Hunter Assault Tank
- This article is about the wheeled 20-ton tank. For the LRM-armed combat vehicle usually referred to as 'Hunter', or other uses, see Hunter (Combat Vehicle) and Hunter (disambiguation).
The HNT-3R Hunter Assault Tank is a wheeled 20-ton combat vehicle armed with a front-mounted Particle Projector Cannon and equipped with a VOX 130 Fusion engine and five tons of armor (front 32, sides 17, back 14).[1] It should not be confused with the tracked, LRM-armed combat vehicle that is usually associated with the name 'Hunter'. Notably, that latter vehicle was also designated the HNT-3R Hunter in its first incarnation in Battledroids.
According to the accompanying scenario, the Hunter Assault Tank is a design used for "Wolf Packs", with Scorpion BattleMechs operating together with fast tanks as independent scout hunter teams at the vanguard of an attack.[2] There is no information whatsoever on who built or used Hunter Assault Tanks, or when, except that it worked in conjunction with Scorpion 'Mechs (which were introduced in 2570).
Canonicity[edit]
The canonicity of the Hunter Assault Tank is a complicated issue. It appears only as an extra piece in the TCI Model Kit #1 alongside the Shadow Hawk and Scorpion, as an eight-wheeled tank that seems to have a turret-mounted main gun (while its accompanying game stats explicitly state "no turret").
The stat sheet going with the model kit has both a FASA and a TCI trademark from 1985 and 1986, respectively; it remains unclear if it can thus be regarded as a FASA publication.
Advertisements for the model kit set were printed in the BattleTechnology magazine, which itself was considered canon in its time (but is now considered apocryphal).
Notes[edit]
- Battledroids featured a (different) HNT-3R Hunter combat vehicle that seems to have been the inspiration for (or an early incarnation of) BattleTech's Hunter tank, which had a front-mounted LRM-20. Rules-wise, Battledroid tanks operated under different, much simplified rules compared to BattleTech; they had 4 movement points, or 3 if they wanted to fire their weapons on a given turn. They had no defined weight or mass, and there were no construction rules.
The HNT-3R Hunter Assault Tank seems to have taken its name from the Battledroids set (alphanumerical codes were later dropped for vehicles), but it is a very different design with a distinctively different look compared to the Hunter paper cutout from Battledroids, to the point where they are obviously different vehicles in all but name. The Hunter Assault Tank as presented in the TCI Model Kit #1 does however seem to follow the vehicle construction rules that would be published in CityTech, curiously a product that also happened to introduce the other Hunter tank (the 35-ton tracked missile carrier).
References[edit]
- TCI Model Kit #1 (Shadowhawk & Scorpion)
