10 Mercs, 10 for the price of 1! Options

[CanRay]

Mercs, love 'em, hate 'em, stick 'em in a stew, they're the folks on the dirty end of the stick for the jobs that are too big for a Shadowrunner crew!

Now available!

[Grinder]

For easier reference:

Description:
Cynical, Sold-out, and Skilled

Hired guns. People without a country who know no loyalty. Opportunists, bottom-feeders, scavengers, vultures. Soldiers without a soul who will go to the worst hells on Earth and do just about anything for a buck.

That’s how they talk about mercenaries. But that’s how they talk about shadowrunners, too.

There’s a fine line between mercenaries and shadowrunners, and it’s a line that gets crossed repeatedly. Sometimes runners will find themselves in the battlefield, working with a mercenary group and doing their best to survive as all kinds of fire rain down on their heads. Other times, they’ll find themselves in the sights of a skilled and deadly mercenary corps, trying to stay alive against superior numbers and firepower.

Either way, they should know about the mercenary units out there, to either improve their bargaining position or help them stay alive. 10 Mercsprofiles ten different mercenary outfits, including Ryan Mercury’s New Assets, the unconventional skill of Bravo Company, and the deadly magic of Task Force Magus. These groups present an array of threats or a bounty of opportunities—depending on which end of the barrel you’re at.

Along with the unit profiles, 10 Mercs provides NPC stats for each unit along with information on vehicles used by many of the units. If mercenaries are going to play a role in your campaign, 10 Mercs is a critical resource for adding flavor, plot hooks, and rules to your Shadowrungame.

10 Mercs is for use with Shadowrun, Twentieth Anniversary Edition.

[hermit]

Uhm. I need an Errata or a clarification.

Falcon TAC-C CSM M1
The text hints it doubles as a rigger cocoon. Is that correct? What is it's availability? Is the price a typo (5,500 Nuyen)? How does it work with non-aerial drones; does it work with the same benefits as hinted or not?

[Prime Mover]

Ryan Mercury and a team of Drake mercs, worth the price of admission.

[Bigity]

Ryan Mercury and a team of Drake mercs, worth the price of admission.

Really? Ugh

[bannockburn]

A short review:
I generally liked the writeups, but, as usual, there are a lot of glaring errors and the product would have benefited from proper editing and proofreading.

Not even mentioning minor typos and wrong words (no, MS Word auto correct is still not proper proofreading), a bold and blue HEADLINE spelling the name of EL CAUDRILLA (sic) wrong is just embarrassing.
An 884m long America Class amphibious assault carrier, where someone apparently mistook feet for meters (hint: the USS Enterprise is only about 342m long and a RL America class 257m, the longest to date built ship is a tanker with about 458m), is something where heads should have been scratched. AND it is too fast by a factor of about 2,3. The Free Marine Corps all in all seems a bit mary-sueish to me, but opinions may differ.

The TAC-C, while a good and interesting idea is ... too valuable for the low price. By far. Fortunately it is missing an availability attribute, so it can never be bought (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
The supposedly ultra silent pistol doesn't have electronic firing. While I like that it has a barrel extension (this just looks cool, and yes, I may be biased from watching Black Lagoon atm), this makes me a sad panda. It's almost unobtainable with the given availability, too. Fortunately, it's a simple thing to just mod a Colt Government 2066 to the same specs. AND it's cheaper in material cost, too.
Ryan Mercury has always been Gary Stu, but a knife that does (Str/2+4)P is just ridiculous. That's a claymore or combat axe in a 15cm package.
At several points I've noticed that adepts with improved reflexes 2 are missing one point of improved reaction that comes with it, but I consider this minor.
What is a bit more baffling is that Major McCord has item attunement metamagic for a short sword he doesn't possess (and a better weapon focus anyways). Could be flavor, of course, from an earlier point in his career, but it caught my eye.

I thoroughly enjoyed Task Force Magus. They embody everything the common man fears about magicians. I only wonder how they keep securing employments at all ... There can't be _that_ many crazy warlords out th... okay. Never mind. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

I think I'll start backing Thunder Corps for the Desert Wars, for sheer comedic value ^^ To quote: "It's like a train wreck with bullets and missiles". What's not to love? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)
The BattleCam drone is really weird, though. 10 Body and 10 Armor on something the size of a football?

The reuse of the old art is another thing that I really liked (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Earl Geier's artwork from FoF touches my nostalgia.
I want to know what happens when you turn down the offer for a lap dance from daisy! And how it could be worse than having a troll perform a lap dance for you! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

All in all: With 52 pages, a decent value for the price, overshadowed by low quality assurance. Writeups range from (for lack of a better word) 'patriotic' to downright goofy while most are giving a sane and sober rundown of the units. Most are enjoyable to read. I preferred the goofy ones, tbh (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[hermit]

Okay, two weeks is enough to assume no response will ever come. Very well, here's my review.

10 Mercs is a bit of a mixed bag. With one exception (more later), the unit writeups are enjoyable, if a bit littered with spelling errors and sometimes odd stats. Proofing seems to have been limited to Word autocorrect again, though even that would catch some of the more glaring typos. The title page also lists the author as primary proofer. This does not work. You can't properly proof your own writing. Period. There's a reason the editor exists.

The document also introduces new equipment. Now, SR3 has shown us the bad idea of scattering sensible gear throughout fluff books in obscure places, and SR4 once set out to fix that. Apparently, that was thrown under the bus along with things such as editing and tables of content, which again are entirely absent in this document. That new items are scattered throughout the document without a table in the end, which makes them harder to find than they should be, doesn't help either. Of course, since the stats of these things never work quite well, sometimes are plain ridiculous (Colt Government TC? Assets' crysknife?), it may be a good idea to just keep them buried. The author apparently didn't know a lot about how SR4 rules work.

The writeups themselves are fitting for the world for the most part. I'm very glad someone finally determined what Matador's former unit actually looks like, and many other units fill interesting niches, from Ace Combat like air mercs to LOL, in case of Thunder Corps. Shadowposters sometimes act wildly out of character - Fastjack lets people into Jackpoint only to diss regulars now? Is that intended to show just how much he's is losing it? And Black Mamba changed from hard-ass African merc who enjoys cutting off peoples' limbs for fun to gossiping schoolgirl. Fail.

But I noticed something interesting about the units. With few exceptions (the 77th Rangers and the 58th brigade, the Iron Cavalry, and if you're generous, the 180th Air), they are from America, made up of Americans, and with few exceptions, they're, uhm, varying degrees of patriotic, to go with bannockburn's way of putting it. Why is that? The 6th world has many warzones and merc havens. There's Eastern Europe, there's Southeast Asia, thers's Yakutia, there's the AzAm War, there's Africa, there's the Phillipine mess, the Balkans, Papua. But NONE are in North America. So why are so many mercs from there? Why is there no Russian unit, no African unit, nobody from Lisbon or Lagos or Amazonia? Wasted opportunities. Instead, we get: the Free Marine Corps.

The Free Marine Corps ... I'm sorry, but what the hell? This isn't an interesting unit, it's wanking to Mary Sues. And what's worse, it's dragging real-world ideology into the setting in a thoroughly unpleasant way. I realise this has been going on for a while, but so far it has been mostly subdued - which cannot be said about the FMC. That should be a big, fat NO GO.

All in all: delivers decent content, but has some hard to ignore flaws. Like many CGL products, a good base but in need of some polishing, more varied content, and some reining in of the author's fanboyism.

[Grinder]

Who's the author of this PDF?

[bannockburn]

R.J. Thomas

[Pepsi Jedi]

I rather liked it. It's a small PDF product. Not meant for great detail or anything, but more for flavor and jumping off points. For that, it does a good job. A few fun interesting facts about each merc group. Enough to give you flavor and let the GM Flesh out.

For what it is, I think it excels.

[Nath]

Only skimmed quickly, but got a first facepalm over the 180th Tactical Air Regiment claim of a fifteen-to-one kill ratio against NAN pilots during the Ghost Dance War.

...

This book somehow managed to push the crazyness of that part of SR history further than it ever went. The Sovereign American Indian Movement was a guerrilla operating within the borders of US and Canada. How the hell are they supposed to have assembled anything like an air force, and one large enough to actually reach that 15-to-1 ratio? What need did they have for an air force when they could take down the opposing forces with air spirits?

[bannockburn]

They had 15 Ultralights and managed to shoot down one fighter (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Fatum]

Typical PDF release quality.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Or merely self-serving, overblown hype making a Mercenary Company out to be better than it really is. Hmmmmm, That never happens IRL. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[hermit]

Since hese documents are supposed to be, in-game, an assessment of the mercenary organisations by prospective hirers and NOT shameless self aggrandisation, TJ, that approach makes little sense.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Since hese documents are supposed to be, in-game, an assessment of the mercenary organisations by prospective hirers and NOT shameless self aggrandisation, TJ, that approach makes little sense.

And yet you see that even in real-world assessments IRL. Sometimes it is hard to keep it out. Spin is an ongoing occurence, after all.
However, I was simply offering one possible explanation for the discrepency.

Unfortunately, I have yet to see the actual document yet, since I have not been able to purchase it yet. Hopefully soon.

[Pepsi Jedi]

Well the "Ghost Dance War" started in 2014, but Howling Coyote had been building his forces since he busted out on Dec 24th 2011. So he had three years of build up before he basicly told everyone to GTFO in June of 2014. they captured the sub in Aug 2015, in 2016, the US ordered the 'removal' of all Native Americans from US soil. The Great Ghost Dance happens August 17th 2017, the Treaty of Denver didn't happen till April 25th of 2018. So that's a war that lasted 6 full years. Not all of which was the Ghost Dance.

While I doubt that the Nan had tons and tons and tons of planes, they still could have some, in which the 180th was still part of the USAF (reserve) and thus active. The NAN was "Formed" between 2011 and 2014. The NAN is known for having used Magic alot, but the 'war' still lasted 6 years with conventional engagements through out. The NAN would also sic tornado's on enemy jets. lol so calling up the Reserve and putting it in the field isn't out of line.

[hermit]

And yet you see that even in real-world assessments IRL. Sometimes it is hard to keep it out. Spin is an ongoing occurence, after all.
However, I was simply offering one possible explanation for the discrepency.

Well, let's just say some services are more thorough in intelligence gathering than others.

Well the "Ghost Dance War" started in 2014, but Howling Coyote had been building his forces since he busted out on Dec 24th 2011. So he had three years of build up before he basicly told everyone to GTFO in June of 2014. they captured the sub in Aug 2015, in 2016, the US ordered the 'removal' of all Native Americans from US soil. The Great Ghost Dance happens August 17th 2017, the Treaty of Denver didn't happen till April 25th of 2018. So that's a war that lasted 6 full years. Not all of which was the Ghost Dance.

How many warplanes did Al Quaida successfully use against America in the War on Terror, which is a lot closer to the Ghost Dance War than conventional warfare? and they had 20 years to prepare. The 180th would have sounded a lot more plausible if they had been successful navigating the spirits and weather phenomena the Natives threw at the US, successfully attacked ground targets, and gotten their Ace Combat merits in the Eurowars.

[CanRay]

How many warplanes did Al Quaida successfully use against America in the War on Terror, which is a lot closer to the Ghost Dance War than conventional warfare? and they had 20 years to prepare. The 180th would have sounded a lot more plausible if they had been successful navigating the spirits and weather phenomena the Natives threw at the US, successfully attacked ground targets, and gotten their Ace Combat merits in the Eurowars.

And how big an airforce did Afghanistan have? And what kind of planes?

Now, how easy would it be for a couple of Combat Shamans to mollywhomp a US Air Force Base security force? The problem isn't getting the planes, it would have been finding pilots.

Hell, the planes could have been Canadian Armed Forces planes, as well! Which, considering the condition of Canadian Air Power, makes a kill ratio like that rather pathetic...

[hermit]

And how big an airforce did Afghanistan have? And what kind of planes?

Russian, mostly Mig 21 and older, barely air capable, around 20 in working order, none even made it off ground, if I am not massively misremembering.

Now, how easy would it be for a couple of Combat Shamans to mollywhomp a US Air Force Base security force? The problem isn't getting the planes, it would have been finding pilots.

Exactly. Though Shamans back then were very inexperienced with their powers. there might have been 5, 6 qualified indians to fly dusted-off 4th gen planes. I doubt any would be trained with F22, or F35 (which in SR actually could fly, apparently).

Hell, the planes could have been Canadian Armed Forces planes, as well! Which, considering the condition of Canadian Air Power, makes a kill ratio like that rather pathetic...

Sure, but as you said, the bottleneck is pilots.

[Pepsi Jedi]

How many warplanes did Al Quaida successfully use against America in the War on Terror, which is a lot closer to the Ghost Dance War than conventional warfare? and they had 20 years to prepare. The 180th would have sounded a lot more plausible if they had been successful navigating the spirits and weather phenomena the Natives threw at the US, successfully attacked ground targets, and gotten their Ace Combat merits in the Eurowars.

Well that's the thing. the NAN Successfully (Kinda) Stole a nuclear sub, which shows they were infiltrating armed forces bases and stealing equipment. Not just a few crates of guns and such either. They managed to pull off something that has never happened in the history of the US. I'd guess pilots are alot easier to get ahold of than people that can drive a nuclear sub.

As pointed out, it's not like Afghanistan had tons of Jets on the ground to steal, or even pilots to steal them. The Nan how ever, could simply have sent it's people to normal flight schools straight up 100% legally. Now, yes, before you point out 'Hey man, there's a difference between flying a Cessna or a 747, and a military jet." Yes. There --is-- a difference, but if you can fly a normal plane, you only need one or two experienced combat pilots to teach you the differences.

More to the point, the fact that they had the jets is kinda the hardest part. Commercial pilots, with a few hours each with an experienced pilot might be able to get them off the ground. Good enough to scare the crap out of some folks, and maybe even launch a missile or two or drop a few bombs. If the majority of their pilots were in-experienced, it would also explain the 15 to 1 ratio of the 180th as well. It's probably alot easier to shoot down pilots that aren't all that experienced, flying stolen planes or even commercial planes that had been 'converted' for combat or bombing. They don't' work awesome but you can take cargo planes and push bombs out of them. Mount guns in the doors and stuff.

So it's 'possible' the numbers were there. Just not expounded on till now. It's not like the NAN broke Howling Coyote out.... then laid dormant for years.. then blew the one volcano...... then the tornadoes.... then the ghost dance, and that was --it-- for the entirety of the war.

So the "bottle neck" is very easily explained as normal people that went to normal flight school, legally, and then just given a (Pardon the pun) Crash course in combat avionics. (Also remember that for a long time now, you can get "Tribal Status" with as little as 1/32nd or 1/64th Native American blood. So people don't have to have hip length black hair, bronzed/red skin and feathers all over. A member of the Nan might pass as a white guy to anyone on the street.)

The 'crash course' in air combat , also contributes to the kill ratio that the 180th managed to pull off.

[CanRay]

Actually, I just remembered something... The NAN included Hispanics.

When you take the number of Hispanic and AmerIndians in the Air Force, you could get a squadron or two together pretty easily... And then you get them to train other pilots of more traditional craft... The war did go on for years after all.

[hermit]

Well that's the thing. the NAN Successfully (Kinda) Stole a nuclear sub

What? Which one? The one from Secrets of Power, which didn'd make it past Vancouver Island? They infiltrated a US nuclear silo, which, given 9/11 never happened and security in the States themselves was bored and super ineffective, wasn't much of an effort, I'd say.

So the "bottle neck" is very easily explained as normal people that went to normal flight school, legally, and then just given a (Pardon the pun) Crash course in combat avionics.

That's work for 4th gen fighters, the current US models - F22, F35, which also happened in SR's parallel history according to RBB 2 - can't be flown that way anymore. And, even if they found pilots, these aircraft come at roughly 60 hours maintainance and repair after each sortie, even if there was no combat and not even rough weather. The NAN would need actual infrastructure to maintain them, parts, components, radar-absorbent paint ... contracts with Lockheed and suppliers. I can't see that, I realy can't. Those are American planes we'Re talking about, capricious machines built assuming maintainance is never a problem, not russian low-end planes optimised for being usable under any condition. No, sorry. That wouldn't even work with 4th gen fighters. They'd be out of operable planes really fast. And even durable russian and european models need maintainance, ground crews, fuel, munitions ... all of which the NAN never had.

They may have welded mussiles they stole onto PA-25 or something, and done emergency sorties with them. In that case, I tip my hat to the brave and competent NAN guerilla pilots, because a 15 to 1 kill ratio against F22 operated by a government unit with all the contracts is damn impressive. Well, maybe the 160th was flying F35.

Besides, the NAN waged a guerilla war. Usually, that kind of war does not involve both sides having the kind of infrastructure necessary to sustain an air force. In such an assymetrical war, one side usually has air supremacy and the other dodges around their planes and kills their soldiers with IED and nighttime raids on outposts.

When you take the number of Hispanic and AmerIndians in the Air Force, you could get a squadron or two together pretty easily... And then you get them to train other pilots of more traditional craft... The war did go on for years after all.

Okay, I forgot that, too. Yeah, then at least they'd have a sufficient pool of trained soldiers to draw from and get themselves up to speed in modern warfare.

[Nath]

the NAN Successfully (Kinda) Stole a nuclear sub, which shows they were infiltrating armed forces bases and stealing equipment.

No clue on that one. SAIM supporters who were part of the US Armed Forces seized control of an ICBM launch facility in Shiloh, Montana, not a submarine, in 2009, and fired one (the "Lone Eagle" incident). The NAN forces led by Thunder Tyee seized the Bangor submarine base in 2015 and two months later the shipyards in Bremerton. Thunder Tyee was surrounding Fort Lewis and McChord AFB but didn't made the move, as the Ghost Dancers then gave their geologic warning shot that prompted a cease-fire. The taking of these two bases appears to be significant events enough so that they're the only NAN forces operations to be listed in Sixth World Almanac timeline, and Thunder Tyee to be the only NAN military commander whose name is well-known and whose live became a trid show.
The only vessel mentioned involved, in the novel Find Your Own Truth, page 268, is the Wichita SSN, which the Amerindians tried to sink, and his captain moved out and scuttled. It seemingly took thirty years before the wreck was located and the nukes retrieved.
The NAN lack of nukes is somewhat confirmed in NAN Volume 1, page 103, with the assumption that if the Sioux have any nukes, they bought them from an European country.

The 'crash course' in air combat , also contributes to the kill ratio that the 180th managed to pull off.

Then the 180th wouldn't be described as "one of the few USAF units to successfully engage NAN forces."

When you take the number of Hispanic and AmerIndians in the Air Force, you could get a squadron or two together pretty easily... And then you get them to train other pilots of more traditional craft... The war did go on for years after all.

About three years or three years and a half. The Ghost Dance War started with Daniel Coleman declaration on June 10th, 2014, and ended in mid to late 2017 or early 2018. They may have initiated their efforts to train pilots before 2014, indeed (though probably not before 2011, since they had no knowledge beforehand that they could ever engage in an actual war with the help of magic).

Anyway, one or two squadrons is not enough to sustain the kill ratio claimed by the 180th: 15-to-1, with 80% of its pilots killed. Even if you assume that half the pilots were assassinated by SAIM commando, that would still mean they downed over one hundred aircrafts. And that's not counting the few others USAF units who successfully engaged NAN forces.

I'm still highly dubious at the interest of maintaining any air force for the SAIM. An air base has big logistic requirements, runways, buildings, spare parts, ammunition, kerosene. It's easily located by satellite, and easily shut down by a Tomahawk cruise missiles strike (not to mention all those opportunity the 180th must have if they were that good). If they happened to have shamans powerful enough to hide an entire air base and/or stop cruise missiles mid-air, then you are left to wonder why they bothered to assemble an airforce in the first place, and make such powerful assets vulnerable by keeping them static.

[Sengir]

How many warplanes did Al Quaida successfully use against America in the War on Terror, which is a lot closer to the Ghost Dance War than conventional warfare? and they had 20 years to prepare.

None, but the Taliban had several during their conquest of Afghanistan. The SAIM took over several military bases and supposedly had a lot of support among the population, so both material and trained personnel for a dozen aircraft of so should not have been the issue.
Unless a single guy shot down all fifteen planes the SAIM/NAN had the kill ratio is still illusionary, but the concept of them having some air assets is not. And if they ran out of spare parts and fuel after a few sorties, well, a few is more than none...