Mech of the Month

Some time ago, maybe even two years or so, my friend over at The Sunder Junkies, Genghis Prawn, started doing this thing he called the Mech of the Month. If you have not visited the Sunder Junkies Site, I suggest you do so and become a member. The web site is www.sunderjunkies.com. GP and crew will not send you any crap mail, nor will you be added to any mailing lists. All you will find there is stuff about MechWarrior and the many players that play in the server named Sunder.

Back to the Mech of the Month. As I mentioned, each month, Genghis selects a Heavy and an Assault Class Mech to be the Mech of the Month. He will use those two mechs for his entire online time during that month while playing in Sunder. This MOTM has created a following and you will see several people use the ‘mech’ while playing during that month.

I mentioned in a post on the forums there not too long ago that I thought that it would be cool if GP and I could synchronize the MOTM and the Vettie’s Views selections so that I ran a review of the mechs Prawnie selected for that month. That would allow players to get a bit of an inside view of the mechs chosen to be MOTM. Hopefully, it would stir a little interest so that players would not only post their configs for those mechs but also maybe post their thoughts about the mechs as well.

The problem I have run into is that I had already written reviews for many mechs and I have not written reviews for many of the others. For instance, this month Prawnie selected the Black Knight and the SuperNova. I had reviewed the Black Knight many moons ago, but I have not yet published a review on the SuperNova. The BK review can be found here, http://vettiesviews.blogspot.com/2007/11/black-knight.html .

I have only published one review for MP3 mechs. Originally, I started out to review all the mechs from the originals issued in the game to eventually cover the mechs added by our friends at MekTek. Somewhere between MP2.1 and MP3, I had the fortune to be beta tester for MekTek for MP3. This consumed quite a bit of free time and when MP3 was released there had been many changes to some of the mechs I had already reviewed. I felt like I needed to go back and give those mech another shot to bring them up to date. More so, some of the reviews I had already written, but not yet published had to be scrapped or re-done because of the MP3 changes. Again, I felt like I needed to keep to my original script as much as possible and review all the older mechs before I put out anything on the MP3 chassis.

Now I find myself in similar situation. MP4 is forthcoming from MekTek and I haven’t published reviews on older mechs and only one on an MP3 chassis. Because of the NDA (non-disclosure agreement) I signed with MekTek, I cant tell you what is in MP4, if any of the Mechs that already exist have changed nor what new chassis we will see. All I can tell you is that MP4 will be released soon.

With all of that being said, I have gone back and given some additional thought to my original script of mech reviews. I have thought about this for a week or so and every time (lately) I sit down to write another issue of Vettie’s Views this comes to mind and I find myself unable to write an article or to make enough sense of a bunch of words so that you guys find it informative, entertaining or worth your while, instead I come back to this same thing. That thing?
Will I be able to complete my goal of publishing articles on each mech in the game before more are added?

The simple answer to that is no. IF any of you have visited the MekTek Forums, then you already know there are to be new mechs added to MP4. I cant tell you which ones, but you can go there and check it out yourself. It may not be listed as MP4, it might be listed as MP3.1 which is what MekTek started to call this mod until they got very deep into it. As I mentioned, MP4 will be released soon and as soon as I get the official ‘okay’, I will publish pictures or videos of whatever MekTek says I can.

Again, MP4 is coming soon. I still have many mech reviews to publish and many yet to write if I plan to attain my original goal. GP and I have exchanged a couple of mail over the subject of matching my reviews to his Mech of the Month selections, so I have decided to publish or link mech reviews based on GP’s selections for MOTM.

As I mentioned, Prawnie selects Assault Class or Heavy Class mechs. This still leaves the Medium and Light Classes open without the love they deserve. Ol’ Vettie has given lots of thought to this and he thinks he came up with an acceptable conclusion.

When Genghis Prawn makes his selections, I will either put a link to my review on the Sunder Junkies Site if I have already reviewed the chassis or I will dual publish a review for a mech that I have not done already. By dual publish, I mean I will write the review and publish it here on my blog and put a link to it on the SJ site. Additionally, I will get with Prawnie and with his permission, I will add a medium and light class to his selections. I will then link the selections to any review I have already written or publish a new one for that chassis, sometime during the month. Again this is pending approval from GP because the Mech of the Month is his creation, I am just trying to enhance it some and increase the (traffic) flow on his site and mine too.