I am not, unless he took out those helicopters he very well could have been looking individual mechs being isolated and Anihilated Piecemail via Indirect Fire if he did not. Tag range is 15, gunnery 0. The VTOLs could have picked off his parimiter(Via Indirect Archer Fire) and avoided mass fire if he stayed in the city. Probably the biggest mistake I see is the Light Lance being committed and Lost before Adiquit Assault support was in range. If he had gotten the second Helicopter it might have been worth it but in the end the second whirly-bird survived and so did Lyran Archers Tactics.
The VTOLs are the Lynchpin in Lyran Archers Tactics. Without them he is forced to expose 1 or more archers a Turn to massed fire from Heavy and Assault Mechs.
Excellent assessment, sir.
One of the reasons my Archers became strung out was because
I was
racing to engage his lights
before the heavies and assaults could come into play. It was actually
me that then made the "tactical error" (not you, Phell) because he was willing to trade his lights for the helicopters and he did in the first turn of shooting - the Mongoose for the helicopter. The survival of the second helicopter was a miracle, not good planning on my part, because Phell then made some horrible rolls and just couldn't finish off the second chopper. I, at first, had been surprised by 2/5 pilots on the Wolfhounds but then suddenly realized what they really were - chopper killers!
The Cataphract also had a 2/5 pilot
and an LBX cannon (so, like - 5 to hit the chopper!) but just couldn't connect to the second helicopter, which started to pull back at that time because things became direct-fire anyway when the Davions crested that first hill.
The survival of the second chopper was more good luck than good management on my part and then the game would have been very different.