Each player has 5,000 BV forces.
Following a recent battle, the defending forces are falling back to a Forward Operating Base (FOB) for repairs and maintenance. As the defenders are approaching the FOB’s defensive perimeter, an enemy vanguard is detected on approach. Unfortunately, the defender’s battlemechs are in no shape for a direct engagement until they’ve undergone basic maintenance.
The defender chooses a table edge and marks a zone (that is the size of my firing arcs template) representing the forward operating base. The FOB is placed anywhere along their table edge. It must be six hexes from the table edge, and at least six hexes from either side of the table. Place a coolant truck at the center of the FOB. The attacker’s table edge is opposite the defender’s table edge.
Next, the defender places four watchtowers on the table. Place the first tower within 8 hexes of the base’s perimeter. Further towers can be placed anywhere on the table, but must be within 8 hexes of another outpost and not within the base’s perimeter. Towers may not be placed within 10 hexes of the attacker’s table edge. Each Tower is a heavy building with 40 CF. Outposts may be a spotter for indirect fire.
The defender rolls for each of their mechs for pre-existing damage, either: 4 SRM hits or 3 small laser hits (ideally half of the force should take SRM damage, and the other half SL damage). Roll for locations using the front facing chart, rerolling head shots, critical hits are ignored. The defenders’ units are placed within their walk/ground speed of the table center in initiative order.
OBJECTIVES
Emergency Cool down: The defender’s mechs are damaged and need a coolant swap before they can be fully effective on the battlefield. A defender’s battlemech’s heat sinks function at half efficiency until they undergo a coolant swap. Each of the defender’s battlemechs must perform the Coolant Swap action to be restored to full efficiency. Score 1 VP each time a battlemech completes the Coolant Swap sequence.
Hold the Line: The defender scores 1 VP for each enemy mech that is destroyed or forced to withdrawal.
Slash and Burn: The attacker must destroy as many watchtowers as possible to help clear the way for a future assault. The attacker also scores 1 VP for each enemy mech that is destroyed or forced to withdrawal.
SPECIAL RULES
Coolant Swap: A defending battlemech’s heat sinks function at half efficiency until the coolant swap action is taken. To perform this action, a battlemech must end the Movement Phase adjacent to a coolant truck and announce the mech is hooking up to the coolant truck. Hooking up requires the remainder of the turn and the mech may make no attacks, nor be attacked (per standard Succession Wars battlefield etiquette). The coolant swap takes 1 round (so 1 round to get into proper position of the coolant truck, and 1 turn to perform the coolant swap). Only 1 mech may perform a coolant swap at a time.
If during the coolant swap the battlemech expends any movement points or moves at least a hex due to forced movement, the mech takes a 5 point of damage grouping allocated by the Kick Hit Location and the coolant truck is destroyed. The coolant truck is too valuable to be directly targeted by the attacking forces.
Forced Withdrawal: The attacker & defender must adhere to the Forced Withdrawal rules. A mech is considered crippled and forced to withdrawal when it suffers any combination of the following:
2 engine hits
1 gyro hit
When it loses a side torso
When all ranged weapons are rendered inoperable
When at least 3 locations have suffered internal structure damage
(Oh come on, it was only an LRM-5...).
In the end, I won by a slim margin of 3VPs to Mal's 2. Had we not run out of time, who knows who would have won. Mal did pose a question to me after the fact of: how many victory points were needed to secure victory? Uhh...yeah, I dunno. I hadn't thought of that, 8 maybe?
