I know everyone is planning on a glorious victory, however dead mercenaries collect no pay checks!
'There is no way that I am getting
paid enough for this job...'
I got together with my buddy Screech for an 8k game of Battletech this past weekend and what follows is sorta how it all went down (I say 'sorta' as my battle reports aren't the most detailed).
The Buffet Assault Group was fielding a fully painted force, with nothing in the way of advanced tech outside my Commander's custom CGR-SB with 4 tons of comms. equipment generating a 3 hex ECM field. Turns out we were playing ECM incorrectly so the few Streak SRMs that failed to connect should have. In hindsight, I ought to have stuck with the stock model and it's fourth large laser.
Screech's Steiner force was sporting his trademark 'fresh from the factory' grey and probably 3060s era tech. We'll just say they dug deeply into all that the Helm Memory Core had to offer.
The first few turns were mostly uneventful maneuvering and dodging the corrosive environmental effects of the map. The Catapult would spend most of the game on it's high perch, lobbing 30 missiles down range, and on average connecting with about 9 per turn. Typical.
One of my Stingers, ran into a Shadowhawk whilst trying to sneak into the backfield. The Shadowhawk would remove both of it's arms (and all of it's weapons) in this exchange, and the Stinger would flee the field in the following turn!
Screech pondering his next course of action.
The charger and Hunchback (the AC-10 version) leading the charge and tangling with his Marauder and Warhammer!
On my other flank, the 8-Z panther and 2nd Stinger get into the Wolverine and Warhammer's rear arcs, where the torso armor is thinnest, and where they would instead only hit arms and legs...
Realizing that they're outclassed, my commander starts her slow, exonerable retreat. Walking backwards while firing most everything would be how she more or less spend the rest of the game. The hunchback on the other hand was happy to remain stuck in, guns blazing in all directions!
Collective fire from multiple mechs started to punch holes into the Warhammer resulting in 2 XL engine hits. When rolling to avoid a heat-induced shutdown, Screech rolled a snake eyes and the Warhammer went dead!
Dishonorable mercenaries as we are, my forces had no qualms about shooting the stricken mech!
The Warhammer took enough hits to knock the inert mech over. Karma is a bitch though as my Hunchback also needed to make a piloting check to avoid falling, however my pilot lost consciousness following a pair of SRMs to the head. Rendering the check a moot point, and down it went as well.
My Charger, heavily damaged by this point gets an attempted assist from the Catapult which fired and missed with all four medium lasers.
The Warhammer powers back up and presses it's attack. With only 1 functional PPC, it was more or less heat neutral despite the engine hits. The Scouts hang back to guard the Hunchback and it's still snoozing pilot. However the Wolverine dumps everything into the Panther's side torso, hitting its SRM ammo and vaporizing the mech!
The Hunchback struggles to it's feet, and in a brutal exchange both the Warhammer and Hunchback are destroyed! Not pictured but the other stinger tried to run cover for the horrifically damaged Hunchback and lost an arm along with taking a spread of SRM hits to an otherwise pristine scout mech.
My custom Charger. Ya gotta love the CGR-SB, proving once again to be an excellent 'zombie-mech' that refused to fall.
At that point it was almost midnight and my force was spent. The Panther and Hunchback were both vaporized by ammo explosions, the two Stingers had a single arm between them, the Charger was an absolute mess as you can see above, and the Catapult had taken a few good licks as well (and it's ammo hoppers were almost dry!).
On the other side, Screech's Warhammer was so badly torn apart that it may as well have died to an ammo explosion. Both the Marauder and Shadowhawk had taken a fair beating, though the Wolverine had only taken minor-to-moderate armor damage, and so would be able to escort it's comrades home with no trouble at all.
Not mentioned above but worth mentioning: My Hunchback was modeled with the two right torso medium lasers facing the rear. Rear mounted weapons are usually derided as situational wastes of tonnage. However, stuck in the middle of a brawl, those two lasers were blazing away, turn after turn, indeed neither of us could recall a game in which we had so much rear weapon usage.
In fact, following the loss of one of it's arms the the autocannon, moments before it's fiery demise, the Hunchback was actually more dangerous in the rear arc than it was the front!
All in all it was a fun brawl!
