Calling a mulligan on Battletech
We'll kick off Sword and Dragon for real on a later date. Today... did not go well.
I had the Fox's Teeth as my team and decided to start with a recon mission. Run up, scan four mechs, and get out. Simple, right?
Opposition- four light mechs, militia grade. Spider, two jenners, and a cicada. I brought in my recon lance, fairly equal match on weight, with my guys being better pilots and gunners (including a Gunner 1- with no modifiers, he needed a 1 on 2d6 to hit a target).
What went wrong? Although the defenders started with just a jenner and a spider on the board, I had to close the distance to them. They used some hills to screen me. I got close, scanned the spider with one mech and moved another to flank it. My other group was displaying more caution because I didn't want the jenner to use its speed to get behind me- four medium lasers in the rear arc is bad even with militia pilots.
Start of turn three, the remaining defenders appeared. The cicada practically WALKED up to my assassin (walk speed 7, run 11), got behind it and blew through the light rear armor- hitting my LRM-5 ammo. 5 damage x 24 shots tore the 40 tonner apart.
A series of bad initiative rolls followed, leaving me open to the fast moving defenders (sure, my mechs were fast, but they weren't cicada fast). The superior skill of my pilots was keeping me ahead, but just barely. I managed to destroy the leg of one jenner, but it was still functional enough to fire off a few shots. I put up quite a bit of damage, but no kills.
Then things went bad. I had been firing just about everything I could to try to take out the enemy mechs. This meant a lot of heat build up in my lance commander's wolfhound. After shooting up to 21 (on a 30 point scale), I was trying to get clear with him to cool off- besides other risks, the heat was killing my movement. I'd avoided back hits but eventually the odds were going to catch up on me. I did cool down a bit, then blew a shutdown roll. The spider moved in for the kill, but lousy shot placement kept me alive.
An ammo hit destroyed the jenner that wasn't on the ground. I could see pulling out a win of this disaster. Then the cicada nailed my commando, hitting one of the SRM ammo bins, which would totally destroy that mech.
Although my best pilot was basically unharmed and might have been able to fight off the defenders, we decided to call it off- a victory would probably follow the loss of the wolfhound, and three causalities seemed too much to start a campaign on.
We headed off for dinner, and switched to Hero Quest (brought by a former player who had moved away and was visiting, and might be back for good soon). A fun little game, like Descent-lite.
It was a good day, despite my disaster. We'll probably give Battletech a try later on. But, for next Saturday or Sunday, we'll be back to our epic D&D 4e game.
I had the Fox's Teeth as my team and decided to start with a recon mission. Run up, scan four mechs, and get out. Simple, right?
Opposition- four light mechs, militia grade. Spider, two jenners, and a cicada. I brought in my recon lance, fairly equal match on weight, with my guys being better pilots and gunners (including a Gunner 1- with no modifiers, he needed a 1 on 2d6 to hit a target).
What went wrong? Although the defenders started with just a jenner and a spider on the board, I had to close the distance to them. They used some hills to screen me. I got close, scanned the spider with one mech and moved another to flank it. My other group was displaying more caution because I didn't want the jenner to use its speed to get behind me- four medium lasers in the rear arc is bad even with militia pilots.
Start of turn three, the remaining defenders appeared. The cicada practically WALKED up to my assassin (walk speed 7, run 11), got behind it and blew through the light rear armor- hitting my LRM-5 ammo. 5 damage x 24 shots tore the 40 tonner apart.
A series of bad initiative rolls followed, leaving me open to the fast moving defenders (sure, my mechs were fast, but they weren't cicada fast). The superior skill of my pilots was keeping me ahead, but just barely. I managed to destroy the leg of one jenner, but it was still functional enough to fire off a few shots. I put up quite a bit of damage, but no kills.
Then things went bad. I had been firing just about everything I could to try to take out the enemy mechs. This meant a lot of heat build up in my lance commander's wolfhound. After shooting up to 21 (on a 30 point scale), I was trying to get clear with him to cool off- besides other risks, the heat was killing my movement. I'd avoided back hits but eventually the odds were going to catch up on me. I did cool down a bit, then blew a shutdown roll. The spider moved in for the kill, but lousy shot placement kept me alive.
An ammo hit destroyed the jenner that wasn't on the ground. I could see pulling out a win of this disaster. Then the cicada nailed my commando, hitting one of the SRM ammo bins, which would totally destroy that mech.
Although my best pilot was basically unharmed and might have been able to fight off the defenders, we decided to call it off- a victory would probably follow the loss of the wolfhound, and three causalities seemed too much to start a campaign on.
We headed off for dinner, and switched to Hero Quest (brought by a former player who had moved away and was visiting, and might be back for good soon). A fun little game, like Descent-lite.
It was a good day, despite my disaster. We'll probably give Battletech a try later on. But, for next Saturday or Sunday, we'll be back to our epic D&D 4e game.