Lockdown Day 58: Defence of Rynn's Steading part 1

Hi!

A little later than planned but here's the first installment of my Battletech Alphastrike campaign!

Introduction

Wilson's Hussars have been hired by the Magistrix of Canopia to defend the world of Rynn's Steading, a largely agricultural planet with rolling plains and sparse forests with numerous rocky escarpments.

Decidedly down on their luck, the Hussars have taken the assignment to get out of being stuck on the Periphery without employment and jumped at the chance to take work, no matter how poor the pay is. In return for a nominal sum and transport, the Canopians have agreed to enact repairs to the Hussars dilapidated mechs and get them all into running order which has been a real boon to the out of luck mercs.

Unbeknownst to them, Rynn's Steading is home to one of the Canopians armaments factories and word has somehow got out about it so the Canopians need some hired muscle to defend it whilst their own Mech units are busy elsewhere and as such Wilson's Hussars are going to earn their creds the hard way as Red's Marauders, a notorious pirate band has jumped in system and landed an understrength company of Mechs on the world planning to raid said factory for ammunition and other supplies they can sell beyond the Periphery.

Hearing of the landing, Captain Wilson has rushed a lance of newly repaired Mechs out to defend the factory from the attacking pirates.

The Forces

Each force has a total of 275 points of units to call on with each battle allowing for 100 point forces with any casualties being carried over into following games. Damage can be repaired between games but resources on both sides are limited so whilst repairing armour or restocking ammunition isn't going to be too difficult, replacing valuable components or weapons is going to affect the latter stages of the campaign.

Wilson's Hussars

The Hussars lance is commanded by Lieutenant Stilson in her Ostroc with Durant in his Griffin, Yaro in his Locust and Jones in her Jenner. The lance itself is a bit ad hoc so consists of two scouts, a skirmisher and a long ranged expert.

Red's Marauders

Red's Marauders consists of Crosby in a Hunchback, Slambo in a Vindicator, Rowle in a Spider and Simpson in an Assassin. this lance has two fast moving and mobile mechs, a long range expert and a close quarter specialist.

The Battlefield

The battlefield consists of a couple of farming hamlets on one side of the river and a small industrial zone on the other. There are two objectives to claim, the central village has information concealed in it that may prove interesting later in the campaign and the central industrial building is packed with weapons. Any unit within 3 inches of an objective at the end of a turn claims a victory point. If another enemy unit is within 3 inches of the same objective it is contested and neither side gains the victory points.

Victory points can also be claimed by forcing enemy mechs to withdraw once they've lost their armour or by destroying them.

The Game

The game itself was rather a lot of fun and I got so carried away with the action, that I forgot to take pictures but here's a quick overview:

The pirates won the initiative early on in the game and moved forward towards the industrial zone whilst a lone mech, the Vindicator moved towards the village hoping to snipe the mercenaries with it's long range PPC.

The Hussars rushed their light mechs towards the industrial zone and claimed the Victory Point for the first turn. These light mechs would become the bane of the Pirate's lives in later turns but more on that later!

Turn 2 and 3 saw long range fire exchanged between the forces but only light damage was caused with Wilson's Hussars coming out somewhat worse from the exchange but still in fighting form. During this exchange, the Hussars still claimed the industrial zone and the slower moving pirate Vindicator couldn't claim the village objective till turn 3.

Turn 4 had Lieutenant Stilson overheat her mech and blaze away at the Vindicator in the village but only caused a single point of damage and in return got hammered by the Hunchback and Vindicator and would have to retreat due to all her Mech's armour being blasted off.

Turn 5 saw the Hussars really start to make their move as the pirates had made a bit of a slog getting their mechs close enough to the industrial zone to contest the objective and in a furious exchange of fire involving both the Hussars light mechs using the terrain to their advantage resulted in the pirate Spider being stripped of armour and crippled and the Hunchback finding itself unable to get the Hussars Jenner out of it's rear arc and blasting it with short range fire.

Turn 6 had the pirate's starting to withdraw after their Vindicator took a weapons critical from the combined fire of the Hussars Griffin and Ostroc and the crippled whilst their badly limping Spider tried to make a run for it. Crosby, now enraged by the constant fire from the Hussars Jenner maneuvered his mech so he thought his rear arc was covered by a building but the Jenner ignited it's jump jets, flying over the building before unleashing another short range barrage into the larger Mechs back.

The action around the industrial zone

At this point, it was about 11.30pm local time and I wanted to go to bed so allowed the game to finish so I totalled up the victory points which saw Wilson's Hussars claim 6 to the Pirates 2.

I really enjoyed the game but feel that the Pirates chose their deployment poorly as they should have concentrated their heavier mechs on pushing into the industrial zone whilst allowing one of the lighter mechs to hold the village.

The Hussars did remarkably well, especially considering they had lighter mechs for the most part and pilot of the match goes to Jones in her Jenner who really used her mech's strengths to her advantage by outmaneuvering the heavy Hunchback, a mech who could destroy her lighter machine in a single volley.

Needless to say, our cat Mab decided to get involved and help out:

Bloosh!

Next time round I'll make sure to get more photos and we shall see if Wilson's Hussars manage to drive Red's Marauders offworld or if the pirates will manage to pull out a win in game 2 which I hope to play out later today as I am keen to play out another game as soon as possible.

It's interesting to play using paper tokens as whilst it does make a game playable and fun, it just lacks the visual appeal of proper mechs so I'll need to see about getting myself some machs build and painted for future campaigns. Handily I've got my first two Mechs painted and will try and get the remaining two done asap!

Hopefully I'll have another post up today so watch this space!

All the best!