We just had a game on Saturday where a friend and I had a force where each of us had 8 platoons with a few vtol transports, arty, and lrm boats. The game was played on a 3x2 map area, the maximum the local shop's tables can support. The other side deployed on their middle map that was filled with hills instead of the other 2 maps that were a mix of clear, forest, and a few hill hexes.
It has been a long time since I played against people that I didn't honestly believe would not break down and cry as many of them have hated the 3 lrm platoons tht I would normally bring and use defensively. Things were not expected to go down perfectly, but it went pretty well. As the other side was walking around their hills setting up for a long range stand off as they had 2 allacorns, Devestator, Mad IIC with dual hag40s, and other stuff that had long range weapons we threw our infantry at them. 8 platoons dropped in one turn on top of their units. The next turn another 8 got dropped off. Half of them were jump-rifle platoons for their MP, others were TAG spotters and LRM platoons. The rifles were there to crit while the others were to TAG for four Arrow IV launchers, while the LRM platoons were just there to take shots at things; particularly their vehicles.
Things didn't go according to plan, but as I said its been a long time so this was a trial run. We lost our TAG units when an artillery shell strayed onto my friend's platoon. We lost mine when a Pirhanna decided abandon his role of screening against my 3 raptors and randomly decided to shoot at a platoon, which happened to be the TAG unit. Without TAG we had to use standard rounds, but we didn't coordinate where we were firing, which would cost us a few more platoons as one mech wandered right into the targeted hex, but I had just moved a platoon into his hex to leg attack and one behind him. Another shell strayed and magically....landed in the same hex as a platoon that just got in front of the opposing artillery that had nothing to deal with them.
What did go right was that all of the opposing units were clustered on a single map running around. They didn't have many AI weapons other then what the Pirhanna had and he was kept busy since we had 2 of their assault mechs within the range of the platoons for leg attacks, which equaled 25% of their force's BV. The MAD IIC wasted shots on some of the transports, while it killed 1 with a platoon on board, it wasted a shot that would have hurt more had it been used against one of our mechs hitting them from the side. I also had a single LRM platoon that nobody paid attention to who served as a reliable spotter, which allowed us to do a lot of damage with indirect lrm fire.
What could be done to improve upon this:
Make sure that we know where the other is firing artillery and avoid putting platoons near those hexes.
Maybe bring another TAG unit or two as it was bad luck that one was hit with a shell and the other was randomly selected for no reason as the player did not know nor ask what the platoon had before deciding to fire at it with the pirhana's MGs.
The end result was for a total of about 1,400 BV2(transports included) we kept a 20k BV2 force pinned down for 5 or 6 turns on the map that they deployed on. The majority of the damage that was done in that game was from artillery and indirect LRM fire. A few Raptor Bs roasted the 2 Alacorns with infernos by knocking out an engine and stunning the crew for at least 6 turns while the other was stunned so badly that we simply didn't finish the attack and I decided to not even roll the 3rd raptor's launchers. That put the raptors in a position for backshots on the devestator that had taken some leg damage, one crit from a rifle platoon's leg attack. A few Firemoth H's got blasted trying to take out a Kraken 3 and Blitzkrieg of ours. We were 2-3k light, which means we could have had additional pressure on them. It wasn't until the final turn that the other side attempted to get some of it's units off of that map, but by then we had blasted most of our infantry, their assaults were stripped of their armor, and I had my O-Bakemono within direct fire range of the devestator who was trying to get away from the lights and remaining infantry.
Had those TAG units survived the platoons would have had several more leg attacks, more of our artillery would have hit the right targets on top of what we ended up doing without them. I would estimate that to be about 80-100 points of wasted damage. About 5 platoons of infantry would have been alive a lot longer. Of the artillery damage that was done it would have been in 20 point clusters instead of 5 point clusters, which might have made a difference.
