To battle once more!

 o/

That's me on the right where my grey beard is looking suspiciously like mutton chops!

Happy Labor Day folks! Wow. Its been....EIGHT months since I last posted. What the actual fuck? I had a game or two get cancelled earlier this year due to real life and all of that nonsense. Then, my beautiful wife got a job in Charleston, South Carolina. So everything got boxed up and shipped outta Tennessee to our new home. Working remotely I've been going a bit stir crazy as my only hobbying here of late has been painting 40k minis.

I took this pic one evening after about a 10 minute bike ride from my new house.

In the Charleston area, folks use discord to set up games and being an older player (damned near 50!?!) I was avoiding that but finally joined one. Honestly it looks like a rebranded AOL chatroom to me, but after asking around a bit and getting added onto a few more servers, I replied to somebody looking for a 2500 BV, 3020s era Classic BattleTech game and he accepted. 

I was going to post that this was my first miniature game outside of Tennessee in a quarter of a century. However I just remembered that we used to go to the Atlanta Gamesdays and play in tournaments, so it was more like 15ish years or so instead. Doesn't quite have the same ring to it. Moving on...

There was a temptation to just bring (5) Urbies, but I didn't want to be that guy on my introduction to the South Carolina BattleTech scene. Nick, my opponent laughed and said he'd never considered that and likely would have wanted to cuss me if I had. He brought a battlemat, 3D-printed and painted terrain as well. After we set up the terrain we created a scenario on the fly where he was attacking and I was defending (due to having an Urbie) a large storage tank in the center of the board which had 100 points of structure. 

Here's how it all went down:

The battlefield, the large dropship-looking objective in the middle. 

The Urbie trying to gain altitude for a better advantage in terms of LoS.

As usual, the first few turns were just to advance into range, though the Rifleman was already pumping rounds into the objective much to my dismay.

The Capellan Confederation's Tikonov Lancers launch their raid!

Trying to get lines of sight. The problem with 4/5 pilots across the board (both sides), is that it is hard to hit anything at range. Except of course a large, immobile (-4 to hit) structure.

I'm faster than you! To-hit modifiers kept the Spider from shooting the Wasp, but it did deliver a nice, 3 point punch to the back of the Wasp's fragile head!

Still hammering the objective, a 40K-esque close combat scrum breaks out with my Hatchetman getting into close combat for the first time!

At this point, we gave up on the scenario as the to-hit modifiers made it impossibly easy to win for the attacker. Thus the game descended into the typical 'let's just kill each other' slugfest. The Spider kept punching holes in the Wasp, but stopped when I buried the hatchet in the Wasp's SRM-2 ammo bin!

The combatants scatter, the Phoenix Hawk goes after the Urbie with my Commando (the lousy AC-2 variant) in pursuit. The Spider and Hatchetman kept on after the Rifleman.

Caught in a crossfire, the Rifleman pummels the Hatchetman and in doing so overheats badly!

The Rifleman overheats so much that his ammo cooked off! It was partially my fault as the Hatchetman's AC-10 caused 2 engine crits! That said, the (now) Hatchetlessman also failed his piloting check and hit the ground hard enough for it's pilot to take a snooze for the next 5 turns! It was practically a double kill. 

On the other side of the board, the Phoenix Hawk shot up the Urbie enough to hit the last 3 rounds of AC-10 ammo in the Urbie's bin, obliterating the little guy! 

Not sure if this was a fair fight. The Commando's medium laser arm was gone leaving in point blank range with an AC-2 that was best deployed as an instrument of blunt force trauma (if 2 points of damage can be called that). The Spider just has 2 medium lasers and like the Commando hits like a wet noodle in close combat. The Phoenixhawk on the other hand was nice and toasty, and missing a jump jet or two. 

Unable to outrun my mechs, another scrum ensued for another half a dozen rounds or so where the spider kinda flailed about uselessly in the background while the Commando did the same to the front before finally going down to a lost leg. 

That said, they held up the Phoenixhawk long enough for the Hatchetlessman to wake up, get up and run across the field to deliver a game ending AC-10 Headshot!

Well that was a lot of fun! The original scenario not so much, and when I suggested that it was going down fast enough to play two games, switching roles of attacker and defender that we opted to just shed the scenario entirely. Both sides up until that point had taken minimal to no damage, so it was akin to starting over anyways. 

My opponent Nick was a blast to play against, and I look forward to future games with him. He'll be outta town for a few weeks for work but we already have tentative plans to play upon his return. Also the FLGS' owner was all about building up the local BattleTech community, and was asking about running events. Personally I've never been involved in one of those, but I sent them a link to the Comstar site in my blog roll at right. Those guys run pub tourneys all the time in England.

So hopefully they will be running some similarly styled events in the future. Its taken me a few months in in SC, but I finally think that I'm starting to find my local gamer community! I was also asked about playing Alpha strike and gave a few pointers on that (prefaced with the fact that I am a bit rusty on those rules as well). 

The 100pt game experiment

 o/

Surprisingly my Javelin would survive this point blank exchange, but only to fall a turn later.

Why not right? We normally play 300 points at the FLGS, with Frankie and I splitting our force into two, 150 point halves which easily are played against one another when playing at home. That said, our 150 point home games, tend to take a bit too long for school nights (or so Mom says). We usually don't start to play until after dinner, so I trimmed the forces down to an even 100 points and starting at 6pm we finished up at about 8:30. Perfect!

Or was it?

The long range fire support units eye one another warily from a distance.

However, Frankie was less than enthused about not having a pure, speed freaks type of lance. Having not played in a good while, and only having a Wolfhound with a 12" movement and a Spider with a 16" movement, he lapsed into his noob, uber defensive mode. His lance was rounded out with a 4N Hunchback and a skill 3 Hatchetman 3F for his commander. 

While his Spider and Wolfhound went to the flanks and the Hunchback up the middle (briefly), he basically hid his Hatchetman in the back field as it was 'so slow that it was useless' (8" movement, just like the Hunchback). I tried to explain that by hanging back he was playing to my strengths, to no avail. I had two WTH-1 Whitworths, a skill 3 Blackjack BJ-1 and a fast moving 10N Javelin, making for a medium fire lance where both Whitworths halved the medium and long range modifiers. 

Urban combat, not the Whitworth's favorite place to be. 

Pointing out that only the Javelin had a greater than 8" movement on my side, and that his Hunchback was the best mech on the table, not to mention the Hatchetman's lance mates were likely screaming over comms to get into the fight did little to motivate him to bring it into range. It maybe fired 2 shots all game, and spent most of its time in hiding. 

Frankie, lamenting his poor dice rolls. 

His dice were not rolling well and effectively outnumbering him 3-4 at the outset, the end results were predictable. Not even his 6 rerolls were of much use. In the end I lost the Javelin, whereas he lost the Wolfhound and Hunchback, and the Spider was rendered weaponless.

Trying to balance out a pure, high speed lance with a more rounded one at such a low points total wouldn't be easy in my opinion. Of course he complained (every turn) that the Spider only moves at 16" a turn. I had to remind him that not every mech moves like a Mercury, not to mention I only have one Mercury in my collection. 

The final pic taken after the weaponless Spider and barely damaged Hatchetman fled the field. Frankie wanted to memorialize all of his bad rolls with a display of ones.

Note: the tanks were just terrain.

As such, I'm calling this one a bust. I'll see if I can come up with a decent 100pt speed daemon list & something to effectively oppose it. Otherwise I guess that I'll just stick with our usual 150pt lists (I don't think he has the attention span to run a full 300pt list on his own). If the games run long, we can just leave them at the end of a turn and finish up the game the next day (one of the benefits of having a gaming area at home). 

Edit: I made him a 100pt speed freak list this morning and while fast, it's damage potential is kinda meh, and its mechs are fragile as hell...

My first impressions of Alpha Strike

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R.I.P little Urbie, R.I.P...

Welp, after about a month of no gaming, I managed to get in a demo game of Alpha Strike with my buddy Screech, with my son Frankie in tow.

The 2/3 that managed to show up. I gave Frankie control of the medium lance whereas I took the light lance. Originally I had planned to split the tanks between us but it was not to be.

Frankie liked the idea of learning a game at the same time as i was, and having only read the same set of 'quick start' rules. I do have the rulebook for AS, but like most rulebooks that I own, I've done little more than look at the pictures and their captions. I'm far more likely to learn a ruleset by muddling thru a game of it than I am to read the rules beforehand.

Screech's unidentified Steiner force was suffering from budget cut and as such, were left without any funds to apply the regimental color scheme to any of their mechs.

300 points seems to be the 'typical' size for AS here locally, and conveniently my Dixie CTM clocks in at just that amount. However much to my surprise/dismay, when I was pulling out our forces at the FLGS, I remembered that I had transferred all of my tanks and infantry to another case which was still at home. 

Urbies have an Impressive (well, for an Urbie) movement rate of 4", which is for both jumping and on foot! That said, they have have a big whopping '0' for a Total Movement Modifier. 

As such, with my heavy armor lance not present, the game was scaled back to 175 points, and I informed Frankie that we were likely doomed without all of our big guns. Hell, it was both a weeknight and a learning game anyways, so what did it matter really?

Flanking maneuver in-progress...

This pics in this post are more of a highlight reel as I only took a few being more interested in getting a feel for the ruleset. Overall its not bad, though I can't say that I expect to like it more than the 'Classic' ruleset (no doubt much to Kushial's delight as he has no interest in AS). 

In the heat haze of heavy combat, Screech's mechs actually blended fairly well with the environs of the battlefield (note: the ubiquitous 'crotch shot' of my opponent in the background). 

I can see what Catalyst is aiming for though and Frankie seemed to enjoy himself. He did say he'd play it again whereas I've never bothered with trying to teach him classic as he lacks the attention span needed for it. I've heard it said that AS is more of a gateway drug into BattleTech and indeed I have to agree with that. 

The Hunchback HBK-4N was the first to mech to fall, much to my surprise as I was expecting the first kill to be a slow and fragile Urbie instead.

In all honesty, AS is fast paced enough, and units fragile enough that out-right kills are so much more common than in Classic that My Beloved Wolfy might have actually enjoyed this ruleset. For those who don't know, I'm referring to my late wife who was a gamer but HATED BattleTech as it 'impossibly made giant stompy robots boring'. For those who knew her, and her special loathing of BattleTech, that is a HUGE compliment to the design team!

Screech isn't offering advice here, but is rather looking at our cards to see which mech of ours is likely to fall next. Schmuck.

We tried the pilot die optional rule, where you roll 1 differently colored D6 and then another for every point of damage in your range bracket to simulate the possibility of some weapons hitting and some not, rather than the all or nothing approach. Honestly, I can see some form of that approach to shooting bleeding back into Classic. Although my little 14 section mini-tackle box filled with dice does a fine job on its own. 

The Warhammer went down next though an Urbie and commando went with it. Luckily Screech kinda blew his die rolling a little and the Uziel managed to hang on with 1 point of structure left!

All in all it was fun and definitely worth trying again. I don't think it'll displace Classic BattleTech (for me anyways), and I look forward to tryout some more lists with it in the future. Screech won with three kills to our one.

Alas poor Urbie, I knew him...

Seven more mechs cross the finish line!

 o/

Huzzah! It should be noted that the Wolfhound in the middle finished first. 

Its always good to get some more minis added to the finished painting stage! As you can see above I finished up the last three mechs in my army for the Lyran Alliance's Dixie CTM. While in back is a medium lance for my St. Ives Cheveau-Leger (Light Horse). 

First up the Cixie CTM:

No Lyran formation is complete without a Hatchetman (some would say Atlas, but I don't currently own any of those monsters). The Wolfhound is in the middle, my first ever for one of these mechs, and a Hunchback rounds the unit out on the right.

This is a custom refit of the HBK-4N. Arguably the worst of the original Hunchback variants, This 3D print came with a pathetically wimpy AC-5 gun barrel (more akin to the Uziel's machine guns). So I swapped it out for a Team Yankee minigun out of the bitz box and came up with a record sheet that swaps out the AC-5 for a RAC-2 (which conveniently is both the same weight and has the same range!).

My apologies for the crummy lighting in my basement, but...well it is a basement. Here is my entire painted Dixie CTM force, a combined arms, reinforced company. This by far the largest painted formation in my entire Battletech collection!

Next up is the St. Ives' Cheveau-Leger:

This lance is the first of three planned for this army. Left to right is an Enforcer, Jagermech, Vindicator and lastly another Hunchback, this time an HBK-4SP.

The basing on these three look like the ruins of an aerospace port, or perhaps a mech staging area. The Hunchback meanwhile has the ruins of a bricked building on it's base. 

The camera's flash doesn't really do these any justice (again in the basement). I wanted to show these with the originally painted Urbie, which is the first of four. Depending on the era, the St. Ives Military Compact can either be fielded as a stand-alone nation, or as part of the Capellan Confederation's Armed Forces (which requires LOTS of Urbies!!). 

When obscure militias collide!

 o/

There seems to be heavy traffic in the Valley of Death.

Kushial  and I managed to get in a game this past weekend. I only took a handful of pics that are below as he intended to post a battle report I think...

My Dixie CTM  force gathered up for a glamor shot.

Kushial's Ozawa (aka: Yowza!) Urban Defense Brigade,

deployed on what he was calling 'Fort AC-10'.

Both of our initial deployments. The (shallow) river was just counted as difficult terrain so that the tanks wouldn't be hamstrung in their movement options.

Early on with the fast movers out in front and the infantry deploying out of the heavy APC on the island.

Optimal range = a short ranged bloodbath. Also known as a place where that Commando seriously did not belong!

I won't post any spoilers in regards as to who won in hopes of a future battle report via Kushial. It was fun to play a game in which every model was painted (as opposed the Alpha Strike game being played behind us, in which nothing was even primed!).

The latest off of the painting table...

 o/

Comstar and/or the Wobblies in the back row and a pair of tanks for the Dixie CTM in front.

These three mechs literally took no time at all thanks to GW's white contrast paint. The Flashman on the left was a repaint as was the chunk of a commando that is being overtaken by the flora on its base. The Archer in the middle, is my chief negotiator when it comes to past due phone bills and pleas to not nuke one's homeworld from orbit (again). Lastly the Vulcan on the right will serve simply as a distraction/harasser. These three flesh out my Level II which already has a pair of Crabs and a Sentinel.

Meanwhile my recently painted Steiner scout squad was seriously lacking in brute force and more importantly tonnage. These two PPC variant Brutus assault tanks correct those concerns, as will the still WiP Manticores in my painting queue. As always, there is a matching heavy APC in the works as well for the hauling about of their token infantry platoon.

This is not the Steiner Scout Lance you are looking for...

 ...nope, no Atlases here!

(although the Urbies are just as slow)

Its a new year and as such I'm starting off with a new color scheme and unit. This lance is painted in the colors of the Lyran Alliance's Dixie Cavanaugh II Theater Militia (aka: Dixie CTM). I chose them more for the color scheme than anything else. Their unit history involves mainly garrison duties, static defense against raids, and losing to superior forces. 

The above lance clocks in at a paltry 2600 points, which is well below our usual 8K point limit. Luckily, the true Steiner mentality of compensation via sheer tonnage comes shining through via their as yet to be painted, accompanying heavy armor lance. Lastly of course, there will be the usual infantry platoon and APC to round this force out.