Mid-March, and
Drake pulls the trigger. Bear's Bruisers roll out toward the Capellan industrial facility with Drake's Destroyers in tow, and Rook's Raiders lead the way toward the comms center, backed up by Fourth Lance.
Playing the nightly build as I am, I get to see a new mechanism: reinforcement rolls!
No longer automatic, now we have to roll to get reinforcements into place, and reinforcement attempts cost support points. (We'll look into that a bit more next time I'm deploying for scenarios.)
Comms Center AttackRook's lance is first on the scene, with
Double Dog and company arriving before turn 3.
The enemy facility is located in the heart of a large city. The Raiders arrive in the northeast corner of the map, facing off against four heavy vehicles. The turrets may not even be in play—the Bastards may be able to capture this facility intact. (The Federated Commonwealth will probably like that.)
Round 1
Ker-Ker, who drives the Raiders' quickest mech, runs forward and radios the Behemoth tank's position back to
Rook and bin Ala' al din, who will make indirect attacks on it.
Carcer runs northwest, hoping to find a shot from the other side of the block.
Rook toggles her LRM launchers over to the Artemis ammo, but her shots go a bit long. bin Ala' al din also misses; despite serving as spotter,
Ker-Ker is the only one to get a hit in, damaging the Capellan tank's tracks.
Round 2With a bit of heat build-up slowing her mech,
Ker-Ker takes a step back, out of view of the Capellans. Nobody has a line of sight this round, so we roll on to the next round.
Round 3Double Dog's lance arrives, cleverly choosing to enter the area of operations from the west, and thereby capturing the Capellans in a pincer.
Severe and Selvåg charge down the western boulevard, while
Double Dog and Khad move forward to engage the damaged Behemoth.
Rook and bin Ala' al din will tackle the Partisan tank, now that it has exposed itself.
Letting that Demolisher get behind
Ker-Ker was a mistake, but not a fatal one, thanks to the Lancelot's low profile. She's taken quite a bit of damage, however, and it knocks her mech onto its left side.
Rook takes down the Partisan tank, and Khad immobilizes the Behemoth behind it—it'll be an easy shot next turn for someone.
Round 4
Ker-Ker finds the one spot where she is out of sight of the Demolisher's twin AC/20s, and
Rook and bin Ala' al din get into position to answer it. They trade fire with it;
Rook takes a pair of hits but stays on her feet, and knocks out half of its firepower in response.
In the north, the PPC carrier fires three wild shots at
Severe's Koshi, missing all three times, and takes moderate fire from
Severe and Khad in return.
Double Dog can't quite finish off the Behemoth, but it should fall next turn.
Round 5
Even with the Demolisher still at half strength, we're likely into cleanup at this point.
Ker-Ker stays out of sight, while Khad,
Rook, bin Ala' al din, and Selvåg move forward toward the enemy.
Severe, running down another block and shooting at the Behemoth's rear armor, gets the kill, carving it up with her Clan-spec lasers. Meanwhile,
Double Dog gets the PPC carrier, eschewing his PPCs for the Warhammer's extensive array of short-range weaponry. The Demolisher, though much the worse for the wear, survives the round.
Rook may need to duck out of sight next turn, at this rate.
With the very first medium laser shot of round 6, Selvåg punches through the the Demolisher's tattered frontal armor, taking the kill and ending the scenario with a victory for the Bastards.
Damage, Injuries, SalvageKer-Ker's Lancelot took light damage, including to an ER Large Laser (which may be a challenge to get a hold of on contract, if we're out of spares), and bin Ala' al din's Trebuchet has no component damage but has lost a lot of armor. Both pilots survive uninjured.
There may be some good weapons in the wrecks of the Capellan vehicles, so we'll pick up three of them and see what the techs can scavenge.
Industrial Facility AssaultBear's Bruisers lead the way on this one, with Drake's Destroyers reinforcing. A hidden bunker in the Destroyers' approach to the area of operations slows them somewhat: they'll arrive, but not until turn 7.
Deployment
Another city battle. The facility is located at a major four-way intersection in the center of town. The Bruisers considered deploying along the main northeast-southwest road, but decided it would be better to hold back slightly to suss out the OPFOR's deployment.
Round 1
With the concentration of enemy firepower along the main road,
Linebuster's original plan (split into two elements, advance from two directions) seems less advisable now, and the full lance moves north to fight its way down the road.
The Padilla artillery tank in the defending force will cause some heartache if we stay still, so steady advance is going to be the story of the day.
Round 2
Teddy Bear sees a chance to get stuck in against a solo Crusader, jumping inside its LRM range and (perhaps?) avoiding its leg-mounted SRMs because of the geometry of the line of sight between them. Though the Vulcan excels at hit-and-run stuff like this, luck isn't on Teddy's side today: the ER PPCs in the opposing siege turret both make contact with his mech, the gunners just lucking into it, while only one of his laser shots connects.
Round 3
Teddy Bear beats a retreat to rejoin the rest of the lance. His Vulcan is still in acceptably good shape, but he'll do better as a flanker from here out.
Nobody is in line of sight to shoot.
Round 4
A foot platoon on its own (dropped off from the Maxim hover transports) is
Teddy Bear's bread and butter target; the flamer and machine gun mounted to his Vulcan make it the best anti-infantry mech in the whole company, except possibly
Double Dog's Warhammer. He'll scoot in that direction, as the rest of the lance advances.
Linebuster has a shot on the Crusader and unloads with an alpha strike, connecting with both his autocannons and both his medium pulse lasers. Teetering under the impacts, the Crusader's gyro can't quite compensate, and it falls to left—luckily for its pilot, remaining on the building where it perches.
Round 5
The eastern half of this downtown area is full of little plazas and parks between the buildings, perfect for sneaky hit-and-run maneuvers, and for dodging fire. The enemy artillery tank makes use of one such nook, while
Linebuster makes use of another.
Weapons fire is inconclusive. (I thought I had placed Linebuster in a spot where he could collapse the building the Crusader is standing on, but sadly I was one hex off.)
Round 6
The Capellan forces commit to an advance.
Teddy Bear gets into perfect position to take down the artillery tank, while
Linebuster rectifies the position error that prevented him from dropping a building on the Crusader last turn.
The Crusader does indeed tumble five stories to the ground as the building under it collapses thanks to some precision shooting from
Linebuster's autocannons, taking 40 damage as it does.
Hanzoku immobilizes the Maxim transport that tried to sneak behind him, and
Teddy Bear, between medium lasers and a kick through its side armor, takes the Padilla's engine offline.
Round 7
The Crusader attempts to stand up, slips in the rubble of the building, and falls again... setting off a massive fireball as broken rebar sparks off its shattered right torso armor and cooks off its stock of SRM ammo. Kill to
Linebuster, extra credit for creativity.
The two vehicles fall to
Hanzoku and
Euchre, respectively.
Teddy Bear routs the Capellan infantry without breaking a sweat.
Round 8
The Capellan Striker (an 80-ton assault mech, armed with an AC/5, a PPC, a large laser, and some medium lasers) represents about 38% of the starting strength of the defenders, so by the terms of the mission, we can't claim victory and let it retreat, at least not without damaging it first.
Wizard and
Teddy are first in line, but the latter ducks out of the line of fire with an eye toward getting in behind the Capellan mech on a later turn.
Wizard gets the better of the exchange, but damage is light on both sides.
Round 9
Wizard and
Teddy Bear box in the Capellan mech, and
Linebuster cannily finds a spot where he can hit the Striker's hiding place.
Round 10Hanzoku takes out the Striker with a surgical large laser to the head.
Damage, Injuries, SalvageA successful outing from the Bruisers and the Destroyers: no significant damage, no pilot injuries.
Sadly, although
Drake argues to the best of his ability, our mercenary liaison won't let us go over our salvage limit again to pick up the Stalker—another relatively easily repairable assault mech for our forthcoming Third Company. We do at least secure both turrets, one of which has a pair of ER PPCs that may go toward upgrading one of the new Awesomes.
We also pick up another Arrow IV missile system and some medium pulse lasers out of the wreck of the Padilla.
Kill BoardsLast Missions
All Time- "Rook" Ishikawa (37, 11 mechs, 2 Clan kills)
- "Drake" Halit (35.5, 12.5 mechs, 2 Clan kills)
- "Linebuster" Atkinson (20.5, 11.5 mechs)
- "Carcer" Ngo (20, 9 mechs, 2 Clan kills)
- "Woad" Kohler (20, 9 mechs, 1 Clan kill)
- "Teddy Bear" Jamil (19, 8 mechs, 2 Clan kills)
- "Severe" Payne (13, 8 mechs)
- "Hanzoku" Yuksel (12, 7 mechs, 2 Clan kills)
- "Wizard" Que (11, 7 mechs, 6 Clan kills, 1 DropShip)
- "Euchre" Kojic (10, 3 mechs)
- Simona (10, 2 mechs, 1 Clan kill)
- "Ker-Ker" Ec (8, 5 mechs)
- "Blinky" Stirzacre (8, 2 mechs)
- "Milspec" Ortega (7, 1 mech, 1 Clan kill)
- "Double Dog" Dare (7, 3 mechs, 1 Clan kill)
- Sgt. Philippa "Khad" Khadjikyriakos (6, 2 mech)
- "Pepper" Popalzi (6, 2 mechs)
- "Faceplant" Farooqi (4, 2 mech)
- "Wojtek" Frajtov (3, 3 mechs)
- Pvt. Lise Selvåg (3, 1 mech)
- Pvt. Erine Forakis (2, 1 mech)
- Cpl. Margita bin Ala' al din (2)
- "Kicks" Hernandez (1, 1 mech, 1 Clan kill)
- Pvt. Mats Johansen (1, 1 mech)
Onward!Two missions in one day (March 13) concludes our contractual obligation to the Federated Commonwealth. Hauptmann Toman stops by headquarters to congratulate us on a job well done, but points out that there isn't much in the way of transport offworld for a mech battalion and a thousand tons of cargo right now, what with the active warzone and all.
The rest of the invasion is proceeding well ahead of schedule, in no small part due to our successes. Latest projections, according to Toman, say that the main Capellan resistance likely won't last beyond mid-April, and the final surrender may come earlier than that. If the Bastards are willing to stay on until then, running security in our sector...
That kicks off the negotiations. Drake calls some of the unit's administrators in to hammer out some details, and what emerges after a bit of haggling is this: we stick around until the Capellans throw in the towel, we do not take on any additional objectives but merely secure what we've already captured, and in return, we can hitch a ride on Federated Commonwealth transport to a destination in their space of our choice—Outreach, if we want to look for contracts; Galax, headquarters of Federated-Boeing Interstellar, if we want an introduction to an executive who could, perhaps, sell us a DropShip; somewhere else, if we have other plans, subject to Toman's veto if we try to get cute with the deal.
Ares: the double-yellow-circled (newly) FedCom system bottom center. Outreach: the gray system top left. Galax: the double-white-circled world at center right, one jump away from Davion capital New Avalon.Negotiations complete, the Bastards kick back; op tempo ought to be slow for the next few weeks. Not totally stationary, though: on March 20th, Sixth Lance and Ortega's Outriders are in the field for a recon sweep, and spot the torch of a DropShip's landing engines coming down not far from them. A quick radio to headquarters confirms it isn't FedCom, so the two lances move in to investigate...
Action ItemsOnce we wrap this contract, where do we want to go?
Do we think it's worthwhile to rebuild our fleet of Awesomes to a slightly-less-than-Drake's spec, with one or two Inner Sphere ER PPCs instead of Clan tech? (We may have some downtime after this contract, depending on what direction we want to go.)
We ought to know a little more about Phoenix Hawk variants after the forthcoming engagement; getting those upgraded would probably make a difference to the more junior mechwarriors currently driving them.
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Topic: The Opinionated Bastards: a BattleTech/MekHQ Mercenary Campaign (Mar. 22, 3054) (Read 100053 times)