Battletech: Sword and Dragon: Fox's supply run (5)

The Fox's have taken their second mission, also a supply run to beef up their warchest and hopefully capture some better mechs. Using elements of their command lance (Black knight, hatchetman, enforcer) they face off against 4 militia mechs (2 light: mongoose, pather, 2 medium: clint, trebuchet).

Bryan helpfully pointed out my Blackknight has a mod called triple strength myomer. When it's heated up a bit the mech gains a move bonus and doubles (!) the attack damage. He carries an axe already and is pretty weighty, so is now a total badass. I spent the game trying to get him in contact with a mech to cleave in half. Same with the hatcheman, I looked to take a few chops, but never managed to connect.

The maps where a moderately forested map with some open lanes of fire, and a totally open, concrete pad map where the warehouses were placed. Bryan cleverely placed the defenders behind the warehouses (which are considered invulnerable) which gave him a hit modifier (partial cover) and would negate hits to the legs. So clever! 



















The Fox's moved up through wooded terrain while the defenders hid behind the chain of warehouses. The black knight storms up the middle, while the enforcer takes pot shots from a distance, and the hatchetman is sucking up most of the defenders fire (picking on the little guy). Early on, Bryan moves his mongoose out to run at high speed and be hard to hit and generally irritating.



 Heavy fire forced the panther out of hiding and to start moving up before he got destroyed. The hatchet man has been taking a lot of hits, while the enforcer hides in the woods and continues to snipe with his gauss gun.









Here the Panther is hiding by some woods. The mongoose is being it's usual irritating back shooting self, and the trebuchet has moved away from the main group of buildings to avoid getting smashed by the black knight.








After the black knight gets close it turns into a foot race as the knight is chasing down the commander trebuchet, and the defenders attempt to swarm the other 2 attacker mechs. This game was notable for the huge number of shots that missed by 1 point.

Finally the heavily injured panther goes down. The hatchetman is steadily taking most of the fire from the other defenders however.



 The blackknight is trying to manage heat, chase after the enemy mechs (near the top of the map), and continue firing.

 The hatchetman charges the mongoose, hoping to put him down. Probably a mistake to be out in the open with his back to 2 other mechs.





The mongoose speeds away to end up behind the black knight. Around this point he's lost 2 arms and is down to one torso medium laser and a small. Basically no threat at all. *sigh*


 The hatchetman jumps back to cover (middle) and the enforcer is trying to outshoot the Clint.

 Missing a photo or two here here, but the mongoose managed to race behind the hatchetman (now lying down by the river). The hatchman had jumped to cut down the clint. A super lucky small laser shot from the mongoose managed to ignite the ammo of the hatchetman resulting in a destroyed mech. CURSES!





The blackknight and enforcer manage to take down the mongoose. Leaving injured trebuchet and Clint running around. About this point Bryan agreed he could continue running in circles taking pot shots until a lucky hit took him down (he was fairly devoid of armour) but he was essentially beat. It was getting late, so we called it.





The damage to the enforcer is not too bad....but he is missing most of the armour on a leg, and 0 armour in one back location....not something I want to leave unrepaired. The blackknight is barely scratched. The hatchetman is a total repair....but leaves us with how to  deal with the pilot deaths in the campaign. I have since remembered that we did a mulligan on one of Bryan's pilots deaths in the first mission.

There is a mechanic to buy new pilots, but you lose the fun little special skills/personalization of the pilots from the book. Add it to the list of things to consider moving forward.