DEATH FROM ABOVE!

 

Ha HA! I have you now!!

Such a dumb tactic. Why do people like DFA's so much? They usually fail. Considered a 'last ditch' effort in the fluff, on the table top the are in my experience usually attempted by near pristine mechs which is just baffling. Thus, in all of my many, many years of playing Battletech I have never attempted a DFA...that is, until this past Wednesday night.

My Fire Mandrills in their battlefield debut where they faced off against what should have been a forbidden foe: Space AT&T. Given the topic of this post, you can surmise just how well the game went. Honestly all was going well, until about turn three when the beat-up Night Chanter died to a 2nd head shot, and the pristine Lancelot C was also decapitated by a lucky gauss slug. It was all downhill from there. 

Anthony used his LAM Urbies as standard UM-R60s.

It was really weird fighting Urbies rather than fielding them. I killed one and beat up the other. 

Pivotal moment: the Black Knight unloads with all it has save the MPL in the Hatchet arm. All guns miss however, the hatchet hit which was brutal to my little Howler! Then, at +24 heat, the Black Knight shuts down. 

My Howler 4, with its 5/5 rookie sibko pilot was in tatters: missing an arm and lone LRM disabled. With little option to hurt either the heavily damaged King Crab nor the Pristine Black Knight, the rookie at the controls opted for a glorious death in combat and DFA'ed as the that was the only option! It passed over the Locust which sprayed the sky with laser fire, 2 small lasers connected with the little mech that could, which was all that was needed for the Howler's side torsos (yes both of them) to separate from the flying mech.

Bereft of jump jets, gravity took over and it connected with the immobile Knight, inflicting a whopping 6 points of damage (and taking 4 in turn) on impact.  The Howler made its landing PSR whereas the Knight simply fell, taking another 9 points, for 15 damage in total!

As the last mech on the field, what was left of the Howler fled the board, hopefully to graduate to a real mech in the future. 

Desperate times indeed. The other Howler disintegrated under fire and the Shadow Hawk IIC, trying to reposition following the death of the two heavier mechs, fell on pavement, and failed 3 fucking attempts to stand up with only a 5 needed! Already heavily damaged, and in sight of the 2nd Urbie and the one-armed King Crab, it died on its ass in the subsequent crossfire.

Oh hey, guess what? Following the game, I bought some new dice as I still shudder at the sheer number of atrocious rolls in this game.