This series of posts is mainly for people who make decisions on buying mechs in terms of how good they are, rather than if they adhere to a chosen playstyle, or how cool they look.

Operation Frontline Sale: From July 7 to July 12

This is a relatively small sale, and most of the mechs are worth having which is nice. It includes the Crab, Catapult, Nova, and Mad Dog. There’s not a whole lot of selection, but with the latest balance changes, you might find that some of these are worth picking up. Though some of them are really good, I wouldn’t say any of them are “Must Haves” on par with mechs like the Kodiak, Timber Wolf, or Battlemaster.

Top Priority

These aren’t absolutely necessary for a new mechwarrior, but if you’re not currently saving for something particularly important to you, these are well worth the C-Bills.

The best variant to get right now is absolutely the NVA-B, but these things tend to change. I’d say the NVA-A and NVA-Prime are the other two to go for, but that very well might change in the future. Since the re-scale, this thing is a badass brawler or PPC sniper, and I think it’s worth having for pretty much everyone.

Next Best

The Nova is easily the best of this bunch to get, but if you don’t have any of these and can spare some coin, do eet.

Another big winner from the re-scale, the Splat Cat is absolutely badass. Huge damage up close, and now it’s harder to strip or kill it. Real good stuff. It is less versatile than the Nova, so I wouldn’t quite say it’s top priority, but it’s pretty good.

These aren’t as good as they were before (their teeniness was a huge asset) but the hitboxes are still decent enough and the quirks are OK too. 3 Large Pulse Lasers are still good, yaknow?

Last but Least

These aren’t bad, but I’d mainly get them if you’re really interested in them or need to get the other variants to master a chassis.

Lots of people are big CPLT-C4 fans for its sweet quirks and ability to use a STD, but I was never a huge fan personally (I prefer the pure brutality of the A1). The CPLT-K2 is a classic badass, and is certainly better now than it was before the re-scale, but I’m still not huge on it. That being said, there are plenty of good builds for it.

The Mad Dog has never been that great, but it’s always been decent. I mainly want to recommend the brawling builds, but it does have…other options. Right now, the MDD-B looks like the best variant, with the MDD-A and MDD-C as the next best for mastery reasons.

It’s not a bad mech, but it’s primary feature is that it’s the best mech to finish off your mastery of the Crab chassis.