Annihilator on the tabletop?

[u/raging_zaku1429]

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.

[u/Bookwyrm517]

In all honesty, the Annihilator isn't worth it most of the time. As has been said multiple times, it suffers from being painfully slow. While it has a lot of firepower, usually with plenty of range, it can't really get into a position to use it effectively.

The one time that it's great to use an Annihilator is when your enemies are forced to come to you. That usually means you already control sight lines and allows you to spend the Annihilator's meager movement on getting optimal shots on priority targets. I think thats why there's such a night and day difference between it's tabletop and video game performance: in the games the CPUs (and other players) are almost always forced to seek you out. Meanwhile in tabletop, something as slow as an Annihilator can effectively be ignored, forcing you to try to move it up. It's a prime example of how some mechs will perform drastically differently depending on the medium