Monday, December 2, 2013

Yup, sledge hammers still work...

o/

My only gaming/hobby stuff over the past weekend of sheer gluttonous eating, was when Kushial and I played a game of Classic Battletech Saturday night. 8k points, 3030s timeframe units (he had a few royal variants, and idea that completely escaped me), Eridani Light Horse vs. a combination of the 2nd Legion of Vega and the Free Rasalhague's reserve readiness corps (the FRR was still an unwilling member of the Combine during that time period).

We seemed to be trading blows fairly even early on, until a lucky SRM hit produced 3 criticals, and blew the gyro out of my catapult killing it. That, lead to the immediate collapse of my flank and it was all down hill from there. I did hang on for quite a bit before raising the white flag an hour or so later. Of my units though (a medium mech lance and a heavy tank lance), the tanks impressed me more than anything.

The best pic of the tank that Fasa/Wizkids ever made.

I think that vehicles suck in CBT because they're easily immobilized (which happened to virtually all of mine), and thus outmaneuvered are easily taken down (though turrets do mitigate the out manuevering part somewhat, unless of course the vehicle doesn't have one...). That said, the Axel Mk I's that I was fielding a lance of easily did the lion's share of damage to Kushial's ELH force. Indeed, the Axel's took down 2 Jenners (vile looking things), and a Saladin almost single-handedly, and left a few big holes in his surviving units as well. In tonnage its a piss poor trade off, whereas in battle value, probably not quite as bad. They were fielded by the FRR's weekend warriors after all...

The Axel is basically an ICE powered Rommel, which adds a machine gun and trades the LRM5 for a LRM10. Sounds great except its mud slow, and the 'big gun' has a woefully short range. Still Kushial's (quite effective) preference to surround a tank for the 'circle of death' still resulted in several mechs taking a 20-point slug and the occasional MG hit for their efforts.

Conveniently, this tank chassis comes in a bucket load of variants, ranging from the 900 point Axels used Saturday, on up thru the 2k point+ (WTF?) Clan versions! So in the future they'll become a jack-of-all-trades unit. Though, the humble (and probably worst of the bunch) Axel is already a favorite!

4 comments:

Kushial said...

It was a fun game, and the tactics I used were mainly in keeping with the theme of the army. ELH used speed and maneuver to separate, overwhelm, and scatter their opponents. I think I had a pretty good list for this and I was pretty pleased with how well all the units performed.

The loaned base of infantry did way better than I expected though that was mainly due to when I shot them in the turn then the actual results of their shots since it let them get a killing blow or two in. I've got some halftracks and trucks coming in to get some stands built for the future.

Unknown said...

Well 'royal' variants wouldn't have been fluffy for my troops, so is all good. the Legion troops are a DC dumping ground, whereas, as stated, the FRR troops are the reserves issued with obsolete equipment.

Still, they did pretty good I think.

Kushial said...

It was quite the enjoyable game .... Amy LOL

Da Masta Cheef said...

lol, didn't realize she was logged into google rather than me...