Why In The World Would I Want To Move? BattleTech Battle Report
It's amazing how a little teasing from your friends can motivate you to start playing a game again. As I was prepping stuff for our Necromunda Extra Life event last November, my BattleTech friends joked that I wasn't even a BattleTech player any more since it had been months since I had been regularly playing. So, of course I had to start coming to our regular BattleTech games again just to show them up. Plus, it gave me motivation to start working through the giant backlog of minis that I have to paint from the Mercenaries Kickstarter.
Since I'm back to playing regularly, I need to get back to writing up Battle Reports and talking about those games. Recently, we set out with our regular "pickup" game style of just tossing out an era and a battle value and having everyone throw down on the same table. For this game, we set it at 4000 BV and Civil War era (aka FedCom Civil War).
Making A List, Checking It Twice...
Now, I'm the kind of person that doesn't make "reasonable" lists. What do I mean by a "reasonable list"? A reasonable list would be a couple of different mechs at different weight classes designed to work together: a couple of lights and mediums with a heavy and/or assault mech thrown in for some added firepower. You move the smaller mechs in fast so they are hard to hit and draw the fire while you get your larger and slower mechs in range to bring the pain.
But like I said, that ain't my style. Instead, I dump all the points allowed into one or two "super cool" (to me) mechs and just focus on making those individual mechs better. It makes it far easier for me to manage the battlefield, since I only have 1-2 record sheets to worry about. Also, I tend to prefer clan/more expensive mechs, so usually there's only enough points for 1-2 mechs anyways. I try and aim for the 3 gunnery skill / 4 piloting skill so that I have a decent chance of actually hitting something.
With 4000 BV, that usually means I'm trying to fit in a single Timber Wolf, as they are my favorite and therefore go-to mechs to put in a list. This week, however, I had just finished up painting a batch of mechs that included some Marauders and Blood Asps, and technically a Marauder isn't *that* different from a Timber Wolf. It's just missing a little something up top, that's all. Plus, I now have the Marauder II mini, so I decided to give that a try. Scrolling through the different variants, I found the Marauder II, C variant (not to be confused with the Marauder IIC, because why make things easy?) - 4/6* on a 100 ton mech? Plus it has jump jets? Heck yeah!
*Note: For those not used to BattleTech, this is how much movement the mech has: 4 movement walking, 6 movement when running
What about firepower? Oh, it's got 2 ER PPCs and a fancy autocannon on top? We're speaking my language, but what about heat sinks? I tend to prefer lasers to ammo, but I also don't like having to choose between shooting and moving around. Wait, it has how many heat sinks - 46??? I think I'm in love. With the 3/4 gunnery/pilot skills I talked about before, it comes in at around 3800 BV, so I'm good to go (it's also 1 year within the end of the civil war era, so that's good too).
*Note: Extended Range Particle Projection Cannon. Super fun and super high damage laser.
3v1 In A 3v3?
Alright, it's Game Time. Based on the number of players, we split up into two teams of 3v3. For reference, in the pic above, our team was on the bottom edge of the table. I'm not going to pretend to identify all the mechs we had because I'm not that good at recognizing them yet. The big thing to note is that the left side of the board was very open and had quite a few mechs on it (5 of ours, 3 of theirs). The right side of the board is where I ended up dropping in on. There was a mountain that had some light & heavy terrain on it, so I positioned myself by that. Then there was a river that winded it's way through the board all the way to the other side. With the Marauder having jump jets, this would make it pretty easy to make my way across as needed.
The other important thing to note on the right side of the board is that there is just me vs. 3 assault mechs (a Banshee, King Crab, and an Awesome going left to right) along with a single Locust (light mech). The King Crab was definitely the most threatening of the set, because althrough I was packing tons of armor, it's 2 Autocannon/20's would quickly dispose of that. So for the first couple of turns, I jump up to the top of the mountain into some heavy terrain and start blasting away at the King Crab. First turn the rolls are too high to make, but by the second turn I'm able to get at least one through since I didn't move.
The good news about facing 3 assault mechs is that I don't have to worry about them right away. As a general rule, the bigger the mech, the slower they are. So they are only moving a few hexes at a time. They also don't have the range that I do. Meaning I can just stand still and pick on them for awhile before I have to worry about any reprocussions. Plus, the heavy terrain gives me 2 defense, which is hard to get moving around in an assault mech, so staying right where I am is working for me.
The speedy Locust is the first thing that gets in range of me, but I pass on trying to hit it and keep my attention on trying to hit the King Crab. Luckily, it looks like the Banshee is going to help the left side of the board, and the Locust quickly sprints over in that direction as well.
A New Challenger Approaches...
Then comes Round 4. Wait, what's this? the Banshee has turned itself in my direction and fired shots in my direction! How dare you, sir! I thought we had an unspoken agreement to leave each other alone! Yes, I know that the shots didn't inflict much damage onto me, but this aggression will not stand! I turn the fury of my ER PPCs onto the Banshee and let 'er rip. Meanwhile, the King Crab was getting frustrated from being targeted too much and decided to go for a quick swim (it failed its skill check going through the water and fell down), which means I couldn't really target it anyways.
What do you mean what was happening on the left side of the board? I don't know, I didn't really keep track. In case you forgot: IM DEALING WITH 3 ASSAULT MECHS OVER HERE. Almost 300 tons of firepower was still slowly making its way into firing range.
Round 5 sees Lady Luck on my side. After alpha striking (attacking with all my weapons) at the Banshee, which is really nice to do and not have to worry about heat, I manage to get a crit into the Banshee's internals. Rolling the dice had me hit a bin of ammo, so goodbye Banshee! The explosion from the ammo detonating did enough damage to take out the mech, and I still think I had another crit to roll! Darn. Ok, whew, time to take a breath. One assault mech down, 2 more to go. I can't breathe for too long now, as both the King Crab and the Awesome are now in range to start pelting me with their guns.
Ow...
My luck only lasts but so long. Eventually, the King Crab gets both AC20s to hit me, rolling in the same spot for damage, my Center Torso. So there's 40 points of armor gone, leaving me with...1 left. Any other class of mech and that would be it for me. But now my internals are exposed so any more center torso shots mean a chance of dying. So I'm down to my last couple of turns. Oh yeah, there's also the Awesome there with 3 PPCs. Both of these mechs now just need to stay in place and blast me, so the little bits of trees that I'm in are the only thing keeping me alive.
At this point, I've resigned myself to being dead, I just would like to take out the King Crab with me before I go. That way I could say I took out 2/3rds of the assault mechs. On the other side of the battlefield, things were thinning out pretty well in our favor, so one of the smaller mechs starts heading in my direction to help. However, another chest shot from either the Awesome or the King Crab is enough to finish me off for good, leaving a smoking corpse of a mech in my wake.
As to the King Crab? The repeated barrages of PPC fire from my side managed to strip off practically all the armor off of the King Crab, but not really wound the internals too much. Lady Luck had gone on vacation at this point because at every opportunity I had to roll a potential crit, I would roll a 6 or 7 (you need an 8+ to score a crit). So it was very badly burned, but not dead. On the last round that I was alive, I managed to sink a bunch of damage into it, causing it to roll a pilot skill check. The smaller mech arrived to help and finish off its arms, removing those pesky AC20s from the game, although a turn too late. Yet, when the King Crab rolled its pilot skill check, it failed, causing it to fall over and destroy its gyro, keeping it from ever getting up again. With no weapons and being stuck on the ground, it was effectively "mission killed".
Conclusions
We had to call the game early as the store was closing, but even though the left side of the board was demolished, there was still an unharmed Awesome on the right. With only smaller/medium mechs left on our team, it really could have gone either direction on who would win.
Why did I just stay in place the whole time? I didn't have to worry about terrain/line of sight for most of the game due to how high up I was. Plus, standing still gave me no penalties on my shooting while giving me a +2 on my defense, which I'd have to have been jumping around in order to have normally. And that jumping around would have given me a +3 penalty on my shooting. So it wasn't really worth it most of the time.
I dont care that "technically" I didn't land the final blow or that "technically" the mech was still alive. I'm still saying that I took down 2 out of 3 assault mechs to their killing of my Marauder. Neener Neener!
Notes/Disclaimers: I generally assume I know nothing. So if I've missed something, let me know in the comments. If you like these types of posts, consider subscribing to our patreon.