I've been pondering Battletech again...

o/

Battletech is a game we play only vary rarely. Mainly as games (often fought till one side has been wiped out) seem to take forever to conclude. That said, I really do enjoy the background fluff, indeed I'm currently reading the 1st Succession War PDF. Normally we play at the 8000 point mark which isn't much to be honest, rather mechs can really absorb a lot of punishment and keep on going.

Looking to thwart the issue of endless games without conclusion (my longest to date clocked in at 12 hours or so before I threw in the towel and told my opponent: You win, now get out, I'm done! (or something to that effect). I thought I'd try devising a scenario of my own for a future game, where total annihilation shouldn't be the objective. Instead escaping an ambush intact is! Or...at least having my unit commanders do so.

So here's what I came up with:

Backstory:

TBAGers, the resurrection! (following their 15mm demise)

The 3rd Succession War has been raging for years, luckily though your backwater world has come thru unscathed until now. Your Successor House/Periphery Realm’s* mortal enemies have sent a mercenary battalion (insert whichever here, but in this particular case) known as The Buffet Assault group (TBAGers) on a raid to strip your planet of whatever military stores it can find. As you ready your militia forces, you research your adversaries only to discover that the TBAGers have a reputation for employing simple, mob-like tactics and suffering from consistently mediocre leadership. Odds are, this raid will prove to be no different…

Landing unopposed, they quickly established a beach-head around their drop ships. The TBAGers' primary combat companies have aggressively moved towards their objectives brushing aside what little resistance that could be mustered in their path. Even though your militia units reacted quickly, they are too lightly armed to deflect the oncoming horde. However your scout lance has spotted an opportunity that could throw this entire raid into disarray…

Overconfident, the TBAGers combat elements are all but running amok, while your scout lance has reported that their command company is advancing at (quote) ‘a leisurely stroll’. Sensing an opportunity for a decapitation strike, you’ve let the main force bypass unawares, whilst your remaining militia wait in ambush for the TBAGers' commanders to blunder right into the kill zone!

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Scenario:

8000 points per side, all level 1 technology. 

This variant will lose that torso
mounted cannon and gain a...um,
backpack?

The attacker (TBAGers) need their command units to escape the ambush and link up with the main raiding force. The ‘command units’ consist of a Cyclops CP-10-HQ**, and three ‘Command Squads’ of infantry, each mounted in their own transport vehicle. 

The TBAGers need to get the Cyclops and at least one infantry squad to escape the ambush via the opposing player’s table edge in 6 turns (or less) to win. If only one of those two escape, the game is a tie, if none escape then the defender wins. 

Due to the confusion caused by the ambush, the defender automatically has the initiative, and no TBAGers units may advance faster than cruising speed in the first turn.  

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* Yes its kind generic, but anyone can plug whichever locations/factions they like. 

**The Collapsable Command Module carried by the Cyclops is anything but tech level 1, however it never actually comes into use during this scenario.

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Currently I lack the infantry and their transports as well as the requisite Cyclops mech needed to try this out. However Kushial and I will trade an Awesome for a Cyclops when next we meet, and I already have the rest selected for purchase. I'm just waiting on a few ebay sales to finance them. Once all of that is complete, I hopefully will be able to schedule a game and give this a try!

Wolfy's 'Hit & Run' X-Wing Scenario

o/

Wolfy (my fiancé) has lately been avoiding X-Wing. In a nutshell, she's bored with every game's focus being to simply wipe out the other side. True, that does get old but there are scenarios, right? Well yeah, but the few you get with some of the X-Wing packs are kinda lackluster themselves, and we haven't checked out FFG's fan-made scenarios yet either.

To quote Lando Calrissian: That was too close!

So stricken with insomnia the other night, Wolfy came up with her own simple scenario and we gave it a try twice Tuesday night.

The verdict: Its a keeper!

Using a blind draw for our lists (out of the myriad that I have printed out), we both drew Rebels for the 2nd game. Here, you can see that Wolfy has effectively learned my tactic of blocking with scrub pilots...

Okay so here's the set up:

Force Selection: 100 points - any faction

Mission Objectives:  All ships must at some point cross the center of the game area (use the ship's flight peg to determine this). Additionally, you need to destroy at least one opposing ship, and whichever ship (on each side) that gets the 'kill shot' (final blow on the victim) must then get off of your deployment table edge alive!

Sounds easy right?

Okay, so there's nothing of note happening in this pic, but I thought it looked cool enough to post anyways.

lol, yeah, try it…between the two games played, the winning ships  (a TIE Interceptor in the 1st game and a the Scarlet Harlot with Chewbacca at the helm in the 2nd) made it off the table with (collectively) 3 hull points remaining and enemy ships in close pursuit! Not to mention that it REALLY sucks when the ship you got the kill shot with, gets itself blown up as happened to me in the 1st round...it really makes you think about who shoots what.

The Scarlet Harlot narrowly escapes the board to win the game!

With one win each, both games came down to the wire, and in our opinion those games are the best ones!

Carnage for 3 Battle Report, sorta...

Well once again there was an odd man out at the FLGS this past weekend, so it was a perfect time to tryout my 5th ed Carnage scenario. Here it is again, with a few clarifications as were discussed in the comments of my last post.



I one the die roll and took the short board edge with BA to my left & Mech IG to the right.

Turn 1 I split my forces in 3 groups, one for the BA, one to hold the middle & the last to attack the IG. On the left a rhino full of enhanced marines w/icon of Khorne lunged forward in a rhino, with a twin-AC & ML dread following. The rhino popped smoke while the dread unloaded with everything & killed a bunch of trees. My demonically possessed Vindicator shot @ the BA also with no results whereas my possessed predator connected with an IG exterminator but failed to do any harm. On the right, Fabius in a rhino with his enhanced Marines went full distance & popped smoke, my sorcerer & E-marines ran for all they worth towards the IG while my 2nd dread w/twin heavy bolter killed 1 guardsman in the HQ sq. With failures all around my E-marines with Nurgle icon loaded the Culture Club's greatest hits into the vox array (my objective) and preceded to broadcast on all frequencies @ high volume.

The BA were second & split their forces similarly to me. Mephiston on psychic wings flew at my center, while a Librarian dread moved to intercept my approaching rhino. Using his scout moves, a Baal pred (untouched by my ineffective shooting)speared towards my objective & flame stormed 3 of my E marines. While on his left another Baal using similar moves opened up on a Chimera w/twin Ass cannon to no effect. A pursuing Land speeder similarly missed. A 2nd BA dread ran up the middle towards the IG while the rest repositioned in the middle, to guard a big rock (the BA objective, which elicited DA in disguise jeers & comments)

The IG caught between 2 rapidly advancing armies, did what IG do best by hunkering down & opening up with everything while their astropath(the IG objective) desperately called in for an evac, air strike or ANYTHING! Despite another vast expenditure of ammo, little more was done aside breaking the twin ass cannon from a Baal pred.

Turn 2, my twin-AC & ML dread fire frenzied while the other Blood Raged, and in between the 2 was a Baal. While the Blood frenzied dread ran an impressive 12", the fire frenzy dread blew the Baal to pieces. My vindicator fired on Mephiston missing him entirely (my predator also missed with all guns, demons make for abysmal gunners it seems). The Khorne E-marines disembarked after their rhino made an impressive power slide peppering a BA tac squad, though not felling any of them. although my lesser demons did arrive to assist & charged into said tac sq. with 1 casualty a piece. On the other side right flank continued to advance at speed but that meant no shooting.

The BA turn 2, Mephiston watched in horror as the librarian dread charged the Khorne E-marine squad inflicting just one kill while receiving a shaken result. It was pretty sad really. He did make good progress toward the IG with the BA dread popping a sentinel, and an assault sq. w/Priest dropping into my deployment zone & popping my pred with an inferno pistol. Mephiston cast the str. 10 spell, charged my vindicator rolled LOTS of 2s to hit, and only managed to shake the vindicator (to the amusement of its demon crew).

Turn 2 IG was much the same, hunkered down & guns blazing resulting in many, many stunned results to the BA vehicles, and immobilizing Fabius' rhino.

Turn 3 saw both my dreads engage in a wild west shoot out, as they both Fire frenzied & were 6" apart and staring at each other. While the win heavy bolter blazed away, the twin AC & missile launcher scored 4 penetrating & 1 glancing hits followed up by a nice Yahtzee roll of all 1s for damage! The Khorne e-marines & Librarian dred were doing nothing to each other while my Khorne rhino rammed a BA rhino resulting in sore necks for all drivers. my vindicator sped away from Mephiston shooting the BA assault marines in my back field killing 3 with my nurgle squad felling another (with the Culture club not fazing the BA, they opted for the ultimate act of terror and switched the vox array to a Bluegrass station!) Meanwhile the sorcerer & squad opened up & gutted the IG HQ while Fabius & friends charged & destroyed the IG Exterminator.

BA turn 3, a 2nd squad of assault marines dropped down into point blank range of the IG scaring the hell out of them, there was little movement on the BA side as vehicles were stunned everywhere. Mephiston did little, still embarrassed by his failure to hurt the vindicator, nor did the Assault marines take it down. The librarian dread however found its wits & cleaned house vs. my Khorne E-marines, felling all but the champion (who with his powerfist destroyed the dread).

IG turn three saw almost EVERYTHING open up on the BA assault squad in their midst, killing six (all praise be to cover!)While the Demolisher stunned the BA dread that was running straight at it (again lots of cover saves there).

Turn 4-the shop was closing. :-(

We got a late start & were fielding 2k all around, WAS too much for this scenario. In 4th ed. we used to run this @ 1500pts, and I'd say that should be the point limit. While due to time limits the game was inconclusive, we all agreed that the BA were in the best position to win. My charge into BA territory was seriously blunted, while I had Mephiston & assault marines into my deployment zone (helped by my dreads trying to kill each other). Whereas the IG was about to get hammered from both directions by by BA and my Enhanced marines (though considering the distance, one of my E-marine squads was likely to fear the full weight of fire from that demolisher had the BA dread not taken it down.

It was a good test for my updated Carnage scenario though.

5th. ed. 40k Carnage scenario for 3 players

Hello all,

Not too much on the modeling front this week. Most of my time was used cutting & then grinding down the excess metal from the head of a Cawdor mini to add to a sentinel driver to go with my kill team mentioned in the previous post. I think it'll work, however after cleaning up all the pewter shrapnel & dust, a bodiless Cawdor head didn't strike me as all that photo-worthy.

I have been thinking about the old 'Carnage' scenario though. We used to play it a lot. For a while we didn't have a FLGS to play at, and when the guys came to the house to play, I only have one table. So we played Carnage. We modified the deployment as we often only had 3 players, with one deployed on a short board edge. Usually that player had the advantage over the other two who, staring directly at each other, would get the Ork mentality and charge straight at each other. With the army on the short table edge just hunkering down and sniping. (One notable exception was with 2 IG armies on the long table edges with mortar squads vs. FW heavy mortar lobbing counter-battery fire back and forth for several turns, don't recall whose mortars won that one.)

5th ed. eliminated victory point scenarios, and Carnage was a casualty as well. However of late at the FLGS, we've often had an odd player out. Sometimes there's time for a second game so they can play, sometimes not. In general the FLGS's owner's son opts out of playing, but that means he hasn't played on Saturday night in close to a month now.

That's crap.

So...this week I thought about updating the ol' 3-player Carnage for 5th ed.



So that's what I came up with. More or less the same 3 player deployment as we used before, but the 'Capture & Control' scenario will eliminate the potential of a tie. Not to mention trying to keep track of who got what kill points, are there half kill points, etc. isn't a concern. I often forget the big yellow 'cheese die' turn counter on the table, so writing down who killed what simply won't happen, consistently anyways. Another thing is that in order to capture an objective, you have to advance on it and with out flankers potentially coming out of everyone's back field, there's no one deployment zone that offers any particular advantage. I'm sure that some people won't like the idea of out flankers in their backfield, however locally we have six, count them SIX Space Wolf armies (with their infernal scouts) in our group. So that's more or less a normal possibility anyways.

So, if we have another odd guy out this Saturday I'll see if they want to give this a try. 40k shouldn't be spectator sport/hobby.