Anacondas and Wolfs and Nightingales, Oh My!
Hey, all Prof here again.
Today I want to talk about a recent release on the community site. The F-55 (previously known as the Type-55) and the F-305 frames came out last week and I saw a few questions I wanted to take some time and answer. First off, a quick note on the name of the -55. The original crop of CEF frames all had Type-XXX as their names which was cool but was later changed to F-XXX. Narratively this is just a redesignation of the frames and not so much a retcon or a new unit.
The F-305 is totally new, like it has never existed before in Heavy Gear. The 4th edition of the RPG is bringing in several new designs designed to fill gaps. Many of these are not really designed for Blitz! use. If you are a Blitz player only and are not sure how to use them, that’s okay, they are not always suitable for Blitz. The F-305 is the first in a trio of non Terra Novan combat engineering units we will see in the RPG. In the RPG these serve as “support” machines that can repair friendly units in combat. As is, Blitz has the Eden Druid covering this role for CEF, Caprice, Utopia and Eden. It doesn’t make sense however for a CEF character to pilot a Druid in the RPG hence the 305. A Caprican mount (a Hammath variant that was originally under the name Sidon) and an Engineering Armiger are also present. What other stuff can we hope to see? Well that’s something of a surprise.
On to the title of this article though. Veterans of the universe may recognize the names I listed as things that are mentioned in universe but never got miniatures or appeared in Blitz. In some cases they never got stats or even art. One thing with the RPG is we DO plan to work on as much stuff as possible. Extended Content is by far the easiest way and is good for missing variants and the occasional full chassis. The core RPG book and future expansions are useful for things that need more detail and possibly art. A lot of these units are just not needed in Blitz. They wouldn’t really bring anything to the table or are just not useful at all. The RPG on the other hand has more room to play with stats and abilities to give them a niche.
Going forward, you may start seeing some long lost units and things that had art but never were named. Some are in the core book, some are expansions, some will come here. I will leave you with a few hints of what may be coming at some point in the future…….anybody remember Project Tin Man?
