Author Topic: [Total Warfare] Battle for Hoff - Queen's Gambit accepted  (Read 1596 times)

sentinemodo

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[Total Warfare] Battle for Hoff - Queen's Gambit accepted
« on: 30 October 2013, 04:29:57 »
We had a game with hive_angel lasting for the last month played over this forum. Yes you read it correctly, it was play-by-post battletech game, played for over a month of (nearly) daily postings, often multiple ones in any given day. That may sounds like a lot but actually was quite fun (if you like prolonged pleasures).

Technicaly, the game was played using coordinates for movement, with maps posted after every turn for synchronization. I've made text version of RS's in the separate thread, but they didn't got much use. We used online roller for dice resolutions.

You can see the whole story in the thread [IG] Battle for Hoff - Queen's Gambit accepted.

The scenario was taken from the old scenario pack Tales of the Black Widow, describing the early years of Natasha Kerensky's Black Widows.
The skirmish was between two strenghtened lances (five mechs each side), with defender side having more tonnage and the attacker side having higher skill level. So it was a game of skill vs brute force. The condition to win was to destroy two mechs of the opposing side loosing no mechs on it's own aand withdraw. Partial victory for loosing one and draw for loosing two.

I was playing defender, while hive_angel an attacker.

The game lasted for seven turns, the initial ones went for the attacker, the crusader of the defender forces was left exposed and scored direct hits from warhammer's ppc and griffins ppc and lrm. Warhammer didn't even warmed up, while crusader pinned to the hill couldn't escape for another round from that barrage.
On the thrid turn situation changed, I've finished sprint to climb a level 3 hill with an Archer, and he dominated the field with his lrm-20s. Actually he tried dominating the field, because for the first few turns he couldn't hit a thing regardless of odds, but as a threat he remained and limited the attacker moves.
About that time attacker rifleman came out of cover and received warm greeting, loosing most of its armor.

Hive launched a circumventing attack with a griffin trying to get behind my forces, but effectively hea spread a little too much. Warhammer on it's own couldn't do much damage against quite heavy armor of defender's two griffins that jumped around so he chip by chip weared down the crusader's armor at one point forcing him to drop down behind a hill to cool down and avoid concentrated fire.

by turn six the griffin recived a lucky headshot from wasp's SRM-2 and unbelievably he failed a 3+ unconsciousness roll. on Turn 7th he was pushed by the same wasp out of the map for the first mech. attacker rushed his stinger to help the griffin while also trying to score some back side hits, but as the griffin went out, he was left exposed and jumped of the map for the second point and decisive victory for the defender.

few things of note
The scenario while trying to make for a believable black widows company made it a little to hars on the attacker - his mechs were partially damaged to begin with - mostly the griffin that had overheated on jumps and had a malfunctioning ppc.
Also while the point of skill in differnce is HUGE bonus (especially when you really have time to consider your moves) they made a defending force too strong. Those two griffins should probably be replaced with pair of 50 ton mechs.
Like in many other games I've played (with last one soem 15 years ago) luck had played a large role - I was practically unable to hit anythign despite firing all of my mechs at good (8+) odds for few turns, and when I finally met Loki and drank with lady Luck, I scored headshot (that knocked out mechwarrior) and several crit rolls against warhammer and rifleman.
comments on mechs composition from defender perspective - I've had A LOT long range weapons, mostly LRMS, with mechs that have surprising low number of heatsinks and lots of armor. I kept to high ground, jumped like mad and nitpicked from afar. The crusader had greater amount of weaponry BUT with 10 heatsinks it was more of display case than actually useful equipment. That being said, I've eaten my LRM's ammo reserves FAST - then again I think I've never ever been in battle that had used all of the available ammo, so I decided not to worry to early.

Attacker on the other side had a lot of armanent (the though of getting anywhere close to that warahmmer with it's 24 heatings and staning in depth 1 water *shudder*) with much less armor - I think that his rifleman had half of what crusader was carrying.

comments are welcome of course
« Last Edit: 30 October 2013, 04:47:55 by sentinemodo »

 

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