Thursday, January 23, 2020

Scenario playtesting

o/



The following is a sorta bat rep for a scenario game I came up with aways back. This was it's first run and predictably, we found several issues with it, but I'll get to those in a bit. Firstly here is the back story and scenario, with the bat rep to follow, and then thoughts/needed revisions at the end. Hope you enjoy!

*****

It’s 3028, the 4th Succession war is just ramping up into full swing, and the Dame Catherine Humphreys, leader of the Duchy of Andurien declares war on the treacherous Capellan Confederation due to an 'unprovoked' attack. The Buffet Assault Group, is deployed to assist the 4th Defenders of Andurien in their assault on Scarborough…

*****

It has been a long day of fire support duties. The TBAGers have spent the past 12 hours, perched atop a ridge, pounding the Capellan defenders back into the stone age. Their ceaseless LRM strikes only interrupted by the frequent need to reload. However after hours of firing, their ammo hoppers (and the accompanying train of Andurien ammo carriers) have all run dry. Wearily, the TBAGers pull back to the rear for a much needed night’s rest. Even their CO Catalina is exhausted, spending the day endlessly patrolling for flanking attacks and escorting the ammo carriers heading both to and from their position against attack. 

As the day draws to a close and the evening fog rolls in, the TBAGers finally have the space port in sight, their barracks lay just beyond. Their minds dulled with fatigue they let their guard down as the Anduriens have a 2nd line garrison lance protecting the town from danger. With the last few straggling ammo carriers in tow, the TBAGers only need to pass thru town before they can enjoy some warm food, hot showers and blessed sleep…

The Scenario:

Eight thousand points per side, 4th Succession War (tech level 1). 

The defender’s Andurien lance and infantry platoon as well as my opponent's forces deploy as per the norm, and my opponent has the initiative for the first two turns as the rookie Andurien lance is thrown into disarray by this ‘sudden ambush behind the lines’. 

At the beginning of turn 2 the TBAGer mechs arrive on their table edge and wearily join the fray. Exhausted from a long day, their P/G skills are awful and all of their LRM hoppers are empty. They may not run in the turn they arrive since the inexperienced Anduriens were taken by surprise and neglected to warn them. Likewise the din of distant battles and the foggy conditions masked this fight from the tired mercenaries. The ammo carriers arrive on turn 3 and also may not run in the turn they arrive. 

The dense evening fog adds a +1 to hit modifier for all shooting rolls at all ranges. Physical combat rolls are unaffected.

In order to win, more than half of the TBAGer mechs and ammo carriers (I only have 2 ammo carriers) need to escape off of the board via the enemy board edge within 6 turns. The Anduriens DO NOT need to escape the board, however the Andurien mechs will fall back and retreat off of their table edge if they start taking internal damage. If the infantry platoon falls to half strength, the remainder will scatter into buildings/cover and be removed from the board.


The Buffet Assault Group in back were all quite tired 5/6 pilots with the 2 ammo carriers having 5/5 crews. The Anduriens in front were all 4/5 pilots, with 3/- Frogmen infantry. The three Urbies were identified as Light Pole, Mini-Bus Shortbus, and Emoji.

The battlefield. Note Felis Gigantus lurking off to the side...

Yes, I will make several strolls thru the middle of your game, and yes I will plop down right in the middle of it too!

Turn one. Due to range, fog and movement, my Anduriens make no shots. Screech's Capellans fire a few times, but no hits are landed. 

Turn 2 and the Tbagers arrive, and note the lonnnnnnng road ahead of them....

Multiple modifiers or not, they can't hit me if there's a water tank in the way!

Turn 3 the ammo carriers arrive, and prepare for their high speed dash across the table. 

Here at the top of turn 3, we realized my assault mechs had no possible chance of making it off of the board. So we added 2 turns to the game. Catalina pulled out of line in her Stalker to provide covering fire to her troops whom she ordered to make a run for it! Meanwhile Emoji, the infantry, and the Capellan scouts start brawling at point blank range. The infantry managed a Commando head shot amidst their little blast of buckshot, much to Screech's annoyance.


My lone gunnery highlight of the game came when 'shortbus' put an AC-10 slug into the head of Screech's Awesome. Sadly there was no crit made. Truth be told, there were quite a few head shots in the game, though this was the only one to penetrate anybody's armor in that location.

An Awesome disobeys orders and peels off to stand and fight. Three 'big guys' running and forgoing all shooting (paltry as it was) is kinda boring to play. Speaking of, 3 of the 4 Tbager mechs would end the game with minimal damage, and near all of it to their rear armor. 

...aaaand its a free-for-all at this point. Damaged urbies were making fighting retreats (albeit slowly), Assaults were running (also but not quite as slowly), the longbow narrowly passed it's piloting check to not fall whilst turning at a run on pavement and in the back field, one of the APCs made an unsuccessful MG strafing run on an enemy Catapult. 

At the bottom of turn 6 we called the game due to the late hour. 


The Awesome that stayed behind took a pounding this last round and would end the game on it's back, the only mech to fail a piloting roll all game! My side's 'hero-mech' title ought to go to my Andurien SHD-1R. It took an absolute ponding, and never once fell despite losing almost all of it's armor from the waist up!

The final, parting shot.


Okay so, thoughts?

Well first of all, success was impossible as I'd handicapped my forces too much. Thus the game essentially ended as a draw when we called it due to time. Had we gone another turn, the APCs would have exited the board, though at the minimum the Longbow and the one Awesome would have needed another 2 turns to exit as well. No units on either side were lost, though mine were sporting heavier damage than his mechs.

I had thought that a straight run across the board would be too easy. Perhaps had we been using a standard mapsheet it would have been. However mine is a 36"x36" map, meaning there was literally no way my lumbering assault mechs could make it in 6 turns! We realized this early on and revised it to 8 turns, but even then 10 might be more realistic, that or use faster mechs. However this was kinda tailored to my Tbagers so the latter isn't much of an option. Placing the Şoarece in the middle of the intersection as a roadblock didn't help matters either. 

The fog needs to go! Exhausted 5/6 pilots, running, and shooting at moving targets (at range) are all but impossible to hit. Adding in a further +1 meant more often than not, I needed a 13 or 14 to-hit roll on 2D6! Yeah, not happening. Indeed, all game my lowest to-hit number was a 7, however the vast majority were 10+ rolls, and box cars were kinda the norm.

Movement: Screech suggested my units be allowed to run on the turns they arrived. Tired or not, mechwarriors still react quickly to the situation and those few extra hexes of movement were sorely needed!

Deployment: He also suggested deploying his force on a flank. It would have been too easy to overload one side or the other, namely on the road itself to all but eliminate any hopes of escape from the outset. It was a conscious decision on his part not to do so.

Still, it was a fun time and we'll give this another go (with revisions) in the future.


Monday, January 6, 2020

My first game of 2020!

o/


After a yearlong hiatus due to misaligned schedules and an untimely illness on my part, Kushial was finally able to come over for a game! He was brining a medium/light weight company (well mostly, he left 2 behind to guard the dropship), against which I fielded a similarly weighted demi-company, of mechs, with an APC carried infantry platoon. 

The following is my usual brand of a half-assed bat rep. Kushial already posted his which you can read here

My setup assistant Baxter 'helping' as usual...he would be removed from the table several times over the course of the game. 

Kushial's Donegal Guard approaches...

My right flank defenders, with my Urbies in the 'subdivision'. I had hoped he would close to slug it out with them in these close confines, but to no avail. 

My left flank, and the LoS blocking hunk o' cardboard that would see much fighting around it. 

My hunchback advances boldly out in front of the vehicle park, tempting the hatchetman horde to charge in, but they don't take the bait...

My Whitworth would stand rooted in it's spot most of the game. with a multitude of targets, it had no need to close and performed admirably (well, when my die rolling actually cooperated) in the fire support role with it's twin LRM 10 launchers. 

Ceding ground to try and draw him into close range, the hatchetmen and Urbies instead trade long ranged AC-10 fire, whilst the first real scrum begins on my left flank. 

My first ever use of a quad mech, the Scorpion performed fairly well, though the lack of both adequate heat sinks and the ability to torso twist were rather difficult to grapple with. 

Backed into a corner already, grrr...

As a bit of a side note, in the background on the platform next to the dropship, That valkyrie had just finished incinerating my infantry platoon to a man! This was the first time that anyone actively engaged my infantry, normally they're just ignored.

The beginning of the end as the end starts to swing against me...

TREACHERY! Attacking a prone mech!?! (A Gryo hit and destroyed foot actuator would keep it down). This shall be noted in the Book of Gru-wait, wrong game system...never mind. 

I kept forgetting about that little, overheated all to hell and heavily damaged but still not dead little bastard.

and lo, the mechs began to fall...

The hatchetmen continue to dance back and forth in front of my gunline, taking damage but not enough to die. 

Finally they charge, axes held high! Two urbies would fall to shooting however, denying them their axe swings. Remarkably, one urbie took an ammo crit and survived by dint of only having 1 round left in the hopper! It still hurt quite a bit though. 

Trapped like a rat and preparing for death. 
The hatchetman would decapitate my griffin with it's axe, though a solid right hook to the hatchetman's face made for a glorious death!

With the last 2 urbies combat ineffective (only 1 small laser left between them), my still untouched (and almost out of ammo) Whitworth, and surprisingly only lightly damaged Scorpion run up the white flag and retreat. Likewise that heavy APC put pedal to the metal and made a run for it as well. 

My ragged survivors (though 'survivors' kinda debatable given the state of those two urbies)
So...I started off 2020 much like I finished off 2019, by losing. Of well, consistency is half the battle they say (just not the half I was hoping for...). Still, it was a fun time and I look forward to our next bout which hopefully will not be until 2021.

Wednesday, January 1, 2020

Its the Urbie Dance Squad!!

o/

Happy New Year folks! Wow, 2020....sounds futuristic doesn't it? However, rather than the far future we're still right here in the present, moving on...

Despite the inordinate amount of free time that PDF units seem to have, cleaning their mechs still doesn't seem to make it onto the duty roster...

I closed out 2019 by finishing off my 'Podunk' PDF lance, consisting of a trio of Urbies lead by an obsolete Shadowhawk SHD-1R. The Shadowhawk's LRM-5 was mismolded and looked more like an SRM-4. Somebody with decent greenstuff skillz (i.e.: not me) could've probably fixed that, but I instead trimmed the LRM and head mounted SRM launchers off making it into a SHD-1R. 

The cars, mini bus and lamp post all came from SteelWarriorStudios. The SHR-1R's base is by Gamecraft Studios.

I have a 2nd Shadowhawk in the same boat, and will likely make it into a 1R as well. Given my fondness for mediocre-to-shitty mechs, I don't see this downgrade as an issue, rather its perfect for PDF/Homeguard type of units. As such, this bunch is in urban camo, meaning it could be from most any inner sphere/periphery house or mercs, or even some really, really down on their luck pirates. 

Guess who's happy to see you???

The smiley emoji on the top of that one urbie is in recognition of it's first ever shot fired in anger that took down a pristine King Crab! I won't go into detail (again) as most folks like to remind me that I never seem to shut up about that, lol. 

These will likely not be all painted in the color scheme...

Also, some late year reinforcements rolled in in the form of a Bulldog lance. These tanks are from SteelWarriorStudios, and they scale perfectly with my Scorpion and Demolisher tanks. I think they're a vast improvement over the official model. I'm also tempted to mod the record sheet of the standard model to add in some additional armor to match what looks like appliqué armor as compared to the LRM versions.

As a Christmas present to me, I ordered a Marik decal for my truck.

Due to RL scheduling issues, there are still no dates set for games at this time (but we are trying!), despite that I'm hoping this is the year that changes my Battletech gaming from sporadic to frequent!