That Guy vs. That Guy = SO. MUCH. NERD. RAAAAAAAAAAAGE!!!!

 o/

That's me on the left in the brown shirt. 

Okay so first things first: I had fun.  

Two rounds, Lostech Era, with lances provided by the TOs including several custom mechs, randomly chosen by the players for both rounds, so each player didn't field the same lance twice. That said, I believe Sven bucked the trend and did get the same lance for both rounds. Each lance also came with predetermined piloting and gunnery skills which were all over the place too. All lances were play tested by the TOs with those of higher tonnage having lower skilled pilots and vice versa. 

Both of my games were against good opponents, with my games being enjoyable despite my going 0-2. My first game against Sven came down to the wire, with me losing my Vindicator to a trio of headshots (the last of which was delivered via a hatchet) at the very end of the last turn! 

Round two was vs Noah whom I played in my first Battletech tournament (which, as it turns out was the last time he has played a game). As we had both lost our first round and were out of the running, I had suggested we just play a game and ignore the scenario. However, the scenario was rather novel so 2-3 turns in, we made a go of it. 

Both rounds spawned VERY loud arguments, with two of the FLGS' that guys in attendance. One player whom I prefer to avoid gaming with (he's just fine to BS with though) was involved in the both of them. That said, from what bits & pieces I gathered from the 2nd round his arguments were justified. His opponent whom I have played once before was by far the worst of the two that guys playing, refused to even listen to the TOs (both of them) and kept arguing his point. Whatever it was. 

Something about underwater movement, & surviving tonnage of said underwater unit which was unable to move and/or shoot. Honestly, I steered clear of both confrontations. Especially the one in the 2nd round which had me wondering if fists would fly. Remember kids, this is supposed to be fun with giant stompy robots. 

At one point a trio of US Navy Seamen (this is Charleston) were watching bemused from the FLGS' entrance as a couple of guys their dads' age, argued loudly about their toys. Having later played said scenario with Noah, I have no idea what the issue was. However, in my game with Sven, the volume of arguing had gotten so loud however, that Sven and I were having difficulty communicating with one another about what mech hit what, and what damage was applied to where. 

That guy number 2 won 2nd place and a $20 store credit to go with it. He was the one that was arguing with even the TOs as well as the other that guy whom he was playing. I hope he enjoys his store credit, because after this experience, I am sure he will have a hard time finding anyone who was present willing to play against him. Seriously dude, is winning worth it so much that you're content to alienate the entire local player base to get said win?

Anyways, tournament ranting over, below is a photo dump of the festivities (photos of the aforementioned arguments omitted): 

Early on and off to a good start. 

Nick 2.0 had intended to just stop by and shit-talk me. However, as somebody was a no show, he got sucked in for a round. He played this tournament's that guy #2 and unfortunately, as you can tell by this photo, he was not enjoying his impromptu game. 

There is one lance I didn't want (based purely on the paint jobs), and so naturally that is what I got for round 1. The Yen Lo Wang was the only stock model, with the rest being custom mods, and all with Hatchets. The only weapons I had that could reach beyond 9 hexes were two large lasers. 

Tourney Organizer Blaine on the left and my opponent Sven on the right. Am already in the process of working out a timeframe to get another game in with Sven. Note: his t-shirt. 

Sven weighing his options. That or I just did something that threw him for a loop. 

Believe it or not, my Vindicator came thru this exchange completely unscathed!

The Yen Lo Wang goes down! Yes, even the Archer had a hatchet!

Blaine took Nick 2.0's place for round two. Noah on the right is calculating his firing solutions.

My Awesome is starting to feel the 'love'.

My s

My Shadow Hawk (another custom variant, no hatchet though), advancing on the CPLT-K2 in the distance. My Archer spent the game camped on the hilltop, raining sporadically accurate missile fire down on Noah's mechs all game. 

Turn three and the Battlemaster and my Wolverine manage to hop aboard the moving hover train. A shootout was attempted, but nothing came of it. All that was missing from these two were the cowboy hats. 

The train, sans cargo/objectives. My Wolverine captured one while Noah's Battlemaster captured the other two which, along with the loss of my Shadow Hawk (typical) would hand him the win. the train's 'track' was numbered which made for a handy turn counter as well. 

My Wolverine escaped with an objective, garnering me all 27 of my victory points. However, by moving off of the board to capture the 20 VPs, it cost me 55 tons against my surviving tonnage which seemed a bit counter intuitive.

Another train scenario table, much nicer than the one I played on. Nick played on this in the first round and in the second Sven got brutally tabled on it in the 3 or 4 turns.

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 Battle against the Mech that shall not be named

 o/

The following battle report is of my game vs. Kushial that we played Saturday night. Kushial said that it's been at least three years since we've played Battletech against one another and while I find that hard to believe, I gave up on trying to find a battle report on here of the two of us playing a game. 

We played our usual 8k points at the local FLGS on one of their 3D printed maps which was really quite a treat! He was fielding the Lyran Alliance's Donegal Guards whilst I had the Clan Snow Raven's Epsilon Galaxy. 

Both sides deployed.

Moving up the center with a Shadow Hawk C and Hellhound, my pilots started to question their superior technology in the face of all of the massed tonnage and firepower before them...

As my Star Commander's Adder drops off it's load of Elementals, the mech that shall not be named is spotted and a furious exchange of gunfire ensues. The Adder loses that fight as virtually all of the enemy mech's fire connects with the Adder's right leg (while it's UAC-5 rounds fly off into the ether)!

On the rest of the board, my fire was a bit of a mixed bag, with the Shadow Hawk likewise taking a LOT of damage to it's right leg whereas I seemed to be carving thru his right torsos. Then of course there was the piranha, blazing away with lasers and a dozen machine guns a turn and hitting with just one MG on average before his Valkyrie jumped away again. 

The Mech that shall not be named outmaneuvered me following a mistake on my part, and dishonorably kicked the Adder's already crippled leg, destroying it and removing the mech from the game. The Shadow Hawk took command as it was painted, only to lose it's leg a turn later. 

Command then fell to my Primed Hellhound which had the most surviving paint left in my force (and was also inflicting the most damage overall). Here it unloads in the the Mech that shall not be named while in the background the Elementals and piranha collectively sandblast about 40 points of armor off of the sides of the Donegal Black Knight! As heavily armored and undamaged as the Knight was, it merely found this experience to be irritating.

The Hellhound punches thru one of the side torsos of the not named mech and hit the SRM Ammo, obliterating it and avenging the fallen Star Commander! He hoped that this act would inspire his remaining troops...

However it was not to be as the piranha, dreadfully overheated due to an engine hit, tried to duke it out at point blank range with the Donegal HBK-4P. A dazzling exchange of 8 medium lasers vs. 12 MGs and an ER small laser ended in the only obvious result.

At this point my 2 remaining Hellhounds (of which the unprimed one had lost half of it's weapons) bugged out, leaving the 4 remaining Elementals for dead. 

As crushing of a defeat as it was, this was still a fun game and I'm looking forward to vastly more frequent games with Kushial in the future!

Starting off 2023 with a fighting retreat...

I know everyone is planning on a glorious victory, however dead mercenaries collect no pay checks!

'There is no way that I am getting

paid enough for this job...'

I got together with my buddy Screech for an 8k game of Battletech this past weekend and what follows is sorta how it all went down (I say 'sorta' as my battle reports aren't the most detailed). 

The Buffet Assault Group was fielding a fully painted force, with nothing in the way of advanced tech outside my Commander's custom CGR-SB with 4 tons of comms. equipment generating a 3 hex ECM field. Turns out we were playing ECM incorrectly so the few Streak SRMs that failed to connect should have. In hindsight, I ought to have stuck with the stock model and it's fourth large laser. 

Screech's Steiner force was sporting his trademark 'fresh from the factory' grey and probably 3060s era tech. We'll just say they dug deeply into all that the Helm Memory Core had to offer. 

The first few turns were mostly uneventful maneuvering and dodging the corrosive environmental effects of the map. The Catapult would spend most of the game on it's high perch, lobbing 30 missiles down range, and on average connecting with about 9 per turn. Typical.

One of my Stingers, ran into a Shadowhawk whilst trying to sneak into the backfield. The Shadowhawk would remove both of it's arms (and all of it's weapons) in this exchange, and the Stinger would flee the field in the following turn!

Screech pondering his next course of action.

The charger and Hunchback (the AC-10 version) leading the charge and tangling with his Marauder and Warhammer!

On my other flank, the 8-Z panther and 2nd Stinger get into the Wolverine and Warhammer's rear arcs, where the torso armor is thinnest, and where they would instead only hit arms and legs...

Realizing that they're outclassed, my commander starts her slow, exonerable retreat. Walking backwards while firing most everything would be how she more or less spend the rest of the game. The hunchback on the other hand was happy to remain stuck in, guns blazing in all directions!

Collective fire from multiple mechs started to punch holes into the Warhammer resulting in 2 XL engine hits. When rolling to avoid a heat-induced shutdown, Screech rolled a snake eyes and the Warhammer went dead!

Dishonorable mercenaries as we are, my forces had no qualms about shooting the stricken mech!

The Warhammer took enough hits to knock the inert mech over. Karma is a bitch though as my Hunchback also needed to make a piloting check to avoid falling, however my pilot lost consciousness following a pair of SRMs to the head. Rendering the check a moot point, and down it went as well. 

My Charger, heavily damaged by this point gets an attempted assist from the Catapult  which fired and missed with all four medium lasers. 

The Warhammer powers back up and presses it's attack. With only 1 functional PPC, it was more or less heat neutral despite the engine hits. The Scouts hang back to guard the Hunchback and it's still snoozing pilot. However the Wolverine dumps everything into the Panther's side torso, hitting its SRM ammo and vaporizing the mech!

The Hunchback struggles to it's feet, and in a brutal exchange both the Warhammer and Hunchback are destroyed! Not pictured but the other stinger tried to run cover for the horrifically damaged Hunchback and lost an arm along with taking a spread of SRM hits to an otherwise pristine scout mech. 

My custom Charger. Ya gotta love the CGR-SB, proving once again to be an excellent 'zombie-mech' that refused to fall. 

At that point it was almost midnight and my force was spent. The Panther and Hunchback were both vaporized by ammo explosions, the two Stingers had a single arm between them, the Charger was an absolute mess as you can see above, and the Catapult had taken a few good licks as well (and it's ammo hoppers were almost dry!).

On the other side, Screech's Warhammer was so badly torn apart that it may as well have died to an ammo explosion. Both the Marauder and Shadowhawk had taken a fair beating, though the Wolverine had only taken minor-to-moderate armor damage, and so would be able to escort it's comrades home with no trouble at all. 

Not mentioned above but worth mentioning: My Hunchback was modeled with the two right torso medium lasers facing the rear. Rear mounted weapons are usually derided as situational wastes of tonnage. However, stuck in the middle of a brawl, those two lasers were blazing away, turn after turn, indeed neither of us could recall a game in which we had so much rear weapon usage. 

In fact, following the loss of one of it's arms the the autocannon, moments before it's fiery demise, the Hunchback was actually more dangerous in the rear arc than it was the front!

All in all it was a fun brawl!