Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Heavytech? Battlegear? What...?

o/

Last week, Hive Angel and I tried out Battletech for the first time in years. About 10 for him, and 4-5 for me. Using preselected 3025 mechs from an old scenario pack with 'experienced' pilots (4/5 mech pilots are more or less a bunch of scrubs that just graduated from a mech academy and thus actually lacking in any experience...). Indeed, it was relatively early in the game when I determined that one of my mechs had fired 180 long ranged missiles, and only 18 of them had actually connected with their target (and not all at once)!

We just kept it simple omitting jumping (which we soon came to regret), torso twists, piloting rolls (though I don't think either of us managed to inflict 20+ points of damage on anything in one round, my Cicada should have made some as it spent all game hauling ass) and internal critical hits. As it was we had to call it as it was getting too late to continue, and ending more or less in a draw with one heavily chewed up mech/gear per side & all the rest being either slightly dented to completely untouched. It was fun though and a good refresher course in good ol' CBT.

As the mechs (one lance per side) were all proxies, I used my Heavy gear minis to at least keep us from having to remember who's proxy was who's. Considering that in their respective universes, mechs would easily steamroller gears, my guys felt pretty good hitting above their weight class!

The unrivaled MVP of the game however was the 'light forest hex # 0312'. Not one shot (NOT ONE!) that passed thru this hex EVER connected with whatever was on the other side! Range, speed, volume of fire, none of it mattered. Hex 0312 is simply the stoutest piece of light forest in the Inner Sphere! As Heavy Gear is set primarily on the desert world of Terra Nova (and the desert is where most combat takes place), there is little doubt as to why my Gears were so easily thwarted. As for Hive Angel's Battlemechs? Well, I think we just chalked it off to those 'experienced pilots.'

We may give it another go this week, not sure what my schedule looks like yet as I just got back from a 3-day weekend with the family and that's juggled my schedule around a bit.

6 comments:

Hive Angel said...

From this day forward this shall be known as the rather light engagement, heavy ammunition wasting "Battle of Forest 0312".

Itinerant said...

Have you looked at their Quickstrike rules as found in the Strategic Operations book? A lot more abstractions and games that finish in an hour to 3 hours, depending on the size of battle. You will hit and mechs will explode.

I've got a quick aar on my site and a link to another blogger who's giving this version of bt a try.

I don't have the time, capacity, or friends that would play full BT w me. However, I really want to enjoy and game in this universe so I'm giving hem a try.

Da Masta Cheef said...

I think we're going to go with the full on rule set...eventually. I have a few other friends who've tried a few practice/refresher games as well. As with any game system, once we get the hang of it it'll go faster.

Screech said...

One of these days I'll have time to get up to your place and drag out my Nova Cat star (though battlevalue restrictions will probably limit it to only 3 points).

Da Masta Cheef said...

Indeed. earlier I was relearning how frustrating it can be to assemble the chicken legged mechs...

E.S. Wynn said...

Oooh, ok, nice! Good to see some photos for scale. I was thinking about using Caprice quads as replacements for Wobbie drone mechs, but I'm still on the fence. So far, you can only get them in a box set, it seems, and then you're paying $60 for a set of five mechs (the rest being superheavy scale) that may or may not work, lol. Ah well.