Heavy Gear Sale and my Mecha Addiction

Hi Everyone,

My name is Bernard...and I am an addict. I love giant robot death machines...probably a little more than what would be considered healthy. I would change the name of this blog to "Blood, Elves, and Ass-kicking Robots", but I am lazy. While cruising the blogosphere, I stumbled across a post on Frontline Gamer informing everyone about Dream Pod 9's (DP9) Spring Sale. For those that don't know, DP9 makes 'Heavy Gear Blitz!'. I have somewhat of a history with Heavy Gear, so for the sake of completeness, I will tell this tale from the beginning.

I pledge allegiance, to the Field Guide, of the New Coalition of Terra Nova.

Before I was ever a wargaming nerd, I was a video game nerd. Before that, I was a cartoon nerd, with a certain fascination with mecha. I mean, after all, what is cooler than giant robots beating the crap out of each other? When my family got our first computer back in the 90's, it came with two games; Starsiege and Heavy Gear 2. Starsiege was okay, but Heavy Gear 2 had a badass mech pointing a gun at your face on the box art, and I was instantly hooked. Coming from the consoles of the era, and switching to 3D accelerated graphics, my mind melted from the level of detail contained in the game. I could play against people half way across the planet with my fancy 56k connection (granted, you could never actually hit anyone on said 56k connection). For the time period, the game was amazing. For me, that game combined two of the most important things in the universe....death robots and video games.

You would have to be crazy not to play this game. If you didn't, that guy would blow you to bits!

Fast forward a couple of years, and you would find me in mecha gamer hell. Mechwarrior was putting out the same old game year after year. There were no more Heavy Gear sequels (There was a CG cartoon show apparently, but I never heard of it until yesterday). The Armored Core series wasn't quite doing it for me. No good Gundam games were ever released in America. I could go on forever. My giant robot of death addiction was barely sated with the Gundam 1/144 model kits at my LFGS.

Why did I never see this?!?!

Fast forward a few more years, and you would find me being introduced to wargaming via Warhammer 40k. Immediately, I started searching for table top mecha games, but I only came across Mechwarrior. Those models make me cringe every time I see them. No offense to any Mechwarrior players, I just don't like the style. 40k has mecha by the way of the titans, but you almost have to take out a loan to be able to buy one, so I gave up on mecha gaming all together. And then, last week, I saw the info about 'Heavy Gear Blitz!'. My eyes practically bulged out of my head, and my brain replayed all of the highlights of the Heavy Gear 2 single player campaign. Nostalgia made me hurry over to the DP9 web site and drool over the models. And then my girlfriend calls...

Me: "Hey, so I stumbled across this new mecha game."
Tara: "You aren't going to buy any new models, are you?"
Me: "...maybe?"
Tara: "*sigh*"
Me: "...but they are on sale!"

The demon that possesses my girlfriend when I buy models.

Yea, so I totally caved in and bought a NuCoal force. I have been learning all I can about the game by staring at their forums while I wait for my stuff to arrive. The sale ends on 5/1/12, and details are as follows (verbatim from DP9's site):

"As spring is in full swing, we're having a sale! The Spring Sale will run from Friday, April 13th through Tuesday morning May 1st, 2012. For every $50 of products (including books, miniatures, model kits, package deals, etc.) purchased, we are throwing in a free $10 or less gift product of your choice with the order, if you purchase for $100 you can select a $20 or less gift product instead of two $10 gift products, $150 order gets you a $30 gift, and so on. Do not order the gift(s) as if they are lines in the order or they will be charged with the order automatically, just type your requested free gift name(s) and product number(s) in the comments section of the cash out page and they will be added when we pack the order."

Deals that awesome are pretty rare. Pretty much, if you buy a starter kit, you get some free models. If you buy the NuCoal megaforce (have to rep my squad!), you get $60 bucks worth of free stuff to dominate all of the other crappy factions. What are you waiting for?!?! Get over to the DP9 web site and buy stuff already, or the Hussars below will shoot you in the face!