DropShip Down!

Things had been going so smoothly, too, the Leftenant thought to himself. In a daring raiding action, two lances of Federated Suns MechWarriors had captured an unguarded Clan Ghost Bear Overlord-class DropShip as the Bears were occupied fighting forces from Clan Wolf. Not the original target of the raid, the thought of taking such a prize was in and of itself worth the risk, but that worth increased exponentially when the Leftenant's team found the encrypted Clan Watch files. Whilst none of the members had the cryptology skills to crack the files, Davion MIIO would do so in time.

Unfortunately, neither the Bears nor the Wolves were willing to let the DropShip go so easily. As they began to lift off, both forces launched attacks to bring the Overlord down.

"Incoming!" The Leftenant's second in command called in, but with only enough time for five of the eight MechWarriors to button back up in their cockpits.

As the ship headed towards the rocky coast of one of the planet's many archipelago formations, the Leftenant prepared himself for a tough fight. If we can just hold on, he mused, our extraction team will tip the scales too far in our favor for the Clans to stop us.

So, Saturday night BattleTech was a bit of a hit & miss for us this past weekend. We had five potential players, but it ended up just being the three of us in the mood to go for a game. Because BTech isn't really written for uneven numbers of players, or honestly for more than two sides, we had to do some quick winging of it. We decided to do an extraction scenario, where one force would have to retrieve an object and then retreat off of their map edge. Which then turned into, what if a crashed DropShip contained some valuable intel, and one of the three forces had to protect it from the other two, which are also competing against one another? As usual, we diced off for who would be the DropShip/s protectors. That role fell to Sean, who once again was using the Khaos Chevaliers as a stand in Federated Suns forces. That left Jesse and the Ghost Bears & me with the Wolves to oppose him. We came up with the Feddies fielding 150% of each individual Clan, or roughly 75% of the total opposing force. Jesse and I went with 300 tons, though he selected a total of four at 290 - a Behemoth/Stone Rhino, Gladiator/Executioner, Grizzly, and Solitaire. My 300 consisted of a Tomahawk, Masakari/Warhawk, Rifleman IIC, and an Uratha. That gave Sean 450 tons, for his five 'Mech team - Fafnir, Mad Cat Mk II, Zeus, BattleMaster, and an Imp. We set up a series of island mapsheets. Sorry to the GBs, as most the photos are from the Wolves' side of the field.

The mission was to reach the DropShip (represented by the Pinkie Pie My Little Pony on the map) and retrieve a memory core. Then, the core needed to be escorted off the map. As an added bonus, on the tenth turn, Sean had to roll for reinforcements. On a six, they came in and wiped the floor with the Clans. Turn eleven, it would have been a five or six. Turn twelve, four, five, or six etc. A partial victory would go to Sean if his forces survived, total if he destroyed everyone or his reinforcements made it in. Partial victory to any force that retrieved the core, total victory if they made it off the field with it. Total defeat in any other case.

Turn 0, Jesse and I rolled for map edge. I deployed north through the islands, he deployed south through the peninsula. (South end contained the beach house the Wolves won in a Trial of Possession against the 4th Skye Rangers a few years ago, fun fact) Sean did some impromptu scatter rolls (1 or 4 north, 2 or 5 east, 3 or 6 south) for each 'Mech (1-6 for which hex away from the DropShip it started in) to begin set up. Then Jesse and I alternated entering the field after Sean completed. I led in with my Warhawk and planned on using my 7/11/7 Uratha for the recovery. Jesse had his Solitaire but the lack of jump jets on it looked like a problem to me.

Turn 1 went terrible for Jesse. Whilst we were really just moving up to approach, Sean had positioned himself for line of sight. One really lucky 10 pt ER PPC hit, a snake eyes (2) on location, two crits rolled, both hit the gyro = Gladiator/Executioner on the ground.

Turns 2, 3, 4 were mostly movement and opportunity shots. You can see the lines of advancement as we were closing in on the target. My Uratha was bold, counting on a highish TN to protect his lack of substantial armor.

Turn 5 is where it went down. The Uratha made it to the DropShip. We had to pull Pinkie Pie out of the way and use a rubble tile from the hard board city map set to lay out the size the Overlord occupied. The silver Lyran Alliance die represents the core. The Wolves were well on their way to at least a partial victory, provided the Uratha survived...

Turn 6, which it did, long enough to high dive into the deep end of the pool! The Bears needed to reevaluate their Feddie targets, moving onto the Wolf position to steal the core. The Wolves, meanwhile, used their heavier firepower to push the Feddies back. The Fafnir, untouched, engages the Rifleman IIC. With pure luck, firing only two Heavy Large Lasers scores one hit... To the head! 16 pts and the MechWarrior is killed in action. It basically swung wide here. My Tomahawk kills the Feddie Zeus as well, but loses a leg in the process.

Turn 7, 8 saw the Wolves lose their Warhawk, but by that point, the Uratha was halfway down the map, with the Solitaire doing everything it could to stop it. Then, Jesse lost initiative and had to move first, resulting in a bad guess at the Uratha's next stopping point. With the Solitaire showing rear armor, and the Uratha having two Heavy Medium Lasers...

Endgame, the Solitaire falls and with it, the only chance of any 'Mech on the field stopping the core from being delivered into Wolf hands. Jesse's Stone Rhino shut itself down from massive overheating and was about to be made into swiss cheese by Sean's three 'Mech team. The Tomahawk and Gladiator/Executioner wouldn't be getting back up again any time soon. Only turn 9, but we let Sean roll for reinforcements anyway, and he didn't make it. The day belonged to the Wolves and it was glorious.

Great game for all three of us. Jesse is really getting all of the rules down hard and Sean proves once again that his knowledge of the game rivals my own. In the future, we'll probably end up doing more of these lopsided objective games because this was a hell of a lot of fun, until 330 am.

Couple from the Ghost Bear side.


~Fen