Campaign Mission: Liberate the Settlement

 o/

The game in a nutshell...

I got my second game in our local Chaos Campaign in Friday Night. This was the first mission in the '2nd track'. My opponent Jake who is running the campaign didn't feel like going back to finish up the first 'track' (section) of the campaign so instead my TBAGers did what mercenaries do best: Hang back and collected a check for doing nothing. 

The structure to defend and the elementals were playing the part of the helpless civilians. The rest of the mechs pictured were the pirate OpFor.

Heading into this mission, pirates had occupied and were harassing the locals in a small settlement. I needed to minimize civilian casualties and defend a building for 4 turns, and then either cripple the commander's mech, or kill one of the lesser pirate mechs which would force their retreat. The pirates would not engage me until fired upon. I was allotted 2k BV from my TBAGer company. The forces were as follows:

The Buffet Assault Group: 

Merlin MLN-1A, Pilot Murl N., Gunnery 3, Piloting 4

Panther PNT-9R, Pilot: Ace Darwin, Gunnery 3, Piloting 4

The Buffet Assault Group, advancing more or less at a mosey...

The Pirate OpFor:

Warhammer WHM-6RK (the pirate leader) Gunnery 2, Piloting 4

The following pirate mechs were all Gunnery 4, Piloting 5:

Commando COM-1D

Commando COM-1D

Wasp WSP-1A

Locust LCT-1E

The pirates turn to engage the rescuers!

Not really a fair fight in terms of numbers, but I had an easy job to do, or so I thought. From what I heard (after the fact) most folks in the campaign engaged immediately once in even long range resulting in civilian casualties and sometimes loss of the structure as the pirates, once engaging the player's forces had time to send one or two light mechs back to raze the settlement. 

Kill the locust & win, easy-peasy, right? Wrong!

Having a pair of 4/6/4 mechs, I maneuvered in close hoping for some easy, kills, engaging on turn 4 (and keeping the civvies alive and the building intact accomplishing that part of the mission by default), all I had to do now was kill an enemy mech to win. With 3 PPCs, plus a variety of lesser weapons, how hard could that be? 

Carrying the team, Ace's almost down a leg (as usual) and then, of all things receives a Wasp-delivered-successful Death From Above attack!

Turns out, that apparently Murl N. (now known as: Murl N. Sucks!), my Merlin pilot was...intoxicated? Every turn, he'd fire a spread of weapons, keeping his heat neutral, hitting with one weapon (never once with the PPC), and rolling just 1 point below what was needed to hit with every other weapon, and he did this this: 

Every. Fucking. Turn.  

Turns out that landing on your feet following a DFA strike isn't easy...

When virtually all of the damage is coming out of a freaking Panther (and with the law of averages, he missed sometimes too), while a 60 ton mech bumbles about, well, needless to say its not easy trying to kill even a light mech! Then, just to try it, Jake's Wasp made a Death From Above attack! Of course a 20ton mech doing this to a 35 Ton Panther resulted in equal damage for the two participants!

...and here we are at last. 

Eventually, I took out a Commando by legging it with a kick in close combat. It's wreckage was represented by a 'rough' terrain marker. The following turn, as the pirates turned to flee, the dumped into the the (by then) one armed and still woefully inaccurate Merlin, inflicting considerable damage. In response Murl N. rolled a snake eyes for his piloting check and was summarily knocked out for 3 turns following his impact with the ground.  

Ace moving and shooting to save his both unconscious and intoxicated teammate, removes the Wasp's left torso with a PPC shot! 

Pirates being pirates, fled on by, pumping all they could into the prone merlin for added fun. In the end I won, but the victory was pyrrhic for sure. Jake figured we had time to play two games, given how quickly I had accomplished the first half of the mission. However, due to me abysmal shooting from the Merlin, we only played this one game. 

Somehow Ace's Panther survived the game instead of getting legged as usual, though as you can see, it was a close run thing. 

This bastard is going to cost a bloody fortune to repair!

Damage can't be repaired until the end of this track, and given how beat up these two mechs are, they're effectively out of use for now. I have a considerable warchest of C-bills at this point, but repairs to these two will likely gut that. I ought to fire the pilot 'Murl N. Sucks!', but my Assassin pilot died in my first game, and I might not have enough cash left to hire another mechwarrior, so he's safe for now.