o/
Up close & personal!
Here's the battle report of my latest campaign game that went totally not the way it was supposed to! I could field no more than 325 tons of mechs from my TBAGers company, with a minor payout bonus at the end if I opted to bring less than that. I had no idea what my objective as to be aside from kill the enemy.
I opted for a 310 ton force consisting of:
Stalker STK-4N (my commanding officer for the TBAGers Catalina Styner)
Catapult CPLT-C1
Charger CGR-SB (Challenger)
Hunchback HBK-4SP
Urbanmech UM-R60
Not terrifying at all...
Initially, the OpFor played by Dylan consisted of a Longbow, Thunderbolt, Shadow Hawk, 2 Locusts and a Wasp. Every other turn Dylan would roll a D20, and on a 15+, 1 or 2 (I think he had a roll of 20 to get 2) mechs would show up as reinforcements. Pretty daunting considering his choices of reinforcements are all of the mechs pictured above!
The Hunchback charges into the killzone!
Starting out, my Catapult lobbed some long ranged shots (It wouldn't move all game earning it's pilot a name: Happy Camper). Oddly, (to me), Dylan was using his bug mechs to call in max ranged indirect LRM fire at my...Urbie?!? What the hell? I mean the assault mechs didn't mind, but seriously, what the hell. Dylan's still a new player and apparently had his first encounter with a UM-R60L recently, and that experience scarred the boy. The Urbie would survive the game unscathed.
Six small lasers or not, do you really want to get that close to a Challenger? Movement modifiers prevented any lasers from hitting either mech, but then...
...The kicking started. The Wasp missed, likely as it's leg went cartwheeling away following a 16 point hit from the Challenger's foot!
After the Charger had dropped one locust and then kicked the leg off of a Wasp that was hell bent on suicide (you're welcome), Dylan switched targets to murderous effect! An ungodly number of LRMs just kept raining down, turn after turn, it was brutal!
The hunchback takes down the wounded T-Bolt with a few head shots!
Only one mech arrived as a reinforcement however, a Crab. He never made another successful reinforcement roll! The Stalker, Catapult and Hunchback had pounded the Thunderbolt. Indeed, once in range, the first round of shooting, the 4SP missed with nothing! Eager to try out something new, the Shadow hawk charged the Hunchback (to quote Dylan: these aren't my campaign mechs, what do I care?) My Hunchback ignored it and took down the Thunderbolt in another shockingly accurate volley!
Dylan's Shadow hawk meanwhile, fumbled it's roll to hit and instead the Hunchback deftly stepped aside and tripped the Shadow hawk into a nice, 18 point face plant!
Trying to recover from that debacle, it took the Shadow hawk 2 tries to stand back up, and when it finally did so, he positioned it with it's back to my Stalker, which was a mere 3 hexes away. Giggling uncontrollably, Catalina removed that terrible pilot and his mech from the world! Not even halfway thru her damage rolls and something hit the Shadow hawk's SRM ammo and that was that.
The 2nd Locust should be a puff of smoke somewhere out there in the middle.
By his point the second locust was gone, crippled by several turns of point blank medium laser fire from the Catapult, it turned and tried to make a run for it. Climbing down the hill it had been on, it ended its move a perfect 7 hexes out from the Catapult... Meanwhile the Catapult's bodyguard, the Urbie never hit a damned thing all game, though it wasted almost a full ton of AC ammo trying to hit that stupid locust (and for a few turns it was in easy small laser range).
Finally the Challenger fails a piloting check and falls, knocking out its pilot for 6 turns (we were on the next to last turn). The Stalker came running into the rescue to finish off the Crab that was pummeling my stricken mech (along with the longbow firing indirectly). The head only had 1 point of armor left, luckily they never hit it...
This game was definately not going the way that Dylan thought it would.
The Longbow continued to rain death on the Challenger, along with the seriously damaged and overheating Crab. He was passing his shutdown rolls after taking 2 engine hits, losing an arm, a few heat sinks, and several other components. The Stalker would soon finish the Crab off. Meanwhile the Hunchback was flanking around a hill to finally starting laying some fire onto the infernal Longbow. A short ranged Hunchback should never be allowed to get that close to a longbow, much less should it be able to inflict enough damage to cause the longbow to fall over, twice!
The Crab turns to slag and the Longbow hits the ground again!
The game ended with the OpFor practically tabled. Only the Longbow was left, it was on the ground and it had my MVP, the Hunchback all over it! Jake, the FLGS owner and campaign manager wandered over, looked at the table, then looked at Dylan and said: how could you fuck this up? You're fired (No, Dylan doesn't work there). The objective was for things to get so overwhelming that I as the campaign player would realize that discretion is the better part of valor and make a run for it.
Instead I obliterated the enemy, huzzah! Now at the end of this 'track of the campaign, I can repair all of my damaged mechs. Starting with this one:
Ouch! Zombie mech anyone?
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