Battletech: Sword and Dragon: Sabre's Recon (2)

We finally managed to get in another Battletech game last night.....which means it's time to update from the old stuff at last. It appears we got in our first two games for the campaign in May (how time flies!).

The details of the campaign will be filled in over time, but we just plunged in with a recon mission. Mostly raw plastics as you can see, with the intent to paint a bit between each game. This has largely been achieved.....mostly by not playing! Bah.

Bryan ran Sorenson's Sabre's against a group of mercenaries (randomly rolled). He thematically decided to keep his lances intact, and used the recon lance (Mongoose, Spider, Whitworth, Hermes). The mercenaries ended up with 2 light and 2 medium mechs (Commando, Panther, Centurion, and Hermes). The Sabre's need to scan all the defenders (2 of whom start off table) and then retreat all their forces. The merc's obviously won't be able to prevent this, but want to damage the sabre's as much as possible.

Stiff new maps, a bit of treatment under some heavy books sorted this out after the game. The mercs start on table with their slower mechs, Sabre's will enter from the top.









The Sabre's advance up hugging the woods, while the mercenaries hang back in hills overlooking the open approaches. The Sabre's have managed to avoid all gunfire at this point, but they will need to expose themselves eventually.







A spider races up and scans the first mercenary.












A mongoose is attempting to acheive the same on the other flank. We decided you needed line of site to achieve the scan, which this mongoose didn't have in this pic.








The sabre's have left 1/2 their mechs back, while the fastest ones attempt to get a mobility win. The panther from above has retreated to avoid getting scanned, and the mercenary reinforcements are swarming towards the mongoose. The Centurion (blue top) turns and continues to blast at the spider racing past it.

Here we see the mercenaries attempting to take down the spider and/or the mongoose. The dice are markers for how difficult it is to hit the mech due to movement. Red means they walked/ran, yellow marks a jumping mech.







The Sabre's have completed their scans and are now retreating. The angry mercenaries are pursuing and attempting to put the hurt on the Sabre's.

The spider took some critical damage, and a gyro hit...but managed it's pilot rolls and kept it's footing. It managed to handily run off the table edge.

Two turns from the edge, the mercs are still in hot pursuit. I'm suspect this is where the spider took it's crit hits.

If you look closely you can see that the spider is moving so fast that it has a -4 to be hit. Considering the mercs hit on a base 4, -4 from the spiders move, -2 as they are running to keep up that's a 10+ (on 2d6) prior to range mods. Not much was hitting despite the best efforts.





Final  turn. Not much left but the gnashing of teeth and weeping.










It's fairly nice to get to play a throw away team while you are learning. Having played the side that maintains it's mechs and damage et al it feels WAY different. You start sweating decisions that would be simple if you just don't really care about the risks. Obviously this is what campaign play for any system gives us but it's quite interesting getting to see both sides within a single campaign system.

I was pretty stoked that this would motivate me to get painting and have some nice eye candy. It's also a system I find fun to play, although I wish it played a bit faster. Unfortunately I haven't seen a ton of painting progress....but then again, there hasn't been a lot of games. The intent was at least one mech painted between games.