Firing up the old GM-Coldstart 285 fusion engine...

Luckily Battletech is known for it's old and reliable cold-start reactors to keep their ancient mechs running, and with any luck the metaphorical reactor will do the same to this otherwise seemingly DEAD blog!

As is to be expected, the ol' pandemic shit-canned any and all plans for gaming. Battletech related hobbying pretty much died with it. That said, I've been in the process of rewriting the unit history for this blog's namesake: The Buffet Assault Group. I've hopefully come up with a general overview that fits in nicely with the game's established fluff lore (apparently 'fluff' is for 40k and 'lore' is for Battletech, or so the old grognards say...). Anyways, here's the TBAGers' updated backstory: 

Catalina Styner & the TBAGers

Cursed with a family name that phonetically mimics that Steiner royalty, Catalina would suffer for her family name and lack of political connections throughout her Lyran military career.

Her name aside, she managed to qualify for and enroll in, and graduate from the prestigious Naglering Military Academy. Assigned to the Lyran 2nd Royal Guards, she quickly proved to be a talented mechwarrior and leader who slowly fought her way up through the ranks. Lacking highborn political connections however, Catalina was 'glass ceilinged' at the level of company commander.

After suffering almost two decades of frustrating service, Catalina retired from the Lyran military with both an unblemished career and a long history of promotions lost to the less capable, but well connected 'Social Generals' of the LCAF.

She formed her own mercenary command in 3029, with good prospects given the continuous turmoil of the succession wars. Embittered by her former employers, she dubbed her new command The Buffet Assault Group, a play on her disapproval of many in the LCAF officer corps. 

After assembling a rag-tag combined arms battalion, with one company each of mechs, armor and infantry, Catalina secured a contract with the Free Worlds League's Andurien Province. This contract would be extended to last for the duration of what would become the Andurien Crisis. 

The hard fighting of the Andurien Crisis would take a grievous toll on the TBAGers (as the mercs liked to call themselves), and by the war's end the battalion would be reduced to a lone, understrength company consisting of a mech lance, and an ad-hoc mixed armor and infantry platoon made up of squad remnants and dispossessed armor crews, a trio of tanks and lastly a captured Capellan APC. 

The TBAGers contract was terminated without compensation for losses by the FWLM for siding with their rebellious employers at the conclusion of the Crisis in 3040. Securing passage on a jump ship bound for Outreach, Catalina and her shattered command were expelled from League territory and permanently barred from any future League employment.

*****

I've also revamped my miniature line up for the ol' TBAGers. Gone is the assault weight fire support lance. Equipped with mechs from the early succession wars, my inability to roll worth a damn on the missile cluster chart, as well as a lack of Artemis IV fire-control meant that the majority of their weapons were neutered for most of the game. Indeed, doesn't matter if it's an LRM-10,15, or 20...I only average 6-8 missiles AT BEST!

Pay no attention to the chaos Marines in the background...

Instead I'm guessing those mechs were sold on eBay lost in combat and my 'surviving' lance hasn't been finalized yet, though will likely still include a Catapult (facepalm).

I've been on a bit of a 40k painting kick for awhile, but I need to rotate some Battletech stuff back into the painting queue. So, hopefully I'll be updating this here blog a bit more regularly. 

Steel Haven Campaign game: The Jig is up!

 o/

Up close & personal!

Here's the battle report of my latest campaign game that went totally not the way it was supposed to! I could field no more than 325 tons of mechs from my TBAGers company, with a minor payout bonus at the end if I opted to bring less than that. I had no idea what my objective as to be aside from kill the enemy. 

I opted for a 310 ton force consisting of: 

Stalker STK-4N (my commanding officer for the TBAGers Catalina Styner)

Catapult CPLT-C1

Charger CGR-SB (Challenger)

Hunchback HBK-4SP

Urbanmech UM-R60

Not terrifying at all...

Initially, the OpFor played by Dylan consisted of a Longbow, Thunderbolt, Shadow Hawk, 2 Locusts and a Wasp. Every other turn Dylan would roll a D20, and on a 15+, 1 or 2 (I think he had a roll of 20 to get 2) mechs would show up as reinforcements. Pretty daunting considering his choices of reinforcements are all of the mechs pictured above!

The Hunchback charges into the killzone!

Starting out, my Catapult lobbed some long ranged shots (It wouldn't move all game earning it's pilot a name: Happy Camper). Oddly, (to me), Dylan was using his bug mechs to call in max ranged indirect LRM fire at my...Urbie?!? What the hell? I mean the assault mechs didn't mind, but seriously, what the hell. Dylan's still a new player and apparently had his first encounter with a UM-R60L recently, and that experience scarred the boy. The Urbie would survive the game unscathed.

Six small lasers or not, do you really want to get that close to a Challenger? Movement modifiers prevented any lasers from hitting either mech, but then...

...The kicking started. The Wasp missed, likely as it's leg went cartwheeling away following a 16 point hit from the Challenger's foot!

After the Charger had dropped one locust and then kicked the leg off of a Wasp that was hell bent on suicide (you're welcome), Dylan switched targets to murderous effect! An ungodly number of LRMs just kept raining down, turn after turn, it was brutal!

The hunchback takes down the wounded T-Bolt with a few head shots!

Only one mech arrived as a reinforcement however, a Crab. He never made another successful reinforcement roll! The Stalker, Catapult and Hunchback had pounded the Thunderbolt. Indeed, once in range, the first round of shooting, the 4SP missed with nothing!  Eager to try out something new, the Shadow hawk charged the Hunchback (to quote Dylan: these aren't my campaign mechs, what do I care?) My Hunchback ignored it and took down the Thunderbolt in another shockingly accurate volley!

Dylan's Shadow hawk meanwhile, fumbled it's roll to hit and instead the Hunchback deftly stepped aside and tripped the Shadow hawk into a nice, 18 point face plant!

Trying to recover from that debacle, it took the Shadow hawk 2 tries to stand back up, and when it finally did so, he positioned it with it's back to my Stalker, which was a mere 3 hexes away. Giggling uncontrollably, Catalina removed that terrible pilot and his mech from the world! Not even halfway thru her damage rolls and something hit the Shadow hawk's SRM ammo and that was that. 

The 2nd Locust should be a puff of smoke somewhere out there in the middle.

By his point the second locust was gone, crippled by several turns of point blank medium laser fire from the Catapult, it turned and tried to make a run for it. Climbing down the hill it had been on, it ended its move a perfect 7 hexes out from the Catapult... Meanwhile the Catapult's bodyguard, the Urbie never hit a damned thing all game, though it wasted almost a full ton of AC ammo trying to hit that stupid locust (and for a few turns it was in easy small laser range). 

Finally the Challenger fails a piloting check and falls, knocking out its pilot for 6 turns (we were on the next to last turn). The Stalker came running into the rescue to finish off the Crab that was pummeling my stricken mech (along with the longbow firing indirectly). The head only had 1 point of armor left, luckily they never hit it...

This game was definately not going the way that Dylan thought it would.

The Longbow continued to rain death on the Challenger, along with the seriously damaged and overheating Crab. He was passing his shutdown rolls after taking 2 engine hits, losing an arm, a few heat sinks, and several other components.  The Stalker would soon finish the Crab off. Meanwhile the Hunchback was flanking around a hill to finally starting laying some fire onto the infernal Longbow. A short ranged Hunchback should never be allowed to get that close to a longbow, much less should it be able to inflict enough damage to cause the longbow to fall over, twice!

The Crab turns to slag and the Longbow hits the ground again!

The game ended with the OpFor practically tabled. Only the Longbow was left, it was on the ground and it had my MVP, the Hunchback all over it! Jake, the FLGS owner and campaign manager wandered over, looked at the table, then looked at Dylan and said: how could you fuck this up? You're fired (No, Dylan doesn't work there). The objective was for things to get so overwhelming that I as the campaign player would realize that discretion is the better part of valor and make a run for it. 

Instead I obliterated the enemy, huzzah! Now at the end of this 'track of the campaign, I can repair all of my damaged mechs. Starting with this one:

Ouch! Zombie mech anyone?

Scenario playtesting

o/

The following is a sorta bat rep for a scenario game I came up with aways back. This was it's first run and predictably, we found several issues with it, but I'll get to those in a bit. Firstly here is the back story and scenario, with the bat rep to follow, and then thoughts/needed revisions at the end. Hope you enjoy!

*****

It’s 3028, the 4th Succession war is just ramping up into full swing, and the Dame Catherine Humphreys, leader of the Duchy of Andurien declares war on the treacherous Capellan Confederation due to an 'unprovoked' attack. The Buffet Assault Group, is deployed to assist the 4th Defenders of Andurien in their assault on Scarborough…

*****

It has been a long day of fire support duties. The TBAGers have spent the past 12 hours, perched atop a ridge, pounding the Capellan defenders back into the stone age. Their ceaseless LRM strikes only interrupted by the frequent need to reload. However after hours of firing, their ammo hoppers (and the accompanying train of Andurien ammo carriers) have all run dry. Wearily, the TBAGers pull back to the rear for a much needed night’s rest. Even their CO Catalina is exhausted, spending the day endlessly patrolling for flanking attacks and escorting the ammo carriers heading both to and from their position against attack. 

As the day draws to a close and the evening fog rolls in, the TBAGers finally have the space port in sight, their barracks lay just beyond. Their minds dulled with fatigue they let their guard down as the Anduriens have a 2nd line garrison lance protecting the town from danger. With the last few straggling ammo carriers in tow, the TBAGers only need to pass thru town before they can enjoy some warm food, hot showers and blessed sleep…

The Scenario:

Eight thousand points per side, 4th Succession War (tech level 1). 

The defender’s Andurien lance and infantry platoon as well as my opponent's forces deploy as per the norm, and my opponent has the initiative for the first two turns as the rookie Andurien lance is thrown into disarray by this ‘sudden ambush behind the lines’. 

At the beginning of turn 2 the TBAGer mechs arrive on their table edge and wearily join the fray. Exhausted from a long day, their P/G skills are awful and all of their LRM hoppers are empty. They may not run in the turn they arrive since the inexperienced Anduriens were taken by surprise and neglected to warn them. Likewise the din of distant battles and the foggy conditions masked this fight from the tired mercenaries. The ammo carriers arrive on turn 3 and also may not run in the turn they arrive. 

The dense evening fog adds a +1 to hit modifier for all shooting rolls at all ranges. Physical combat rolls are unaffected.

In order to win, more than half of the TBAGer mechs and ammo carriers (I only have 2 ammo carriers) need to escape off of the board via the enemy board edge within 6 turns. The Anduriens DO NOT need to escape the board, however the Andurien mechs will fall back and retreat off of their table edge if they start taking internal damage. If the infantry platoon falls to half strength, the remainder will scatter into buildings/cover and be removed from the board.

The Buffet Assault Group in back were all quite tired 5/6 pilots with the 2 ammo carriers having 5/5 crews. The Anduriens in front were all 4/5 pilots, with 3/- Frogmen infantry. The three Urbies were identified as Light Pole, Mini-Bus Shortbus, and Emoji.

The battlefield. Note Felis Gigantus lurking off to the side...

Yes, I will make several strolls thru the middle of your game, and yes I will plop down right in the middle of it too!

Turn one. Due to range, fog and movement, my Anduriens make no shots. Screech's Capellans fire a few times, but no hits are landed. 

Turn 2 and the Tbagers arrive, and note the lonnnnnnng road ahead of them....

Multiple modifiers or not, they can't hit me if there's a water tank in the way!

Turn 3 the ammo carriers arrive, and prepare for their high speed dash across the table. 

Here at the top of turn 3, we realized my assault mechs had no possible chance of making it off of the board. So we added 2 turns to the game. Catalina pulled out of line in her Stalker to provide covering fire to her troops whom she ordered to make a run for it! Meanwhile Emoji, the infantry, and the Capellan scouts start brawling at point blank range. The infantry managed a Commando head shot amidst their little blast of buckshot, much to Screech's annoyance.

My lone gunnery highlight of the game came when 'shortbus' put an AC-10 slug into the head of Screech's Awesome. Sadly there was no crit made. Truth be told, there were quite a few head shots in the game, though this was the only one to penetrate anybody's armor in that location.

An Awesome disobeys orders and peels off to stand and fight. Three 'big guys' running and forgoing all shooting (paltry as it was) is kinda boring to play. Speaking of, 3 of the 4 Tbager mechs would end the game with minimal damage, and near all of it to their rear armor. 

...aaaand its a free-for-all at this point. Damaged urbies were making fighting retreats (albeit slowly), Assaults were running (also but not quite as slowly), the longbow narrowly passed it's piloting check to not fall whilst turning at a run on pavement and in the back field, one of the APCs made an unsuccessful MG strafing run on an enemy Catapult. 

At the bottom of turn 6 we called the game due to the late hour. 

The Awesome that stayed behind took a pounding this last round and would end the game on it's back, the only mech to fail a piloting roll all game! My side's 'hero-mech' title ought to go to my Andurien SHD-1R. It took an absolute ponding, and never once fell despite losing almost all of it's armor from the waist up!

The final, parting shot.

Okay so, thoughts?

Well first of all, success was impossible as I'd handicapped my forces too much. Thus the game essentially ended as a draw when we called it due to time. Had we gone another turn, the APCs would have exited the board, though at the minimum the Longbow and the one Awesome would have needed another 2 turns to exit as well. No units on either side were lost, though mine were sporting heavier damage than his mechs.

I had thought that a straight run across the board would be too easy. Perhaps had we been using a standard mapsheet it would have been. However mine is a 36"x36" map, meaning there was literally no way my lumbering assault mechs could make it in 6 turns! We realized this early on and revised it to 8 turns, but even then 10 might be more realistic, that or use faster mechs. However this was kinda tailored to my Tbagers so the latter isn't much of an option. Placing the Şoarece in the middle of the intersection as a roadblock didn't help matters either. 

The fog needs to go! Exhausted 5/6 pilots, running, and shooting at moving targets (at range) are all but impossible to hit. Adding in a further +1 meant more often than not, I needed a 13 or 14 to-hit roll on 2D6! Yeah, not happening. Indeed, all game my lowest to-hit number was a 7, however the vast majority were 10+ rolls, and box cars were kinda the norm.

Movement: Screech suggested my units be allowed to run on the turns they arrived. Tired or not, mechwarriors still react quickly to the situation and those few extra hexes of movement were sorely needed!

Deployment: He also suggested deploying his force on a flank. It would have been too easy to overload one side or the other, namely on the road itself to all but eliminate any hopes of escape from the outset. It was a conscious decision on his part not to do so.

Still, it was a fun time and we'll give this another go (with revisions) in the future.

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.