Solaris VII event After Action Report

 o/

Hockey games aren't this ugly...

This past weekend was the Solaris VII multiplayer event at out FLGS and it was...alright. I got to meet prettymuch all of the local BattleTech crowd, roll some dice, bullshit with the gang, shoot stuff and of course, have my pink panther be the first mech present to die. All the usual stuff. 

Scott (center) was the primary organizer as with assistance from his buddy Barry on the left there (who's voice sounds a lot like Joe Pesci), and Wyatt to Scott's right. In the foreground you can see Ace & The Master Chief, both ready to rumble! Much to my surprise, no one had every  heard of Ace Darwin's Whipits, or had ever seen anyone with a pink Panther before. 

The whole crew going from left to right: Ian (who sounds surprisingly like my friend Charlie back in TN and is taller than even I am!), Badger (yes, that's his real life name), and again Barry & Scott. 

To the right of Scott is Joe & Chris, Wyatt seen in the 2nd photo above and Jason whom I didn't get a pic of had already left by this point)

And lastly Nick & Dylan. 

The guys who organized the event played in it as well, and given all of the work that they put into 3D printing and painting the terrain, coming up the scenario, etc., why shouldn't they? 12 players, Tech level 1, 3020s era, at least 2 mechs totaling no more than 120 tons (only Chris opted to field a light lance lead by a Crab). 

The initial set up, the blue hexes around the edges being numbered and randomly rolled for. Somehow Ian ended up all on his own on the lefthand side. 

The scenario involved a lot of automated defense turrets that really seemed to bog things down in my opinion. I get what they were aiming for, to force the players into a scrum in the middle, rather than sandbagging in the outfield. However the turrets ate up a lot of time, effectively took Dylan's Orion out of the game on turn 1 with 2 engine crits (notta good experience for a new player). Nick's guillotine took a gyro hit as well.

The Solaris VII, mechs vs turrets game begins...

So many turrets, dear god in heaven, get inside the walls!!

Also, with only Ian on the left side, once his two mechs entered the city (they had a short, straight shot inside the walls), the turrets on that side of the field spun around to attack the nearest target, leaving Nick's Guillotine on our end, and Dylan's now lone surviving Vindicator on the other to run like hell! In total, with 15-16 turrets outside the arena, 2 guarding every gate to the arena and one in the middle, that's like damned near 30! It was a bit...much. 

Yes, exactly.

Armed with a variety of weapons, varying rolls to activate, turrets surrounded by mechs were easily taken down passing out VPs to all who shot them, whereas on the other side, bereft of targets the turrets were ganging up on the few mechs unfortunate enough to be in LRM range.

Skidding at full speed into a wall is a lot of fun, so long it isn't your Wasp doing it! Luckily Ian's other mech was an Atlas. 

At this point, Ace already had no front center torso armor and Chris' Locust at the top was missing an arm or two, and that buttered Crab had seen better days as well. Chris pondered having his Locust run around inside the city, activating all of the turrets. I told him it was a good idea so long as he yelled 'LEERRRRRROY JENKINS! He said sure...why? Ugh, that...hurts...so...much (and I didn't even play Everquest)!

Once inside the city, the wall turrets started to pop-up, and start to attack WTH? When there's already a scrum in progress, who wants to get taken out by a wall turret shooting you in the back?

At this point it was about time for me to go. Originally when I signed up for this we had no plans for the day which was fine as I figured this would take forever with 24+ mechs on the field, commended by a dozen people. However a week and a half ago Frankie heard that a rodeo was in town and so we were going to that in the evening. Thus at the end of turn four, 4.5 hours into the event, my Charger alpha struck into a Blackjack, delivering a 37 points of 'laser good byes', while Ace's Panther disintegrated in the clusterfuck at the wall. Nick checked out as well, not sure if he had plans (he did mention Octoberfest) or had just had enough.

Till we meet again Mr. Blackjack...

As soon as we walked out of the shop and the door closed he turned to me and said: 'So, thoughts?' As I'm sure you can imagine  my first thought was: the turrets need to go. My other thought was to freeze the initiative for the game, or at most reroll when someone dropped out. Instead every turn we rolled for initiative. Followed by roll offs for all of the duplicate rolls, and so on and just that alone was like 10 minutes a turn wasted.  

Nick agreed. Turret combat isn't want Solaris should be about. Again, I get what they were going for but it was just too much. Nick commented that they wanted to really get into the crunchy details whereas at an event like this, streamlining things is better. 

So many thoughts...

Anyways we left, the fam and I went to the rodeo, ate fair food, and here & again I checked my phone to just see 'still going' updates, and after we got home and were chilling out a bit before going to bed, the discord notification came in that the last mech standing was declared at 10:45pm (the game started at 12:30PM), with Scott the winner. 

Hrmm...I know I wasn't there for the last 6 hours, but I always find it a little suspect when an event organizer wins his own event. Those still in attendance didn't have anything but praise, so no foul play appears to have taken place which is good. But still I can't help but wonder...

Reading back thru, this post came a bit more negative than intended. The FLGS is wanting me to help organize an upcoming Urbie Derby. So I guess my turn in the sun to be complained about is coming...