Bot War - Mercenaries

One of the elements I like about Bot War is the resource management element which dictates how your units activate and what abilities you can use.

At the start of each turn all of your bots generate a small number of energy cubes that get added to a pool, you then distribute these cubes back to the Bots for them to then use as they activate. Each of the core actions (move, ranged attack, close attack) costs one cube, and you can do 2 activations a turn. What you can do though is “boost” once a turn, either a shield or an attack, meaning you can get an extra dice to that particular throw at the cost if an energy cube, this is where you want to dish out more than 2 cubes to the Bots that you know will want to have a more impacting ranged attack, or may be activating later in the turn so you’d want them to be a bit more resilient. Super Abilities also need cubes to activate and maintain, meaning some bots need to have 4+ cubes to stay powered up and then do their 2 activations with possibly additional cubes for boosting.

So energy cubes are a key resource to fight in Bot War, it’s extremely beneficial to have more to provide options during the game. A lot of the Mercenaries have the Artillery Support special rule which requires 2 cubes to maintain each turn after being activated. This makes the force quite energy hungry and most bots are only generating 2 energy each power up phase. This is where the concept of “batteries” comes into play, they are cheap units that are energy positive, they generate more than they use meaning there is additional cubes to go into the pool for redistribution. The Mercs have access to a Generator unit which is the perfect embodiment of a battery, it costs 4 points (forces in normal games are 80 points), and generates 2 cubes, but it has no movement, ranged or close attack stat, so it is adding 2 cubes into the pool and taking nothing out.

So, with all of that information taken on board, in order to fuel my energy hungry abilities I need a generator, so I dug out one of my spares and painted it up in my Mercs colour scheme. It’s only blu-tacked to the base for now, but I have chosen to put it on a 40mm base instead of the normal 35mm so I can also add a pile of energy cubes next to it for a cool looking piece that could also double as an objective marker.