So after work, school and general blahs. Klat and I got a game of Alpha Strike in on my new city terrain.
The game started off with some special rules for the tank farms. IE, they all explode... quite large like. 3 inches +1D6 at 3 points per blast radius. I was rolling my heavy cavalry command company while Klat was rolling higher points cost mechs (at one lance short due to an issue with some of his minis going AWOL) however all of his mechs were Skill 0 pilots while aside from two mechs in my own force at Skill 0 and Skill 1 the rest were at Skill 4. The horde approaches.
Klat chose defender and had the honor of setting up the city. The objective was to capture the city 'intact' and it was worth a whopping 200 VP's. However with the option to destroy the city with the explodey tanks on the table it would make the game pretty interesting.
First two turns were spent on manuevers. The play area however was close on a 2ft by 4ft area. Which meant that there was fire by turn one. Klat was as expected throwing down some hideous fire on my mercs, but the horde advanced, withering devestating fire.
By turn 3-4 we got to the middle of the scrum area and began hammering each other. LOS was very important as we were trying to not blow up the city and many times we had to check our fire as single missed shot could spell our doom. More so for my forces as the tank farms were located heavily in my deployment zone. Fortune favored the bold however and we were exchanging shots with calculated risk.
Klats advance was hampered by the tight quarters of the city side of the board, but with clear lanes of fire. His malestrom began hitting hard while his Thunderhawk manuevered into a prime firing zone.
That damn T-hawk was a beast and began droping deadly fire on my forces. Knocking out quite a few of my forces throughout the game. However as we would later learn. His position was both a blessing and a curse.
After 5 turns our mechs were battered and started to reach that point in the game where they just start falling down after one hit. Klats skill 0 pilots were a nightmare to deal with as they rarely missed unless I had enough cover between me and his mechs. I started to swing the assault lance up the lane while my heavy cav and fire support lances acted as the anvil. However the first loss of the turn happened when my Longbow died to accurate sniper fire.
We opted that mechs could jump onto the tanks (for fun's sake) but it still kept us from targeting them unless we had a sure shot. My NAIS Thunderbolt was the short lived star player as his 6/6/0 damage bracket combined with high manueverability and jumpjets meant that no matter what Klat could not escape from him at short and medium ranges. If I remember he took down about three mechs on his own before he was killed by the T-Hawk.
When Klats malestrom died his Hunchback was next on the kill list. Followed by his bandersnatch and the suicidal bastard (klat can explain that mechs story)
Nearing the end of the game, Klats forces took a serious beating, despite the quality of his pilots my merc horde still kept coming. The 3025 era mechs proving time and time again at how sturdy they are. Another first we had in our game. One of my mechs died due to an ammo explosion result after a critical hit. That was quite the sight. Of course even with case the Marauder-R was dead either way.
Klats counter fire that turn was deadly and ended up knocking out my poor poor Bushwhacker Both Marauders and all but my Archer in my fire support lance. However I knocked out all but three of his mechs. The Deadly T-hawk, his panther and his beat to hell wolverine. In order to deny me VP's, he ran the Wolverine off the table. I tried to do the same with my Primitive Thunderbolt but a MP hit left him at a 4 inch movement. He was almost off the table. Then in happened.
Sensing his impending doom was nigh, Klat shot a tank farm and all hell broke loose. Denying me the 200 VP's for the intact city and only a measly 50 points. He hit with the T-hawk and boom. The resulting explosions ripped into the damaged Prim Thunderbolt, and had the other tank was in the radius for the explosions it would have killed off that mech easily. However the resulting chain reaction hit all the other tank farms, scorching all my remaining mechs. Loosing the Archer (I think) to the following conflaguration.
However his attempt at blowing up my forces did not delay the inevitable and both his (then pristine) Panther and the T-hawk were gunned down. The Mercs won a phyrric victory.
We sat down and calculated the points.
Ducks: 863 total
Klat:526
All in all it was a fun fight, we figured out that Skill 0 forces are nasty, but you can win against them. But Skill 0 still feels undervalued to me. One extra lance really does make a difference.
