BattleTech Battle Report

Generic Mercenary Force gets ready to intercept half of today's contractual opposition.

Something a little unusual today, a solo BattleTech battle report: just the thing for total lockdown. Playing with myself is so much easier to organise! I even managed to fit in a second game within a week which otherwise NEVER happens with other humans.

An early victory as the Wolverine (brown with grey splodges) immobilises the hover-tank with a lucky volley of missiles.

I've been thinking about running a Battletech campaign for a while, and decided to just go for it, to help pass the time and avoid having to paint more models. The canon is long and convoluted, so to simplify: Battletech is about neo-feudalism and giant robots. Another massive war has enveloped known space as the fanatical wing of the quasi-religious galactic phone company tries to take over the Inner Sphere. Our protagonist faction are a mercenary unit on a planet (Tharkad) being occupied by the "Word of Blake" (WoB) and have do guerrilla warfare things until help arrives. Curious parties may find this wiki helpful for deeper dives into BattleTech lore. Sadly, no mention or acknowledgement is ever made made of William Blake which I think is a terrible oversight on the part of the writers.

The *new* Vulture (blue, foreground) and Wasp slowly make their way through the woods towards all the excitement.

Our first scenario begins with the initial Word of Blake (WoB) invasion as our protagonists (conveniently engaged in a live-fire training exercise) try to give some of the invaders a bloody nose as they unexpectedly drop in over the training ground. As they would be deploying in the centre with the WoB forces arriving from opposite table edges, the mercenaries' plan was to try to fight only one half of the opposition, who were bringing more points to the game.

Spurred on by their initial success, the Mercenaries attempt to destroy the lone Enforcer (blue) before help can arrive.

The mobile Wolverine leapt up the large hill and scored an early success with a lucky salvo of missiles which scored two critical hits on the hover-tank ( a Saladin for those of you with Technical Readout 3026 to hand). The first critical tore off part of the side-skirts of the craft, while the second rolled high and knocked out the engine. Although this didn't affect the vehicle's weapon, being immobilised counts as grounds for "forced withdrawal" so the crew bailed out of their vehicle as soon as it slid to a halt rather than be target practice for the 'Mech jocks.

The Enforcer is still in the fight as a the Vulture brings its vastly superior weapons into the game.

Buoyed by their initial success, the mercenaries surrounded the Enforcer, hoping for a quick kill. BattleTech being what it is is, however,  meant that hadn't managed to land a killing blow by the time reinforcements arrived. The Vulture, easily the most dangerous thing on the field, brought its long-range weapons (including an ER PPC in this configuration) to bear against the mercenary Crusader and ripped great holes in the torso, eventually bringing the beast to the ground by shooting a leg off. At this point I realised that the Enforcer should probably have thrown in the towel by this point (missing a torso location put it in "forced withdrawal" as per the rules), so I declared it "hors de combat" and played on.

With their original plan having failed, the mercenaries pin their hopes on winning a close-in brawl.

Desperate to even the odds the mercenaries concentrated on the Wasp and knocked it out with engine damage, but the Vulture was stubbornly resisting all attempts to breach its armour and took the PPC arm off the Panther, rendering it almost completely toothless. Still the mercenaries fought on, hoping to nobble the Vulture with a  lucky shot to something.

The Mercenaries score enough engine hits to force the Wasp (green & yellow) pilot to "strike their sensors" and shut down.

It all came down to the wire: The Vulture was cornered with its back to the water and nowhere to go, but with 36 (!) missiles' worth of SRMs managed to sandblast the Wolverine which was already missing all the armour on its centre torso. I didn't even bother rolling the dice after I calculated 29 individual missiles had hit. Ow.

A swarm of missiles from the Vulture takes out the Wolverine and scores a total victory for the Word of Blake.

I decided to go easy on the Mercenaries and let them recover their destroyed 'Mechs, but they are still left with a massive repair bill before the next engagement. Hopefully they can do a bit better with a recon-in-force on a Blakist position.

In conclusion, I think my initial plan was sound, but I strongly suspect that I would have been better served by trying to knock out the Vulture first, rather than going after the lesser opposition. Even if I had lost the game overall, I would at least have scored some points for knocking out the enemy commander and would have avoided all that firepower moving forward. It is a little galling to lose against myself though, even when I was not being as punishing with the Vulture as I could have been. Better luck next time I guess.