ALL UNITS, SUPPRESSIVE FIRE!!

o/

Unfortunately, 'suppressive fire' isn't really thing in battletech, but I'm going to assume that that was the erroneous order issued forth by my mech commander in order to justify the otherwise atrocious inaccuracy of my mechs' shooting Thursday night. 

Oh sure, I did hit the enemy now and again...however in all but two specific instances during the WHOLE game, my shooting was an exercise if futility. Indeed, most hits seemed to be by accident rather than design. Admittedly, Screech's gunnery skills weren't much to be praised either, however mediocre is still vastly better than atrocious!

I'm not sure what the Free Worlds League is paying these schmucks, but it's clearly too much!

My TBAGers were running a demi-company consisting of an an assault lance made up of an AWS-8R x2, STK-3H, AS7-RS, and a medium lance using all three of my HBK-4N2 refits, as well as a Stinger STG-3R refit that upped the armor to that of the 3G, and swapped the MGs out for a single small pulse laser.   

On the other side of the board, Screech had a mixed star made of 4 points (8 tanks) of the base model Joust, and his star commander piloting a Thor/Summoner, who clearly shat in some Khan's cornflakes to be tasked with leading a bunch of tanks into combat!

As such this won't be as much of a bat rep at as it will be me showing off my WIP city map/board, whilst lamenting about the inability of my force to even kill fucking tanks of all things!!

An overhead view of the battlefield. All of the little MDF buildings are now painted. The cardboard blocks were intended to be temporaries until I got more terrain, but they make for excellent line-of-sight blockers. So I think I'll just keep them, prime and paint 'em up a ruins. 

The Marik Militia's vehicle park. The problem with a parking lot is it creates a vast open space. However using it as a tank park broke it up nicely, not to mention being the TBAGers' employers, they couldn't simply step on them, making  that lot into a bit of an obstacle course as well. I periodically tried to activate the tanks but Screech would have none of it for some reason...

The view from the other side of the board. Screech was running late (as usual), so while waiting I used a spare base to trace a hex grid on top of the cardboard bricks in he event that any mechs jumped up there. It was a bit crude but usable, and in any event none jumped up there. Once these bricks are painted up, I'll redo the hex grid with a bit more care than this go round.

(In my best Star Wars Imperial Officer impression): Ah yes, our first missed shots of the day...

Gratuitous Dropship pic. Still super happy with this though I have yet to paint it or it's landing pad.

Okay, 1st excellent gunnery incident: My Stinger jumps 6 hexes into the rear arc of two Jousts, firing and hit with both lasters! Unfortunately you've no doubt seen the two other jousts that did a quick reverse in direction to get rear armor shots at said Stinger. Screech was salivating at the prospect of 16 LMGs taking it apart, however his 1st shot, an ERLL hit the center rear torso and killed the mech in 1-shot! Normally, players are thrilled with 1-shot kills, but Screech looked totally crestfallen as all of those LMG gun barrels slowly spun to a halt, unfired.

The last savage exchange of fire, shooting lots and hitting little. Just off to the right and sadly not in the photo, my other Awesome connected with both LRM15s and its large laser with no less than an 11 for any rolls! As usual the missle clusters were kinda meh, but whatever it hit at least.

As for my mechs above, collectively about 1 weapon in 5 actually hit their targets, though I did at least get a box cars roll on the cluster chart for the lone LRM20 of the Stalker that hit. That aside though, many, many civilians no doubt died horrible deaths.

*****

In the end, my Hunchback on point as badly beat up and the one mech I lost, the Stinger, I fully expected to as it was the cheapest thing on the board by a vast margin of points! the Stalker's left torso was exposed meaning had we gone another turn it would have tried to hide to dump the SRM ammo in that location before continuing on it's bonsai charge! Lastly the Atlas' left arm was in ruins but otherwise was doing fine. The loss of the laser in said arm would have eliminated and future over heating issues. The rest had just a few minor dings with one Awesome and Hunchback each leaving the board untouched!. 

On the other side, Screech's Thor had taken a few decent hits, but no internals . Whereas his collection of tanks ranged from untouched to crawling off of the board trailing busted track links whilst a few drivers struggled thru multiple, stacked driving penalties! One Joust also lost it's weapon's stabilizer in the last round which would have been an issue had we continued. 

So it was kindova draw I guess.