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.