Battletech - Terra

 The first battle on Terra, Clan Wolf vs the 10th Hastati Sentinels.

The basic premise of this mission is that the Wolves are rampaging through a Republic admin centre, trying to cause as much damage as possible whilst the Republic forces try to get them to retreat the field before they achieve their objective.

This was a first time game for a friend so to make it a bit fairer (considering he was using Clan Mechs) and I outnumbered him, I staggered when my second lance was allowed to enter the battle.  This proved to be quite telling, with two of my assault Mechs taking forever to actually get on the board, but in the end the game went right down to the wire, and with an extra hit or two could have ended with a draw.

Some pics from the game, with the Wolved needing to destroy all the marked buildings for a win, I needed to destroy or put the Wolves into forced retreat:

Closing:

A little maneuvering, with the Zeus leading the charge, aiming for the Wolf Gladiator:

Throwing my lighter forces forward to distract the enemy fire:

A battle on the far side of the board, by this point the Shadowhawk had lost initiative and just lined themselves up for a shot down the gap between the buildings, my Trebuchet & Blackjack got behind them and that was all she wrote:

The Nove overheated to shutdown to absolutely hammer the Zeus while my Raven was harassing the Gladiator (which was focused on doing as much damage to the buildings as possible): 

The Nova and the Zeus went down in the same turn and with some of my heavier Mechs out of position I was in dire straits at this point, only two buildings remaining:

Nova, boom:

Shadowcat with a rear shot from the Trebuchet, the Blackjack was forced to retreat by fire from the Timber Wolf very shortly after this:

The kill of the game, a critical hit from the Raven on the Gladiator, rolled double 6's for the head shot - initiative is so important in this game:

This is what was left after the last turn, the Wolves managed to destroy the last building and I failed to put the Summoner into forced retreat with the last shot of the game, just two internal structure short to get a draw!

My casualties:

The Wolves casualties by the end of the game:

So after all of that, a loss, 5 VP to 4 VP, a win to the Wolves and the 10th Hastati Sentinels had to fall back to fight another day!

It was such a close game, but the TMM values of the Wolves made them just that little bit harder to hit, and I just had too much ground to cover especially with the staggered forces.  We both really enjoyed the game though, my friend far more than I expected to be fair, I may have convinced him to get a small force of his own...

So, I did win, from a certain point of view.

Next up, a solo tryout game, Dragon's Fury vs 10th Hastati Sentinels!

Battletech - 10th Hastati Sentinels

 So, I've discovered that I'm better when I have an actual deadline to work to.

Last weekend I hosted an Alpha Strike game for a friend who'd never played Battletech before, but was aware of a small amount of the lore and wanted to play as Clan Wolf - thankfully I already had enough of those painted up for him to use them.

However, I didn't want to go back to my existing factions to oppose him in this little battle, so gave myself the aim of getting 3 lances of Mechs painted up in a relatively short space of time - this would top my previous best of 8 in a weekend.

Which unit to paint up though?  I knew the era I wanted to play in, which was the fall of the Republic, so setting it during the early part of the fight on Terra would be an ideal choice and would give me a new unit to tackle - the Republic of the Sphere, specifically the 10th Hastati Sentinels (in their original MWDA colours, not the newer interpretation of black/gold).

2 Days, start to finish with the exception of having primed them the night before so I was ready to go.  Happy to say I did indeed accomplish my task:

Above, the 3 full lances, below a little close up of a few of them:

Ready to go defend Terra from the Wolves!

Next up, a few pics of the actual battle.