Robotech Reinforcements - Zentraedi

A productive night of painting has completed the base-coating of the Zentraedi force, including the new additions of two light and two heavy artillery battlepods. They still all need to be highlighted and based, but they're at a stage where I could put them on the table without feeling a need to apologize.

The mainstay of the force is the 12 standard Regult battlepods. At this stage I'm planning on fielding these as two formations of 3 battlepods, and 3 formations of 2 battlepods. However some of these may be re-allocated if when finalizing the army list I decide to allow "bodyguard" battlepods to be added to other units. I actually picked up a box of 6 additional battlepods, but in hindsight this was probably excessive - the 12 from the starter box should be enough. The extras are still on their sprues for now, and will only be assembled if I decide they're needed. 

Two trios of Regult battlepods

Next up we have the Glaug officers battlepod. I only have one of these for now, but I'd like to add a second. Looking back at my first draft stats I gave the Glaug DC3, but I'm thinking now I may up that to DC5. One issue with the Zentraedi list right now is that it lacks unit variety - two thirds of the force consists of battlepods, and much of the rest battlepod variants. The officers pod is one of the few different units in the force, so I want to make sure it feels and plays differently to a battlepod on the table.

The only units I've added not from the starter box are some artillery battlepods. Two each of Gluuhaug-Regult light artillery battlepods and Serauhaug-Regult heavy artillery battlepods. 

I haven't decided what profile I want to give the artillery battlepods yet. The main stat-line will be the same as the standard battlepod, so that part is easy. But the stats for the missiles I'm still mulling over. I do know that I don't want them to be static formations that sit at the back and bombard all game, in the way Basilisks or Whirlwinds often do. I want them to be bounding forward with the rest of the force, using direct fire as often as indirect. 

As with the UEDF I don't want to start assigning and play-testing points values until I have the final stats fully locked down. But I do want to do a very rough ballpark value, mainly to see if I should buy more models to reach 3000 points. Here's what I've got; 

• For regular battlepods my initial guess (which I'm sticking with for now) was 350 points for a pair or 450 for 3. So all twelve come to somewhere around 1800-2100 points.
• The officers battlepod, with DC5 and a reasonably powerful weapons fit, I'm going to call roughly equal to a pair of Guard super-heavy tanks (Baneblades or Shadowswords). On the basis of that comparison I'm going to go with an initial guess of 350 points. 
• For the artillery battlepods, not knowing the profiles of the missiles the only thing we can say with certainty is they'll be more than a standard battlepod. Throwing out an almost entirely arbitrary number, at 200 points per artillery pod that would be 800 points for all four. 
• The value of both the Recon battlepod and the Recovery battlepod will depend entirely on how powerful their special rules (which are currently completely undefined) end up being. So throwing out an (again) almost completely made-up number, let's say each ends up being worth around 250 points.

So using these extremely rough guesses, fielding all these models would come to around 3700 points (plus I have some suitable spacecraft models to add orbital fire support if I wanted). Which is great. That gives me some leeway in case I've over-estimated any of the unit costs, or if I wanted to leave out some units (such as the recovery pod, or not fielding all the standard battlepods) and still be able to comfortably get to 3000 points. Any additional models purchased can be for preference and unit variety.