The Victorious Infantry!

o/

My buddy Rob came over for a long overdue game of Battletech this past Friday evening. It was our standard 8k point game, he had a Taurian Concordat medium mech lance backed up by a half dozen vehicles, and I fielded a Draconis Combine heavy mech lance, backed up by a motorized infantry company.

The Scimitar tank died in one volley to this platoon!

At the mention of the infantry he said (quote) 'oh boy'. Lol, that kind of attitude is to be expected as most infantry using the stats in the Total Warfare book, are little more than cannon fodder that do little more than slow the game down. However I was using the Heavy Infantry out of the 3085 The Cutting Edge record sheets book. Contrary to that title, virtually all of the infantry contained therein come from far earlier (some more than a century) eras. The platoon type I was fielding debuted in 3060 for example.

Having an armor divisor of 2 (meaning it halves incoming damage, or to be lazy simply omits the double damage to infantry out in the open), a movement of 2 hexes, a reach out to six hexes, and the potential to inflict up to a 23 point blast of buckshot (in 2-point increments), yeah...they gave a whole new meaning to his 'oh boy' sentiment!

One shot from the Hatchetman's AC10 tore the leg off of that Stinger, killing it, that said, my mech barely escaped the return volley alive! The infantry meanwhile were scaring the wary hovertanks!

Lacking any sort of anti-infantry weaponry (i.e.: MGs, small pulse lasers, flamers, etc.) my platoons proved quite resilient whilst hitting pretty hard in return. One platoon took out a previously untouched Scimitar hovertank in one volley and his light SRM carriers were quickly limping around on flat tires!

It took an awful lot of hits, but after the prior round, there was no way my Hatchetman could survive this crossfire, and that platoon took a beating as well!

Of course mechs (and the AC20s on those infernal Scimitars) were the real damage dealers, and we were putting the hurt on one another quickly. However my infantry (previously always thought of as a circus side show) really kinda turned the tide of battle in my favor. We called the game early as I had to work Saturday and Rob was exhausted from his job of managing an entirely different circus (he owns a Dairy Queen).

I'm calling it a win as he lost a Stinger, all 3 Scimitars, with everything else damaged aside from his Archer which I never even shot at. On my end, one platoon had been gutted, my Hatchetman was a smoldering wreck, and my Ostroc and Awesome were pretty beat up as well. Whereas my Dragon had likewise not been shot at.

It was a fun little game, and we need to play more often, though I wonder how soon it will be before I will have these deadly new platoons coming for me...