Lockdown Day 59: Defence of Rynn's Steading part 2

Hi!

Here's the second game of my Battletech Alphastrike campaign!

Introduction

Following the initial clash at the factory, the pirates have split up into individual lances and have been pillaging outlying settlements whilst the mercenaries of Wilson's Hussars are spread thin trying to catch the marauders.

An emergency call for help has come in from the settlement of Yardholm where the pirate crew has struck the township hard and have fled east towards the badlands. Guessing their route of march, the Hussars have set up an ambush at a region known as the Three Sisters, a trio of large rock pillars that demark the closest boundary of the inhabited regions and the badlands.

It has fallen to Lieutenant Blakenship, commander of the Hussar's Fire Lance to spring the trap on the pirates.

The Forces

Each lance costs around 100 points with the Hussars being deployed at two corners of one side of the battlefield guarding the passes between the Three Sisters whilst the pirates deploy on the opposite edge.

Victory points will be awarded to the Hussars for destroying opposing Mechs or forcing them to withdraw. The Pirates will get points for each Mech they manage to get off the opposite board edge and for destroying opponents.

The Hussars Lance is commanded by Lieutenant Blakenship in his Archer, Lefler in his Wasp, Durant in his Griffin and Jones in her Jenner. Following the last game the Jenner has been totally repaired whilst the Griffin will have a point of damage left over that the harried mercenary techs haven't had chance to repair yet. This force give me two fire support and two fast scout Mechs.

The Pirates once again has Crosby in his Hunchback, Simpson in his Assassin, Marcus in his Mongoose and Hinge in her Locust. Following the last game, the Assassin is totally repaired whilst the Hunchback has two points of damage on it following the mauling it received at the hands of the mercenaries light mechs. This force has three fast moving scouts and a single brawler.

I had the idea that in this campaign, each side has the ability to repair five points of damage between games initially until objectives are claimed and resources captured, or in the case of the mercenaries, the government sending supplies. Therefore the Hussars Ostroc is undergoing further repairs as it was totally stripped of armour in the last game. The Pirates are in a somewhat more difficult situation as not only did they take damage, they had two mechs suffer critical damage which will require extensive repairs so will be needing to capture some swag for them to repair their damaged Mechs.

The Battlefield

The battlefield consists of a central village surrounded by fields to the south and the northern edge is hilly and wooded with the three rock pillars splitting the skyline.

 Pirate deployment

The Game

The pirates won initiative in the first turn and began moving as rapidly as possible across the board towards the Hussars skirmish line. The initial exchange of long range fire saw a smattering of shots with the only success being the Hussar's Archer managing to slam some long range missiles into the Hunchback, stripping a point of damage from the hulking Mech.

 Hussars blocking force

Turn two saw the pirates pushing forward as rapidly as possible and exchanging fire with the Hussars in the hills with the only real success coming from the pirates Locust and Mongoose each scoring a hit on the already damaged Griffin. In the exchange, the Hussar's Jenner pulled off quite a shock by hitting the pirate Locust for a point of damage, despite the range and speed it was moving at. I feel that the Jones in her Jenner needs a raise as she's provided stirling service in two games already!

 Pirates advance through the village with the slower Hunchback lagging behind

 Hussar blocking force opens fire from the hills 

Turn three saw things starting to heat up, in some cases literally with the Hussars Archer overheating (improved attack dice but makes it easier to hit and cannot fire as effectively next turn) and pouring a barrage of missiles into the Hunchback scoring two more hits on the beast (I had hoped to do more damage as I was rolling for four attacks at this point!). Return fire from the Hunchback saw the Archer take a point of damage whilst the pirates light mechs got close enough to open up on the Hussars Wasp who took a critical hit from the firing Mongoose causing it to overheat each time it wanted to fire.

The battlefield mid game

Turn four saw the Archer unable to fire and the pirate Hunchback closing in and keeping up fire with it's massive autocannon which scored a critical on the Hussars mech scoring a critical and reducing the Mechs movement by half. The Mercs seem to be having a bit of an issue with their shooting as despite unloading everything they had at the closing opponents, they failed to score any hits.

 Light Mechs fight for the best line of sight on the flank

Turn five saw two of the pirate mechs slipping through the Hussars line and escaping into the badlands whilst the Archer and Hunchback blasted one another to scrap. The Hunchback crippled the Archer with four criticals, blowing off a leg and badly mauling it's launchers but in return the Archer caused a chain reaction of explosions on the pirate mech reducing it to a pile of scrap, killing the pilot.

Pirate mechs close with the Hussars

Escaping Pirates

Turn six saw the last pirate mech escape the Hussars and join it's lancemates in the Badlands leaving the mercenaries to lick their wounds.

I totalled up the victory points with the Pirates scoring 4 and the Hussars 2 so a victory for Red's Marauders but at quite a price as they lost one of their most powerful machines but the supplies the escaping Mechs carried should help repair their damaged machines from game 1. If I was to choose lance composition again, I'd choose four light, fast moving Mechs and saved the Hunchback for when I was facing a slugfest rather than a scenario that required maneuver.

The Hussars were unfortunate with their dice rolling but I should have tried to get the two fire support mechs moved to a more central location so they could concentrate fire on the approaching mechs rather than hugging the edges of the board which saw the Griffin soon outmaneuvered and left able to only lob the odd indirect shot at the rapidly departing pirates.

The critical hits the Hussars took during this game will prove interesting later in the campaign as the amount of damage the Archer took is worrying and Captain Wilson is going to have to do some lobbying to get more supplies to effect repairs, something that may be a bit difficult as the recent ambush failed to do more to deter further attacks from the Pirates.

The campaign is starting to heat up with the victory points standing at five a side over the course of both games and the more I play, the more I'm tempted to add some infantry scale skirmishing into the mix as small character based scenarios may be fun involving information gathering, supply raids and so on.

I think I'll just keep to the basics for this campaign but I think for my next, I want to put together some infantry and characters for some fun sub campaign games in. There's also the option of adding some space combat to the mix as Dropships and Aerospace assets clash in the initial stages of the campaign. It's fascinating how much can be incorporated into Battletech if one is so inclined and I'm keen to further explore this in the future as it is possible to really get stuck into the nitty gritty of the conflicts of the Inner Sphere be it small skirmishes or massive planetary invasions!

I've now got my first Mech Lance that I sculpted painted and ready to show tomorrow as well as a second Hunter light tank and I'm keen to get a second lance built!

Tomorrow I'll get them photographed and hope to show off some more bits and bobs I've been working on so till then, All the best!