Battletech

Merc lance for Mondays pew

So I've thrown this together after some effort. It's not very well-written or styled atm but it functions! Thought it would be an interesting excuse to familiarize myself with available variants. Work in progress, I'm pretty sure I've changed some things just since this screenshot (like unnecessary decimals) but the PC is down for the night lol.

Any input/advice? The picks are all kinda with ComStar in mind fwiw. Models from AGOAC, Mercenaries, and some force packs.

Just starting in BT and on here cuz fook the other place and the fasicts

Just starting 3 of us are leaning and have played other games but want to get the game but be over whelmed.

Year: 3020 Location: New Antioch, Duchy of Andurien, near the Capellan front

Briefing:

The mercenary company Fired Bolt has been garrisoned here now for several weeks, under contract with the Duchy of Andurien out of convenience for both - the mercenaries were there, and the Duchy had apparent suspicions the nearby Capellan Confederation could make a play for the world soon. The world is largely a cultural trophy, not a military installation, but is considered valuable to the Duchy and the Free Worlds League all the same.

Those suspicions were confirmed as Capellan-aligned mercenaries jumped into system while the regent was meeting with a ComStar delegation earlier today. Their dropship was just sighted several kilometers east of the major city in which the meeting took place.

Stop the invaders and buy time for the VIPs to reach safer ground.

Formations: From left to right

Von Belcher Mobile Front: (Southern edge)

• Louise, Locust
• Commander: Bob, Battlemaster
• Linda, Catapult
• Tina, Chameleon (TRC-4B because it's super cheap lol)

Fired Bolt: (Northern edge)

• Commander: Ripley, Ostsol
• Hicks, Hunchback
• Bishop, Flea
• Vasquez, Locust

You'll note VBMC is fielding much more BV and tonnage. We gave ourselves a starting budget of 3640 BV1 to create our Companies, and enough MechWarriors to pilot them all. He skewed much lighter, not included in this formation are an extra Panther and Locust. I missed the line that said there's supposed to be a 3000 BV cap per mission, so I probably should've had to leave Tina at home, technically. That said, he had the option to deploy all six Mechs he owns, but opted to just deploy a Lance and keep two Mechs in reserve. Hard to say if it was the right choice - he left quite a few points on the table, and once one Mech went down he suffered from activation disadvantage pretty hard for an army that's really intended to dominate that front. This mission ended up costing him, but his reserves may keep him afloat through the next mission.

Turn 1:

Vasquez pushes Tina, looking for some early crits. Gets lit up for her trouble. Little else happens beyond positioning.

Turn 2:

Vasquez retreats but is chased down by Tina. The Locust's center torso is completely destroyed, forcing the pilot to eject - the Mech is beyond repair. Firefight breaks out on the Western flank.

Turn 3:

Nothing of note tbh, nearly every shot seems to miss.

Turn 4:

Ripley makes a play to push Linda over. Tina sweeps in 1 hex behind her - and misses with nearly every shot, then overheats, shuts down, and falls over. She groaned the whole time. Ripley knocks Linda to the ground as Bob blows Bishop's leg clean off, effectively neutralizing the Flea for the rest of the battle. Had we paid closer attention to the rules, at this point Fired Bolt had 50% of their force remaining and I'm pretty sure technically lost already. But we played one more Turn.

Turn 5:

Some more shooting but nothing particularly consequential. Fired Bolt surrenders and is allowed to retreat.

Final Result:

Decisive victory for VBMF. The VIPs managed to escape, but the damage done to Fired Bolt was considerable. The VBMF readies its next push on New Antioch in good shape, while Fired Bolt has to go into debt to cover its costs and has completely lost one of its two Locusts. For added insult to injury, Bob improved his Gunnery by a point.

The game was a ton of fun and we both are getting much more comfortable with it I think. We looked up a couple rules neither of us had encountered yet like physical attacks and "can a Mech with no arms stand up after losing a leg?" I gotta say, though, unless I misread the rules, losing your first battle is BRUTAL and can seemingly completely fuck your Company if you're not careful. So for any other new Commanders playing a Chaos Campaign, I highly suggest you try to minimize your losses if a track doesn't go your way in the first couple turns - a 50% payout for a loss is going to really hurt so don't risk more than you have to.

Thanks for reading! Our next battle probably won't be for two weeks unfortunately but I'll be sure to post when we have it :)

Neither of us have played more than a couple games so just trying to figure out what Mechs to start with was an ordeal but we got what we've got lmao. Pray for Tina, she's stuck in a training Mech with half the usual armor and zero heatsinks. But hey, it was cheap. If she survives we'll try to get her in a newer variant soon.

Gene runs ops from the dropship btw

I'll post later with a report if yall like :) it should be a more or less weekly campaign that'll go till we feel like stepping out of Introtech, at which point we'll use all the additional rules and move into 3050ish, and I'll play ComStar. But for this campaign we're keeping it simple, I rolled battlefield support units into BV and we opted to use BV1 for now since we're not using much beyond the basics for now. Starter campaign basically, then we'll get into the "full" game.

I didn't paint them with any scheme in mind for now, I just felt like using some nice orange paints I had ;D

Destroyed a vehicle and it produced a long, dense wall of black smoke (that eventually dissipated) instead of its usual small plume of it. Probably one of the more fun graphics bugs I've seen in MW5:Mercs so far 🫠

I wanted to go for a desert camo look for these two and after some dry brushing over speed paint I am quite satisfied. Dry pigments on the legs will always look good too.

The lance for the "play this first" scenario from the starter box is painted and ready. I wanted to go for an "urban night battle camo" look but the metallics turned out a bit too shiny I guess. I still like the result.

"Stuff I don't have in stock"

So I'm new to the game, just have a couple under my belt, and I've got a friend coming over this weekend to learn the ropes. I know there's a lot more nuance to the game than just "match Battle Value as close as you can", but are there any things I should know when trying to compose two fairly balanced teams against each other?

So far I've got

Team A: AWS-8Q, CPLT-C1, WVR-6M, LCT-1E

Team B: CLN-7Z, OTL-4D, CES-3R, LCT-1V

Their BV is pretty close, and they seem all like reasonably good Mechs. But am I setting one player up to get steamrolled? Are there better lists I could make given what I've got (and assuming we keep it pre-Clan)? What would you change for a noob-on-noob brawl?

In Norway are not blessed with many gamestores that actually carry BT stuff. Since we are not in the customs union ordering from other countries can often increase the price by quite a lot since we have to pay VAT on shipping and charge for custom clearance.

See that one local store have the Tactical Operation Books (Advanced Rules and Advanced units and equipment) but the image on the store are the fourth (Rules) and first printing (units). I am going there this sunday to see for myself, but are first printings still usable. See that the current ones are sixt printing for both.

Had a co-op session with a handful of minor bugs, including a couple of missions (including this one!) where my damage was 1-2 orders of magnitude higher than it should've been. Not really sure what caused it, but not long afterwards I disconnected from the session, restarted my game, reconnected, and we didn't have the bug again.

Played the first scenario. Defenders had a good advantage for 5/6 of the game, until some surprise crits took out a key Mech and the attackers claimed an uphill (literally) victory.

Played a lot of WH games in the past, migrated to OnePageRules, now I'm dipping my toes into this it seems. I'm sure we missed some rules (I don't think I made enough piloting checks, for one) but overall I think we both got the feel for the game quite quickly.

Now, for the seemingly impossible task of deciding how to paint these guys... that doesn't really matter in this game, right? I mean, it doesn't really matter in 40k either, but you know what I mean. In other words, as long as they look cool and possibly coherent, we good, right?

Thanks 💜