Sword & Dragon. Alpha Strike crossover.

It's been awhile since Bryan and I got in a battletech game. We were working our way through the Sword and Dragon campaign set-up, but decided that the larger set ups (more than 4 mech a side) were going to be hard to fit in with our schedules. After playing alpha strike a number of months ago, I finally grabbed the rules, and we had a go at the game.

The transfer from a classic BT campaign setting to alphastrike I think will have some bumps (there are mech and pilot specific rules that probably won't be useable) but for a first game it went well.

A recently acquired set of heroscape tiles made up our board. We didn't play with them as hexes (we measured), but it was handy. The blue is a lake, and the light grey/tan are forests.


The fox's teeth are completing a probe against the local opfor. After choosing their six mechs (Enforcer, Dervish, Javelin, Black Knight, Cataphract, and Centurion) a series of random tables determined the opposition. They are house (Kurita) mech pilots with a skill of 4. Mechs are 2 light (panther and Jenner), 2 medium (Assasin, Trebuchet), and 3 heavy (Dragon, Jagermech, and quickdraw).

The defenders set up first on their 1/4 of the board, and the attackers get 2/3 (4 mechs) running on the far edge. After 6 turns the other 2 attackers arrive, the following turn a lone mech that was left off the table. Victory conditions are based on the attackers surviving 10 turns, and/or killing the enemies heavy mechs.

Dice show that the mech has moved and what it's modifier to be hit is.

End of Turn  we see the Fox's teeth (FT) in the lower edge, mostly hiding against the superior defender numbers.

Turn 3(Right), The defenders lighter mechs race forward to engage the FT. The assassin in particular is REALLY hard to hit, so mostly gets ignored. A few hits are starting to land.








Turn 4 (Left). The battle continues to mostly focus on the lighter defenders harrasing the attackers and trying (and suceeding) in sniping their back (increases damage in alphastrike). The defenders mechs hangout in a tree line mostly missing at moderate range against obscured targets. The defenders light mechs continue to accrue damage, but they are hurting the attackers.

Turn 4(Right). The congo line of back shots that was set up.












 I missed turn 5 picture.

Turn 6 (Left). The attacker reinforcements show up. Top of the map the Javelin lines up for a back shot against an injured Treb (which has a broken fire control computer).

Near the bottom left the cataphract arrives, meanwhile the black knight is flanking the defenders in the trees, but has had all it's armour peeled by frequent back shots.

An enforce is in the lake (with the assasin back shooting it), while the centurion (with negligible armour remaining) remains in the small stand of trees.

Turn 7 (right). One of the defenders (trebuchet) is forced to withdraw as it has less than 1/2 of it's structure. The assasin has gone down from shooting (left of the lake). The black knight is engaging the heavy mechs in the woodlands, while another congo line of backshots has set up on the left side of the plateau at the bottom.

Turn 8. Everyones mech is pretty heavily damaged armour wise. Critical hits are starting to accrue for most units.

The attackers are now trying to get their objective to take down the heavy mechs, and focusing their attacks to that effect.

The dice rolls in this game continually went hot to cold for each side, and during this phase the defender was *just* missing a lot of shots.

Turn 8 (right). The dragon defender mech has moved into the water to protect it's back against the plateau. Some crit damage has reduced it's damage output substantially.

The jagermech has been ID'd as a soft target and is being picked on. Meanwhile the defender light and medium mechs are still hassling the attackers back armour. The reinforcement mech has arrived (Jenner) bottom in red.

Turn 9. The second defender mech (panther near the top) is now withdrawing as well. The attackers have now gotten advantages in numbers, but things are looking a bit frail all around. Couple good hits could see everything change.

Battle is focused around the wood to the right.

Turn 10 & Turn 11. The next two turns see a succession of defender mechs fall in quick order. Forced withdrawals are chased and shot before they escape for a solid attacker victory. The game is called with one attacker mech on the table and looking like it has a tough chance to withdraw without destruction.






Thoughts: We started around 715. And finished by 10pm. Including a few interuptions by phone, chit chat and lack of knowledge of the rules (I've played once, Bryan never).

Not having the crit hit table on a quick reference sheet definitely slowed things as well.

Considering we had 13 mechs on the table, weighted towards heavier classes I think this was great time.

Bryan remarked that there is still a tactical feel to it where you need to make some decisions about what unit to move next and generally where to push your attacks and retreat. I really like the change from classic where you spend so much time calculating odds to hit followed by most shots missing.

The weapons do very little damage in this era, but the mechs don't have a lot of hits either. It seems to work. Crits do bad things. We didn't end up using the overheat values at all, mostly b/c a number of mechs didn't have them, or the odds of hitting were pretty low.

I'm definitely thinking I should get back to painting my mechs, as I suspect we will get some more games in.

Alpha Stike First Game

My second day at the 2014 trumper salute I hit one of the games that has been on my list to try for a number of months, Battletech Alpha strike. One of my gaming friends, Brian, and I have been playing Battletech on and off for the last year. It's quite fun with small numbers of mechs and we were getting in some of the Sword and Dragon campaign book battles in. Unfortunately he have now hit the point where the number of mechs required has jumped from 4 to a side to 6 to 8. These are also weighted towards heavier mechs. The small battles consume our time allotment, and neither of us are in a position to leave the game set up for long enough to finish it a week plus later.

Overview:

Alpha strike has been touted as a fast play version of Battletech. The scenario set up was two clans forcing fighting for some esoteric point of honour. I'm not up on the fluff, and I suspect our tactics of focus fire violated the warrior ethic, but meh, it's a demo game.

One of the big pluses in my mind is that the range bands of mechs have been set are regular distances 0-6, 6-24, 24+. The damages from all weapons are subsumed into a single damage value delivered in each range band (which can vary). I.e a mech could do 2/3/1 over the short/med/long range. Overheating allows for boosting damage at the cost of speed AND a to hit penalty. If you don't fire or are in a lake you get to reduce your heat total (which ranges from 0-3).

Also very convenient, and definitely a step of abstraction, is that the to hit modifiers for movement of the target are based on their top speed. You ALWAYS get the modifier unless you specifically go stationary (as opposed to not moving where you are considered to scuttle around a bit, but don't move meaningful distance). Stationary figs get a bonus to hit what they shoot at; bit of a risk/reward option there.

Damage is abstracted to armour and structure boxes. Once you start taking structure hits you roll for possible criticals (which are very likely, though not guaranteed). CASE still protects against ammo explosions. There are a number of special abilities which reflect various equipment, and sometimes weapon loadouts (ENE means the mech uses only/mostly energy weapons so is immue to blowing up from an ammo hit).

The Game:

 I missed taking shots for the couple turns of the game. I forgot and it played quite fast. Our force of 5 mechs kept to the centre and advanced under the cover of the hill. In the distance we see 2 mechs at 12 oclock which are the heavy scary mechs (a dire wolf and something i forget but was roughly described as the scariest mech there is). Meanwhile we traded shots with the mechs on the rise to the right. The smaller fast scout mech was basically impossible to hit and was needling damage off us. The larger mech I think got cocky and moved up beside it. 4 mechs that couldn't hit the scout decided to shift targets and quickly gave us our first kill.

 Another angle of the same turn I believe.

 We continued to push forward over the hill and through the forest. I believe one of our mechs went down, tying the game, but we quickly iced the ?Mad cat? at 1100 oclock hiding behind the brown mesa on green hill.

My fellow gamer moved his mech into the water of the x lake (so known because it's easy to cross *rimshot* hehehe). This way he boosted the power of his shots every turn with overheating. Meanwhile the two scary mechs (Direwolf hiding behind the green hill at 2 oclock). were paring us down steadily. One of my own mechs was a couple points from being destroyed and I have no idea why none of our opponents thought to do it. They seemed fixated on the other mechs for some reason, despite being told it had no armour. A mistake that would cost them.

 We rush forward (although my crippled mech continues to hide in the trees) and assassinate the 'scariest mech'. The now open shot from the direwolf destroys my mech with a lucky critical. We are now 3 vs 2 mechs. The Thor and the Gyr hawk rush the direwolf, ignoring the lighter enemy mech that came up to support mr scary.

The direwolf was successfully killed, but the gyrhawk and thor were killed shortly after by the damage the direwolf did (shooting I believe is simultaneous) and the lighter mech (name escapes me). At this point my crippled mech is hiding in the woods trying to hit the damned fast mech racing towards him.

What follows is a comedy of errors as the two mechs swap initiative back and forth and scuttle around for FIVE turns unable to roll the mediocre numbers needed to hit their opponent and finish them off (both were one hit from dying). On the last turn I go stationary, get the kill, and suffer a kill in turn. A TIE! How wonderful. I'm pretty sure the other players were getting a bit irritated waiting for the resolution, but all stayed around as it just didn't take very long to play the 5 turns (1-2 minutes a turn I'd guess). This in my mind is pretty high praise indeed.

The whole game took 1.5 - 2 hours I'm guessing. This included some explanations, some drooling and staring at mini's deciding what to do and who takes what, etc etc. I think if everyone had been considering what they were going to move next while the opponents moved and rolling faster it could have gone 25% faster. Zoom zoom!

I was sufficiently happy with the system to pick up the rulebook at trumpeter. While you can order the 'ad hoc' cards off rpgnet, which are about 40 mechs on nicely printed cards, all the stats for every mech is on the Master unit list (both for classic as well as alpha strike). It's unfortunate there isn't an easier way to print them , but they came as jpegs, so some sort of graphics program to resize and get more than one on a sheet of paper is necessary for the time being.