The mythical fully painted game...

GLORIOUS COMBAT!!

Well, 'mythical' for me I guess. This past Saturday I got to play vs. my buddy Kushial whom I hadn't seen in person in at least a year. Both of us were fielding fully painted forces making the first time I've EVER played a game of Battletech in which everything on the table was painted! 'Tis sad but true. 

Really? They couldn't give us 2 map sheets with roads that lined up? No apparently not. Not liking the 'road to nowhere', I put a bunker on the end point so that it went 'somewhere'.

The game spanned about 7-8ish hours, so rather than try to chronicle all of that (and no, I don't take notes) the following is just a bit of a highlight reel of a really fun game.

My army...

...and it's list. I made a sheet up for the apocryphal Urbie MG variant. Also I swapped out the 1A Griffin's prototype PPC for a standard one as otherwise I'd hardly be able to use it!

Kushial and the Pride of Donegal Guards.

Note: The 8th mech is missing, no doubt this battle conflicted with some Lyran Commander's social calendar!

Turn one and the Urbie's (laughably) charge forward into trees and up hills (making virtually no progress whatsoever)! A few ranging shots were fired, but not much else happened. 

Urbies take the (uncontested) hill! The Wolverine and Dervish had the first real exchange of fire, with the Dervish suffering heavily for it.

Despite the Gunnery of 5 due to obsolete targeting software of the 'primitive' Griffin, it lands a head shot on the Awesome! The Whitworth lobbed a few indirect LRM volleys using Urbies as spotters, but to little if any effect. 

The Awesome's pilot, angered by the creation of his new 'convertible' savages the Griffin in return. 

3 Urbies take up a tight formation on the hill, whilst the 4th (curiously) leads the charge out into open terrain... 

...only to find out why Urbies shouldn't do that. 2 engine hits, AC soon to be knocked out of action and armor plates everywhere but but still attached to it's frame, the reckless Urbie staggers away in retreat...

LRM-5 aside, the Grasshopper and Hunchback open up with everything else they have and hit...NOTHING! Sadly, it was to be the first of many such abysmal exchanges... 

YES! Clusterfuck in progress, otherwise known as: Battletech the way it was meant to be! 

A few more PPC rounds and the Griffin drops again, gyro is hit & internals exposed, the pilot struggles to stand. The Whitworth, seeing the writing on the walls prepares to bolt from cover to avoid having to deal with that beast 1-on-1. 

After a serious struggle to rise, the Griffin retreats as fast as possible. The Awesome claiming to have 'no other targets' dishonorably pumps 2 more PPC rounds into the fleeing machine which miraculously stays on it's feet. 

Ol' Urbie #317, desperately tries to gimp its way off of the board under the protective (though quite inaccurate) covering fire of it's brethren on the hill. Meanwhile the Grasshopper and Hunchback continue to shoot lots and hit little in the backfield...

Seeing little need for LRMs at this point, the Whitworth finds a spot to hide and dumps ammo, turning the 'Tinman' into a laser boat. Meanwhile the rest my lance on the hill continues to blaze away for minimal effect...

317 finally escapes the board whilst another Urbie on the hill, dubbed 4-Fitty disintegrates under heavy fire. Seeing the struggle of 317 to flee, the remaining Urbies choose to stand and die where the are. Finally however the tide turned somewhat in my favor as 2 Hatchetmen fell as casualties.

ACK! FELINE MAXIMUS!!! Resulting in a sudden (and temporary) truce to combine fire and fend off the titanic beast!!

The last Urbie desperately tries to shake the Hatchetman swinging for it's rear, whilst the Hunchback finally figures out how to hit and starts laying into the Awesome. The Whitworth opted for a cinematic 'shoot each laser at a different target' move that sounded like a good idea but instead hit nothing. 

Ignoring all of the shots fired at the Awesome in between the original headshot and the last 2 consecutive turns. Just in those last 2 the Hunchback hit that fucking Awesome 15 freaking times, all I needed was one damned headshot to put it down automatically but nope...just ground thru armor only getting a late crit on a leg or something...

The ragged survivors.

In the end, Kushial's Awesome, Dervish (another mech that refused to die), and Last Hatchetman were all in rough shape, and likely would be out of commission for awhile. The other two were relatively unscathed.

As for me: the Urbie lance was gone, 3 dead and the last that managed to escape was so badly damaged it would likely be scrapped post battle (as would the similarly crippled Griffin).  The Hunchback was pretty chewed up by Game's end but the Wolverine and Whitworth were both in fine enough shape to take to the field again as is, needing only ammo reloads and minor armor repairs.

Apparently, I need to 'up my game' as I'm now holding a record of I'm 0-3. I'm having a ball with it though, so its not really much of a loss! Hoss will be unleashing PANDA-MONIUM!! on me here this coming Saturday, so I'm hoping I can turn the tide of my current losing streak.

I can't wait to see what the Operation Klondike era Wolverines can do on the table top...

PANDA-MONIUM STRIKES AGAIN!!!

Seriously, they have to be stopped...

Hoss, the wiley commander of PANDA-MONIUM!! was in high spirits as he launched his assault!

My prior efforts to contain these rogues however were kinda meh. Hopefully my Capellans will do better. This time the Capellan Confederation's (as usual) woefully ill-equipped Home Guard raced to intercept whilst screaming for assistance by anyone who could hear them! The St. Ives' Sentinels weren't all that impressed with their pleas however and merely sent a lance as backup. 

The battle begins...

PANDA-MONIUM!! (I really think that that name should always be in all caps, and maybe followed by a few exclamation points whenever mentioned) fielded essentially the same list as last time (despite the recent acquisition of an understrength battalion of plastic mechs), with only the Griffin being swapped out for the GRF-1N model. 

The intrepid Home Guard fielded a lance of Scorpion light tanks (proxied as I loathe the actual mini) of 3 standard models, and 1 modified medium laser variant which removed the MG & its ammo which allowed the 1-ton cargo bay to be expanded into a 2-ton infantry bay via the other-worldly magic of Battletech's construction system. Riding in said infantry bay was a heavy mountain platoon, which consequently is just about the only 2-ton platoon available aside from the near worthless (well, on the table top) medics.

Sadly, I couldn't claim that die as cover...

Starting things off, the standard Scorpions valiantly (or is it stupidly?) charged forward, whilst the ML version slogged thru a wooded ravine. The St. Ive's mechs advanced cautiously aside from the Locust which was predictably ran forward at full throttle. There was some minor exchanges of fire, nothing too impressive other than to say that the Scorpions were making the enemy assault mechs angry. 

This match up ought to have been a lot more in my favor than it looks...

Moving a full, straight line of 12 hexes and coming to a stop inside the minimums of both of the Griffin's weapons, the LCT-1E  let loose with everything hitting the Griffin in the face with a sole ML! In return the Griffin would need an 11 to hit and...the fucker rolled box cars for the PPC! Seriously? Yup, blew off the right arm and a good chunk of the right torso, as such the Locust pilot was already planning his escape from the board.

Don't recall much from this pic other than my poorly positioned Thunderbolt (appropriately not in the picture) was only able to bring 2 lousy MGs to bear on the Griffin...

Yeah, there's the friggin' T-bolt, failing...meanwhile the mtn infantry disembarks, preparing to take the nearby (and uncontested) hill!

The board was quickly splitting into a short-ranged ravine slugfest on my right and a woefully imbalanced, open ground duel on my left.

With 2 assault mechs bearing down on it, both unfazed by the neverending LRM barrage, my Catapult pilot makes a beeline into heavy cover to weigh his dwindling options.

In doing so, he hung the poor Scorpions out to dry, I can only imagine the fury over the comms...

With the sudden disappearance of the Catapult into cover, the Battlemaster and Awesome turn their guns onto the Scorpions. Both had already taken several hits, with #2 in the front impressively absorbing 3 PPC rounds without going internal! Sadly, it was caught in a crossfire with the Battlemaster as well which scored a turret crit hitting ammo and BOOM!! The Scorpion was vaporized. This was Hoss' first ever kill and he was most pleased. 

Meanwhile on the other side, my 3rd std. Scorp unwisely took on the Shadowhawk, and suffered heavily for it.

We need to paint these mechs, cause to the outsider its really hard to tell who's is what.

Cursing the Catapult, the left flank's last, heavily damaged Scorpion wisely turned tail and made a run for it, whilst the other that took on the Shadowhawk, unable to flee crawled up to higher ground seeking cover. With the screening force gone, Hoss' 2 assault mechs went in for the kill on the Kittypult, whereas the fighting was still more or less a free-for-all in the hills and valleys on my right flank.

Despite running wide open, the Griffin manages to get in a parting shot at the fleeing Scorpion, which replied in kind though I don't think either scored any hits.

We need to look into the death from above rules as Hoss is really keen to give this a go. He had pondered jumping onto my infantry earlier, and then again later my Wolverine, but in the latter case (he skipped it in the former) he just charged in for some regular ol' HTH combat...

His Griffin swings! (and misses), After which the Wolverine puts a nice round-house in to the Griffin's head! 

...and perhaps he ought to just stick to the shootin' instead. Speaking of, despite hunkering down in cover, his Battlemaster and Awesome were kicking the ever-loving-shit out of my beleaguered Catapult which was doing its best to fend them off, but they have so much fucking armor...

The Shadowhawk, quite outnumbered, tries to pull back but is pursued and attacked from almost all directions (whereas the T-bolt just kinda waffled around in the back field, again, as usual...).

Six, I said SIX FUCKING PPC rounds connected in 2 turns! I'm not sure which pilot was sweating more, the Awesome's or the Catapult's! The last shot finally went internal and luckily only hit a heat sink, though the ammo in that torso was low enough to possibly survive the explosion had it been hit...maybe.

At this point it was starting to get late and both sides were pretty ground down. I'm calling it a win for Hoss as I'd lost 1 tank, with a 2nd as well as a Locust forced from the field. All other mechs on the field were damaged, though nothing too serious aside from that late hit on the Catapult. 

Screech is slated for to come over for a game later this week, with Hoss returning once more on Saturday for another blood bath! This makes me quite happy as I don't think I've played this much Battletech in such a short span of time in at least a decade!

Yet another Lyran/Marik border skirmish...

o/

I have no recollection of when I last (or even if I've ever) fielded this many mechs that were all painted in the same, matching color scheme...

After what seems like eons in trying to align schedules for a game of Battletech, my buddy Rob was finally able to come over for a game! 8k points, I knew he was bringing Blitzkriegs (hideous things that they are) among others, so after much hemming and hawing, I opted for a Jihad era demi-company rather than my originally planned succession wars era d-co. 

Hopefully you can follow thru the battle via my highlight reel of pics:

My list. The asterisks on the R-60s denote their use of precision ammo. Whilst that left them with a mere 5 AC rounds a piece, I didn't realistically expect them to last much longer than that. 

The opening round with Rob's banzai charge up the middle! I deployed my Hunchback poorly, meaning it spent the first few turns uselessly navigating zig-zagging slot canyons...

I also fucked up in my 1st turn by camping my Whitworth in a cozy little secluded spot of terrain. My intent was to use an Urbie as a spotter and have it lob some LRMs indirectly. It wasn't till the shooting phase that I realized that I'd swapped the LRM toting model out at the last minute for the (apparently salvaged/captured) rocket toting pirate version...

I'm not sure which Lyran unit Rob was attacking with as they were all sporting the infamous 'fresh from the factory' lack of paint. So fresh in fact that the Berserker BRZ-C3 in the rear wasn't even fully assembled! Woe betide any who find themselves within reach of the invisible axe of death which hits at 40 fucking points per stroke!!!

The Whitworth and a trio of Urbies bottleneck up at the mouth of the pass amidst the initial exchange of fire...

The Urbie on point takes a brutal AC20 hit whilst the conga line dumps all they have into the lead Blitzkrieg. They inflicted multiple hits, destroying an 'arm' (if you can find one on that mini let me know) as well as scoring engine and gyro criticals, knocking it to the ground! In the backfield, my Wolverine takes a tumble caused by hits from the Crossbow.

The Urbies hopscotch around giving 'Levi' (the Urbie numbered 501) room to jump (gingerly) in retreat. Doing so put its rear armor to the enemy, protecting it's ONE remaining point of center torso structure!!! Luckily Urbies don't have lower arm actuators, meaning their guns can fire backwards as they run, no...jog, no...briskly walk away.

Meanwhile the Whitworth advanced to harry the retreating Blitzkrieg, and my Griffin jumped over it to cut off its escape! Much to the surprise of my Whitworth pilot however, the Berserker ran up into point blank range!

In the shooting phase the advancing Blitzkrieg pumped 2 AC20 rounds into the next Urbie in line and it pretty-much disintegrated under the onslaught. In return my Hunchback opened up with everything it had at the same BlitzKrieg's rear hitting with just...one...freaking...medium pulse laser BUT: that punched thru the right rear armor and hit ammo. 

The Blitzkrieg disappeared in a mushroom cloud!! 

In a panic, the Whitworth fired a whopping 40 rockets at the Berserker, hitting it with 24 (collectively) and making it quite angry! In return it fired a few lasers to warm both it's axe and the Whitworth up. Then, swinging said axe it sliced off the Whitworth's ENTIRE left torso! Unsurprisingly, the mech fell under such punishment!

Run Levi RUN!!!

In the backfield, my Wolverine and Rob's Crossbow were bloodying each other slowly but consistently, knocking one another to the ground in the process. 

The Whitworth struggles to its feet after a few tries and staggers backwards in retreat, however the Berserker was in it's prime and ran past the stricken machine to take aim at the closest Urbie, whilst the Hunchback moves into optimal firing position. In the back, the stricken Blitzkrieg tries to retreat but can't shake my Griffin. 

In the shooting phase the Griffin tears off the Krieg's other 'arm' and the Wolverine and Crossbow pummel each other. Unfortunately for me, the Crossbow scored 4 internal rolls on the Wolverine, taking out the SRM-6 and then hitting the ammo! I had CASE, but that's still kinda useless when paired with an XL engine, the Wolverine was done! 

Up front the Panicking R-69 Urbie & Hunchback unloaded into the Berserker hitting with virtually everything, even scoring 2 AC 10 hits with the Ultra! Undeterred, down came the axe and the right side of the R-69 was shorn from its body! That said, the stubby stature of the Urbie served it well and it remained on its feet.

This along with a growled comment begrudgingly acknowledged the impressive, massed fire power of my Urbie lance. 

At this point it was getting late and we decided to call it. Had the game continued, Rob growled that he would have been coming for the Hunchback next after it's withering volley of lasers! 

The Butcher's Bill:

I'd lost my Wolverine (it even got a paint chip! Fucking metal minis...) and an Urbie, with two more Urbies and the Whitworth critically damaged (and likely scrapped post battle). My three remaining mechs were practically untouched. As for Rob's Lyrans, one Blitzkrieg was beaten all to hell and the other was a still smoking crater! Whereas the Crossbow and Berserker both had moderate armor damage, but nothing that was in danger of going internal had the game continued. As such I'm calling that a solid win for Rob. 

We had a lot of fun though, and I hope it doesn't seemingly take years to arrange another game. 

Tentatively I'm scheduled to play Hoss again here later today. Additionally I'd like to play Rob again, as well as  Kushial in the near future, and Screech too. 

The TBAGers take on Panda-Monuim!!

o/

GLORIOUS COMBAT!!

My buddy Hoss came over Saturday night, and we fought our first Battletech game vs one another. I'm not sure, but I'm thinking that this was Hoss' 3rd or 4th game, but in general his grasp of the rules already equals mine (and as we all know, rules aren't my strong suit). No scenario, just a simple, straight up kill each other game, between two early succession war mercenary lances. 

The Battlefield. 

I found the above on a forum...somewhere, so I claim no credit for its creation. There are only two height levels present: 1 & 4. As such, only Hoss's Griffin had jump jets powerful enough to propel it up on top of these ridges. We ignored the black objective things in the middle, pretending they weren't there in order to create at least one large open killing zone.

Also this was the first time Hoss played with a lance made up entirely of his own minis, though I did make up a list for him. I'm sure it won't be long before we won't know what he'll be fielding until he arrives to play!

Much like on Da Long Wayz Dezert Groop, what follows is a captioned highlight reel of pics which passes for my usual sort of half-assed battle reports.

My list. The 'Catalina' part of my Awesome is a simple refit moving the ammo out of the center torso to the sides.

Hoss's list. Hoss loves all things Panda, hence the name I chose for his unit. Now he's thinking of painting his mechs black and white!

Hoss, my wily opponent during the game's opening maneuvers.

My first hit of the game! My stalker hit the Griffin on the ridge with 2 large lasers and an LRM 10. His mech fell, though not off of the ridge. 

My Whitworth and Panther, flanking around to take on the Shadowhawk lurking in the darkness. The Whitworth got a lucky SRM hit, scoring a snake eyes for location and a further engine hit! Luckily for Hoss, his Shadowhawk doesn't run all that hot, so this wasn't much more than an annoyance.

All the assault mechs close to optimal range and the armor plates all around start taking some serious punishment! Its been quite awhile since I've been on the wrong end of an Awesome. Let me tell you now in case you didn't know: it sucks!! My 8T at close range was clearly outmatched by his 8Q!

My light mechs blocked the exit to the canyon, trapping the shadowhawk-or so I thought. Rather than try to take on 2 lighter mechs, Hoss jumped-reversing course, shielding himself behind the spire and hanging my ambush out to dry!!

The next turn, the Panther rerouted for the main battlefield, whilst the Whitworth made pursuit. The assault mech meanwhile continued to hammer one another...

My stalker, having dissipated it's excess heat the prior round, strode out into the open and Hoss took the bait! Hoping to take advantage of my stalker's lack of close combat capable 'arms'. Instead, the stalker torso twisted and hit his awesome with everything it had (minus the LRM), all hit aside from a single medium laser! My awesome and panther added to the weight of fire and savaged his awesome, tearing the arm (and it's fist) off of the mech, and exposing internals in the torso and one leg, killing 2 heat sinks in the process.

Meanwhile his assault mechs hammered mine in return. In the backfield his Shadowhawk and Griffin beat the hell out of my Whitworth, punching a hole in the Whitworth's arm, taking out an actuator, whilst it destroyed the Shadowhawk's AC-5 in return.

Dead mercenaries collect no paychecks!

As such his mechs started a slow, fighting retreat. Putting 2 PPC shots into the center and right torso of my (up until that point) pristine Panther! The Whitworth and shadowhawk continued to skirmish in the backfield, whilst his battlemaster kept up the pressure on my stalker. Agreeing with his sentiment, my Awesome fell back as well, whereas the broiling stalker stayed where it was, firing a token shot or two whilst it's overtaxed heat sinks dissipated the 10+ excess heat points! 

We called the game here, making it a draw. Neither side was beaten though both were very much bloodied. No mechs died, though most will be out of commission for quite some time due to repairs.

It was a fun game and we look forward to the next one! Next up though, Rob has a game tentatively scheduled with me on Tuesday, hopefully he'll actually be able to make good on that! I'll field one of my other forces as the TBAGers will be laid up in R&R for awhile.