We've all been there in our Battletech career. We had that moment- you know the one. Everything was going well, you were in control of the situation, and then it all came apart- and you knew that the fight was ruined for you. You even know the moment everything changed- the gauss shot missed, the artillery scattered back on you, your Blackjack slipped on pavement, your enemy rolled a '12' on that wild ER large laser shot... and everything changed.
But hey, we all love a story about failure, don't we? So let's yuk it up and let those stories out. Tell us your worst 'uh oh' moments, let us revel in your bad day- and know that we've all had our own, we're sharing them too!
Obviously, I'll go first (and probably have more as we go).
The players, as a merc company, were hired to find a pilfered nuclear weapon, hidden in a seaport's warehouses somewhere. The weapon was mated to a ballistic missile (a CAV 'Whisper' Scud launcher was used as the miniature), and Comstar wanted it back- no matter how bloody things got. Who stole it, no one knew- yet. To find the weapon, the players had to have a Mech stand in base contact with a warehouse for four turns (two if it had a Beagle probe, which only one did)- at the end of the scan, the players would be told what the warehouse contained. Some were empty. Some had assorted goods stored in them. One had a Scud launcher. And others had defending units that would pop out and immediately engage the scanning unit. This could range from dock security (rifle infantry) to light vehicles to a Brigand-class Battlemech.
...oh, and one had a Demolisher II tank.
So our intrepid merc saunters up in his MAD-5D Marauder, a Mech that as the GM I'd wanted dead for a while. He made a beeline for the nearest warehouse, and started his scan. I checked my inventory sheet to see what was in that particular building- oh, it's the Tank-O-Death. So I'll be firing on him at a range of two hexes as soon as it reveals itself. This should be fun!
The tank popped out the door (I presume with a Kool-Aid Man 'OH YEAH'), and let go with all four weapons. The Marauder was immobile. The tank was treated as having cruised to leave the building. It was short range, no intervening terrain, and a 3 for gunners. This was going to be ugly.
It was.
The LB-20X, firing slug shot, went wide. The Ultra AC/20 jammed. The machine guns both pinged off the legs near-harmlessly. I couldn't believe it- the ace in the hole to make life interesting on the players had essentially wasted its best chance at causing real damage. The players, understandably, made damned sure that every unit that could help remove the Demolisher from the field did so- since this was the old BMR rules, an inferno-packing Kintaro was plenty enough to do the job. With the big gun gone, the remaining forces weren't able to do much more than slow the search down a bit, and the Scud was soon found and recaptured. (It was sabotaged by the thieves to go off later, but that's a story for another day).
To this day it's one of the biggest wastes of a turn I've ever seen in a game- Battletech or otherwise. What a mess.
