Designed as a fire support mech, the Crossbow is a pretty simple and straightforward early Clan omni. While the first variants only had weapons in the arms, later versions thankfully changed that up and started adding them to the torso. In some ways its reminiscent of a Crusader with big round arms full of missiles, and even shares the same weight, but it does quite a few more different things.

Not putting anything in the torsos make the early variants quite flawed – while usable, they have completely empty side torsos, which means any crits there will immediately move to the CT. It’s a real good way to start taking engine/gyro crits early. Later variants that start adding things to the torso are much better, as even a tiny bit of padding adds a lot of durability. It does tend to have some weird loadouts too, I think all the holes in the arms for missiles made some designers interested in filling arms with lots of guns.

Chassis

As an omni, nothing structural changes between the variants – every single one is a 5/8 move speed mech with a standard engine and about 90% armor coverage. This is pretty good – while not maxed out it’s certainly fairly durable with the standard engine, and 5/8 movement on a heavy is generally what excites me. One concern is with the early variants, where the standard engine isn’t quite as durable as you’d expect – having nothing in the side torsos makes it eat CT crits at a much higher rate.

Variants

These mechs have all been reviewed based on a standard F through S scale, which you can find described on our landing page here (along with all of our other ‘mech reviews, the name of the box you can buy to get any of the mechs we have covered, and our general methodology).

Prime

All this is armed with is a pair of LRM 20s (with Artemis IV), four tons of ammo, and a dream. It’s not a ton of gun, but it’s not insignificant either – especially as those LRMs have no minimum range, so it’s happy to run straight into a fight. It does run 1,829 BV, which is higher than I’d like for that amount of gun (compare to an Adder A at 1,400ish, where you’re essentially paying 400 BV for durability and Artemis IV), but it’s not so high it’s unusable.

Jack’s rating: C+

Peri: The early model Crossbows all kinda mega suck in my opinion. They cost a lot for something with empty side torsos, which is a design flaw that is both vanishingly rare and really crippling. 1800 is a lot to pay for a pair of LRM-20s, particularly a pair of them attached to a mech this vulnerable to crits and TACs.

Peri’s Rating: D

Liberty: I agree with Peri here, unfortunately. Despite my love of how the Crossbow looks it really is overcosted for just how fragile they end up being. 5/8 with a pair of LRM 20s is really not enough.

Liberty’s Rating: D

A

Switching up to a more short range focused config, this variant drops to a pair of LRM 5s (without Artemis), pair of streak SRM 6s, and pair of medium pulse lasers. This is, technically, more total damage – max of 48 instead of the prime’s max of 40. To do so it’s sacrificing a lot of range and has to start (barely) caring about heat. At 1,797 BV you aren’t saving much. It’s a marginally better brawler, but less flexible overall.

Jack’s rating: C

Peri: Second verse same as the first. Empty side torsos suck and this costs a lot.

Peri’s Rating: D

Liberty: Stuff! Things! Close range fighters are fun but this is still too expensive for how much you’re actually getting out of it while STILL HAVING EMPTY SIDE TORSOS

Liberty’s Rating: D

B

Continuing the trend of shifting to a more short range focus, this has four streak SRM 6s, two in each arm. At 1,687 BV it’s also continuing to get cheaper. If I want a close range mech I’d take this over the A any day – that’s a ton of possible hit locations and I save another 100 BV, mostly just sacrificing 10 LRM tubes at longer range (oh no).

Jack’s rating: B-

Peri: This is the best of a bad bunch when it comes to early model Crossbows. The price is reasonable and if you haven’t played against mass SSRM mechs, it is insanely unpleasant to get shot with this many hit location rolls. Once you get enough streaks together a TAC becomes a question of when, not if. Empty side torsos completely kill it for me, but it is the best of these.

Peri’s Rating: D+

Liberty: This is at least kinda funny for what it is but having a six pack of Streak sixes for near 1700 BV is really not alright. At least it’s an improvement on the Chassis over the last two.

Liberty’s Rating: D+

C

A variant that actually does have things in the torsos, this has a pair of ATM 6s and a pair of heavy machine guns. While it does have enough ammo to give the ATMs full flexibility, just having a pair of 6s is not a lot of throw weight. At 1,557 BV I don’t mind it too much, but generally I prefer at least ATM 9s. Cheap way to get a heavy mech on the field, and at least it’s not spilling crits into the CT instantly.

Jack’s rating: C+

Peri: ATMs are good and having anything in the side torsos is great, but the tube count is somewhat disappointing here. Two ATM-6s is worse than an ATM-12 for both ammo tonnage and cluster table reasons. It isn’t terribly expensive and is usable, but it is somewhat disappointing.

Peri’s Rating: C

Liberty: ATMs! We love ATMs! And things in side torsos?! Why are we suddenly in competent ‘mech land? This loadout and movement profile plus an ECM suite makes for a pretty alright forward support ‘mech that I think you could get some pretty nasty work out of. For all of my love of the 6 cluster table it really doesn’t stack up to the 12’s which is unfortunate. Still, loadouts are looking up!

Liberty’s Rating: C+

D

It has two Mech Mortar 8s. Mech Mortars only fire indirect (at a penalty, even if you have visibility), are really good at killing infantry, and otherwise suck. If your opponent brings tube artillery or other infantry, at 1,154 BV this will generally remove them from the field very quickly. Otherwise, don’t bother with it.

Jack’s rating: F/C- (C- only if there are significant infantry)

Peri: Mech mortars are hilarious and I love them. They are explicitly not allowed to be good, but they are cheap, kill the hell out of infantry, and can scratch the paint on a mech if they feel like it. I think you should 100% play with some mech mortar goobers, but I can’t say they are any good.

E

I’m not sure if the main goal of this variant is to kill infantry at close range, or melt the pilot’s brain. It has 16 AP gauss rifles. That’s eight slots in each arm that can explode. Against infantry it’s an unholy terror that will delete entire platoons just by looking in their direction. Against mechs it’s comparing directly to the B variant as a way to deal up to 48 damage in small hits – slightly fewer than the B, at slightly shorter range, and with more explodium in the arms. At 1,558 BV I don’t think it’s worth the savings.

Jack’s rating: D+ (but a very very funny D+)

Peri: We call this one the “Suicide Booth” locally because of how many pilots we have seen die out of one of these. Whenever an APGR gets crit, it counts as an ammo explosion and inflicts two pilot hits, deals a small amount of damage to the structure on the arm, and can roll for another crit. It is not uncommon to watch chain detonations deal 8+ pilot hits simply because the arms can’t stop exploding. This mech doesn’t believe in infantry, and it will, on average, kill two platoons every time it fires if you split the arms off. The designer of this one was driven feral by infantry, and considers it completely acceptable to annihilate your pilots if the payoff is deleting every foul and regressive infantryman off the face of the Earth. This is by far the funniest Crossbow, funny to the point that it is the only Crossbow that anyone here uses. Other Crossbows are more functional or higher quality, but none of them are as funny as firing 16 shitty little guns and channeling the power of Infantry Guy to scratch the enemy’s paint and then die.

Peri’s Rating: Also a D+ but an A+ in my heart

Liberty: The symphony in infantry man’s ears, the despoiler of all things two legged or explosive, the killer of my pilots, the song in my heart and the dispenser of all my woes upon the table. I adore this thing. I run it too much. It kills a lot of pilots, both mine and others- mostly mine. There is nothing funnier to me than running the absolute ‘little guy’ energy that the Crossbow model possesses up to something and saying ‘I hit you with 16 AP Gauss’ on 7s and then just dousing something in 3 pointers. Also great for informing someone their tanks are lame and stupid, this thing is the shear concept of motive hits.

Liberty’s Rating: C- on the table S++ in my soul. I love him. 

F

Someone looked at what I said about the C and acted on it – each arm now has an ER medium laser and an ATM 9. Only two tons of ammo per launcher, but that’s plenty – take one each of ER and Standard (enough for three and a half turns) and two tons of HE. Seven turns of shooting HE is about as much as you’re likely to get in most games. At 1,854 BV it’s a competitor with the prime, but puts out some serious short range hurt and is reasonably likely to get there.

Jack’s rating: B

Peri: They forgot to put things in the torso again. ATM-9s are better than 6s, but I still would much rather have one with something in the side torsos and an ATM-12. The obsession with symmetry is really hurting this mech.

Peri’s Rating: D

G

Six streak LRM 5s. Who the fuck cares. It’s cool that each one that hits is going to do full damage, I guess, but you don’t need the ammo conservation and it’s less damage than the prime in nearly every situation (the prime does 32 damage on average cluster rolls, this does 30). 1,725 BV is in the ballpark of everything else, so it’s not even cheaper.

Jack’s rating: D

Peri: SLRMS are a lot better than regular ones, and I am perfectly happy to trade off max damage for more consistent delivery of 5 damage hits. Those random 2s and 3s that you get with other LRMs are a bit of a bummer, so this mech not having those is nice. It isn’t much better than the Prime, but I think it is a wash, rather than being worse.

Peri’s Rating: D but not worse than the Prime’s D

Liberty: Ok, hear me out, this is horribly expensive for purpose and for the job you should be taking something else but this is the thickest boy sitting on the razors edge of being a ‘little bastard’. There’s not enough damage here to justify going to kill it, especially if you’ve got something else in their face. That being said this is straight up just a worse pick than near about any other thing in the ‘little bastard’ anthology pack but it’ll do the job if you’ve got the BV… and worms in your brain.

Liberty’s Rating: D. At least he has a job to do!

H

Another of the generally bad H heavy laser configs, this is running a heavy large laser, heavy medium laser, LRM 15, and four light machine guns. Even at 28 heat sinks it can’t fire everything – at a standstill it still goes up 2 heat. It would be fine if there was a reasonable chance it can cool off at some point, but mostly once you’re shooting you’ll want to keep shooting (not that a bunch of its damage can reliably hit). At 1,707 BV it continues the trend of not being enough cheaper than much better variants to justify itself.

Jack’s rating: C-

Peri: I give this points genuinely on the back of it being both asymmetrical and also having real stuff in the side torsos. Heavy lasers remain bad and expensive, but this is one of the better laid out Crossbows and by a lot. If we got a variant like this with regular lasers, I’d really like it.

Peri’s Rating: C

Liberty: Heavy Large Lasers my beloved. I am a fan of Heavy Lasers, especially the bigguns, on the other hand my love for them is on zippy shitheads or big brawlers, not fat mediums that crave death at every turn.

Liberty’s Rating:C-

J

Switching up to an improved heavy large laser (and taking everything back out of the side torsos), this fills nine ER small lasers into the other arm. It’s also running a supercharger to make sure it can get into range for those lasers. It can only fire one arm or the other, which isn’t amazing given the fairly short range of the heavy laser, but when it’s close that’s 45 potential damage from the ER smalls. It’s just a lot of shots, and at 1,839 BV it isn’t tremendously overpriced despite the supercharger putting it at a bad move speed breakpoint. While in close it’s also got talons putting you up at 20 damage kicks. When close, it’s scary. While closing, not so much.

Jack’s rating: C+

Peri: This is extremely funny. It does okay damage, has a can opener if it wants it, and can shit out most of a Nova’s worth of lasers up close. As far as supercharger mechs go it is one of the better ones. Talons are kickass and I love to see them, and this would be my favorite… If it had anything in the goddam side torsos. There is nothing mechanically keeping people from doing it, the sides are wide the fuck open and there are ways they could have locked them up to keep people from putting shit in them. Really fucking annoying to see so many potentially good variants ruined by that. Its not the worse but empty side torsos really, really suck.

Peri’s Rating: D+

Liberty: J is for Jade Falcon are all crazy idiots and make funny machines. Still love me Heavies, especially imrpoved ones, and this many ER Small Lasers is just funny as all hell, especially when paired with Talons for some up close 20 damage savagery. Dear god why can’t you fuckers put things in the side torsos?!?!

Liberty’s Rating: C

T

Two ER large lasers are accompanied by a shitload of one-shot SRMs. Forty tubes, to be precise. It’s a lot like a rocket launcher mech, only this one is very much designed to just rattle a pilot around until they fall asleep. It’s very funny, but really doesn’t justify the 1,729 BV cost for what will mostly just be a pair of ER large lasers bouncing around. Take something that does more consistent damage.

Jack’s rating: C-

Peri: This is a very funny variant. This was designed to match the art, which had a pair of LRM-20s, and going for 40 one shot SRM tubes is the single funniest way they could have matched it. The ERLLs are fine and those SRMs are a crit-hunting menace, but you will probably want to hold this mech back until pretty late in the game. On turn 5 or 6 one of these rocking up on an assault mech with some open hit locations would be insanely funny and pretty good too.

Peri’s Rating: C+

Liberty: Hilarious rec-guide variants are hilarious. Never in my right mind would my response to ‘how do I get 40 tubes on a design’ have been ‘fuck it, one shot SRM the fuck out of it’. I agree with Peri, this thing wants to be in the back plinking away with those ERLLs for the majority of the game right up until you see something big and important with some open side torsos, then you pissmissile this fucker right into it and start fishin’.

Liberty’s Rating: C+

U

Underwater variant. Both long and short range torpedoes. It runs 1,856 BV and I’ve got no idea if that’s a good value or not (probably not because it doesn’t focus on a single goal) because I wouldn’t subject either myself or my opponent to playing a game underwater.

Jack’s rating: ????

W

The fifth variant to actually put anything in the side torsos, this is another generalist with a pair of LRM 10s, ER PPC, and pair of improved heavy medium lasers. It’s pretty straightforward, at range firing the PPC and alternating 1/2 LRM launchers, and in close you swap the PPC for the lasers. It’s simple, doesn’t excel anywhere but is never really incompetent, and unfortunately costs 2,051 BV. For about the same cost I could get a Loki Mk II T and do massively more damage, or sticking with a crossbow pick up an F for similar flexibility and increased damage.

Jack’s rating: B-

Peri: This is a baseline competent mech but it is a really bad use of both BV and the Chassis. None of the Crossbows are good uses of the chassis and this certainly is one of the mechs of all time as a result. It is like a dollar store Nova. It isn’t terrible, it is vaguely usable, it costs way too much and isn’t even funny.

Peri’s Rating: C-

Conclusion

This is an incredibly average mech despite the weird configs. While they don’t really work well, they also mostly don’t work terribly. The main weakness is that 7 of the 13 variants have completely empty side torsos, which just urges crits to instantly migrate to the CT, but that’s still better than a lot of mechs weakness and it’s relatively cheap for a clan heavy (because it doesn’t commit the cardinal sin of carrying too many guns).

Peri: The Crossbow is a good chassis completely wasted by dogshit configurations. There are some great ways to use this chassis and absolutely none of the designers who have made Crossbows have done any of them. With the lack of an XL engine, endo steel, or ferro there is a lot of room to load up with space inefficient DHS and tons of energy weapons. The Crossbow is just a waste of a perfectly good and very rugged heavy mech chassis.

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