Landing DayI said July, and I meant it, although what was supposed to be a fairly relaxing month ended up being a pretty busy one.
Not as busy as our Opinionated Bastards are going to be today, though. The House Davion invasion forces have fought their way to orbit, sweeping aside the Capellan defenses between the jump point and Ares proper, and the DropShips are hitting atmosphere.
It is early morning in Advance Company's area of operations, and time to hit the airfield to clear some room for Assault Company's DropShip.
First time I've ever hit 'deploy force' for the whole unit.The Battle BeginsDrake's timing is superb: Assault Company's Overlord DropShip will be on final approach in less than a minute, as the Bastards on the ground hit the field. Sensors show a Capellan rapid reaction force on the way, due at about the same time as the DropShip—it looks like Assault Company will get a shot at some action tonight too.
Three heavy mechs and a pair of vehicles are out of frame, just north of the airbase buildings.As the Bastards approach the airfield, a lance of AeroSpace fighters roars down the runway and gets into the air. The incoming Overlord is well armed and armored, but it may still be wise for Assault Lance to go for combat drops instead of waiting for the DropShip to land. (We do have a number of mechs that are well-suited to shooting down air assets—they'll give it a try, if the Capellan aircraft come into range.)
Round 1Euchre and
Wojtek, on the left flank, run onto the pavement, while the rest of the Bastards are a little more circumspect, moving forward slowly and using cover. Next round will likely see the lighter, faster units push forward to screen the heavy hitters, with the aim of securing a landing spot on the southwestern end of the apron.
The logistical support which will momentarily be descending toward the Bastards on a column of fusion fire has our more ammunition-dependent mechwarriors practically salivating.
Pepper looses a full salvo of LRMs from his Archer's launchers at the enemy War Dog, on the edge of his effective range.
His LRMs miss, but fortunately, the War Dog's answer shot misses too: a Gauss rifle slug sizzles past
Blinky's cockpit. The War Dog is a dangerous one.
The Stingray which strafed
Euchre chipped away at his right leg, but
Linebuster and
Hanzoku peppered it with LB10X cluster rounds in reply, and the aerospace pilot gets the worse end of the exchange—though he keeps control of his machine, for now. The Capellan Hetzer also takes some fire, while the Maxim hovertank lands some desultory LRM fire on
Wizard's Guillotine.
Round 2The two southern Capellan fighters fly off the map, having overshot their turns, but they'll be back well before our DropShip arrives. The two that peeled off to the north begin to circle around, perhaps waiting for a better angle on the Bastards, or waiting for the DropShip.
The Bastards, with a substantially heavier force than the defenders on the ground, begin to push forward. The assault mechs, unfortunately, are a bit behind—they set up to fire on the aerospace fighters, which have now vacated the field.
Drake is the first on the board, drawing a bead on the enemy Vedette between the airbase buildings. Two shots from the Awesome's PPCs suffice to punch clean through the tank's frontal armor. The rest of the Bastards trade long-range fire with the enemy, without substantial effect.
Blinky does, however, immobilize the Hetzer. We will most likely remove its AC/20 from the field next round.
Round 3Forakis and
Milspec corral the Maxim, and between the two of them, are likely to immobilize or destroy it this turn.
Blinky,
Teddy,
Euchre, and
Wojtek, in some of our faster mechs, rush toward the center hangar on the field. While they hold the advance position,
Hanzoku and
Linebuster bring the assault mechs forward to secure the Overlord's landing site.
The timing is awful, but lack of maintenance appears to have caught up with our force on the ground—several of our pilots report targeting systems on the fritz.
Euchre,
Wojtek,
Hanzoku, and
Linebuster can't get their weapons to go green to fire. (GM note: seems like a bug with mechs that fired at the aerospace fighters that left the map. Hopefully they can shoot again once the ASFs return!)
Drake is hitting his usual rhythm, punching through the immobilized Hetzer's armor without difficulty.
Blinky pulls back hard on the throttles to bring his Ostroc to a crash top, and the War Dog's pilot falls for it, drilling holes through the hangar in front of the Bastard with Gauss rifle and large pulse laser.
Blinky is much more accurate in return, landing two ER Large Lasers and a medium laser on the Capellan heavy.
Milspec pins the enemy Maxim down with large laser fire, while Forakis, from the flanking position, knocks out its engine and plants a kick into its left tracks for good measure.
Round 4The two remaining Stingrays make another pass over the battlefield, although they may elect to hold off on firing: their ground controllers must know that the DropShip is almost here.
Wojtek dashes behind a hangar, hoping to find a quiet spot to restart his mech and hopefully bring his targeting systems back online, while
Euchre,
Linebuster, and
Hanzoku charge across the battlefield—they may be able to punch if they can't shoot, and even if they can't punch, they can be tempting targets for the Capellan defenders.
Euchre, giving his control console a solid thump, sees a flash of targeting reticle in his neurohelmet displays, and reflexively pulls his triggers... and sends an ER Large Laser beam slicing through the War Dog's cockpit. Limply, it falls to the ground. (GM note: so it's only a bug with display—if you dismiss the 'null pointer' dialog, you can still target things—as we discovered to our great beenfit.)
Milspec, facing off against the Maxim, has pulled most of its teeth with a trio of laser beams through its turret, but is a level of elevation above it, and can't finish the job with a kick this turn.
Round 5The south pair of Capellan aerospace fighters returns just in time for the DropShip to arrive. It does look like Assault Company, or at least those of its pilots who are comfortable with jump jets or the single-use descent packs, will want to depart their mechbays a little early.
Blinky, not fond of being in so many crosshairs at once, darts back behind the hangar. The Ostroc is a great hit and run machine, especially on relatively open ground like the south half of this airfield.
Teddy and Forakis head northeast, looking to deal with the nearby Vedette and flank the Capellans, while
Wojtek does something similar to the west. The assault mechs push up the field, attracting the attention of the Capellan fighters; perhaps they'll have an opportunity to knock one of them down.
Targeting screens flicker back on across Advance Company, and
Linebuster and
Hanzoku take the welcome chance to line up shots on the aircraft harassing our mechs.
Drake, tracking a Stingray as it passes over his mech, leads it perfectly. Two of his three PPC shots impact on the aft fuselage, and smoke and flame pour from the fighter's engine. The third burrows its way deep into the left wing root.
Blinky, recognizing a target of opportunity when he sees one, sends a large laser beam lancing into its nose, while
Linebuster peppers it with an LBX cluster round. Stricken, it spirals toward the ground, its pilot pulling out of the spin at the last possible second, hitting the ground hard and skidding across the apron. It isn't destroyed, but it's grounded and directly in front of several of our mechs.
Pepper scores some solid hits on the fighter passing over his mech, and a hit to its avionics bay triggers its autoeject system—LRMs are evidently a great anti-air weapon, when they're in the right arc.
Milspec finishes of the Maxim hovertank. The Capellan Grasshopper opposite our mechs from the hangar lands some LRMs to the head of
Euchre's Lancelot, but the Bastard stays on his feet.
Hanzoku wings a third Stingray with a cluster shot and some lasers, inflicting moderate damage as it goes past.
Round 6The Capellan reinforcements are here: a full company arrives just as our DropShip begins its final approach.
Wojtek and Forakis don't need a radio call to make the unanimous decision to be somewhere else, pronto.
The Bastards scatter for cover as the DropShip descends at maximum speed. With two fighters off the board,
Double Dog makes the call to keep Assault Company aboard for now.
Wojtek, already out on a bit of a limb, doubles down on his flanking maneuver, and finds himself behind a Thunderbolt for his trouble.
Forakis and
Teddy are in a very tight spot, and Forakis gets the worst of hit: a brace of SRMs impact her mech's head, and the mech drifts to a stop as she blacks out.
Teddy, on the other hand, dodges a lance's worth of incoming fire with some adroit jump jet maneuvering.
Drake, not quite in range of the approaching Capellans yet, turns his attention to the grounded Stingray and obliterates it with a pair of PPC shots.
The DropShip attracts a bit of fire from the JagerMech on the ground, but even that small amount is enough to throw the pilot off. It wobbles on its jet, descending rapidly, and hammers into the ground without entirely regaining control. An earlier landing than Assault Company expected, and a jarring one, but they're on the ground.
Round 7Forakis is in a bad spot, unless she wakes up very soon.
Wojtek, sensing that he has the tiger by the tail, decides that running won't get him anything, and pulls up behind the Thunderbolt, ready to unload all of his short-range weapons and as much of a kick as he can muster.
Rook,
Carcer,
Double Dog,
Ker-Ker,
Khad, and bin Ala' al din are the first off of the DropShip. The Overlord, a battalion-sized mech carrier, has Davion engineers aboard in most of the rest of its bay space, who will be putting this field into service as a supply station once we secure it.
In a sense, Forakis lucks out: the combined fire of a company of mechs slices through her mech's torso and cuts cooling lines to her engine's radiator fins in the side torso. The engine goes into automatic shutdown, and the mech ceases to be a target. Forakis' mech is dead (extremely dead), but she should survive the battle.
Rook's first salvo on Ares cuts the left arm from the Thunderbolt across from
Wojtek, who does some damage himself with lasers, machine guns, and a kick.
Drake,
Woad,
Teddy Bear, and
Euchre all pour fire into the Grasshopper amid the airbase buildings.
Woad notches the kill, however, with a pair of medium pulse lasers to the enemy mech's head, while
Teddy slices off its right arm.
Round 8Doggedly,
Wojtek pursues the Capellan Thunderbolt, which now appears to be altogether on the run. A lance of fast mechs will join him: the Ryoken, the Raven, the Trebuchet, and
Severe's Koshi.
Elsewhere on the field,
Woad and
Teddy tee up some clean shots on the JagerMech, while the main body of the force looks to round the eastern edge of the airfield to bring the Capellan reinforcements under fire.
Simona begins his Ares campaign well: an ER medium laser carves the left torso off of the Capellan Thunderbolt
Wojtek has been hassling.
Wojtek unloads machine guns and lasers into its rear armor, but it's
Hanzoku who gets the kill: an ER Large Laser from the Crockett cuts through the armor that Wojtek ablated down, and sets off the SRM ammo behind it.
Milspec, stationary in a stand of trees, takes a PPC hit to his Crab's arm, but doesn't let it faze him. He cuts the left arm from the Capellan Warhammer south of the main body of the enemy force with precise laser fire.
Round 9The Capellans may be retreating. They are, granted, badly outmatched, now that Assault Company is fully deployed.
The Overlord's weapons batteries, now that the ship is grounded, prove too accurate and too powerful for the aerospace fighters: one of the last two Stingrays augurs in after going out of control, and the final fighter is not far behind.
The Bastards advance across a wide front, with the heavier mechs on the open ground to the south, while the faster ones push through the wooded hills north of the field.
Teddy pulls off a nice feat of piloting, dashing across the front of the JagerMech to shelter behind a hill.
Rook puts the hurt on the retreating Warhammer, but it's
Blinky, with the closer shot, who gets the kill: a clean core through the rear torso armor.
Woad adds another to his tally as well, with another of his signature short-range alpha strikes, igniting the JagerMech's ammunition stores.
Round 10The Capellans are not retreating, or at least not entirely.
The Bastards (the fast ones, anyway;
Drake and
Rook are our least mobile units, and a bit behind) filter through the airbase buildings, screening themselves from the bulk of the firepower at the north road, while still giving themselves shots at the enemy.
Blinky gets a bit too close to the aforementioned line of fire, and his autoeject system just barely triggers as 40 LRMs from the enemy Archer pepper his mech's head. (That's -1 edge to survive a fatal injury, for those keeping track at home.)
He and
Euchre, though they take heavy fire, put enough of it back on the enemy Battlemaster to force it off its feet.
Round 11With the Battlemaster prone, the Capellan mechs seem on the cusp of breaking and running. The Bastards give pursuit.
As always, the bot is extremely good at abusing line of sight, so the exchange of fire this round was limited.
Euchre,
Woad,
Kicks, and
Hanzoku all got good hits in on the Battlemaster, but it remains an active fighting machine for the moment.
Round 12One or two more of the enemy, and we can call this airbase secure. The assault mechs all have line of sight now, and the light mechs to the west should shortly be able to close in on the main enemy to tighten the noose from a flank.
Another round of good gunnery from the Bastards, but no lethal hits.
Round 13The Capellans are clearly looking for some kind of last ditch chance here, before falling back entirely.
Newcomer Mats Johansen finishes off the stricken Battlemaster with a volley of SRMs, while
Drake cores the Grasshopper with a volley of PPC fire.
Linebuster severs the opposing Archer's arm,
On the other side of the field, Simona's Clan ER Medium Lasers bring down the Capellan Vulcan.
Wojtek kicks the Stinger to bring it down.
AftermathThe Capellans break and run as the Battlemaster falls, leaving the Bastards in control of the field. We set up a security cordon. The Davion engineers disembark and set about clearing the airfield for use. Some of them stand around the Overlord, which has smashed a massive crater into the south taxiway where it impacted.
Our own supporting elements follow them out of the DropShip, commandeering a hangar to use as a headquarters building.
Damage, Injuries, SalvageIt takes a few hours to cut Pvt. Forakis out of the twisted wreck that used to be her Phoenix Hawk. She emerges almost miraculously unharmed: nothing worse than a bruised foot and a more-bruised ego. She cycles between chagrin at getting so thoroughly unhorsed, sadness as she regards the vaguely mech-shaped pile of debris, and irritation at all the fuss people are making.
Blinky is in worse shape. After fishing his parachute and ejection seat out of the trees north of the airfield, the doctors diagnose him with a few sprained appendages and a concussion. His Ostroc, funny enough, is in better shape than he is: critical hits, rather than component destruction, triggered his ejection system, and a new life support system and some fresh cockpit instrument panels will bring the mech back into service.
Elsewhere in the unit,
Euchre,
Carcer, and
Wojtek all sustained minor injuries in the battle, but the doctors deem them combat-ready if needed. Only two mechs are totally undamaged (
Kicks' Phoenix Hawk and
Khad's Thunderbolt), but nobody besides
Blinky and Forakis took internal damage, so whipping the unit back into shape should be pretty quick work now that the full tech team is here.
We came close to losing two pilots, which would have substantially soured the victory, but
As for salvage...
This is the Bastards' last bite at the 100% salvage rights apple, and boy, did they ever make good use of it. The unit writes off one Phoenix Hawk, and salvages five repairable mechs: an Archer, a Phoenix Hawk (of course), a Grasshopper, a Stinger, and a War Dog. The War Dog and Grasshopper are almost combat-ready as is; all they need are some new heads. The Archer and Phoenix Hawk are functional enough to walk into our hangar HQ, but their combat performance is substantially degraded—they'll need a lot of new parts before they can fight. There's not much left of the Stinger, but the techs say that the engine is still good, and the resut lf it is secondary by comparison.
Kill BoardsI always forget how much of a lead
Rook has. Even spotting
Drake five or six combat engagements on Ares, she still leads on both overall kills and mech kills.
Woad adds two mechs to his tally to tie him for second on the mech-killer board. Newcomers Margita bin Ala' al din and Mats Johansen join the leaderboard.
Wojtek may not have the most kills or the most mech kills, but every kill he's socred is on a mech—nobody with that statistic has more than him.
Linebuster made it to 60xp, which is good for a rank of Gunnery/Mech—he joins the ranks of the +2/+1 pilots.
Last Mission
All Time- "Rook" Ishikawa (32, 11 mechs, 2 Clan kills)
- "Drake" Halit (27, 9 mechs, 2 Clan kills)
- "Woad" Kohler (18, 9 mechs, 1 Clan kill)
- "Linebuster" Atkinson (15, 9 mechs)
- "Teddy Bear" Jamil (14, 7 mechs, 2 Clan kills)
- "Carcer" Ngo (14, 6 mechs, 2 Clan kills)
- "Hanzoku" Yuksel (9, 6 mechs, 2 Clan kills)
- "Wizard" Que (8, 6 mechs, 6 Clan kills)
- "Severe" Payne (8, 6 mechs)
- "Blinky" Stirzacre (8, 2 mechs)
- "Euchre" Kojic (7, 3 mechs)
- Simona (7, 2 mechs, 1 Clan kill)
- "Milspec" Ortega (7, 1 mech, 1 Clan kill)
- "Ker-Ker" Ec (6, 3 mechs)
- "Double Dog" Dare (5, 2 mechs, 1 Clan kill)
- "Pepper" Popalzi (5, 2 mechs)
- "Wojtek" Frajtov (3, 3 mechs)
- "Faceplant" Farooqi (3, 1 mech)
- Pvt. Erine Forakis (2, 1 mech)
- "Kicks" Hernandez (1, 1 mech, 1 Clan kill)
- Sgt. Philippa "Khad" Khadjikyriakos (1, 1 mech)
- Pvt. Mats Johansen (1, 1 mech)
- Cpl. Margita bin Ala' al din (1)
Plans and IntentionsWord rolls in over the radio nets as our headquarters staff gets set up: the Federated Commonwealth landings are going well across the planet, the first-wave troops securing room for uncontested DropShip arrivals to unload the bulk of the invasion force, in particular the armor and infantry that will hold the territory taken by the mechs. As far as bulk goes, we represent quite a lot of it: bringing two companies to the table means the Bastards are about 20% of the FedCom-aligned mechs on-world.
We have enough mechs for another full company in mothballs, which puts us only a company's worth of pilots away from the rarefied air of battalion-sized mercenary units—not much of a step down from famous mercenary names like the Northwind Highlanders or the Gray Death Legion, and on a very short timeline. Growing (more) quickly runs the risk of watering down the extreme skill we've cultivated over the four years of our existence, although we can always look for easier contracts to train up newcomers.
More proximately, our FedCom liaison, Hauptmann Catriona Toman, arrives at our headquarters a few hours after the Bastards' landing, and informs us that there is plenty of work to be done in the second phase of this operation: a drive toward one of Ares' major cities.
TO&E, MechWarrior Claims, and Mech AssignmentsNow that we're all together again, feel free to suggest any tweaks. Bear's Bruisers is just over the line into assault lance weight, I believe, so we should probably adjust something there, at minimum.
- Advance Company
- Drake's Destroyers
- Major Huri "Drake" Halit (Mephansteras) - Awesome AWS-DRAKE
- Cpl. Ferdinand "Woad" Kohler (A Thing) - Grasshopper GHR-5KOB
- Pvt. Jan "Euchre" Kojic (EuchreJack) - Lancelot LNC25-0B
- Pvt. Abdul-Hafiz "Pepper" Popalzi (mrkilla22) - Archer ARC-2K
- Ortega's Outriders
- Lt. JG Jose "Milspec" Ortega (milspec) - Crab CRB-30-UK
- Pvt. Kevin "Blinky" Stirzacre (moghopper) - Ostroc OSR-2D
- Pvt. Erine Forakis - none
- Pvt. Ik-jun "Wojtek" Frajtov (Blaze) - Phoenix Hawk PXH-1
- Bear's Bruisers
- Lt. SG George "Linebuster" Atkinson (Hasek10) - Emperor EMP-6A
- Lt. JG Tedros "Teddy Bear" Jamil (Knave) - Vulcan VL-5T
- Pvt. Ed "Hanzoku" Yuksel (Hanzoku) - Crockett CRK-5003-1
- Pvt. Xue-Min "Wizard" Que (Rince Wind) - Guillotine GLT-4P
- Assault Company
- Fourth Lance
- Captain Sung-min "Double Dog" Dare (a1s) - Warhammer WHM-6R
- Pvt. Catherine "Severe" Payne (Burnt Pies) - Koshi/Mist Lynx
- Pvt. Gwenael "Kicks" Hernandez (Sheyra) - Phoenix Hawk PXH-1Kk
- Recruit Simona - Ryoken/Stormcrow
- Sixth Lance
- Sgt. Philippa "Khad" Khadjikyriakos - Thunderbolt TDR-5S-T
- Cpl. Margita bin Ala' al din - Trebuchet TBT-5N
- Pvt. Mats Johansen - Trebuchet TBT-5S
- Pvt. Lise Selvåg - Raven RVN-2X
- Rook's Raiders
- Captain Mariamu "Rook" Ishikawa (Culise) - Stalker STK-3Fb
- Cpl. Damayanti "Carcer" Ngo (Dorsidwarf) - Flashman FLS-7K
- Pvt. Elroy "Faceplant" Farooqi (NickAragua) - Dragon DRG-5N
- Pvt. E-Shei "Ker-Ker" Ec (Kanil) - Lancelot LNC25-0B
- Available Mechs
- Quickdraw QKD-4G
- Whitworth WTH-1
- Wasp WSP-1A
- Phoenix Hawk PXH-1Kk (refitting)
- Phoenix Hawk PXH-1 (×4) (we have so many Phoenix Hawks)
- Archer ARC-2R (damaged)
- Awesome AWS-8Q (×2)
- Marauder MAD-3R
- Raven RVN-2X
- War Dog WR-DG-02FC (damaged)
- Grasshopper GHR-5H (damaged, recommend refitting to -5KOB standard, like Woad's)
Action ItemsPer the house rules for this contract, Capellan forces start at Elite skill, A+ equipment, and maximum morale. Because
Hanzoku blew up that Star League cache a few missions back, equipment drops to A. From major objectives and victories on attack missions during the raid, we have four points with which we can reduce any of those ratings by 1 step each (so Elite becomes Veteran, e.g.), although I'll say no single rating by more than two steps.
This scenario had a bit less detail in it than the other handcrafted ones, in part because I'm out of practice, and in part because a battle involving 50ish units is slow even with a computer doing all the heavy lifting, but I hope you enjoyed the ride. It'll probably be a few months, again, until the next time I can find an evening to play the game and a subsequent evening to write it up, but nevertheless, this story will continue.
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Topic: The Opinionated Bastards: a BattleTech/MekHQ Mercenary Campaign (Jan. 4, 3054) (Read 95298 times)