Throat’s like fuckin’ sandpaper…

The thought crossed my mind as I brought the Sailing Saint around to gaze out across the roiling sands of the Bromide Dunes. The arid wind was dry, like the rest of this damnable continent, robbing the cockpit of every molecule of moisture it could get its proverbial hands on before whisking away again across the great expanse I found myself trudging across.

Galtor III had been hell these last few weeks, embroiled and on contract to the Suns to hunt the remnants from their last, barely, successful campaign. Their hold on the place was slacking, even now. The Combine would be back, of that even the middling family princelings above me could see and be sure of. Always hated working for the families these days, their orders were as sporadic and misguided as the supplies they sent, yet somehow still far more common than the pay.

“We are never workin’ for the Suns again after this…” I mused to Saint and the seemingly dead air of my comm. That familiar steady creak and hum of the old Charger’s myomer was my only answer as I glanced over our shoulder through the twisting morass of heat, dust, and fumes.

The rest of my Company had been sent elsewhere by over confident generals, spreading a heavy group as thin as they could manage. Sharon had said they were probably doing their best at getting their money’s worth out of us given the circumstances.

I just figured they were trying to get us killed to avoid the bill all together. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time someone tried to skip writing checks on payday in exchange for a good deal with the coroner.

“Skip’, got something on the scope for you.” Bron’s voice cut through my idle thoughts, calling my attention back to the hunt at hand, “Pair of fast movers about two clicks to your west. Beelining right at you.”

“Any ID?” I asked, hauling Saint’s bulk around on target, searching past the dancing eddies for any sign of the target’s approach. “Got nothing on my end.”

“Nothing on what frame, just speed and weight, both 30 tons; clippin’ ‘round 120.”

“Sounds like… What was it? Colonel Salavin?” I grumbled, the sensors in Saint’s targeting system finally getting a fix.

“Tai-sa Sullivan.” Bron corrected, a note of barely concealed amusement in his voice.

“Well, whatever he is I’ve got eyes on.” The chattering squeal of an ECM suite grating in my ears as the building plume of dust came into view did little to pull my eyes from the news on Saint’s display. “Shit.”

“Skip?”

“Omnis, Clan. Pair of Arctic Cheetahs. Loaded for bear too. If that ain’t him then I don’t know wh-” Saint squealed underneath me, reeling at the hit from the leading ‘Mech that scythed a slab of armor away from her chest before their second bathed us in missiles. The staccato howl and pop of the warheads smashing into her armor rang in my ears as I fought to keep us upright, the towering bulk of my Charger threatening to go down like a few dozen tons of bricks. “Bron, get me some help, now. If you need me I’ll be out here getting my ass kicked.”

“On it, Skip.”

4 Shells… 4 Chances.

Saint’s foot slammed down into the dust as I regained control and planted her forward, tracking the second cheetah along its wide banked around my left, slowing in the turn for a moment. It wasn’t much but it was just long enough for Saint’s ancient computers to get a fix past the noise of its ECM.

The massive cannon on my right roared, sending a titanic shell out across the plains on a trail of smoke and fire as it tracked, pulling hard towards the evading light before screaming past just a few inches over its shoulder. I growled, hauling Saint back and around again, tracking the pissant for a moment before letting a flight of SRMs loose with a cascading pop of kicker charges as the aft damage alarm sprung to life.

My back armor was waning and fast under the tearing claws of the first Cheetah. It broke and ran as we swung around after it with a stuttering beam and another missile salvo, ducking into the shadow of a rock pile and leaving its compatriot out to dry in the open. The cacophonous clunk and whine of the cannon’s loading drives shuddered through the ‘Mech as I hauled her around for another try on the first target. The pair were pulling away, extending across the plains to set up for another pass, hoping to spear in on me from both sides.

I had no intention of letting that happen.

The little Omni banked, coming to a proverbial crawl as it turned around to come back. An inexperienced pilot always took too long on the return, that wasn’t the Tai-sa, couldn’t be. Had to be the bastard that hung his friend out to dry.

That or this was just another herring.

My reticle lit gold as it finally settled, the seeker in the shell all too eager to chase its assigned rabbit. The squawk cut short as the cannon barked again, leaving a trail of smoke and fire ripping across the plains. This time it had more than enough space to correct on target.

If the pilot ever knew what hit him I’d never know, nor would I ever care.

The Cheetah went up like a pyre as the shell crashed through it, its warhead kicking off its ammo reserves in a flash of fire and dissipating plasma as the ‘Mech scattered across the plains in a thousand thousand smoldering scraps. My moment of satisfaction faded quickly with the renewed howl of Saint’s integrity warnings. The sound grabbed my attention, yanking my gaze from my kill to the rapidly closing form of the other Arctic Cheetah.

We hauled around, staggering as a spear of concentrated laser fire sheared Saint’s left arm off, sending the useless arm to the ground in a puff of dust. I fought to stay upright, knocking her targeting reticle onto the approaching nuisance with a frantic slash of the controls. The lock tone filled my ears as the target dipped and ducked past swirling eddies and low scrub, making a line towards their hidey hole again.

It wouldn’t help. Not this time around.

Captain Tom ‘Skip’ Cutter, Charger CGR-1A5 Pilot, Daylight Mercenary Company, Galtor III, March 3rd 3129.

—

Howdy Mechwarriors and welcome back to the Mech Review! My Clan Advisor is still around this week but I’ve got something she doesn’t know about now: A bloodname! That’s right, while out visiting the distant world of Old Kentucky recently I picked up the McKenna bloodname in an absolute throwdown of a fight. Great time, not really sure how or why I ended up there but there’ll be another article about it soon enough! Suffice to say she’s gonna be pissed and it ain’t even her Clan!

Anyhow, so, what’s waiting in the bay for us this week? Why that’s simple: A shitbucket! Well, at least in my opinion.

The Arctic Cheetah is one of those early Clan Light ‘Mechs that just couldn’t leave well enough alone and made some genuine early years… design choices. These things die to stiff breezes and cost way too much for my taste in what they’re doing.

That said, let’s go on a real cold safari and see what we can’t find out there in the arctic! Hopefully it's not a terrible 'Mech that makes me hate whoever the fuck made it!

Arctic Cheetah (Hankyu). Credit: Rockfish

—

Chassis

The Arctic Cheetah, or Hankyu if you’re from the Sphere, is, of course, an Omni-Mech and as such is unchanging in many ways throughout its many configs. So, what does the Arctic Cheetah actually look like?

30 tons
8/12/6 movement profile provided by a 240 rated Clan XL and 6 hard mounted Jump Jets
10 Hard Mounted Double Heat sinks, mostly in the engine, one mounted in the RT.
Endo Structure
76 Pips or 72% load of Ferro-Fibrous Armor
7 armor on the arms, 8 on the legs, side, and center torso, 9 on the head and 4/5/4 across the back.
9.5 tons of podspace
A base unloaded cost of 436 BV
A flamer that you would THINK is hard mounted but actually isn’t because it moves all over the god damned place so in reality it’s just fucking there. On every config. For some fucking reason.

Genuinely un-hard mounting the jump jets and converting them into armor and more pod space fixes this machine. Note: this isn’t me trying to optimize the thing so much as make it usable. I love the way the Arctic Cheetah looks and see the basic idea of ‘Little Clan Bastard’ that it could be but it is stolen from me and dashed upon the rocks by the perfidious idiocy of a 30 tonner who’s thickest armor is on the fucking head.

A world in which this thing goes 8/12, has no hard mounted jump jets, a full armor load, and 11 tons of podspace is a damned good one where I am far happier at the presence of yet another little idiot dude. Hell it barely even uses the jump jets, of the 11 configs currently in common use exactly ONE rounds out the jump jet load to 8 to get its full possibility. WHY?!

I live- no, we -live in a world of despair and terribly fragile death machines.

Despair.

Variants

These mechs have all been reviewed based on a standard F through S scale, which you can find described on our landing page here (along with all of our other ‘mech reviews, the name of the box you can buy to get any of the mechs we have covered, and our general methodology).

Prime

Man, you sure are, aren’t you?

The Prime starts us off by jangling a 1,334 BV price tag in your face. In exchange for such a price what exactly do we get? Well, let’s see:

Two LRM-5s, one in each arm, with a ton of ammo a piece in each side torso.
A pair of ERMLs, one in each arm again.
A TAG
A Flamer
An ECM Suite
An Active Probe

I always say EWAR is the best war but man this is a sad way to do it. At -3 with an alpha strike the heat is at least manageable, at most going up +3 with a full 6 hex jump, but you’re only getting so much for the pleasure. Even in the Clan Toumans there are better options for a comprehensive battle line EWAR platform…

Like a Phantom Prime or, god help me, a Parash! At least the both of them can take a damned hit and keep moving.

Liberty’s Rating: D-. Expensive lights are fine. Gun EWAR platforms are fine. Hell, lightly armored lights are fine. But an expensive, fragile, gun EWAR light? This is not fine.

A

I’ve got bees, and the bees say you’re a bitch.

All that other shit from the prime? Lame, get rid of it. Who even likes cERMLs and EWAR systems anyways? In this house we roll deep in the paint. What paint you ask?

Why cSSRM 6s, of course!

The A slots itself into a far more workable, and slightly more cost efficient at 1,117 BV, support option that can lend a hand to reach inside any open spots that your big heavy bruisers have been cracking open! Ontop of that we’ve got… a Small Pulse Laser and a flamer.

Sure? Why not. Gotta do something with the two tons left by the primary armament and it certainly couldn’t’ve just been having full armor on it in the first place.

I kinda like this one, if I’m honest. It’ll do alright damage, is so negative heatwise that it can’t go up even with a full jump unless its damaged somehow, or takes outside heat, and is at least somewhat reasonable price wise.

That said it has the secondary problem of still being a ‘mech that, in purpose and cost, is really just 2 Baboon 6s in a trenchcoat with less total armor.

God I love the Baboon 6.

Liberty’s Rating: C-. At least it has a purpose and a place but man it is getting way out efficiencied in the second line here.

B

OH GOD HE’S GOT A GUN!

Honestly… I don’t hate this, especially not for the even more reasonable price of 1,076 BV.

Packing along an ERML, an MPL, a Flamer, and an LB-2 with one ton of ammo the B has a pretty alright firepower set that allows for some work in the ‘little bastard’ field with the LB-2 and the occasional hit from the ERML and MPL.

The flamer is here too, I guess?

With only 13 possible heat build to work with, the B is at -1 heat on a jumping alpha strike. No heat issues, some real guns, a slightly more reasonable price, even though I’d still just rather have something like a Locust IIC.

Liberty’s Rating: C-. At least he has a purpose and an acceptable enough cost to work with? Still annoyed about the armor and the jump jets though.

C

GOOD LORD WHAT IS GOING ON IN THERE???

Ok so this is the ‘I’m a cocky Arctic Cheetah C pilot and I’m gonna declare a Trial of Grievance on my Star Colonel and their Mad Cat’ config. It is here to kill ‘Mechs and stab backs and, honestly, it’ll manage it. Four ER mediums, two medium pulses, an active probe, and the ever shifting flamer gives it lots of gun.

Well, right up until something actually hits it which isn’t exactly the hardest thing to manage in a world of LPLs, precision autocannons, and Targeting Computers. For 1,840 BV I could have a fucking Conjurer 7, a Black Lanner D, a Carrion Crow, a few Novas… Genuinely a shitload of things I might actually want to use.

Liberty’s Rating: F. HOLY FUCK IS THIS THING EXPENSIVE FOR WHAT IT IS.

Clan Sea Fox ilKhanate Arctic Cheetah. Credit: Jack Hunter

D

GO MY TOOB MEN!!!

We have here, in the D, our first true Arctic Cheetah that falls into the ‘Little Bastard’ zone. It’s been a long time since I had an entry in the category and I think the D certainly fits. For a really quite acceptable 1,080 BV the D packs a pair of LRM 10s, 4 tons of LRM ammo, and a Flamer for some fucking reason. This is at -9 on an alpha strike so you could actually jump the full distance, fire it all off, and take an engine hit before it has a real problem.

With enough ammo to grab weirdo utility munitions, normal shells for bothering people, and genuinely stupid stuff for memes at the same time the D is honestly the zenith of all Arctic Cheetah config design ethos.

There, see, I said something nice about this fucking thing. Honestly I might run this thing at some point with the random Arctic Cheetahs I’ve got sitting around… where to get the LRM 10 boxes for the conversion though?

Liberty’s Rating: C+. Honestly I love it. Only note is that that flamer being like… something useful would be cool? An ERSL, perhaps? It’d only add like 50 some odd BV and at least have a real gun on it. I don’t know what it is with the Arctic Cheetah and its hate boner for killing random infantry but it’s really cramping this thing’s style more often than not.

E

OH YEAH, ATM TI- What the fuck is this?

Oh boy, Infantry-Guy’s been here. How can I tell? Simple:

6 LMGS in two arrays, one in each arm with a half ton each, a random god damned Flamer, a pair of B-Pods, and a pair of MPLs. This is 11 total heat before movement so it’s got the same heat path as the D before it which is good.

At least the MPLs are good and it can do bootleg MML-3 style crit hunting? For 1,084 BV I can’t hate it too much since it’s at least gonna do an ok enough job running around as a light hunter/BA beating machine but man would I rather have something like a Phantom E for that job.

At least it’d have a fucking ATM on it and not lie to me!

Liberty’s Rating: C. I mean a pair of cMPLs and a bunch of other random bullshit with no heat problems is cool but there are just other things that will do most of this job without the uh… armor problem for a touch more. Like a Fire Falcon H!

F

Oh, you’re familiar, I guess.

Take a Prime and rotate it in your mind. No, clockwise, not counter-clockwise you animal. The fuck’s wrong with you? Now, go ahead and pull all of its guns and think real hard about what you would do with it. Have an idea? A perfect config, perhaps?

Well fuck you, you’re getting an F in all of its 1,394 BV glory.

Taking after its distant progenitor the F mounts a strikingly familiar loadout:

Two Streak LRM 5s, one in each arm with one ton of shared ammo in the right torso.
Two Improved Heavy Medium lasers, one in each arm, with the one ton of shared ammo stowed safely in your mind palace.
A Light TAG, for when you wanna play with your friends but like… not too hard.
A Flamer, because of fucking course it has a Flamer in it.
A Watchdog CEWS so you can break out the book and remember the difference between it and the Nova CEWS.

Cool.

An alpha strike with both streaks locking will put you at 1+ movement which is fine enough. 1+ movement for a guaranteed 10 damage is workable and I do love me some iHMLs but good god is this thing begging to be killed rapidly and violently. That’s a lot of explosives for a little guy that can’t take an IS LPL anywhere but the head without having a life threatening issue.

Liberty’s Rating. D+. Cool? Just… I genuinely cannot justify at or near cheapo Heavy ‘Mech shitbrick prices for a Light ‘Mech that will get its fade run by the ancillary pulse lasers of any given big old backliner it’s wanting to go fuck with, let alone the front liners it has to get past to do it.

H

The Arctic Cheetah is not a real G and therefore does not get one. You get H, for shitty Heavy Laser Variant.

Suffer.

The H is, as is so often the case with dedicated H configs, a heavy laser variant that makes generally shit-to-meh use of the weapons system. What do we have? Well, an ERLL in the left arm, an HML in the right arm, a pair of HSLs in the left torso, and a Flamer, for some fucking reason, also in the left arm. Oh, also a trio of heat sinks to get us up to 26 total sinking for the 28 heat we can build. 2+ movement isn’t the worst profile, especially on a loadout where you probably won’t be hitting the hammer every turn anyhow, but it is somewhat stymied by the fact that it is still a poor boy built of glass, paper, spit, and hope.

For 1,264 BV this is fine enough but I continue to pine for the world where I didn’t have a flamer and the jump jets and instead just had more god damned armor. I don’t know who to blame for this but I cannot help but feel they know their sin and are simply hiding from me.

I will find them.

Liberty’s Rating: D. I love heavy lasers but this shit is ass.

I

Do you like Microplastics? What about Hot things? What about Macro Plastics? What about Hot Macroplastics? Mmmm, Macroplastics…

The I config is a simple support weirdo carrying a Plasma Cannon with one ton of ammo in the right arm, an Improved Heavy Medium Laser in the left, a pair of SRM4s, with a ton of ammo each, in the side torsos, and a random fucking flamer again. A total of 23 heat from the guns and no additional sinks leads us to a steady 3+ movement profile on an alpha strike but it can be rapidly corrected by just dropping one of the big guns and that god damned flamer.

For 1,299 BV this is another entry in the ‘damn… but it could just be something better?’ category of the Arctic Cheetah family of products. This is rapidly becoming my least favorite line of products and I don’t know what Clan representative I have to talk to about it to make it so one never sullies my eyes ever again but I will pay literally ANY price to get these things the fuck away from me.

I hate it here. The Omni-mines fucking suck.

Liberty’s Rating: D. Get the fuck away from me.

Northwind Highlanders Arctic Cheetah (Hankyu). Credit: SRM

J

Yea, sure, whatever.

1,179 BV gets you an ERLL and an ERSL in the left arm, a PAC/2 and the fucking flamer in the right arm and 1 ton of PAC ammo in the right torso. It builds 18 heat while being able to sink 20 so as long as you don’t jump you can run around like an idiot plinking away with your pea shooter until something finally deigns to remove your petulant existence from its field of view.

Invigorating.

Liberty’s rating: D. I guess it’s kind of a little bastard but at this point I would take the literal first opportunity I got to turn this thing inside out on fucking principle.

T

THIS IS JUST THE FUCKING F AGAIN!!!

Take an F. Remove the IHMLs, replace them with ERMLs. Remove the Light TAG and the Watchdog CEWs and replace them with a normal TAG and- wait… is that?

EIGHT JUMP JETS???

My god they figured out how to count. Also it’s -3+ movement firing everything off if both Streaks lock or whatever. This is fine, I guess? At least it’s more maneuverable but now we’re at the point where it’s bouncing around doing a vague amount of damage and being a nuisance until it lands in the wrong spot, someone realizes they can hit it with everything on 8s if they stand still in their relatively safe position and it is removed from existence.

This inclusion of all available jump jets is not absolvement, this still costs 1,429 BV and I would genuinely just rather pay the extra fist of BV to have a Phantom C.

Liberty’s Rating: D+. At least it moves fully and does stuff, I guess?

Final Thoughts

God I fucking hate Arctic Cheetahs.

Get rid of the flamer that’s fucking EVERYWHERE and give it some more armor. Drop the JJs from the hard mount and give it some armor. Make better little bastard configs.

Look, if you have an Arctic Cheetah burning a hole in your pocket and you’ve just gotta run your favorite little blorbo go grab the D, the B, or the A. Or like… I dunno a better fucking ‘Mech.

Even still, these, and most Arctic Cheetahs, are one ‘ah fuck, wrong hex’ move away from handing the opposing Wraith a free ‘I traded up today’ sticker. The Wraith is 1,287 BV and it is LITERALLY, the baseline of fast Light hunting mediums. It’s cheaper than this and it will absolutely run this thing, and every other Arctic Cheetah’s, fade the moment it gets ahold of them.

Shameful.

Until next time! Fair weather, good seas and happy exploding-at-the-slightest-of-breeze-ing!

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