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BattleTech Player Boards => Challenges and Gatherings => After Action Reports => Topic started by: Tai Dai Cultist on 30 March 2018, 18:12:03

Title: Alpha Strike: Dark Age Kurita vs Clans 400PV
Post by: Tai Dai Cultist on 30 March 2018, 18:12:03
Having recently bought the GKR: Heavy Hitters mecha boardgame for the express purpose of using it for Alpha Strike battles, I'm pleased to give a batrep on my first battle using the excellent game pieces as terrain!

My opponent and I agreed to set up the ruins of some city, having been abandoned for hundreds of years.  Surely something important was at stake in what's clearly a ritual Trial of Possession agreed to be fought at this locale.  At an agreed upon 400PV limit, I brought a reinforced Dark-Age themed company and I faced off against a Supernova augmented with a point of Aerospace support.

The Clans:
Battle Star: Blood Asp, Mad Cat, Loki, Black Hawk, Fenris
Support Star: 5x Elementals
Unattached: 2x Some ASFs.  Spoiler alert: they did so little in the battle I don't even recall what they were.
I think everything of his was skill 3, except the Blood Asp at skill 2.

The Kuritans:
Command Lance:  Avatar-B (Commander), Sphinx (Multi-Tasker), Rokurokubi (Antagonizer), Rokurokubi
Battle Lance: 2x Mamono IFV, 2x Hiryo WiGE
Scout Lance: 4x Void BA
Support Lance: 4x Zou Assault BA
Unattached: Mobile Long Tom
Command and Support lances were skill 3, all others skill 4.

We set up the battlefield and agreed that the entirety of the rubble-strewn board game board would be considered rubble.  The buildings and some extra 6mm terrain were mixed with some forested patches to make a more or less symmetrical battlefield.  I anticipated that flanking attacks would be especially key to the battle as the center of the board is a giant area of "You go slow unless you can Jump".

My battle plan as I deployed was to let the Mamonos and Zous clog the middle, and cover the Avatar who'd just lob IF4 attacks all day from behind LOS blocking ruins.  My fast mechs and Hiryos would play games on the flanks to press advantages or counter the Clan's attempts to do the same.  Being outnumbered (if not out-massed) the Clan side gave the Blood Asp and Loki responsibility for the center of the board while the Mad Cat and Fenris held one flank and the Black Hawk held the other.

With thrusts moving so very slow up the middle, the initial action was unsurprisingly on the flanks.  Games of pussyfoot were the rule and no solid advantages were had until I withdrew my Sphinx from facing off against the MadCat and Fenris combo, but I didn't keep track of terrain well enough and the Loki in the center of the board had a nice clean shot right through the urban mess on my Sphinx.  Oops.  Loki blows full OV and rocks my poor Sphinx for the first significant damage of the game.

It is right after that on turn 3 that the ASFs arrive.  I wasn't able to get any infantry carriers into position to have already dropped my BA off, and I sure as hell aren't having them pile out this turn either and beg for aoe bomb attacks.  With having to withdraw my Sphinx even further back off the front lines entirely to protect it and not being able to deploy any BA this round, the Clans take the tactical upper hand.  The Mad Cat smells blood in the water and presses an advance to pursue the Sphinx, and the Black Hawk gains control of the other flank as my Rokurokubis fall into the ruins to help try to turn the center of the board to my advantage.  The only significant damage done is by the fighters that bomb the hell out of my IF-lobbing Avatar, but they don't get internal yet.  My Sphinx goes nuts with Multi-Tasker, lighting both fighters up.  One crashes on its subsequent Lawn-Dart check, and the other suffers two Fire Control hits and is effectively out of the game.

With that moral victory filling my sails, the tide turns.  The Antagonizing Rokurokubi is able to force the Blood Asp to waste its firepower on the low probability shot, opening up my tanks and infantry to advance and seize tactical control of the center of the board without being devastated by the big assault.  The Fenris moves to cover his backfield by meeting my Hiryo and its attending BA before I can them up behind the Loki or Blood Asp, and without support his Mad Cat is absolutely swamped by vehicles and infantry as it keeps moving up to chase my Sphinx to finish it off.  With the Mad Cat on one flank having moved up, and the Black Hawk on the other flank running completely un-countered after it won a one-on-one duel vs a Rokurokubi, my Avatar can't deny everything LOS and is subsequently targeted for termination.  It goes down in the crossfire, but dice gods protect my Sphinx and it goes untouched.  I'm able to deal out enough damage to put the Mad Cat, Loki, and Blood Asp all in forced withdrawal in the same turn that I lose my Avatar.  With my tanks and infantry dug in nice and snug in the urban ruins, and still backed up by 2 mechs and a Long Tom, the Clan forces accept the offer of Hegira.

Moments that defined the battle:
Removing both ASFs from the battle on their first and only airstrike.
On the turn I resigned to the "inevitable" loss of the Sphinx, it survived unhit.
Not a single moment, but it certainly affected the battle that I won initiative every turn.  I never even had to use the Command Lance ability to force a reroll!

Title: Re: Alpha Strike: Dark Age Kurita vs Clans 400PV
Post by: markhall on 05 April 2018, 09:03:21
Nice report, Shame the Bad guys won.



Moments that defined the battle:
Removing both ASFs from the battle on their first and only airstrike.
On the turn I resigned to the "inevitable" loss of the Sphinx, it survived unhit.
When one side has Areospace it can be a real game Changer. But glad to see it didn't phase you.
There's just so few options outside waiting for them to show up and trying to take them down. Or ignore the potential damage output and hope to win the ground war.

Not a single moment, but it certainly affected the battle that I won initiative every turn.  I never even had to use the Command Lance ability to force a reroll!


Definitely always a helpful factor.

Did the Battlestars re rolls prove useful?
Title: Re: Alpha Strike: Dark Age Kurita vs Clans 400PV
Post by: Tai Dai Cultist on 05 April 2018, 09:46:52
Nice report, Shame the Bad guys won.

Thanks.  But didn't you read it?  The good guys vanquished the evil Clans! :D

Quote
When one side has Areospace it can be a real game Changer. But glad to see it didn't phase you.
There's just so few options outside waiting for them to show up and trying to take them down. Or ignore the potential damage output and hope to win the ground war.
Definitely always a helpful factor.

Actually it's been our experience locally that ASFs never pull their weight.  This game was pretty typical in how they (fail to) contribute to a battle.  I'm personally of the opinion that ASFs need their PVs halved or so in order to be viable inclusions for an Alpha Strike ground battle.  They're only able to make 1 or 2 passes per game, even assuming they don't get shot down on thier first pass anyway.. which isn't a safe assumption as return fire will usually be hitting on 6s (or even better).

Quote
Did the Battlestars re rolls prove useful?

They always do.  I'm of the philosophy to save rerolls for misses that "should have hit" rather than trying to force improbable hits.  My own rule of thumb is to only reroll missed 7s and under.  I can be tempted on 8s, but if a 9+ misses, I chalk it up as "wasn't meant to be" and save for the shoulda-hits of the future.  I tend to lose rerolls as either the game ends or my lance gets shot down below minimum composition before I go through all 6.

My opponent I played tends to be more aggressive in his reroll philosophy.  He's denied me too many rerolls by breaking my lances to allow himself to go with unspent rerolls.  He's happy to burn through them in the early phase of the game, even rerolling long odds just for the chance of maximizing damage output.  My observation on this strategy is I'm happy to see it done against me as I feel I benefit: if you reroll 9s and 10s, most of the time you're just wasting a reroll.  It pays off in like 1 game out of 3.  In this particular game, my opponent went through his entire batch of rerolls and then at the end when he had the relatively easy shot on my vulnerable Sphinx he couldn't finish it off due to bad luck- and no insurance left.
Title: Re: Alpha Strike: Dark Age Kurita vs Clans 400PV
Post by: markhall on 06 April 2018, 05:08:07


Actually it's been our experience locally that ASFs never pull their weight.  This game was pretty typical in how they (fail to) contribute to a battle.  I'm personally of the opinion that ASFs need their PVs halved or so in order to be viable inclusions for an Alpha Strike ground battle.  They're only able to make 1 or 2 passes per game, even assuming they don't get shot down on thier first pass anyway.. which isn't a safe assumption as return fire will usually be hitting on 6s (or even better).

That's not been my experience In CBT. Especially when you add bombs to the payload. It generally results in a heavy or smaller being taken out out of the game on the turn they arrive. Baring really bad luck.
Then then go off for a turn or 2 and return to strike at predamaged units.
They are easier to plant in Alpha Strike much like everything is. But they can still bring the hurt for a turn or two.
Actually it's been our experience locally that ASFs never pull their weight.  This game was pretty typical in how they (fail to) contribute to a battle.  I'm personally of the opinion that ASFs need their PVs halved or so in order to be viable inclusions for an Alpha Strike ground battle.  They're only able to make 1 or 2 passes per game, even assuming they don't get shot down on thier first pass anyway.. which isn't a safe assumption as return fire will usually be hitting on 6s (or even better).
Have a similar approach to the rerolls over here.

No mention on how the Long Tom's Fire did. How was using on Board Artillery?
Title: Re: Alpha Strike: Dark Age Kurita vs Clans 400PV
Post by: Tai Dai Cultist on 06 April 2018, 09:55:44
The Clan side did bomb my Avatar with one ASF because none of his ground forces could get LOS early on, and strafed some tanks with the other ASF.  I do believe that you'll find some forumites who'd say the correct answer for ASFs is NEVER strafing... and indeed if my Avatar suffered 4 bomb hits early on rather than 2 it could have reversed the outcome of the battle... even if the ASFs still both got shot down after doing so.

The Artillery didn't have any real direct contribution.  It never hit any troops.  The closest it came was actually a freak deviation that missed so bad it dropped at a point where my SPOTTER was between the blast and the intended POI.  Another point of hilarity was my aiming POI deliberately chosen to min/max the deviation chart and distances with relation to the 2d6 bell curve, figuring my odds of hitting something were better by "counting" on probable deviation results and placing the POI roughly in the middle of his forces but not directly on anything.  Only I rolled a direct hit and blasted the nobody-home POI.

I kind of like this result too, btw.  For a long time Alpha Strike has been VERY beneficial to artillery... even overly so.  It used to be fairly easy to stack enough bonuses (when playing with SPAs like we do via Formation Building rules) to get guaranteed direct hits from artillery.  They've nerfed that fairly hard, and so the result in this battle was actually more fun and felt more "realistic" than me pointing at a unit and say "that one dies/takes 3 damage".

Still, even with the Long Tom not having had a direct impact on the outcome, it did have an indirect one.  The center of the board was heavy with buildings, and had the Hegira not happened, I had a great tool in hand to deny Clanners of their cover as well as a weapon that insta-gibs battle armor.. just because noone had been caught inside the AoE yet didn't mean that'd it'd still keep going that way.
Title: Re: Alpha Strike: Dark Age Kurita vs Clans 400PV
Post by: Thorvidar on 13 April 2018, 15:02:38
Yeah I tend to be a bit aggressive Tai-Dai, but thats because I have to, when I cant roll to save my life. You know how my rolls are.  ;)