Waterly Memorial/Sixth of June 2023 Recap

It's a bad moon on the rise!

For this year, we slapped together about a dozen different Alpha Strike forces at 275ish points per and went with a "deserts of despair" theme on map sheets. The initial idea was just pairing off and running through essentially stars/reinforced lances.

However, as is becoming a bit too often an occurrence, even though we shifted the date around to accommodate more people, attendance was pretty disappointing. It was enough though, and not to take away from anyone that was able to make it out.

So, in what might have been a pretty giant strategic blunder on my part (lmao), I convinced the whole room to jump into a single game.

What we ended up with, was Sean (FedSuns), Kelsey (Ghost Bears), and Rachel (Jade Falcons) on the south side of the map line, with myself (Steel Vipers), Jack (his force), and Alex (Cloud Cobras) coming in from the north.

The biggest issue was that because I'd built AS275 forces, we hit the table with a LOT of pieces, with three brand new players. And I tend to forget that movement in AS is (generally) equal to walk movement in Total Warfare BattleTech so we had three mapsheets laid out lengthwise when two probably would have been fine for a training game, though a three by two would have been best for maneuvering the sheer scope of force.

33 'Mechs hit the field, and after a few turns of just getting them all up there, clashed centerline as these things do. We'd had some basic shot attempts earlier (even though we were all trying to avoid a straight kill alley) but once the battle was joined in full, armies clashed and 'Mechs died. Eventually. A LOT of missed attack rolls - we were doing standard 2d6 SAR instead of 1d12 MAR optional rules.


In the end, it got late, people were falling off 'cause even though AS in general is quick-ish, 33 pieces and new players nerfs that idea, so we decided to finish one last turn and call it on points. North side won by 12. 12 little points. Not even the full cost of -any- of the pieces on the field, and I think we decided we only won by even that small margin 'cause I managed to take down Rachel's Warhawk.

Jack's Locust lasted for far more turns that it should have given all of the firepower on the field and was a real, real good line blocker for our side.

All in all, win or lose, I love playing and I love getting other people to play but had I been planning to do a six player game, I most likely would have done AS200 forces, and gone with using 1d12s per point of potential damage to speed it up even further. Huge thanks to my people for humoring me and getting that game in. Really missed out on having some more of our experienced people tagging in but there's always next time.

Honestly, the biggest win for me was that my kiddo is finally at the age where he can hang out when my gaming people & has the interest in actually playing (Alpha Strike rules at least) BattleTech, even if we sort of made him in this case haha.

But from a higher level overview of things, the more active players we have, the better. Also, the more players that live with me, the better 'cause that means I have the opportunity to get in more games & put less burden on all my friends to learn it. And, of course, running campaigns is what I'm here for.

It sure was a field. 

A copy of our "brilliant" tactical plan. 

Full Blog Updates

The 357th ID Blogspot goes all the way back to 2011, though the genesis of the group had its roots in the hallowed antiquity of 2006, after a decade of people coming & going and solely subsisting on pickup games with a limited pool of 'Mechs. I started this as a way for all of us to touch base and throw our units out to the wider world, to commemorate some of our gaming excursions (especially our later Waterly events), and in general to just muse over a universe that I've loved playing in since the first MechWarrior video game (and those a-hole Dark Wing Lance guys!).

A lot has changed in the past dozen years. Even more has changed since my first time hitting the tabletop in 1996. Official and unofficial membership in the group has ebbed and flowed. Many of us have "grown up" more, got married, had kids, picked up crazier job obligations etc. Some former members have made themselves so unwelcome in general as to become excommunicado (thanks, John Wick!) and others never had a chance to really get going with group activities to be considered as such despite the interest. There have been moves and breakups and shakeups and breakdowns. Life has been lived and whatnot.

So I thought it was a good time for 1) a general update about the updates and 2) going through & cleaning up the ol' Blogspot. My biggest goal with this is to get all the various units cleaned up with tables of organization & equipment (such as they are), and to take new pictures as all but a handful of existing units have had additions or primed pieces finally painted. And many have been "finished" in that I won't be adding anything new to that particular unit, though the faction itself may see growth.

In many cases, this has already happened. Clan Ghost Bear, for instance, has an entry with Tau Galaxy but thanks to the successful Clan Invasion Kickstarter and so much plastic available for a much, much lower price point than metal minis, I've also built a small Rasalhague Galaxy force. Clan Cloud Cobra now has a new Beta Galaxy unit in progress. House Liao, if we're looking at it as a Citizen's Honored type unit and not a straight mercenary force, as the 4th Tau Ceti Rangers looking towards a battalion by mid next year.

In other instances, under-represented houses like Steiner/Tamar Pact will be getting a unit added soon as will Davion sort of. And in doing this, it will push me to get my paint backlog cleaned up more. Since the CI Kickstarter, I've barely touched anything metal and I have so, so much work on that side to finish. I've been trying to keep units purely metal or purely plastic but also, since I have the ability to 3D print, there's going to be a lot more blending of units down the road.

And when I say "3D print," I mean for 'Mechs and stuff that don't have miniatures already. I fully support Catalyst and whilst I haven't purchased any Ironwind Metals products in probably 8 or 9 years, I still support them fully too. But I'm also not going to sit around and wait for the next six years to get a bevy of Iron Cheetahs and Mastodons for my forces anymore. Plus, and going back to the Clan Invasion Kickstarter (and the more recent Mercenaries Kickstarter), the Catalyst plastics are scaled with each other much better & their designs are more of a current aesthetic than most of the older IWM sculpts that were inherited from Ral Partha so when I do 3D print, I have the option of scaling to fit (even if it takes me a few tries to make it look right) so no more giant-sized light 'Mechs or tiny assaults (Blood Kite). |

Last, I want to go in and retool the history/backstory/large components thereof of my Kuroi Kaze force. I don't use it in many games these days but it is a huge part of my own BattleTech history and I love it dearly. So it deserves a clean up, a refresh, and some changes based on how much more I know about BattleTech in 2023 than I did in 1996, especially because I oft note how many unintentional similarities my history has with canon stuff in the early BattleTech fiction that I didn't read until the last few years (like, I just got the first two books of the Warrior Trilogy, 35 years after they were written...). Which is kind of a sad look for Mike Stackpole that my musings as a 16-20 year old sync up with his adult stuff buuuuut I'm sure people will just say I must have read -something- about these characters and copied ideas so whatever. It doesn't matter much to me either way, but I do have some newer ideas that I want to incorporate whilst leaving some core background untouched. Legacy history won't go away, I'll still hang onto what I had, but we'll consider this a giant retcon in another universe or some shizz like that.

But yeah. 2023. Post-pandemic edition. Looking at playing with people a lot more. Teaching more new players. Sticking with my "I'm willing to foot the bill for your first lance/star" is much easier when I can grab a lance or star pack for less than $30 these days, versus $50-80 depending on composition. And with a huge amount of tanks and general-use 'Mechs coming between now and next year, it's a great time to be a BattleTech player.