Batrep Continued, and Postgame:
Instead of tossing in the towel, I vowed to play on at least one more turn.
My Scimitars ended up doing me proud. While the Mercs were wreaking havoc in my backfield, so were my Scims in his. I had lost two of them, and couldn't afford to keep one in my own backfield any more for ECCM purposes so I sent it in to join its Artillery hunting friend. An opportunity opened up for me though, as the Deimos had moved up into short range on my artillery hunter but then decided in the firing phase to vent heat rather than try again to murder my hover. He also focus fired down my Cauldron-Born that same phase, so I knew I could take full advantage of that mech's OVL in my own oncoming phase. Instead of doing the murdering, the Deimos got murdered. With his Mad Cat MkII already in forced withdrawal, that changed the merc's position. He could no longer afford to maintain his only 2 hard hitters out on the fringes of the battle, and brought the Masakari out of its cover to reinforce his middle. And he quickly thought better as it found itself out in the open catching fire. He got it back into cover before I could bring the full hammer down, but I was forcing him to react to me now and I felt much better about playing on.
I still felt behind the might I had remaining on the table, however. I decided on a gambit to ignore his artillery (the thing that's been dealingme the most damage, btw) to press the advantage on his collapsing flank. His Enyos are dead, and his Rommels are in forced withdrawal. All he's got to contest anything but the flank I abandoned is some infantry and the Shadow Cat. I feel it's fine to gamble with my Owens' life and trust in the God of TMMs and let it dash out in the open towards the Masakari. Doesn't matter for C3 if it gets close now; the Wulfen has free reign to ECM my Naginata now. I get close so I can TAG the Masakari.. and I get lucky. And the O-Bakemono makes short work of what's left of the Clan Assault. His Cerberus abandons its cushy hidey cover to reinforce his collapsed center, and gets close enough to be caught by my Void BA. It's not fast enough to escape the Voids, and will be taking AM attacks in its rear for the rest of the game until he can scrape something up to delouse his sole remaining heavy hitter.
Despite bringing down my Akuma the Merc player had a lot of bad luck on dice rolls, leaving me almost otherwise completely unscathed as the game turned solidly away from being in his favor. He offers to concede, and at that point I share with him that I still think it's pretty tight. His Cerberus only has a round or two of relevance left, but so does my Shiro. He's still got his two very deadly artillery tubes (and spotters, since I couldn't spare the distraction of shooting at his infantry) as well as the Shadow Cat even after the Cerberus either goes down or suffers the inevitable crippling critical hit (what with Void swarming it now). He points out that my Hovers and Owens are running rampant, and I too have 2 artillery tubes AND the still unscathed Naginata. We agree to call it a draw.
It was an intense game. Took us about 5 hours to play out a game this size, which left us both kinda rubbery-brained. I was making mistakes well before the endgame. Still, rather fun and very much felt like an epic clash of armies where both sides decided they both had had enough and agreed to try again to clobber each other to death some other day rather than today.
My opponent asked me what I felt his MVPs were. Clearly the artillery. He didn't pay for many skill upgrades, but he didn't skimp on them. He was pummeling me with needing 6s or at worst 7s to place POIs on target all day. Even under the recent artillery nerfs, artillery is still the king of battle I'd have to say.
OTOH my own MVP I'd say were my Scimitars. Which is something I find comforting... the new PV system didn't kill their relevance.. just keeps me from using SO many of them as I'm used to... and well that's pretty much exactly what the PV-reeval aimed for. With their 3 Damage at short range with 20" means 4 damage in your back arc... and 4 TMM still means you gotta shoot at it a LOT to just kill one of them. And having 4 ECM tanks made protecting my (unboosted) C3 network child's play. It never got jammed until I didn't care if it got jammed.