Author Topic: There's No School Like the Old School: 3025 Bash, 400 PV  (Read 2220 times)

Tai Dai Cultist

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A custom scenario battle, where victory comes through taking and holding control of objective markers on the board.

My force included a Battle Lance, a Striker Lance, a Pursuit Lance, and a Light Recon Lance made of tanks.
My opponent had an Assault Lance, a Battle Lance, and a Striker Lance. (His Strikers became the designated prey for my Pursuit Lance)

I had numbers on my side.. but he had higher skill values.  Will this be a game where pilot skill is trumped by numbers?  We thought it fair that given my 4 to 3 numerical advantage, some weighted scoring system should be in place for objective control.  We went with SZ of claiming unit = points earned.  And we set victory at first one to reach 20 points.

Rather than using deployment zones and making it too easy to grab/contest lots of objectives, we walked our units onto the field.  The closest objectives were meant to be far from home edges, but we each had some 16" movers to get close enough to claim objectives in round 1.


I began the game with the plan of holding the 2 on my side of the board, and overwhelming the middle to take that as well.  From there I'd be able to swing left or right if necessary to reinforce a faltering side, or to seize on weakness becoming evident in one of my opponent's sides.

We each had a Locust and a Spider in our lists.. I put them both on one flank but my opponent split them up to grab 2 objectives to my one. There wasn't a lot of fighting in this initial round, but I did get a Pursuit Jenner and a Forward Observer Galleon with clean LOS to the enemy Locust (and 5 IF mechs to bombard the would-be objective grabber...)  But the dice weren't with me, and the Locust survived to register points for his side.

End of round 1: 2 points to 1



Starting with the action closest to the camera:
The enemy Locust came around to backstab my Quickdraw and to contest my claiming that objective, with a Mongoose coming up to retain control of the vacated objective.  A Black Knight and Centurion are starting to work their way over to lay supporting fire down for the Locust.  The only good news for me on this flank was that I was able to move the Jenner in to backstab the Locust.  Between the Jenner and the turreted Galleons, I'm able to put the Locust in forced withdrawal and thus claim the objective anyway.

In the center, I'm collapsing 5 mechs and I have the Hunchback off in the distance as a swing hitter as well.  I'm able to get a Dragon, but only that Dragon as of yet, up close enough to claim the center objective.  The enemy center is soft, but he's able to bring the combined fire of a Dragon, Quickdraw, Warhammer, and Battlemaster all on my spearhead mech.  It's put into forced withdrawal, and he successfully prevents me from claiming points in the center.

On the far side, his Spider jumps into my mechs while a Victor assumes control of his objective.  A King Crab covers the Victor's back, and I see no way to contest his objective for now.  I focus on maintaining a hold on my objective by moving a Panther over to it, and unleashing my Pursuit mechs on his little fast guys.  The Blood Stalker SPA isn't quite enough to make up for Skill 4s, and the combat on that side ends up being largely a pointless wash.

Points scored: Victor earns 4 points to the enemy and a Mongoose earns 1, added to the prior turn's 2 for a total of 7.  My Panther nets 1 point and my Quickdraw 3, added to last turn's tally gives me a running total of 5.  I now realize that my battle plan needs to change.  He'll likely camp assaults on both objectives on his side of the table and he'll win in 2 turns.  I need to contest at least one of his tokens and disrupt those 4 points if I want to win...

Round 3:

Again starting closest to the camera and working back:

My opponent unsurprisingly moves the BattleMaster over to hold the objective on his side of the hill.  Other than laying the Black Knight's field of fire down on my objective, he's happy to leave it to me so that he can reinforce the center and ensure I can't claim points there.  We end up with a mosh pit of 3 mechs in melee range of one another.  I need 5s and 6s to clear his 1 mech off of the objective, and the dice don't help.  He needs 8s and 9s, and he drives off one of my 2 mechs there.  Noone gets points in the middle, but I came out on the losing side in damage traded.

On the far side I pull my Hunchback off firing in support of the center to relieve the Panther from holding the objective (I need to be a points whore here...)  My opponent makes a gamble and moves his Victor up to help fire upon my mechs in the center (that worked out for him) leaving the King Crab alone on his objective.  I couldn't get anything behind that mech, so I decided now wasn't the time to sacrifice a unit on the off chance of interdicting 4 points.  I chose to try to wipe out the last of his speedsters, so that my own forces on that side could then swarm the King Crab next turn.

Points Earned: King Crab and BattleMaster tack on 8 more, for a total of 15.  My side gets 5 this turn from the Quickdraw and Hunchback, for a total of 12.

At this point I consider throwing in the towel.  I could, perhaps, deny the King Crab its points.  But there's not a damn thing I can do about the Battlemaster, so he's guaranteed 4 more points and will at minimum hit 19 points in a hypothetical round 4.  My best case in the center from here out is to simply deny additional points that would be superfluous anyway... I can only send mechs in 1 at a time and they'll just get massacred doing that... no way can I claim that center.  So with no path to hitting 20 before my opponent will, I concede.

Post battle thoughts: 
I like the gist of a zone control scenario, but I do think we didn't do a very good iteration of it with these rules.  Some more fine tuning is in order.

Yet again, the side with skill 3s defeats the side with skill 4s.

My battle plan wasn't sound from the get-go.  I can't sit and camp on my flags when the other guy is using assault mechs to camp his.  I certainly didn't deserve to win with a plan like that ;)

I like the errata for Pursuit Lances.  This is the 2nd time in a row I've used one where it was more of a help than a hindrance!

Eugee

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Re: There's No School Like the Old School: 3025 Bash, 400 PV
« Reply #1 on: 19 July 2016, 16:48:16 »
Nice report!

When my buddy and I did a similar style scenario, inspired by MWO Conquest mode.

There's 5 neutral points (arranged like you had) and if you end your turn with a unit adjacent (within 2") and uncontested by the enemy, the point shifts to friendly and you start scoring 1 VP/turn from it.  If the enemy ends the turn with a unit within 2" uncontested of a friendly point, it shifts to neutral.  So to shift a point from enemy to friendly requires two turns of uncontested adjacency.  Typically you grab your two close points, then brawl over the center one.  You play to an arbitrary point value, but we played to 20, so that the game will end in a tie after 10 turns if neither side can get an advantage.

If you want a 5 turn game max just play to 10.