Steel Rift is easily the most excited I’ve been for any wargame in decades. While the fluff and lore we do have so far is a bit sparse and raw, it paints a picture of an advanced intrasolar human civilization rebuilding, surviving, and battling in the wake of a massive catastrophe. And that is always going to appeal to me! But, really, it’s the rules and mechanics of Steel Rift that have blown me away more than any other element of the game. So what are we to do with a game that has incredible mechanics but lore still slowly-but-surely cooking? FAN CONVERSIONS!

I am, and always will be, a huge fan of the Command & Conquer game series. Thanks to the tremendously flexible rules system by Death Ray Designs, it couldn’t be easier to build your own custom HE-Vs (the ‘Mechs or Walkers of Steel Rift) and even DIY your own factions. This week’s article is the first in a series adapting the factions and units of Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun and its sequels for use in Steel Rift.

All the rules for what we’re doing today can be found in the core rulebook for Steel Rift, available on Death Ray Design’s website and in their online force builder, the Hangar. A new edition was recently unveiled at Adepticon, and I have had the good fortune to read through it earlier today. For just $40 USD you can get a combination print and PDF version, or if you’re not sure yet? Just the PDF for $15. This isn’t sponsored or anything. I just really like the rules.

Just because they’re the good guys, and the ones who use more giant robots than anybody else, we’re going to start with GDI. In Steel Rift, you construct your Faction by selecting what faction type you’re playing as and then selecting two perks, one from two of three available categories. Those faction types are Authority, Corporate, and Freelancer. Authority refers to any of the old world governments of Steel Rift, and Freelancers are the setting’s mercenaries and wild cards.

You might be thinking, “Oh. Well that’s easy. We’ll build GDI as an Authority faction and be done before lunch.” You’re half right, but where’s the fun in doing just one faction for GDI when later games gave us some exciting varieties to choose from?

This week we’re building the Steel Talons.

In the canon of Command & Conquer, the Steel Talons were founded after the Second Tiberium War to serve as GDI’s test bed for experimental weapons technologies. They kept classic GDI walkers, like the Titan, Wolverine, and Juggernaut, in production and regular operation.

Because of the heavy focus on R&D of new and advanced weapons systems, I think it’s fair to say we can compare the Steel Talons to, or suggest it has close ties and relations to, a military industrial contractor, or major corporation. Corporations are the high tech faction category in Steel Rift, so let’s represent them that way and pick some thematic perks.

Firstly, this is GDI’s experimental warfare division. So let’s give them so top end hardware. No, literally! Top End Hardware is a special perk available to Corporations that allow their HE-Vs to carry 2 additional Tons worth of Weapon Systems and Upgrades.

Secondly, the Steel Talons held a great deal of secrecy about themselves. So we should give them something spy related. In the games, they operated surveillance equipment called “pulse scanners”. They only showed up in one mission, and they were mostly just a stealth game mechanic, but we can imagine a little beyond what was in-game. If the Steel Talons maintained all this detection equipment, let’s give them the Exhaustive Intel Gathering perk. Once per game, that lets an ally take the Lock On order without needing a target designator.

Steel Talons are famous for their use of GDI’s walkers, and lucky for us Steel Rift is a game that focuses primarily on HE-Vs (walkers) with other forces as support. So we need four things: Wolverines, Titans, Behemoths, and the Mammoth MKII. Technically, we don’t need the Mammoth MKII. But I want it. What’s great about this is that Steel Rift has four sizes of HE-V: Light, Medium, Heavy, and Ultra-Heavy! I think you see where this is going.

This is an anti-personnel Light Walker/HE-V with a focus on recon, and we’re specifically depicting the upgraded variant used by the Steel Talons. So first off, we build this as a Light HE-V with a pair of Rotary Cannons and a Haptic Suit upgrade. Since it’s a scout, and we know we’re building artillery, let’s give it a Target Designator. In cutscenes, the Wolverine has always come across as pretty durable (still fighting even after losing an arm). So let’s give it Reinforced structure. In C&C 3, the Wolverine received an AP ammo upgrade. We haven’t got anything like that to work with in Steel Rift, but other walkers received the Adaptive Armor upgrade to protect against EMP attacks. The equivalent of that in Steel Rift is ECM. So let’s slot that in its place.

For the miniature, you could happily depict a Wolverine with Death Ray Designs’ Fennec Light HE-V. But, if you’d prefer something more specific to Command & Conquer, SirMortimerBombito has a great Wolverine STL.

The Titan always gave me real “ship-of-the-line” vibes, meaning it’s there for the line of battle, slugging it out and taking hits in return. For the standard Titan, we’d just want to go with lots of armor and structure upgrades: Reinforced Structure, Reinforced Armor, and Extra Plating. Let’s keep the theme going from the previous design, and match the Wolverine’s Haptic Suit and an ECM upgrade for our Adaptive Armor stand-in.

An Autocannon for the main gun is pretty straightforward, but the Steel Talons Titan MkII had an upgrade to replace the Autocannon with a Railgun. Here’s where Steel Rift is going to differ a bit from an RTS: HE-V loadouts don’t favor mounting only one weapon. So our Titan is going to have an Autocannon and two Railguns.

If you used the Fennec for your Wolverine, then you can keep the look of your force by using DRD’s Corso Medium HE-V. If not, SirMortimerBombito comes through again with a very slick Titan STL.

The Behemoth was a Juggernaut artillery walker variant designed by the Steel Talons to garrison infantry in a pod mounted on top of the ‘Mech. While we could homebrew some rules to build an infantry pod onto a Heavy HE-V, that’s not really what I’m about in this current series on the blog. So, instead, we’ll simulate having the garrison by mounting a Rotary Cannon to deal with any infantry or light vehicles that try to harass our artillery unit. Mounting 3x Howitzers is easy enough, although in Steel Rift we’re paying a premium for that (every duplicate weapon costs +50% more in tonnage than the previous). Still, if we’re after authenticity? This is it. To use up our remaining equipment slots, we can slap ECM and Extra Plating (+2 Armor) on. That does put us 2 tons over weight, so we’ll apply Stripped Armor (-2 Armor). We end up breaking even on armor, but get ECM in the trade.

Keeping with the theme of using DRD’s Authority miniatures, you can represent a Juggernaut with the Shepherd Heavy HE-V. I know that doesn’t exactly match the look of the C&C Juggernaut, so you might also try the Mars Heavy HE-V if you prefer it! I don’t know of any Juggernaut or Behemoth STLs out there in the wild. The closest thing I might suggest is the Ogre II from CAV: Strike Operations.

This is the fun one, isn’t it? The biggest and meanest of the GDI arsenal. A multi-limbed walker with Twin Railguns and an aft-mounted Anti-Air Missile system is all done easily enough in Steel Rift. It’s the rest of the tonnage that’ll be a bit rough to fill out. Since this is meant to be GDI’s most unstoppable unit, we’ll make it more resilient with Reinforced Armor and Structure. Since it’s been a running theme with all the other front-line walkers, give it the Haptic Suit upgrade. Because this is a huge unit likely to be on the table the whole game, and it has the biggest guns out of anything we’ve made so far, let’s give it Coolant Tanks and a Heavy Reactor to let it take Overdrive actions as often as it wants.

For the miniature, if you wanted to keep going down the same theme as the others, you would need to get the Mastiff Ultra-Heavy. While this isn’t a multi-limbed model, Steel Rift has no WYSIWYG rule, and you’d be free to legally use the Mastiff to depict your Mammoth MkII in any game. If you need a multi-limbed walker for this, instead you could use the Goliath Ultra-Heavy. But that’s pretty far removed from the look and vibe of the Mammoth MkII, which is why I’ve got a link here for the Simba from CAV: Strike Operations.

Steel Rift rewards you for building specialized teams of HE-Vs, which is something we didn’t consider when building our baseline GDI walkers… well, I might have. I included Target Designators on the Wolverines so we’d have them during this step. Target Designators let units with Smart weapons (like Missiles and Rocket Packs) fire indirectly at the targets being designated. But our artillery walker uses Howitzers, and those don’t have the Smart trait… unless…

Howitzers mounted on Medium and Heavy HE-Vs gain the Smart trait when those HE-Vs are in a Fire Support Team made up of 3 HE-Vs. So let’s put two Wolverines and a Behemoth in a Fire Support Team. Except… this is going to change things for us a little bit. Although the Wolverines are required to mount Target Designators now, those Designators also cost us 0 equipment slots. Similarly, the Behemoth has hit a snag: per rules, Fire Support Team Mediums and Heavies are required to mount Missiles, a Rocket Pack, and a Howitzer.

So we redesign the Wolverine a little bit. We drop the Reinforced Structure to free up 2 tons of payload space, then upgrade it to Ceramic Armor. That gives a chance to ignore the AP ability of Laser Weapons, and since lasers are classic Brotherhood of Nod tech, that feels really thematic!

Reworking the Behemoth is a little harder because we’re going to break the theme of the Juggernaut to do it. We drop a Howitzer and add a Rocket Pack and some Missiles. That makes our HE-V compliant and mechanically a better unit. Now, to fill out our payload, let’s drop the Extra Plating and replace the ECM with a Heavy Reactor.

If you’re playing with a casual group or a friend, you could probably ask if they were okay with you breaking the rules here and taking one Howitzer instead of the missile weapons but keeping the team benefit. If we were playing a C&C game, I’d certainly roll with it.

Steel Rift game sizes are Recon (100 tons), Strike (150 tons), Battle (200 tons), and All-Out War (350 tons). These also restrict how many teams you can bring, and what size those teams can be. Bringing a 3x HE-V team, like our Fire Support Team, requires us to build at least a Strike-sized army or larger. So that’s what I’ve made!

Our Fire Support Team consists of a 40 ton Behemoth and 2× 20 ton Wolverines for a total of 80 tons. We can bring 2× 30 ton Titans, bringing us up to 140 tons. For 10 tons, we can bring the Orbital Laser Off Table Support asset, because that’s basically an Ion Cannon. And that brings us to 150 tons of Steel Talons.

If you want to play a Battle at 200 tons, you can add the Mammoth MkII to the list. And, for your convenience, I’ve included the files needed to run these armies right here in this blog! The Steel Rift Hangar has an option to load an army list from file, and you can use that to examine or edit the HE-Vs and the list to your liking!

I’ll make a list for the Brotherhood of Nod’s Black Hand, including the Purifier Warmech!