Awesome game of battletech tonight!
Scenario:
- your jumpship misjumped and found itself in the sink-hole star system of Charybdis. It's basically an astronomical anomaly that sucks-in all nearby mis-juped ships with no way out. The result is a hodge-podge of techology weilded across the solitary planet. Two main factions are (yet unnamed) descendants of Afrikaaners and Quebecois.
The players represent a 3067 era merc unit, most recently arived via mis-jump, who have been contracted by the Quebecois to steal some nuclear weapons being held by the Afrikaaners, thereby tipping the balance of power.
The nukes are only reachable via aerial insertion, except that the Afrikaaners also have a Castle-Brian style orbital defense laser.
So a plan is concocted: a company of mercs will drop on the nukes compound, while a demi company drops on the orbital laser: both deplyed via"toss drop", wherein the dropship describes a ballistic arc over the planetary horizon and ejects the 'mechs prior to crossing said horizon and coming into the laser's field of fire. The 'mechs complete their trajectory and land at the two sites.
Tonight we gamed the Laser site, wherein the mercs land with several pallets of buckets containing binary epoxy. Those with hand actuators recover the buckets and fight their way to the Laser Silo and use the buckets to glue.the silo bay doors shut. Each bucket has a charge which is used to instantly mix and spread the epoxy. A minimum of 3 buckets is required.
Arrayed against them are 16 low-tech fuel-cell based 'Mechs equipped with BAR:5 commercial grade armor, Heavy rifles, rocket Launchers, MGs, and a ballistic equivalent to a medium laser that we dubbed a chain gun: the 25 ton Istavark, 55 ton Eland Eland, and 70 ton Voortrekker.
The trick is that the merc unit packs a lot of weapons that do more than 5 damage, so each it with those is a crit chance, and the Afrikaaner 'mechs are all ballistically armed, with lots of ammo. Meanwhile, the mercs are taking massed Heavy Rifle fire, and RL 20 barrages at short range.
The pallets and merc 'mechs are scattered all over a 2x3 mapset, and face organized lances of Afrikaaner 'mehs.
In our run-through, the 'mercs barely succeeded, but did so, losing only a Starslayer, hunchback, and, Penetrator. The Afrikaaner force was down to 8. 4 of 8 Voortrekkers, 3 of 4 Eland Elands, and 1 of 4 Istavarks. Additionally, 2 more Voortrekkers were badly crippled, one Istavark had no weapons, and one Eland Eland was missing a leg.
Merc Shd 7M, and Wvr 8k were barely holding together, Ghr 6K badly beaten but in good shape, Tdr 7SE and Mad 5t were all but untouched.
