Sunday Recap

As the invasion drags on into its second month, the 51st Falcon Regulars dispatched a patrol to Hilltop 0203 to investigate a seismic disturbance. Finding the Kiryu 08th Strike Lance already on site, the alert fighters on CAP were dispatched to support the engagement.

Fracas on the hill top. A moving smoke cloud deployed by the Dracs drastically changes the tempo of the battle.

Battered and bloodied the Falcons were forced off the hill having fought nearly to the man and forcing a near similar exchange in combat losses from the Draconis lance.

Post Mortem:

This was the first time I used Aerospace in about 10 years.

And while I was expecting something like this:

You know, BAD ASS.

Instead I got this:

"MY GOD ITS FULL OF ERROR LIGHTS"

Looking back at what we might have done wrong in the foreaye into aerospace, I got a few things wrong.

1. Units with damaged avionics/sensors can't fly NOE. This might have been a problem if the last aerospace unit managed to live much longer, but it was forced away.

2. Damage against SI is halved on aerospace fighters.

3. A roll of 12 is a "golden BB" for the aerospace fighters.

4. Loss of Avionics is a control roll like losing a leg actuator. (The book lists the Avionics as being able to be hit 3 times... but the sheet only had one square...)

5. Strikes cannot be done at NOE. They also lose an altitude after doing it.

6. Firing arcs for ground to air attacks are decided by their orientation to hex 0909.

7. You apply the Angle of Attack modifier for ground to air attacks just like shots between aero units.

8. When a defending ground unit shoots at an aerospace unit that is attacking him, they use the Above/Below hit table.

All in all, not a bad first run. The end result isn't much different from how we played, but we can redress it in the next scratch up. I'd like to use the advanced AA rules in Strat Ops though. It calculates based on the closest approach of the craft as opposed to hex 0909 and adds the velocity of the craft to the to hit number.

Picking up objects/ Sunday Game Day

Sunday Game Day is still a go.

I will be bringing Aerospace to test out those new rules. If anyone wants, we can do straight air to air games.

Also, regarding picking things up and changing the rules. Even though it used to be a 1mp and piloting skill roll in the past, per TacOps pg. 92 on picking up inanimate objects:

"Regardless, the unit must be in the hex with the
object during the Physical Attack Phase; if the item is only “level
1” in height, the ’Mech must be in a hull-down position (see Biped
’Mech under Hull Down rules, p. 21) to pick it up.
Like finding a club, when attempting to pick up an inanimate
object, the unit may not fire weapons or make physical attacks
during the turn."

Effectively, you just enter the hex and wait till the physical phase to pick it up. I suppose that makes sense since you don't pay MP to punch or kick either.

Scenario List

A forum member over on the Battletech Forum made a neat scenario list I'd like to work over. I've wanted to adapt the FoW excellent scenario system. Maybe we can work up this thing.

Link to the right.

Code of Play

My apologizes, I thought this was on the site, but it seems I only circulated to a few people. Check out the code of play on the right. It's nothing major, just a brief heads up on the rules that tend to get used for the unfamiliar.

Mid South Con

It's official, I've been accepted to run a Grand Invasion Battletech Scenario at Mid South Con. We will go from orbit to surface LZ in one go. All that's needed is a 15k painted force.

Anyone want to help playtest the scenario? I need to get more aerospace experience under the belt.

Some aids

Unit Selector
A fairly comprehensive web based selector for a large fan run compilation of faction assets. Ever wanted to know who used what? This is pretty much the place to get it without headache.
There used to be another version of it on the publisher website. It's inferior to the above though.

Master Unit List
For all your BV needs.

Game Day 1/8/11

Some pics from yesterday's game over at Hobby Town.

First game was the hold the line scenario. The scenario has some real balance issues I think. As the defender was IS and had some low point units, It was prohibitively difficult for the defender to win as the offense sunk a lot of points into a few clan mechs. It meant that in order to win, the defender had to hunt down the elementals AND kill a few mechs... and there was no incentive by the offense to even present the elementals as a target.
Or to rephrase, the Defender didn't have to kill his equal number per se, he had to take out over 150% of his BV just to get close.
Or are we reading the wrong?

And considering the resilience of the Jade Falcon Fire elementals, it would have been tedious had it played out.


Axe wielding midget out of friggin NO WHERE.

Pristine Orion goes down in the first shot by a lucky head cap from a Warhawk-C. PAINFUL. It just goes down from here.

JadeFalcon shifting left and splitting the defenses piecemeal.

Right flank breaks down and scatters attempting to pull in the penetrating clan elements.


At this point we called it. It was pretty apparent that if the defender got ONE point it would be by luck alone. We still had some time to do an interesting game. So we re-cocked it real quick for a game of "Capture the Giant Miniature RadioActive Space Hamster".
The game disentegrated to LOLs.


Hamster at the snap.

Clan player picks up the hamster and runs. IS player starts realizing the value of numbers as the clan player has too many targets to respond.

Carnage comes full circle as mechs start falling in a brutal grudge match. Mechs are overheating, PSRs PSRs EVERYWHERE. The dead pile up in quick succession.
The Warhawk-C dies on principle (with its juiced pilot it was 4100pts of slow moving target).


The ball is resnapped and picked up by the hiding Dasher. But players are getting incapacitated faster than they can be accounted for. One clanner player was close to loosing his entire team to a recreation of "Man Getting Hit By Football."

Store was closing so we called. Only the proxied clan got a point, so he wins the match. I'm sure he'll have a lot to reminisce about in the ICU with his buddies.

Great game, looking forward to the next session with hopefully some more balanced scenarios.