The Cauldron-Born

The Cauldron-Born

Today’s review comes to me with mixed feelings concerning this battlemech. It can carry one of the most devastating load outs in the puretech game. It can be one of the most brutal missile boats and it can be an excellent range fighter or support mech. It has speed and slots and decent electronics all contained in a low profile. The best part is that it only weighs in at 65 tons, very useful to drop commanders in league play. Crap, I forgot to tell you what mech. The Clan Cauldron-Born.

Well, I sort of gave away the theme of this review, but what the heck, I will give you the review anyway. The Clan Cauldron-Born weighs in at 65 ton from the Clan Factory carrying only Enhanced Optics (EO), pre-set with a top speed of 86kph and having 2 heat sinks. The armour for the Cauldy is Ferro Fibrous (FF or just Ferro) and is nearly completely full with 12.5 tons. The weapons load out leads you to believe that this mech is an infighter with long range support. It has twin LBX10s, dual ERMLs and two LRM15s (all Clan weaponry, of course).

The Cauldron-Born offers BAP, LAMs, EO and Advanced Gyro and a standard frame that holds 13 tons of Ferro Armour. The speed ranges from 68kph to 104kph. It is pre-set (as mentioned) to 86kph and this seems to be a very speed for the Cauldy. Drop down to 80kph buys you another 1.5 tons or speed up to 92kph for 2 tons. These three speeds are all decent and still allow for good handling.

The slots on the CB allow for many varied load outs. I will discuss some of them in a bit, but first lets look at the slots. Each arm is a 3-slot omni. The right torso is a 2-slot energy and the left torso has a 2-slot ballistic. There are twin 2-slot missile racks on top of this mech as well.

Just sitting in the mech and studying the slots, one of the first configurations that comes to mind is to make this puppy a brawler, a brawler truly from the cauldron. I have this image from one of Shakespeare’s writings where the witches are stirring their cauldron and saying something like “…toil and trouble…”. I see them stirring and hauntingly laughing as a Cauldron-Born crawls out of the boiling pot… Oh well, sorry.

As a brawling machine, the Cauldron-Born can carry one of the most devastating load outs in the game. Put a LBX 20 in each arm, a LBX 10 in the left torso and a Heavy Medium laser in the right torso. If you lower the speed to 80kph and shave 1.1 ton or armour you can add LAMs and AG. Of course, you can skip the LAMs (for in close fighting) and fill the armour and keep the Advanced Gyro. AG will keep the Cauldy from being knocked over (except for the most extreme alphas) and reduce the amount of incoming knock a little. This particular weapons load give the Cauldy a 76point alpha every 6 seconds. The LBX 10 and HML both recycle at 4 seconds, so they make a 20 point follow on shot to the original alpha, pretty nasty. At 65 tons there are not many mechs in the game that can carry that kind of load making it very useful if you think think things are gonna be tight, especially useful in a city setting. (There are mechs that can carry bigger alphas, the same or even more of a brawling load, but not too many at 65 to 70 tons.)

We all know a brawling Cauldron-Born is nasty and that it can even chase down some mechs and smack the crap out of them., but what is this talk about missiles? Well, keeping the armour full, lowering the speed to 80kph, a pilot can put 4 ATM12Es on board with double ammo. OR, if you prefer being a little closer, change the ATM12Es to ATM12Ms and add BAP (for long or short range fire). Prefer standard CLRMS? Good news for you. The Cauldy can take 4 CLRM20 (with double ammo) and 2 CLRM10s. Ouch. You like MRMs you say? OK, the Cauldron-Born can be loaded with 2 CMRM40s (double ammo) and 2 CMRM10s with BAP at 80kph and full armour. Still want to get closer? Fine. Load this beast with CStreak4s and CStreak6s and add a couple of machine guns for fun. 2 CStreak5s and 6 CStreak4s fit nicely and will knock down a lot of mechs in a knife fight. The machine guns will strip away bits of armour as the missiles ‘streak’ across the battlefield into your opponent. CStreaks and CMRMs have this auto lock thing, kinda like a wire guided shot. No need to wait for the missile lock sound, just aim and shoot and shoot and shoot. I almost forgot, the CB can take Arrows and Clusters too…

I heard some talk about using the Cauldron-Born in a long range support role with no missiles. Of course you can do that. Bump the speed up to 92, select BAP, LAMs and AG, shave tiny bits of armour and load up with 2 Clan Gauss Rifles and an ERLL. Now the Cauldy has the same load as the infamous Thor with more speed, with the exception of ECM and jumpies. It is faster and using Bap can locate the enemy on radar faster. Lower the speed to 80kph, remove the AG (keep the BAP and LAMs) and shave a little more armour and the Cauldy can carry 6 CUAC2s. This makes for a very nice 1000 meter machine gun with more umph. Need to go on a cold map? How about 2 ERPPCs, 1 LtPPC, 92kph with all the electronics goodies offered? Sure, we can do that and have a 75% heat efficiency rating using 11 heat sinks. Lasers are better for you? Then I say load up 3 ERLLs and 2 CUAC2s with 6 heat sinks at 86kph and all the toys. Or drop the CUAC2s and add 2 CLRM15s and a few more heat sinks and you still have a very good range support mech.

Needless to say, the Cauldron-Born is a very useful Omni mech. It can be used in many different roles, from knife fighting to precision range strikes, or anywhere in between. The tonnage is big enough to take on any Heavy Class mech and many assault class mechs and walk away the winner. At 65 tons, the CB is often called into use on limited tonnage drops, especially in league play. Offense is not a problem with the Cauldy. What then?

The problem I see with the Cauldron-Born is the chassis. The Cauldy is built on a standard frame, but it is very weak. The center torso and the arms take the majority of any fire. You would expect that in a good fire fight for the CT to take the most hits because most pilots will aim for the CT to get to the core quickly and put the mech down. The Cauldy’s CT holds 2.10 tons of FF armour and can take 63pts of damage before exposing the internals to fire. Each arm houses 1.2 tons of armour (FF) and can take up to 36pts of damage. Many times, the weapon is destroyed in the arm before the arm is completely removed. I cant reveal the amount of internal armour for the arms or the CT but if you strip all the armour from the mech the lab will reveal the amount of armour left (you also need to remove the weapons, electronics and lower the speed). This gives you a rough idea of the internals but you need to account for the special slots.

The Cauldron-Born just seems to be weak when taking incoming fire. It really wants to die to fast. Now there are some players that are very good at spreading damage and even avoiding damage and making a mech seemingly last forever, but overall, the CB goes down fast.

The Cauldy does handle well. The turning radius is a bit small, but the accel and decel rates are very good. This mech is one of the few that can hill hump with little effort. The CB has a bit of a bounce to it when it walks, almost a cocky strut. The visibility from the cockpit is excellent looking forward or to either side. I guess the key to a good CB, no matter what the load out, is to kill first and be quick about it.

During our days in NBT, we stole several Cauldron-Borns and we used them in many street fights and as missile boats. They seem to be a popular mech in MechCombat League. It is easy to see why, they fit many roles and the weight is not so much that you cant get another heavy (or 2) into the line up depending on the ladder.

Back in NBT, Hacksaw and Buddha were our CB specialist. In MCL, Buddha and Wilson seem to be the CB lovers and both have been very effective. In our first match in MCL against a team named 1FSAC, they used a pair of CBs against us. I believe that Hogsback was the map. We started in relatively close drop zones. When ‘go’ was called and confirmed, we started out for their drop zone in hopes of catching them trying to climb some hills and taking them down one at a time. 1FSAC apparently had other ideas and went a different way than we expected. We chased each other around the map for about 27 minutes only making contact a couple of times. With less than 3 minutes to go, we topped a hill to find the enemy set up in a very good defensive position around a small lake or stream. They had 2 Cauldron-Borns and a couple of other mechs. The CBs were loaded with ATM12Ms or CMRMs and they hit Cow and I as soon as we popped the hill. I spent about 2 minutes of the last 3 under water. Cow died pretty quick as did one of our other pilots. We discussed it before deciding to go in. We both knew we should have just backed off, waited the clock out and gone on to the 3^rd map. We had won the 1^st map. We knew better but decided to go in because we were set up for brawling and felt like we could take them down. We also thought they were set for a ranged fight. We knew better. We really did. We went in anyway. When the clock expired, they had killed 2 of our guys (not me, lol) and we had only killed 1 of theirs. I was working on the 2^nd CB and had him cored and blinking in every critical slot. I wasn’t in much better shape. The clock ran down and 1FSAC won the round, 2 to 1. It was brutal, fast and furious. The Cauldies they had played a big part in their win of that map. I should mention here that they also won the 3^rd map, Avalon Pro, giving them a match win at 2 maps to 1. 1FSAC played a good game and won the match.

I will say that if you are in a 55ton medium mech set to brawl without LAMs (what was I thinking?) that cresting a hill to see 2 Cauldron-Borns pointing their noses right at you is not a pleasant sight. Oh well. We gave them a hell of a fight and they knew they had been in a close one. I didn’t die, but 2 of my team mates went down to missile fire (and supporting fire) before we took out one of the CBs. Maybe if we had gone for the smaller mechs, who knows. Any way, the story is written. The CBs were king for the moment.

If you haven’t tried a Cauldron-Born there are only a few reasons why not. You don’t have the Microsoft Clan Expansion Pack, you don’t like the way a CB looks, you had rather drive assaults or you don’t have the Microsoft Clan Expansion Pack. Did I mention that you may not have the Microsoft Clan Expansion Pack? For those of you that don’t have the expansion pack, you are missing out on a real sweet ride in the Cauldy. It packs a lot of whoop ass and handles itself very well.

It is a shame that the CB (and some others) are only available in the Microsoft Expansion Pack. Actually, these mechs are included in your copy of Mercs, the pack merely unlocks some codes and allows you to use them. I cant tell you how to do this without them packs (even if I knew), but I would suggest running down a copy of the packs to get the extra mechs. I do not suggest paying 50$ or more (US Dollars), but the packs are fun to have. I just did a quick search and they are still available. The Clan seems to be more expensive than the Inner Sphere.

I cant believe the prices on EBAY for these things. I have 3 separate copies of these things. The most I paid was 14.99$ retail while vacationing in New Orleans some years back. As little as 2 years ago, I bought my 3^rd set (both discs) for a total of 15.98$ including shipping charges. Wow, who would have thought that they would be 50 to 80$ for only 1 of the 2 packs now? Used at that! Unbelievable. Maybe, if I decide to retire in the next year or so, I can just sell my copies and use that as my retirement fund, lol.

Sorry, I was distracted at the Microsoft Packs prices. Hopefully, XPlosive Brand or someone will pick up the rights to sell these things and get the prices back to where they need to be, 8 to 10$ each.

Back to the Cauldron-Born. If you can play with on, try it. The CB is a fun mech with lots of options. Protect yourself or die quick. The weak CT and Arms keep the rating down. Vettie’s View? A solid 3 ½ minutes. Very versatile mech and dangerous in the right hands.