Sphere (even from itself and the clans). The counter to this was the crusaders who believed they had a duty to rule the Inner Sphere, thus protecting it from itself. Unfortunately there was a crusader faction within clan wolf resulting in a civil war that greatly weakened them for a time. Combine this with a traitor of a Steiner who decided the best way to come out on top was to betray the Inner Sphere and seduce her way to the top of clan leadership. It did not look promising for the Inner Sphere. Fortunately Kurita and Davian leadership as well as Comstar leadership where willing to sacrifice everything including themselves to protect the Inner Sphere from the clans or the invasion would have been much shorter and ended rather different. (I am not so sure Marik belongs on the above list)
For the Record I have been playing since 88... I am a part of the faction that looks at the Dark Ages Clix game and says "WTF??? Who in their right mind would say "we have a 100 year armistice... lets all dismantle our combat technologies, abandon fusion power in favor of diesel, and sing kumbaya."" It is a bit of BS that came about when battletech was briefly owned by a company that had a very different idea of what they wanted to produce for a game. Fortunately topps sold the game to Catalyst and it appears to be returning to the story that was in the works originally with writers having to employ some strong suspension of disbelief to deal with changes to the story ark by Wizkids without straight up saying "hey we are retconning that BS.
❗️1:At least the FRR and Ghost Bears ( CGB/ Rasalhague Dominion ) merged to be arguely the best state of both IS and Clan with some struggle but overall, highly value family, tradition, sound plans and military aesthetics.
❗️2:The reasons for the " silly " clan names is due to the behaviour of the native animals of the clan homeworlds and genetic altered ex-Terra animals brought with them on the exodus.
❗️3: Clanners are "smarter" ( at least the science caste ), they just got hampered by all the batchalls! It would require 10x more logisticial and military power to ENCIRCLE the entire Inner Sphere! They would be too fragmented!
The Clans are built with only the finest of Kerensky's creamy soup stock.
You are correct.
On the other hand: how dare you‽
My favorite attempt at the Clans' ways was when an Inner Sphere planet issued one without an intact military asset to their names. What they did instead of challenging the Clan they were facing to a battle, they challenged them to a game of American football, and the loser would surrender. One problem, they were facing Clan Ghost Bear, who loved that game more than all the rest of Clan society, and they also stacked their team with the unarmored version of their Elementals, who were the "ten-foot Amazons" mentioned in the first video. They were also the ones to take on Rasalhague and respected the fighting spirit of those Space Vikings and added all surviving bloodlines to their existing Clan-ordered castes where each person would fit, likely also writing down all those family names as potential blood names.
Too bad clan Wolf had to screw it all up.
I literally thought laughing sounds at the way they sounded recorded through an x box live mic were Steve crying in pain as you were torturing his broken back.
Just found your guys channel, love the way y'all do content, entertaining and informative, with humor galore. Keep up the awesome work
One thing on clan bidding, it was the one that bids the least forces that would win not the most.
The clan Narrow Profile Brain design quirk strikes again
You will have to ask the forgiveness of the celestial wisdom when you get to operation bulldog.
As for how the capellans supported the war effort/ why they couldn´t use it for their own benefit, their main contribution was selling good, modern raven battlemechs for cheap to the frontline forces. The FedCom Alliance had stolen the raven blueprints and factories previously but had developed it from a designated EW platform into a mediocre light mech. The capellans meanwhile gave it ALL the lovely little support thing like TAG or NARC which allowed the inner sphere to REALLY make use of their artillery advantage.
I enjoy the new perspective on the battletech universe. 👍👌🤘
Nice outro. Pumped for the battle :)
Clans typically bid down, not up.
The most efficient in this case being the least amount of equipment and personnel risked, the better.
HOWEVER.
Efficient being the key bid point.
Of course, outside of Wolf and I think Nova Cat, strategy and logistics were typically a non factor, thus the fact that the Clans as a whole lost on Tukayyid. Wolf did not.
As a clan hater, I am ashamed to say that when I first opened my battle tech box and we all chose which little symbols to put on our little paper mechs.I chose the wolf dragoons.
Chicks dig giant robots
(comment is here for engagement... I have nothing to add)
I apreciate this greaty, thank you.
I have nothing else to add
25:59 I dunno, an undead grizzly sounds pretty terrifying to me.
Great vids guys! Really enjoying the content.
Love the timberwolf
I dont know if this has been mentioned (looked through some comments, didn't see it), 44:27 "the il-khan and his flagship the Dire Wolf..."
The "Dire Wolf" was the Clan Wolf flagship, not a Smoke Jaguar ship. The il-khan ("something" Showers if memory serves ?) was just visiting as he was trying to put the brakes on Clan Wolf, as they were sooo far ahead of everyone else :)
Or was it because Clan Wolf made a "not so subtle dig" at their fellow clans demanding a meeting in their invasion corridor, light years ahead of the others... gah, i gotta read the books again, its been a decade or two....lol :D
All your talk of "cunning plans" reminds me of Blackadder. "I have come up with a plan so cunning you could stick a tail on it and call it a weasel."
Have to say the way you keep ragging on Ghost Bear its clear ypuve never actually been in the woods or tundra and have those things pop up out of nowhere.
Honestly with how quiet and well camouflaged a Polar Bear is I can fully appreciate Ghost Bear. It also sounds a lot better than I wet myself when scary murder machine popped up out of the bush next to me.
I thought you played MW5 D: Tyra Miraborg sounds like Tyr's Daughter - the Rasalhague man who was too angry to die after he got abandoned by the Dragon's Breath mercs
Lyran as in a Lyre, like the music instrument, not leer. The choice of the Lyre was made as it was a name/symbol not associated with any of the cultures of the three groups that formed the Commonwealth; the Tamar Pact, Federation of Skye and Protectorate of Donegal.
that was the best sponsor segment ever. Surely you forgot to say Raid Shadow Legends is how the clans performed their Trials, right?
Tyra was flying a Shilone Starfighter, when she kamikazing into the "Dire Wolf" killing the IlKhan. So yes, the clans didn't see her comming until it was to late.
The Clans are fairly crazy...but how many civil wars did the Inner Sphere have again? Lol
No plot armour as strong as clan wolfs armour :-)
The true reason why the clans failed was because they made one mistake, they invaded my home planet. The clans were defeated by a crappy cartoon making fun of them!
Generally great video, but it's "Lyran" not "Lyrian" Commonwealth. Minor mistake, but it bugs the hell out of me. Sorry ;)
BTW... For those who are unfamiliar, clan culture has it's conceptual roots in the Mongol invasion, thus the leaders of the clans are the Khans, the first among the khans is the Il Khan. Same as it was when Genghis invaded the western world in real earth history.
As for the killing of the il khan... It was largely arrogance, and a LOT of plot armor. You had a small fighter who was doing a strafing run on the flag ship. that flag shop could soak everything she was throwing at it... they did not expect something so dishonorable as to suicide into the bridge til the last second.
IMO, it was simply some plot armor given to her so as to be able to further reinforce the connection between the story of the clans and the mongol invasion. After all when Genghis died, the mongols withdrew to their home lands to elect a new khan.
So I see where the next video is going but man you got to bring up the football game that happened during the invasion cause your buddy will get a kick out of that one.
Yes this strange thing American Football. I'll keep quiet about how it was played.
Some of the misinformation in this is a bit painful. It is a good start for people but there are some errors that irk me as a LONGTIME Battletech fan....I may have to issue a batchall...
It's hilarious that you keep calling "ComStar" "Comcast". I don't know if it's on poupous, but it's quite apt.
The names of the Clans were given based off of certain animals indigenous to their respective home worlds
Why didn't the Clans invade the IS from all directions? Because they couldn't. First, there's the issue of transit time. It takes 8 months to travel from Clan space to Terra, at the rough center of the Inner Sphere. It'd be months more to cross the IS "south" of Terra. And that's the shortest route, fastest route. It would be through heavily populated and patrolled systems, pretty much guaranteeing the Clans being discovered before they can launch the invasion. It also means that the Clans that were to invade from the points farthest from Clan space would only have what they took with them and could not be reinforced. Any attempt to do so would be either too late or intercepted once the invasion began.
Second would be they would be almost guaranteeing being defeated in detail. The Clans just didn't have the numbers or resources for it to even be possible. There were 17 Clans, but not all of them were equal. Add in that the Clan homeworlds _suck._ They are resource poor compared to the IS, and barely habitable. By focusing on one section, they maximize their forces and resources. By keeping other Clans back home, they minimize losses and wasted respources.
You insult the ghost Bear name?
I challenge you to a trial of grievance!!
"Bang zoon! To 'da Inner Sphere, Alice!"
Ah an hour long little bite sized piece
The proverbial straw came in September 3048 when Outbound light, a ComStar exploration ship, appeared suddenly over the Smoke Jaguar homeworld of Huntress. The ship was seized by the Smoke Jaguars, its crew interrogated and databanks sifted through, but Khan Leo Showers did not immediately bring the incident to the other Clans' attention. He waited until November to alert the Grand Council to what had taken place, presenting the information gained in such a way as to make several points: the Federated Commonwealth was growing in power and threatened to restore the Star League under their rule; the discovery of the Helm Memory Core and other Star League artifacts was helping the Inner Sphere to recover its lostech and erode one of the Clans' major advantages; and most distressingly, that ComStar was close to discovering the location of the Clan Homeworlds, leaving the Clans open to invasion.[4][5]
www.sarna.net/wiki/Clan_Invasion#Prelude
this is like Tex Talk Battletech lit
U got a music list for those background themes?
Everything about Battletech is objectively dumb and that's WHY we like it. Especially anything having to do with the Clans.
Clan Mongoose was technically absorbed by the Smoke Jaguars but in practice were functionally eradicated in the fighting of their Refusal attempt.
Hells Horses are named after a failed experiment to adapt terrestrial horses to the Clan homeworlds. "A kindhearted warrior" chose to release the test subjects rather than euthanize them as was planned because someone said "why the f+++ are we even making hyperagressive, carnivorous horses in the first place?" Then some genius named Little Nicky decided they should be the totem mascot of an entire clan. The Horses were notable for first developing Elemental (10 ft Amazin GF) bloodlines and also preferred to use actual tanks heavily alongside mechs (operated by mechwarrior genotypes).
The Capellan fans hate everyone. Including themselves. If they didn't hate themselves they wouldn't be Capellan fans. Emotional sadimasochism is a requirement to root for anybody that pathetically bad at being the villains.
And It's Tukayyid. YID. I don't know how or why you get to pronouncing it "yAd," but it drives me nuts.
Each of the Clans were named after a Totem animal, most of these animals are bonkers, for example Clan Ghostbear totem animal is the apply named the Ghost Bear, think a Polar Bear on Steroids with the Stealth of the Predator.
You forgot to mention that the pilot who rammed the flagship was thought to be so badass by the clans that they gave her and her actions several lines in "The Remembrance" their official oral historical epics which all clan warriors must learn to recite accurately, there she is viewed heroic badass figure, they also named a warship class after her later on. Sure clans are shit but they sometimes know to give respect when its absolutely deserved.
Maybe should read up on Clan Ghost Bear instead of shitting on their name. Ghost Bear is a real animal in the Battletech Universe. And they are pretty badass. Reason why the clan named themselves after it. Also, how the clan was founded is pretty cool. Also, they made some of the better Clan Mechs for a time. So much so. Other clans fought them for the rights to use them. Which the held on to some. Lost others. Overall. Did pretty well.
Clan Wolf = clever badasses!
I always thought most of the clans names were cool though...guess I'm lame
You’re not, this guy just thinks he’s funnier than he is.
Clan Ghost Bear is the best name, fight me.
the clanners almost did what they were originally supposed to do and recreate the star league by bringing the inner sphere together to fight them
canadian are the best
39:09 this guy thinks there Capellan fans out there.
These guys jest at the clans taking time to reelect a Illkhan but the IS spends 300+ years blowing each other back to the stone age. While comiting mass genocide & gassing entire planets making AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU look like childs play. Meanwhile the IS is holding mechs together with bubblegum & duck tape. Also this guy misses a lot of key points throughout the novels. Though some research was done. Lethal heritage would be a good source point for a vast majority of knowledge. Looking forward to Pt. 3 to see if he gives Clan wolf the proper respect for handing space AT&T w guns their ass on Tukayyid.
So the Totally-Not-Space-No-No-Germans™ looked at the Inner Sphere, had this reaction:
"We have only to kick in the door,” the crusader Clans said, “and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down."
And then what happened to the Actual-No-No-Germans™ ensued when they had the same reaction to the Soviet Union?
What's the background music? Sounds extremely familiar...FTL?
Yeah
Yussss!
Best plan to screw over the other clans, become Il-clan
Invasion Corridors sound too much like they where playing too many clan slanted MOBAs the chatternet
“Sponsored by Clan soggy bear 🐻 “
As someone whos been a Clan Wolf fan since the early 90's, I love the hate. The Wolves superpower is just that they dont subsist on a diet of leaded paint chips.
I got into battletech right when this northern nibba started this channel
Welcome to battletech
Glory to Jade Falcon
"Not a single brain cell shared between them" - Science Insanity
Put that on a T shirt if you ever decide to sell some merch. Have one of the dumbest clan mech designs on the T shirt and that quote over it.
The Capelens have fans?😮
All Jade Falcon hate comes from either jealousy or smooth brains poisoned by the cartoon propaganda
The illest of the clans
Oh he likes Clan Wolf. Let’s see how long that lasts
to be fair, their form of honor combat was to not cause the total destruction of the world's population and infrastructure, meanwhile, the centuries of combat in the innersphere was so close to nuking from orbit and annihilation that their tech and weapons were what they were upon the clan invasion.
Clan Wolf is the definition of a Mary Sue.
then again I wonder how much of it is actually deserved due to clan wolf being less stupid than the other clans when it comes to honor (and realising from the get go that spheroids do NOT care for clan rules), not thinking logistics or collecting intel are for wimps (hell without clan wolf the clans would have invaded 100% blind into the sphere), adopting some of the doctrines that made the wolverines successful (ironic) and at the same time having all the advantages of superior tech and training the other clans have.
Overall i wish most clans acted more like clan wolf rather than the opposite, at least during the invasion era (cant speak much for later eras, as from how little I know yeah they went full mary sues, what with clan wolf in exile and main clan wolf just being buddies again in the snap of a finger, and their ungarrisoned empire being untouched in the book that was supposed to be all about a landgrab against clan wolf... though their position as the big bad of the setting for the ilclan era tells me they will eat defeats sooner rather than later to preserve the status quo)
@thorveim1174 To be fair it is not just the Clan Era. They are Mary sues because they can do no wrong in every Era including the Fedcom Civil War, the Blakist Era, the Dark Age and shocker of shocker they are now the IlClan. Like I get how they can be dominant in one Era but in every single one they have Teflon. Definition of writers pet imo.
@@gabrieliacoboni6951 to be fair I dont hear much about clan Ghost Bear doing much wrong either (though they sure arent as influential)... Also for the ilclan era, yeah they definitely do wrong here. Giving the middle finger to the wolf's dragoons for no real good reason after they helped them take Terra is sure to bite them in the ass later... And the current leadership of clan wolf is a clear asshole, painting him as a clear target for everyone else in the setting. Doubt the wolves will go the way of Comstar and die completely, but they sure as hell are poised to get kicked in the nuts repeatedly with an iron boot, not only by the sphere but also maybe the clans that never moved to the sphere and may consider the taking of terra by a spheroid clan a complete travesty.
@thorveim1174 I do agree that eventually Clan Wolf will lose simply to keep the setting going but consider how Clan Wolf got to Terra. Said asshole leader somehow outsmarted everybody which seems to fit a pattern with Clan Wolf always outsmarting people. And as for Clan Ghost Bear, they are going through a Civil War while Clan Wolf isn't even denied. For clarification I am speaking of the Wolf Empire and Clan Wolf as separate because yes the Dragoons did kick the Wolf Empires buts. But that doesn't even hurt the Wolves proper on Terra who somehow kept finding forces over and over again to win again and again. I don't dislike the wolves as a faction. I dislike they seem to be a writers pet and have not been handled well since the 90s.
Ehhh….I wouldn’t go that far