Battletech Rio Jihad Campaign 3076: Assault on the Repair Base

I played the Opp Force in another Jihad campaign game for the local Battletech group. This battle was a Manei Domini assault on Stone's mercenaries repair facility. The mercs had just received a airdrop of supplies (the little white rectangles) and were in the process of moving them into the base. Additionally a group of pirates called Grimm's Anarchist had heard of the assault via a contact. They planned to raid the base for some of the supplies.

The Manei Domini brought 8 celestial omnimechs and the pirates brought 6 assorted mechs. Stone's mercs had a company of heavy mechs and a few vehicles. The mercs defended the base well suffering only a single mech out of action. Some of their other mechs were damaged including a Black Knight who lost his targeting computer half was through the battle. The pirates suffered the loss of a Locust who ran into a mine field at the start of the battle. The Manei Domini suffered at least 50% losses due to the fact that the defenders chose to concentrate on them.

This is a map of the Blake Protectorate. Rio is in that eastern peninsula near Tikonov.

Battletech Basic Training Training Scenario #1: First Run

I've been playing Battletech again at my FLGS for a couple months. It's been almost ten years since I was a regular Battletech player. My wife use to play Battletech before our daughter was born 14 years ago so we are both very rusty players. Since I've been playing with a local group I've dug out my old mechs and started painting and re-painting them. I've also started purchasing new mechs. My wife and daughter are both gamers so when my daughter expressed an interest in learning the game my wife decided she would start playing again as well. I've got the newest rule book "Total Warfare" but most of my mechs and record sheets are classic Inner Sphere so I turned to my 3rd edition boxed set for training scenarios. Fortunately Battletech has changed very little in 30 years compared to other games so this worked out just fine.
The scenario calls for Wasp and a Griffin as the Defenders and a Stinger and a Wolverine as the attackers. The first side to score a kill wins the simulation. I chose to run the defending mechs. My wife chose the Stinger and my daughter chose the Wolverine.


Early on the Wolverine took several hits but it's tough armor held out quite well. I chose to keep my mechs mobile through jumping and running. This also made it harder for me to hit but not that hard. My wife jumped the stinger quite a bit too but the Wolverine had no jump jets so it ran quite a bit which it why it took some damage.

Later on in the game all that jumping and shooting was really starting to overhead my Griffin. The old 3025 mechs have very poor heat management. Usually they have only single heat sinks and more fire power than they have heat dissipation. The 3025 Griffin-1N is notorious for it's heat problems since it carries a PPC and a LRM 10 launcher which generate 14 heat alone. With only 12 heat sinks you can't walk and fire for more than a couple turns without starting to take overheating penalties. Another problem is the PPC has a minimum range of 3 hexes and the LRMs are even worse with a minimum range of 6 hexes. This ment that I had to stay mobile to stay at range especially since my wife and daughter were doing the best they could to stay inside my minimum ranges. Eventually I had to start walking and firing only one weapon at a time but I was still having heat issues.

With my Griffin overheating I decided to try and get my Wasp into the fight a bit more. The Wolverine had taken some heavy armor damage at this point but had lost no internal systems. My Griffin's heat was going down but I was still taking movement and heat penalties. I tried to jump my wasp behind the Stinger to get in a physical attack and some close range back shots. Unfortunately I miscalculated the Wolverine's run and was able to get into physical attack range with me. The Wasp managed to shoot the Stinger but only managed to hit a leg. The Griffin missed entirely due to the fact that the Stinger had jumped the the Griffin was still suffering a +1 to hit due to heat. To make matters worse the Wolverine blew the Wasp's arm off in the firing phase. I missed my kick on the Stinger during the physical attack phase but the Wolverine connected sending the left leg of the Wasp flying off and knocking it on it's back.

On the last turn my Wasp managed to stand back up but it's SRM 2 pack did minimal damage to the sturdy Wolerine. I decided to fire both the Griffin's weapons at the Stinger in an attempt to get a draw. One good shot on the Stinger with the PPC could easily take it out and the LRM 1os can do massive damage to a light mech too. Unfortunately despite being at perfect range for the LRMs neither shot hit. The Wolverine completely opened up on the poor Wasp with everything it had blowing the 20 ton mech into several pieces.

The simulation was over with a solid victory for my wife and daughter.

Battletech Rio Jihad Campaign 3076: Battle of the Com Station

I played the opposition force again for the local Battletech campaign. This time I got the low down on more of the campaign details. The campaign is taking place on the planet Rio. Devilin Stone has hired mercenaries (the campaign players) to take Rio from Word of Blake forces. So far Stone's mercenaries have fought mostly mercenaries hired by the Blakest.
This particular battle took place near Orinoko City.
The Word of Blake had a com station outside the city they were using to jam communications. The facility was defended by four lances of the "Shark Hunters" mercenary company and some infantry. Stone's mercenaries brought about a company to assault the facility.

Again Stone's mercenaries pretty crushed the "Shark Hunters" effectively wiping out the mercenaries as far as the campaign is concerned. To add insult to injury the Word of Black sent an entire bomber wing to indiscriminately bomb the battleground. The bombers of course did more damage to the defending forces than the attackers. In the End Stones mercenaries took the facility with no casualties.

Classic Battletech "Battle at Wilson's Farm"

I'm still playing the opposition forces for one of the local Battletech groups. This week I was put in command of a force of 6 Manei Domini mechwarriors and battlemechs. We were stationed at the Wilson farm. Wilson was the leader of the local Blakest militia. A force of Inner Sphere invaders approached the far and met with Wilson. Unfortunately the Manei Domini commander observed the farmer and the invader's diplomats shaking hands at the end of the meeting. Traitors cannot be tolerated so the closest Manei Domini battlemech was ordered to fire on Wilson's truck vaporizing it instantly.

The Manei Domini sprung the trap and at first it looked like things were going perfectly. The Blakest Militia and Manei Domini were surrounding a single lance of Inner Sphere mechs and the other Inner Sphere lance was some distance away from the fight. One Inner Sphere mech, a Clint IIC was damaged badly in the opening salvo. However the Manei Domini commander noticed that the Blakest Militia did not fire nor did they make any moves to engage the invaders. A Militia Crab mech moved up to the road and appeared to be scanning the area where Wilson's truck had be destroyed.

Shortly after determining that Wilson was actually dead the Militia units changed sides which infuriated the Manei Domini commander. Unfortunately it left the Manei Domini battlemechs outnumbered over two to one. The Manei Domini concentrated their fire on the traitors virtually ignoring the Inner Sphere lances. The Clint IIC was forced to withdraw and the Crab mech of the traitor militia was destroyed. Some of the other militia mechs were heavily damaged and a few of the Inner Sphere mechs were damaged but the Manei Domini suffered the loss of a Malak and several of the mechs took critical damage. In the end what looked like an easy victory for the Word of Blake turned into a shameful loss.

Classic Battletech: Infantry Battle!

Some Battletech players at my local FLGS have been running a Battletech campaign set during the Blakest Jihad. I've been extremely busy with school so I wasn't able to dedicate every Sunday afternoon to the campaign but I've been playing the Word of Blake units during some of the games.
This last game we played a large scale infantry battle set in a city. The Blakest were hiding some weapons grade Uranium in the city and the allied forces were sent to investigate. The Allies expected light resistance but they were mistaken. An entire regiment of elite Word of Blake infantry were defending the city. The fighting was hard. The Blakest forces shot down two VTOL troop transports and immobilized 8 tanks armored vehicles. Most of the Allied forces were turned back but they did manage to infiltrate one of the facilities and achieve some of their objectives.
I've never played such a large infantry battle in Battletech before but it was a lot of fun.