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.
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