You must like this guy, you finished painting all of your terrain.

 o/

The title is a direct quote from Frankie Wednesday afternoon.

Only having 4 heavily damaged buildings and a half painted dropship to go, I took a break from mechs to paint the last pieces of my terrain. The novelty of a fully painted battlefield at home, not just the FLGS is what spurred the finishing of my terrain. Here you can see the Battlefield (sans cat) using a mix of both my, and Nick's terrain. 

Look who forgot that the table opened up to reveal another table inside?

Nick came over for the inaugural game of Battletech at my house Wednesday night. 4500 points BV, 3020s era as always, homemade lasagna in the oven, and the following scenario of Nick's creation:

One side is trying to steal newly discovered technology from the other, in this case, the chemical make up of the coolant for lostech double heat sinks. There were 3 structures on the field that a designated hacking mech needed to be adjacent to for 2 turns (could not shoot while downloading the info), and would need to download from all three structures. If damaged but the hacker mech was capable of escaping the board, another mech could pick up the task to get to the remaining structures for downloading the still needed info. 

The forces of arrayed for battle, not pictured is Nick's Capellan weapon of terror (for both sides), a Thumper artillery cannon that would be firing from the table itself. 

The scenario sounded pretty steep to accomplish, but figured we'd give it a try. As I was fielding periphery pirates in the form of Battle Rattle the 65th Lyran Regulars (Battle Rattle is no more), vs. Nick's filthy Capellans Red Lancers, it only made sense for me to be the raiding force trying to steal the technology. Also as periphery pirates, all of my ammo bins were half empty at the start of the battle as logistics is hard when you have to steal supplies. My hacker mech would also be my fastest, a Javelin.

Turn 1 was the usual maneuvering and some sparse LRM shots at maximum range.

The Javelin plugs into objective building #1 while the Blackjack tries to fend off a Locust and Battlemaster. Luckily the Battlemaster was confused by the tree the javelin totes around on its base, and largely missed!

My shooting was largely ineffective aside from this Whitworth putting 2 volleys of LRMs into the sliver of Wolverine behind that large objective building .

With the Thumper terrorizing both sides by lobbing rounds of death that are scattering randomly (hitting nothing but scaring all), my 2nd Whitworth breaks free and runs down the board edge (and behind Dunkin Davions) to kill that infernal cannon!

The T-Bolt and my commander's refitted primitive Griffin shoot at point blank followed by a good ol' fistfight. Unfortunately, a punch to the head knocked out my commander for 2 turns!

Alpha striking with all weapons as soon as it got in sight, the Whitworth takes out the Thumper!

Trouble brewing...

Neeka takes to the field (she made 3 separate passes thru during the game). By this point my Javelin was lost, legged (as usual) by the seemingly not-so-random damage chart. The Javelin took 1 ML hit to a side torso, and all other damage to its leg. Seriously WTH?  

With the Javelin lost and the Capellans pummeling my prone Griffin, all hopes of salvaging the technology was lost and the Blackjack and Whitworths tried to inflict as much damage as they could against superior foes. 

Guess what turn it is? 

Correct, last turn and everyone piles in for a good scrum!  The Battlemaster (unsurprisingly) really pummeled the Whitworth in front of it resulting in 1 gyro and 2 engine hits. The awakened, 1-armed Griffin had a few parting shots for the T-Bolt, and the Blackjack shaved all of the armor off of the back torso of the Battlemaster, but sadly failed to go internal. 

Scenario Result: Capellan Victory. 

The Javelin losing a leg after successfully hacking the first building, and thus unable to get away with any stolen info was disappointing. Not saying I would've won had it not taken virtually all of its damage to 1 location, but had the damage been spread out to something reasonable (for even a lightly armored mech), then I ought to have had al least a fighting chance. As such, the scenario needs some tweaking in both our opinions. 

Being unable to fire, needing 2 turns each per (3) locations (so 6 static turns for 1 mech?), and with the defender knowing where you are headed and able to surround the target location is borderline insurmountable (well, we were out of era for Wobblie shenanigans, those fuckers can accomplish almost anything). Roles reversed, I am not sure Nick would have fared much better in this scenario even with heavy his mechs.

Now its my turn now to devise a dastardly plan scenario for a future game...