I was looking back to the info in WoR:S regarding the 3088 Star Adder campaign in Hansa space, after going over the data on the League shown in Objectives: Periphery and Field Report: Periphery; and it occurred to me that the kind of slash-and-burn attitude which the Clan has towards the Inner Sphere (and the Council of Six Clans) post-Reaving may not be quite so evident when dealing with the Deep Periphery.
For example, it's noted that the RDF made two separate (failed) attempts to counter-attack the Adder occupation forces involved. But given the kind of naval forces the Adder fleet has to hand, would it simply be a case of the Clan keeping the Hansa JumpShips at bay (or blowing up any that get too close to one of the target worlds), or were the Adders actually allowing the RDF to land their troops first?
Given how widespread the standard RDF deployments would have been prior to the incursion (with the closest RDF garrison more than two jumps away from any of the four target systems), is it likely that the Adders are actually letting the Hansa ground forces try and fight; if only to give their own surface assets some live-fire combat experience? If so, it would seem that, be it out of principle or pragmatism, the Adders as of 3090 are still willing to treat the Hansa less harshly than they would other non-Clan opponents by this time.
Actually, in the long run, I wonder if their picking only four worlds to go for at a time was part of the point. Maybe they aren't in any particular hurry to conquer the Hansa outright; it could be that they recognise the need to burn off some of their warriors' more aggressive tendencies, without risking the increased exposure of a premature assault against the Inner Sphere or near Periphery.
To take an example from pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, the Aztec Empire had at least one enemy city (Tlaxcala) which they made a point not to conquer outright; instead, by leaving it unoccupied, they could raid it for captives (and would-be sacrifices) on a regular basis, blooding each new generation of warriors in the process. (There were other enemies, like the Tarascans, who were large enough to block Aztec expansion in their own right; but the Tlaxcalans had no such ability.) Of course, when a group of Spaniards managed to recruit the disgruntled Tlaxcalans to their own cause, things didn't work out quite so well for the Aztecs.
But in the sense that keeping at least a portion of the League alive (as a live-fire "training opponent") might be a way to help keep future Adder generations experienced against "Inner Sphere" tactics, would it be something that the Adders might just consider doing; or would the pressure in the Council from the other three Homeworld Clans mean that keeping at least part of the Hansa alive, even for such a purpose, would be politically unfeasible?