Waterly Memorial/Sixth of June 2015 Recap

Any BattleTech player who has kept up with the game post-Clan Invasion knows all about the Word of Blake, and most likely knows why the Sixth of June is an important date in the fictional universe. For those that don't;

Tukayyid. A backwater Rasalhague world that saw the initial end of the Clan's invasion of the Inner Sphere. ComStar spent its ComGuard forces in an all or nothing fight against the combined might of the invaders, winning a 15 year peace, in 3052. Seeking to capitalize on this, Primus Myndo Waterly ordered mercenary forces and ComGuard units across the Inner Sphere, military might sent to garrison HyperPulse Generator stations on countless worlds, into action to shut down communication and by default, make ComStar the de facto ruler of the Sphere. Unfortunately for her, most of the Guard disobeyed the order and the so-called Operation: Scorpion failed. Precentor-Martial Anastasius Focht and Precentor Dieron Sharilar Mori assassinated Waterly, on the Sixth of June, 3052. They then announced a Reformation based on the writings of Jerome Blake that Focht "miraculously" found on Terra. Waterly loyalists, including much of ComStar ROM (intelligence branch) fled Terra and other postings, meeting up on Gibson in the Free World's League, to form the Word of Blake. Later, the Word's Precentor-Martial, Trent Arian, was also assassinated on the Sixth of June, and replaced by Cameron St-Jamais, a member of the Word's subgroup... the Sixth of June.


See where we're going here?

(Prior to the BT, we played a bunch of games of Magic and all hung out. That part was cool but unrelated.)

So we set up a gaming night with the express goal to get in as many games as possible. Utilizing two tables, we set up four separate mapsheets for players to one on one each other with teams of three 'Mechs @ 200 tons, minus five tons per Clan 'Mech. We had eleven different three-'Mech teams to chose from, with a 12 (the Word of Blake force) being picked after people arrived. My initial goal was to let people match up as they wanted to and pick their forces and whatnot from the prebuilt group. Things got a little crazy because of the amount of people that arrived vs how many were playing and we ran into our first snag - only myself and Sean are versed in the game well enough that we don't need any (or much) rule double checking and stuff. Because we had an odd number of people, I planned on sitting out the first round. So we ended up with Sean teaching Brett - Khaos Chevaliers vs Blood Spirit Iota Galaxy; Rachel and Tiffy - Word's Light of Mankind vs Marik's 19th Marik Militia; Jesse and Jer - Ghost Bear Tau Galaxy vs 26th Royal Tyran Mechanized. I was bouncing around making sure everyone had their 'Mechs, printing out record sheets if need be, and taking care of the other guests.

Then Rachel needed me to take over for her. It was getting kind of loud and we had people that wanted to play video games, so she went over onto that stuff, and I squared off with Tiffy. There was frustration because I was focusing on that game, and answering questions from the other table, as well as from Jesse/Jer's game. But we got through them all, more or less. Tiffy conceded her game to me as the amount of background noise was getting to be too much. Jer and Jesse had a brutal slugfest that saw, in the end, two headshot deaths and one CT death on Jer's side vs no losses for Jesse. The short range brutality was epic. Over on table two, Sean finally took down Brett, proving that experience definitely makes up for technology.

Once the initial games were done, almost everyone drifted to do something else. Sean and I matched up, however, Jade Falcons vs Wolves. It was a savage, three turn win for me, as I decapitated one 'Mech and blew through the CT of another (like three CT shots in a row) to push him into a concession. Then we started one more, Draconis Combine vs Kuroi Kaze that we "paused," took position pictures of, and will be finishing this weekend. It was into move-countermove by the time we stopped playing, at 3am.

All in all, it was a great night and a great time and I'm glad so many members of the 357th were there in one place. However, next time, rather than do individual games, we'll probably lower the total number of people over here to just the one's playing & match them into one or two team games. Seems like it would be easier for everyone to focus.

Nooooow, the pictures. These aren't in my normal turn to turn order but I also didn't take most of them. They give a good feel for what was up though.