Timber Wolf

Why it earns its tonnage

Seventy-five tons, walk five, run eight, twelve tons of ferro-fibrous. State those three numbers together to an Inner Sphere engineer of the period and watch the objection form. Their heavies achieve two of the three. This achieves all of them and retains twenty-seven and a half tons of pod space.

Their readouts claim it carries approximately the firepower of a Marauder and a Catapult combined. For once their assessment is close. On the Alpha Strike card a Prime is 5/5/4. A MAD-3R is 2/3/3, a CPLT-C1 is 2/3/2. Combined, four, six and five. The Timber Wolf exceeds that at short range and falls marginally short at medium and long, while being faster and better armoured than either, on one chassis, with one pilot.

The Prime configuration spends its pod space on two ER large lasers, two LRM 20 racks, two ER mediums, a medium pulse laser and two machine guns. Seventeen double heat sinks. Their documentation describes this as sufficient for a skilled pilot. That is an accurate statement and it is also a warning. A competent warrior fires most of it, most of the time. An incompetent one shuts down and is recovered by my caste, which is the part of the work I could do without.

Understand the pod space and you understand the machine. Everything named in the paragraph above is removable. What remains fixed is the endo-steel structure, the 375 extralight engine, the armour and the heat sinks. That is why the table lists twenty configurations across two centuries and not twenty rebuilds.

Two flaws, stated plainly, because pretending otherwise helps nobody. Its targeting is improved at medium range, which is not where a machine of this reach should prefer to fight. And the head armour is one point below what the design should carry. We have known this for two hundred years. It has not been corrected.

Two centuries, and a period of being built by hand

Clan Wolf produced it in 2945 as one of three second generation OmniMechs intended to replace the ageing Woodsman. The Gargoyle proved a capable fast assault design. The Naga proved an adequate fire support platform. Every Clan, including those that did not hold the rights, recognised within a season which of the three mattered.

Clan Wolf kept it. The production rights were defended in Trial after Trial and were never successfully taken. Until the invasion the entire supply came from one facility on Strana Mechty, and another Clan acquired a Timber Wolf by trade, by gift, or by taking it from a battlefield.

Then the part my caste does not enjoy recounting.

The Wars of Reaving severed us from the Homeworlds. The Blakists scoured Tamar. By 3080 the Timber Wolf was being assembled by hand at the W-7 plant on Weingarten, and certain components were being machined individually because the manufacturing data for them no longer existed. Losses exceeded production. The Wolves began evaluating other designs.

Consider that. The machine that broke the Inner Sphere's understanding of what a BattleMech could be, produced one at a time, from measurements taken off surviving examples, because we had lost the drawings.

Alaric Ward corrected it. On forging the Wolf Empire he ceded the W-7 facilities to Clan Hell's Horses and ordered the Kallon plant on Thermopolis retooled. The Timber Wolf returned to its proper place in the touman.

Two further notes, offered without comment. The Inner Sphere built the Rakshasa at their New Avalon Institute of Science for the express purpose of emulating the Prime configuration. Without Clan weapons and Clan materials they could not approach it. And we ourselves built the Linebacker to replace the Timber Wolf. It is faster. It carries less armour and ten tons less pod space. We improved the one quality that was already adequate.

How these are rated

Every verdict below is against other Timber Wolf configurations. Worth saying plainly that the Trap test finds nothing here: every configuration carries the same armour, the same frame and the same engine, so none of them can be strictly beaten on the card the way an Inner Sphere variant can. The tiers are entirely judgement on this page.

Only the Trap tier is calculated. It is worked out from the variant data rather than decided by me, which means it is falsifiable: to argue with it you only have to name something the cheaper machine gives up. The other three are my opinion and you should treat them that way. 0 of the 20 Timber Wolf variants fail the Trap test. The full rating scale is here, including what it deliberately does not measure.

The configurations worth arguing about

All 20 are in the table further down. These are the ones that change what you are actually facing.

On the table

Fielding one. You possess more firepower than anything likely to oppose you, and greater speed than most of it. This is not an argument for closing. A Prime does its work at range and a warrior who charges is trading armour with a machine that costs a third as much. Watch the heat. Seventeen doubles is sufficient for a skilled pilot, and the corollary of that sentence is the important half.

Opposing one. If you are reading this from the Inner Sphere, here is the honest answer: numbers. At 2224 to 2923 Battle Value you may field three lesser machines for one of ours, and it cannot engage all three at once. Take the head shot if it is offered, for the reason stated above. And do not assume the configuration your scouts reported is the configuration you will face.

What I observe going wrong. Inner Sphere warriors fight it as though it were a Marauder, because it resembles one. It is not a sniper. It does its damage at long range and remains dangerous when you arrive. There is no range bracket at which you are safe from it. That was the design requirement.

Against OpFor Command

If you run solo games with our AI opponent, the Timber Wolf is the most varied chassis on the site, and that is the point of it.

• 6 configurations are Skirmishers, 5 are Brawlers, 4 are Snipers, 4 are Missile Boats and one is a Juggernaut. No other chassis here spreads across five role tags.
• Practically, that means the engine will drive a Prime and a W in completely opposite ways, and both are the same machine with different pods.
• 4 configurations carry jump jets, including the S with five of them. An enemy Timber Wolf that can jump is a scenario problem rather than a target.

If you want a solo game that does not settle into a firing line, this is the chassis to put on the other side.

All 20 configurations

Damage figures are the Alpha Strike short, medium and long values. Every configuration shares the same engine, frame and armour, so only the pods change.

Where and when you can field it

Availability for the Prime by era, straight off the Master Unit List.

Related designs

Other machines that do the same job

Take it to the table

Common questions

Stats on this page are generated directly from our variant database, which is reconciled against the Master Unit List for Battle Value, introduction dates and per-era faction availability. Alpha Strike damage values are the standard card figures. If you spot something wrong, tell me and I will fix it.