Donegal Guard vs Ace Darwin's Whipits

So this past Saturday evening I made it back up to Johnson City for a game with Cheef again. This time around I was fielding a slightly reinforced lance of my 8th Donegal Guard versus his Ace Darwin's Whipits. He had me slightly outnumbered at the beginning with 7 mechs again my own 5.

We both split our forces with two of my jump capable mechs (Wolverine and Hatchman) on the tighter confined urban terrain while my Ostol, Awesome, and Hunchback took to the rolling hills on the other flank. He put his Stinger, Grasshopper, and Urbanmech on the urban side while his two Shadowhawks, Panther, and Enforcer took the other. Rob made a brief appearance and was nice enough (to me anyway) to seemingly put a light curse on Cheef's dice. Early turns of ranging shots didn't see anything happen but the first blood was in the urban era. Before the Urbie was close enough to get involved, my Hatchetman and Wolverine ignored the Grasshopper to double up on the Stinger. It was quickly rendered bereft of weaponry and proceeded to book it off the table. His Grasshopper and one other mech were the other two failed pilot checks.

My Ostol was faster than the Awesome and Hunchback and as it got out in front it quickly drew a heavy amount of fire that it weathered fairly well. As the ranges dropped more damage began mounting on both sides. Cheef became more disillusioned with his Shadowhawks as the game went on, as why they look like nice mechs, having the lightest versions basically of all weapons with an AC/5, SRM/2, and LRM/5 and a single medium laser. They consistently just couldn't put up a decent amount of damage reliably. Around this point too, Cheef learned of Murl's seeming curse when it came to piloting checks. Out of three checks over several turns and three different mechs, he rolled a combined 3 each time. One of them was on his Urbie which managed to crit itself on it's fall and took out it's own AC/10.

I ended up taking a leg off of Ace's Pink Panther and rendered him mission inoperable. A few turns later saw the Urbie destroyed, though it did score a small laser hit to the head of my Hatchetman in the scrum, and one of his Shadowhawks downed from a destroyed leg as well. It was nice to have a proper urban combat scene with a Wolverine and Hatchetman squaring off against an Urbie, Grasshopper, and a Stinger. Definitely a proper fight with the proper types of mech for it.

At this point he was trying to regroup his scattered mechs to support each other as the remaining Shadowhawk was missing some weapons and the Enforcer was starting to show some damage. It was at this point that when my Hatchetman and Wolverine shot at the Grasshopper that my dice after failing to confirm a possible critical hit on at least a dozen previous rolls suddenly got three of them on the Grasshopper for a pair of engine hits and a gyro hit. Combined with it losing most of its weapons as well, Cheef threw in the towel at this point. I somehow had all my mechs still standing though three of them were a couple good hits from going down. All in all it was a fun evening with lots of chatting and relaxing. Looking forward to the next time though it seems that once a month to get up there is going to be as good as it gets for the foreseeable future.

Quite A Bit Overdue

So back on October 21st, Cheef and I got a game of Battletech in, but I've been a bit busy and have not got around to posting about it yet. As is quite common, close to the halfway point I forgot to keep taking pictures.

I took a Clan Ghost Bear force of a Solitaire, a Nova Cat A, a Hellbringer (Loki), and a Mad Dog (Vulture). He brought a wolfhound, a commando, a hatchetman, a Hunchback variant, and then too much armor. 4 Heavy tanks total ended up being too much armor for me to chew through fast enough. Towards the end I tossed in the towel with three beat up mechs remaining facing two damaged mechs and too much remaining tanks to deal with. Two tanks were fairly hurt but the other two were basically untouched. The next day I even considered a force of a dozen LBX armed Urbanmechs to deal with the tanks by criting them to death next time.

So that's how it went, I feel like I did fairly well early on to keep my force fighting just part of his but I couldn't roll well enough to drop his mechs fast enough before the rest of his force came to bear. (Though 4 ER Large Laser hits from the Mova Cat cored the Commando quite nicely) So that's it for now and I'll see about posting again soon. I have Monday off work and nothing I to deal with that day so I'll be looking to spend at least some time getting some Battletech dealt with. See you all next time and thanks for stopping by!

True and False Heirs of the SLDF Collide

So this past Saturday night I managed to get a game of Battletech in once more against Cheef. It was a match were I was outnumbered 2 to 1 as I took a full lance of medium and heavy mechs from my old Eridani Light Horse regiment with highly skilled pilots but ended up facing Cheef's Hell's Horses in a horde of 4 light mechs, 2 light tanks, a medium mech and a heavy tank.

I took a 2/4 Hunchback HBK-4P, a 2/4 Quickdraw QKD-5K (but flipped the 2 rear medium lasers with the SRM/4), a 3/4 Archer ARC-2Rb, and a 2/4 Crab CRB-27b.

After numerous rounds we were both hurting fairly badly. I had lost my Hunchback, the Archer was almost dead, and the Quickdraw and Crab were both fairly hurt. He'd lost both light tanks and a Stinger while having a Wolverine (which he tried call a Hellhound), Stinger, Locust, and Pirahna all one or two hits away from destroyed and then the Demolisher was in good shape. If we played it out I figure I'd lost the Archer and probably the Crab while finishing off his mechs but my Quickdraw would be jumping to stay out of line of sight from the Demolisher. So we called it a draw while we still had salvage worth salvaging.

I was really happy with how the Quickdraw and Crab did. The Hunchback was disappointing as with it's slow speed and layout it had to expose itself to a LOT of damage to be able to unload it's firepower into a target. The Archer was doing well but with the speed of the enemy force it soon had issues with keeping the range open for those LRM.20s. All in all it was a lot of fun and I'm planning on another post around the end of the week hopefully as I'm looking at at least one, possibly two, crazy long work weeks. That's all for now and thank's for stopping by!

When Ghost Bears Maul

So this past Friday I managed to get back up to the Outpost for another game of classic Battletech with Cheef. I was fielding most of a star of my Clan Ghost Bear while he had some Draconis Combine troops. With the points cap I had 4 mechs to his 4 mechs with my fifth star member being stuck back at the dropship on guard duty. I fielded a Kingfisher (C variant), a Nova Cat (A variant), a Bearcub 2, and a Pirahna. He was fielding a Rifleman, a Dragon, a Cyclops, and a Hunchback.

This was definitely more of a balanced game than our previous outing as my dice were more normal in their rolls while his rolls actually were willing to score some hits this time. Seeing as that set of dice rolls normally when he's been playing with Frankie in Alpha Strike, I am starting to think they only work well when Frankie is there to use them. I tried to keep my deployment to one side of the map, especially since he started looping his Dragon the long way around the central city section we were fighting in. I ended up with the Pirahna looping behind the Dragon and spending several turns wearing it down while my other forces dealt with his other units.

The Bear Cub was the first to die but between its up close SRM and medium laser fire combined with the Nova Cat's ER Large Lasers, and the heavy fire from the Kingfisher, the Cyclops took a lot of damage and was in a rough way fairly early. In exchange for heavy damage to my Kingfisher, the Cyclops and Hunchback were both killed off on the same turn though some of this was I was lucky on a lot of my shots landing repeatedly in the same location.

In the late game my Kingfisher was getting close to dying from cockpit damage as the LBX AC-5s on the Rifleman kept landing at least one point of damage on the cockpit each time it shot. Indeed, the Kingfisher was down to just one point of armor on the cockpit at the end of the game. At this point I had the Pirahna use its speed to disengage from the Dragon and loop back around to harass the Rifleman with the Kingfisher while the Nova Cat dealt with the Dragon.

At this point the pilot of the Rifleman seems to be from the former Rasalhague region of the Draconis Combine because he was turning his mech into a walking sauna. It actually got to the point that the mech shutdown due to overheating which was a first for both of us in a game. Due to the number of heatsinks it was going to be 2 turns minimum before he could restart the Rifleman which was when Cheef called it a game. I'd have been able to finish off the Rifleman between the Kingfisher and the Pirahna while the Nova Cat held off the Dragon or teamed up the Kingfisher and Nova Cat to deal with the Dragon while the Pirahna kicked and machine gunned the downed Rifleman. So all in all it was a good outing for the clans and it was nice to finally get them back on the table after a long long time for them. It was a fun game as always and I'm looking forward to the next one.

When The Dice Want More Table Time

So this past Saturday, I finally got another Battletech game in with Cheef. He was fielding his Ace Darwin's Whipits while I was fielding a unit of my Caselton Militia with a couple Rabid Foxes attached. In my head I had it as the Foxes on a data gathering mission using the militia forces for cover. This was one of those games where Cheef's dice were fairly unforgiving towards him while on the other hand my own dice were trying to send me the message that they wanted a lot more useage as I was rolling way better than I normally do.

My full deployment was in Civil War era units and consisted of the two Fox agents in PXH-3PL Phoenix Hawks, a militia Marauder MAD-5M, 2 militia WVR-7K Wolverines, and then a pair of SRM variant Hetzers. He had Ace in his pink Panther, two Shadow Hawks, a Grasshopper, an Enforcer, and a Wasp. All his units have their call signs, rides, and a brief backstory on his own blog here. Several of his mechs had slight tweaks from stock variants as well as improved piloting skills while all my pilots were 4/5s. However my mechs all were loaded with pulse lasers to improve their shooting as well as the Phoenix Hawk variant having a targeting computer to go with those pulse lasers.

We both deployed fairly normally and just charged at each other. By turn 3 we were at close range and unloading all we could into the other. His Enforcer was his leading unit and I singled it out first as a target. It took a lot of hits which resulted in major damage all over it including 3 criticals for 2 engine hits and 1 gyro hit. It did manage to stay standing and ended up backing off the table in withdrawal a few turns later. Over the next few turns I managed to kill the Wasp, force one of the Shadowhawks to withdraw, and then at that point with moderate to heavy damage to his remaining units while I had one heavily damaged and the rest moderately to lightly damaged, his force decided that getting paid another day rather than no more paychecks was the better option and called it a day.

While it was nice to get a game in, the dice were definitely not being balanced between us. One of my Hetzers managed 21 out of 30 possible missile hits where 4 of the 5 SRM/6s hit and then I rolled high on the scatter chart as well with only 3 of the 24 missing. I have never in any game managed a missile accuracy like that before and when paired with the pulse lasers bonus offsetting my movement penalties, it definitely became a one sided game around turn 5 or 6. Hopefully we can get another game in soon that is more balanced and fun for all without the dice gods being petty.

So more of an overview than a full up battle report as I didn't take a ton of pictures but I will say it was nice with us both having fully painted and based forces on the table. I know that has been a slight annoyance to Cheef lately as he's dipped his feet into the waters of Alpha Strike and has been facing nothing but bare gray plastic models on the other side of the table for several games now. So that's all for now and with the parting joke that I "Raid"ed his Wasp pilot "Hotshot", I will see you all next time. I need to get the next installment of Red Bull Rising up and will aim to get that up this weekend.

Davion Militia Slapfest

So this past Saturday I finally got a chance to get another game of Battletech in up in Johnson City and once again against Cheef. While I brought a full company of my Davian Ozawa Urban Defense Brigade, Cheef brought most of a mixed company of his Davion Dixie Cavanaugh Theater Militia. I'm not going to do a full blown report but merely do a photo dump with some thoughts about the game.

I decided that with my force deployed all together (hoping to overwhelm part of his force) that the eight UrbanMechs should have the nickname of Fort AC/10.

One of the things I must say is that my crit rolls GREATLY let me down. I didn't make a single one of potentially close to a dozen crit rolls on his mechs and only made a few against his vehicles. I scored a number of motive crits on his vehicles but that didn't exactly help remove their firepower any. This was balanced out though by his own difficulty in getting a lot of his shots to land that should have been easy hits needing around a 5 or so. All in all it was a fun time though and was great to see two fully painted forces totaling 22 units on the board. As Cheef noted in his own quick blurb on this game, the Alpha Strike game on the table beside us had half as many units on the board but didn't even manage one based, painted, or even primed model.

As I mentioned before I am getting some better supplies and equipment to up my painting game for a new regiment of Eridani Light Horse made up of some new Catalysts plastics I already have plus the ones that will be coming from the Mercenaries Kickstarter. My new magnifier with light as arrived. I've got a new batch of better brushes enroute as well as some contrast paints. I plan on starting on a test model here in a couple weeks and I might be asking here for some advice on things from any readers. Currently the plan is White Primer, then GW Imperial Green base paint with Dark Angels Green and Creed Camo contrast paints.

Finally A Game!

So Saturday afternoon and evening, I finally got some Battletech in with the Cheef.  It was 8K BV per side and we both packed in the models.  I took most of a company of my 8th Donegal Guards with 10 light mechs.  (Fluff wise, I'm just saying the other two were back guarding the dropship ride home.)  There were 5 HCT-3F Hatchetmans, 2 JVN-10N Javelins, a WTH-1S Whitworth, and 2 VLK-QF Valkyries.  The entire force was jump capable and was able to be very mobile on the board.

Cheef took a mixed bag of his 25th Marik Militia with a GRF-1S Griffin, a WTH-1 Whitworth, a WVR-6M Wolverine, a SCP-1N Scorpion, 3 UM-R60 Urbanmechs, and then a Heavy Tracked APC with a Heavy Mountain Platoon.  Like Cheef, I'm a fan of the Urbanmech and the Wolverine is one of my favorite mechs so it was nice seeing them on the table.

Both forces were standard mechs with no advanced tech so a basic enjoyable 3025 force for both of us.  This was a game with several firsts for us.  The first successful Death From Above attack, first time someone killed one of Cheef's infantry platoons, and first time I got to kill something with a Hatchetman's hatchet.  It was a very enjoyable game played over 9ish hours at a casual pace with several breaks throughout for dinner and other things.  We actually remembered to give each other a force list this time which will help with the game reviews we'll both be doing.

We played on Cheef's game table with his urban hex map and new terrain.  The Dropship is very impressive and has made it onto my "I Want One" list.  His force was spread across the board and I went heavy to one side to take advantage of the slow Urbanmech movement to give me a chance to hit his other flank harder while they got into range.  If either of us could roll better, it might have worked too.

I completely forgot about taking pictures for a number of turns.  At this point, we both had some very messed up mechs.  The only kill though so far was where my Valkyrie by the dropship just flamered the last of the infantry platoon away.  While they're only on the list to round out his points total, I don't think he thought I'd bring a unit to kill them like that.  Normally they're good for piling on 6 to 12 points of damage a turn helping wear down a mech.  Somewhere a bit before this picture was the successful death from above attack where one of my Javelins which was missing a side torso  landed on his Scorpion.  He tried to shoot the mech and spoil the attack but only managed 9 of the 10 damaged needed to force the piloting check.

A few turns later and we arrive at what I am referring to as "The Muggings".  His Hunchback was badly hurt with 2 engine hits and his Wolverine in the background had fallen over due to engine hits as well as losing a foot actuator.  At this point the Hatchmans moved in and had favorable rolls.  I also intended to use the hatchets to finish the mediums off and was looking forward to swinging some axes.  Both mechs died from the shooting though and there was no close combat attack.  This was the turn where the game really swung in my direction.  Even though I had several mechs barely functional, he'd lost 3 units to the one dead Javelin on my side so far.

This was right at the end of the game.  My second Javelin died in the bottom corner beside a Hatcheman that fell over while killing his Griffin.  The Griffin punched my Hatchetman in the face forcing a piloting check with I failed but he took a hatchet to the head to decapitate the Griffin.  This was my first kill with a hatchet so it was nice to see it finally get to earn some glory.  At this point do to being able to gang up on his outnumbered force I took out one Urbanmech, knocked one over as ran out of ammo from a torso crit, and the third lost it's AC.

At this point Cheef called it a game as it was getting late and while he could take out some more of my mechs, I was going to be able to just overwhelm his remaining units with weight of fire.  He was down to a barely touched Whitworth that was running low on LRM ammo, a Scorpion in decent shape, 2 Urbanmechs with no weapon capability, and a barely dented (I kicked it in the butt with a Valkyrie at one point) Heavy APC.  I had both Valkyries with no LRM ammo, a very hot Whitworth with 2 engine hits, and 5 Hatchmans all damaged to various degrees from moderate damage to barely upright.

The Raiding Force

So all in all it was a successful raid for the 8th Donegal Guard with the ability to salvage mech parts and supplies from the city area as the remnants of the 25th Marik Militia force withdrew to regroup and call for some assistance.  We both rolled fairly poorly for a while but around midgame my rolls started improving while his continued to be very streaky.  I'm starting to think he and Neverness need to swap dice and see if that helps any.

I'm definitely looking forward to another game (which hopefully won't be in a year or so like this one took to get in).  And in addition I got a cool Eridani Light Horse decal and an Atlas he had no plans to ever field again from Cheef as a late Christmas present.  I'll be making a run up to Cincinnati in a few days and plan to stop by Iron Wind Metals for some mech shopping so keep an eye out for incoming new mechs.  That's all for now and thanks for stopping by.  See you all next time.