IRL games AAR campaign.

[DevianID]

The Year is 3049.  The Clan Jade Falcon Turkina Keshik, honor guard to the Khan himself, takes its first action among the nameless planets in the Periphery clearing the way to the marked invasion corridor.  The players are following a chaos campaign based off the free 'Succession Wars' book, with 2 changes.  First, I divided the costs of everything by 100, so instead of 1000 warchest points, they have 10 honor points.  Next, to illustrate the fierce competition for honor among the individuals in the clan, the players each track their own points, so they each start with 2 points instead of a communal 10.  In the custom campaign thread I detail the math.

Session 0 was a quick set of alpha strike games for the trial of position, and the meeting engagement from the succession wars book.  Winning that, they moved onto the breakthrough track.

For this engagement, the Turkina (its a little early for a Turkina mech, but the Turkina Keshik had them earlier than the rest of the clan) picked up the 4 points of SPA on the pilot card for Ivana, meaning the long and short range mod was flipped.  This means at point blank the Turkina will struggle to shake off enemies, but at range the mech is murder.  The other mechs are a Nova Prime and Locust IIC, the Nova bought 1 free automatic initiative win, and the locust saved their points (the 4th player couldnt make it and im still looking for a 5th.)

Arrayed against them was 2 packrats with infantry, a mobile HQ, a plainsman hover tank, and 5 mechs--A wasp, wolfhound, crab, dragon, and warhammer.  The tanks started in the middle with both mech forces opposite each other, with about 45 hexes from east to west (exactly enough so that it was possible for all mechs to achieve the breakthrough condition in 10 turns).

The opening salvos saw the clans advancing, as the Turkina had to move at max speed to meet one of the victory conditions (exit the enemies board edge by turn 10).  Initial fire on turns 1-3 saw the packrats get destroyed with the infantry not escaping the wreck and also dying, only managing 1 SRM6 strike on the Turkina back.  The plainsman also died as it lost a turn of movement to a skid, so wasnt able to get behind the advancing clans in time and was nuked by the nova.

Turns 4-6 saw the Turkina mark the crab, and abandon the plan to run off the board.  Instead, the Turkina was focused on killing as many mechs as possible for personal glory.  By turn 6 the crab was armless and missing a leg floundering on the ground, as the Turkina started backing up to maintain longer range.
The Nova spent this time marking the wasp, but diverting attention to kill the mobile HQ providing an initiative bonus.  As a result the wasp was still alive hounding the locust iic.
The Locust iic poked out to mark the wolfhound, but proceded to lose key initiative for multiple turns in a row.  This lead to the inner sphere surrounding the IIC, whose lack of jump jets made its every move tense as it tried to avoid a 5 mech dog pile.

Turns 7-8, the Turkina turned its attention to the warhammer, and managed a boxcar ERPPC shot on a mostly undamaged heavy mech, earning the Turkina its second kill.
The Nova finally chased down the wasp and ended it, lamenting the lack of pulse as even with a skill of 3 the brace of ER mediums often needed 9s on the evasive 20 ton bug mech.
The Locust iic took a kick, which with the weak legs quirk caused a crit even after an edge reroll.  This was proceded by a fall, and we all assumed the locust iic was a goner.  The Nova did distract the Warhammer, pulling its PPC shots off the locust onto it the turn the warhammer died to a head shot, which may have kept the Locust in it.  In response, the 8 ER smalls stripped armor off the wolfhound but spread out too much to destroy the enemy.

Turn 9-10, both the Turkina and Nova had an interesting competition to LOSE initiative, as both wanted the first opportunity to mark the unclaimed dragon for their next honor kill.  The Turkina rolled a 3, 'losing' initiative but getting the honor of being the one to fire on the Dragon.
The Nova was now too far to make it off the board, spending that turn drawing fire from the warhammer for the Locust put it too many hexes away from the board edge to make it away.  The Locust stood and made a beeline for the edge even with the leg damage, and managed to cause some internal damage to the wolfhound in the process.

Turn 10, the locust moved off the board for the victory condition 'breakthrough' which opened up his honor duel target, the wolfhound, for the nova.  Not letting the wolfhound escape, the nova unloaded all 12 ER mediums and claimed enough mech kills for a victory point, making up the one lost for not achieving the breakthrough objective.  The turkina's first salvo knocked the Dragons left arm clean off.  We decided that the fresh Turkina would claim the dragon if we continued, putting that player at 180 tons destroyed for 2 honor points--1 more than if they tried to achieve the breakthrough mission.

At the end, the Turkina started with -1 HP, but gained +1 for fighting with Honor and +2 for 180 tons of IS mechs destroyed, for 2 HP.  The turkina elected not to repair the armor damage to avoid spending HP in repairs.
The Nova started with 1, spent one to win initiative once (which came in handy), and gained +1 for fighting with strict honor rules and +1 for 55 tons of mechs destroyed.  The nova pilot took 1 head hit and some light armor damage, which the pilot elected not to repair.  So ends at 2 honor.
The Locust IIC started with 0, gained +2 for fighting with honor and achieving 'breakthrough', spent 1 to heal the mechwarrior damage, and thanks to the easy to maintain rule on the Locust iic got to repair the armor and structure for 0 honor, leaving 1 Honor.
The player that was missing didnt have to pay the 1 point to participate in the mission, so is still at 1 Honor in their Uller.

We managed 10 turns in less than 3 hours, with 3 clan mechs and 9 inner sphere units, which is pretty good for the groups first battletech game (the session 0 was played with alphastrike).  I do use a modified initiative system to speed campaign play up, but I was still worried how long the game would take so it was nice to finish under estimate.

Next mission: Assault!  With 2 wins, the clan force moves to the potentially final mission in their Operation Revival campaign.

HP cost:1
Option (All): Exemplar of Jade Falcon: Fight with Strict Honor regardless of enemy actions (+1 Honor)
Option A: Warden Caution.  Fight as if in light fog (+1 MP per hex moved using ground MP) (+1 Honor)
Option B: Crusader Recklessness.  Suffer a medium density mine attack turn 1 (TN8, 4x5 leg damage) (+1 Honor)
Objectives: Global, Defeat 50% of the enemy forces without losing 50% of your forces by turn 10 (+1 Honor)
Objectives: Individual, Defeat all the inner sphere forces, and claim +1 Honor per fraction of 100 tons of enemy mechs (so +1 at 50-145, +2 at 150-245, ect.)

[DevianID]

The OpFor defending against the 8k expected in Jade Falcon Mechs (10k with pilots) is:
Karnov Gunship
J Edgar Flamer Hovertank
Sleipnir APC (SRM Version) with Jump Rifle Infantry Platoon.
Po Standard Tank

Firestarter K
Sentinel 3KA
Trebuchet 5S (Veteran)
Dervish 6M (Veteran)
Lancelot 02 (Veteran)
Catapult 'Butterbee' (Veteran)

[DevianID]

The 3rd (and final) match rooting out the periphery forces in the early phase of operation revival had some great ups and downs.

The layout was the neoprene grassland map with the base, with the defenders starting deployed and arrayed behind the walls.  The (unintended) consequence was a pretty drastic playsize reduction, as the base half of the map was never used as the IS forces sallied forth from the base to engage the clan forces at close range.  So while turn 1 saw the usual lack of significant damage done, SRMs were online on turn 2 and in close range by turn 3.  The Turkina took the crusader option to take a mine hit at the start, reducing my mines to 3.  The other 3 players all took the honor option to fight in 'light fog' but be immune to minefields thanks to careful steps.  While the Nova had jump jets to partially negate this, the Uller B and Locust iic quickly regretted the decision as the lower ground speed let the enemies box them in and hound them.

Turn 3ish the first action took place, where the Trebuchet S moved over the mines that "I" placed.  When I realized my mistake, the mines rolled a 9, hitting, and then ALL 20 damage rolled the same leg location!  This THEN caused crits, dropping the mech right in front of the Blackhawk/Nova.  The other duels were the Turkina on the suprisingly evasive Sentinel, the Uller on the Firestarter, and the Locust on the Lancelot.  Sadly for the players, no real damage happened, though the prone Trebuchet got banged up pretty good.

Turn 4, the firestarter, catapult and sentinel had boxed the uller into one corner, while the Lancelot, Slepnir and Po zeroed into the Locust IIc.  The Sentinel then turned to reinforce the Lancelot as the Uller wasnt going anywhere.  The Trebuchet fell trying to stand, and destroyed his own leg!  Man that poor treb.  This let the Nova have free shots, but the Nova kept the evasion up so wasnt getting the prone adjacent bonus.  Damage saw the Firestarter+Dervish take the Ullers laser arm, trading the arm off the firestarter; the Locust put a truckload (47) of point blank damage on the Lancelot and took off a large laser and PPC, but in return the IIC lost 2 arms.  The Turkina had rear shots on the Sentinel, but couldnt connect with the Gauss, so only managed an LRM20 to crit the gyro and take an arm.  Lots of arms gone but nothing crippled.

Part 2:
Turn 5, the Locust iic has an important decision.  With just the center torso pulse and not much else, and hobbled by the light fog speed penalty, the pilot can either abandon his honor by ejecting, preserving the value of his mech as the team is on track to win the mission... or he can stay and fight, further drawing the enemy back and tanking 2 mechs, 2 vees, and infantry shooting which will definitely kill him but keep his honor safe.  Abandoning his honor will net more chaos campaign pointsas buying a new 25 ton locust iic would be 3 honor.  He decides to take the worse, but more honorable play of sticking it out and going down in a blaze of glory--very jade falcon like!  The attacks come in, and with 1 structure left I rolled 3 total crits to the center torso and hit engine... engine... and ENGINE!  I use the "declare and shoot at the same time" method for speed (which is a house rule, but is used in tournaments too as it does make things faster), so once he died the remaining PO ac/10 tank and Lancelot with large and medium laser left cant shoot the dead target, meaning his mech is fixable... he keeps his honor and can fix his mech!
Elsewhere, the Uller B hits with his ultra and srm, and while he cant do the staggering 44 damage he did last round as his one arm is missing, the 2 guns are enough to finish off the firestarter.  He takes aa few hits from the firestarter and dervish in return, but the Turkina stepped in and drew fire from the 4 srm6 'butterbee' catapult, sparing him the worst of it.  The Turkina finally hit the Sentinel, killing it with the first Gauss shot that hit.  The Nova jumps in again and savages the Trebuchet, leaving it with 5 structure in a leg and not much else.

Turn 6, the Turkina knocks down the catapult, finding the less evasive target much easier to hit then the sentinel.  The Trebuchet, in forced withdrawal, kills itself trying to stand.  The Lancelot gets killed by the black hawk/nova who was freed from having to shoot the trebuchet when it killed itself.  The uller is slowly backing up still, and lands enough damage on the Dervish to generate 2 crits this turn--if you didnt know the dervish has ammo everywhere, including the arm that the uller landed all its shots against.  Sadly, with 2 crit rolls a 6 and 7 meant no crits, so no dead dervish.  In response, the dervish clips the leg off the Uller and crits the actuator on the other leg--frankly im surprised its still alive.

Turn 7, the uller shocks me again by rolling the 10 to stand on one damaged leg.  The look on my face when he rolled the hard 10 was apparently priceless.  The Turkina put more damage on the catapult, and I believe dealing a gyro hit as well.  The Nova now starts to focus on the Po and Slepnir tanks, but starts with the jump infantry.  ER medium lasers are not great at hurting infantry, but they were in the open so he still manages to kill 6 of the 21.  The nova jumped on top of the Po as vehicles have no honor and can be attacked with physicals, but no significant damage.  Sadly the Uller, who again generates a crit roll on the Dervish with the exposed ammo, doesn't generate any crits.  With more structure then armor left, the dervish takes the other leg off, and hits the head, the only place with armor left on the Uller.  This meant that with the fall, the Uller doesnt get cored out.  With no legs and 1 arm, the Uller cant fight and cant withdrawal, so counts as destroyed BUT can still be repaired.  Both light mechs got the best possible unit destruction to go down with full honor intact but not losing their mech doing it.

Turn 8, the Nova switches from the jumping infantry to the easier to hit Po tank.  The Po gets hit on the side so much that the damage kills the tank.  The Turkina's Catapult goes down, and with the Dervish no longer in a duel with the Uller the Turkina quickly dispatches the Dervish the Uller half killed.

Turn 9, the Nova follows up by killing the Slepnir with a motive crit to immobilize the wheeled tank, which in the chaos campaign with forced withdrawal counts as destroyed.  The Turkinia puts lots of fire into the infantry closing in on her, and again the damage to infantry in the open savages the unit despite gauss rifles and LRMs not being great anti infantry weapons.

Turn 10, the infantry die, and the hovertank gets immobilized TWICE by the nova, though it could have been the Turkina.  The Vtol and Hover have been dancing around this whole time with a massive movement mod, taking pot shots at the Turkina's rear, but with mostly machine guns and flamers the 11/17 speed on both units didnt translate to any real damage.  With just the Vtol left, and with no more glory to be won and no more risk to the remaining 2 player mechs, the battle comes to a close.  Since the players won the required scenarios, they dont need any follow up mission for clean up, and this peripheriy world is officially pacified.

At the table I awarded the Uller the MVP for surviving and standing on 10s, but in hindsight im going to ALSO give MVP to the Locust IIC for also sticking in the fight and going down swinging despite ejecting being the better play.  Some repairs were needed, but the final tally saw all pilots coming out in the positives.  Next battle is Van Strangs world, which will be a new chaos campaign.  The players can bank their leftover honor, and get resupplied with the base 2 honor everyone gets at the start of each chaos campaign.  No one needs to create a new character to begin with a mech of their choice (at the cost of all their banked honor points and XP), so the Locust, Uller, Nova, and Turkina will carry forth to the next battle.

[DevianID]

So next session starts the assault on the Amaris loyalist Van Strang, to wipe out the family of Amaris's general once and for all.  Starting from this week, i've introduced the Turkina Keshik special unit ability, found on Sarna and summarized here: When fighting enemies without honor, (a player) gain(s) a +1 initiative for turn for every unit you defeated last turn.  In addition, if (a player) winning initiative by 2, you can move and shoot a unit before the enemy takes their turn.  This means they have no target movement modifier.

Since I do individual initiative for each player, its a bit easier to act before the enemy (only need to win by +2) but the clan side will have a lower initiative bonus as the +1 for killing a unit applies only to the single player and not all forces on the clan side.

The next battle:

Operation Revival Von Strang's World.  The Jade Falcon Player must play through 3 scenarios.  If any global objectives are lost, a 4th scenario must be played (Hot Pockets) to finish off the surviving Von Strang forces.

Track: Outer Fortifications
   Track Cost: 0
After landing on the plains outside of 'Amaris' city, the Turkina Keshik finds the approaches heavily defended with turrets and interconnected tunnels.  The Turkina Keshik must battle past these defenses into the city proper to end the Von Strang's affront to the Star League once and for all.
   Option (All): Strict Honor, +1 point.  Show the barbarians how a true warrior fights!
   Option (A): Warden Combined Arms: -1 Point (the cost of elementals if you don't have a set yet).  The pilot has a suit of elementals attached to their mech (if non-omni, the elementals must deploy normally).  The elementals can invade the defense network at the start of the movement phase if the turret is still live (not collapsed) and has no armor (allowing them to breach the walls).  If 2 units of elementals invade the network, the defenses are deactivated.  The elementals must be used to breach the defense network and can not attack non-gun emplacement enemies unless they are the only thing in range.
   Option (B): Crusader First to the Frey: +1 Point (the cost required to heal 1 damage the option inflicts).  The pilot suffers a pilot hit upon landing due to a high G dropship deployment, but takes an additional turn before the game begins with no enemy movement or return fire.
   Objective: Move off the enemies deployment zone, into Amaris City's valley, by turn 10.  +1 Point if using the Crusader option.
   Objective: Disable the turret network entirely by turn 10, either by destroying every turret or infiltrating 2 units of elementals.  +1 Point if using the Warden Option, and the elementals that infiltrated are returned back to the player upon mission success.
   Achieve Both Objectives (global): +1 point

   Forces: The player characters forces face 40% BV in tanks/infantry, 40% in turrets.
Turrets: The gun emplacements are placed in pairs.  All gun emplacements have 40 CF and 40 Armor, and are level 1 buildings with connected tunnel networks.  They cost 400 BV per pair with a 4 gunnery skill crew.  Both turrets have 1 machine gun in each hex facing, and both have a turret.  One building in the pair has 2 AC/10s in the turret, while the other building has 4 AC/2s in the turret.  They have enough ammo to not need to track ammo for the scenario duration.  The turrets should be arrayed not touching each other, so they all can fire on level 2 battlemechs with no LOS obstructions.  As a reminder, buildings are immobile; for simplified critical charts, each time a building takes damage to the CF, if the damage is 5 or more make a crit roll.  Instead of a separate hit chart, roll number of crits like normal.  A building collapses after 2 critical hits (so 2 rolls of 8-9, or 1 roll of 10+ on the determining crits table).

Sample Opfor for 10.5k BV clan force.  10 pairs of Gun Turrets (+1 400 BV turret pair for every 533 BV flamer elemental squad brought), and the veteran conventional Van Strang Guard, with 2 motorized Laser Platoons, 2 Foot Rifle Platoons, 2 Demolishers, and 2 Vedettes, all rated 3/ 4.  All enemy forces are deployed on their table half, while all defense guns are on the deployment zone (but must not be adjacent to each other, so after filling the defenders deployment zone hex line, the next row will be a bit forward, ect).

Player notes: If players want to score the bonus for everything, since 20+ total turrets with 40 armor and 40 structure must be destroyed (1600+ damage) by turn 10 (for a 10.5k force) elementals must be used, but they also need to cross the entire map to get close enough to breach the turret tunnel network.  Going full crusader to blitz through the map is individually easier, but working together with at least 2 warden options are needed to achieve the global objective.

[DevianID]

So for this battle, we had the Nova player unable to make it, plus im still looking for 1 more player anyway, leaving only 3 players to tackle the mission.  The Turkina player bought a Fire Falcon, so the roster was a Uller B, Fire Falcon Prime, and Locust iiC.  This meant the matching BV was much lower, so the tank and infantry got lowered from veteran to green, and I only got 7-8 turret pairs instead of the 12ish I was expecting.  This ended up making the mission much much easier for the Clan force to exit the board edge by turn 10 and also to get the elementals into position to infiltrate the turret tunnels.

Turn 1 saw the locust iic taking the crusader option to get one bonus turn.  He used this bonus turn, plus turn 1, to get into the enemies table half in terrain.  The fire falcon and Uller decided to stick together to ensure the 2 elementals they were carrying had the best chance of surviving.  Early shooting was mostly blocked by LOS.

Turn 2, the fire falcon moved up into strike position of a demolisher while staying in woods.  The Uller followed behind, but was too slow to get angles on much as the pair were working around a cliff on the flank.  The Locust dashed into range of the other Demolisher.  The demolishers were brought low with motive crits, as they were taking hits on their side armor.  One was immobilized, under forced withdrawal the crews bail instead of staying and dying in their tank, removing the biggest guns I had all at once on 10+ motive crit rolls.  The locust dropped the other down to 1 MP.  My shots back all whiffed, as the green crews versus light fast mechs needed neigh impossible hit numbers.

Turn 3, the Locust moved into base contact with a protruding turret, while the falcon and uller moved up cautiously.  The Locust autohit the adjacent building, stripping the 40 armor off.  The Fire falcon had a lower initiative score then the uller, so got to shoot first and immobilize killed the speed 1 demolisher.  The Uller had only infantry to take potshots at with the Demolisher killed, which was already too far away to influence the battle.  My return shooting from the 7 dual ac/10 and 7 quad ac/2 turrets saw about 40 damage put onto the locust, but it stayed standing.

Turn 4, the locust iic was thinking about sticking around 1 more turn to strip the armor off another base, but I stepped in and suggested he move off the table instead since he didnt have the armor to take another 14 turreted ac/10s and his evasion this turn would only get up to a +3.  He wisely agreed, so I let him take back his move and instead fall off the edge per the crusader victory condition.  The Fire falcon again got to shoot before the Uller, so again killed the only vehicle in range.  The uller instead put 34 ranged damage onto a turret stripping most armor off.  Shooting saw mostly the AC2s connecting thanks to the longer range versus the Uller/falcon duo who were about 8 hexes from the lead turrets.  The low profile kept the Uller's damage to less then 20 points.

Turn 5, the Fire falcon and Uller made their dash forward to deposit elementals adjacent to the buildings.  The Firefalcon finished stripping the armor off the second turret to allow elementals access next turn, and multitargeted an ac/10 building as the final tank was out of reach.  The Uller combined fire, destroying the turret, meaning 1 less pair of ac/10s would be shooting.  The Firefalcon paid for this though, as moving into point blank range to drop elementals saw over 30 damage connecting against the light mech.  Fortunately for the player none of the damage caused any crits to the legs, but I did take an arm off and strip all the leg armor.  The uller got dinged up a bit more, but again low profile kept the damage from really connecting, and I spread the damage enough to see no internal damage.

Turn 6, with the light omni's getting the elementals into range last turn, saw the elementals bust into the fortification network, and the 2 units won the warden turret destruction objective for shutting down all the turrets.  With the main objective won and no further honor to be gained finishing off the vedette and infantry the lights bypassed, they moved off the enemies edge for a very early victory!

The Firefalcon needed 1 honor to repair the internal damage, but everyone else escaped scott free.  The light mechs get free armor repairs at they are 45 tons or less, so everyone gained 2-3 honor easy.  This mission originally was going to be a lot harder, with the extra player and slower Turkina giving me a lot more battle value to toss at my players.  The player was wise to buy a Fire Falcon to take instead of the Turkina to get off the board faster, but we ended up ending WAY early, and I didnt have the next mission terrain prepped and with me, so an early night was had.  The Fire Falcon got MVP with the most kills and most internal damage taken, netting 2 xp.  We realized later that the Pilot ability the Turkina/Fire Falcon player had was the flip short and long range hit mods after the game.  I dont think it would have changed the mission outcome, but the Uller might have got to shoot the tanks the Fire Falcon killed as more of the Falcons short range shots would have missed.  The uller instead never really got to shoot as all the nearby targets all died to immobilization hits from the Falcon.

For the next mission, the players are moving through the valley into Amaris city, past the various cul-du-sacs lining the main road that have hidden units.

Track: Cul-de-sacs
   Track Cost: 1
Once the initial defensive perimeter was bypassed, the Turkina Keshik found itself moving through the valley before Amaris City, where numerous Cul-de-sacs provide ample ambush opportunity for the Van Strang guard division in an attempt to slow the clan advance.
   Option (All): Strict Honor, +1 point.  Show the barbarians how a true warrior fights!
   Option A: Warden, Disable Inner Perimeter Defenses.  +1 Point if all turrets destroyed.  Add 1 pair of turrets (see above track) along the defenders home edge.
   Option B: Crusader, Elemental Engineer Scouts. -1 Point (cost of elementals if player does not have them).  The Crusader player can reveal the nearest unrevealed Cul-du-sac each turn after finishing their movement.

Map: Use the valley map, placing 2 cul-du-sac tokens facing the road for each enemy unit.
The enemy force is 50% of the player force.  All forces deploy in the Cul-du-sacs lining the valley, waiting to fire on the first unit moving into line of sight.  When revealed, they may torso twist and make all weapon attacks immediately if within one hex (using the hidden unit rules); if 2 or more hexes away when revealed they can not torso twist and fire using a +2 snapshot modifier (plus partial movement modifier if mid movement).  The buildings blocking LOS are light civilian housing structures, level 2 buildings with 15 CF each and provide vision only through 1 hexside (the cul-du-sac entrance)—destroying the building reveals any unit inside it.  Unlike normal buildings, entering and exiting a cul-du-sac from its open hexside does not count as moving into/out of a building.

   Objectives (Global): Exit the defender's map edge by turn 10 with all forces (+1 Point).

Sample Opfor, all 4/5.  J Edgar Flamer, AC/2 Bulldog, Condor Davion, LRM Flatbed Truck, Flea-16, Trebuchet 7k, Vindicator, Hunchback 4H. (5357 BV), + 4 SRM foot infantry.  All units start hidden in the Cul-Du-Sacs.  (With this composition of 12 units, 24 Cul-du-Sac tokens would be placed.)

[DevianID]

For the Cul-du-sac mission, we got a new player! Yay for full star of 5 players!  My planned OPfor was 5565 BV, which was about 54%--a bit higher then my 50% target.  With the new player in the Vulture B, the teams BV went from 10.2k to 13,253, so I gave the enemy units +1 gunnery skill for +20% BV, which made the total comparrison 50.39%!  Perfect!

The mission was to break through the suburbs into the capital city proper, requiring all forces to exit the defenders map by turn 10.  There were 24 buildings (15 cf) hiding enemy forces along the road the players were forced to stay within 3 hexes of.  Every other building had some unit hidden in, with the goal to slow the Jade Falcon advance.  The players collectively decided to load up on the crusader option of using elemental engineers to detect the hidden units; no one wanted to go after some turrets for a Warden bonus, as the turrets can be pretty nasty and would make getting off the board harder.

The mission being tricky with all the hidden units, turn 1 and 2 saw the players taking it easy, revealing the close buildings with elementals and destroying far away buildings to root out hiding enemies.  The Turkina squarely smacked a revealed Flea and clipped a leg, but didnt destroy or cripple it.

Turn 3-4 saw the Locust pilot plot out an escape route that didnt expose himself to any point blank ambushes, and while he knocked down 4-6 buildings on the way out, by turn 5 he fled the table.  This was a bit too early he realized later, as ALL friendly forces need to make it off, and the other players ran into trouble later.  As for the rest of turn 3-4, the Turkina got a bit greedy and selected a second mech to duel, a revealed Trebuchet K, before finishing off the Flea.  The Treb got knocked down, but the Flea was standing and the Treb would stand again next turn no problem.  With no mech targets not in a duel, the Uller, Black Hawk, and Vulture attacked the vehicles--the uller finished off the Bulldog the Vulture crippled, and the Black Hawk killed the LRM truck.

Turn 5-6, the Uller lagged behind to get shots on the Hovercraft, and the Nova pegged the other.  Both hovercraft took shots from a few players, and both died to motive immobilization.  In retaliation, the Trebuchet had a clear shot on the Uller, who forget the Treb wasnt honor bound/locked into having to shoot the Turkina!  He took severe damage from the PPC toting Trebuchet, with a single point of structure left in the torso and a handful of armor points left in every other location combined.  Thankfully he didnt fall; I think he had to use his 1 edge to reroll the 2 crits on the leg I got.  The Vulture ranged ahead of the Turkina and Uller, and tangled with a revealed hunchback.  The good news is that the massive number of SRMs from the 2 streak launchers, along with all the medium pulse lasers, managed 3 head hits and a 4 pilot damage from the knock down!  The hunchback only got a single snapshot off before getting KOd, and sleeping through the rest of the battle (plus being crippled with 4 pilot hits).  Infantry from the buildings came out starting from this turn, and showed themselves to be true terrors as the Clan mechs dont have any city fighting configs yet in 3049.  The combined SRM fire put some decent damage on the leading Vulture.

Turn 7-8, the Turkina now had to move max every turn to make it off the board on turn 10, as the stalling to clear up the enemy forces backfired when the mechs didnt die.  With no choice, the Turkina had to present back shots to the Flea (though it was too slow with only 1 leg to capitalize), but more importantly the Trebuchet.  The Foot SRM infantry also had point blank shots.  The damage was enough to get a TAC even with edge, causing 2 crits to the engine on the CT.  Then, the PPC and AC5 combined to punch though the torso and get 1 crit--lower 6 LRM ammo.  This would kill the Turkina, but the player forgot to track ammo; being the generous sort, I allowed a 1 in 4 chance to see which ammo bin was empty from all the LRM shots taken this game, and on a roll of a 1 the Turkina would have the empty bin hit.  Roll--1!  So the Turkina isnt dead to engine crits!  Elsewhere the Nova was busy killing infantry the HARD way, dealing 1 point of damage with each ER Medium laser.  The Uller, taking potshots when available but now in 100% survival mode, managed to kill 4 troopers, while the Nova got 1 squad down.  The Vulture went forward again, this time dealing with the last hidden mech, the Vindicator.  The vindy got some internal damage on the Vulture's arm, and took a truckload of missile damage, but the firepower from the Vulture was too spread out to deal any significant hits.

Turn 9-10, with crunch mode being real, the Turkina flipping arms knocked over the Trebuchet with a leg getting destroyed, but it wasnt enough to cripple it--fortunately the mech failed to stand both turns and thus didnt get any more shots.  The Nova killed another infantry squad, and the nova and uller did some damage to the final infantry squad near the exit.  The goal was to take as much firepower off the table as possible for the Turkina, who needed every hex of movement possible and couldnt risk a fall due to 20 damage.  The Vulture paused to cripple the Vindicator with another withering barrage of missiles, and didnt lose any other internal structure to the return PPCs.  The last shot was from the damaged infantry looking for a lucky hit to stall the Turkina, but fortunately the last srms I had didnt get any lucky damage.

At the end of the game, the Uller needed to spend 1 honor to repair the structure, as the player didnt want to risk bringing the light mech to the next fight with existing damage.  The Locust was fine--too fine--as it made it off the board so early.  The Vulture spent 1 to repair armor, but let the 4 internal arm damage stay.  The Turkina took a head hit, multiple internal hits, and armor damage, requiring 4 honor to repair (a real bleeder of a mission)!  Challenging the second mech prevented anyone else from shooting it with their better point blank shooting, so the mission time limit combined with the over extension hurt.  The TAC hit from the infantry to get 2 engines and a head hit was already enough to force a 4 honor repair, thus in the end because I allowed a chance for the LRM bin to be the empty bin the Trebuchet didnt get the ammo when I got all those rear shots.  If the ammo had been full though, the 2 pilot hits from the ammo explosion ALONE would have made for a much more expensive bit of healing.

Next mission is the big showdown with Van Strang's force.  The delaying actions the enemy fought with first turrets and then hidden units has allowed night to fall.  Worse, a storm has brewed, making for truly miserable conditions.  The Jade Falcons are pushed by the Khan at flank speed into the capital, looking for a swift victory, BUT the enemy has foreseen the Falcons plan, and maneuvered into the Falcons rear thanks to the cover provided by the storm.  A sensor equipped aerofighter detected the enemy regiment MOMENTS before they launched a surprise attack on the Falcon's rear, giving the Falcons a scant few moments to form a battle line and defend their flank.

Track: Thunderstruck
   Track Cost: 0 (due to refund from multiple weather/light effects)
With the ring of defenses and ambushes doing the job of slowing the Turkina Keshik's advance, night falls as the Jade Falcon forces make their way to the enemies imperial palace.  A foreboding thunderstorm also begins, further obscuring the enemy movements.  The enemy, wary of the clan's superior technology, has hid his forces and maneuvered them towards the clans rear to execute a surprise attack, which the clan are moving at flank speed into on orders from the Khan.
   Option (All): Strict Honor, +1 point.  Show the barbarians how a true warrior fights!
   Option A: Warden Elemental Swarm: -1 point (the cost of elementals if the player does not have them).  Unbreakable defensive tactics cause the enemy to hesitate, allowing hidden elementals the opportunity to swarm their target like Piranhas.  Any time you make a successful piloting skill roll for taking 20+ damage in a turn, any units not involved in an honor duel that dealt part of the 20+ damage get 1 swarm attack from elementals made against them in the physical attack phase.  Only 1 successful swarm attack can be made with this ability in the mission, and once the swarm ends or is shaken off, the elementals go back into hiding (do not place them on the table).
   Option B: Crusader flank speed: -1 point.  Crusader mechs with this option can start the game 10 hexes from their board edge, and receive +2 initiative on turn 1.  +1 Point if all Mech forces are defeated by turn 10.
Deployment: The Clan forces start the game deployed within 3 from their board edge, or 10 hexes from their board edge if using optional 'Crusader Flank speed', instead of walking onto the board normally.  The enemy, who were discovered moments before finishing their rear attack, pick one long map edge and move everything on from that long edge (their home edge is still the short edge opposite the jade falcons).
Lightning storm: at the end of every turn roll a d6.  On a 6, one random unit on the table is hit as if struck in the front by a PPC (10 damage).  Lightning Storm includes the moderate rainfall (+1 to weapon attacks, clear hexes are +1 piloting skill/muddy) and moderate wind (+1 to missile attacks).  In addition, the game is played with the Night Fighting rules (no moon: +3 to weapon attacks and +1 to piloting rolls if your searchlight is off/destroyed) as the enemy forces and storm delayed the attacking Jade Falcons long enough to lose daylight, and the storm further darkened the skies.
   Objective (individual): Destroy the Van Strangs!  +1 point any warrior who destroys a mech with the command mech quirk or is otherwise marked.  1 such mech should be placed per 2 players if not enough mechs with the command mech type quirk are generated.
   Objective (Global): Overwhelming Victory! Destroy 100% of the enemy before they destroy 50% of the player forces.  +1 point.
        Objective (individual): Honor kills.  +1 point for 50-145 tons of mechs destroyed, +2 for 150-245 tons, ect.  Players must hold the field to gain this bonus.

   Enemy forces should equal 100% of the clan forces, using veteran (3/ 4 skill) pilots.  The storm prevents infantry from deploying.
Sample 13k Force: 2 Scorpion Tanks, Plainsman Hovertank, LRM Partisan Tank, Commando 2B, Cicada 2B, Blackjack 1, Enforcer-4R, Enforcer-4R, Command mechs Highlander 733P, Phoenix Hawk 1, Mongoose 67.  13,683 BV.

[DevianID]

AAR for Thunderstruck chaos campaign mission, 5/10/22 (figured I needed to start dating these for reference as my chicken scratch notes at the table dont always hold up so well)

Going into the mission, the Vulture B and Locust iic took warden options, while the Turkina player (piloting a Black Lanner D for this mission), Nova, and Uller players all took the crusader option to start further up the table with an initiative bonus on turn 1.

Unfortunately I rolled pretty hot on initiative this game, and the command bonus from the Van Strang command mechs only furthered the good rolls.
Turn 1, the locust pushed up to one side with his bad initiative, inviting me to ambush him when my forces moved.  The rest of the players sallied out, getting decent bonuses but trying to stay mostly central.  Going for back shots on that locust iic, one enforcer slipped, and the pheonix hawk also skidded, but skidded into terrain.  Before resolving all the fall/skid damage, I got a center torso crit, and 2 gyros put the phoenix hawk down on the movement portion of turn 1!  And these guys were veteran pilots too, but snake eyes are snake eyes.  Elsewhere, the second enforcer did manage his run to get rear shots on the locust, the highlander walked up to kick, and the commando made an oblique run to also kick.  The tanks took firing positions, and shots started flying.  The Locust iic entered a duel with the commando, the Black Lanner star commander got greedy and marked both an enforcer and highlander, the Vulture marked the blackjack, and the nova marked the skidded enforcer.  Finally, the Uller marked the mongoose.  Shots exchanged saw many search lights get knocked out, with the Uller and the Black Lanner keeping their lights, though the Nova may have its light taken out later.  Damage overall was light, as the Nova jumped forward in a way to draw some of the fire off the locust, and the locust with its +4 TMM didnt even take 20 damage despite point blank.  The main culprit was the +1 rain and +1 wind making lots of the OPFOR missile attacks bad--the scary 4xLRM15 partisan maybe did 40 damage in 6 turns.  The lightning triggered on a roll of a 6, and dealt 10 damage to an Opfor Mech, the highlander I think.
In physicals, the Locust's luck almost ran out.  The highlander needed an 8 to kick, and the player had to burn edge to force a reroll, as my first attack hit.  19 damage would have killed the Locust's leg all at once!

Round 2, the players backed up as they could, but the Uller went down a closed off alley which would put it in danger later.  With the Mongoose gone after the Vulture, the Uller put an ac/10 into a Scorpion.  Fortunately, with no lights to see by, many of my mechs failed PSRs for moving recklessly in the dark, as the loss of the searchlights already started showing.  With half my mechs on the ground on turn 2, not much fire was exchanged.  The Vulture was the lowest initiative, which got repeated turn after turn, so the Cicada, enforcer and Mongoose closed the distance and hounded the vulture every turn for the rest of the game.  The Vulture player was in a duel with the black jack, so while the other mechs were hounding him he kept his honor and just let them get unanswered shots.  I clustered everything on the left arm and right leg somehow, and got a foot crit which slowed the vulture down.  The pilot did make the PSR for 20+ damage, which triggered their Warden Elemental support.  The cicada got attacked by hiding elementals, and rolled to hit with a swarm attack and hit!  For the players counter, with many searchlights knocked out, the damage turned to a trickle, the +3 night penalty really slowing things down.  I believe the Lanner, with its functioning light, drew some fire and lost its light turn 2 or 3.  Round 2 the lightning triggered AGAIN, 2 in a row, and struck the Vulture I think in the arm.

Round 3, the Vulture was forced to move first and tried to make a slow fighting retreat.  The cicada, mongoose, and enforcer followed.  The Locust iic moved up, but failed their PSR for moving recklessly and fell with an incomplete movement.  This turned the attention of the blackjack, tanks, Highlander, second enforcer, and commando.  Many got adjacent for that -2 adjacent bonus.  The Uller, who was backed into the alley in the previous turn, came out 2 hexes from the fallen Locust, taking partial cover on the terrain in the center of the traffic circle.  For shooting, the Locust took a beating but the partial movement mod before the fall was enough, when combined with all the night/weather effects, see him live through the weapons and physicals phase, armless and with critical leg damage.  With no arm to prop and shoot, and with the PSR to stand with the no arms quirk and no leg being impossible, the mech was abandoned and a mission kill.  The pilot's honor was intact, as it was impossible to continue fighting, making the surrender acceptable, and since the mech wasnt cored out he didnt even have to replace his defeated machine.  As for the Elementals, with the Blackjack not in his face attacking his rear, the Vulture doubled up with the swarming elementals to knock the cicada down, nearly crippling it.  It too, with the no arms quirk, had enough damage that it couldnt continue fighting as was removed, giving the Mad Dog/Vulture first blood for the player forces.

Round 4, the Vulture, losing initiative again, put his back to a level 5 building and prepared for the assaults.  The mongoose took position on his left side, and the Enforcer (marked in a Duel with the Black Lanner who greedily declared 2 mechs at once) took position on his right side.  The hover tank floated in, using its 9 MP cruise to get short range shots on something every turn with no skid issues.  The vulture saw his left arm savaged, and his right leg had 10 points left, just enough that any kick from the enforce would cleave it.  The blackjack took the opportunity to close on the vulture as well, going for a kill.  The highlander fell moving into optimal range, and the accumulated damage saw the rt arm get knocked off, so no proping and shooting.  The Highlander spent half the game on the ground lol.  The Uller, still working on getting out of the bind from turn 2 when it went down a dead end ally, moved back and forth to keep a TMM, while turning to face the enemy--i believe he finished off the scorpion he damaged the previous turn.  The mongoose was out of line of sight, and the Uller didnt move to engage his honor duel target this turn, so he earned a Dezegra point.  The Nova managed to get a line on the second enforcer this turn, and finally dropped his duel target.  The Blackjack, the Vulture's target, also dropped to the accumulated medium pulse and missile fire.  In melee, the Enforcer missed his mech toppling kick, sparing the vulture this turn.  The Mongoose didnt miss, and got started on chopping down the Vultures left leg too.

Round 5, The Nova took position on the LRM partisan, killing it; the Uller landed an Ultra to kill the commando's CT weakened by the earlier Locust iiCs small lasers (and earned a 2nd dezegra point for not engaging the Mongoose), and the Black Lanner continued to tapdance with the highlander at long range and send a streak6 at the Enforcer as honor demanded to keep engaging both units.  The Vulture, slowed and stuck fighting with his weakened back to a building, again had to weather the Mongoose on his left and Enforcer on his right.  Since he didnt have an honor target, he took the opportunity to break honor entirely and try and save his leg from the enforcer.  Since the black lanner was only ineffectively tossing a streak at the enforcer while focusing on the real prize of the highlander, there was no chance the Black Lanner would help save the Vulture from the enforcer.  SO he put everything into the Enforcer, causing enough for a knockdown, keeping his leg safe for 1 more turn.  The Mongoose finished chopping the left leg armor and started getting internals there though, but somehow the Vulture stayed strong.

Round 6, the Uller finally moved up to engage the Mongoose, and took it out with no time (or Dezegra points) to spare.  The Black Lanner stripped the PPC off the Highlander, the Nova moved to shoot the other Scorpion tank and dropped it.  The Highlander did some more flopping and standing, but still put a PPC shot on the Black Lanner before losing the main gun.  The Vulture was still in a death dance with the Enforcer, as the Enforcer stood and once again was threatening the Right Leg with a 10 point deathblow.  The uller had taken some scattered hits throughout, and the Plainsman hovertank almost put him out with critical damage, but he lived.  The Vulture took 2 crits to his right torso, destroying both the SRM streak launchers, and didnt knock down the Enforcer with shooting damage--a potential leg killing kick was incoming.  The enforcer missed the kick, then fell, but was once again still alive.  The Mech started dumping ammo on the now useless streak 6 bin.

Round 7, the initiative was seized with a good roll, and the Vulture finally put the Enforcer down.  The Plainsman maneuvered behind the Vulture, and with the 3 SRM launchers I scored a ridiculous number of hits, which took a lower leg actuator, and then I got a silly 8 confirmed crits to the right torso from 2 point SRM damage, a 12, 11, 10, and 8.  With the torso crits taken the previous round that knocked out the streak launchers, I fulled critted out the entire right torso, then transferred a few crits to the center torso and got the engine.  Worse, since the ammo was being dumped, the ammo was still valid to explode this turn, so the pilot took 2 head hits from the ammo explosion.  With the second mech destroyed, the Uller, who had been in survival mode since turn 2, simply moved behind a level 2 wall to ensure more than 50% of the player force survived.  The Plainsman took a parting shot from the Uller, not killing it, but damaging it.  The real action was with the Nova and Black Lanner with the Highlander.  Disgruntled with the Black Lanner declaring 2 mechs, but only engaging 1 (which almost cost the Vulture his life every time that Enforcer went for a 10 point kick), the Nova broke honor and alpha striked with all 12 lasers to try and kill the Highlander out from the Black Lanner.  The maneuver failed, as the Highlander had been only damaged significantly in both arms, and while 9 lasers hit out of 12 hit the highlander was still standing.  The Black Lanner then fired her 6 er mediums, and these traveled from the destroyed right arm, to the destroyed rt torso, and into the center torso to finish off the Highlander that the Nova had just savaged with 63 laser damage.

With only the 1 plainsman hover tank, I was prepared to call it, but rolled for lighting at the end of the turn 7.  A roll of 6!  Oh boy, 3 player mechs with damage, 1 hover tank... A killing blow to the uller could turn this to a pyrrhic victory... I numbered each unit clockwise, and rolled a 2, indicating a hit on the Hovertank which got damaged earlier!  This 10 lightning killed the hovertank, ending the night with a literal curse from the gods as the vulture's killer suffered divine retribution!

At the end of the mission, the Vulture ended up with 3 mech kills, so he earned the MVP xp for 2 weeks in a row.  His damage was significant, so his chaos campaign total is 0 after repairs.  The Uller and Locust IIC, after spending many weeks building honor in light mechs, both finally have the points necessary to upgrade their rides after losing their assault mechs in week 1.  The Turkina/Black Lanner/Fire falcon player had a butchers bill in repairs on multiple mechs to pay off, so is starting the next mission pack a bit in the red but with multiple mechs to choose from.  The Nova player was previously in the red from buying the pilot skill jumping jack, but that skill has paid off way more then its cost at this point--a head hit is still in need of healing though.

This mission was brutal; the falls and skids did a bunch of damage to the Opfor and even killed one of my mechs on a skid, the phawk!  The Uller player commented that without that luck, with all the times I won initiative I probably would have cleaned up with the Phoenix hawk stalking around and ganging up on the weakened clan machines.

With the final campaign mission a success as the players kept 50%+ alive while killing 100% of the enemy mechs, the players dont need to play the 4th mission, hot pockets, to clean up the Van Strang forces they missed in any of the earlier missions.  This means we advance to 3050, and begin wave 1, the invasion of the inner sphere!  Of note, all the City Fighter configs (usually S, sometimes C, depending on the machine/lore) are now available in the timeline, using lessons learned in the periphery campaigns.  The next significant time the Omni's get new configs is during/after Tukayyid in 3052, but the 3050 city fighting machines are some of the best configs the clans get, especially for whats to come!

The Turkina Keshik cant rest easy though, as their first deployment into the Lyran portion of the Federated Commonwealth is a doozy.

[DevianID]

Mission tentative for 5/17/2022.

New Option: Aerofighter support from the Battlefield Support Point section of the Battlemech Manual.  The Turkina Keshik has 45 mechs, 15 units of elementals, and 30 aerospace fighters.  Purchased like Elemental Support, aerofighter support comes in light and heavy variety.  BSP costs are 1 to 1 honor point, but you get them once every game after purchased unless the mission/weather disallows them.  Clan players can purchase the following BSP air support, up to 10 total BSPs per player maximum:
    Light Strike: To hit, 5, damage, 2x5, cost, 2, BV~80
    Heavy Strike: To hit, 6, damage, 4x5, cost, 3, BV~120
Example:  A player purchases 2 heavy strikes to soften up enemies.  This costs 6.  Each game, they can use one or both strikes a single time in the players weapon attack phase (thus they cant be used in the movement phase on a 'sieze the initiative').  The to-hit is 6, and it ignores all modifiers.  On a success, on a 1-4 the target is hit in the front, on a 5-6 the target is hit in the rear.  Each strike does 4 groups of 5 damage, rolled normally.
Owning either air support will make certain warden or crusader options free, as the player already has the aid of air cover.  Like all Turkina Keshik units, these forces can not be used to attack any unit locked in an honor duel with a mech, even the players own honor duel target (be sure to use them before declaring your duels!).  Kills will count towards the owning player, if applicable.

Wave 1, Turkina Keshik, world: Bone Norman.

Track 1: Bone Norman, "shaky start".  The Turkina Keshik drops directly onto the palace of the planetary governor, seeking to defeat the planets leadership in a single quick strike.  Unlike most worlds however, the orbital satellites of Bone Norman are advanced enough to detect the incoming Jade Falcons and rally a counter-attack, turning the Falcon's decapitating strike into a defensive delaying action as the mercenary regiment and militia forces seek to defeat the falcon vanguard before the falcons can reinforce.
Track Cost: 0
Option (All): Strict Honor, +1 point.  "It is not a question of IF we win.  It is a question of HOW we win, Quaff?"
Option: Warden, Eye in the sky.  Your unit gets +1 long range and +1 run movement from supporting clan aerospace assets.  -1 point unless you bought aero fighter support.
Option: Crusader, Let them see!  1 unit/turn gains +1 long range and +1 run movement from the enemies advanced satellite spotting.  +1 point.
Map/Special Rules: The battles take place on the plains before the Redstone palace, with its open parks and pathways, surrounded by forests and light urban communities.  The Jade Falcon forces must deploy via combat drop.
Objective (Global):  Destroy the palace guards infantry, and then survive with all units until turn 10 (+1 point).
Forces: deployed on the Palace grounds are a regular militia vehicle lance and the elite but ceremonial infantry of the palace guard, total BV of 50% player force.  On turn 5, an additional 100% of the player force of the 1st Grave Walkers mercenaries (regular) arrives from behind the palace.

  Sample Opfor based on 12k Jade Falcon force: 4 Ceremonial Guard foot infantry platoons (2/3), Swiftwind ICE Cargo, AC/2 Vedette, AC/2 Vedette, Plainsman Hovertank, Shrek AC Carrier, Axel Tank, Von Luckner Tank, Behemoth (Flamer).  Turn 5, Hornet 151, Ostscout 7J, Hermes 1A, Cicada 3C, Whitworth 1S, Vindicator 1X, Phoenix Hawk 1K, Quickdraw 5A, Warhammer 6K, Cyclops 10Z, Marauder 3M, Banshee 3MC.  Notes: the Swiftwind, Ostscout, and Phoenix Hawk have improved communications, thus get +1 run and +1 long range from the advanced satellite network.  The Cyclops company commander has an advanced tactics suite, so provides the enemy force +2 initiative.  Second in command in the Phoenix hawk and Marauder provide a +1 initiative for the enemy force if the Cyclops is destroyed.

Sample Clan Mechs: 3/4 Mad Dog B 3015, (DD 2600), 3/4 Timberwolf S 3250, 3/4 Nova S 2714, 3/4 Black Lanner D 2388, (C 3330), 2/4 Turkina C 4309.  IE, if Clan BV is ~15.5k this will put the generated 12k force into 3/4 veterancy.

[DevianID]

5/25 Bone Norman Track 1.  We had a week off, and were down 1 player, so the BV was mostly balanced and the IS forces only got 1 pilot upgrade to keep things costed.  3 players went for the crusader option for more honor, giving the Cyclops, Banshee, and Cicada 1 extra run MP and range.

Only 1 scatter for orbital deployment, which fortunately didnt result in the vulture scattering off the board on 2d6.

Turns 1-3, before the mechs started coming on, were pretty intense.  The heavy and assault tanks pushed forward, landing heavy damage on the Vulture turns 1 and 2, and the final straw was the Plainsman putting 2 SRM6s in the Vultures back on turn 3, critting the gyro, burning the edge reroll, and all told leaving the mech with 4 internal structure in the CT and all other locations mostly ok.  This put the entire team in crisis mode, as losing a mech means the global objective for 1 honor point is in jeopardy.

The mechs pooled their shots, killing the Behemoth to a 8 side location hit of engine, crippling the Axel and stunning 2 times it so it fled off the board unable to shoot, and stunning the Von Luckner 2 times and burning through it's side location for the kill.  The 8 side TAC on the vehicles was clutch in getting stunned results this game, stopping shots thanks to Forcing the Initiative and Overrun unit specialization to act before the tanks.  One of the AC2 vedettes went down as well, plus 1 of the infantry units.  The Plainsman died to the Timberwolf's pulse lasers in the rear.  The swiftwind, ac2 vedette, and ac/5 schrek stayed alive the rest of the game, doing plinking damage, and the focus on panic firing at anything getting too close to the wounded Vulture saw the team ignore the infantry, killing one turn 6 and going for the objective turn 10, but leaving 1 base of infantry alive with 8 soldiers left as all 4 SRM infernos needed 10s to kill, and all 4 missed.

Turn 3-5 the mechs came in.  By turn 5 all the attacking mechs were on the table and running up the middle-left.  The Cicada and Phawk, with the bonus speed, beelined towards the Vulture/Mad Dog.  The triple pulse lasers on the Vulture put the Cicada in forced withdraw with an Overrun, so the Cicada was forced to flee without shooting, and the 2/4 Black Lanner knocked around the Phawk but didnt put anything serious onto it yet.  The 3/4 Black Lanner with +1 initiative chased the Hornet off the board with crippling damage.  The Twolf knocked out an infantry base, and scattered some damage on the Ostscout.

Turn 6-7, Vulture started moving towards the right, as the mechs were all running up the left flank towards him.  The Phoenix Hawk got a leg knocked off, so wasnt able to get shots on the Vulture as it was facing the wrong way after its failed stand attempt.  The 2/4 Black Lanner then knocked down the Quickdraw the next turn, delaying it from making it up the field.  The Black Lanner tanked the Ostscout and Hermes kicking it, and the Marauder was barreling towards it as well.  The 3/4 Black Lanner, on the other hand, was using his movement to circle around behind the enemy, with the intention of drawing the enemy back towards him.  His plan worked thanks to his bad initiative rolls and over run always ensuring a mech that had moved was in short range.  The Cyclops, Banshee, Quickdraw that got knocked down, and Whitworth all got occupied by him, though the Vindicator Warhammer and Marauder escaped his delaying action.

Turn 8, the Hermes went point blank to the Vulture to potentially finish it off, but whiffed.  The response saw 3 medium pulse lasers on the Vulture roll 2 box cars and deal 14 points to the speedy mechs head, removing the threat.  The Vulture also put some fire into the Ac/2 Vedette and Schrek, as the unanswered plink damage was starting to sting, but hitting front armor yielded no critical motive rolls.  The Lanner circled back to finish off the crippled Phawk with 3 out of 7 weapons, taking the chance to cool down, as the heat had gotten up to 13 thanks to the Hermes flamer from last turn  The phawk, who knocked himself unconscious trying to stand, wasnt cored but the Lanner had a crit to the gyro and removed a torso.  Needing 13s to stand and in forced withdraw but unable to move at least 1 hex to the board edge, the mech shut down.  Since the 2/4 lanner broke right to deal with the phawk, the Marauder, Warhammer, and Vindicator focused on the twolf who was guarding the left to stop mechs closing on the vulture.  The Twolf did 3 crits to the left torso, and hit 3/3 heat sinks, leaving the ammo.  The Marauder M is just the best.  On the bottom of the Map, the 3/4 Black Lanner evasion tanking 4 mechs, keeping them at short range to him instead of moving up to get shots on the Vulture, finally saw the veteran Cyclops land a hit with the AC/20.  Even with edge, the AC/20 hit, and the Lanner fell.  The banshee, who was in base, missed the follow up kick on the prone Lanner, so fortunately he survived with no crippling damage.

Turn 9, the Timberwolf landed the 4th crit to the exposed left torso on the Marauder, which still had oodles of armor everywhere else but 1 arm.  With only the ammo left, the Marauder went down.  In response, the combined fire from the Marauder, Warhammer, and Vindicator saw one of the 10 point PPCs get a head shot!  The rest of the damage scattered around.  The Twolf pilot had used his edge forcing a reroll on the Opfor initiative on turn 4 to allow for Overrun fire to keep the Vulture alive, so was forced to accept his fate to the toss of the dice.  I rolled 1 crit, and fortunately only got a 6 for lower life support.  The pilot didnt fall asleep on snake eyes, but with 2 structure left and the SRM6 on the Warhammer, the player was understandably worried.  Elsewhere, the Vulture put a second round of fire into the Vedette and Schrek, hoping to whittle down the plinking fire, but like before attacking tanks on front armor is tough, and he couldnt move forward with only 4 center torso structure left.  The 3/4 Lanner that fell used masc and ran 11 away, risking rear shots but able to get that +4 mod thanks to 14 MASC movement countering the need to stand.  The Banshee had 2 short range shots with PPC and AC, but didnt stick anything.

Turn 10, the Ostscout finally got into base, tossing a medium laser and 2 4 damage punch attacks into the Vulture.  2 of the 3 attacks hit, but neither hit CT, so the mech lived.  With that sorted, the 3/4 Lanner on the bottom of the map no longer needed to evasion tank, and won init, so maneuvered into the rear of the Cyclops hoping to alpha strike the commander off the table before next mission.  Sadly the plan failed, and the +2 initiative veteran commander will be back next week.  On the top of the map, the 2/4 lanner put damage into 1 of the 2 infantry squads left, and the Vulture brought the other to the brink with only 2 models left.  The twolf was scared of a head hit, but was the only unit left to kill both infantry units for the mission objective.  The large pulse secondary target killed the infantry with 2 troopers left, but the twolf took a conservative move 4 away from the infantry in cover to ensure the many 2 damage infantry attacks didnt kill his pilot.  Needing 10s for the inferno srms proved too much, and the infantry survived with 8 troopers left.  (8 killed by the Vultures LRM20, 9 killed by the 2/4 Lanner's turn 10 alpha strike, and 3 from 1 of the twolfs pulse laser, on a 28 man rifle platoon.)  Even with a 3 jump into woods, the Warhammer still hit several times, but the SRMs didnt find the twolfs head, and the pilot didnt get knocked down from the kick.

So the butchers bill was high, with no clan mechs defeated but the palace infantry still alive.  The players still did great though, outnumbered in BV by 50%.  My survivors for next battle:  Vedette AC/2, Schrek AC/5, Oscscout, Whitworth, Vindicator, Quickdraw, Warhammer, Cyclops, Banshee.  The Swiftwind evacs with the palace guard, it had no weapons and was just used to ferry infantry around.  Total survivor BV=9500 to draw from.

[DevianID]

Next Mission, tentatively June 1.  Bone-Norman 2, 'Breakout'.  Following Track 1 'Shaky Start', Track 2 sees the Turkina Keshik forward elements getting swamped by mercenaries and militia forces.  The Opfor is trying to destroy the Elite clan forward elements in the Turkina Keshik before the regular falcon forces arrive, which will let them secure a firebase inside the Redstone Place to repel the invaders.  The Clan force, now encircled with enemies arrived from the rear palace staging area, must break the enemy encirclement and hold the enemy in the open positions on the palace plains until reinforcements can scatter them.  The players have a brief reprieve before the encircling forces arrive (IE redeploy the mechs), but can not repair any damage incurred from the last battle--backup undamaged mechs will be important in this battle, as the arriving force is fresh.

Track Cost: 0
Option (All): Strict Honor, +1 point.  "It is not a question of IF we win.  It is a question of HOW we win, Quaff?"
Option: Warden "Regroup and hold!", player gets honor for each 2 other surviving clan mech (+1 for 2, +2 for 4)
Option: Crusader "Strike them down!", player tracks mechs for honor kills (+1 for 50-145, +2 for 150-245, ect)
Map/Special Rules: The fighting is taking place on the same Redstone palace grounds
Objective (group): 'Wait for reinforcements' +1 point.  Survive until turn 10 with 50% or more clan forces
Objective (group): 'Breakthrough  encirclement' +1 point.  Destroy 100% of the Grave Walker mercenaries starting on the mid-board.
Forces: 50% of the players force is in Grave Walker mercenary mechs deployed in the center of the map, using damaged (but not crippled) machines from track 1 as available.  On turn 3, 100% of the Jade Falcon forces, split between militia tanks/infantry and mercenary mechs, move on from the Jade Falcon board edge.  The Jade Falcon mechs can not repair damage from the last scenario (but can use fresh backup mechs).
  Sample Opfor: 6k from surviving Grave Walkers mechs from round 1 (Whitworth 1s, Vindicator 1x, Warhammer 6k, Banshee 3MC, Cyclops 10z), then Turn 3 12k in 2 Rifle Jump Platoons, 2 LRM Wheeled Platoons, 2 Hunter Light Tank (ammo), Sturmfeur SRM Heavy tank, Von Luckner, Pegasus Hover (Missile), Engineering Vehicle (AC/20), Galleon 200, Scorpion (ML); Mechs Koschei, Catapult (Jenny), Enforcer 4R, Scorpion 1N, Panther ALAG, Firestarter Mirage.

Projected Clan Force: 2/4 Black Lanner C (3885) 3/4 Kit Fox S (1771) 3/4 Nova S (2714) 3/4 Puma B/S/A (1884) 3/4 Locust iic (1452) = 11706, no opfor pilot adjustment needed.

[DevianID]

Tuesday May 31st game.  The Breakout mission was successfully completed, with some crippling damage but only one clan mech destroyed.

Turn 1-2, the Clan force advanced up the right side as fast as possible to get distance from the company of mechs and militia arriving on turn 3.  This made for a hair raising turn 2, when the clan mechs were in point blank range, but overall they got away with minor damage, mostly to the Adder.  Turn 3, when everyone arrived, the clan forces made it across to the far mapsheet, putting enough distance that my encircling forces didnt really contribute too much.  With 3 turns of trading shots, the Whitworth got focused down by the 4 Medium Pulse lasers on the Adder, the Uller was dinging the Banshee, the Black Lanner was dueling the Vindicator, the Locust iic was fighting the warhammer, and the Cyclops got ganged up on with aerospace support.  The whitworth was the first to die, giving first blood to the Adder.

Turn 4, the Black Lanner seized the initiative and acted first, knocking over the Vindicator and crippling it, and drawing the entire table forward.  It would later stand, fire a parting shot, and flee the table by turn 5.  The Cyclops also got hit by the Blackhawk and put into crippling status with a hip injury, but it would take 2 turns to flee the board so it provided the +2 initiative for 2 more turns.  The Warhammer forgot to kick the Black Hawk on turn 4, which was pretty funny as I had teased the black hawk player about getting good hits, but forgetting to kick evened out that.  The Adder moved midboard and made good use of the pulse lasers, but took some more fire due to not maximizing the evasion.  The locust focused on staying in woods, being too evasive to focus down for the time being.

Turn 5-6, with my force now clustered up and able to bring all my shots on whomever was too close, the Adder ended up moving into machine gun range to kill the 4 infantry squads.  Everything dogpiled the Adder, and I destroyed him with a few units to spare.  The Locust circled around behind the enemy while the Adder was the center of attention.  The Warhammer got crippled on 5 and walked off turn 6, the Banshee took a lucky ammo hit to the AC10 ammo, despite having tons of armor and structure left, and by 6 the cyclops and vindicator had walked off with the warhammer.  So the initial 5 mechs were all gone from the field, meaning the last mission objective was to survive till turn 10.

Turn 7, the Locust, in the circular holding pattern with woods evasion, underestimated what in-hex jump rifle infantry need to hit, so I did enough damage to get a lucky gyro hit.  The edge reroll on the Locust got burned on a CT floating crit earlier which turned into a double heatsink crit.  Thus, this crit found its way to the gyro, but the Locust iic didnt fall fortunately for him.  Elsewhere, the Uller was taking some fire on the left side of the map, as the mechs chasing the black lanner peeled off to go after the less evasive Uller.  This was the laser scorpion, the scorpion mech, panther ALAG, Kochei, firestarter, and missile pegasus.  The Pegasus died to the Uller's flank shot boxcar hit, while the Stuermfors side got an 8 floating crit from the blackhawk, into a weapon destroyed roll of 9 which was upgraded to engine destroyed since the side had no armor.  This left just the slow Von Luckner moving 1/2 from track damage with that ac/20 as my scariest tank.  The ac/20 engineering vehile got crippled by a large pulse from the Uller earlier and made its way off the map on this turn.

Turn 8-9, the Locust iic risked a run with a damaged gyro, and fell at the end of their run.  Smelling blood, I pushed everything towards the Locust and Uller, who both lost initiative too.  The Black Lanner managed to take the Koscheis left arm out and trip him, so no 65 ton kick, and the Uller took both arms off the Firestarter while the Blackhawk, who had broken honor to kill as much as possible, hit the Kochei in the front.  My shots into the Locust was mostly from the Enforcer that dealt the deathblow to the Adder, and sadly for the militia Opfor they hit the legs that still had armor, as well as blowing away the arms and torsos, leaving the mech alive.  The uller, black hawk, and locust all have low profile, which really showed its worth downgrading lots of 10 and 5 point hits into 5 and 2 point hits, and neutering my missile damage--further degraded to nothing when the AMS activated on the Black Hawk.  I didnt cause any good critical damage.

Turn 9, the Locust stood and backed up 2, now with no evasion, but most of my units that could threaten him were occupied.  So turn 10, when the locust and Uller won initiative, I mostly just tried to focus the Blackhawk as my last major target.  The Locust iic ran again back into woods for evasion, but then saved 1 MP to go prone.  I thought this was pretty smart and a great move, as you cant fall if you are already on the ground!  Since reinforcements arrive and scatter the enemy after turn 10, he didnt have to worry about needing to stand again, and the evasion from running and then being prone and at range meant he lived.  The uller likewise jumped into woods away from the main enemy force, to ensure survival.  I just had a few 12s at long range with the slowed von luckner, and the rest onto the Black Hawk who tanked the enemy fire well with low profile, making the piloting skill roll to not take any fall damage.

So in the end, the Adder player got the most honor for other surviving clan mechs besides himself, which helped as he lost his 35 ton mech and was in the hole.  The MVP was tough to decide, as only 3 enemy mechs actually died this mission with 3 players claiming 1 kill each; we decided that the Black Hawk, who broke honor to fire as effectively as possible, had the most crippling shots after the 3 way tie for mech kills, so he got the bonus XP.

With this victory and mechs repaired, the Turkina Keshik is off to the next world in their wave 1 invasion!

[DevianID]

In the aftermath of the fierce counterattack of the Grave Walkers, the Turkina Keshik held until reinforcements dropped.  With the Jade Falcon Vanguard still intact and accurate images of troop strength, the enemy forces withdraw and begin guerilla operations.  While the Grave Walkers were mauled by the falcons, the counterattack did prevent the Falcons from defeating the enemy leadership at the palace--who then organized effective resistance on the planet for years to come.  With the regular army forces having secured their landing, the Turkina Keshik is off to spearhead the next invasion.

Track 3: Here, 'Falcon Foolin'.  Unlike on Bone Norman, the enemy did not have a sophisticated satellite system and the RCT and green militia were attacked before they could mount an effective defense/counter attack.  News of the clan's strange dueling process has spread though, and inner sphere forces try and use the challenge system against the clans.
Track Cost: 1
Option (All): Strict Honor, +1 point.  "We shall not stoop to their level!"
Option: Warden "Lessons Learned" -1 point, the player can use bomb BSP attacks in addition to any purchased aerofighter support.  (a number of BSPs in bombs = to purchased support)
Option: Crusader "Amaris City was a Fluke" +1 point, can not use an urban/city fighter configuration.
Map/Special Rules: Urban street to street map layout--Cameron Valley, an abandoned city.  The enemy tanks/infantry deploys in the center, while the mech forces move on from the enemy edge.  The light enemy mechs will all issue challenges in such a way to make targeting the vehicles much harder, and will try and keep maximum distance to prevent falcon forces from effectively engaging, without breaking honor enough to cancel the duel.
Objective (All): Clear the streets of vehicles by turn 10 (+1 Point)
Objective (Individual): Honor Kills for holding the field.  +1 point for 50-145 tons of mechs destroyed, +2 points for 150-245 tons, ect.
Forces: 70% of Jade Falcon BV in green militia tanks/infantry.  25% of Jade Falcon BV in green light/medium mechs (1 per player mech, to challenge with).

Projected Falcon Force: 3/4 Timberwolf S, 3/4 Blackhawk S, 3/4 Vulture B, 3/4 Black Lanner C, 2/4 Black Lanner C, 16k BV.
5 Light/medium mechs for challenge baiting: Hornet 151, Suburbanmech, Panther ALAG, Wyvern, Vindicator (4k).  The mech forces deploy on turn 3, and all issue challenges as they move onto the board.
Green (5/6) Militia Force: 2 each of Warrior Helicopter (missile), Striker, Gladius Hovertank, Maxim hovertransport with foot rifle infantry, SRM carrier, LRM carrier, Schrek PPC, Demolisher.

Unlike normal, the tanks are arrayed in a defensive position and trying to stall for time.  They will not break formation to close distance, preferring to stay in their firelanes unless they must move to get LOS to the enemy.

The city blocks are assumed to be 50 CF/hex scattered medium buildings, level 2-4 in height, with a 2 lane highway running through the center of the city from SW to NE.  All non city blocks are 1 hex wide pavement, or the 2 hex wide highway pavement (+1 mp for vehicles on pavement, skidding rules).  Numerous underground parking garages/subways/basements under the city blocks exist, meaning buildings may have basements (dont bring a 55+ ton mech into any city block building tiles!  You might crash through the floor into the parking garage/subway and get stuck forever!).  The city is abandoned, so the militia can and will shoot buildings to collapse them on clan forces.

[DevianID]

Landing on Here, the defending green militia and regimental combat team employed a new strategy based on the limited intel of the invading clan's odd dueling style.  By deploying armor and conventional forces, and using light mechs to declare challenges once the vehicles come under fire, the pressure on the engaged vehicles will, in theory, be lessoned as the clan forces split their attention.  Cameron Valley, an abandoned city, was chosen to stage the militia's first line of defense, allowing other forces time to gather and organize a resistance.  The Turkina Keshik must roll back this defense lines in the city alleys to strike at the defense's staging grounds before they become organized and entrenched.

Track 3 on planet Here was played with 4 players, so the enemy forces got dialed back a little.  The board was a blank mapsheet with a 2 hex wide road, filled with 3 hex by 6 hex city blocks surrouned by more roads.  This made for several long straightaways and many back alleys to fight through.  The 2 Schrek and 2 LRM carriers started deployed on the straight highway, while the pairs of SRM carriers, Demolishers, Maxims, and strikers all split up to cover the alley entrances on my half of the board.  The Warrior vtols and infantry took on the job of spotters, to allow the LRM carriers opportunities to strike from outside of LOS.

The Players brought a Black Lanner C, and Vulture B, the Madcat S, and one player brought elementals instead of a mech, all deploying in the north.  The Black Lanner and Vulture used the 'Amaris City was a fluke' option for not using a city fighter, the Madcat/timberwolf S chose no bonus options as he didnt want to give up his jump jet city fighter variant and didnt have the points for air support; the player bringing elementals used air support, paying a point for a light bombing attack.

Turn 1-2, the Black Lanner and Vulture/mad dog traveled down the eastern edge alleys, while the Timberwolf headed down the center 2 hex wide highway.  The elementals started attached to the Black Lanner, and got dropped off turn 1.  However, the enemy won initiative, so I positioned my Vtols to get spotting LOS on the 0 movement modifier elementals, and a demolisher left his alley to turn the corner for ac/20 shots.  I killed 1 suit outright with an ac/20, and would have had 2 suits but the green demolisher only rolled a 6, needing 5 base +1 walk +1 small target.  I made up for it with medium range LRMs fired indirect.  Those needed 11s, but with 6 sets of LRM20s 1 hit each turn, dealing scattered damage.  On the player's side, the Elementals with their purchased fighter support bombed an LRM carrier and Schrek, crippling the LRM carrier and sending it packing.  Turn 2, the elemental player won initiative and killed the demolisher with same hex targeting.  The Black lanner scattered some firepower, but turn 2 put down both high elevation spotting Vtols despite +4 hit modifiers, as warrior's have very little armor and all nose hits were rolled.  The Timberwolf used smoke rounds turn 1, so that turn 2 the twolf had smoke cover to use.  The Vulture's medium pulse lasers killed or put into withdraw a maxim and a striker.

Turn 3-4, the enemy challenging mechs came on the field, declaring challenges to encourage a stand up fight in the open highway with the Schrecks, mechs, and flanking SRM and demolishers.  Everyone broke out of contact turn 4, so all the players started earning Dezegra points for losing sight of their duel target since the vehicles were playing dirty.  The Mad dog had to play back, as unless a player siezed the initiative, the threat of a SRM carrier coming around a corner was not a shot they wanted to risk.  The Black Lanner used a Masc move to cross from east to west alleys, to deal with the demolisher.  During this turn out of LOS, the players focused down the buildings with infantry spotters, destroying both buildings but not before the spotting LRM carrier (now just one as the other fled by now from the air strike) killed 2 more elemental suits thanks to the infantry spotters.  This put the elementals down to 2 suits, as he forgot to shield himself from the elevated spotter's LOS.  No more indirect at this point though.

Turn 5-6, the Twolf player came back into the highway and put 4 heavy smoke tiles down to cover his advance.  I lost initiative though, and promptly ran into the smoke with my mechs and schreks on my move, giving me cover they clan player wanted for himself.  This kept my core highway force alive with  high TMMs and heavy smoke.  The vulture (who couldnt regain LOS on his duel target due to hiding 1 turn too long) lost his honor end of turn 5 for not engaging in the duel for 3 turns.  On the bright side, this freed him up to kick, and he promptly seized initiative on turn 6 and kicked the Hornet mech's leg off.  The Black lanner was running back and forth pinging the Demolisher holding the east alleys, and in return in 3 turns of shooting I connected with an AC/20 to the rear on 11s, but didnt get any crits as I punched through the 7 rear CT armor.  The demolisher couldnt move, but wasnt crippled or immobile, so the Lanner after 3 turns still wasnt done with the 80 ton machine.  The elementals advanced into the center smoked area, as the Vulture was tanking the fire due to a low TMM.

Turn 7-8, the slow pace for the clans turned around.  The demolisher went down, the SRM carriers died to a siezed initiative strike so they never fired, and all my hover and strikers died due to forced withdraw motive hits on hover/wheeled penalties.  Everyone was putting down vehicles.  Only the mechs in the center + the schreks were still alive.  The Panther had by now been crippled by the twolf and was withdrawing, and the vindicator had it's leg kicked off by the vulture.  One of the schreks was in withdraw due to losing all the armor in one location, so was backing up 1 hex a turn.  Concentrated PPC fire clustered on the twolf's center torso, and the Mad dog lost it's 2 large laser left arm.  The elementals in point blank range were finally in their element, and the player used their heavy air strike to cripple the other LRM carrier which had withdrawn by this point.

Turn 9, the last 2 schreks had died/withdrawn, and the Panther and hornet both were taken out.  So turn 10, the Vulture player was given the final kill on the vulture, as this would offset the honor he lost for breaking LOS in a duel.  Most players only broke even in this fight, as damage was severe enough to cause repair costs.  The Black Lanner made out best, as the player elected not to repair the rear armor destroyed by the AC/20, only fixing the structure.  The player will have to protect the exposed rear in the next mission, but if they do they will have came out positive after that track.  The Black Lanner got the MVP, with the most vee kills including the impressive 2 vtols in 1 turn to prevent my LRM spotting shenanigans.  The players leveled up their skills, the black Lanner pilot is now 2/3 or 2/2, the Vulture is 2/4.

[DevianID]

Track 4, Planet Here, scheduled tuesday 6/14.  With the defenders rolled back from the abandoned Cameron city, the Turkina Keshik now entered Connor pass leading to the capital city.  The planet's defenders have erected a simple picket force to keep the enemy back while they rally the defenders in the city.  The Turkina Keshik must quickly decapitate the leadership organizing the city's defense after punching through the hastily erected defense line, to rout the defenders and stamp out resistance to the Jade Falcon occupation before it has begun.

Track 4: Here, 'Nathaculor, the swift blade'
Track Cost: 1
Option (All): Strict Honor, +1 point.  "We shall not stoop to their level!"
Option: Warden, 'Collapse the defense line', +1 point if all enemy forces are defeated before 'rolling' the map.
Option: Crusader, 'Race to take the head', -1 point.  If a Crusader defeats the enemy commander, instead of spending honor on this option they gain 1 honor per Crusader taking on this option.  (Example, 2 players take this option.  Player A claims the commander, and will gain 2 honor.  Player B will lose 1 honor.)
Map/Special Rules: Connor Pass, the outskirts of the capital city.  Chase Rolling Map layout, 1 map per 4 mechs (3 total maps for this scenario).  An enemy defense force is attempting picket duty outside the city.  Part 1, punch through the enemy defense line, rolling the map when able, to defeat the enemy commanders on the last map sheet.  The enemy will use 'Falcon Foolin'.
Objective (All): Destroy the Command Lance (+1 Point)
Objective (Individual): Honor Kills for holding the field.  +1 point for 50-145 tons of mechs destroyed, +2 points for 150-245 tons, ect.

Forces: 50% of the Falcon's BV deploy at the opposite end of the chase map, split between regular light/medium mech lance and vehicles/infantry.  A Veteran command lance (50% Falcon BV) is deployed on the edge of the rolling mapsheet, only revealed when the first mapsheet is finished.

Notes: The players will reveal the next map sheet in the line ('rolling' it) when either no units are on the bottom most mapsheet (thus the bottom sheet is removed and a new mapsheet is placed at the top), OR when a player moves off the edge of the top mapsheet, causing a new mapsheet to be placed for the players movement.

Expected Clan Forces: 2/3 Black Lanner C, 3/4 Black Lanner C, 3/4 Timberwolf S, 2/4 Vulture B, 3/4 Blackhawk S.  17k BV.

Picket Force: J. Edgar, Bulldog, Heavy LRM Carrier, Demolisher, 2 motorized rifle anti-mech infantry platoons, 2 Foot LRM platoons.  Griffin Sparky, Trebuchet J, Phoenix Hawk D, Wolfhound 1.  8076 BV at regular skill.

Command Lance: Veteran Thunderbolt SE, Veteran Orion V, Veteran Thug 10E, Elite (2/3) Atlas A.  8562 BV.  The Atlas A is the Commander, and gives +1 initiative while on the map.

[DevianID]

One player couldnt make it, so most of the forces got skill downgraded to match the new battlevalue.  The players had a Turkina, Timberwolf S, Black Lanner C, and Nova S.

With the chase map layout, I made a mistake not putting any turn limits on.  This caused the game to run a little long as more (and longer) map layout combined with no turn limit, as the player all decided to fully destroy the first force before encountering the second, meaning I should have run this as 2 separate battles.

As is, with the skill downgrade I only managed to score a few LRM indirect hits, some scattered medium laser hits from the Wolfhound and Sparky Griffin, and the infantry connected with a few shots in the opening act.

Turn 1-2, the Turkina player hit both ER PPCs into the left torso of the Trebuchet cross map, instantly crippling it.  This was great, but the downside was that the Trebuchet was far enough away to easily escape after 1 more round of fire turn 2.  The Timberwolf S squared up with the phoenix hawk, and the pilot now has blood stalker, so by turn 2 the hawk was on the ground floundering, but not dead, so the Twolf had to keep shooting it to not take the Bloodstalker penalty.  The Nova player has been choosing to fight without honor in the group, so was putting damage into anything and everything with those pulse lasers.  The Black Lanner seized and got a malfunction to an AC/20, limiting my return potential, and engaged the wolfhound in a duel.

Turn 3-4, the Turkina had begun work on the griffin cross map, while the Wolfhound got right up in the Black Lanners face.  The Nova helped the Black Lanner knock over the wolfhound, who positioned himself to kick the head of the Lanner otherwise.  This foreshadows events to come.  The Demolisher also got it's side burned through by 7 damage clan lasers after the Twolf killed the unconscious phoenix hawk pilot, and the long range LBX fire from the Turkina and short range machine guns from the Nova sent 1 of the 4 infantry squads into withdrawal.

Turn 5-6, the Griffin got a hole burned though its CT from PPC fire from the turkina, the Wolfhound died to the Lanner, and the Nova 1 shot the bulldog with all the pulse lasers.  This left some scattered infantry and the heavy LRM carrier the infantry had been spotting for this whole time.  With just a few things on the board, by turn 7ish the slow LRM carrier had been tracked down and eliminated.

At this point, the players reorganized and rolled the map to face the next challenge, the command lance.  With the +1 init bonus from the Atlas, I had a string of good rolls for initiative and the players were struggling with how to approach this brick of armor and weapons.  For my part, I raced forward towards a hill for firing lines, leaving turns 1-2 with no shots on the command lance maps.

Turns 3-4 got interesting.  The Orion and Thunderbolt were the first to crest the hill, with the Atlas and Thug 1 hex behind and blocked by terrain.  The Tbolt and Orion put 25+ damage on the Twolf at range with great dice rolls, causing the player to use edge to prevent a TAC hit with the AC10.  The Turkina got LOS issues, as the Turkina engaged the Tbolt on turn 3 but lost LOS on turn 4.  In return the Twolf used infernos to overheat the standard heatsink Orion, making follow up shots worse.

Turn 5-6, I continued to win initiative, and the Lanner pilot used his edge to force a reroll.  The Nova and Lanner started to encircle the flank, with the twolf holding the base of the hill and the Turkina providing long range support.  The Orion backed up 1 hex behind a hill turn 5 and lost 9 heat, while the Thug took shots on the now flanking Black Lanner.  The tbolt got shots on the twolf, thanks to winning initiative even with a forced edge reroll, pinging the twolf a bit more.  The Nova, who broke honor, got 2 turns of laser hits to the head versus the Tbolt, killing him and freeing the Turkina to shoot the atlas.

Turn 7-8, the Lanner moved behind the now cool Orion and Thug, who responded by staying still.  The combined fire stripped all the armor off the Lanner's center torso with great damage grouping, and got a head hit.  The Nova successfully pulled the Atlas, putting the Atlas in a position such that the Turkina got rear shots or the Nova did.  The Atlas gave the Turkina the rear.  The players called an air strike on the Atlas, which also hit the rear, and the Turkina rolled 2 for 2 ER PPCs to the rear, and then got an LRM hit to the rear torso as well, Coring the atlas without damaging anything else really.  The Atlas, in return, continued to rain SRMs into the enemy, this time the Nova.  The low profile plus the AMS cluster penalty shot down 2 full flights of SRMS in 2 turns, leaving only minor scattered armor damage before the Atlas died.  Finally, the Twolf jumped into the Orions rear, and ALSO clustered pulse lasers and SRMs all into the center torso, stripping the armor there (and no where else) and getting 3 chances for crits.  The player rolled 5 total crits with 3 chances, and destroyed the near full health Orion.  So I lost both a near full health Orion and Atlas in a turn.

Turn 9, with the Lanner in an honor duel with the Thug, the Lanner maneuvered up to point blank range on the Thugs right side after winning initiative.  The damage was decent, but nothing crazy to a 240+ armor Thug.  In respose, the torso twist SRMs hit the head (as the PPC minimum was too high) and the player rolled a 4 for his second pilot hit!  He burned his edge on an initiative roll earlier, so fell asleep within point blank range of the Thug!  Turn 10, the Nova AND the Timberwolf broke honor to try and knock down the thug, who was on a hill 1 hex above the sleeping Lanner... just like the Wolfhound from the first map.  I even mentioned off hand how now that the enemies are getting big damage clusters, its critical to keep edge to save the pilot.  Still, with the Twolf and Nova both unloading into the Thug, I got a gyro hit and had to make 3 total piloting skill rolls, at +4 so needing 9s, to stay standing.  Made all of them... I then needed to hit with the kick, and I did.  Then I needed to roll a 6 to hit the head for 16 damage from the Thug... SIX!  The opfor thug kicked the clanner's head clean off, killing my player and causing the first player death in the campaign.  Not what I intended for this mission, which was supposed to be pretty benign.  At this point, the Nova seized the initiative on turn 11 and finished the Thug's CT internal structure, ending the mission.

Overall, the Nova got the most kills only cause I played the Nova turn 11, ending the match by downing the crippled Thug.  The Turkina got the most kills with honor, so gets MVP.  The twolf and Nova mostly broke even with all the armor damage taken necessitating repairs costing points, and breaking honor to try and save the Lanner.  The Black Lanner player didnt have a deep stable of mechs, so instead of keeping the mechs and upgrades accumulated and using a brand new 4/5 pilot, the Player is rolling a new character, which per the Chaos campaign is a 3/4 pilot with a mech of their choice but no upgrades, and the standard starting points (2 in this campaign).

[DevianID]

With Falcon forces punching through the hastily erected defensive line, the commander of the RCT along with other key battalion leaders were defeated on Here, forcing the militia to disperse and begin guerilla operations.  The remainder of the RCT fled to the planet Somerset after the loss of command, where they suffered another crushing defeat at the hands of the Jade Falcons, and in 20 hours the Turkina Keshik had routed all major resistance that stayed on planet Here.  The Turkina Keshik loads up and turns towards their next target, Toland. 

Though the players took a casualty, the worst part of the loss was that the Black Lanner pilot who died had the jungle fighter SPA, which would have been perfect in track 5.

Game Tentative 6/21/22.

Track 5: Toland, 'Rumble in the Jungle'.  The defenders of Toland, the 2nd mech regiment of the 12th Star Guard regular mercenaries plus local militia, deployed their mech forces in defended positions in the Jungle leading to Toland City.  There they sought to use the dense terrain to resist the Clan's advance; the Turkina Keshik and supporting forces must push the enemy mechs out of the jungle into the wide open plain behind the Jungle where they are open to aerospace attack.
Track Cost: 1
Option (All): Strict Honor, +1 point.  "Hiding and Running shall not save you.  At least face your end with Honor!"
Option: Warden.  Strafe the spineless!  -1 honor point.  You may place a strafe BSP template every turn, but it must be entirely on the barrens portion of the rolling map.  These kills contribute towards your Honor kills total.
Option: Crusader.  Harry the retreat!  -1 honor point.  All fleeing mechs on the Cantor's Climb are spineless and not worthy of honor duels.  You may attack any mech on the Cantor's climb barren without honor restriction.  These kills contribute towards your trophy kills total.
Map/Special Rules: The enemy deploys in the hollows of a jungle, with their back to a stretch of barrens called 'Cantors Climb' that leads to Toland City.  Use any heavy forest map.  Jungle terrain works like standard woods, with the following changes: +1 MP to move in all jungle woods hexes, and the to-hit penalty of the woods (+1 for light, +2 for heavy) applies as a piloting skill negative as well, due to unsteady footing.  Vehicles can not operate in jungle terrain.
The enemy is wary of being flanked; the enemy is in forced withdraw any time a Jade falcon mech is in a hex row equal or behind the hex row they are in and visible to them.  When moving, they must attempt to reach a hex row in front of any Jade Falcons, and will never willingly move into the hex row of a visible Jade Falcon mech.  Use rolling maps: when the first section of jungle is clear, roll the map to a barrens map.  All enemy forces pushed to a barrens map are in forced withdraw for the remainder of the scenario.  (The intention is to have the defenders slowly withdraw from the Jungle as the Jade Falcons assault their position)
Objective (Global):  Drive the defenders out.  All enemy mechs withdraw from the jungle into the Barrens of Cantor Climb by turn 10 (+1)
Objective (Individual): Honor Kills.  Gain +1 point for 50-145 tons of destroyed mechs, +2 for 150-245 tons, ect.
Forces:  100% of the BV of the Jade Falcon force; 1 unit of foot rifle infantry per clan mech, with the rest of the BV in mechs.

Suspected Clan Forces: 3/4 Black Hawk S (2714), 2/3 Turkina C (4701), 3/4 Gladiator D (3561), 2/4 Vulture B (3517).  14.5k without the Timberwolf S (3250), who cant make it.

4 Foot Infantry Platoons, 14k of mechs in 3 lances, regular skill.  Jaegermech, Rifleman, Scorpion, Wolverine 6R; Wolverine 6D, Dragon, Hunchback P, Quickdraw; Dragon C, Marauder, Black Knight L, Goliath.  While at least 1 command mech is alive per 4 total Opfor mechs, the Opfor receives a +1 Initiative bonus.  The 3 lances deploy in 3 seperate clustered areas of the jungle, by lance, to try and support each other while having vision on all of the Jungle approach.

Note to players:  1 way to approach this mission is to attack each segment 1 at a time, trying to devastate each isolated lance.  The other way is to jump or run behind them just barely in sight so they must fall back, heading them towards the end of the map and the Cantor Climb barrens where they are in exposed positions.  With only 10 turns to clear out a mapsheet with 12 units on it, and with the enemy forced to move pretty slow due to jungle terrain, a focused effort is advised to prevent pockets of resistance developing in the jungle.

[DevianID]

So for the 'Rumble in the Jungle', the Turkina player swapped down to a Viper/Dragonfly, and the Executioner/Gladiator became a mad cat.  This was enough BV saved to downgrade the pilots to a 5 skill gunner, though the infantry stayed the same.

The map was half of the Jungle map from solaris, with 2 barrens maps after that in chase layouts.  Being a narrow/long map, the enemy deployed around the stream that ran through the jungle, providing a bit more LOS.  We played the elevation as all flatland, so no elevation to shoot over jungle, making sightlines really important.

The players settled on using the Vulture as an anvil, with the Viper and Nova jumping behind the enemy to put them in forced withdrawal.  The mad cat played middle, acting as an opportunity hunter.

Turns 1-2 saw the jumping nova and dragonfly getting into position to start pushing back the enemy mechs.  The Vulture had some failed jungle PSRs, burning edge early on.  The Vulture would continue to fall pushing though the jungle for the whole game, running to make 1-2 hexes of progress each turn.  The Nova player once again eschewed honor, shooting whatever was closest each turn.  The Madcat was fighting with honor, trying to focus down 2 mechs at once, splitting fire to keep both engaged.  The Dragonfly decided to ignore the mechs to deal with the infantry.  The Vulture initially was fighting with honor, but with the jungle blocking LOS to his duel targets, the player broke honor to attack the mechs they could see each turn.

Turn 3-4 saw the pulse lasers from the Vulture and Nova seek out the left torso of the marauder, critting the ammo and removing the Opfor's command mech.  The Vulture tried to initally make a bid for the wolverines, due to the hated clan's name, but the Vulture's LOS was so blocked the target priority became whatever was in pulse laser range.  The Mad Cat started taking the majority of the fire, as the Vulture was tripping in the woods but receiving cover, while the Mad Cat was avoiding the PSRs but standing in the open terrain.  I got a medium laser to the twolfs head.

Turn 5-6, the Twolf's splitting fire only resulted in downing 1 mech.  The vulture was all too eager to snap up the kills the Mad Cat didnt finish, earning 2 kills this way.  The Nova continued to peck at the enemy with pulse lasers, and by turn 6 all enemy units were flanked and put into forced withdraw between the jumping nova and even jumpier dragonfly.

Turn 7-8, the Mad cat decided to stay still, going for more kills and hoping the enemies in retreat would have poor shots.  Sadly, for the second game in a row, the player got a string of improbable rolls and I killed his pilot AGAIN.  This time, the Rifleman and Jaegermech falling back both flipped their arms, and with 6 shots of autocannons and 1 large laser (still in short range thanks to not being able to move very far in the jungle) I managed 3 more head shots, on top of the 1 I got earlier.  One edge forced the large laser to reroll, but that still left an AC/5 and AC/2, fully blowing out the head and putting the clan down their mad cat.  The Vulture continued to trundle forward, though now the Mad Cat in the open wasnt tanking all the fire, but the enemy was thinned out so I only hit a few more times with the retreating goliath.  Elsewhere more IS ammo from flanking shots was crit, popping more mechs.

Turn 9-10, all the mechs except the 1 Jaegermech had fled out of the jungle thanks to the flanking Viper and Nova.  There was a bit of tension as the Jaegermech might fall in the jungle, meaning he wouldnt actually move out of the jungle by turn 10.  Fortunately, the Vulture had moved far enough by this turn to get good LOS, and with 2 turns of pulse and streak missile fire the measly 6 tons of jaegermech armor didnt hold, and the 1 mech still in the jungle died at the turn 10 buzzer.  The Nova wracked up another kill, this time on the Rifleman via rear shots.  The dragonfly jumped back to wipe out the last bits of the infantry with the machine guns and lasers, plus helped put some damage on the Jaegermech.  I got some kicks in for my trouble, with 12 damage from the rifleman onto the Nova before it died, the Jaeger onto the Vulture, and the dragon got the dragonfly.  All the clan pilots stayed upright through all the kicks across the turns, so I never got to capitalize there.

At this point, both the Nova and Vulture were 1 kill off of getting 3 bonus honor, so we played turn 11 and 12 with the retreating mechs to see if they could earn a bit more honor.  The dragon managed to run off, potentially showing up next mission, but the Vulture nabbed the ammo with the first good crit roll of the night for the player against the goliath (he had just the worst time critting before this--the streaks generated tons and tons of chances, 6+ on turn 9 IIRC, but none of them converted until the final chance versus the left torso on the Goliath, hitting the 1 in 4 for the mgun ammo).  The nova took those 2 turns the Vulture was pummeling the Goliath to get 2 turns of rear shots on the Black Knight, coring out the rear center torso with a turn 13 medium range shot right at the edge of the 3rd mapsheet before the black knight ran off.

The players had some light repairs, as the mech with the lion's share of the damage just died outright (mad cat).  The Nova was awarded MVP for a pretty silly kill count combined with helping the Dragonfly put the mechs in forced withdraw.

Next mission the Mad Cat player is bringing in yet another new character, this time starting in a second line Nightstar for the mission--partially for change of pace, partially to say that the backup falcon forces are lending an assault to the Turkina Keshik.  After the final battle in wave 1 he will switch to a real omnimech, assuming I dont kill his pilot for the 3rd game in a row!

[DevianID]

Track 6: Toland, 'Conquerors Euphoria'.  With the defending mechs mostly destroyed in their failed attempt to stall the Jade Falcons in the jungle, the regular militia must try an hold Toland City while the survivors pour in and evacuate the planet.  Defeat the defenders and claim your prize!
Track Cost: 0
Option (All): Strict Honor, +1 point.  "Hiding and Running shall not save you.  At least face your end with Honor!"
Option: Warden, Fight Without Waste.  +1 point.  The clans abhor wasteful damage to the city they are trying to take.  You may not attack any structure this battle (elementals are assumed to clear the buildings of enemy infantry after the battle).
Option: Crusader, Finish off the Rabble.  +1 point if the Survivor is destroyed by turn 10.  Place one damaged survivor from Track 5 on the map, if available, in addition to all other forces--generate a single random survivor if none are available from the prior mission.  If not enough survivors made it for all players wishing to use this option, all players lock in their choice and use 2d6 to see who can claim this bonus.  For any player choosing this option who doesn't get a survivor, the player gets +1 initiative this battle from the surge of victory instead of the potential of an honor point.
Map/Special Rules:  The Jade Falcons attack from the open Barrens of Cantor Climb into Toland City.  Use one barrens map for the Jade Falcons to deploy on, and the rest of the maps for Tolland City as needed.
Objective: Wipe out the defenders (Global) +1 point.  Destroy at least 50% of the enemy forces by turn 10.
Forces:  Only a handful of mech survivors made it back from the failed attempt to hold the enemy at Judea Jungle.  80% of the BV is in regular militia vehicles/infantry, plus any survivor mechs from the Crusader option.

The Nova Player cant make it next week, putting the expected clan force as 2/2 Turkina A (5115), 2/4 Vulture B (3517), 3/4 Mad Cat S (3250), 3/4 Nightstar 9J (3167), 15k BV.
At 80%, the enemy militia is 12k BV and has 3 jump platoons, 2 motorized (1 heavy), 3 mechanized (wheeled, 2 heavy tracked), 4 foot platoons (1 heavy).  The vehicles are rhino+steurmfur, von Luckner+Ontos, Sabaku Kaze+ Falcon hovertank, Condor+Laser Condor hovertanks, 2 Tokugawa wheeled tanks, hunter+striker.  The 3 mechanized infantry cant go in buildings, but the remaining 9 infantry units will start deployed in buildings.  12 of the 24 units must be destroyed by turn 10.

The sole mech survivor is a damaged Dragon.

[DevianID]

Late AAR for wave 1 track 6, Toland.  The players had the same 4 due to scheduling issues, so the lineup was an Arctic Cheetah A, Black Lanner D, Vulture B, and 'Nightstar 9j'.  The Nightstar on loan from the garrison cluster gets his shot at the Turkina Keshik, and if he survives this battle will upgrade to a Gladiator omnimech.  The Swap from the nova to the arctic cheetah and lanner C to D was enough to downskill my forces, so the unprepared militia were gunnery 5 in the face of the lightning attack from the lighter then expected clan forces.

The exact turn by turn is a little fuzzy, but some key moments is the Vulture and Black Lanner going ham early on, scoring 2 kills in 1 turn each on assorted infantry and vee targets.  The Black Lanner then had a faulty Masc, edge, fail (it was masc #2 in a row), and so ended the battle hobbled in heavy forests.  The enemy tank, a von luckner, had a perfect 6 hex run to get into base with the knocked down Black Lanner, where it's AC/20s and srm 16s would wreck havoc, but a clutch save from the Vulture saved the day.  There was a lot of clutch immobilization overall.
Later on, the Opfor Ontos had a perfect short range layup with 8 lasers into the Nightstar, but another seized initiative from the arctic cheetah let the light mech go first, and the player used his air strike, hit the rear, and got an immobilization result on an 11.  His SRMs then immobilized another vehicle, giving him a 2 mobility kill turn.  The Nightstar's +1 command mech init bonus really swung some of those init rolls, and im glad that mech is gone from the player's stable in favor of the omnimech.

I did see that my old copy of total warfare has updated the forced withdraw rules AFTER this game.  In my copy, an immobilized vee is dead, but in the new printings a vee is only crippled when it loses all of it's weapons, or all of it's armor from a single location.  So... expect tougher vehicles going forward now that I found the newest rules. (I had checked the errata prior, but either I missed that change or my book is so old the errata I need is some legacy TW errata.)  The battle against the 2 companies and the dragon took all of 2 hours since I was playing by the old forced withdraw rules--i dont think it would have changed the outcome, as vees that cant move are easy pickings versus the clans, but there would have been more pressure to deal damage aggressively.

Next week starts Wave 2 of the Jade Falcon invasion, which for the Turkina Keshik involves a knock out battle against the former capital of the hated Rim Worlds Republic, planet Apollo.  Landing amidst the monsoon season, a combat drop to cut off the enemy's head was not an option, forcing the Jade Falcon forces to land a distance away and fight a more conventional attack.  This not only meant that an interception force was able to meet the falcons in open battle, but the 2 castle Brian style fortresses from the Star League Civil war are fully operational in time to resist the Falcon attack.  Infact, Apollo was the only world to truly resist during wave 2--which the falcons assumed was because the early difficulties were flukes and the inner sphere were weak cowards.  In reality, during wave 2 the federated commonwealth pulled back most of their forces to reorganize and adapt to these new invaders.

Wave 2: Falcon Foolin', the Federated Commonwealth pulls back

Apollo May 3050, former capital of the Rim Worlds Republic; defenders: Grave Walkers 2nd mech regiment and Apollo militia.  Attacking during monsoon season reduces the clan's aero fighter support effectiveness.  The enemy, made up of the 2nd Grave Walkers mercenaries and accompaning militia, are looking for revenge on the Turkina Keshik for the loss of the 1st Grave Walkers on Bone-Norman, and meet the Falcons in open battle during the storms to resist the Falcon's advance.

Track 1:  Meeting Engagement.  Clan forces meet heavy resistance after landing, with militia and Grave Walker units hampering their initial advance, backed by monsoon storms.
Track Cost: 0
Option: 'For the Starleague Reborn!' +1 point for fighting with strict honor.
  Warden:  'Mine specialists' +1 Honor.  Two medium density minefields are placed by the defending Grave Walkers per player that takes this option.
  Crusader: 'Revenge for Bone-Norman' +1 Honor.  One Grave Walker mech is veteran skilled, and not subjected to 'forced withdraw', per player that takes this option.
Map/Special Rules:  Monsoon rains, treat as Heavy Rainfall.  +1 to weapon and piloting rolls.  Mud (+1 mp/piloting for all non-mech units), and Rapids in depth 1 water (+1 MP/+2 piloting, failed PSR displaces 2 hexes downriver).  Use a river map set for the wetlands caused by Monsoon rains in the open terrain the defenders met the clan forces at.  Aerospace attacks suffer a +3 penalty due to the storms.
Objective (Global):  Break the enemy resistance.  Defeat or cause the retreat of all enemy MILITIA forces by turn 10.
Objective (Individual): Assuming the falcons hold the field, they can claim honor for trophy kills on mechs they destroyed.  +1 per 100 tons of mechs a player destroys, rounding normally.
Forces:  50% player BV mixed unit of militia vehicles and infantry, supported by 40% player BV grave walker mercenary mechs, with at least 1 light/medium mech per player to perform 'falcon foolin' (declaring challenges with evasive light/medium mechs to take pressure off midfield deployed militia forces).

Expected clan forces: 17k BV.  (for reference, BV needed to downskill piloting=16k.  BV needed to downskill gunnery=15k.  BV needed to downskill both=14.5k.  BV needed to UPskill piloting = 18.7k.  BV needed to upskill both=22.44k.)
Sample Opfor: Stinger 3g, vulcan 2t, griffin 1n, griffin 1s, dervish 6m, whitworth 1, crusader 3r, commando.  hwc ppc, ml packrat, Calvary, hetzer, Saladin, Hunter 15, tokugawa ac2, maxim srm4, schrek ac5, schrek AI, srm carrier, sabaku kaze. 2 foot 2 motorized infantry (Rifle).

[DevianID]

So all 5 players decided on taking the crusader option to upskill the mercenaries of the 2nd Grave Walkers, so 5 veteran mechs were looking for vengeance against the Turkina Keshik.  The players brought a Turkina, Gladiator, Timberwolf, Vulture, and Nova.  Pretty serious tonnage.

Round 1-2 saw the normal early positioning, with my light/mediums calling out challenges to force some split fire under the 'falcon foolin' innersphere strat.  The weapons fire of note was a pair of the Turkina's large pulses stripping the side torso off the challenging stinger, sending it packing.  I also only had 2 non-jump mechs, with a river, and the commando failed his PSR to cross and got swept 2 hexes downstream...

Round 3-4 saw the commando fail again to get across the river, going 2 more hexes down stream, and my only other non-jumping mech, a crusader, ALSO failed to cross the river and got swept along.  He actually breached his right arm in the fall, taking out all the arm weapons.  The clan mechs were trading blows with the militia at this point, and with numerous seize'd initiative rolls the players were able to lay a smack down on the hovercraft before they moved, using the Turkina Keshik's formation ability.  No movement mod saw the infantry carrying Maxim go down, taking the infantry with it, along with the Saladin and Sabaku Kaze, and on turn 4 the Timberwolf also used a Seize to kill the Calvary helicopter without it's +4/5 TMM.  I didnt really get any damage out yet, but the player forces were almost all in short range next turn.

Round 5-6 saw the Gladiator/Executioner get focused down really hard.  A jump of 4 left him with only +2 TMM, and not a lot of cover between him and the tank line.  The Schrek pair opened up, scoring almost all hits, and took all his CT armor off with some very lucky clustering.  The players continued to smash back vee's without their movement mods, though overall we saw some very aggressive edge usage this game to land missed kicks or win init for that no TMM shooting.  The Hetzer was targeted to prevent the AC20 from shooting thanks to more Seizes, and the SRM carrier only got off 1 salvo before being focused down, hurting the vulture a bit but thats it.  My mechs had made it up to the militia at this point, taking a hill for line of sight.  The Crusader also made it out of the water.  The griffin S challenged the Turkina after the stinger got run off the table, and started a run to close to point blank but slowed by a lucky TAC to the gyro, preventing full use of the mobility to corner the Turkina.  The Executioner backed away after the whallop, not to reemerged until turn 7.  At the end of turn 5, the Vulture locked in a duel with the Vulcan got a gyro hit, which KOd the Vulcan pilot on the fall.  Turn 6 saw the Vulture pounce on the Vulcan while asleep, coring it out.  No longer in a duel, I moved up the commando and crusader, and put some fire into the Vulture.

Turn 7 saw the Vulture pounce on the Commando with a Seize, coring it out.  With no vehicles left to protect with cheeky mech duels, since the schreks died, and the ac2 heavy Tokugusa got immobilized and focused down as well, all my mechs broke honor and shot the Vulture in the back, taking an arm and doing 2 head hits.  The Gladiator emerged and made it to the hill, killing 1 infantry unit, and the Twolf or Nova finished off another with secondary machine guns.  The PPC griffin got knocked down, and Dervish got taken out from an ammo hit to the arm srm2 ammo, while the Griffin S, which got a TAC to the gyro several rounds earlier from the Turkina finally got more CT damage, losing the Gyro entirely and flopping on the ground, 1 hex away from its Turkina target. 

Turn 8, since my mechs were now open game since they broke honor, the Nova got the Crusader with an ammo hit in the rear, the Executioner got the downed griffin, and the timberwolf got the Whitworth that had been annoying the Executioner.  The Heavily damaged Vulture just stayed back, taking a bit more damage and almost losing a leg, but avoiding more pilot damage.  The Turkina had prone adjacent shots on the Griffin S who lost the gyro, taking the arm off for minor return damage via prone shots back.  So all that was left the next turn was a crippled infantry, which the Nova killed at point blank range, taking 4 return rifle damage in response, and finishing the battle.

Overall, I caused armor damage that cost some armor on a few mechs, though the Vulture had a butchers bill in pilot and internal damage to repair.  With the enemy mercenaries and militia defeated on the open field, they were forced to retreat into their star league era fortresses to continue resisting the Jade Falcon invasion.

Next mission, the players must infiltrate 2 units of elementals into the secret bolt hole of one of the 2 ancient Castle Brains, thanks to plans saved from the SLDF civil war in taking the Rim Worlds capital those hundreds of years ago.  A break in the storm presents an opportunity to quickly drop troops into range, though 2 units of elementals must infiltrate the secret entrance to the fortress to overthrow the defenders from the inside.

Track Cost: 1

Option: 'For the Starleague Reborn!' +1 point for fighting with strict honor.
  Warden: -1 point.  'Break in the storms' The player's aerospace attacks can not be intercepted by the heavy air cover of the anti-aerospace turret; additionally gain 1 light strike for this mission.
  Crusader: -1 point.  'Damn the turrets, full speed ahead!' The player hot-drops their mech (with attached elementals) despite (or in spite of) the anti-air network.
Map/Special Rules: The bolt hole is in a remote section of the castle network, protected by only a few of the 20 heavy, 50 standard, and 100 antipersonnel weapons emplacements of a castle Brian to not draw attention to its location.  At least 1 area effect turret exists, so the elementals must ride mechs to the mission area to avoid the artillery.  The anti-aerospace turret means that unless the warden option is taken, players can not use aerospace attacks this mission.
Objective: Embark 2 units of elementals into the bolt-hole objective hex, placed 6 hexes from any map edge on the defenders side of the playing area.  +1 Point.  The players must supply the elementals from their own forces attached to their omni-mechs.
Forces: 1 anti-aerospace bunker, 3 castle Brian gun emplacements, 5 castle Brian automated antipersonnel turrets.

[DevianID]

We had quite the showdown with the first castle brian assault from the Turkina Keshik.  The team of 5 had to infiltrate 2 squads of elementals into a bunker access hatch, defended by 3 gun emplacements, 5 AP bunkers, and an anti-aerospace emplacement.  The turrets were quite mean, even at skill 5 gunnery.

The match started off turns 1-2 with the team moving up.  The maps were in a chase formation, representing a deep strike into enemy territory focused on getting to the target on the other side of the second map.  Some fire was exchanged, mostly onto the lead weapon emplacement.

Turn 3-4, the dragon fly player (the fastest mech the team took) made the first endzone run into my back field.  My onboard artillery failed to stop the dragonfly viper, so infantry was in scoring position.  Elsewhere, the team siezed and stunned the first lead turret, stopping those shots, but the Vulture stepped out into sight of the main aerospace bunker and got walloped over 2 turns.

Turn 5-6, the dragonfly started pulling back, ready to take elementals from the vulture if need be.  The Madcat S and Nova set up their attack run into the endzone, and by being adjacent to each other drew a lot of artillery fire.  The Madcat/timberwolf took the lion share here, as the Nova has low profile limiting my damage.  The vulture spent 2 turns backing out, as the damage was severe.

Turn 7-8, the Gladiator/Executioner stepped out to be a target for the Madcat/Timberwolf, taking a huge amount of fire by presenting better target numbers than the twolf.  The Gladiator survived but got hurt pretty bad.  Since the twolf and nova had infantry in scoring position, the dragonfly retreated, no longer needed for ferrying elementals to the target zone.

Turn 9-10, the timberwolf and nova were exfiltrating, having won the mission and now just trying not to die.  With the Gladiator having tanked all the damage he could resonably tank, the Twolf and vulture got targeted again.  I KO'd the vulture pilot, who was saving honor by not healing wounds and going into battle hurt, which cost him as that was the difference between making and failing the KO check.  Likewise, I hit the twolf pilot in the head 2 times, and he also had pilot damage he forgot about.  At the time, he made his roll and got off the board, but upon review he failed, so I made him burn his edge from next battle as a penalty, and let him reroll (he had the XP to buy the edge).  His reroll was a 7, passing for 3 head hits, so he didnt get ko'd and killed.

Turn 11, the Vulture, who still had elementals, had the elementals swarm the vulture and pull the KO'd pilot out.  Then on the next turn they fled, after my final artillery barrage failed to kill them.  He is down a vulture, which he can eventually salvage, but for now the enemy  holds the field so he will need to buy a light mech for next time.  The Nova was the only mech left operational on this turn, all others having run, so all guns fired on him but failed to put him down as I needed 10s or so to hit.  So he also escaped the following turn.

The aftermath was a win, but a bloody one.  The missions versus the castle brians in the fluff were particularly frustrating for the Clan forces, and I am glad it played out perfectly to the story on the table--the clans took out the first castle brian thanks to a secret access point, but next battle they have to assault the second castle brian strongpoint with no 'easy' option.  Historically the clans dont win the next battle, getting rebuked by the gun emplacements firepower, but talking to the players they do have a chance.  Using the extreme range on most clan guns, the main opposition will be from the 6 thumpers firing every turn, so if the players stay on their toes and all load extreme range guns, they can potentially peel back the enemy defenses before the scattered artillery damage adds up.

The other option is to go in with massive smoke barrages to cut off direct line of sight, letting the clan shorter ranged guns advance and pick off 1 turret at a time.  This is faster, but if they can see 1 turret that is still 1 turret shooting back per turn, on top of the artillery.  I expect them to go with the max range option.

Track 3: Commence the attack!  No secret access tunnels are known in the archives for the second Castle Brian defending Apollo.  The clan jade falcon forces must assault the fortified positions the hard way in order to dig out the defenders hiding within the walls--just like their SLDF forebears when this was the capital of the Rim Worlds League during the Stefan Amaris uprising.
Track cost: 1
Option: 'For the Starleague Reborn!' +1 point for fighting with strict honor.
  Warden:  -1 Point.  'Combined arms warfare.' Elementals accompany the player.  While each weapon emplacement is sealed off from the rest, if an elemental embarks into a building hex they can disable the hex from the inside by killing the gunners.
  Crusader: -1 Point.  'Limited patience.'  The player's attacks into the structure are ruthless, loading chemical SRM ammo and infernos to burn the defender.  The player may treat the CF of a building that has lost it's armor like a vehicle for generating critical hits with inferno SRMs (normally you must deal CF/10 in damage to generate a critical hit, this ability means each SRM deals no damage but instead generates a critical hit with a -2, good for killing the gunners of the building with a roll of exactly 11)
Map/Special Rules:  The jade falcons need access to the base, so choose an approach away from the reinforced weapon's bunkers and their capital lasers.  This puts only a single anti-aerospace bunker and it's attendant weapon blisters blocking their advance into range of a large portal where the enemy can stage assaults out of--and the Jade Falcons can break into.  The monsoon rains have picked up (+1 to gunnery and piloting); with the anti-aerospace also providing cover no air attacks can be made.

Bunker reminders: 5 anti-personnel bunkers, 100 armor 100 structure, providing a defense line with overlapping fields of fire (1 mgun/flamer per facing).  3 weapon emplacements, 150 armor 150 structure, with a turret mounting a Gauss rifle, LB10x, and LRM10 with Artemis.  In addition, 1 mgun/flamer, 1 AMS, and 1 medium pulse per facing.  Antiaerospace weapon emplacement.  3 identical hexs of a building, 100 capital armor and structure each.  In addition to the mgun/AMS/medium pulse per facing there is an SRM6 Artemis per facing.  Each has a turret with 4 large pulse lasers, 3 lrm20 with Artemis, 6 LBX10 cannons, and 2 Thumper artillery pieces.  23k BV.

[DevianID]

Track 3, Cue boss music!  The players decided to go for the safe long range attack approach, leveraging clan range and speed to dodge the 6 thumpers being fired by the base.  The battle took many many turns, but the game played out in 3 phases.

Phase 1, all 3 artillery emplacements and 2 forward weapon emplacements versus a Gladiator with 3 large pulse lasers, Timberwolf with 2 ER PPCs, Nova with 2 ER PPCs, Dragonfly with 1 ER PPC, and Adder with 2 volley fire ER PPCs.  The first part was focusing down the 2 forward gun emplacements, who had gauss LB and LRM harrasing fire.  The artillery was placed with 6 shots on the same place, prefering clumps when available, though if any player stood still then I split my artillery up to make it harder to dodge.  After the first 10 or so turns the players had killed the 2 weapon emplacements and figured out the artillery pattern, so they settled into a rhythm to deal damage safely.  The exception was the large pulse laser Gladiator, who had to enter LRM return fire range to hit with his large pulse lasers.  I only was able to hit any of the enemy mechs if they didnt move +3, but for a gladiator he can only get +3 when using MASC, so over the dozen or so turns the 6 LRM20s with artemis rolled (above average) numbers of 12s to hit, burning his edge on a CT crit, hitting his head for a pilot hit, and getting another ct TAC to ding his engine.  I also had a few shots on the Adder, who strayed too close a few times and got hit on 12s when the Gladiator wasnt tanking the shots.  My best damage was when the Gladiator strayed to 18 hexes, allowing me to fire the LBX cannons and splash with artillery on direct fire.  After that turn no one ever approached within 18 hexes of the buildings again.

Phase 2 began when the first artillery building died.  My range changed slightly, and I started a new artillery pattern.  One turn was 2 locations with 2 shots each, 1 turn was walking fire with 4 hexes in a row.  This artillery was harder to dodge, but the players started taking turns 'off' to avoid likely scatter locations rather than risk damage to deal 15-30 points to something with 1000 armor.  The Gladiator now began only attacking when masc was available to get a +3 TMM to avoid the 6 LRM 20s, and never rolled a snake eyes to take damage (and likely lose his mech).  All the trees had been removed at this point from the firing area, so range was the main factor players needed to manage.  The artillery pattern (despite being fewer shots) did a bit more damage overall, since the players had gotten good at dodging it.

Phase 3, the final phase, began when the second building lost all its armor, and was taking hits on its 1000 structure.  The new pattern of 4 thumpers was kind of a nuclear sign, forming a triangle with some space between.  This was the hardest pattern to dodge by far, and the players were taking about 5 damage/turn when I rolled a favorable direction.  This cause the dragonfly and Gladiator to really disengage multiple turns to prevent getting unlucky splash damage.  The Adder got too aggressive during this phase, and over the course of the 1000 damage I had 3 turns of shots onto him, one on 12s one on 11s one on 10s when he moved only slightly to dodge the artillery.  On the 3rd of three turns, he took 20 damage, fell because of the monsoon weather, and rolled a head location from the fall, KO'ing his pilot along with the other head hits I had caused earlier.  Being KO'd in front of artillery isnt good, and the mech was destroyed after 2 turns of concentrated damage with the pilot failing to wake up on a 10+.  Other than this, the rest of the team weathered the 5 or so damage it was taking from the artillery long enough to put the 2nd hex of the multihex building down.  With over half of the hexes collapsed, the anti-aerospace bunker fell apart and was destroyed, earning the players a 3 honor win.  The gladiator spent all 3 honor fixing damage, the Adder pilot is spending his honor getting a replacement light mech, and the timberwolf only had to spend for armor repairs.

Next mission, Track 4: Fight in the Shade!  With attacks on the fortress complex frustrating the Khan, he orders an entire assault cluster to refit with arrow launchers and guided missiles, to collapse the remaining defenses and assault into the base complex.
Track cost: 1
Option: 'For the Starleague Reborn!' +1 point for fighting with strict honor.
  Warden: 'Blot out the sky'.  -1 point.  Any purchased aerofighters equip air launched arrow missiles instead of attacking normally.  Add 1 arrow attack per turn, fired from a low angle omnifighter that CAN target units inside the portal.
  Crusader: 'Raise the shields'.  -1 point.  Equip a squad of elementals to act as ablative armor for a player omnimech.
Map/Special Rules: 2 Maps in chase format.  The enemy map edge includes a complex 8 hexes wide and 8 hexes deep and 7 levels tall, blocked off by a large portal.  The weapon emplacement are all placed within 8 hexes of the large portal on the enemy map side.  Monsoon Rains continue to cause disruptions.  +1 to gunnery and piloting skills, unless both units are inside the fortress complex.  The map includes a large portal into a mountain complex.  Once 4 sections of wall are destroyed, the 8 hex multihex building collapses, though the players can collapse fewer hexes and try to fight through the gaps.  The interior of the base can not be targeted by arrow guided missiles, only those launched by arrow omni fighters.
Objectives: Defeat the units inside the large portal, and hold the accessway into the fortress complex.  2 points if done by turn 10, 1 point otherwise, as the enemy will have time to retreat with some units before the base is locked down by the falcons.
Forces: 5 AP bunkers, 3 Weapon Emplacements, 1 Large Portal, and 15 friendly assault mechs loaded with arrow missile launchers.  ~12k BV.  In addition, an enemy force of militia and Grave Walker mechs defends the interior fortress complex, with a combined fortress and enemy unit BV of 100% of the players force.  (So if the players bring 15k BV in units, 3k enemy units will be defending the interior complex.)

Large Portal (8 hexes) 1000 armor, 1000 CF each hex
   4 AC/20 (2x2 Turrets), 8 each Mpulse, aSRM6, antimissile systems, mguns (front facings).
   33,500 BV total (all 8 hexes) (4000*8 + 1247+256)

Sally Point Defenders: If the players bring a Timberwolf S, Gladiator D, and TAG mechs 2/2 Black Lanner A, Arctic Cheetah Prime, and 2/4 Uller A, they have 14400 BV.  BV needed to skill down the defenders: 12900 BV.  At 19800 the defenders are veteran.  The 3k points of defenders are:
Panther 9R, Mercury 98, Karanov Transport Vtol (6t), Blizzard Hover Transport (6t), Skulker Scout, Ranger AFV, 4 platoons of rifle infantry.  (3005 BV)

Assault Cluster Arrow Missile Barrage: 30 guided arrow missiles arrive every turn on the enemy's map for 10 turns, at which point the Assault Cluster must pause to reload.  If the players have a TAG designated target, they may direct some or all of these missiles as they wish, each missile locking onto the TAG signal on a 4+.

[DevianID]

Game on 8/8.

The mission this time was to use the TAG equipped mechs to guide in the arrow barrage from an entire cluster of assault mechs fitted for the task.  The players spent some honor and ended up with 3 arctic cheetah primes, a timberwolf S, and a turkina prime for sniping.  Their BV was just over the threshold for green militia, so they faced a regular force.

Turn 1 and 2 the players split fire into the 3 weapon emplacements, eager to destroy the defending gauss emplacements as quickly as possible.  The TAG at 15 meant I was in medium range to shoot back with gauss, so with a 4 base, 1 for rain, 2 for range, if they placed themselves in +2 cover with a jump or run of at least +3 I would need 12s to hit.  So I took my 12s, but didnt hit any of the evasive light mechs.  The mechs all loaded smoke to cover their advance, so they always moved into +2 cover at the minimum.

Turn 3, with the turrets dealt with, I only had a few machine guns each round.  The players marked out the max range of my door guns, and stayed outside that range but inside TAG range, to begin peeling the 2000 damage needed to put a hole into the castle brian door.  Within 3 turns the Turkina plus guided missiles plus secondary attacks from the other mechs had peeled through the entrance.

Turn 6, the first Arctic Cheetah jumped past the rubble into the base, while the Timberwolf was right behind.  The timberwolf made his PSR to avoid tripping in the rubble thanks to burning his edge.  With a hole open and mechs pouring in, the infantry and vees moved up to shoot while the mechs charged the hole to block the entrance.  Shooting saw me cripple the Arctic Cheetah and deal 2 pilot damage, hurting the players warchest honor points, but his mech didnt go down.  The flamers and infernos from the Arctic Cheetah and Timberwolf S killed 3 of the infantry, which were my largest damage source.  The Turkina sniped the Panther, dealing some damage.

Turn 7, the crippled Arctic Cheetah fell back behind cover, out for the rest of the game.  Another Arctic Cheetah jumped in to fill its place.  The Turkina Siezed initiative and killed the wounded panther before it got to move, thanks to a player using edge to force a reroll on my initiative of 11.  With the Panther down, the Timberwolf damaged the Mercury and the arctic cheetah killed the Skulker.  The Mercury didnt hurt the Arctic Cheetah too bad in return.

Turn 8, the Timberwolf finished off the Mercury.  The Turkina siezed initiative again and destroyed the Infantry Fighting vee.  The third arctic cheetah killed the last infantry platoon.  This left the Vtol alive at the end of the turn, with no weapons and no more infantry to transport.  The final turn saw the transports go down to a third sieze in a row thanks to using edge to force a reroll, stripping my TMM and obliterating the Vtol with Tag missiles.

So at the end, the players managed to kill the militia force behind the wall in the 10 turns or less, getting the extra honor.  This is good, because the next wave of the invasion starts off with bad news...  Clan Jade Falcon overextended in wave 2, and are out of supplies.  The players will not be getting their 2 points for campaign expenses, so will only have this opportunity to spend from their bank before being thrown on planet and being completely broke!  On the good news, the Clans have adapted to the inner sphere practice of declaring bad faith challenges to distract the falcons, so Falcon forces no longer have to accept any challenge from the inner sphere they dont want to.

Turkina Keshik Wave 3: Supply Lines
   While the Falcon's were well supplied during wave 2 and took more worlds than clan wolf, they finally ran out of supplies during wave 3—clan wolf on the other hand faced no supply shortage and overtook the falcons during wave 3.  This supply setback forced the clan to take only 5 worlds, meeting resistance only on the Planet Hotsprings where the Turkina Keshik was deployed.  Clan forces have also adapted to the inner sphere practice of 'falcon foolin', (declaring pre-emptive challenges with mechs to distract clan forces from the militia infantry and vehicles).  The clan forces no longer must accept any challenge from inner sphere forces to remain honorable, meaning they are free to focus down the forward deployed militia forces before dealing with mech reinforcements.

Supply Issues: Returning players do not receive 2 honor points when starting this wave of the campaign.
End of 'Falcon Foolin': no longer have to accept challenges from the IS.

Track 1: Turkey shoot's revenge.
   Hotsprings was the home to the Von Jankmon Bloodname, which formed the reason why the Falcon's were interested in a planet known only for its value as a tourist attraction.  The Von Jankmon's have a high quality aerofighter lineage, so upon landing the Hotspring's entire aerofighter force was destroyed for the loss of only one clan fighter in return.  This left only vtol and conventional fighter units to oppose the advance of the ground mechs.
   Track Cost: 0
   Option (Warden):  Steady Shield.  -1 point.  For each air attack BSP, gain one air cover of the same type.  These can be used to prevent a fighter from attacking that round.
   Option (Crusader):  Raptor Reflexes.  -1 Point.  Instead of seizing the initiative, the player can move after the aerofighters have moved, potentially dodging their attack line.
   Option Strict Honor.  The player fights with strict honor, +1 point
   Map: Use the desert airfield map to represent the area outside the dropship landing zone where the ground forces are intercepted by militia air forces.
   Objective: Destroy all enemy air assets (+1 point)
   Forces:  1 Squadron of aerofighters and one lance of vtol, 50% of the players force, green base BV.  If player BV is at or above 11k, skill is regular.
   2 Warrior h7A, 2 Warrior h7C, 2 Guardian fighter (4 RL10), 2 Heavy Strike (9 RL10), 2 Bluehawk Support (10 HE bombs) (4114 BV)

   Notes: Each fighter pair attacks once every 3 turns.  Turn 1 is the Guardians, Turn 2 is the Heavy Strike Fighters, Turn 3 is the Bluehawks.  Aerofighters move after all mechs move, so unless one of the Crusader or Warden options are taken there is no way to avoid an aerofighter attack, as all fire is simultaneous and the fighters line up after normal mech initiative.  While the fighters are fragile, the first turn payload is extreme, especially the 100 damage in HE bombs carried by the Bluehawks.  As a reminder, Dive Bomb to-hit numbers are skill+2 made at net altitude 3, while strike attacks are skill+2+usual target modifiers made at net altitude 4.  Each altitude adds 2 hexes to the ground unit's range.

[DevianID]

This past week's battle was pretty simple.  Since the aerospace fighters were staggered, I never got back to back damage on anything.  Only one player took any defensive option, using warden to bring some air cover.  Everyone else just decided to take it.
Round 1 was pretty minor.  My guardians whiffed all my rocket attacks, and I lost 1 guardian in return.  The vtols had a +5 TMM so just plinked at range.
Round 2 started the sieze the initiative train that lead to the VTOLs destruction.  I lost 2 vtols to siezes this turn.  My heavy strike fighters landed 2 honor worth of damage on the Gladiator, and about 50 damage on the timberwolf.  The twolf player had bought extra edge, so all my head hits got rolled away, leaving him with only 1 honor damage in armor.  Both heavy strike fighters died for their efforts.
Round 3, the Aerospace player used his edge to stop both bombers from being able to attack this turn.  1 of the bombers was also shot down.  My vtols suffered only rotor hits, turning about 20 damage into 4.
Round 4, the guardian came in to deal some more damage but missed and was shot down.  The vtols were finished off as well.
Round 5 the players set up for the bombing turn, getting into a tight formation to get shots on, without putting anyone in scatter paths.
Round 6 the final bomber came on, and I went for the most isolated mech, which happens to be the artic cheetah and the lightest.  The player's plan of bunching up didnt work as well as they hoped since most weapons were out of range, but they still hit with enough to core out the Bluehawk's SI.  In my attack back, I did 70 damage to the Arctic Cheetah, killing it and costing the player 3 honor.  Overall I did 6 honor damage (7 with the purchased air cover) making this a pretty costly bleeder scenario for many of the players.

With the air raid over, the Turkina Keshik is free to move into the city to rout the defenders.  Since this is an ancestral home of a Jade Falcon bloodname, the Turkina Keshik is ordered into the city with elementals to avoid collateral damage and take the city as intact as possible.  The enemies are using the city to buy time to mount an effective defense, with militia tanks and infantry dug into alley ambush position and mechs forming firing lines from cover on the major streets.

Track 2: Suffer no Collateral
   The Turkina Keshik is ordered not to damage the city with collateral damage from missed heavy mech attacks, so the elemental force is ordered to form the spearhead of flushing out the defenders improved positions.  With the static defenses and tanks routed, the dug in mechs will be forced to flee their improvised positions or face swarming elementals.
   Track Cost: 0
   Option (Warden):  Elemental Cross Training (1 points).  Your elemental unit use your pilots skill and pilot special abilities due to combined arms training.
   Option (Crusader):  Ignore the Khan's order (1 points).  You may deploy your mech instead of elementals.  Keep track of all missed shots and movement damage done to buildings—Apply log(10) rounding up to this damage to see how much honor is lost due to collateral damage (1 point with 2-10 damage, 2 points with 11-100 damage, 3 points with 101-1000 damage).  For example, an LRM 20 that hits and rolls 12 missiles, will miss with 8 damage.  An LRM 20 that misses all together will miss with the full 20 damage towards the tally.
   Option: Fight with strict honor, +1 point (elementals must challenge vehicles)
   Map: Use a single map with 3x6 city blocks.  Each hex in the block is a CF 50 building, 5 levels tall.
   Objective: Defeat the static infantry and tank positions in the city (+1 point)
   Objective (Bonus): Earn points for mech kills for holding the field.  1 honor per 100 tons, rounding normally.
   Forces: 4 platoons of SRM foot infantry in buildings, 8 dug in tanks.  4 mechs are providing overwatch down the main streets using buildings as cover on the back board edge.  These flee when the infantry and tanks protecting their position are destroyed.  The tanks have partial cover from the front due to their improved positions—hits to the front that do not hit the turret locations are discarded, but front mounted vehicle weapons can not fire.
   4 SRM infantry (24 troopers) deployed on level 4 of 4 different buildings.
   2 Wheeled APC (Mgun), 2 Striker tanks, 2 Bulldog Tanks, 1 HWC (PPC), 1 Heavy LRM carrier, all in improved (partial cover) positions.  Partial cover does not apply to attacks from above, as normal, but also only applies to the front of the vehicle in this scenario.  If a tank is forced to move (from forced withdrawal) the partial cover is lost.
   2 Griffins, a Wolverine, and Trebuchet guard the main streets leading down the city but do not engage unless an enemy is in their lane.  They are taking partial cover (left/right) as appropriate against the buildings, and can only move to fall off the board.
   If the clan force of elementals (and potentially mechs) is 4500 bv or more, the enemy force is regular.  Otherwise the enemy is green (3776 BV in infantry and tanks).  The mech's needed to cover the straightaways (1 per straightaway) do not count against the defender's BV, and are always green.

   Note: Battlearmor pay 1 ground MP to enter a building like infantry, but may jump into/out of a building instead.  They need LOS to the building hex, and can enter any level up to their max jump.  The piloting skill roll for a heavy building is +2 (jumping infantry doesnt have enough movement to also suffer the hexes moved penalty).  On a failed piloting/antimech roll, a trooper suffers 4 damage, but never deal damage to the building.

[DevianID]

In track 2, the Turkina Keshik was ordered into the city in elementals to clear out the defending infantry and tank forces without causing collateral damage to the ancestral home of the Von Jankmons bloodline.  All players decided on going with elementals; no one defied the Khans order and brought a mech.

The city was laid out in 3x6 city blocks, aligned to the hex grid in a chase format.  The first 2 turns were spent moving up, but turn 3 the right side elementals were in range due to how the hexes create rhomboid blocks.

Turn 3-4, one players elementals shot down into a vehicle from the roof, while another jumping through a window.  The player on the roof caught several of the indirect LRMs, which taught the rest of the players to stay inside as infantry doesnt take damage in a building from indirect attacks.  The 2 elementals managed to kill both vee's by turn 4, and started working on the infantry on the right side.

Turn 5-6, the two players going up the middle path both hit infantry entrenched in buildings.  It was at this point where we all had to re-read the urban combat rules.  I thought being in a building was like heavy woods, but instead it is like light woods (which makes sense as I DO remember treating the hexes like light woods months ago the last time we had an urban fight).  I didnt realize that infantry takes half damage from burst fire weapons in same building shootouts, which meant all my infantry took 1 extra turn to kill then I thought despite each flamer on an elemental dealing 3d6 damage.  The players also had to read a few times how I damage them by simply attacking the building... I made all the buildings heavy as this was supposed to be a nice downtown on a tourist planet, thus the elementals were taking only 25% damage but I could hit very easy.  PPCs and missiles did scattered damage to a few of the elementals but nothing critical yet.  The player with the damage suits on the right had to hang back thanks to all the indirect LRM damage, but everyone else was still advancing forward.

Turn 7-8, the left most elemental reached their target, which was furthest away.  Him and another elemental doubled up on an infantry unit to kill it in one turn, and then both jumped off to go after a vehicle.  The left most elemental put a bulldog in forced withdrawl while the 2 middle lane elementals took down a heavy weapons carrier, APC,  and striker tank.  On the right side, the other striker tank was taken down.  Only 1 elemental has taken damage jumping into buildings to crisscross down the city streets out of view of the mechs guarding the straightaways, so the players are making excellent progress.  Most of the time the first salvo into a vee's side immobilizes it, and the second volley on the next turn hitting with the -4 bonus does enough damage to one location to either punch through the armor and kill it on side crits, or put it in withdraw.

Turn 9-10, the last tank is the heavy LRM carrier.  The lead elemental on the right gets there first and begins the 2 turn process to kill the tank.  The surprise here is just how much damage 80 LRMs can do to a building that is adjacent.  In 1 turn I deal 30 damage to the elementals as the building collapses.  On the next turn, all the players jump into attack positions, with one player swarming a mech, another shooting a trebuchet with their saved SRM volleys, and the last 2 moving into position to threaten the final mechs on turn 11.  The divided attention mean that my split fire only kills 2 suits from one elemental unit.

Turn 11-12, with the last vee dead, the mech begin their retreat.  I give the 3 players in swarm position a chance to finish their swarm attacks as the mechs start jumping away.  All 3 manage to land some crits on the mechs torsos, but all 3 end up hitting non-vital components.  With the mechs now retreated we call the game there.  Next week, the player's in their mechs harry the enemy forces retreating from the city.

Track 3: Race the Falcon Jaegers!
   With the enemy mech force fleeing the city after their defense positions were over run by elementals, the lighter Falcon Jaegers are ordered to hunt the fleeing mechs before they get to woods cover.  The Turkina Keshik has a small window of opportunity before the Falcon Jaegers arrive to claim as much glory for themselves on the retreating mechs as possible.
   Track Cost 1:
   Option (Warden): Cost 1.  Flanking Tactics.  The Warden player starts from the side edge instead of back edge where the enemies move on from.
   Option (Crusader): Cost 1.  Early Start.  The Crusader player may move on the board 1 turn earlier.  If they would already arrive on turn 1, automatically win initiative turn 1.
   Option:  Fight with strict honor (+1 point)
   Map:  Mostly open/light suburb terrain outside the city limits, chase format.  The players mechs arrive on turn = 10-to ground walk movement-1 (if jump jet equipped and/or masc equipped).  Thus, a 5/8 mech will deploy on turn 5, and an 8/12/8 mech will deploy on turn 1.
   Objective: Defeat as many mechs in 10 turns as possible, at which point the lighter Falcon Jaegers arrive and take over pursuit. (Points for mechs defeated for holding the field, rounded normally)
   Objective: (global) Defeat all mechs before the Falcon Jaegers arrive on turn 10 (+1 point)
   Objective: (individual) 1 point for every fraction of 100 tons destroyed, rounding up at 50.
   Forces: 80% of clan forces.  1 Company of green militia mechs.  Militia mechs start in forced withdrawal; mechs put into crippled status instead suffer a +2 morale penalty to fire.  The defenders must move 1 hex closer to the far edge each turn, but will still move as close as possible for the best shots on the closest clan mech that has moved before them (per the AI opfor rules).  If they lose initiative (and no one seizes) they instead move as evasive as possible to their home board edge.
   Ostsol 4D, Griffin 1S, Wolverine 6R, Warhammer 6R, Stinger 3R, Commando 2D, Phoenix Hawk 1, Centurion A, Longbow 7Q, Longbow 7Q, Zeus 9S+, Cyclops HQ (provides a +2 init bonus).  ~12000 BV (green) if clan force is 15000BV or less, ~14000 BV (regular) if clan force is up to 17500 BV.  If far above this player BV, consider adding more enemy mechs.

Sample:(Black hawk s, timberwolf S, 4/5 Vulture DD, night gyr D, Gladiator D.)  (Vulture B/P or Gladiator B/A)

[DevianID]

Late AAR with holiday delay... the players were down 1 mech so 3/4 decided to play it safe but one decided to play the mission.  Sadly with only one player outflanking and going for kills, he took 6 honor damage trying to prevent enemy units from fleeing while the rest mostly stayed honor neutral, picking up 1 kill but not pushing for more or a company kill.  With that mission over, we move onto the next wave of the Jade Falcon invasion!

Wave 4: The Falcon Guard Falls
   With their supply lines solved, the Clan Jade Falcon resumes their invasion targeting 15 worlds.  While initially successful despite increasing resistance from inner sphere forces, on Twycross the entire Falcon Guard was lead into an ambush and destroyed.  This, coupled with the death of the Ilkhan a month later, stalled the rest of the clan invasion as Clan Jade Falcon rebuilt the Falcon Guard while electing a new ilKhan.  These setbacks would take a year off their invasion timeline, giving the defenders of the inner sphere time to issue field upgrades to their mechs, greatly expanding the inner sphere's technical capabilities in the face of the clans.

Track 1: Baker 3 August 3050, under strength militia (regular; combined arms battalion). 
   The Baker militia used traps and ambushes to engage and destroy a few mechs and elementals, trying to use subterfuge to make up for the militia's unsupported and under strength numbers.  These dishonorable tactics caused Turkina Keshik fly into a frenzy, hunting down and killing every militia member they could find.
   Track Cost: 0
   Option: (Warden)  Mine clearance ordinance:  The Warden Player uses their heavy aerospace strike fighter to identify safe hexes.  Each turn the player can probe 1 hex, and upon finding an unsafe hex one heavy strike is automatically expended springing the trap.
   Option: (Crusader)  Canary in a Coal Mine: The crusader player uses their unit of sensor equipped elementals to jump into hexes ahead of the mech, marking them safe.
   Option: Fight with honor.  +1 point.
   Map: Hot springs.  The geothermal activity allows the defender to place hidden deadfall traps.  These work like medium density (20 point) minefields, but also lower the elevation 3 hexes, causing a PSR to avoid falling for 1.5 times falling damage.  Mechs without jumpjets will be stuck in the deadfall, and will need to deal damage to the terrain to climb out.  (200 damage needed to lower adjacent terrain 1 hex level).  Hexes that might look like lava are just heated sulfur water.  +2 heat for mechs in water hexes, regardless of depth.
   Objective: Destroy all militia forces for using such dishonorable tactics. (+1 point)
   Forces: 50% of clan BV in combined arms militia (1/3 mech, 1/3 tank, 1/3 infantry).  For each clan unit, place 1 secret dead fall trap and hide 1 unit per the hidden unit rules.
  (Archer 2W Hunchback J Wyvern N Sentinel KA 2 Manticore 3 Vedette 2 Skulker 2 foot infantry 2 motorized infantry)

   Note: Militia forces will move towards and attempt to attack units stuck in a deadfall, as they have or will have no movement modifier and are thus the easiest targets.

[DevianID]

More slacking on getting the AAR up.  Mission for next week (aka tomorrow lol).  As an aside, originally I had hidden units for the scenario last week that I didnt use properly.  It worked out in the end as I would have chosen infantry anyway and the team never moved onto my half of the table as it was.

Track 2:
   The Turkina Keshik must penetrate through the enemies defensive line, and infiltrate 2 flamer elemental units into the defensive bunker network the militia commander has been using to move their forces and set up ambushes.  The commander is killed when 2 flamer elemental units are slipped past their lines into his bunker.
   Track Cost: 1
   Option (Warden): More traps.  +1 point.   A player taking this option gives the defender 1 deadfall trap, per the previous scenario.
   Option (Crusader): More ambushes.  +1 point.  A player taking this option gives the defender 1 hidden unit, per the previous scenario, from the forces deployed on the defense line.
   Option: Fight with Honor.  +1 point.
   Map:  Lush forest.  The midpoint between the two maps represents the militia's defense line.  Militia units on this line are not subject to forced withdrawal, and units deployed on the line have improved positions (partial cover) facing the clan players board edge.
   Objective:  Infiltrate 2 units of flamer elementals into the militia's command bunker to find and kill the militia commander responsible for the defender's dishonorable tactics. +2 points if elementals infiltrated into both hexes.  +1 point instead if both hexes of the bunker are destroyed (and the commander presumed, but not confirmed, dead).
   Forces: 50% of clan BV in combined arms militia (1/3 mech 1/3 tank 1/3 infantry) deployed on the defense line.  In addition, the enemy commander is in a Hardened Command Fort 6 hexes from the enemies board edge..  This structure is 2 hexes long, level 2 high, and has 144 armor and 150 CF per hex.  To identify the enemy commander, the armor must be stripped from a hex and elementals then embarked into that hex.  Once both hexes are embarked into, the commander is found and brought to swift justice, ending the militia's resistance on the planet.  The hardened command fort is found in the free hexpack promotion.  It has a BV of 906, and is armed with a variety of weapons including a sniper artillery piece and pair of autocannons using flak to cover versus air attacks.  Due to the placement of the forests, line of sight to the Command bunker is extremely limited, forcing clan units to pierce the defense line to even get line of sight to the building.

Expected forces: Victor 9a1, cataphract 2x, vindicator sic, quickdraw 4g, drillson srm, hover tank, scimitar missile, blizzard srm2, partisan, hunter, calvary srm, cobra transport, 3 jump infantry, mech infantry.

[DevianID]

Some belated notes about track 2.  2 of my hidding infantry had perfect surprise shots on t1 on a light mech, but I failed to hit and was immediately destroyed.  An airstrike killed my victor by rolling 3 head hits with 5 damage clusters before the clan player even got a chance to shoot it.  My heavy hitting command bunker seemed to need 13s to hit all game, so the triple PPC and triple laser batteries never got to do anything.  My Vtols did the most work, forcing lots of edge to be spent thanks to TAC and headshots on the SRMs, which caused the light arctic cheetah to have to fall back for much of the game.  The artillery did 10 damage scatters quite a few times, causing some repair bills to the players.  The single Turkina was enough to strip the armor at long range off the command bunker, so the understrength players who only brought 2 units of elementals were able to infiltrate both of them safely by taking their time, earning the bonus honor.

Track 3: The Battle of Braunfield (historic 7 gdl mechs lost to 3 clan)

After Baker 3, the Turkina Keshik headed to Sudeten to support the 124th striker cluster (the Blue Demons).  Following a clumsy batchal by the Grey Death commander Greyson, the mercenary force met the Falcons in open battle that immediately turned into a rout and retreat for the mercenaries.

Track Cost 1
Option: Fight with honor (+1 Honor)
Option (Warden): 0 Honor. Guard against infantry.  The player may, if their omnimech has leg critical space, add up to 4 .5 ton APOD systems to prevent infantry ambush attacks.  They must subtract an equal tonnage in other systems per the omnimech special rules.  (apods each automatically deal 1d6-1 damage to all infantry units in a hex, done before any suprise or leg attack is made)
Option (Crusader): +1 Honor.  Big game hunter.  The player challenges a 'heroic' unit of the Grey Death Legion.  If they do not defeat this unit (the unit falls off the board) then you lose this honor point (so net zero).
Map:  This portion of the Braunfield battle takes place on the eastern side.  The clan forces arrive from the north on the standard battletech map, while the GDL units start already deployed in the south on 'Rolling hills #2', arranged in chase format.  The 4 infantry units are deployed anywhere as hidden units.
Objective: The enemy quickly falls into a retreat once they realize the superiority of clan omnimechs and the folly of meeting the enemy head on.  This happens when any mech loses an arm, takes 2 engine hits or a gyro hit, or any ammo explosion/sensor hit, in addition to normal forced withdraw rules.  Once one unit is in retreat/destroyed, the entire force retreats.  Defeat or drive from the field all enemy mercenary mechs while maintaining a 2 to 1 kill ratio.  (+1 point)  Points for mech kills for holding the field as normal.
Forces: One random mech of the GDL per mech of the players.  The roster available for this fight is below.  In addition, 4 units of hidden infantry: mechanized laser, mechanized mgun, foot rifle, foot commando (antimech) srm.  Canonically Grayson and Davis lose their Marauder and Rifleman by the time they leave Sudeten (but are not killed).  Use these 2 as the first heroic units, replacing the random heroic unit rolled.  Use a minimum of 1 heroic unit if no players challenged a heroic unit using the crusader option (no bonus honor for players facing a heroic unit if they did not select the crusader option).  Grayson has the tactical genius bonus, and his Marauder command mech provides a +1 initiative bonus.  Both are lost if his mech is destroyed.  Assume the remainder of the GDL roster is engaging Blue Devil forces elsewhere.

   +Grayson 3/ 4 Marauder * NA tactics 4 edge
   +Lori 4/4 shadowhawk 3 edge
   Dallas 4/5 Trebuchet
   Miles 4/5 Griffin
   
   +Hassan 4/4 Warhammer 5 edge
   Rachel 4/4 Catapult
   Wayne 4/5 Centurion
   Paul 4/4 Archer

   Gomez 3/3 Griffin
   +Bear 4/4 Crusader 4 edge
   Mai 3/3 Vindicator
   Dimitri 4/5 Enforcer

   +Davis 3/3 Rifleman* 3 edge
   +Delmar 3/3 Wolverine 2 edge
   Sharyl 3/3 Shadowhawk 2D
   Francis 3/ 4 Assassian

   Thomas 4/5 Thunderbolt
   Martha 3/ 4 Jaegermech
   Craig 4/6 Dervish

   +Tracy 3/3 Phoenix Hawk 1K 3 edge
   Thomas 4/4 Griffin
   Philip 4/4 Vulcan
   Winston 4/5 Commando

[DevianID]

First battle of clan jade falcon versus the grey death legion done and logged.  The players ended up facing Grayson and Davis in their Marauder and Riflemen, with their special pilot cards too, plus a pair of griffins.  The clan players had 14k bv, so the skills of the GDL were increased to elite status.  Grayson had his 1/1 card, davis had his 3/2 card, and the griffins were 1/1 and 2/2.  So not quite 80% of the clan BV, but I also had those 4 hidden infantry.

The hidden infantry did over 30 damage this game, as the Timberwolf ran into 2 stacks of them.  The twolf killed one of them with infernos, but the other 3 units of infantry were able to leave the field with about 33% total casualties.  For duels, Grayson randomly got the Black Lanner, the 2/2 griffin was up against a twolf, the other griffin was up against the mad dog/vulture, and davis in his rifleman called out the gladiator/executioner.  Early weapons fire saw the Black Lanner nope away from the elite Grayson, eventually breaking honor to go after other mechs.  This left the Twolf facing down both the griffin and Grayson on the left flank, and after losing a bunch of armor to the Marauder at long range, plus the infantry damage, the twolf backed off out of weapon range.

Elsewhere, Davis used his pilot card to 'taunt' the Mad Dog, making him forced to move at top speed out of formation into the mercenary surat who probably called him all kinds of names in that thick scottish brogue.  This would have forced the Mad dog player to lose his honor for shooting the gladiators honor target, but ?fortunately? the gladiator left himself too close to the map edge and the griffin promptly pushed him right off.  So now the Vulture was free to target the rifleman as the riflemans duel target was no longer on the board.  With the Black lanner having come around after running from the Marauder, the Lanner and Vulture double team'd the Rifleman, dropping it with an ammo explosion after stripping all 3 of Davis's edge points away.  The Griffin died a turn later, though both Davis and the Griffin had set up potentially fatal kill shots on the vulture via kicks from 1 elevation higher to the head, I didnt kill any of my players this day though as Davis' kick hit an arm and the Griffin lost a leg in the weapon attack phase.  With Davis down 1 turn later and the griffin missing a leg, the Grey Death called for a retreat, as the clans had a full cluster still unassigned just waiting their turn to duel the famous mercenaries.  The players just let the Marauder and other griffin go no contest, with the Timberwolf and Vulture having most armor stripped (and the vulture sporting internal damage).  The Lanner was packing only range 15 ER Medium lasers, so chose not to trade shots with 18 range PPCs with the Marauder's special ability to combat intuition for movement phase shooting before the Lanner has evasion pips.

In the end, a very quick night as discretion was deemed the better part of valor.  The players had 2 enemy kills for 1 mech lost, with the lost gladiator player getting pushed off the map having a cheap repair bill, same as the armor slagged timberwolf and vulture.  2 to 1 was about right compared to the 7 to 3 historic results with 50ish units duking it out per the original scenario in 'Blood of Heroes' so our little slice of the battle very plausibly fit in.

We lost a player this week, so need to find a new player to bring the player count back up to a full clan star of 5.

[DevianID]

Track 4: The Battle of Killiring Crossing (historic 3 gdl to 4 clan)

Following the disastrous opening battle, the GDL re-earned their reputation by making a historic fighting retreat behind clan lines for 2 weeks, effecting repairs and sabatoging clan supply points along the way.  This culminated in a final breakthrough to territory still held by the federated commonwealth after making a river crossing under enemy fire using a heavy rainstorm as cover.  Now better accustomed to the clan method of fighting, the GDL engaged only 2 to 1 or better in mech fights, and scored more kills then losses overall.
The clan forces finally found and began to move against the fleeing GDL, though reinforcements were delayed due to weather.  The majority of the GDL mech force crossed the river, with only a few light and medium mechs and hovertanks holding the line as rearguard.

Track Cost 1
Option: Fight with honor (+1 Honor)
Option Warden: Strider Star (0 Honor) A player may deploy turn 1 using elementals instead of a mech, thanks to advanced strider stars of elementals.  The elementals do not use the mechwarriors stats unless the player pays 1 extra honor.
Option Crusader: Mech Duel (cost 0) A player may preemptively challenge any mech instead of waiting until the weapon attack phase the turn they arrive on the board.  This nets 1 honor for defeating 50+ tons of enemy mechs and holding the field.  If multiple players use this option, the player with the lightest mech has bid the lowest and earns the right to the challenge.
Map: River Crossing map.  Depth 0 water and all hexes within 1 hex of depth 1+ water is treated as mudslide/swamp (+1 mp, +1 PSR, stacks with rain) due to heavy rainstorm (bog down rules instead of falling over, automatically bog down if jumped).  Heavy Rain imposes a +1 MP and +1 PSR cost to all hexes, and a +2 penalty to fire (stacking with the mud special terrain).
Objectives: Defeat the rearguard in 10 turns to harry the remainder of GDL forces as they make their river crossing.  (+1 point)
Forces:  A rear guard of light and medium mechs, as well as a regular hover lance and infantry company.  Greyson is directing the battle from afar, provided the tactical genius initiative bonus.  If the marauder lived from the previous scenario, add it to the enemy forces instead.
   Rebekeh Frye 4/4 Hunchback* half ammo
   Santon Lynn 4/5 Javelin* half ammo
2 j edgar, saracen, scimitar, 2 mech rifle, foot rifle, foot mgun.  The LRM support from the mercenaries many LRM equipped mechs may be called in from off map to support the rear guard.  1 LRM 20 of long range support per turn is added per attacking clan mech, using the indirect fire rules.
Special Rules: To deploy onto the map, the clan player must first move 17 hexes in the rainstorm.  So a Nova, with a 5/8/5 speed, would take 4 turns moving with jumpjets to move 17 hexes, and can deploy on turn 5.  A Vulture, with 5/8 speed, paying 2 per hex due to rain, would take 5 turns to move 17 hexes, and can deploy on turn 6.

[DevianID]

With only 4 players this week, but no one downgrading to cheap elementals, the OPFOR got a 3rd mech (Grayson) in his Marauder, but I could only afford sill 4/4 instead of the 1/1 on his actual pilot card.

With no one taking the alternate victory options, the game opened with the arctic cheetah arriving on t4, the Nova and Twolf S arriving on T5, and the Vulture arriving on t6, as they all had to cross 17 hexes of rainstorm to get to the battle site.  Thus turns 1-3 I just got some distance from the edge of the board and placed infantry in defensible positions.  Turn 4, the first mech to arrive was an arctic cheetah.  Between the storm and the arctic cheetah jumping +3 each turn, my skill 4 gunners all needed 9s if I stood still at short range.  Thus, with movement and range I never landed a shot on the arctic cheetah for the entire game.  His shooting back on t4 slowed one of the hover tanks a bit with a motive crit.

Turn 5, the Nova and Twolf jumped into woods.  Greyson moved up to set up attacks for next turn, while the hunchback covered his rear and the Javelin stayed evasive.  The infantry moved out to engage.  This turn I believe the pulse lasers from the nova wiped the entire motorized infantry platoon out, since they were in the open.  The twolf hit with some pulse lasers and did 17 to the CT on Greyson.

Turn 6, the Vulture arrived, and we goaded the player into staying back, as without jump jets the MP penalty from the storm would be disasterous for him out of heavy woods cover.  So he agreed and took up point in the heavy woods, which kept him pretty safe.  Greyson used his pilot card ability to act first, and he put 20 damage onto the Twolf before the Twolf even got to move.  The Twolf stayed upright however, even with the storm penalty.  In return, the players unleashed all their BSP air assets into greyson, plus the Twolf got more potshots.  The Air strikes ended up pretty much all rolling crazy, getting the 5/6 rear on a bunch of damage and rolling the left torso enough to generate 2 crit rolls, which only have ammo.  I ended up using 3 out of 4 of Greysons edge rolling off the Rt torso crits, and the player still managed to sneak a CT engine hit in.  The arms and legs were virtually untouched.  Worse, with 75% of my edge gone, the Twolf managed 3 SRM6 hits, and even with low profile he got 8 missiles, which proceded to hit the head TWICE.  I decided to keep the head hits, as I could edge the KO roll.  Well, I failed the KO roll and failed it again with a reroll, meaning in 1 turn the players stripped 4 edge and KO'd Greyson Carlyle.  Sadness.  The Vulture beat on the Javelin, and the tanks continued to miss a bunch thanks to weather plus evasion or heavy woods, though the Nova killed 1 with pulse lasers.

Turn 7, with a KO'd Greyson, both the Twolf and the Nova jumped into point blank range of the KO'd greyson.  The Twolf has 3 pulse lasers, and targeted the head with all 3, needing 5s I believe.  2 hit, both hit the head with the targeting rules, and Greyson got brutally killed on a failed KO roll WITH a reroll.  The Nova, who broke honor to kill Greyson if the Twolf missed, took his shots into the Hunchback, where a TAC resulted in an engine and gyro hit, knocking him over.  My ac20 meanwhile only did 20 damage to the Twolf's arm, which he shrugged off.  The tanks landed some scattered damage, but nothing real.  On the other side, the Vulture did some crits to the Javelin, taking out an SRM launcher but not killing him.  The Javelin missed his return shots.  The arctic cheetah immobilized a hovertank.

Turn 8, the Nova rolled high enough to sieze the init, and he shot before the hunchback could move.  The Nova got into the rear, and landed multiple pulse lasers into the rear CT, which was alread TAC'd out earlier.  He got 3 chances for crits, including yet another TAC, and each earned 1 crit, which was engine gyro engine.  With 3 total engine hits, the mech was destroyed after only firing 1 time.  The twolf took this opportunity to go infantry hunting, and used infernos to burn out an infantry squad.  The vulture destroyed the damaged Javelin, and took about 12 total damage in return, while the Arctic Cheetah and it's streak SRMs found another immobilized result on a hover tank.

Turn 9, The Arctic cheetah immobilized a 3rd tank, and the the players started cleaning up my remaining forces.  At the end of the turn, I only had 1 platoon with 14 troops, and 2 immobilized vees.

Turn 10, the final turn, each clan mech focused down a different target, and they managed to kill all 3 remaining units.  A full victory for the Clan forces!

I was kinda shocked at this one.  The mission is set up that the clans lose this battle, as the historically GDL made it across the river in a victory.  I know if Greyson didnt have to burn so much edge rolling off those rear left torso hits from the lucky aerospace BSP strikes, then he wouldnt have taken those head hits as I could have edge rerolled them.  With Greyson not KO'd, he wouldnt have been so easy to kill, and his ability to shoot and kick out of initiative order with combat intuition would have definitely done damage and stalled the clan forces.  In the lore, he was supposed to have to abandon his marauder here covering the retreat, but him dying so fast meant the players had enough momentum to clear the rear guard before the mission time was up--to the last turn no less.  Great stories coming out of this game, gotta love the narrative dice want to tell some times.

Track 5: The Battle of Hammarr Spaceport
   The Grey Death Legion as well as much of the militia forces have been ordered to evacuate Sudeten instead of continuing to fight, despite the exceptional fighting retreat of the GDL and recovering much of their fighting strength in the days after the Killiring river crossing.  The falcons must try and stop the retreat as much as possible to recover honor lost from letting their prey escape their talons.  While initially hard pressed, a suicidal last stand of some of the GDL including the hero Delmar Clay, along with a militia mech company, are trying to buy enough time for the dropships to launch.
   
Track Cost 2
Option: Fight with honor (+1 Honor)
Option Warden: Wing Support (1 honor).  The player use aerofighter support stationed on the moon to harrass the fleeing dropships.  +1 turn to the turn limit if buying this option with honor.  If using own aero support, for each 20 damage done +1 to the turn limit.
Option Crusader: Strider support (1 honor) The player may control a second unit (a unit of elementals).  If bought with honor, these are 3/ 4 skill.  If using players own elementals, use their skill (4/5 free pilots most likely)
Map: The clan players arrive from desert hills on turn 1, while the GDL deploy on the Citytech map representing an unused dropship staging pad at the edge of Hammarr spaceport.  The militia arrive from the citytech edge on turn 3.
Objectives: Defeat the enemy forces by turn 10 to be able to attack the launching dropships. (+1 point)  Earn points for mech kills holding the field as normal.
Forces: The defenders have hardened their resolve and are not subject to the forced withdrawal rules.
   Mai Li-Fong 3/3 Vindicator*
   Delmar Clay 3/3 Wolverine* 2 edge  Delmar is providing a +1 initiative bonus with his command mech.
   Craig Priestly 4/6 Dervish*
   Charles Lovell 4/4 Centurion*
   1 Foot rifle 1 foot SRM
1 company of militia mechs arriving on turn 3.
   Rifleman 3/ 4, Rifleman 4/4, Archer 5/4, Warhammer 4/4
   Hatchetman 3/3, Phawk 4/3, Dervish 4/4, Griffin 4/4
   Locust 2/3, Ostscout 3/3, Spider 4/4, Wasp 4/4

The culmination of the battle against the grey death legion.  The defenders are throwing 18646 BV.  There is no pilot skill balancing for this match, instead the clan forces are expected to bring as much weight and damage as possible to win within the time limit, and for the first time can fully control 2 units with the elemental option.  Only the mechs of the Grey Death Legion (those with the *) can benefit from the grey death special unit abilities and quirks.

[DevianID]

So to recap the last battle, the enemy had about 18k, and the players (plus their elementals) were able to muster over 20k.  So the 'gear check' was successful.

The flow of the battle, round 2-3 when the Grey death lance met the enemy in ernest, it was a blood bath.  With the Night Gyr player breaking honor to double team mechs, armor started falling immediately.

Round 4, when the enemy reinforcements had made it most of the way up the map, the grey death forces were all wiped out when the players all siezed the initiative, stripping most of my units of their TMM>

Round 5, with my commander gone and grey death init bonus lost, the players 'Turkina Keshik' force bonus had them all seizing the init again, and all my evasive lights died instantly.  The seizing didnt stop either round 6 and round 7, with clan forces shooting the enemy with no evasion, and each kill preventing shots back.  I was losing 3 units a turn most turns.

Round 8 I had so few units left that now the players were rolling init against each other, to see who could get that last kill to put their kill tally into the next bracket for honor rewards.  The Night Gyr Gladiator and I think the Warhawk all scored 150+ tons of metal, with all enemys dead by turn 9.  This was a huge showing for the unit's special initiative ability, as for a solid 4 turns the entire team, or most of it, was acting first out of order, scoring kills and knockdowns that I couldnt get simultaneous fire back on.  Also, the elementals soaked up good damage by purposely keeping their TMM lower then players mechs, thus tanking for the players.  I killed a suit or 2 but nothing crazy, and the most damaged elemental unit got sold back immediately by the player.  The elementals got 2 mech kills for their owners too.

Wave 5: The falcon rests.
Following the death of the Ilkhan, the invasion of the inner sphere takes a one year hiatus.  Steel Viper forces take this opportunity to begin several trials against the Jade Falcons due to long standing animosity and rivalry between clans.  The new ilKhan Ulric Kerensky further fans this grudge by ordering the Vipers and the Falcons to partner in the renewed invasion.  Both sides exhausted themselves in trials to invade and control worlds in the invasion cooridor, weakening the Falcons so much that they didnt recover their strength spent on these trials until Tukyyiad began.  The Falcons only had the strength to claim 2 additional worlds after the year of peace during wave 5 as a result.

During this track, banked honor can be spent freely due to the lengthy duration the year of peace takes.  The turkina Keshik is not involved in any inner sphere battles during this wave.

Track 1:  The Trial of Peace.  Steel vipers began their trial over the genetic legacy of the very Khan of Jade Falcon himself.  Khan Elias Crichell showed that despite his advanced age he was still an apt tactician, as he leads an orbital drop with Keshik forces almost on top of Viper positions that were assaulting the Jade Falcon landing zone, intending to beat the numerically superior Vipers by trapping them between the Keshik and Omega galaxy and winning with superior tactics and cunning.

Track cost: 0
Option: Fight with strict honor (+1 honor point)
Option Warden: Preliminary smoke barrage (-1 honor).  Place a 7 hex heavy smoke area anywhere on the battlefield to aid the combat drop.
Option Crusader: Preliminary challenges (-1 honor).  Declare your challenge target before turn 1 starts.  If multiple players choose this option, roll to determine who declares the first challenge.
Map: outskirts of landing zone.  The Falcon forces must deploy via combat drop (PSR or you scatter).  The Viper forces begin deployed on the map facing opposite the landing falcons.
Objectives: Defeat the 3rd Rattler Heavy Mech star.  +1 Honor.  Earn 1 honor per 50 tons of mechs killed if holding the field (up from 100 tons per normal--clan targets are more honorable kills thus worth more).
Forces: 1/ 2 Thor C, 2/ 3 BattleCobra B, 1/ 3 Crossbow B, 1/ 2 Loki Prime, 1/ 2 Timberwolf Prime (22,114 BV).  The Khan underbid, intending to shame the Vipers with a numerically inferior force that used better tactics.  The enemy has 120% the players BV, so should outnumber the players slightly--adjust skills to match 120% of the players BV.  The clan Steel Viper forces will abide by honor duel rules as long as all combatants are honorable.  They will all break honor as soon as 1 player breaks honor.  The clan Viper forces have no special abilities/tactics or unit abilities.

[DevianID]

Some fun Steel Viper versus clan jade falcon player action was had!  Thank goodness for the player's edge and unit special abilities, they really made this fight not a TPK.

The initial setup was a deepstrike drop, and all the players had risky deepstrikes that could have scattered off the table if they failed their PSR.  Fortunately everyone passed so no mechs were destroyed in deployment...

The Vulture challenged the Crossbow B, hoping to use range to whittle it down before the 48 damage in streaks ruined the Vultures day.

The big Warhawk challenged the heaviest Viper mech, the Timberwolf.

The lightest player in the fastest mech didnt declare a challenge, hoping to line up back shots before getting an opponent, then challenge the enemy and back shot them all at once.  I rolled lower initiative, so a mech with a 360 arc of fire, the Battle Cobra B, challenged the Fenris mech who was the Thor's rear, saving the Thor from being backshot.

The Night Gyr decided to go after the Loki, hoping to kill the Loki and then deal with the Battle Cobra.  Since the Battle Cobra got the jump on the player's Fenris, this put the Night Gyr up against a second clan heavy, the UAC20 Thor C, once the hellbringer was finished off.

The opening salvos saw the player's mostly ahead.  The Vulture had shots at range 25 and then 21 and 13 on turn 2, 3, and 4, but didnt cause any serious openings in the 65 ton Crossbow's armor.  The Warhawk C player alpha striked the Timberwolf every turn, with ER lasers and LRMs coming back.  The Night Gyr bought smoke, and used it for the Warhawk, so the Warhawk had +2 cover versus the Timberwolf meaning the Warhawk was winning his long/mid range trades up to turn 4.  The Loki actually put up a good fight versus the Night Gyr, with both mechs having a pair of ER PPCs.  The ultra ac/10 and extra heat sinks of the Night Gyr put it ahead, stripping an ERPPC turn 2, another turn 3, along with some engine hits, and eventually with just 3 er mediums left the hellbringer was still doing 21 damage before being laid low with a torso destroyed and engine hit to the other torso.  Lasting 4 turns and doing that much damage was a pretty good showing.  Finally, the Battlecobra was too overheated firing 2 PPCs on turn 2 to capitalize on turn 3/4, where i won init, so I just gave the fenris no real shots on the Battle Cobra while the Battle Cobra whiffed the ER PPCs.

Turn 5, the Crossbow was now in range of the Vulture, and did 36 damage right off the bat.  This sent the Vulture into a hasty retreat, blocking LOS on turn 6 and beelining straight away turn 7 to at least put the crossbow at range 9, where I only hit with 12 damage.  The return fire was inconsistent coming back, not hiting anything vital but going internal on the left arm for no crit.  The player rerolled the crit chance with one of their 2 edge, as the ammo or a shoulder crit would halve the crossbows fire power.  No luck on the edge reroll either.

The Warhawk, with the timberwolf now in short range, took enough damage to fall.  Damage back at this point has destroyed the Mpulse and one of the arms, but the pair of LRM20s were still online.  With all the heat the Warhawk had accumulated just standing was all it could muster, letting the twolf get up into the smoke in base contact for machine guns too.  The Warhawk fell again, and took a head hit and failed PSR, so had to burn the player's 1 edge staying awake.  Standing up and backing up to protect the rear with the cliff edge, the warhawk got off light and dealt an engine crit to the twolf, who fell down, putting the warhawk in the lead for now with 1 salvo of LRM20 left.

The Night Gyr was afraid of the UAC20 with multiple ER PPC and laser damage weaking all the mechs armor, so played keepaway for numerous turns.  This was actually pretty intense for the player, as he wasnt in good shape to deal with a fresh 70 ton mech with that kind of short range firepower.  Fortunately he won init all these turns, so the Summoner couldnt close the gap very well.  The Night Gyr's shooting at 12-9 hexes with woods put the Jumping Thor at 12, 10s, and 11s for the ultra, which all missed.  Return fire was better for the Night Gyr who had medium range instead of long with the paired ER PPC and ultra 10.  Plus the Thor fell at the end of that set of exchanges.

The Fenris finally won initiative, and was getting rear shots.  With no crit soaking on the Battle Cobra, the 4 crits to the left and right rear torsos all transfered internal, meaning he got some engine and gyro damage.  This caused a fall, which caused a failed PSR, into a snake eyes consciousness roll.  With the mech asleep, the pulses targeted the center torso, and the Battlecobra went down.

The next set of exchanges started with the Warhawk siezing the initiative on a good roll.  With the Timberwolf knocked down, but half the Warhawks firepower neutered from prior shoulder damage, it was no or never, and the player knocked off the side torso.  Thanks to the engine crit on the other side, the timberwolf shut down for good, and thanks to the sieze the Warhawk got to apply damage in the movement phase, so I got no shots back with my point blank paired LRM20s into his armor stripped mech.

Up north, the Battle Cobra got another 24 damage in streaks in, getting a head hit.  The Vulture burned the second edge on initiative, trying to get away.  Fortunately, a streak missile got in and hit the left arm, causing 2 crits!  The crit rolled into the streak ammo, which blew the arm off, cutting the firepower in half.  Sadly for the vulture the pilot stayed awake, so it was still a fight.

The Night Gyr got some internal damage to the CT on the Thor, with the gyro taking away its mobility and the engine knocking its mobility down due to overheating.  This lead to a second knockdown, and the Night Gyr could risk getting closer now that the Thor was ground bound.

The Fenris, who only took 1 point of internal damage in the duel with the Battle Cobra, moved up incase the vulture needed help with the crossbow.

In the final round, we saw a sieze from the Night Gyr let the Night Gyr close the distance and alpha the Thor, hoping for the kill in the movement phase so the Thor couldnt shoot the weakend Night Gyr.  This gamble paid off, as the engine was destroyed when a side torso was destroyed thanks to the previous crits to the center.

On the other side, the Crossbow did another set of streak damage, critting the hand and shoulder of the Vulture and knocking the pulses out of the fight going forward.  Fortunately for the Vulture, his streaks connected back at the battle cobra, and while he alpha'd up to 14 heat to do it, the 12 streak missiles hitting open torsos, like on the battle cobra, transfered the crit inwards.  So combined with the 3 snake eyes TACs the player rolled at the same time, he dealt a silly 8 confirmed crits total to my center torso--which had only taken 3 internal structure damage.  So the final mech went down in a spectacular way, leaving the players battered but intact.  Without edge and siezes I would have destroyed multiple mechs here, as the players were fighting 120% of their BV in clan forces.  So that puts the initiative bonus and edge bonus somewhere at +25% id say, judging from this battle.

[DevianID]

Track 2: Political maneuvering.  With the return back to the homeworlds and lull in the invasion, warriors have an opportunity to issue personal challenges for rank, technicians, or possessions that had to be put on hold during the invasion.  Each player has several options for trials.

Rank: Players may take a new trial of position.  This allows them to earn a new rank, which in turn grants much honor to those that rank highly.  Since a trial of position is a formal trial, players area provided a free heavy omnimech for this trial that does not cost points to buy or maintain.
Trials of position involve a pair of warriors facing off against 3 enemies each.  Each enemy destroyed increases your rank, starting with a medium omnimech of regular quality, a veteran heavy omnimech, and elite assault omnimech.  A player can earn a higher rank by engaging the other trialmates targets, initiating a grand melee in which all clan mechs are active and free to target either trial mech.  By defeating 4 or more mechs in this way a legendary rank can be achieved.

Technicians: Players may make a trial of possession for the right to create and maintain a non-standard omnimech config.  While not worth honor per say, winning the right to a specialist team allows a warrior to create a custom omnimech configuration instead of the tried and tested standard omniconfigs.  A player may only have a single custom omniconfig.

Possession: Players may make a trial to aquire and use unique mechs not normally available to the Turkina Keshik.  This allows a player to use a mech only found in a different faction for example, or to use a second line mech in the frontline Turkina Keshik.  If a player wanted to use a Kodiak, this is the trial required.  This trial also lets players acquire expensive mechs without paying the normal cost.


Track cost 2:
Option: Fight with strict honor (+1 honor point)
Option Warden:  Careful planning.  (-1 honor).  The player knows the enemy opposition before selecting mech and variant for the trial, though the player's weight class is still fixed.  If the mech type is known (such as the different trials of possession) the player learns of the special condition the challenged party is imposing, such as fighting without sensors, or with only energy weapons.
Option Crusader:  Unrelenting violence (+1 honor).  The player and all enemies start with +1 pilot hit due to unaugmented trials pre match or prior combats, such as the infantry stage of a trial of position.  The player can not heal this injury until after the trial.
Map: Circle of Equals or equivalent
Objectives: Defeat the enemy forces as generated by the trial.  +4 honor per new rank earned.  Honor for holding the field, 1 point per 50 tons defeated.  If the trial of possession is successful, the player gets the mech, or can use the custom omni-config.
Forces:  Trial of position forces include a regular medium, veteran heavy, and elite assault clan mech.  The player uses a heavy omnimech, which is provided for free, in a trial of position. 
In a trial of possession, the challenger (the player) chooses the map and location.  The challenged (the enemy) will be using the mech (either a custom, or the mech the player is trying to win).  The challenged in a trial of possession must be given a mech of equal or greater tonnage if they win.  The player mech must not be heavier then the enemies mech (must bid down their force).

Notes:  In the interest of speed for group play, multiple trials will be played at once, some on the same maps--trials of position for example are usually done 2 at a time.  The custom omni-config doesnt net the player any honor--indeed the cost of 2 for entering means with battle damage this option will cost the player most likely, and they also have to first defeat whatever monster config they create.

[DevianID]

Personal Trial aftermath: Mostly positive, but the Grendel/Mongrel Mech remains a player killer, reprising its role from day one session 0.

We had 2 players going for the trial of position, hoping for higher rank and thus higher honor.  The risk?  If you fail to kill the first mech, you wash out and have to roll a new pilot.  Fortunately, we had no washouts.  The players chose a nova cat prime and timberwolf S.  The S, being less BV, got the easier trio.  The Nova Cat made a good showing on the first opponent, a Nova, killiing it with tight clustering of the PPCs and blowing out the CT after just a few volleys.  His next mech was a Timberwolf N, a much fiercer opponent.  The Timberwolf stripped all but 1 ER PPC off the Novacat, but in the end died to more very tight clusters of PPC fire--I believe my legs were almost untouched.  The 3rd mech, a Dual ER PPC+large pulse gargoyle, finished off the player Novacat.  This earned the player the rank of star commander.
The timberwolf S player took longer to kill the Nova, who had paired ER PPCs not to be trifled with.  The low gunnery of the first mech proved too much a handicap though and the Timberwolf prevailed.  The second mech, a Thor B, didnt ever hit with the NARC, and in general missed more 7s then he hit.  So the Timberwolf slowly carved up the Thor with pulse lasers as they bounced left and right, until the recurring misses from the Thor eventually meant it lost the damage race.  The final mech, a gargoyle prime, had the massed cluster damage to exploit the open torso.  The player got into short range and put everything into the Gargoyle hoping to race the low damage high crit enemy assault.  I took the players torso off, leaving just 2 SRMs and 1 pulse laser, and I also generated 5 crit rolls on the CT.  I failed every single 8+ to get the final single point of engine damage to kill the player.  In return, he rolled a super high initiative, used the Turkina Keshik special to attack in the movement phase, and killed the Gargoyle before I could shoot back by taking off a side torso for 2 engine crits and rolling a 3rd crit on the opposite side torso, which powered down the mech and earned him 3 kills for star captain!

On the personal trials, one player was playing for a custom Executioner config.  He made it a brutal short range fighter, but put mostly range 6 ER Smalls or range 12 SRM streaks.  So to fight his custom, he brought a bunch of pulse lasers.  The special Fog limited his max range, so he used smoke to make the hits for all the standard lasers and streaks a 9, 10 or 11 on a run/jump, while his pulse lasers not shooting into smoke needed 7s at the same range.  Since he got to place the smoke from his SRM, he always placed it in a location that I wouldnt be able to benefit while staying within 4 hexes for my streak short range, so if I wanted defensive cover id need a range penalty and thus wouldnt even be able to hit at all.  So it was a slow death with my much more numerous weapons only barely hitting while his few but accurate pulse lasers eventually took a leg, killing my mobility and making me easy pickings.

Elsewhere, a Timberwolf Prime was fighting to claim a ghost bear exclusive Kodiak.  This matchup came down to his longer range compared to the big damage UAC and streaks.  The Twolf excels at medium range, so was firing LRMs and ER lasers at 9 hexes any time he won initiative while the kodiak needed 10 with the big guns at long range and 8s with the lower damage ER lasers.  The player eventually got cornered by the Kodiak, with damage piling up, but an edge roll to reroll an UAC 20 that hit saved him 40 damage, which he could not take in any single location.  Worse for the Kodiak, the player had a string of initiative wins, letting him break out of the corner and re-establish long range dominance.  With my firepower halved and both players out of ammo, the Kodiak fight ended abruptly with a double head shot with medium lasers dealing 14 damage to the head in a single shooting phase.  While the Kodiak was in a bad position now that the Twolf was out of the corner, the CT armor was still strong and the timberwolf was getting crit chances any time the kodiaks ER lasers connected.  So the Kodiak died right before things got critical for the player, a lucky break.

Not so lucky was the player challenging the Diamond Sharks for their new omni, the Mongrel, before its debut on Tukayyid.  The player bid low, so his 2/3 Arctic Cheetah A only had to fight a 4/4 Mongrel A.  The player had some misfortune of missing multiple streak shots on decent numbers when he won initiative and got in the Mongrel's rear.  Worse, he forgot the Mongrel's only rear firing weapon is on the right arm, the medium pulse and ER small, and he didnt arc dodge it, so the medium pulse was scoring free shots it shouldnt have been able to take while his streaks into the rear were rolling low.  With a few losing initiative rolls meaning the light Cheetah no longer could threaten the rear, he had to retreat which brought the LRMs into range.  Due to the earlier medium pulse damage, I eventually connected with the leg a second time and felled the light mech.  A combination of bad dice and one mistake about not arc dodging cost the player something like 7 honor, maybe more if the pilot took pilot hits that need to be healed.  This is twice a 4 gunnery Clan Mongrel has cost a player 7+ honor in a trial. 

With all the individual trials complete, next week players begin competing in the blood name seeded tournament.  The march madness style bracket will be populated with random clan pilot cards, giving me the gunnery, piloting, and special piloting skills, along with the pilot's favored mech.

Track 3++: Bloodname Tournament.
Track cost: 2
Option: Fight with strict honor (+1 honor point)
Option Warden: Sibkin bond.  +1 personal honor each time you play as opfor (as one of the players Sibkin) against another player and win.
Option Crusader:  Independant Allegiance: +1 honor for defeating another player character with your own player character in the tournament.
Map: 1-2 mapsheets or 1 neoprene, chosen by defender.
Objectives: Progress as far down the bloodname tournament as possible.  Honor for holding the field after a match, 1 point per 50 tons defeated.
Forces: 32 seeded participants, though only the matches involving players will matter.  Players may be tasked to face other players, or to play opfor as needed.  Each match is a 1v1 duel.  Contestants will roll off.  The winner declares the challenge and sets the weight class limit as the attacker.  The loser picks the location (maps) of the battle.
The winner of the tournament gains the honor of becoming one of the bloodnamed members of the Clan.

Note on crusader and warden options.  The Warden option is a way for players who get knocked out early to gain some honor back by playing as Opfor against the other players, to speed the games up by having multiple trials going on at the same time.  The first round will be all the players versus the GM, as no PvP seeds lined up (earliest possible PvP is round 2).  The players flip a coin or roll off, the winner is the attacker who chooses the location of the battle (picks the map).  The loser picks the weight class of the fight.  An attacker can not bring a mech of a heavier weight class then the one the defender choose, allowing light mech specialists to actually have a chance.  For all the random opfor I will populate the tree ahead of time with who won each matchup between 2 cards using megamek AI, which will also give any pilot damage the winner has accumulated, so the players only have to worry about their battles.

[DevianID]

So the bloodname trial was completed, but it was a little chaotic.  Me, the gamemaster, didnt even stay to the end as the final 5th bout was PvP.

One player couldnt make it so we ran 4 1v1 matches at once.  My initial thought for multiple mapsheets was immediately thrown out--1 map sheet x4 players fit barely with all the other record sheets and dice and such.  Round one went well for everyone, they all beat their first OpFor opponent played by me.  The 4 semifinal brackets saw one player in bracket 1, one player in bracket 2, no player in bracket 3, and 2 players in bracket 4.  So after round one, with the tournament reduced to 16 total slots, 2 players had to face off.  The player who was defender choose an assault mech, which the other player didnt have, so they had to fight up in a timberwolf.  The direwolf just stood and delivered, with every turn dealing more out then they took.  The timberwolf player hesitated and by the time they finally closed into short range the long range guns on the direwolf had already done too much damage.  On the other side, the players had to face mechs which both randomly had rangemaster.  So both players picked point blank mechs, and despite my random card pilots being 1 or 2 gunners, taking a +4 long range penalty at short range meant they just couldnt hit.  So the random card pilot abilities pulled from a stack of 32 saved both players.

Round 3 was another bot round, like round 1.  Some damage was dealt here and there but overall the brackets 1 and 2 saw opfor executioners paired off against player owned assaults, and bracket 4 saw an opfor nova facing a player stormcrow.  The nova did lots and lots of 7 damage medium laser hits, but the nova clutered pretty hard with the ultra ac20, double head shotting and ct coring the mech in the same turn after only 3 turns of exchanged fire.  The Opfor executioners faired no better, with 1 dying to a player ERPPC from a Warhawk to the head, with the other losing initiative to the players custom all point blank backshooting assault, generating 3 engine crits with the quad mount streak6s and small lasers.

Round 4, bracket 1 and 2 players met in the semi-finals, while bracket 4 met with the opfor 1/2 skilled timberwolf.  The Player on Player match was set up to be a player Fenris backstabbing the other players Thor in a low visibility fight.  However, with a flubbed init roll the Thor siezed the init, and acted in the movement phase.  With a full alpha strike, everything hit the torso, taking out 2 engines on the left side XL and the Thor's SRM sneaking a 3rd engine hit to the CT.  So now the players get to see the kind of BS I have to put up with LOL.  Turkina Keshik has a great unit bonus even in PVP situations.  On the other side of the bracket, the card pulled that rose to the top had sniper and +1 to crit, so at long range the hit mods saw multiple lucky location rolls against the player.  With a TAC dinging the engine and causing unexpected heat, the player failed the ammo explosion roll, so burned all their edge on round 2.  With no edge and critical heat, the player took a turn jumping away to cool off, then jumped in and took more heat damage.  However, the player took inferno srms as well, and did just enough heat to cause a shutdown roll... which the fresh opfor timberwolf failed.  The player then stood still and put all their direct fire weapons to the head dispite the to hit penalty and hit with a medium and small laser.  Both rolled the 6-7-8 needed to confirm a headshot to an immobile shut down mech, meaning the unlucky player turned the entire match around in a single turn with 12 damage to the enemy Twolf while passing multiple ammo explosion and shutdown rolls along the way... He played to a very unlikely out after taking a bad TAC early, and sometimes the draw on the flop saves you.

This left 2 players winners of the semifinals.  With time running late for me I had to run, but the players decided to stick around in the shop and determine the winner right then and there.  The Warhawk with its headhunting PPCs or the Direwolf S.  The direwolf player got to choose maps, so picked won with no LOS and woods, allowing him to get right point blank on the Warhawk before shots would be exchanged.  Thus the raw extra damage of the direwolf S, with 90+ damage but only at range 12 or less, was all in short range when the 2 players actually could see each other.  The ER PPCs and large pulses needed very lucky clustering to fight out of this, but the dice instead scattered damage all around.  The direwolf player on the other hand clusted well despite having lower damage per shot, as there was just too much total damage not to get something through, and once the torsos were open the myriad of srms and LBX cluster shots dealt 3 engine hits in the same turn they got exposed.  It went 6-7 rounds total, but the warhawk just didnt have the luck to win out, and even was failing PSRs and taking additional fall damage to make matters worse.  At least thats what I was told.

The end result is a ton of XP for players (the winner of the night fought 5 times, and got MVP for winning, totaling 6 XP), and the winner also gets the Roshak bloodname.

With this the year of peace is over, and turkina keshik is returning from the clan homeworlds.  Their next battle is one of the longest and bloodiest ever, the battle of tukayyid!  I am running the campaign straight from the Tukayyid campaign book, which will see all players start with 4 honor to last though what may be up to 18+ battles if the players are unlucky... or 2 battles if they are extremely unlucky!  In addition, buying new mechs during Tukayyid is more expensive in that campaign book compared to normal (only have what you bring with you for the most part) so its entirely possible the players will quickly run out of resources, just as happened to the falcons in the lore.  The players will have to bid exactly what mechs they will be bringing.  Comstar gets a similar military force based on the player's size, and unlike normal the comstar force has to manage a warchest of their own, meaning on a macro scale the players can potentially bankrupt me and take away my ability to repair damage.  I get the equivalent of 20 'honor' in supplies, and like the players I must buy into the tracks too now.

Since the campaign has a back and forth element, I can only predict so far in advance.  The first mission randomly rolled is Recon.  The location is outside the Jade Falcon landing zone on the south Prezno plains.  Jade Falcons start with priority, and the random roll for attack/defender sees the side with priority get a bonus towards being attacker--each time the players win or lose the priority can swap from Jade falcons to neutral to comstar, or back.

Edit: Housekeeping.  The massive Tukayyid campaign will see all the players coming together versus comstar.  Track cost and options are fixed by random rolled mission.  Both sides have a universal advantage (in addition to the usual Turkina Keshik unit bonus).  Any player can pay the track cost out of their own pool.  Track rewards will need to be split among the players as needed to fix damage and such.
Wrath: Clan forces gain a -1 bonus to hit any foe that refuses a fair challenge.  A fair challenge is from an honorable Jade Falcon battle mech to an enemy mech of equal or larger weight class.  (This replaces the normal +1 honor bonus for fighting with honor.  The Turkina Keshik is still expected to fight with honor as the Khans signature unit)
Comstar: Comstar start's with +12 bonus BSP points each mission, used for artillery, vehicle, and other support, in addition to their mech forces.  Several of the Comstar divisions also have a unit bonus, like the Turkina Keshik bonus.  For example, the 394th division, the White Lions, (the first comstar opponents) have "Forcing the Initiative" (+1 to my initiative per clan unit killed the prior turn) and "Rapid Strike" (only when attacking some of the comstar forces can strike from the sides).

Finally, the comstar unit pool is based on what the players bring.  My current list of player assets is:
Executioner, Fenris, Arctic Cheetah, Paul (2/4 pilot?)
Dire Wolf, Timber Wolf, Storm Crow, Uller, John (1/3 pilot?)
Night Gyr, Arctic Cheetah, 10 BSP, Jeff (2/3 pilot?)
Timber Wolf, Mad Dog, Storm Crow, Andrew (2/4 pilot?)
Warhawk, Summoner, JeffC (3/4 pilot?).
2-4 total elementals (all but jeffC?  Or some got sold i think?).
If any of these assets are being left behind, I need to know soon.  If I dont hear anything im assuming this is the list going to Tukayyid and building my Comstar force accordingly.  Players can also salvage and repair comstar mechs, and pay normal rates when repairing comstar equipment.  Comstar has to pay double to repair captured clan equipment.

Assuming 300ish points, I have randomly generated the 36 starting comstar mechs.  Since I know your starting mechs, you can know my RNG mechs/skills.

77th:  Veteran Iota.  “White Monsters” Heavy Assault Level II Marksman 1 in 3.  60 points
   Black Knight 9x2  <--I rolled up the one you want to salvage JeffC with the hatchet/sword!
   Shootist 8a
   Orion Mx2
   Thunderbolt 7M

201st: 3rd army Regular Kappa.  “Snow on the Mountains” Heavy Fire Mountaneers 1 in 4.  48 points
   Marauder 5CS x2
   Bombardier 12D
   Warhammer 7CS
   Rifleman 3N
   Archer 5CS

388th: 11th army Green Delta.  “White Banshees” Light Fire Command Sharpshooters. 32 points (regular)
   Panther 8z x3
   Urbanmech r63
   Rifleman 5D (unit swap ability)
   Battlemaster 3s (commander, unit swap ability)

394th: Veteran Lambda “White Lions” Medium Battle Forcing Initiative/Rapid Strike.  48 points
   Wyvern 9N
   Crab27 x2
   Sentinel 3L x2
   Centurion 9A
403rd: 11th army “Forceful Words/Prenzo River Rats” Regular Upsilon Assault Striker no skill.  72 points
   Cyclops 11A x2
   Victor 9B x3
   Battlemaster 3M

111th: 3rd army “The White Clan” Regular Rho Light Striker no skill.  18 points
   Mongoose 66
   Mercury 99
   Mercury 97 x2
   Hussar 200D
   Hussar 400D

[DevianID]

Tukayyid Track 1: Recon; South Prezno Plains.  A large flatland covered in fields and grass, irrigated by the mighty Prezno river to the north.  The Jade Falcon landing was mostly uncontested, with only the 394th and 403rd division active in the area.  Day 1 the Jade Falcons begin their invasion with a recon of the area, while the defending Comstar fight a series of delaying actions.  This first day is usually glossed over by historians of Tukayyid, as day 2 saw the Jade Falcons masterfully surround and destroy the 403rd division, with headhunter elementals finding and killing the 403rd's leader and routing the whole division.  Still, despite only losing a single warrior in the Jade Falcon's day one, the Comstar 394th division "White Lions" made the Jade Falcons advance wearily amidst constant harassment attacks.

Recon: The attacker (rolled 3, Jade Falcons) deploys no more then 25% of their total campaign force.  They move on from their edge turn 1.
The defender deploys up to 100% of the force the Jade Falcons attack with, set up anywhere on the board.

Track Cost: 2 (any combination of players may pay the track cost, as long as 2 points total are paid)
Option: +2 (Jade Falcon only--refund the players, the player who bought into the track get to choose).  25% of the defender is 'hidden'.

Objectives: Identify the opposition (Jade Falcon).  Scan 50% of the enemy force. +1
Objectives: Pre-emptive strike (Jade Falcons).  Destroy or cripple 25% of the enemy force. +1
Objective: Escape (Jade Falcon).  At least 50% of the Falcon force must live and leave the map from their home edge by turn 8. +1
Comstar scores any of the objectives the Jade Falcons fail to accomplish.
The game ends on turn 8.  Comstar holds the field unless wiped out, in which case no one hold the field.

Map:  Deployment zone (map pack tukayyid). 
Prezno plains events--
   no 'Thunderstorm' (rolled 6, need 11) (no weather)
   Yes 'Fields as far as you can see' (roll 9 need 7)(No trees)
   Yes 'The Heat has gotten here first' (roll 7 need 7) (no water)

Comstar has 18(edit24) bsp support points (edit since 300 is between the book 200 and 400, im upping the base BSP from 12 to 18, since we are playing in the middle).  The 394th have a balanced mix of support forces.  2 medium tank, 2 jump infantry 2 motorized infantry, light bombing, light air cover, 1 sniper artillery.

So if John Jeff and Paul bring lights (33 points out of 75 max for Tukayyid mission 1 Recon) then JeffC can bring his lightest unit (a Summoner) for 20 leaving Andrew the choice of 20 points for the Timberwolf/Mad Dog or 19 points for the Stormcrow
So im looking at 72 or 73 points.  This lets me deploy the randomly generated Veteran 394th 'White Lion' Medium Battle unit for 48 points, along with 2 assault mechs from the Regular 403rd 'Forceful Words/Prenzo River Rats' Assault Striker unit for 12 points each, putting me at 6 mediums 2 assaults for 72 points, plus the BSP minions.

Comstar's supply count: 20 (-2 for upcoming mission)

[DevianID]

Game 1 of the Battle of Tukayyid!  It did not go as I expected...

My players were apprehensive of their lights getting focused down by the medium mechs of the veteran 394th 'White Lions'.  The mission, recon, saw me already deployed with 8 total mechs and some BSP vee/infantry support.  The rolled mission had 3 objectives: Kill 25% (2 mechs), retreat with 3+ clan units by turn 8, and scan 50% (4 mechs).  So after a few lucky shots on light mechs that were a little to forward, the players were ready to GTFO and forget the scan mission.

Round 1, the players decide not to give me hidden units for some extra supply points, so I deploy the Cyclops and sentinels in long range sniping positions, with the pair of crabs and centurion mid board.  The Wyvern and Victor deploy behind some hills to jump on anyone running up the flanks.  I rolled high for initiative, forcing all the players to move up.  The 2 lights that got targeted were a pair of Arctic Cheetahs.  The right arctic cheetah was in range of the pulse laser equipped Wyvern, and thanks to the pulse bonus I put a crit on the mech's gyro.  The other Arctic Cheetah had a +4 evasion, but wandered into medium range of the 50 ton crab/centurion trio, and ate a 10 damage AC10 to the CT.  So both Arctic cheetahs, who had probes to scan mechs, were 1 CT hit away from death after two big damage attacks hit home.

For the players, they abandoned all honor immediately and put all 5 mechs into the Pulse laser wyvern, practically killing it and rendering it unable to shoot.

Round 2, the players won initiative but not by 2 to use the Turkina Keshik act first ability.  So the Uller put a kill shot into the downed Wyvern, and the other 4 clan mechs all focused fired on the lead Crab.  The Thor, one of the 2 heavies of the Star, purposefully moved slow to present an easier target then the damaged lights, so all my fire saw about 40-50 scattered damage, but he stayed upright.  The final salvo of the 4th mech, the Timberwolf, cored out the crab, leaving the players with 2 kills.

At this point, they surprised me.  Instead of playing the 8 turns, they all just ran off the field on turn 3.  I was kinda surprised by this--I didnt use my artillery and bombing BSPs as I was waiting to use them at clutch moments in the late game, so they went wasted.  The players of course dumped all their light and heavy strikes immediately on turn 1.  So after just 2 rounds of combat they won the 'kill 25%' and 'survive and retreat 3 units' and failed the 'scan 4 objective' part of the mission.  With 2 to 1 they took their minor win and literally ran away with it.  I was expecting a short game, as recon is only 8 turns, but they really got me with a 2 turn game as they abandoned their honor instantly.  We found the 'Wardens' hiding in clan jade falcon thats for sure.

So Comstar is down 1 supply out of 20 (aka down 100 WP out of the starting 2000wp) and the cored out Crab and Wyvern cant be recovered.  The players took the equivalent of 300wp in damage, but kept all their mechs, so comstar has a supply advantage but the players have a mech advantage as it stands now.

Next game rolls: Roll =1, pushback, 4=JF Attack (If JF lose mission 1, comstar attacks due to priority swing)  Map roll=7,6, Grasslands 1 and 3.  Storm=6, no storm, Trees=6, keep trees, water=7, no water.

Tukayyid Track 2, Pushback; South Prezno Plains, May 2nd.  Day one (May 1st) of the Jade Falcon campaign saw the Falcons cautiously advance, as the 394th supported by the 403rd forces engaged in delaying actions.  Wary of the defenders, only one Jade Falcon mech was lost the entire day due to the slow advance [and none from the players].  This escalated to a full on battle for the central corridor of the South Prezno Plains on the second day.  The Falcons surrounded the 403rd's positions and utterly destroyed them with heavy omnimechs, exacerbated when elementals killed the 403rds commander and through them in dissarray.  Elsewhere the 388th fended off Falcon attacks until the Falcon units victorious against the 403rd came to reinforce against the 388th, driving the 388th into a retreat.

Attackers can deploy up to 50% of their starting force (so 152 points in units).  Defenders can 100% match the player's deployed force.
Track Cost: 4
Options: None
Objectives (Jade Falcon): Destroy 75% of the defender force (+2).  Destroy 100% of the defender force (+4).  Destroy the enemy commander (+1.5).
Objectives (Comstar): Hold--Keep 50% of the forces alive by turn 8 (+2).  Make them Hurt--Destroy 75% of the players forces (+4).  Lead to Victory--complete both other Comstar objectives and keep the commander alive (+1.5).

Clan forces deploy from either edge flanking the Comstar on turn 1.  Comstar must be at least 12 away from their home edge (so its hard to just run off turn 1) and can deploy anywhere.

Suspected Player force: Legendary Direwolf, Elite Warhawk/Gladiator, Elite Timberwolf/Night Gyr.  35+30+30+20+20 points.  135 points.

Enemy force: 403rd 'Forceful words' Regular Assault unit.  3 Victors, 1 Battlemaster, 2 Cyclops.  72 points.
394th 'While Lions' Veteran Medium.  2 Sentinel, Crab, Centurion.  32/48 Points remaining.  Sieze the Initiative unit bonus.
388th 'White Banshee' Regular Mixed Command: 3 Panther, UrbanMech, Rifleman, Battlemaster 3S*.  32 Points.  Sharpshooter unit bonus.  134 points total, 16 mechs.
24 BSP: 2 Assault Tanks (14), 2 Jump infantry, 2 Mech Infantry (8) Light Smoke artillery (1) Light Air Cover (1).

GM Notes:  Since comstar wants to retreat at least the commander of the 388th to deny both the Jade Falcon 100% kill and commander kill objectives, expect the Battlemaster to run as fast as possible to get off the board on turn 3, using smoke for cover.  Diving on the commander at short range is risky considering its 16 to 5.  Expect to lose a clan mech here.

Edit: Further GM notes.  16 mechs is almost half my 34 remaining mechs.  This can be a giant death pile that really sets me back if I fought too the end, but the mission is for me to run off the map with most of my forces, lingering on the board edge until turn 8 if it looks like I can get away with it.  Its a whopping 4 supply to go into this match, so if I manage to retreat everything I just drain 4 supply from both sides.  Since Comstar has a supply advantage, if I do run away with everything the mission will be a tie but ill be up on supply.  That said, if the players get too aggressive trying to stop me from running off, I will put 16 mechs into that player and go for the throat, as I need to kill some clan mechs or Ill win the supply war but lose the mech attrition battle.

[DevianID]

One player dropped last minute this week, so I had to cut 3 mediums from my forces.  The remaining brought the beef though, a legendary dire wolf, and elite gladiator warhawk night gyr.

I split my forces (terrible idea) with the (flawed) idea to keep 6 of my assault mechs on the other side of the table to 1) score the hold objective and 2) not overwhelm the players.  The remaining side had my 4 light 1 medium/heavy/assault mechs.  The players attacking from the flank decided to rush the commander on the lighter side to prevent his escape, so the 6 assault mechs on the other side of the board did nothing for many turns.

Turn 1, I put my 1 smoke down to keep my commander safe.  So far so good.  The players immediately broke honor and all shot at my crab, and with great cluster rolls pierced the CT without going internal anywhere else, and hit the gyro.  So the crab fell down.

Turn 2, the gladiator crit seeker put more crits into the ct without coring it, earning that player some salvage resources.  Elsewhere, the slow urbanmech got a sharpshooter shot off that failed to crit, and the players again clustered all into 2 locations, the rt and CT, and killed the mech instantly.  A panther took 20 scattered damage and needed a PSR, failed, PSR seatbelt check, fail, 3+ pilot check, failed on snake eyes.  So a panther is knocked out now too.  It got worse.  My commander ran up to partial cover and despite the partial cover absorbing an amazing 35 damage, they failed their 20+ damage PSR and fell, delaying their escape by 1 turn.

Turn 3, the panther who is asleep gets executed thanks to that -4 immobile bonus.  My commander failed to STAND UP, so what was a turn turn 4 escape on turn 1, and a turn 5 escape on turn 2, was now a turn 6 escape at the earliest.  Ouch.  The panther executer also secondary shot my infantry with mguns hitting on 10s, killing them.  With the commander not a target due to not successfully standing on a 5, the players shot my rifleman who made it to the board edge.  He lost a leg sadly, so he wasnt getting off the board now either.  My remaining 2 panthers jumped into smoke to take some heat off my commander, but honestly at this point they should have just run away to rejoin the other assaults on the opposite end of the table.  This flank was crushed in 3 turns due to CT great clusters, snake eyes KOs, a legging, and multiple failed PSRs on the commander.  I did get some indirect missile damage from the battlemaster S onto the warhawk which was fun.  The panthers, for their trouble of staying, were rewarded with damage to the gladiators left and right exposed torsos.

Turn 4, my commander finally stood and got closer to the edge.  The players, having seen my (failed) plan the previous turn, sent both the jumping night gyr and masc'ed gladiator over to get LOS on it.  The gladiator clustered into the left side, hit the turn prior, to kill the torso and disable the XL engine, earning some salvage.  At least the commander critted out the players comm equipment with his medium laser return fire and burned his edge with a head hit, hampering the gladiator going forward.  My victors started moving up, but I didnt move up my 3 longer ranged assaults yet... so far those 6 assaults have shot only a single gauss and lrm10 the whole game.  My tanks, slowed by the elevation penalty vees take, finally were in range to start putting their 10 damage ppcs to work and I scored 40 damage to the dire wolf.  The players also put enough fire into the legged rifleman to break an arm off, as it shot them from the ground earlier that turn, and knocked down one of the stationary panthers in the smoke.

Turn 5, I broke and ran with a panther, and the victors moved again.  The other panther tried to hold the smoke position since he fell over the turn prior.  The gladiator moved into the smoke, to shoot both my infantry hiding in it and the panther that just stood.  The gladiator killed the panther at point blank, and then rolled boxcars to hit the infantry in smoke and killed them too with a second lucky 2d6 mgun on infantry this game.  The direwolf got shot by a different infantry unit and the tanks, taking 20 damage but staying standing with their legendary piloting skill.  The direwolf and warhawk hit the fleeing panther (who should have ran away sooner) and knocked it down, slowing its escape for next turn.

Turn 6, the warhawk pilot rolled high enough to seize the initiative, and killed the panther before it could stand and run.  The dire wolf, with no good target, sniped a victor on his sieze before the victor could reposition.  He also fired a couple random shots into the infantry.  The infantry died to more lucky 2d6 rolls with near min damage, and the victor failed the PSR for 20 damage at range 20 before he had his evasion, rolled to fall on his left side, rolled snake eyes for the fall damage, and the player I allowed to use his edge on fall damage my snake eyes crit rolls to explode my ammo.  It was hilarious at the time, but this battle was such a blood bath cause i split my forces to go easy on the players that I cant afford to give them fun kills like this in the future.  The other players damaged a tank but it stayed alive.

Turn 7, the players were done with tanks dealing ppc hits to them, and did 80 damage to one of them, killing it.  They also picked up my last infantry.  All my mechs were running for the board edge now, but I placed the assault mechs so far back they will need a few turns to make it off.  With the assaults finally having moved up, I was hitting with their PPCs and gauss/missiles, causing damage to the warhawk but no knockdown.  I was fully routed at this point due to bad positioning and splitting my forces.  The victor pair were the closest in range besides the tanks, so in addition to losing one tank one of the victors got the AC20 damaged by an arm crit.  Victors having short range guns meant the players took no damage this turn from them.

Turn 8, the 2 remaining victors jumped into the smoke, trying to take cover before making a push for the board edge.  The direwolf moved down off the hill, ready to charge the smoke turn 9, so spent this turn damaging my last tank.  With help from the warhawk they did 80 damage to it combined and killed it.  The Gladiator chose to stay in the smoke point blank to the victors.  He killed the damaged one without the AC 20, and the night Gyr killed the other one's entire right torso with great clustering, dropping the ac20 for the future.  The victors missed the gladiator in the smoke, dealing only arm damage and not hitting the open left torso stacked with ammo.

Turn 9, the cyclops and battlemasters were in short/medium range.  The Night gyr headshot the fresh battlemaster with the first shot from an ER PPC... thats rough.  The battlemaster actually had the armor to potentially make it off the board, which was my last hope when the last victor died via the direwolf charged into the smoke to wreck it's day before it could move.

Turn 10+ cleanup.  With 2 cyclops plus the limbless rifleman, the right side cyclops lost a leg, but not before putting a gauss slug into the warhawk's head.  The warhawk player hadnt used their edge, so the damage was rerolled into an arm hit.  With no leg, in the next turn the return fire was penalized and the direwolf picked it off with a gauss rifle explosion.  The left sided cyclops got knocked down, and the gladiator ran up to the left side where it couldnt shoot the gauss rifle while prone.  With all the point blank SRMs and med/small lasers, the gladiator caused an ammo explosion to the 12 on the CT.  The warhawk used the targeting computer on the helpless rifleman to take out the XL side torso, in order to salvage the mech to sell for resources.

So the warhawk had a 60 ton rifleman and 80 ton victor salvage, the night gyr had an 85 ton battlemaster and victor, while the gladiator had a salvageable victor and crab IIRC.  Might be a little off here with who did what as I dont have the record in front of me, but of 13 mechs they salvaged 6 and cored the other 7.

This was a CRUSHING defeat for the comstar OPfor.  In the lore, the 403rd Forceful Words all died, but the 388th White Banshees held their ground until eventually retreating.  However, in this game since I split my forces like an idiot, I lost the 388th first, and then the 403rd when they arrived super late to the fight.  I expected to lose 6 mechs here, to try and match the fluff, by putting the 403rd far away from the board edge.  Instead, the players (wisely) used their outflank option to wipe out the 388th first, to prevent them from escaping.  Lesson is, I cant pull any punches this campaign, as the players when not bound by honor/lore are too good at nuking the closest mechs each turn, taking me out piecemeal.  I need to stick together to aggressively punish players who are too close, as at this point I need to salvage and steal their mechs to have enough mechs to last the rest of the campaign without cheating LOL.

[DevianID]

With the South Prenzo Plain region captured with 2 wins for clan Jade Falcon, they move onto the Prenzo River region.  This region was the costliest obstacle for Clan Jade Falcon, who lost multiple omnimechs when comstar targeted the only 2 bridges that covered the 250+m raging river.  Artillery, safe on the opposite side of the river, is extremely heavy from both sides, with the clan's using arrow barrages to counter the conventional comstar artillery as possible.  After the bridges were destroyed, comstar made a counterattack to scatter the Jade Falcons still remaining after their bridge losses.

Roll 1, Retreat!.  Roll 5, Comstar Attacker!  Maprolls, Grasslands#3 (starter set), OpenTerrain#2 (MP grasslands)

May 4.  One day after their victory on the southern plains, Clan Jade Falcon marched to cross the twin bridges across the Prenzo river.  Defended by the 111th 'White Clan' Division, 388th 'White Banshees', and 201st 'Snow on the Mountains', the comstar forces hid and waited until omnimechs were on both bridges before blowing up the bridges at the same time.  At this point the artillery barrage intensified, and the Jade Falcon forces were forced to retreat from the exposed riverbank 30 KM south until they could find alternate crossings.  After their retreat on May 4, the clans would take 4 days to find an alternate crossing, not able to attack again until May 8 into May 9th.

Special Rules:  Due to heavy bombardment in the Prenzo River region, any time 3 or more units of any kind are adjacent, those hexes will be targeted for next turn with offboard attacks.  These attacks hit any units still in the targeted hex next turn on a 6+, and deal 20 damage in 5 damage clusters.

Retreat! Track Cost: 3
The defender arranges the 2 mapsheets in long (chase) orientation of their choosing.  The attacker chooses the home edges.  The defenders (Clan Jade Falcon) deploy on the falcon home edge turn 1.  The attackers (Comstar) deploy on the FALCON home edge turn 2 (behind the players).  The attacker can deploy up to 33% of the force limit (101 points).  The defender can bring up to 100% of the attackers force points.  The Jade Falcons (defenders) must flee off the attackers home edge to exit the battlefield without being destroyed.  Comstar (attacker) holds the field automatically.

Objective (Jade Falcon).  +2; retreat half the deployed units off the attackers edge.
Objective (Both).  +2; destroy or cripple half the enemy force
Objective (Comstar). +1.  Scan 25% of the enemies force.

201st: 3rd army Regular Kappa.  “Snow on the Mountains” Heavy Fire Mountaneers 1 in 4.  48 points
   Marauder 5CS x2
   Bombardier 12D
   Warhammer 7CS
   Rifleman 3N
   Archer 5CS

111th: 3rd army “The White Clan” Regular Rho Light Striker no skill.  18 points
   Mongoose 66
   Mercury 99
   Mercury 97 x2
   Hussar 200D
   Hussar 400D

*The 388th that should be alive are all dead.  The 394th: Veteran Lambda “White Lions” will have to take their spot.  Sieze the Init and outflank*Ed see below.  24 points.
   Sentinel 3L x2
   Centurion 9A

24 points of BSP.  2 Jump (4 points) 2 Mech Infantry (4 points) 2 heavy tanks (10 points).  1 light air cover, 1 smoke thumper (2 points), 1 sniper artillery (4 points)

90 total force points.  Possible Clan combinations:  22+12 (2 light mech elite 1 light legendary) +40 (2 heavy elite mech) = 74.  16 points available to upgrade with.

Note to players: Edit.  The 394th have Rapidstrike, not outflank.  Rapid strike is way worse for the players.  50% deploys normally, but 25% (1 clan mech) deploys on turn 2 and 25% (1 clan mech) deploys on turn 3.  The players choose who is in the 50%, but dont know which mech of the 2 delayed mechs will move on turn 2/3.

[DevianID]

Had to turn off Ixion or i'd never type up this AAR and post the next mission.

This battle, where comstar attacked, went swimmingly for comstar.  The big advantage was starting with 15 to 3, as I delayed 2 clan mechs.  The players were clever and chose to bring salvaged mechs with bondsman pilots to delay me, using a crab and a rifleman.  Turn 1 they proceded to run up the two sides of the map.

Turn 2 I got clever/viscious.  I rolled really low, offered them the chance to sieze, and they denied.  So with my early mech advantage and the fact that they were on the board edge, I completely surrounded the Vulture/Mad Dog.  Further, since the player in the Fenris didnt move his max turn 1 in order to set up shots turn 2, I surrounded him too.  With a level 2 of heavy mechs to back up my surrounding forces, I killed the Fenris with a 60 LRM barrage to the rear.  The vulture was a real trooper this game though, surviving and killing a light mech.  He stuck around till turn 4, each turn with me surrounding him and trying to kick him.  Of note, the veteran centurion failed multiple PSRs trying to kick, and damaged himself multiple times, bleeding me of resources to repair him.

The players did a great job switching gears.  With this mission lost, they retreated the jump jet equipped Timberwolf S to preserve the heroic skill pilot.  They then targeted as many mech of mine as possible, looking to cause damage, head hits, and internal structure hits.  The Crab and Rifleman didnt hold too long, but the Rifleman crippled an expensive marauder and the Crab went for damage on my medium sentinels.

At the end of the mission, the clan forces were down 2 clan mechs, 2 captured IS mechs, and 3 points of honor.  The Comstar Forces still have 15 mechs thanks to salvaging the crab rifleman and vulture from the players at the cost of 3 light mechs, but I went from 16 logistic points down to THREE.  Since I was so short on mechs I had no choice but to repair everything.  After this, I will start having to sell mechs just for points to enter missions.

Next weeks mission:
Roll3=meeting engagement, Attacker roll 4=JF Would Attack, but due to switch in priority from losing the retreat mission Comstar attacks again.  Primary enemy 201st.
Map roll 8, 7: Open terrain and grasslands Streams.  Defender (JF this time) chooses edge.  Attacker can use up to 33% (100 force points).
Track Cost: 1
Destroy, Cripple, or force off the table 50% of the enemy force.  (+2 Points).  Units may only retreat off their home edge, but this counts against them for victory conditions.
Special Rules:  Artillery Barrage:  Any time 3+ units are adjacent, all hexes are targeted with 20 damage of artillery the next turn, which hits on a 6+.
  Limited engagement: The game automatically ends on turn 15.  (To hold the field/salvage mechs, one side must be completely destroyed/retreated by this turn limit)

201st: 3rd army Regular Kappa.  “Snow on the Mountains” Heavy Fire Mountaneers 1 in 4.  48 points
   Marauder 5CS x2
   Bombardier 12D
   Warhammer 7CS
   Rifleman 3N
   Archer 5CS

BSP Support: 2 Heavy Tanks from the 201st, 2 Mech/2 Jump infantry, 1 light air cover, 1 smoke, 1 sniper artillery.

Supporting mech forces:

*The 388th that should be alive are all dead.  The 394th: Veteran Lambda “White Lions” will have to take their spot.  Sieze the Init and outflank*Ed see below.  32+16=48 points.
   Sentinel 3L x2
   Centurion 9A
   *Salvage Vulture Prime (Pulse Wyvern Pilot from mission 1)
   Crab (Crab#2 pilot from mission 1)

So I used 96 points out of 100 points.  Because of the "White Lions" on the attack thanks to the priority change and roll of 4, 2 clan mechs will be deploying late like last time, though this mission is a cakewalk compared to the last one.

Sample 96 points: Regular Timberwolf/Stormcrow (14/13 points from andrew), Heroic Medium/Heavy mech (21/22 John), Elite Light Mech (11 Paul), Elite Assault (30 JeffC), Elite heavy mech (20 Jeff)=96

So with the Warhawk, Night Gyr, Arctic Cheetah, Andrew and John can bring a timberwolf and stormcrow, either or since they both have the same mechs.  Or some other combo but 96 points is pretty do-able.  The arctic cheetah is a good mech to be delayed, the other delayed mech will probably be whatever has short range guns.

[DevianID]

Covid Strikes, so only a small group today.

This mission was 6 good comstar heavies vs 3 clan mechs, 2 twolves and an arctic cheetah.  Meeting engagement is a 15 turn limit, so early on I settled in to just get my armor across the river and do poke damage with all my long range heavies.

The clan players used the SRM6s on the Timberwolf S to lay heavy smoke, which they used to cover their advance.  Smoke is so broken lol.  So I often needed 11s or 10s with weapons, and 9s with LBX cluster, the whole game.  The turns I needed 8s/9s was mostly from walking LRM mechs to exactly 7 hexes away.

Turn 3, the Timberwolf A head shot a fresh marauder with an ERPPC.  Turn 6ish, the ERPPCs clustered all in the side torso of a warhammer, killing its XL engine.  Turn 9, a Bombadier that was trying to body block and push clan mechs back now that the LRM bins were empty got headshot... the Bombadier could take 15 damage anywhere but the head, even in the rear... but Boom!  Headshot...  Then, turn 11, the turn I finally put down the Arctic Cheetah, the Timberwolf A headshot the Archer.  It was so demoralizing haha.  Whats worse, on turn 4 I destroyed one of the PPCs on that Timberwolf A, as before the Marauder died its ER PPCs were doing good damage and I was internal in the arm and torso pretty early on.  So 2 of those headshots were done when the Twolf had only 1 ERPPC each turn.

Since that pretty much dominated the flow of the game, After the 3 kill with a headshot I switched to a tactic of just living till the game ended on turn 15.  In this way, I could deny the clan players all the salvage and resources from holding the field.  So the damaged vulture hit behind terrain, and while the TWolf S, the other twolf this match, put some crits into it, it stayed alive.  Meanwhile the final marauder took a TAC from the TWolf A, to pair with all the headshots, that took out the engine and gyro.  After failing to stand a few times and beating the mech from all the falls, I just kept it on the ground behind a level 1 elevation change, and it just barely survived with a few CT structure left by the end on turn 15.

So 3 headshot mechs and one destroyed to side torso XL engine, for 1 clan light mech and 4 honor in damage to the timberwolf pair.  Comstar definately lost big here, as those headshots turned a close game into a blowout.

Next mission SHOULD have been 'crossing the streams', the story based mission where jade falcon has to jump across the mighty prenzo river after comstar destroyed the bridge.  Except... the mission doesnt say that the Jade falcons are always the attacker.  So the random roll for attacker/defender=5, meaning comstar attacks?!  Why oh why comstar did you have to roll to be the attacker!  Kinda defeats the whole point of the mission.  I even checked the errata, to see if the mission changed any, and all the errata mentioned was the attacker/defender options are renamed.  However, i DID find errata for 'Pushback', the mission that RUINED my comstar force... that mission ends on turn 8.  So the pair of cyclops, the rifleman, the battlemaster, and the victor ALL would have survived that battle as it would have ended before those units could be killed.

So a few things will happen.  Comstar has no jump jet mechs, which is kinda the theme of 'Crossing the Streams' as its an 8 hex river that, cannonically, the Jade Falcons had to jump across, and Comstar was the defender.  Comstar as the attacker, without the omni abiliity to swap into jump jet mechs to play the mission, automatically loses this mission, as I dont think its even possible to walk across the river by 5 turns with my jumpless mechs even if I manage to make every single piloting skill roll.  So Comstar Forfeits this match cause the only way I could play it would be to take 1 light mechs so the clan force cant bring any mechs at all, and try and load up on air cover to stop the 10 BSP in air attacks from killing my light mech.  Thus instead of trying to cheese the mission ill just take -3 honor as the track cost, but +4 honor to JF for winning, as I dont think its worth playing 5 turns just to bomb a mech with 18 BSP in air cover just to be cheesy.  However, in return, im going to let the results of pushback stand (the clans wouldnt have been able to salvage or anything as the game ending on turn 8 would have prevented any hold the field bonus.) but im also going to give those mechs that were lost that shouldnt have been lost back.  So the clans keep all the crazy honor they scored for killing all the units, but comstar is not in such a hole for continuing to play that mission and losing 5 more mechs when it should have ended.  Comstar had 3 honor, -1 for the meeting engagement, -3 for crossing the streams, so comstar is -1 honor and will need to sell mechs ANYWAY, so gaining 5 mechs (3 of which were damaged by turn 8, -1 armor on battlemaster -2 for crippled rifleman -3 for crippled victor) means I can sell the duplicate 5D for 1 point to be at 0 instead of -1.

Recordkeeping aside, the next mission we will actually play is 'Cities of Death'.  This is the story mission where JF is automatically the attacker, and has to move into a city where comstar has set up hidden units.

When the Jade Falcon forces moved to attack the town of Olalla, comstar prepared by demolishing all the buildings and building hidden bunkers for all their units to hide in, disguising the bunkers as normal buildings.  Wary of a potential trap, the Jade falcons only moved one unit through at a time, so that only one unit could get ambushed, and with the element of surprise lost the superior Jade Falcons destroyed the smaller comstar ambushing forces to (briefly) take the city.

Track Cost: 3
Objective (Comstar) Destroy/cripple all JF mechs (+4)
Objective (JF) Destroy/cripple all Comstar mechs (+4)
Special Rule: Unless JF gives the defender 2 points by waiting to receive loremaster Kael Pershaws warning, comstar can, as long as no units have been revealed yet, automatically win initiative one time before a roll is made.
Special rule: Suburbs.  1d6 (roll=6) clusters of light buildings 3x3 hexes (with the central hexline being a road) are placed.  The height is 1d6/2 rounding up, rolled 3 lvl 1 clusters, 2 level 2 clusters, 1 level 3 cluster.  Players alternate placing building clusters with comstar placing first.
Fake Town: All the comstar units are hidden, 1 per building.  A comstar unit can not be attacked or make an attack until it moves out of a building, even if discovered by an active probe.

Map:  Foothills #2 x2

Comstar Forces: 100 points.

77th:  Veteran Iota.  “White Monsters” Heavy Assault Level II Marksman 1 in 3.  60 points
   Black Knight 9x2
   Shootist 8a
   Orion Mx2
   Thunderbolt 7M
2 Heavy Tank BSP, 2 Mech/2 Jump Infantry, 1 light air cover, 2 heavy air cover, 1 sniper smoke.

        Vulture Prime 16, Veteran
        Rifleman 3N 8, 12 leg damage
        Rifleman 5D 8
        Marauder 5CS 8, 2 head hits

[DevianID]

So we had our battle in the cities of death... only it was less death for the clan players.

The mission set up saw the clans bring some lower skilled warriors to get more total tonnage on the field.  However that was not the story of the week.  The mission was really bad for comstar as well, as the only goal was to kill everything, which is really hard for comstar when the clans are focusing fire on the closest thing.  But that too is not the story.  We also wont talk about how the random map rolls were hills, which are terrible for my inner sphere heavies to traverse, but the clans outfitted in jump capable mechs were able to cover quite easily... so my 6 run speed moved me 3 hexes for a +2 shooting penalty for only +1 TMM, meaning to even get closer to the clans hopping 5 hexes each turn I had to keep running up and down those damn hills to bring my shorter ranged weapons into play... but no, that too is not the story of the week.

The Story of the Week... Black Dice for Black Knights.  Let me explain.

One player really liked the swordhachet black knight 9 that comstar made.  So he was really looking forward to fighting and salvaging it to use despite being a clan mech player.  So, the 77th rolled their random mechs and got two!  Meaning this player had his chance to kill and salvage them, the only way to aquire the mech as it is not a variant the clans, who have the older star league black knights, can get normally.

Deployment turn 1 saw the clans picking the edge with the fewest buildings on it.  My mechs are all hidden in bunkers, so they only come out after I see the clans, but I had to deploy across the map turn 1.  So, with the clans in an open corner able to establish range advantage, my turn 1 all my far away assets on the other map sheet left hiding to try and box in the clan mechs, so my closer units on the same mapsheet as the clans could attack from hiding with the far away units on a later turn.  I did cripple the executioner clan mech with LRM fire, as I outranged most of the clans in indirect fire at least since the clan players took no LRMs.

Turn 2, I rolled low initiative, so the clan players siezed since their initiative was so much higher using the Turkina Keshik special rule.  Thus, they got to shoot before I moved and gained cover/evasion.  One of the 2 timberwolves fired at the closest mech out of hiding, a black knight.  However, the next to activate was the hero of the hour, clearly a goliath scorpion at heart, and first shot with his Thor's ER PPC took the black knights head clean off, giving him the salvage on a great comstar mech with only 32 damage taked total.  That meant that my closest unit, who was gonna stalk up using LOS blocking buildings in my turn to pin the Falcons in place, was now dead.  The falcons had an open flank to maneuver back, making my mechs at long range unable to deal any damage for the next few turns.  In my movement phase I brought everything out of hiding, trying to deal damage in short range this turn as next turn the clan forces will move back.  I did some damage but nothing critical.

Turn 3, the clan players got another sieze, as I rolled horrible again.  As I feared, they focused down another mech 4v1, this time my vulture, and also sent a shot into the crappy Hussar which died to a medium pulse laser to the head and another to the chest.  Paper armor everywhere.  Ouch.  The most damaged mech, the Gladiator, was now in the corner.

Turn 4, my initiative was snake eyes, so yet again the clan forces got a full activation before me.  This time they didnt kill anything, but damaged the tbolt and shootist.  I had bad odds with the shootists AC20 turn 4 that maybe could have crit the black hawk, but I missed.

Turn 5, my initiative of 5 was the best id rolled in 4 turns, but still too low so yet again the clans got to activate multiple mechs before me.    The Gladiator I smacked with more indirect LRMs from my infantry spotters, but the gladiator is good at swatting infantry so this was my last turn shooting him.  He positioned well to have some mechs on the left side and some on the rear, to keep the open right front torso from getting even more crits.  I failed my 1 crit roll to hit ammo, and he passed all his PSRs.  With no more infantry to spot, turn 6-7 he could just hide and stay safe.  In the sieze portion of the turn the Tbolt died, and the shootist was finished off by the stragglers.  Hilariously, the Nova that shot my shootist rolled boxcar crit on the arm, and then rolled boxcar crit on the leg... so despite having tons of armor and structure everywhere else, the shootist was out of the fight as it was gonna fall automatically.  I rolled for fall damage, and, of course, hit my head, which had suffered some damage earlier.  Thus I killed myself.  The nova player took great joy in this LOL, he turned red laughing and earned the nickname 'the jeff that laughs' in a Gotham-esh villainy laugh sort of way.

Turn 6 I finally won initiative but to little too late, my black knight, 2 orions, and a tank was all that was left that could hurt the clans.  However, the Thor, with the new black knight finally in range, acted first in the turn order, and first roll, ER PPC, and he tossed the dice but didnt look at them.  The other players had to look, and confirmed a SECOND head shot.  So I shot back, but only did minor damage... another fresh mech dead to the first turn being shot at.

Round 7, I had a good initiative roll but the players won initiative when they used up their edge to force me to reroll... into a 3.  With only 2 mechs left they ignored the tank and far off infantry and went all in on the 2 orions.  Both mechs were fresh, but man was momentum with these players.  It took all 5 clan mechs alpha striking, but both orions had the same thing happen... the rt torso got open, and of the 11 crits in that torso, they found the LBX ammo and destroyed the XL engine.  So I didnt even get a shot back on turn 7.

In the end, I lost 2 fresh black knights to a head shot, the Shootist to medium damage and multiple headshots following multiple boxcar crits to remove limbs with 3 points of IS damage to each, the Tbolt got cored when the Thor put 21+ damage into my open CT, coring it out with the ER PPC and both LRM clusters all hitting the same spot and none of the other fully armored spots, and both orions to lucky ammo crits despite a pretty packed rt torso.

I caused some damage, but thanks to great salvage from all the headshots and XL torsos the clan players came out ahead of their damage costs.  And the Thor player who only rolled his black dice when rolling the ER PPC retired those dice after so many headshots lol.  Hence his 'Black Dice for Black Knights'.  With 3+ mech kills The Thor was the MVP by a landslide.  Last game, it was the Timberwolf A who went nuts with ER PPC headshots, earning 2 ER PPC headshots last week and 4 total kills.  The fact that a Thor matched it is extra impressive, but it also means that comstar is RUINED.  I lost 6 out of 8 mechs to bad initiative where I couldnt even shoot back this week, so the players mechs got out of this fight pretty amazingly.  The mission and map were both bad, but holy heck add in bad initiative luck and multiple headshot kills on fresh mechs, and the results are just devastating. 

Comstar mechs remaining.

403rd (regular, 12 each)
Battlemaster (-1)
Victor (-3)
Cyclops 11A x2

388th (regular, 8)
Rifleman 5D

201st (regular, 8 each)
Marauder (-3 damage, 2 head hits)
Rifleman 3n (-1 damage leg armor)

394th (veteran, 8 each)
Sentinel 3Lx2
Centurion

111th (regular, 3 each)
Mongoose
Mongoose
Mercury 97
Hussar 200

Next mission, comstar attacks back (roll 6).  Meeting engagment, 201st (whats left) primary attacker (heavy unit so heavy tanks again).

Jade Falcon (defender) picks home edge.  Attacker deploys up to 100 force points, defender deploys up to how much the attacker brings.

Track cost: 1.  Objective (+2) destroy 50% of the enemy force.  Game ends automatically on turn 15.
Maps: Rolling hills plus open terrain.
Special rules.  6 clusters of buildings placed, 3 per map, alternating by side.  Comstar is the attacker so cant use them for bunkers per the Suburbs rule, but can deploy 33% of their force as normal hidden units per the fake town rule (so can shoot out of phase if not detected by an active probe, and can be shot at if detected).  Thus 6 units can be placed in hiding out of my 19 units.


Enemy force: Marauder and Rifleman (who has leg damage as I cant spend 1 to just heal 12 leg damage) +16, The 394th medium attack specialists sentilelx2 and cent (so 2 clan mechs are delayed) +24, The 111th light mongoosex2 mercury hussar with LB10x(+12), the Rifleman 5D (+8), The cyclops, victor, battlemaster (+36), so 96 total.  2x2 infantry (8 points) and 2 heavy tanks (10 points).  Im selling some battlefield support points to fix the above units damage, so thats less bomb attacks you have to worry about.  Cant heal my 2 head hits on the marauder.  This leaves 1 cyclops in reserve.

[DevianID]

Pretty good game for the players, no major snags.  The first few rounds were mostly maneuvering and dealing with BSP infantry and tanks.  I had a few shots with the tanks but overall they whiffed.  The first mech kill came from a Gauss rifle that hit and rolled the exact ammo crit, detonating a sentinel from cross map with no fanfare.  Thats rough.  I also jammed my other sentinels ultra cannon, so he started to retreat.

The players were trying to deny any assets from leaving the table, so any time a unit moved to the board edge they went out of their way to focus it down.  I play an optional 'flee the field' rule that you must start the turn on the battlefield edge and be standing to actually flee (the megamek houserule), otherwise we would need more mapsheets, as with 18 units being played on 2 maps the clans should have at least one more mapsheet my retreating forces would need to go to actually get away.  Since I so greatly prefer 2 mapsheets to finish games faster, im ok telegraphing which units are retreating, giving players one final chance to stop them without needing to put down 2-3 more maps.

After the sentinel died, I had a string of 4 turns of lost initiative, 2 from the players using edge to reroll my initiative.  The leveled up players at this point are murderers with the Turkina Keshik 'shoot in the movement phase before the enemy moves' special unit ability.  First they focused down my Cyclops, killing it the turn it tried to fall back, without me being able to shoot back.  Next they destroyed a marauder and Hussar in the next turn, again thanks to me not having any evasion cause of the unit special ability.  After that, my retreating Battlemaster was destroyed, and the gyro in my centurion ripped out.  They also legged one of my mongooses.  On the 4th seize, the victor and the mercury died.  They then took their time to capture the Mongoose, though the ammo on the centurion exploded preventing it from being captured.  This left them with a captured Mercury, mongoose, marauder, battlemaster, Victor, and cyclops, with the centurion, sentinel, Hussar all total losses.  This salvage put them out of negative campaign points, as I whiffed a lot of attacks and then lost multiple shooting phases from their sieze the initiative rules.  Rough.

The 2nd Jade Falcon victory in Oalla wins the Falcons this objective, meaning the Falcons are free to push onto the final zone of Humptopolis.  Comstar is out of gas, and will be just launching delaying strikes at this point, hoping for a desperate last ditch defense that may give time for reinforcements from the Comguards victorious over the ghost bears to land and bolster their efforts.

Mission rolled, pursuit.  Roll 3, JF attacker.  The attacker deploys 25% of their force (75 force points).

Track Cost: 3.  Objective (JF) cross the map and flee with 50% of the clan units by turn 15 (+3 Points).  Cross the map and flee with 75% of the clan units by turn 15 (+1 more).
Objective (Comstar) prevent 75% of the Attacker from crossing the map and fleeing by turn 15 (+3 points).  Destroy 100% of the attacker (+1 Point more)
Mapsheets: Roll 6, Rolling hills.  Roll 6, Rolling hills.
BSP: Comstar's lines are broken as Jade Falcon pursuit closes in on the scattered remaining forces, only the aerospace reinforcements from the Ghost Bear theater can save them.  6 Heavy Strikes/TN6, 20 damage each.

Mission 2, Withdraw/On the Run if Jade falcon is the attacker.  Roll 4, JF attacker assuming they win mission 1.
Map, deployment zone neoprene, or rolling hills and grassland.
Track Cost: 3.  Objective.  Attacker: Destroy defender before turn 10.  Defender: Survive 10 turns or defeat 5 attackers.
Options:  The attacker can gain two honor to allow the defender to ignore the night fighting rule.
Special Rules: A combination of Night and lingering battlefield smoke makes all attacks add 2 to the difficulty.
The defender deploys 1 mech (probably a Cyclops with veteran sentinel pilot if Comstar is the attacker).  The attacker deploys any unit a player wants, 2 units on the field max.  Whenever a unit is destroyed another unit from the players force can come on, until the attacker runs out of mechs.

BSP: Comstar forces are trying to withdraw until Ghost Bear Reinforcements can land and meet with what little they have left.  2 Light air cover, 2 heavy air cover protecting the dropships approach (6 points) + 4 heavy strikes from reinforcing aerospace assets.

I managed to flee with only the pair of riflemen, the jammed Sentinel, and a mongoose, and have a Cyclops thats getting the veteran sentinel pilot that I can put into a fight, though many units are damaged.

[DevianID]

So the players wrapped up tukayyid successfully, taking a few hits from air strikes but nothing that burned honor too badly.  The total butcher bill leaves the collective clan players with 3 honor amongst all 5 of them, enough to bring 1 salvaged inner sphere heavy back into action, either the marauder or black knights.

The next known major story point is the refusal war in 3057, so '53 '54 '55 and '56 represent possible years with no conflict.  The steel vipers attacked a number of worlds, as did some mercenaries, but turkina keshik was absent from the dozen or so battles in the interim.  Per clan tradition, one battle must be fought each year or you need a trial of position to retain warrior status.  Thus, the next 4 battles would be trials of position, which would determine if any of the player's warriors are retired.  We have one star captain, one star commander, and 3 mechwarriors.  So I propose that the next battles would be Andrew in an assault, Jeff in a heavy, and a random bondsman from the group in a medium, versus one player, and 1 other player versus a bondsman, a regular pilot, and a player.  Since a trial of position involves 8 total units on the board, participating in this trial will keep everyone active for the year of '53.  Each year we will rotate who is trialing for rank and who is called to act as the examiner after this, with deference to those with rank or blood names serving as examiners per their rank, as seems to be clan tradition.

There is a bit of text in the sourcebook that the constant trials within the clan post tukayyid were bleeding the clan of warriors, which is partly why 3057 saw a return to major battles to put the battle hungry falcons to work against others instead of among themselves, so the trials are the most lore accurate thing I could find that turkina keshik would be doing during the time jump.