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.

Battletech: Rules interlude....speeding things up (6)

Interestingly in our last game we chatted a bit about how to speed up Battletech. We only played with 7 mechs, yet it probably took us about 2.5 - 3 hours to conclusion. I don't think this is a terribly slow rate of play either. One of the fears moving forward is that many of the missions are calling for 8 mechs.....on a side. Time is going to be a challenge.

Part of the discussion on speeding things up was prompted by talking about Battletech history. Bryan's favoured period is pre-clan invasion (Succession wars). The mechs have a fairly set level of technology, and every design has flaws and are sub optimal. With the arrival of the clan, you started to get mechs that are 'good at everything' as per Bryan. New weaponry and double strength heat sinks result in more deadly fire, faster movement and less decision making about how to manage heat. It therefore makes for a shorter game as the weapons are much more lethal. Perhaps this was one of the drivers for the popularity of the era (and who doesn't like power creep?).

Back to slow speed of play.....We identified that the calculations to hit that often (quite often) result in misses (and general low level of damage delivered per turn) draw the game out. I suggested maybe we should give a global to hit bonus (arbitrarily suggesting +2). Thinking about it, we didn't think that it would likely change tactics that much. It will make light mechs more squishy......but I think everything gets more squishy. We will attempt this next time we play (one on each side) to see the actual effects of the change.

Some other items we need to consider with this campaign are:
1/. Do we kill off pilots in mechs that explode? vs allowing them to be bought back or some other effect (loss for a period of time)
2/. How to handle ammo costs without being too annoying to track shot by shot.

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.

Battletech: Sword and Dragon: Sabre's supply run (4)

We got this one in at the beginning of September. Supply Run is a mission where the attacker is attempting to seize the contents of some warehouses. The warehouses contain (if the attacker wins) 2 mechs, and a bunch of ammo. We have been mostly ignoring ammo for the time being....it looks fairly annoying to track, and I'm contemplating some way to make it simpler than counting each shot, but still taking into consideration ballistic weapon ammo use. Anyway, back to the mission at hand.

Due to the successful recon by the sabre's, their opponent have a negative modifier on their force generation table. The sabre's end up facing 2 medium and 2 light mechs, all driven by poorly trained militia. A whitworth, centurion, assassin, and enforcer make up the militia force.

The maps include a fairly open back table with the warehouses, and a heavily forested map where the attackers enter. The militia deploy forward to attempt to hammer the attackers as soon as possible in the close ranges where they have a better chance of hitting, rather than letting the attackers take up hulldown positions in the hills on the open map and hammer them at long range.

Quite quickly the two forces are at knife fighting range, but the woods are largely eliminating most of the available lanes of fire. The Sabre's have brought in a heavy mech (hunchback), an assault (hatimoto chi) and a light or medium mech (Jenner). All mount experimental weapon systems (ER lasers, AC10 X, and a Narc missle).





The defenders are attempting to stay away from the assault mech while focus firing on the Jenner and, to a lesser extent when the shots won't work, the Hunchback.

I often find myself tending towards 'gamey' solutions, but obviously the point of running the opfor against the Fox's and Sabre's is to bleed them as much as possible in most missions. I think that the missions are largely winnable, but the question is the degree/cost of the win for the protagonist forces.


The game was consistently marked by the inability of the militia to gain initiative. This resulted in most of their mechs going before the sabre's and resulted in set ups like this. The assasin is trying for a rear shot on the hatimoto. In return, the hunchback and jenner are ganging up for some physical attack throw downs.

 The river ended up being fought quite closely over, as it was a serious mobility barrier for a number of the mechs. The sabre's have excellent piloting skill, so it was mostly a reduced speed barrier. The militia suck, so didn't want to risk the piloting checks. Jump jets were used frequently to hop across the river.

Another factor was this was one of the few locations that gave decently long fields of fire.

 The end is close. The militia mechs have lost most of their armour, so the AC10 X on the hatimoto chi, which acts as a giant shotgun, is coming into excellent effect. Any 'open' areas of armour are way more likely to get hit, and potentially cause critical hits.

The Centurion goes down with gryo damage.

 Followed in the next turn by the assassin having it's leg shot off, and the Centurion having it's leg KICKED to confetti by the hatimoto chi.

The enforcer finally brews up in an ammo explosion giving the table to the Sabre's.











The resulting capture of a Centurion and a Jagermech, plus the mad salvage by the Sabre's brings up their warchest to a respectable 367 after repairs etc. It is noted that assault and heavy mechs are real expensive to repair, giving an obvious imperative to only bring what you need to a mission. On the other hand, the Jenner was pretty heavily damaged and could easily have ended up destroyed this mission. Can't bring things that are too light......a juggling act to be sure.

Battletech: Sword and Dragon: Fox Recon (3)

Our second mission of the campaign (again written up in a very delayed fashion) we see the Fox's teeth starting their own mission arc with a recon. Trying to remain true to character and thematic, the Fox's run an intact lance which is, of course, Recon.  The Fox's have an assassin, wolfhound, hornet, and Commando, facing off against a group of 4 light militia mechs, a spider, mongoose and 2 panthers (eek PPC's!). Objectives are to scan the enemy mechs and exfiltrate the entire force.

Choosing a heavily forested map the Fox's get some decent cover moving up. The opfor (run by Bryan) has choosen a faily blank map with a few hills. Definitely some risk in the approach. 2 militia mechs start on the board, and will be joined by their reinforcements shortly.Turn 1 is already bad news for the Fox's as one of the Panther's hits with his PPC on an 11. This trend would continue for most of the game.

The Fox's approach from 2 flanks attempting to run around the hills and deprive the enemy of areas to retreat to (and avoid a scanning).










Turn 3 Right. The reinforcements show up, just as the first two militia mechs are scanned.












Turn 4 (left) the Fox's have managed to accomplish the first objective and scanned everything. Now to run away quickly! We're all the way in the corner of the far map, with enemies that can jump and some hills in the way....what could go wrong?







Turn 5. Wisely Bryan is keeping close on the heels of my fleeing troops. The high speeds reduce fire, and the militia are bad shots, but the volume of fire presents a risk.











Turn 6: I manage to place 2 engine hits on the mongoose! Now everytime it does ANYTHING it net generates heat. In hindsight this would have caused the mech to dropout (withdraw rules), but we didn't know.

Instead it dogged my steps hoping to blow up or something nearby.






Turn 7. Fox's are half way back. One of the panthers (in the bottom right) is just about out of the fight (too slow).

Turn 8. A stupid mistake was made by the Fox's (me). I set up one of my mechs (top line) to a charge attack from the mongoose. If it hits it will bash my mech off the table and count as out of the fight, in addition to any horrible damage it will likely achieve. Also, the mongoose is horribly injured and could brew up in an exciting fashion.

Some stressful holding of breath while the attack numbers are calculated and rolled....a miss!


Final turn: The Fox's escape off the table. A bit worse for wear than their counterparts the Sabre's at the end of game 1.

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.