After securing a planethead for the 3rd New Samarkand Regulars, my battalion's part in the ongoing Kurita Master Plan for the invasion of Vega was to secure the port city of Yuzhnata Porta.
I allowed (most) of the forces from the previous battle time to rest and recoup while I composed an infantry-heavy force for the upcoming city battle. I wouldn't know what the exact scenario rules would be, so but I anticipated some version of objective control point(s) and I wanted cheap (and expendible!) units to hold buildings.
While the GM set up the terrain, I had time to snap a pre-battle pic of my lineup:
My Battle Lance was composed only of non-XL engine mechs. They're there to absorb punishment and hopefully not get wiped out doing it. Someone's gonna have to soak surprise attacks afterall...
The artillery lance saw the repeat appearances of the Orochi and the Avatar (now reconfigured in the B model) because I wanted to do my punching with IF. Commanding the task force today was a Teppo (proxied by the Mobile Long Tom mini), and its 3 artillery pieces weren't enough for me. It was pulling an Arrow IV gun trailer. I have 3 TAGs in the force (2 Crows and a WHM-7K) and then 3 more LTAGs on my battle armor. I'm ready to sing Katyusha all over these defending Vegans!
I grouped my 3 squads of Kanazuchis into an Assault lance, because
of course I would. They'd be transported in the Turhans and the Teppo.
Speaking of Turhans, they were grouped with a pair of Crows to form an ad-hoc lance (both pairs of vees are in different lances in my campaign force TO&E). I made this lance a Support lance because I couldn't make it a Recon lance. (Plus, the catch-all "support" designation seems to fit better for an ad-hoc force in a roleplaying sense) Obviously the 2 Crows got Forward Observer.
I had to have a Recon Lance to mooch Forward Observer SPAs, so mine was composed of 3 squads of Kage BA (TAG variant). I would also be including a jump platoon of special forces (with the Urban Guerilla SPA for extra giggly goodness) and rather than try to say that unit would be a lance in of itself, I schlepped them in with the Kages. One squad of the Kages would ride into battle on the Avatar, and the other 2 squads and the Special Forces platoon would fly into battle in the OO-Suzumebachi.
My last lance was the mechanized infantry. Basic foot infantry in heavy tracked apcs. They took Lucky 2 as their Support ability.
The defending milita pre-deployed in the city and of no great surprise to me, there were hidden units seeded in the buildings. The militia even set up ECM jammers on numerous rooftops. I'm glad my Crows carry ECM to go with their probes so I could immediately begin switching over to ECCM...
After I deployed my forces, the GM told me my objective: the big bunker (with the star graphic) is a major C2 hub and my goal is to capture it intact before turn 7. Oh, and the militia set tire fires in the streets to hamper my approach. Yep.... my infantry is going to turn out to be important today.
I know I'm facing at least 2 lances of scorpion tanks with 2 ASFs coming in on the radar map (my OO-Suzumebachi will have to fight its way in..) and an unknown number of hidden units on top of that.
I'm immediately greeted with the not-so-surprising surprise that there is militia hidden in that big building just outside my deployment zone. Also, a lance of Republic regular mechwarriors are present to stiffen the militia's resistance. Well, I couldn't expect a walk-over the entire campaign, could I?
The layout of terrain gives me three avenues to approach the bunker that is my objective. But my APCs would be shot to hell and never reach the bunker by taking anything but the direct approach. And it turns out his artillery is ready to blaze away at the bottleneck that makes the direct approach. Oh, and of course he has artillery. And of course he lights up my clustered APCs in the bottleneck. In that artillery strike I immediately lose a Turhan due to mobility hit and a tracked APC to ammo explosion (that infantry had JUST bailed out in time...).
My infantry make an absolute mess of the hapless militia trying to hold the skyscraper immediately in my way, and my indirect fire lights up a Hatchetman hiding inside another building. Here I make a tactical mistake.. I should have just leveled the building on him rather than trying to damage him through the building's absorbtion. Both mech and building survive in precarious condition due to my decision, rather than destroying them both as I probably otherwise could have done. I also do some skirmishing on my right flank to keep the defenders there honest and not collapsing on the bottleneck I'm pretty clearly telegraphing that I'm committing to use.
Some Saladin hovertanks come out of hiding and begin slashing through my forces. I kill one with artillery, and the other has to be dealt with by collapsing my right flank. My Victor was happy to do so though, he got stripped to armor after going all "Look at me! We're coming at you from the right!" anyway. I suffer another Ammo explosion crit this turn thanks to a Fast Interceptor reaching the fight on turn 2 and strafing my bottleneck some more. Ironically, my AAA gun trailer (equipped with Anti-Aircraft Missile alternate ammo no less) is what went boom. It didn't even manage to shoot down the ASF in the process :( On the upside, my Teppo had just begun going offroad, and losing the trailer meant that I won't be slowed down any from here out :}
Hidden units start coming out of the woodwork, and I see that there's 4 platoons of infantry ready to light up my poor infantry as they approach in effort to take the structure. I *could* level the structure with my armored forces, but that's not my goal here. I couldn't keep forcing my APCs through the strafe-and-artillery-bait bottleneck, so they had spread out. But I found one APC in an untenable position with my Victor falling back... there's nowhere for it to go where it won't be shot at. It COULD reach the bunker objective, but it's the only one at that moment that could. I ultimately decide to give that platoon of infantry the honor of sacrificing themselves for the Dragon. Egged on by encouraging voices over the tac-net "You go kick in the door! We're right behind you!" **hands over mouth to muffle voices*** "next turn..."
That one unsupported foot infantry platoon is unsurprisingly wiped out, but they did take a militia platoon with them and kept the other three from firing on my encroaching APCs. My Cyclops spearheaded my advance, and even downed an Axeman in the process. But it drew a withering amount of fire from the defenders. It would suffer TWO ammo explosion criticals (hooray for CASE) but would ultimately not survive anyway due to being stripped of structure. Still, that mech's sacrifice allowed for the rest of my force to advance unmolested, and the defenders were in an untenable position to keep me out of the bunker objective.
The GM began testing for morale, but it turns out the Axeman was piloted by the planetary Legate. Woohoo for the 3rd New Samarkand! We get Nguyen in this timeline, too! About half the defenders began routing, and the battle was effectively over. From here out victory was assured, but what was to be determined was how much more damage I'd take in the process... and how much more salvage I'd secure!
My airborne infantry didn't arrive until the outcome of the battle was already certain. But I was able to drop them on the far side of the board, and they were super handy for spotting the fleeing Vegan and Republican forces. None of the mechs would escape my salvage yard, and I'd even grab a couple Scorpion tanks to boot.. all without suffering many more losses. I'd lose one more unit: a tracked APC carrying the same platoon that narrowly escaped firey doom in an ammo explosion. On the very turn they jumped into the bunker, they repeated the same feat... the APC transporting them exploded mightily. I expect the remaining APC crew won't open the hatches for that particular foot platoon in the rest of the campaign. They're clearly cursed, and that's no small thing in the 3rd :D
Speaking of the luck and curses of the 3rd... I never did trigger my automatic hit. I wanted to ensure there were no automatic failures to hand back to me when my Ooze flies overhead and inevitably has to make a lawn dart check :D
Butcher's bill for the battle:
2 APCs and AAA gun trailer all total losses due to ammo explosions. Crews were unsurprisingly all killed too.
The foot platoon that kicked in the door to the bunker didn't survive its solo banzai charge. Unsurprisingly.
Cyclops 12K was also diagnosed as a total loss. It suffered two ammo explosion crits itself... I suppose that's a very appropo outcome as well. Fortunately that mechwarrior survived... but not so fortunate to avoid WIA status.
On the flipside, all 4 enemy mechs were captured and salvageable. When my Cyclops pilot gets better, she'll have 6 different mechs to choose from as her new ride (including the 2 I kept as battle salvage from the meeting engagement)
My Oo-Suzumebachi drew a pretty fair amount of damage between dogfighting and ground fire. Still, despite barely taking 50% armor damage the crew found a way to get themselves wounded. Oozes have the unstable fuel tank quirk... perhaps something broke on landing and they got sprayed with noxious chemicals.