Completed Herding Cats, a trial Codex Battletech Match

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The Dragon has something like 13t of long range weapons, and 2t of close range weapons. It's without doubt a long range skirmisher (thanks to it's higher than average speed). The close range weapons serve to deal with faster light mechs that are able to get under it's long range guns.

Yeah, my original idea behind picking those two mechs was to remain at long range and snipe the other team to death. Then I played some other game, forgot the original plan and told Norfleet that his Mech is a close combat one so he should get close. No surprise he was bit confused about the "plan". My BT/MW skills are rusty as hell. But definitely wouldn't mind having a second battle after this.

Turn 15 MOVEMENT and FIRE (Yes I am still alive)

Sorry all, between some mis-communication and RL issues there was a nice delay.

With that said we have movement. This turn the Dragon decided to try some clever manuvering while the Awesome just charged forward to smash. The Rifleman is just taking a nap.

Here is your map. As you can see we are now at knife range. We shall see if the damage the Awesome has already sustained will cause the mech to go down before it can pulverize the Dragon at close range.



And the numbers


Weapons fire for Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike)
Particle Cannon at Dragon DRG-1C (CGR); needs 8, rolls 4 : misses.
Particle Cannon at Dragon DRG-1C (CGR); needs 8, rolls 5 : misses.
Small Laser at Dragon DRG-1C (CGR); needs 11, rolls 2 : misses.

Weapons fire for Dragon DRG-1C (CGR)
Medium Laser at Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike); needs 6, rolls 8 : hits LT
Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike) takes 5 damage to LT. 8 Internal Structure remaining
Critical hit on LT. Roll is 5; no effect.
Autocannon/2 at Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike); needs 8, rolls 8 : hits RL
Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike) takes 2 damage to RL. 14 Armor remaining.
LRM 10 at Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike); needs 10, rolls 10 : 6 missile(s) hit.
Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike) takes 5 damage to RT. 6 Armor remaining.
Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike) takes 1 damage to RT. 5 Armor remaining.

What a dud round for the Awesome, despite needing only an 8+ on the PPCs it missed with both. Meanwhile the Dragon needed a 6, and 8, and a 10 and manged to roll almost exactly that for each weapon. With that said, the damage failed to do anything relevant so let's do another round.


Heat Phase
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Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike) gains 23 heat, sinks 23 heat and is now at 0 heat.
Rifleman Sneede-FLU (CGR) gains 0 heat, sinks 0 heat and is now at 0 heat.
Dragon DRG-1C (CGR) gains 9 heat, sinks 9 heat and is now at 0 heat.

Control Rolls
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End Phase
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Pilot of Rifleman Sneede-FLU (CGR) "Unnamed" needs a 7 to wake up. Rolls 7 : successful!


Looks like the Rifleman managed to wake up, so I need to know if you want to try to stand up again GarfunkeL.

I will.

I'm up for that.

I've read that something bad happens if someone fires a PPC too close? What's the rules for that?

It is theoretically possible to disengage the field inhibitors (re: remove the minimum range) on PPCs, but if you do bad things can happen. For the sake of simplicity I am not letting people do it this battle.

So PPCs simply cannot be fired below what range?

You just suffer -1 for each hex inside your minimum range. I don't recall if that is inclusive or exclusive of the given value, which for PPCs is 3.

so i went away for few dayc, came back, and what do i see?!?!?!?! You guys still alive and nobody scores criticals? ...

SON I AM DISSAPOINT

I seem to have exhausted my supply of criticals booting your head off. A fair enough trade, really. That moment alone was more awesome than anything else in the game to date.

Round 16 MOVEMENT (Come back here, I'll bite your legs off!)

As the Awesome continues to stalk the Dragon, he completely ignored the Rifleman. Such a mistake may prove to cost him as, zombie like, the Rifleman rises again. The Dragon continues to backpedal, but close range is close range.

Standing roll


Rifleman Sneede-FLU (CGR) must make a piloting skill check (getting up).
Needs 10 [5 (Base piloting skill) + 5 (Left Leg destroyed) + 0 (getting up)], rolls 12 : succeeds.

Here is the map

Coming soon.....bring down the thunder!!!

Round 16 FIRE (I fall down, but I get up again)

With a nice shot at the back of the Awesome, the Dragon Rifleman launched one of its last 3 volleys of LRM 20. Alas, still fuzzy from the nap, the volley went wide. It was up to the Dragon to to cause some damage...and it delivered. The Awesome was lucky so far, but the hits to the center torso add up and eventually one caused some critical damage to the Gyro. The first gyro crit gives a +3 penalty to all piloting rolls and requires a piloting roll anytime the mech runs. Now the already slow Awesome is even slower. As a added bonus, the crit itself causes a piloting roll that the Awesome failed, falling on its ass.

Here are you numbers


Weapons fire for Rifleman Sneede-FLU (CGR)
LRM 20 at Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike); needs 9, rolls 6 : misses.

Weapons fire for Dragon DRG-1C (CGR)
Medium Laser at Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike); needs 9, rolls 9 : hits CT
Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike) takes 5 damage to CT. 13 Internal Structure remaining
Critical hit on CT. Roll is 9; 1 location.
<<<CRITICAL HIT>>> on Standard Gyro.
Autocannon/2 at Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike); needs 8, rolls 11 : hits RL
Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike) takes 2 damage to RL. 12 Armor remaining.
LRM 10 at Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike); needs 10, rolls 6 : misses.

Weapons fire for Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike)
Particle Cannon at Dragon DRG-1C (CGR); needs 8, rolls 10 : hits RL
Dragon DRG-1C (CGR) takes 10 damage to RL. 8 Armor remaining.
Particle Cannon at Dragon DRG-1C (CGR); needs 8, rolls 10 : hits LT
Dragon DRG-1C (CGR) takes 10 damage to LT. 3 Armor remaining.

Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike) must make 1 piloting skill roll(s) (gyro hit).
The base target is 5 [5 (Base piloting skill)].
Roll #1, (5 (Base piloting skill) + 3 (gyro hit)); needs 8, rolls 3 : falls.
Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike) falls on its rear, suffering 8 damage.
Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike) takes 5 damage to RTR. 5 Armor remaining.
Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike) takes 3 damage to LL. 30 Armor remaining.
Pilot of Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike) "Ulminati" must roll 8 to avoid damage; rolls 9 : succeeds.

Dragon DRG-1C (CGR) must make 1 piloting skill roll(s) (20+ damage).
The base target is 5 [5 (Base piloting skill)].
Roll #1, (5 (Base piloting skill) + 1 (20+ damage)); needs 6, rolls 7 : succeeds.

What I find most interesting is how evenly the Awesome managed to spread the damage on the Dragon. It has no internal damage anywhere, but the next hit to any location but the left arm will penetrate armor. If the Awesome had clustered the hits it did as well as the Dragon and Rifleman have, the Dragon would already be dead.

That's going to be tough to come back from. Time for BattleMech curb stomping!

You mean the Rifleman, right? I haven't taken any naps lately, which probably contributes to my crankiness. And how many more rounds of ammo do I have, anyway? Am I also down to 3 rounds of ammo on the LRM? I have more than that for the AC/2, right? That thing never runs out of ammo in Mechwarrior, probably because it never does any damage, either.

I think you have 7 or 8 more volleys of LRM 10 ammo, and it will be highly difficult for you to mange to run out of AC/2 ammo

Yeah, I never managed that in the Mechwarrior games, either, even spending the entire mission from the moment of enemy contact to the cessation of hostilities simply holding the fire button down.

You should consider yourself lucky in that regard! If there WAS an actual way to control aiming, like, say, by actually ROLLING the dice, seeing as this game seems to be D6-based, I'd have blown your head off from clear across the map! As it stands, the wonderful accuracy of these weapons at the ranges given suggests that they are being fired from the hip while blindfolded.

Round 17 MOVEMENT and FIRE (Or watch the sniper mech get physical)

We will start the summary with this.



Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike) must make a piloting skill check (getting up).
Needs 8 [5 (Base piloting skill) + 3 (Gyro damaged) + 0 (getting up)], rolls 8 : succeeds.



Despite the gyro damage, the Awesome manages to drag itself to its feet just to see the Dragon bearing down on it. Both mechs engage in a volley of short range fire that neither is good at before their clashing feet meet. Meanwhile the Rifleman hops forward (I don't know how a one legged mech really manged to move even one hex, but the game allows it) and sends another desperate salvo of LRMS at the back of the Awesome.

I'm all atwitter to find out what happens..

Yeah, yeah, map, you'll see it at the end.

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In the end it was a medium laser that killed the mighty Awesome. For the 4th time in the game, the Dragon rolled snake eyes for the hit location...center torso possible crit. Since the center torso was already exposed this meant two rolls for possible crits. This time they came in spades. The first roll was "11", two crits and the second was an "8" adding one more. Turns out that the extra crits were only insult to injury since the very first crit was a second gyro critical. Two gyro crits is a mission kill. The second two engine crits really succeded in upping the repair cost. In return only the small laser on the Awesome managed to hit, finally removing the last of the center torso armor, but too little, too late. At least the in the process of falling down the Awesome pilot managed to catch his head on the dashboard and black out, so he does not come to until the auto-eject sends him out of the mech.

Here are your numbers.






Weapons fire for Dragon DRG-1C (CGR)
Medium Laser at Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike); needs 6, rolls 9 : hits CT (critical)
Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike) takes 5 damage to CT (critical). 8 Internal Structure remaining
Critical hit on CT. Roll is 11; 2 locations.
<<<CRITICAL HIT>>> on Standard Gyro.
<<<CRITICAL HIT>>> on Engine.
Critical hit on CT. Roll is 8; 1 location.
<<<CRITICAL HIT>>> on Engine.
Autocannon/2 at Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike); needs 10, rolls 10 : hits LL
Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike) takes 2 damage to LL. 28 Armor remaining.
LRM 10 at Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike); needs 12, rolls 4 : misses.

Weapons fire for Rifleman Sneede-FLU (CGR)
LRM 20 at Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike); needs 8, rolls 8 : 12 missile(s) hit (using Rear table).
Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike) takes 5 damage to LTR. 5 Armor remaining.
Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike) takes 5 damage to CTR. 12 Armor remaining.
Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike) takes 2 damage to LTR. 3 Armor remaining.

Weapons fire for Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike)
Particle Cannon at Dragon DRG-1C (CGR); needs 10, rolls 5 : misses.
Particle Cannon at Dragon DRG-1C (CGR); needs 10, rolls 5 : misses.
Small Laser at Dragon DRG-1C (CGR); needs 7, rolls 11 : hits CT
Dragon DRG-1C (CGR) takes 3 damage to CT. 0 Armor remaining.

Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike) must make 1 piloting skill roll(s) (gyro destroyed).
The base target is 8 [5 (Base piloting skill) + 3 (Gyro damaged)].
Roll #1, (gyro destroyed); automatically fails.
Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike) falls on its right side, suffering 8 damage.
Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike) takes 5 damage to RA. Armor destroyed, 11 Internal Structure remaining
Critical hit on RA. Roll is 10; 2 locations.
<<<CRITICAL HIT>>> on Heat Sink.
<<<CRITICAL HIT>>> on +Particle Cannon.
Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike) takes 3 damage to CT. 5 Internal Structure remaining
Critical hit on CT. Roll is 9; 1 location.
<<<CRITICAL HIT>>> on Heat Sink.
Pilot of Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike) "Ulminati" must roll 11 to avoid damage; rolls 7 : fails.
Pilot of Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike) "Ulminati" takes 1 damage.
Pilot of Awesome AWS-8Q (Strike) "Ulminati" needs a 5 to stay conscious. Rolls 3 : blacks out.
And that is a game folks... Good job to both teams, but my congratulations go to Team gold for the victory.

The Winners



In the end I think the Gold team won despite their strategy, not because of it. As GarfunkeL noted, engaging in a short to medium range slug-fest with a couple of long range snipers is not ideal. However, putting the Dragon forward as the better (i.e. closer) target just as the Rifleman was on the ropes probably won the match for them. Taking the fire on the heavily armor Dragon allowed the Rifleman to continue to pour out the firepower despite being nearly dead.


In case you were curious, the Awesome had 67 armor remaining in the front. By comparison, the Dragon and the Rifleman only had 80 armor combined.


I hope everyone involved had a fun time and learned some stuff. If it looks like there is interest I think I am interested in running another game.

My analysis of the situation is that the apparent lack of team cohesion on the part of Blue probably cost them: The Jenner got caught up in how cool DFA was and disregarded instructions, and being suddenly taken out by a boot to the head cost the Awesome the precious rounds of fire it needed to get the win.

On our side, I think we overestimated the value of flanking and the apparent weakness of rear armor facings. Given that armor appears to be modelled entirely ablatively, striking at even weaker rear armor simply means you have to chew your way through yet another layer of armor, in contrast to a deflective armor model where a shot either penetrates armor and does damage, or mostly just causes an ugly dent without real effect.

Also, the Commander became somewhat distracted and less forthcoming with orders, leaving me to sort of wing it. Kind of dangerous, given that I have no real idea how to play the game. I am uncertain as to why I was repeatedly left without orders. Was it because Garfunkel was otherwise occupied, or because he was as lost for ideas as I was?

This certainly ended more abruptly than expected. I figured I would have to kick him over repeatedly, not that it would end before I could even kick him once. I guess it's sort of moot now, but we didn't actually get our promised map. Was this written in a stream of conciousness kind of way, and the shootan phase left the issue moot?

Welp, new game, then. I'm up for that. Are we doing new teams, more players, or what?

YEEEHAW!

Heck, I'm game for following orders and getting shot to pieces, piloting a mech. I just haven't played mechwarrior in about 20 years, so I remember next to nothing. It would need to be a patient commander..

RL and Aurora LP were taking their toll.