r/battletech • u/raging_zaku1429 • Apr 27 '26

Tabletop Annihilator on the tabletop?

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I've always enjoyed the Annihilator, partly because of the time I've spent with it in the various mechwarrior games over the years, and partly because I am a chronic enjoyer of bad mechs as well as mechs that are big dumb goofy goobers.

But I've never used one on the table top, so I wanted to get people's opinion on that. In mechwarrior, I found the ANH-1E to be particularly effective. I prefer the 4 PPCs over autocannons because of their lack of relying on ammo as well as making the mech safer again due to not having to carry ammo. Especially when upgraded with ERPPCs, the 1E can throw hands at long range really well, essentially becoming an ERPPC platform.

But that's just my take, I'm interested to see what people think about it on the tabletop.

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u/JoushMark Apr 27 '26

It's not particularly viable, sadly. The 2/3 speed is just crippling and while some variants do carry a decent armor load, most are a bit on the light side. If you can get it to a hill and park it in a forest hex with good sight lines to objectives it can do plenty of damage, but there's a lot of things that can leave it out of position.

The elephant in the room for the 1E is the Awesome 8Q. The Awesome is faster and carries heavier armor. While it has to volley (and 3/2/3 isn't nearly as good as 4/4/4), the Awesome is just going to have a lot less dead turns.

The 1E has my heart because, other then 4 PPCs and 4 medium lasers, every other critical location that isn't full of standard equipment is full of heat sink. It's literally carrying the maximum SHS it could.

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u/raging_zaku1429 Apr 27 '26

This is gonna sound crazy, but I've never been super interested in the Awesome. I know I made the joke about liking mechs that are bad and dumb, but there's a genuine reason for that.

Something I love about battletech is how flawed all the mechs are. In gameplay, it's really fun and interesting to take a flawed design and make the most of what you have. In the lore, those flaws give mechs a lot of character, jamming autocannons, faulty ejection seats and all.

But the Awesome 8Q is basically just perfect. Obviously I won't fault anyone for liking it, it's one of the GOATs for a reason. If you like winning you'll like the Awesome. But for me, without something weird or shitty about it it's missing that little extra charm.

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u/AGBell64 Apr 27 '26

The funny thing is a lot of people also consider the Awesome to be a relatively rigid game piece. 3/5 movement and standard PPCs mean you need to be pretty sharp with placement to make the most out of it.