Capturing more bridges...

 o/ 

One hellova fight in progress!

As promised previously, Nick & I played this scenario again with our roles reversed. This time I was playing the defenders and he the attackers. Oddly, I was playing Capellans and Nick Mercenaries, so we also switched factions. 9300 BV this time as Nick's force was a little off again, 3050s era although Nick would end up fielding no upgraded tech. 

Here's how it all went, or as best I can recall as there were a lot of mechs and tanks on the board. 

My Capellan Homeguard force which I called the Jedburg Militia (Jedburg is a town not far from here, with the most redneck sounding name that I have ever heard of). I had a Heavy Mountain Platoon, 3055 LRM carrier, (2) standard Bulldogs, a Liao Vedette, a UM-60, UM-R63, (2) UM-R60Ls (both with 3/5 pilots), an RVN-3L, RVN-4X, CTF-1X and a CPLT-C4C with a 3/5 pilot and serving as my commander. 

The battlefield during our opening maneuvers.

A better view of the same...

I did not get a group photo of Nick's forces, but you can see them pretty good here. In green were The Swamp Foxes fielding a Highlander, Marauder, Quickdraw & Valkyrie, and in blue with the lightning trim were Haim's Hebrew Hammers (yes really), fielding a Battlemaster, Phoenix Hawk, Warhammer and Wasp. All of his mechs were base models & pilots I believe.

Turn two and both sides finally got a good bead on one another with the Vedette leading the charge down the center.

In my backfield, the Infantry platoon was camped atop a building and calling out targets for the hidden LRM carrier's indirect fire. These two units would neither move nor suffer any damage all game. Firing with impunity, they would connect with a fair few missiles on Nick's forces. 

The suddenly, all hell breaks loose! The Cataphract would put an AC-10 into the head of the Highlander deleting it's life support systems (luckily not needed on this world). The Cataphract would suffer heavily for that, but remained standing. In the backfield, Nick would complain that my RVN-4X was tying up an entire lance though in truth that was not so. 

I love this photo. On the left you can see that if any of Nick's mechs were to hop over my Raven and the building behind it, then they would be squarely in cross hairs of a trio of Urbies as well as an immobilized Bulldog (not quite, but the driver was bleeding out...), which were instead sniping at limited targets and doing so at long range. 

With my Catapult, and all of my forces across the 2nd river providing fire support, my Raven-3L, Cataphract and 2nd Bulldog run straight into a hornet's nest! The Raven whiffed other than to plant a Narc beacon onto the Battlemaster, the Cataphract & Bulldog put in a few hits into the Warhammer, which along with the indirect LRM fire, brought that mech to the ground. In return the Cataphract got mauled with it's autocannon being taken out of action, as well as a rear facing ML. The Bulldog was hit as well I think, but nothing major.

The Catapult meanwhile dumped into the Highlander, hitting with both LRM 20s & large laser for a collective 40 points of damage! 

Just another angle of the brawl on the boulevard.

Behind all of this, the first bridge was heating up as well...

Successfully having run the inital gauntlet, the Vedette moved to secure the first bridge. My RVN-4X and Nick's Valk & Quickdraw all jumped onto the bridge as well (luckily it was sturdy). They traded fire but no major damage was suffered as the movement mods were pretty high all around. 

Meanwhile one of my UM-R60Ls held the 2nd bridge, daring something to come around the corner. With so many models firing, the non-firing R60Ls went unnoticed in the chaos. We don't declare mech variants beforehand, so Nick probably assumed that the Urbie on the bridge was another standard one. That said, with 4 Urbies on the table, he commented while we were deploying that there was likely an AC-20 Urbie hiding in there somewhere. 

You're about to find out why Nick really doesn't like this Catapult variant...

Things got rather ugly when Nick's Mercenaries made a late push on the 2nd bridge! The Cataphract backed up to a building to dump its now useless AC ammo (which had little armor by this point to hide behind). The Catapult took a punishing volley of fire that knocked it from it's feet, but not before it put it's large laser into the Highlander's head, vaporizing the mechwarrior within! The Phoenix Hawk & Wasp jump onto the Bridge and the Urbie damned near takes the Phoenix Hawk's leg off with an AC-20 slug! Knocking the mech to the ground. 

The Brawl from the first bridge moves on up the street following the rest of the mechs, while the vedette stayed behind, successfully securing that objective. The Narc'ed Battlemaster ran into some heavy trees to (successfully) avoid any incoming fire and damaging the 3L Raven which whiffed it's shooting at the wasp aside from plunking a Narc beacon onto the back of that mech's head.

My backline continued to fire at whatever was in range all game, the 2nd UM-R60L took a pot shot on this last turn, cratering a building and scaring the be Jesus out of the Battlemaster, but doing little more. Nick was not pleased by the realization that there were two AC-20 Urbies were on the table. Aside from the Bulldog in the trees, none of my units in this last pic suffered any damage in this game. 

By this point in time it was 9:45pm on a weeknight and Nick ran up the white flag. I held 1 bridge, the 2nd was contested with my R60L staring down a Phoenix Hawk and Wasp, both of which had one leg into structure. The Highlander was down, the Warhammer not far from it, and...well everything on that road leading to bridge #2 was moderately to severely damaged in one way or another. 

I still had a pristine LRM carrier, spotter platoon and trio of Urbies in the backfield, The Urbie on Bridge 2 took a ML hit I think. While not mobile by any means, were there still time to play this one out, he wasn't sure his battered forces could weather this untouched force, while still having to deal with my first wave units. 

Once again this was a fun scenario, and again a close one with 1 bridge held and the 2nd contested. After the first game, I was fearing Nick would arrive with his Demolisher tanks, to do to me what I had previously done to him. Likewise while the infantry spotters and 3055 LRM carrier preformed admirably, all it would have taken was 1 VTOL to zip into the backfield and wreck my day. I don't think he did anything wrong tactically, rather I just got really lucky with his traditionally built force. It allowed my static backline and sheer numbers carry the day.