A big ol' scrum

 o/

The view from Anthony's side of the battlefield. One thing of note: this is the first time I have ever seen a Goliath used in a game.

I played in a multiplayer scrum the other night, 6K, clan invasion era, and periodic 'non-agression pacts' that didn't last much longer than the hand shakes that sealed them. 

Jake's forces attacking enmass. Curiously, while all seriously damaged, all three of Jake's Shadow Hawks survived the game. Those LRM carriers however, not so much.

Initially this was just going to be myself and Anthony, but Jake the FLGS' owner joined in as did a new player Aiden, though he only played for a few turns before heading out due to time limitations. 

Below are a few highlights from my side:

My Jagermech JM6-S (which we all know is pure garbage), fired a quartet of autocannon rounds at Jake's far off Longbow. Only one round connected, an AC-2 golden BB that went into a right torso LRM ammo bin, inflicting 120ish points of damage! 

Its celebration was short lived as a gauss rifle removed the Jager's leg shortly thereafter. Still, I am sure the Jager's pilot was smiling as he punched out of his/her wrecked machine knowing that next time they would they would be getting a better mech to pilot.

Later on, Anthony's Scorpion scampered over and put a PPC into the leg of my UMR-90. In return the Suburbie put both it's PPC and a medium laser into the Scorpion's right torso. Punching thru the thin armor and hitting the only thing in there: the SRM-6's ammo bin. Another mech go BOOM!

The UMR-90 would also contribute to the death of one of the LRM carriers and put some more hurt into one of Jake's Shadow Hawks. The Suburbie also survived the game.

Urban gridlock

 o/

Nick and I got together for another game this week. Here was the scenario of his creation: 

3500 BV, Units are limited to infantry, combat vehicles and Mechs of no more than 30tons. It will be a very small city map, the objective is to have the infantry occupy a specific structure to gain VPs. For each unit more than your opponent occupying the structure at the end of the round you gain a point. For each enemy unit destroyed you gain a point. We play to 10 points, first one there win's. Only infantry can enter the structure and only by (2) possible entry points. Only units inside the building can fight each other with a +1 to hit modifier.

Here is how it all went down....

My 'Skittles' Force: (2) ML Scorpions, (2) RL Galleons, (2) SRM Wheeled APCs, (2) Command Van, Q-Variant, (2) Warrior H7A VTOLs, (4) Assault Hover Mechanized Platoons, (1) Motorized MG Platoon, and (2) Ballistic Rifle Foot Platoons, and my 'official' job title. 

Nick's Force: (2) Standard Scorpions, (2) Standard J. Edgar Hovertanks, (2) UM-R60s, (1) Warrior H7A VTOL, and (7) foot platoons of various types. 

Baxter helping set the table up. 

Small and dense city indeed, the large grey building next to Dunkin Davions was the objective. 

We set up 10 hexes out from the objective building. 

Nick curved his force around the city at the same distance. 

Neeka checking on Nick's math. 

She had her game face on and even 'helped' smack my dice around a bit. 

Early on Nick realized his error as his foot sloggers had no transports and my mechanized platoons moved 4 hexes a turn. 

His Warrior swoops in to gun down my lead hover platoon with it's machine gun. Due to modifiers, their return fire was ineffectual. 

With light tanks on both sides, they make for fairly equal adversaries. That said the SWAT APC was immobilized here. 

My warrior puts an AC-5 slug into the Urbie which turns and cores the VTOL in 1 shot! I lost both of my VTOLs this round.  

Nick's Warrior did it's job and Nick took an early 3 point lead. 

Next turn and my tan hover platoon platoon made it inside the objective and no doubt was recreating the Blues Brothers' mall scene! Meanwhile the other two platoons were right on the doorstep. Desptite being suicide, Nick's VTOL simply rotated in place to gun down another platoon, as his foot sloggers were still 8 hexes out. 

The flame platoon would die before the VTOL met a similar fate, but the grey platoon underneath made it in fine. 

This is chopper 5 traffic, looks like we have gridlock on the west side of town...

The J. Edgar and and Galleon blaze away while the scorpion's AC-5 was unable to hit at point blank range. Out of rockets, the Galleon would not survive this fight. 

The Cavaliers'  Wheeled APC lost it's SRM to a lucky crit on turn one. Rather than retreat, it went hunting for infantry and some vehicular manslaughter. Here it would kill 8 troopers while suffering a shotgun blast of damage all around and a motive hit (or was that just bodies stuck in the wheel wells?). 

A short distance later it would run into another platoon, killing 8 more before succumbing to the collective fire of an outraged infantry company!

Nick's J. Edger was immobilized and the grey Scorpion right next to it would spend a few turns in a static, point blank range fire fight! Still intent on the objective my motorized infantry finally was able to join into the fray.  

The Urbie put an AC-10 slug into the front of the as yet untouched Scorpion, which returned fire and scored an engine hit and jump jet loss on the previously softened up Urbie. 

The Motorized platoon dumps into the beleagered J. Edgar and puts it out of it's misery!

My second Galleon, all out of rockets, zipped by the other Urbie and gunned down another  platoon with it's twin MGs.. 

Yes I will bloody up the Cavalier's APC in recognition of it's war crimes. 

In the end I won, 10-6. While I lost more units than Nick, my hover platoons quickly getting inside the objective won me the game. Despite the force marching, his infantry never got anywhere near the objective (nor did my foot slogging platoons). This was a fun little scenario, that needs some tweaking (or transports) for the infantry. 

It was also fun to have all light tanks and mechs duking it out. Usually they just show up and die quickly, but against equalish opponents, light tanks and mechs quickly find themselves in the rare, lightweight slugging matches. 

Project: Recovery

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Covid recovery always involves working on minis for me. 

The past week good ol' Covid decided to stop by & ruin my week for a third time. While I powered thru the best I could at work (I work remotely, so can still push buttons on a keyboard despite feeling like death warmed over). Luckily the fam didn't get it, though they did get...something. The Mrs. was none too happy as my telehealth visit got me some really good drugs whereas hers, not so much.

Anyways, despite the glorious weather outside this past weekend, I didn't do a whole lot out there aside from chilling in our adirondack chairs. When in post covid recovery you tend to get really tired, really fast as so many folks know. That said, I did do a fair bit of painting as you can see above and below. 

You'll note that several photos were taken out in the yard. Why yes, I did lay down in the backyard to take these as any, self respecting 49 year old gamer would. The Mrs. rolled her eyes and the teenager ignored me outright & the dog thought THIS IS GREAT! Or rather he did right up until he got yelled at for stepping on my toys. Clear coat for the win!

A Patton/Rommel for my generic Desert Force that is sucking in units like some sort of fucking black hole!

A second Patton/Rommel as well as a Drillson for my 1st Chisholm's Raiders which is once again a home or my orphaned units and random paint jobs (as the Raiders lacked a coherent color scheme). 

A point of Elementals for the Desert force in case I run my lance of  old Star League mechs as a 2nd line star. Likely as Nova Cats as all of their Galaxies always use appropriate camouflage. 

The Raiders' mech lance made up of survivors from my defunct Comstar/Wobblies and St. Ives formations. I opted to try and tie them together with repainted base edging and a shitload of decals!

40K Ork checker and triangle stripe decals work GREAT on mechs!

Hit 'em Hard The motto of most any Hunchback variant. The Space Wolves paw looks nice on there too. 

Vulcan, not seen in this pic though you can see it above, are the checker stripes across the tops of the shoulders. Also on the MG arm is says Buzzsaw in the same script as the Hunchback's Hit 'em Hard. 

This mini was actively on eBay when is was saved after performing admirably in a game where it was used as a primitive Archer. The decals came out great on this one!

Holy Camouflage Batman! It is a good thing this has blue markings & a brightly colored base, otherwise it would disappear into the background!

Three more models are also in-progress, but I'll save them and whatever else for a fututre post. I'm also hoping to reschedule a campaign game this week coming after cancelling last week due to my case of the black death. 

Urbie Warfare!

 o/

So many Urbanmechs...

Nick 2.0 and I got together for our first game of 2025 last week. He was just starting to set up the board as I got there and said that he'd like to set up a tight, urban battlefield rather than spread the terrain out. I said it that sounded perfect because...

Oh no, no you didn't? 

Actually yes, I did. 

One of these is not like the others...

I decided to kick off 2025 with a long standing promise/threat of bringing nothing but Urbanmechs. 3,998 points of Urbanmechs! Seven UM-R60s, and 1 UM-R60L. Nick said he was terrified. Seriously. Luckily for him, my Capellan Homeguard rarely gets a chance to see combat, and my forthcoming die rolls would sadly reflect that. 

I'll do my best to sort the following pics out, but its hard to keep track as there were so many Urbies and...well, they all kind look the same...

The battlefield, we would start with our mechs all within 2 hexes of the outer edge of the terrain.

Nick's pirate raiders. No idea what kind of pirates attack with Urbanmechs. Maybe they're from the treacherous St. Ives compact or something...

Blue lance enters the city.

The Guillotine unloads into Red 4 stripping all armor from the front torso and knocking it to the ground!

The Blue lance hits the pavement and realizes that they can get extra movement! 

Nick sending pics to his buddies, much as I was doing. 

At this point my red lance was fully engaged while the Blue lance were all still flanking the pirates.

Red 4 regains its feet, facing backwards as it stood. With full armor on it's rear torso, it reversed guns and continued to press it's attack. 

Blue 4 rounds the corner and promptly misses the Stalker with it's AC-20. Unaware of the enormous round that just killed everyone on three floors of the Highrise to its right, the Stalker unloads into the thin skinned 60L, destroying the AC-20, most of it's meagre armor and knocking it to the ground!

The rest of blue lance, making good time on the city streets finally makes it into range and begins to create a crossfire. 

Some hot, sexy, Urbie on Urbie action...

Red 4 could have moved out of view of the Guillotine, but elected to stand still after finding itself in short range of the stalker with no modifiers (and my lousy die rolls). It's final AC-10 slug connected moments before it died. 

Suffering 40 points of damage applied, the stalker succumbs to the pounding and hits the ground!

Recovering, it rounds the building and the guns turn on the Guillotine. Unfortunately I don't think I hit anything this round. 

Am pretty sure I took only 3 medium laser hits in return, maybe there was a lot of smoke or something...

With targets barely in sight, Blue lance continues to fire, killing (rather than defending) many civilians.

The surviving red lance mechs either reposition or provide covering fire to blue 4 as it leads the charge with it's lone, small laser blazing!

The Guillotine ignores the charging small laser and targets the other Urbies, who in turn ignore the fast moving heavy mech can continue to hammer the Stalker and its little friends. This may be the round in which the Stalker's right arm was taken off. 

Same turn, different view.

Blue lance charges the pirates' Urbies for point blank shooting and toe to toe combat!

I threw everything I had at the Stalker and Green Urbie. I think he lit up the entire Blue lance in return.

The Green Urbie goes down for good, whereas Blue 1 hits the ground losing both it's left & right torsos!

The Stalker, it's right side in tatters starts to retreat with the suicidal Blue 4 in pursuit. What's left of Blue 1 makes a run for it while the yellow Urbie moves in. Meanwhile Red 1 & 2 provide covering fire. 

Blue 2 hits the ground in much the same state as Blue 1, and the pirate Urbie moves in to deliver a kick to the downed mech. Fortunately, it was aiming for a torso that was no longer connected, rolling a snake eyes! Luckily for Nick, it then made its piloting roll to keep from falling itself. 

Blue 4 delivers a small laser hit with no shots taken in return (guessing the stalker couldn't depress its remaining weapons far enough). Kicks were exchanged with 3 points delivered in 1 direction and 9 in the other! Luckily, the leg the stalker hit had yet to be hit, allowing Blue 4 to continue this suicidal assault. 

You can't getaway Kirk...

Did you just quote Wrath of Khan to me?

You mean to tell me that Ricardo Montalban is here?

On the table? In an Urbanmech???

Well, it didn't matter which leg the Stalker kicked this time, Whichever one it was went flying off the valiant Blue 4 and that was the final end of the little Urbie that couldn't. 

The Stalker walks back into the shooting gallery, taking a few more hits and stripping the CT armor down to 1 point left.

Blue 2 moves up to avenge the fallen Blue 4 and suffers heavily for it. 

And this is where we called it. 

At this point we called it as it was getting kinda late, and having lost so many Urbies I was ready to hand Nick the win. However much to my surprise, he called this a draw. His second Urbanmech was on its last legs and the Stalker was 'one die roll away from an ammo explosion'. So yeah, I'll take a draw. It doesn't really matter as I had a blast anyways, I always do when fielding all Urbanmechs. 

Our next game will be with just conventional forces...