Alpha Strike in the Spokane Valley

[mhal9000]

HeavyGun and I got together at Gamer's Haven in Spokane last night. The operation was a simple lance on lance skirmish, no objective besides wiping the other guy out. This was the first time Heavy and I had met, and it was the first game of Battletech for either of us in quite some time. We took a little bit of time getting set up initially; spent some time talking about the new rules and talking with a handful of people who wandered up to see what we were playing. All in all we spent about 2.5 hours from when the first initiative roll was made till the last operational mech walked off the battlefield.

We both had a lot of fun, and enjoyed the new rules quite a bit. I'll detail below how it went:

HeavyGun's forces:
Assassin
Dragon
Quickdraw
Hunchback

MHal9000's forces:
Owens
Dragon
Bushwacker
Hunchback

Both lances were fairly balanced for the brawl, so we set up and got things started. (apologies for the crappy photos, the camera on my phone sucks)


Turns 1 and 2 were spent getting across the terrain and into position.

Turn 3 saw first blood being scored by HeavyGun as his Assassin and Quickdraw both scored medium range hits on my Bushwacker, scouring off the majority of it's armor and putting it in serious jeopardy very early in the game.


Turn 4 saw my Owens scraping a little paint off Heavy's Quickdraw at medium range, his Assassin stayed out at long range (a reoccurring and proper strategy for that light mech) and sniped at my advancing Dragon.

Turn 5 is where things started getting down and dirty. My Bushwacker, after pulling a brave Sir Robin for turn 4, stepped back into the fray and laid into Heavy's Dragon for a couple of points, his Dragon and his Quickdraw both managed to score hits on my Owens, digging into the internals on that mech and leaving it with a weapon hit. This particular Owens variant had no long range attacks, which meant he had to get into medium/short range to do anything and he paid a heavy price for it. While Heavy had some legitimate complaints about his dice rolls for the evening, in this turn his dice were very, very good to him and my Owens paid the price. Our lumbering Hunchbacks both finally got into range,  and mine managed to hit Heavy's for a solid 3 points.


Turn 6 continued the carnage with my Bushwacker hitting Heavy's Dragon, getting into his internals and causing a movement crit. That Dragon reciprocated with internal damage to the Bushwacker, scoring a weapons hit with the internal damage. The Owens, really hurting from turn 5, stayed in the fray to get another point of internal damage on the Dragon. Heavy's Assassin stepped up to make sure that that would be the last thing the Owens did in this skirmish as he administered the Coup de grace.

[mhal9000]

Turn 7 saw my Dragon and Hunchback both ganging up on Heavy's Hunchback, dealing a significant amount of damage to that unit and scoring a weapon control hit. Heavy's Hunchback returned the favor to his evil twin, scoring a solid hit on my Hunchback in return.

Turn 8 Saw my Dragon score a final hit on his counterpart and put Heavy's Dragon down not far from where the smoking remains of my Owens lay. He managed to hit back before he went down, scoring an engine critical on my Dragon, now ensuring that I had to track my heat every time I fired weapons.


Turn 9 More Hunchback on Hunchback violence! Won't somebody think of the Hunchbacks?!? Heavy's HB went down in a blaze of glory, and his lance mate the Quickdraw moved up to make sure he wasn't going down alone. The Quickdraw stuck a fork into my Hunchback and called him done with internal damage and an unlucky crit roll.


Turn 10 saw the Quickdraw work his magic again, scoring a hit on the Bushwacker, leaving one more smoking wreck on the battlefield.


Turn 11 finds my Dragon (who is hurting) Heavy's Quickdraw and Assassin (hasn't been hit yet) all that's left on the field. My Dragon manages to score a hit on the Quickdraw and gets into internals, scoring an ammo explosion. Exit Quickdraw, stage left.

Turn 12 sees my Hunchback ready to roast marshmallows. He had fired enough since his engine hit that he would automatically shut down next round if he fired again, and an unscathed Assassin still haunting him at long range. That was enough to send up the white flag and concede the field of battle and salvage rights to HeavyGun and his valiant unit.


In summary, we had a blast. The game moved quickly and we probably could have shaved off nearly an hour off our 2.5 hour playtime if we hadn't sidetracked ourselves a few times. We're looking forward to setting up another game mid to late October!

[HeavyGun]

This was a lot of fun. The alpha stike rules made this much easier. I definitly look forward to the next round.

[StuartYee]

Thanks for the AAR! Great terrain and paint jobs.

So question about the rules, are there knockdowns in AS?

[mhal9000]

Thanks for the AAR! Great terrain and paint jobs.

So question about the rules, are there knockdowns in AS?

Thanks for the compliments, HeavyGun did excellent on his mechs paint jobs! The terrain was already there at the game shop, so we can't take credit for that either, although next time we'll probably bring along some trees to go with it.

To answer your question, no, there are no knockdowns in AS. We just laid the mechs over where they died.

[StuartYee]

We just laid the mechs over where they died.

Haha! Good stuff!