A few weeks ago, some of our ‘Geek Night' group got together for our usual night of mayhem.
A couple of us are Battletech players from way back, including one guy who was hesitant to get into the game again because he was only able to beat the addiction back in the 90's though a 12-step program…
I had been working on a modular terrain board off and on for a while, intending to use it for Tomorrow's War, but when we started talking Battletech, I made some small changes and now it can do both.
There were three of us there than night; I had made up some BV-balanced Lances ahead of time, so we each picked a group and went for it.
Eric (the resident ‘Battletech addict') – West end of the board
Catapult / Crusader / Hunchback / Assassin
Jeff (the guy who has an annoying habit of knowing all the stats for pieces in games he's played ONCE) – North side of the board
Awesome / Zeus / Trebuchet / Wasp
Lee (me – the guy who goes overboard on game boards and rules supplements that we wind up using one time) – Southeast corner
Marauder / Griffin / Archer / Locust
View of the Gameboard (Looking West, with some rebased Clix figures on it. We used standard CBT pieces in the game)
Opening moves:
I started in the City, so I moved my Lance deeper into the buildings. All except the Griffin, which I jumped onto the tallest building. Why? Because ‘JJs are kewl'. In military parlance this is referred to as an ‘idiotic move'.
Jeff moved his units to take the wooded mesa in the center of the field.
Eric parked the Catapult behind the Devil's Tower on the far side of the river, where it sat motionless the entire battle, raining LRMs on targets at random (the Assassin was hopping around acting as a spotter).
Camouflage FAIL:
I should point out that we play a lot of 1-hit/1-kill kind of games like Star Wars Miniatures. Jeff, being a new player, was reluctant to charge out of cover and invite a hit.
Eric and I assured him that Battletech games are more of a grinder, and one-hit kills are pretty rare. So Jeff moves his Awesome out into the open, and Eric matches his move with his Hunchback on the other side of the river.
Jeff rolls hits with 2 of his 3 PPCs. BOTH ARE HEADSHOTS. Down goes a perfectly good Hunchback, whose only damage is some paint scratches from falling over (oh, and the missing head).
The Hunchback did manage to hit the Awesome as it died, so the Awesome's chest armor was pretty weak. I'd spend the rest of the game trying to get a good hit there to finish it off, but Jeff was a little more leery of our advice now.
Hunchback dies from TWO headshots, Awesome falls down in fits of laughter.
I knew the hidden Catapult was going to be a pain to deal with (and I should have done something similar with my Archer), so I sent my Locust sprinting across the river to flush him out.
Yes… I sent a 20 ton scout mech bravely forward to attack a 50-ton mech with over 4x the armament.
Eric probably wouldn't have spent the time attacking the Locust, but when a fly lands on your arm you swat it.
He moved his Crusader in, and almost waxed the Locust in one turn, but missed with his kick, so the Locust was able to escape the next turn (after tripping in the River trying to get back to my side).
Time to squish a bug…
Meanwhile on the North side of the field, my Marauder and Jeff's Zeus were waltzing in and out of the city, taking PPC shots at each other.
I turned my Archer to the mechs on the mesa, but didn't have much luck hitting the Trebuchet, which was keeping my Marauder from making much headway against the Zeus.
Jeff decided to regroup, and pulled all his forces together. My heat dials weren't helping, and I wasn't able to capitalize on this. Instead, I sent the Griffin and Locust West to try to engage Eric's Crusader.
Somewhere about this time, Eric and I spent some time explaining some more about the critical hit rules. Eric noted the Crusader has a load of missile ammo in each side torso, and nothing to pad it. ‘Wow, it would suck to get hit there.'
Jeff regroups:
Come on Crusader, come out and play:
A few shots back and forth, then Jeff sends his Trebuchet to the highpoint of the Mesa, and hits the Crusader in the side torso. He gets a critical hit, and the Crusader pilot now confirms "it sucks to get hit there" as his exploding ammo raises his eyeball temperature past the boiling point.
Kill stealing from above:
At this point, it's getting late, and we decided to end the game after 2 more turns.
Eric is still being a nuisance with the Crusader, and the Assassin is jumping 7 hexes every turn, so neither Jeff nor I are able to get a decent, worthwhile shot.
Knowing the game is ending, I run the Marauder heat dial deep, deep into the RED, doing 2 alpha-strikes back to back. The Marauder connects to the Zeus, and lights off the ammo bin for its LRM. Jeff and Eric are calling it a lucky shot, and writing off the Zeus, when I ask the requisite stupid question of the night…'how many rounds of ammo did it have left?'
Only 2 rounds remain, so the Zeus becomes the only Mech that Eric or I can recall that survives an ammo cookoff.
The Marauder, badly overheated, has sympathy pains and decides to explode its ammo as well. Unfortunately, I was more frugal with my Autocannon, so I have plenty of ammo left to make sure the crater is big and round…
I attempt to finish off the Awesome with the Griffin and Archer, but never manage to connect hard enough with the Center Torso to knock it down for good.
So at the end of the Battle we have the following forces left:
Lee (Me):
-Limping Locust
-Griffin in pretty good shape
-Nearly untouched Archer
Eric:
-Catapult with almost no missiles left
-An annoying Assassin I'll never let him borrow again.
Jeff:
-Awesome that should be cowering somewhere (but someone forgot to tell Jeff that, so he was killing stuff with it instead)
-A Wasp (which Jeff kept asking, ‘what is this for, again?')
-A slightly damaged Trebuchet low on ammo
-A very beat up Zeus driven by a pilot with soiled underwear
I'm a sucker for most things Battletech. Lately, my interest has been drawn to the Quickstrike rules. Need to run a game or three.