BattleTech Mech Overview: Guillotine

Hey there, MechWarriors! Today we're taking a look at a mech I'm irrationally fond of, the Guillotine! When I played Harebrained Schemes' BattleTech, I fell fast in love with the Grasshopper as a rugged mech with decent mobility and the ability to put on one hell of a laser light show. When I started playing Classic BattleTech a few years later, I looked over the Master Unit List to pick out the Free Worlds League's special toys, and I was immediately drawn to the Guillotine as a Grasshopper side-grade with a more useful missile weapon. A Guillotine was a constant presence in my early tabletop forces, and while I don't field it nearly as often these days, I still hold a deep love for this silly lopsided machine.

Guillotine. Credit: porble

The Guillotine is a 70-tonner with a very strong identity. It always moves 4/6/4, unless it decides to go 4/6/6 instead, and almost always has a standard fusion engine. It frequently has the same or almost the same armor layout, pretty thick but not maxed out for its frame. It always has a missile launcher in its center torso, and almost always has nothing but energy weapons anywhere else. It bears a cool-looking-but-impractical asymmetric arm actuator distribution with only upper arm on the left and both lower and upper on the right, so it can neither flip arms nor can it punch worth anything. With a Guillotine, you always know generally what to expect. But should you be expecting something worth fielding against all comers? Let's find out.

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).

GLT-3N

The basic Guillotine sets the tone for all the Guillotines which follow. It's a product of the Star League, but light on LosTech, with an Endo-Steel chassis and CASE for its one ton of SRM ammo as its only advanced features. Its armor is laid out well, able to soak an AC/20 round to any non-head location on the front, and thick enough to stop the first IS Large Laser that hits any of its rear torso locations. A generous 25 single heat sinks are plenty, enough to make its brawling arsenal of a single Large Laser, four regular Medium Lasers, and an SRM-6 heat neutral on a walking Alpha Strike.

Honestly, this is a really solid no-frills Heavy at 1,418 BV. It can't do much at longer ranges with just a Large Laser to poke with, but its jump jets help it keep out of line of sight while it's closing the distance, and once it's in the middle of a brouhaha it's in its element. The 3N runs cool enough that I might've liked to have seen a second ton of SRM ammo for Infernos, but I don't know what I'd be willing to lose for it. Good mech.

Lynn's Rating: B

GLT-4L

So this is the Late Succession Wars downgrade, and remember how I mentioned that Endo-Steel and CASE were all the 3N had in terms of LosTech? Yeah, the 4L is the exact same mech, just with three fewer heat sinks and no CASE. It honestly still handles its heat pretty well, only going up to +4 on a running alpha, and with four heat sinks, a medium laser, and one of the jump jets in the right torso alongside the SRM ammo, its only explosive crit slot is well-padded. It is still more vulnerable and less efficient than its older brother, and only 18 BV cheaper at 1,400 even, but if you're trapped in Succession Wars hell you could do much worse.

Lynn's Rating: C+

Guillotine. Credit: Valk

GLT-4P

Oh, no, this is the first of the Bad Idea Guillotines! So, the 4P decided that it needed to upgrade the 4L's Large Laser to a PPC, but it's still an IntroTech variant, so it doesn't have any weight savings tech to help it do so, so it just pulls armor to make up the difference. The legs and CT still look pretty good, but elsewhere it's getting thin for a mech that isn't particularly fast and still does the majority of its damage at 3/6/9 range. The heat sinks are still the same as the 4L, so we're looking a little toasty on an alpha strike, but it's oversinked for bracket-firing either the PPC or the full close-range battery. And all this for +2 damage and a touch of range on its one long-range weapon. The Grasshopper 5N is a competent SuccWars LL > PPC swap, but this, sadly, isn't. A modest price break to 1,376 BV doesn't save it.

Lynn's Rating: D

GLT-5M

The revitalized Helm Renaissance Guillotine, this is almost exactly a 3N. The one and only change the fat cats at Irian BattleMechs Unlimited made was upgrading the 3N's Large Laser to an ERLL. This is probably the Guillotine I've used the most due to availability, and it's... alright. The added heat of the ERLL makes heat management an active task when you start brawling, since the 5M goes to +4 on a walking alpha, but the added range can genuinely be nice when you're taking pot-shots on the way to the fight. With only a tiny BV increase to 1,472, this is still pretty solid.

Lynn's Rating: B-

Guillotine. Credit: Jack Hunter

GLT-6WB

Ah, the Blakists are here. The 6WB somehow manages to completely alter the use case of the Guillotine without really altering its flavor at all. Speed's the same, standard engine's the same, we've swapped from Endo-Steel to Ferro-Fibrous for our weight-savings tech (picking up a whopping five points of additional armor in the process), and there's still a quartet of medium lasers, a CT missile weapon, and one heavier energy gun in the left arm. So far so similar, but our heat sinks are now 11 doubles (sinking the same as the 4L and 4P's 22 singles, albeit at a significant weight savings), all the MLs are now ERMLs, the big energy gun is a Heavy PPC, the CT missiles are a goddamn LRM-15 (possible thanks to a Compact Gyro), and a Small Cockpit squeezes a C3i unit into the head.

What we have now is a bracket-fire mech that would much rather be at long range than short. A Heavy PPC and LRM-15 can have pretty frightening reach in a C3i network, and this mech is heat neutral firing them at a run; at close range it needs to swap over to the four ERMLs, but those aren't nearly as impressive as its long-range punch. Since it wants to hang back anyway, I would rather have slightly lighter armor than the Small Cockpit, but you can always count on the Blakists to place pilot well-being last. They didn't spring for CASE, either, and with all of this mech's heat sinks hidden in the engine, the right torso is now 1/3rd explosive crits by volume. Fun. With the headchop tax on the HPPC and the generally higher cost of longer-range weapons, we're looking at 1,672 BV for this package.

Lynn's Rating: C outside of a C3 network, perhaps as high as a B- in a network.

GLT-6WB2

The other Blakist one, the 6WB2 is the reason why I had to hedge my intro with "almost always" in multiple places. This is the one and only Guillotine (even including the IICs!) to use an XL engine. It doesn't use the XL to go faster, but it does buy Improved Jump Jets with some of the saved weight, going to 4/6/6. We've still got a Compact Gyro, we've still got C3i, but we're back to a standard cockpit, and back to Endo-Steel and Standard Armor (a half-ton thinner than the 3N norm, but you're not likely to notice the difference). The weapons have been almost completely overhauled, and they're... strange. The traditional left-arm gun is now a Light Gauss, the only appearance of a ballistic weapon in the entire Guillotine family, the CT missiles are for some reason an LRM-5 with Artemis IV, and the right arm lasers are now both Light PPCs, while the torso lasers remain ERMLs. Heat is +5 on a running alpha, not ideal but manageable on a jumper (and you get decent numbers on an alpha at 6 hexes exactly, even without a C3 network), but this is also the lowest-damage alpha we've seen from a Guillotine, and it does nothing to really benefit from the iJJs. This is just kind of a sad sniper; not the worst long-range payoff you could take in a C3i net, but certainly not 1,635 BV worth of payoff.

Lynn's Rating: D

GLT-6WB3

So this is just the post-Jihad refit of the original 6WB. It pulls out the taboo C3i system in favor of a normal C3S and a Guardian ECM, but it's otherwise completely the same. The ECM is deemed useful enough that its BV jumps up to 1,741. I don't think my rating has really changed.

Lynn's Rating: Still a C outside of a C3 network, but a decent B-ish payoff in-network.

Marik Militia Guillotine. Credit: Lynn C

GLT-7M

The most recent variant of the Guillotine both in and out of universe (though not the last in numerical order), the 7M... honestly disappoints me. We've got bog-standard 3N internals and armor, but a switch to 16 DHS has bought enough free mass for a bunch of upgrades. All of the arm guns are PPCs now, with an Capacitor-enhanced IS ERPPC as the big gun on the left and two Light PPCs on the right, the torso lasers are ERMLs, the SRM-6 is a Streak launcher now, and there's CASE II for the SSRM ammo. This is... okay? Aggressively okay. We can sort of headcap, but we can't do it every turn like the 6WB(3) can. We've got some decent firing patterns for heat, but an alpha would get a bit toasty (and would be outright a bad idea if the PPC Capacitor is charged up). This mech does Guillotine things decently well, and picks up a couple nice upgrades (CASE II, Streak), but I'd much rather have had a Heavy PPC and right arm lasers over the Capacitor and LPPCs. And would it kill someone to try some pulse lasers on this chassis? I just think you pay too much for the 7M at 1,877 BV.

Lynn's Rating: C-

GLT-8D

Ah... Davions. My minor grudge with the Federated Suns flares a bit hotter every time a mech I like, a mech which isn't generally associated with them, somehow has a FedSuns-exclusive variant which uses cool technology no other variants of the chassis get access to. As the 1P is to Merlins, so the 8D is to Guillotines. We've got the bones of a 3N yet again, with the standard armor, endo-steel, standard engine, and 4/6/4 movement, but the weight savings from loading 14 DHS have been distributed a bit differently. The 8D picks up a half ton of armor, doubles down on ER Large Lasers while holding onto four ERMLs, upgrades the SRM to a Streak 6, and, oh, it has a targeting computer for the laser light show. The heat curve here isn't my favorite; it's neutral on a jump with either the ERLLs or all the other weapons, but I would've rather seen either one fewer DHS (neutral on a run when bracket firing) and near-max armor or a juggling of heat load so that at least one of the large lasers could join in on the short-range fun. 1,891 BV makes this the most expensive Guillotine, and you pick up reliability with that extra BV, but not really much of a greater ceiling of capability.

Lynn's Rating: C

GLT-3N (Estridsen)

Our only character variant of the Guillotine gains big points from me for being hilarious. Another one of ComStar's little oopsies in gifting their tech to others, this suspected prototype arrived in Rasalhague hands already converted to its unique configuration. This mech takes a 3N, swaps the heat sinks for 15 doubles, upgrades the LL to an ERPPC, and then spends every remaining ton of spare weight on additional medium lasers. It carries twelve medium lasers total. This is a goddamn Spheroid Nova!

Heat is a limitation here, as the MLs alone generate 36 heat to this mech's 30 sinking, but there's a pretty hilarious capability to blap someone with up to 72 damage from the close-range weapons, go up to +12 heat if you ran, then hop into some woods or behind a hill or something with your JJs to cool down. This thing costs 1,846 BV but I ain't even mad, this is one of the funniest things you could possibly do with the base 3N chassis.

Lynn's Rating: C+? (Insanity Rating: S)

Guillotine Conclusion

The Guillotine is perhaps uniquely positioned as a mech which is somehow actively made worse by double heat sinks. The heart of the Guillotine is a cost-effective short-range brawler, but every single higher-tech upgrade so far has lost sight of that identity. There's a hypothetical 4/6/6 MXPL boat or something you could build on this chassis that I would run the hell out of, but nothing here reaches the heights of, say, a Grasshopper 6K, sadly. That said, I stand by the 3N itself as an efficient piece even into the ilClan era.

Hastati Sentinels Guillotine. Credit: Jack Hunter

Bonus: Guillotine IIC

If you spent the entirety of the Spheroid Guillotine's overview thinking that Clan tech would fix its problems, I want to show you what happens when that monkey's paw curls. The Guillotine IIC is one of the least-changed of the Clan variants of mechs, with the same tonnage, same movement profile(s), et cetera. It's also visually similar enough to convincingly run it with the same mini, and it only has two variants to cover, so let's take a quick look.

Standard

We practically have another 3N chassis here, with the same armor, engine, movement speed, etc; the only effective chassis upgrade is swapping to Clan-grade Endo-Steel. The weapons get a ridiculous glow-up, with the left arm gun swapping to a CERPPC, both right arm lasers swapping to CLPLs, ERMLs for the side torso lasers, and the traditional center torso SRM-6. This is a great set of guns and- What's that? How much heat can this mech sink? Ah, there's the rub. 16 DHS give it 32 sinking, so it goes up +4 heat just firing the long-range guns at a walk. There are some plausible firing patterns here, but all of them are going to see you dropping at least one, if not more, of your expensive Clan guns every other turn, and you're paying 2,377 BV for the privilege of not even being able to bracket fire properly. Oh, also, the SRM ammo has been shifted into the center torso, so even the durability of the standard engine is undermined (and this mech hates it if you're not playing with floating TACs). I can't entirely hate a mech that brings three of the best guns in the game, but this is such an utter disappointment.

Lynn's Rating: D

Valk: Okay, hold on a sec. Hi, Goonhammer's local Jade Falcon player here, unable to keep my beak shut in the face of this slander. A D?

First, a disclaimer: I'm not ranking the Guillotine IIC in a vacuum, nor in a "competitive" sense. My thinking here is largely dictated by faction availability and where it can slot into a formation within relatively austere BV limits (I usually find myself playing 7000-8000 BV games, which can be stifling for a full Star). Granted, the things Lynn has said here about its potential shortcomings are true. Yes, this 'Mech does have some heat problems if you're shooting more than a few of your guns at a time. Yes, it's slow for a Clan heavy. Yes, it does have a CT ammo bomb.

However, the standard engine does mean that it fills a niche in the early Clan Invasion arsenal that can sometimes feel a bit lacking, and that's being a durable brick of armor that can waddle upfield (or sit in the back) and give as good as it takes. Most of the time, this niche in my force is filled by assault 'Mechs in a similar cost bracket, like the Warhawk A or Kingfisher Prime. These machines bring a little more armor (and guns in most cases), but you do lose the ability to reposition that you're granted by the Guillotine IIC's jump jets. Not necessarily a huge problem if you're fighting 'Mech-only forces, but the ability to hop away from battle armor while still shooting at them with some degree of accuracy is a nice thing to have. While a full alpha sends your heat into the teens, well, you paid for the whole heat gauge, may as well use the whole heat gauge, quiaff?

The biggest "flaw" here is that CT SRM ammo. Even as someone who plays without floating crits, it's not as big a problem as it's hyped up to be -- a TAC to the CT here has 11 other things it can hit first, and if you are using floating crits, well, good luck hitting it. Worst case scenario, your paranoia makes you dump the SRM ammo early on so you can enjoy your boring Clantech energy zombie.

Are there better heavy 'Mechs in the touman? Sure, depending on the era, I'm far more likely to reach for a Summoner or Flamberge to fill the role of "thicc jumper." Still, this thing's far from a D. If anything, it's too boring for my tastes.

Valk's Rating: C

2

The IIC 2 has the same chassis, engine, and heat sinks as the Standard, but almost everything else is overhauled. This variant carries maximum Ferro-Fibrous armor, the ERPPC, four ERMLs, a Streak 4 (with the ammo shifted back to a side torso!), a Targeting Computer, and it jumps 4/6/6 with iJJs. This still has some significant shortcomings: just the energy weapons are +4 on a walk, +7 if the Streaks fire, and the TarComp isn't quite enough accuracy mitigation to make you want to jump every turn. At 2,721 BV, you could do far better.

Lynn's Rating: D-

Guillotine IIC Conclusion

These are simply bad Clan-tech upgrades, with poor heat sinking and BV-inefficient loadouts. I'd love to see a good Clan-tech iteration on this concept, or a fun mixed-tech variant, but the IIC we have now certainly isn't the right answer to the Guillotine chassis' DHS curse.

Final Thoughts

Please, CGL, give me an unambiguously good Guillotine with DHS, I know it should be possible! Until that day comes, I can at least recommend (most of) the SHS Guillotines for cost-efficiency, and if you need a higher-tech alternative... well, there's still the Grasshopper.

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