Capture the bridges!

 o/

Charge of the 'Light Brigade'!

Nick 2.0 came over for a game this past week with another scenario of his own creation (he is much better at that than I am). Clan invasion era, 9050 BV. Originally it was just 9K, but he thought he was over by 40-odd points and I added in a platoon of hover-laser infantry. Turns out he was under by 100 points, so I just gave him a hover-laser infantry company to compensate. 

There were three bridges over impassible waterways (jumping over was allowed) and each bridge would need to be held by a controlling unit at game's end to count as a siezed objective. Killing the opposing forces was a secondary objective. We both took a ton of pics during the game, and rather than mix the two, I've decided to use his pics almost exclusively, with just a few of mine added it. Here's how it all went down:

My mercenary force consisted of a lance of Corey's Cavaliers mechs: VT-5M, SHD-3H, CGR-3K, RFL-3N, backed up by a lance of the Turtles assault armor: Schrek - Std., Ontos - Std., Behemoth - Std., Behemoth - Armor, and lastly a platoon of despondantly unemployed hover-laser mechanized infantry platoon that we found in a spaceport bar. 

Nick's force was (I think, am going off of memory) a lance of the Tikonov Lancers mechs: WHM-7M, PXH-3D, WSP-1S & RFL-3N, backed up by a lance of McCarron's 6th Armored Cavalry with: RVN-3L, ENF-4R, VTR-9D and an HBK-5M/or 5N.

Lastly, he had the loaner hover-laser mechanized company that fired the platoon that my force had hired. 

The battlefield with our deployments. 

Note the early use of a pizza template as the Raven was occupying the same hex as a hover platoon. 

Turn 1 would be unusually bloody, as my Vulcan put a large pulse laser thru the cockpit of the Raven killing the pilot instantly! The Raven's Narc beacon missed though it was a moot point as the rest of Nick's nearby forces pummelled the Vulcan, destroying it!

The remainder of my mechs sent supporting fire across the river whilst, the first bridge groaned under weight of the 375 ton tank lance meandering across it. Nick's Victor, P Hawk and enforcer fired into the hulking tanks, making them angry. 

Turn two and there were two separate brawls breaking out. On the bridge, a Capellan hover platoon inflicted 3 points of damage to the Armor Behemoth and a lucky side crit of 'crew stunned'. 3 points to an over-armored brick and I think I was more stunned by that result than the tank was! Sensing an easy kill, two hover platoons raced into point blank range of the stricken Behemoth as well as the other Behemoth's many machine guns...

The Victor and Enforcer all took hits as did a few tanks. Meanwhile the Charger and Shadow Hawk (henceforth: SHD because I am lazy), crossed the river for a pointblank duel in the backfield. 

In what would become a comically repetitive (for me) event, Nick's Warhammer fails it's piloting check and hits the ground. 

Thw Warhammer regains it's footing and the scrum is more or less a repeat of the last turn. The Hunchback lands a rare AC-20 hit removing an arm from the SHD, luckily for me it is the one with no weapons in it. 

The two leading Capellan hover platoons were now gone, and the wounded third was engaging with what was left my hover platoon in a fratricidal firefight on the second bridge. The Enforcer (it was in really bad shape by this point) and Victor fall back under the withering hail of tank fire! All three of the forward tanks had mobility crits, but the roads were largely compensating for the mobility loss. 

Both the Ontos and Behmoth #2 were trundling about at reduced speed, whereas the armor Behemoth #1 was immobilised. The Schrek and Rifleman both stayed behind to snipe at whatever targets presented themselves, the the Schrek securing the bridge. 

The damaged, lead Behemoth makes a miraculous roll of 11 on its PSR to round the corner a flank speed without skidding! The Victor jumps back across the river while the Enforcer makes a run for it. Whilst the Enforcer's rear armor is notoriously thin, at least it had armor in that location! The backfield scrum continues with the Schrek sniping the Wasp out of existance with a lucky PPC shot.

Run Forest, RUN! The gunners on the Ontos cackled maniacally as they unleash hell on the fleeing Enforcer. The Behemoths meanwhile concentrate their fire on the Victor.

2-3 falls later, the beat-all-to-hell Warhammer starts an orderly retreat along with the rest of Nick's remaining forces. The SHD brazenly contests the 2nd bridge as an AC-20 slug whizzes by! As you can see by the new set of flames, the Enforcer had unsurprisingly succumb to the Ontos' laser light show. 

A wider angle of the board. Also down and burning was the Victor. After another massed volley of AC-10 slugs, the mech failed it's PSR, inflicting a critical hit on itself during it's fall, which if I recall correctly hit the SRM ammo bin. Meanwhile the SHD suffered a CT crit of a 'lower-6'. Normally that would be the SRM ammo and certain death, but this was a 3H model. So instead of another mech kill, all Nick did was wreck a machine gun.

I'll probably never field the 2H model again...

In the final turn the Charger moved up onto the 2nd bridge to help the beleagured SHD secure the objective. While it would be successful in this endeavor by distracting the Hunchback, it came at a heavy cost. An AC-20 slug punched thru the rear torso armor and hit an almost empty LRM-20 ammo bin. CASE and an XL engine took care of the rest and the Charger was down for the count!

Still falling back, the Warhammer relinquished control of bridge #2 and with my Schrek still parked on the first bridge. Victory was mine with 2 out of 3 objectives secured! That said, the Hunchback was still in my SHD's backfield, rendering the 'secure' status of the 2nd bridge tenuous at best. 

All told Corey's Cavalier's  lost the Vulcan and Charger, with the SHD suffering heavy damage. The Rifleman was untouched. As for the Turtles, the armor variant Behemoth was immobilised and the standard one was moving slowly with it's right side internal structure well exposed. The Ontos had a moderate amount of damage, but nothing too serious and the Schrek in the back was untouched. 

The Tikinov Lancer's lost the Wasp, the Warhammer was on its last legs, whereas the Rifleman and Phoenix Hawk both had just minor damage. McCarron's Armored cavalry on the other hand only had the lone Hunchback survive with relatively modest damage. 

Lastly, not a single mechanized hover-laser infantryman/woman survived the battle.

This was a fun one and like Nick's last scenario, we will be playing this one again in the future, with attacker and defender's roles reversed. 

Two more for the Horde

 o/

You will pass the potatoes!

I've been a little burnt out on painting mechs here of late, and so these and a few other half painted mechs have been knocking around my desk for awhile now. To be honest, all but one of them are at the ready-to-be-inked stage. As I was inking some Star Wars minis this weekend (visible here), I added these two into the inking batch in order to push them across the finish line. 

Looking down the business end, a sight few survive unscathed. 

Mech # 14, the arm also shows a few kill marks which may, or may not have occurred during it's previous career as a Dark Caste Bandit. 

The Starslayer was previously painted for my Dark Cast Bandits, but I stripped and repainted it for my Desert Horde. It will most likely be used as the STY-2C-EC as I have been wanting to field this oddball variant with a force of pre-Clan invasion Nova Cats. 

The sight of a Hoplite usually doesn't alarm an opponent, this one might though...

I couldn't resist the adding the checkboarding on this one, making this the only Desert Horde mech to have any sort of decorative flourishes. 

As this model is armed with a PPC (either a standard of ER model), I carefully trimmed off the AC-10's ejection port and covered the area up with more checkerboarding. 

The Hoplite has been modified using an LRM-15 launcher from reddogminis to serve as a HOP-4B, and/or the far more dangerous HOP-4Bb. This came out well enough that I may order some more hoplites and repeat the process for my Wolf's Dragoons. 

Exercising the Nuclear option...

Right were this debacle fell apart...

Following my last campaign game and its subsequent rant. Last Tuesday I finally played the follow up mission where my wrecked lance, and a second 4100BV relief lance had to escort the spy again. My relief force was an Assassin, Phoenix Hawk, Panther and Valkyrie, all base models with 3/4 pilots in all but the Valk which had a 4/5.

We used my coolant truck rather than the ugly mini provided for the spy's truck. The spy was once again riding in the same 40HP vehicle with and SRM2 turret, 1 whole vehicle hit location, and the movement curve of a Demolisher tank. My mission was to escort him/her to safety, 3 maps away (where the relief force was coming from), as well as get all of my mechs off of the board, inflicting what damage I could on the OpFor along the way. 

Victory lay waaaay over there on the right edge.

The OpFor was a lance  consisting of a Mongoose, Locust, Wyvern, Crab and a Partisan tank. All base models I believe. I had 2 *free* turns of movement before the persuing OpFor arrived. My locust ran like hell, as did the slow ass truck on road for what little benefit that provided. My relief force did the same but was so far away that only the Assassin, moving almost like a LAM and the not far behind Phoenix Hawk would really take any part in this debacle.  

 Only the all but destroyed Royal Locust would manage to get across the whole board, the rest of the original lance would perish on the first map, with the truck barely making it onto map two before it's demise seen here. 

When the OpFor arrived, my last stand started with pummeling the Wyvern with all the Stalker and Hunchback could muster. In return, my commander's stalker was decapitated by a large laser hit (the head took a medium laser in the prior game), killing my CO instantly and dropping her shattered machine. The following turn, as the OpFor (unsurprisingly) caught up with and destroyed the truck, the Hunchback Alpha struck, and would have risked a shutdown from heat due to a last game engine hit had it not been destroyed out right (as it was). 

The Buffet Assault Group's roster post-game.

The only saving grace was the Assassin managed a snake eyes location on the Mongoose, inflicting an engine and gyro hit, sending it into withdrawl. The following turn my forces started to retreat enmass with the Catapult also falling to 2 more engine hits. 

Sounds fun doesn't it? 

On top of the suicide mission with no hope of victory, I was penalized -30 warchest points (about the cost of a light mech) for each mech lost, and a further -40 warchest points for the loss of the truck. This was somewhat mitigated by gaining +25 WCP for each OpFor mech sent into with drawl, those being the Mongoose and the Wyvern which was down to 1 structure point left in it's left leg. 

This scenario was so much fun that after the game I posted on the campaign discord channel that (quote):

 After playing back-to-back not at all fun to play scenarios & I’m not throwing any shade at Shadowstar either, The Buffet Assault Group is breaking contract. 

I’m out of the campaign, best of luck to the remaining players.

Shadowstar who was running the OpFor and had already suffered thru this scenario himself and was apologizing profusely throughout the game (and preemptively before any mechs were even deployed). His game ran better than mine only as he managed 3 consecutive headshots on the OpFor. That said, his spy truck died at the same approximate location as mine did. Extremely good die rolls should not be the only path to victory (I think his game was more or less a draw). We have no idea how the spy truck was supposed to cross the whole map, and why this didn't pop up in 'play testing'. 

The cat herder returns!

My exit caused a bit of an uproar, many private convos with folks in and out of the campaign, and ultimately is causing this leg of the campaign to end on this game. Digger will be once more taking the reins of scenario creation back. The guys who were running don't want to 'deal with the dysfunction' and don't understand why nobody is having any fun getting pasted repeatedly in no-win scenarios (they seem to be enjoying themselves, go figure). 

It wasn't my intention to kill this leg of the campaign, but after taking a month and a half of the summer off from the campaign itself, my first game back felt like an infuriatingly wasted night, instead of a fun time as it ought to be. I've also been told that the nerd rage was steadily building across the board and all that I said in my private convos with Digger post-exiting the campaign has already been said by most everyone else on the players side.

So my TBAGers will return, no doubt enticed back by a lack of other employment options and perhaps a meal plan tossed in to sweeten the deal.  

Hills!

 o/ 

Just a quick post, nothing flashy this time around, but oh so essential: hills. 

Nick 2.0 printed these for me aways back along with several buildings, six of which I have painted already. While I have plenty of buildings and stuctures, and even enough trees for a full on forest, these are my first hills. These were just an exercise in dry brushing with some flock added to break up all of the shades of brown. 

Shrooms, kitties and clan mechs oh my!

 o/

Nick's Awesome AWS-9M taking shelter amongst the giant shrooms.

Earlier this week Nick 2.0 came over for a game, I really didn't take enough pics for a battle report, so am just posting a few photo highlights. 

Poor Neeka, pouting as her lounge table has been turned into a dumb battlefield again. 

Nick's Commando COM-2D skulking behind a burning tower as my Hunchback HBK-4P and an AC-10 Hetzer close in... 

We called the game early due to time. Nick called it a marginal victory in his favor. It was more of a crushing vistory by that point as he had accomplished far more objectives than I. That said, I had beaten the hell out of his Awesome in the last round played. Likewise my Dragon lost a side torso to an ammo explosion but didn't die for once (thank you CASE!). 

*****

The Fast & The Furious sequel number...what? 10? 12, 13?

I also finished up a trio of clan mechs for the Desert Horde. Previously known as the more generic Desert Force, I went back and updated all of the prior post's labels to now say 'horde'. With the addition of these three, to go with my Mongoose and six Mercuries, I will now be able to field a clan second line binary where the slowest mech has an 8/12 movement rate! These three are also the only ones with any appreciable offensive firepower in said binary. 

Piranha, the only mech that makes me want to play Alpha Strike.

Locust IIC, the arms have 8 ER small lasers, rather than the SRM-4s that they look like they carry.

The binary commander's rocket ship Fire Moth.

Some time ago, I also painted up a point of Elementals for the Fire Moth to carry around as ablative armor. I am planning on a third star that will have a much more normal rate of speed, allowing me to field a full second line trinary. 

It's got an axe! RUN!!

 o/

lol, these three are the latest to cross the finish line. The Axeman is painted to match my 5th Donegal Guards, and the two Howlers are for my newest faction: Clan Fire Mandrill Kindraa Mattila-Carrol (yeesh, that's a mouthful!). I also tried out some of my new AK diorama (basing) paints on these and am really happy with the results. 

Applied to a sacrificial base, it looks good as is.

However I added a sepia wash and once dry again, I drybrushed it with wraithbone and I really like the final result. So much so that I did just the same on my Howlers below.

First up the: Fire Mandrills. These howlers were previously painted in Jade Falcon colors, but were stripped and repainted. the rest of that JF star will go to the Desert horde where I will be able to field a stupid fast, second line binary.  As for the Mandrills, I just liked the color scheme, yellow with black & red trim. Though you have to be careful not to add too much red trim, or else you start to get McDonalds' vibes...

The outlandish, yellow, red and black almost work as a sort of camouflage in the desert scrub landscape of their bases.

The side of the Howlers that you most often see as these little fuckers run away at lightning speed!

Saving the biggest for last: the Axeman AXM-2N. This mech joins the Steiner Scout squad, and matches them reasonably well. Especially after I truncated the disasterously difficult painting of the 'scouts'. As such, I will add 3 more assault mechs to fill out a second lance, if not expand them further to an entire assault company (because Steiner).

Folks like to try and get in close to missile boats, but not this one!

Mech #6, I had to look up the number on the Steiner Scout Squad post to make sure I didn't duplicate the numbering.

Note the Jade Falcon Hunchback IIC-turned-stepping stone and the 'concrete' AK diorama paint.

 

Some random stragglers

 o/

Frenemies?

No gaming for me this week, but I did at least finish off another lance's worth of mechs. That said, they are split amongst three different factions as you can see. 

First up, is a century for the Marian Hegemony's III Legio. 

All of the bases line up nicely. As much of a pain in the ass as that was, this bunch might not get any additional minis...

Corey' Cavaliers, up to a full strength lance, with not a decent mech amongst them (well, maybe the Charger).

Lastly the Cicada joins the ever growning Desert force (I wonder if it is too late to change their link/name to Desert Horde?). There are just as many tanks to go with these, plus a point of Elementals. Why Elementals you ask? Well I just reprimed the former Jade Falcon Fast & the Furious star in wraithbone. Meaning that along with the Mongoose and Mercuries, I'll easily be able to field a 2nd line binary with a minimum speed of 7/11!