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The year is 3069.

Clan Smoke Jaguar has been all but destroyed by Inner Sphere forces led by Victor Steiner-Davion. A few Smoke Jaguars who survive call themselves the Fidelis, the Faithful, and vow revenge.

On a planet in Lyran space near the Clan invasion corridor lies the sleepy agricultural research and farming community of Dresden, which provided food supplies to those Inner Sphere units which annihilated Clan Smoke Jaguar. Outlying farming communities have been destroyed by Clan invaders. Men, women, and children slaughtered with no warning and no mercy. A call has been sent to the local Lyran House units to save them.

The Fidelis of Clan Smoke Jaguar (played by frozenwastes from the classicbattletech.com boards - he's using Reaper minis as Clan minis)
Warhammer IIC
10 Roc 3 ProtoMechs
Minotaur ProtoMech
2 Hydra 2 ProtoMechs



Kampfgruppe Panzerfaust (Combat Group Armored Fist) (played by me)
4 Archer 5Ss
2 Kobold Battle Armor points
2 Nighthawk Battle Armor points



The Lyran lance commander has no intention of fighting Clanners in open terrain and deploys near hills and woods west of Dresden. The Smoke Jaguar Fidelis are positioned too close to the city to intercept.



The Fidelis Warhammer IIC has two Clann ER PPCs that would tear the Archers to pieces in open terrain.



As the Fidelis advances on Dresden the Lyran commander tells his troops to advance behind cover and get into indirect fire support position. The Inner Sphere Battle Armor will spot for them. They will not make it to Dresden in time.



A residential apartment building is reduced to rubble by the advancing WHM IIC. The Lyrans continue to advance.



Another building is brought down - this time by the vengeful and murderous Fidelis ProtoMechs. The Fidelis acquired the ProtoMechs from Clan forces that hunted them but without proper medical overseers and treatment, those Smoke Jaguars who volunteer to pilot the ProtoMechs are even more insane that other Clan ProtoMech pilots.



The Lyran Archers still advance to the west of the city. They could have deployed more to the east and have engaged the Clanners in the open but that would have been suicide.



The merciless Fidelis destroy a third residential building and begin to shift to the west to meet the Lyran fire support lance. Unfortuately for the Lyrans, the Archers have gotten too far ahead of their supporting Battle Armor who can only cover distance half as fast as the Archers. One Nighthawk point stays back to keep the Clanners in sight and and act a a spotter for the Archers.



The Lyran lance commander's patience is rewarded as the Archers are now in position behind woods and hills to indirectly bombard the Fidelis. The most southerly Nighthawk point calls down the fire missions from a high hill- too far away from the Clanners because of its Stealth armor and Battle Armor dispersion. The rest of the Lyran Battle Armor advances as fast as their jump jets allow. The ProtoMechs prove incredibly tough, however. One Roc 3 takes 15 LRMs in its torso AND KEEPS ADVANCING WITH NO PROBLEMS!



The ProtoMechs are incredibly fast and do not allow themselves to be bombarded. The Lyran Archers are soon surrounded. At least their Battle Armor support have by now caught up to them. Some ProtoMechs have difficulty crossing the river as they are slowed by all the woods and water. Many are still underwater when their first ProtoMech wave goes in, but the Fidelis are eager to surround the Lyran 'Mechs before they can withdraw.



Besides its LRM 15s, the Archer 5S has four Medium Pulse Lasers (two in rear and one in each arm) and two Streak SRM 2s for close in fighting. These Archers hold their own in close and still fire their LRMs. The Warhammer IIC is taking a beating and ProtoMechs, as tough as they are, are being destroyed.



Two Archers are taking a beating but the Warhammer and ProtoMechs are as well. The Kobolds and Nighthawks are never targeted. The second wave of ProtoMechs emerge from the Level 1 water but most of the first wave has already been destroyed.



The Archers' pulse lasers and Streak SRMs are sweeping away the ProtoMechs and still pounding the Warhammer IIC. Archer A1, however, the lance commander, suffers an ammo explosion and ejects (the 5S has an XL engine so it suffered three engine hits). Three Archers are left. One is damaged but two are untouched and all the Battle Armor is unscathed.



The Warhammer IIC loses almost all its armor and is suffering engine hits and a gyro hit, a lot of heat, and a lot of damage by the time it falls, but is still alive. Few ProtoMechs are left. One Archer does have a lot of armor damaged but nothing internal yet and two Archers and all four Battle Armor points are still untouched when the game is called because the FLGS is closing. It's too bad. I think I still had two kicks coming to the two ProtoMechs at the Archers' feet at this point and hopefully would have punted them to Clan heaven.



In the end the damaged Archer could possibly have been taken down but the Warhammer and all remaining ProtoMechs would have been destroyed. My opponent (frozenwastes) says that they would have fought to the death. Agreed. The Lyrans were happy to kill them all (especially the Warhammer MechWarrior who would be dragged from his 'Mech by the Lyran Battle Armor, forced to look at the buring city, and then summarily executed for war crimes immediately), recover their two MechWarriors and all salvage, and repair the one or two fallen Archers. The innocents slaughtered in Dresden were avenged.

I'm not sure what to think of ProtoMechs. They can take an incredible amount of damage for something so small but their smaller weapon choices force the Clanners to charge into closer combat than Clanners should be engaging in. They are faster than Clan Elementals and can cut off the movement of an enemy but bringing the fight so close takes away the range advantages Clan weapons have over Inner Sphere opponents.

If I had charged my Archers into the open plain, I'm sure the ProtoMechs could have better coordinated and attacked all at once and amassed more firepower to use simutaneously. I don't know what to think. The Roc 3s with their Clan Medium Pulse Laser were doing lots of damage but were very greatly impeded by the terrain. I'm just not sure that the close quarters battle is for them. ProtoMechs don't have the swarm attack and leg attack options Battle Armor does and can't target opponents in the same hex - which I used to advantage at times.

I know that leaving one Warhammer IIC alone to face eight LRM 15 launchers wasn't good as the Archer 5Ss easily fired their LRMs at the farther Warhammer and their MPLs and Streak SRMs at the closer ProtoMechs at same time.

An interesting battle. I made a LOT of mistakes - often forgetting to kick the ProtoMechs at my feet for 14 damage and not using my NARCs and TAGs often enough, just to name a few mistakes.

I do love pairing TAG equipped BA (the Kobolds) with the Archers and using BA for spotters. I did pay a lot extra for the seven tons of TAG missiles (17 BV extra for each ton of TAG ammo) but they could have been worth it in other battles - just not this one.

Bren from theclassicbattletech.com boards came to watch and acted as our rules guide. Bren, I found where TAG takes away target movement modifiers - it's under "Semi-guided missiles" on page 141 of TW, not under the "TAG" section which just talks about taking off the indirect fire modifier and spotter movement modifier. TAG can be really effective. I just never got to use it. The ProtoMechs were too close for LRMs and the Warhammer wasn't really moving by the time the Kobolds reached it.

NARC was really good but I would rather have had LRM 20s or Artemis IV fire control on the Archers. I would also have rather dropped the Streak SRM 2s for more medium pulse lasers but that would bump up the BV cost of 1353 for the 5Ss and their cheap price was why I took them in the first place - I could get a whole lance of Archers with a whole lance of BA support for 6000 points and still pay to convert almost half my LRMs from NARC to TAG-semi-guided.

Anyhoo, an interesting battle.

Nice battle. I expected the protomechs to do better up close. Its a hard slog for Clanners when they are so heavily outnumbered in mechs.
Thats the 3rd battle report with the archer lance?

I'm not sure what to think of ProtoMechs. They can take an incredible amount of damage for something so small but their smaller weapon choices force the Clanners to charge into closer combat than Clanners should be engaging in. They are faster than Clan Elementals and can cut off the movement of an enemy but bringing the fight so close takes away the range advantages Clan weapons have over Inner Sphere opponents.

Here is the clincher, protomechs are best used as elementals that can keep up with mechs, used with mechs and not alone (or almost alone as in this case). The spheroids know to engage in close terrain, they also know to open range when elementals are dropped. They cannot however easily do both, especially where the elementals are replaced by faster protomechs.

Protomechs are best used in a mixed star with two or three medium-heavy mechs, and further diluted with winged battle armour, also choose designs with longer ranges like the Gorgon as well as Roc's. Protomechs should not close to melee range unless they have no choice.

Personally I would not deploy any protomechs, but that is because I hate them and hate their look even more. Battletech did not need animech armour suits, it takes away from the orginal occidental idiom and turns it into something else. HoweverI will grudgingly admit they can be very effective if used in the correct ratio.

I am fine with protomechs as larger BA, which is what the art supports, but the rules make them each a mini mech. They could easily have been super BA, with 5 per hex like BA, instead of the target sinks they are now.

Do proto's block mech movement by the way? If so, then proto units can easily stop the movements of mechs in the movement phase.

Some fresh thoughts on the game itself:

1. Like many terrain map games this one ended up with table edge hugging, its a fourth wall of impassible terrain to cover backs with.

Something I find with mapboard games, having varied terrain right up to the edge encourages people to sit in edfge terrain. However mapboards also offer a solution not available if a tabletop game. If a game gets bogged down on a map edge shift the maps along and add a random map behind the action.

2. Why did the Smoked Kitties close with the archer bundle behind the hill? Asking you as the Lyran player what you would have done if the Jags had stayed in the open and said, 'we are lhunting down survivors, kicking open basements, firing lasers and flamethrowers into suspicious holes'.
Would you have charged out to meet them?

Orlanth wrote:
Why did the Smoked Kitties close with the archer bundle behind the hill? Asking you as the Lyran player what you would have done if the Jags had stayed in the open and said, 'we are lhunting down survivors, kicking open basements, firing lasers and flamethrowers into suspicious holes'.
Would you have charged out to meet them?

The guy, called frozenwates on the classicbattletech.com forums, I was playing is someone I've played with several times before. He's bloodthirsty and eager to engage. In a previous battle involving a river crossing his forces became strung out piecemeal because he didn't take the time to regroup faster units with slower units even though he could have done that without even being under fire.

I was planning, if necessary, to cross the river into the large forest of woods in front of my Archers once my BA caught up. My Archers would still stay out of sight with enough woods to block LOS because with BA TAG and spotters there's no need of the Archers exposing themselves to enemy fire.

In every tabletop wargame I play, before I start, I always examine the terrain and think of how I can use it to help me and hinder my opponent. I actually think of the terrain as a third player who can can have a real impact on the game. What many see as obstacles I see as opportunities to break up my opponent into piecemeal mouthfuls, slow down or completely shut out enemy assets, and aid me in my defence.

When I noticed that most of his forces did not have JJs, saw the hills and river and woods on the west side, and remembered his eagerness to engage from our last game (his Capellens in that game didn't take even take one turn to regroup after that river crossing), I saw how I wanted the battle to unfold and it did almost exactly as I had planned. If it hadn't, I would have tried to maneuver closer under cover rather than just charging and rushing my opponent.

Just rushing two opposing forces together makes for a faster game but takes strategy and thinking out of the equation and just turns the game into a dice-rolling competition, which requires very little thought. I can be a frustrating player to play against because I will take the time to maneuver into a good position before engaging. There is another player we play with, called Lord Cameron on the CBT forums, who is also big into maneuvering and using terrain properly. I've never beat him in a ground battle.

In a two-part 3-way battle with frozenwastes and Lord Cameron, Lord Cameron and I danced our forces all around each other trying to sandwich the other between frozenwastes and the other one of us. Maneuver warfare, baby. This is opposed to war of attrition which is just charging and having the dice-rolling competition as you just slug it out. The dice, however, can be very cruel and I don't like to rely on them.

Also, Inner Sphere forces charging across open plain against Clan forces is a recipe for disaster. The Clanners have better weapons. I was hoping to negate their superior firepower with indirect fire.

I might ask on the CBT forums if the battle report is also there. Probably more relevant there as its a Battletech forum to the Battletech ethos is stronger than the metagame.

My question involved a fourth 'scenario' player beyond the third 'terrain' player. Something the more story driven battletech has over 40K. Most battles in Battltech with developed factions have a reason, this was no exception.

The Lyrans were there to defend the town and avenge the massacred farmers. Even if the Jags only killed the civilians to draw out the soldiers they might well have tried to draw out the soldiers!

Sure you saw where to put your Archers ahead of time, good tactics, but you could have been forced into a tactical dilemma if some protomechs split off to torch a hospital or town hall while the rest waited for you in open terrain with good fields of fire. Sure its normally bad news to face clanners in the open, but if you don't how many civilians will die to these criminals.

If you are going to play Black Hat factions in Battletech (some pirates, WoB, old school Combine, or later Jags) it pays to take advantage and portion off one or two atrocity causing units that need to be urgently stopped by an investment of time resources far exceeding their tactical value.

Besides his mistake was not closing into dense terrain it was attacking piecemeal. Unlike most clan vs spheroid games I think you outranged him on this one. I don't know what else the clanners have beyond a pair of CERPPC's but I doubt it matches up to four Archers even if you took 3025 ones.

Orlanth wrote:

I might ask on the CBT forums if the battle report is also there. Probably more relevant there as its a Battletech forum to the Battletech ethos is stronger than the metagame.

My question involved a fourth 'scenario' player beyond the third 'terrain' player. Something the more story driven battletech has over 40K. Most battles in Battltech with developed factions have a reason, this was no exception.

The Lyrans were there to defend the town and avenge the massacred farmers. Even if the Jags only killed the civilians to draw out the soldiers they might well have tried to draw out the soldiers!

The batrep is on the CBT forums under "After Action Reports". You have to scroll down a bit to look for that but that's where all batreps go.

Excellent anology with the "fourth player" as the scenario. I do prefer scenario play and am used to them as a 40K player but it's hard to make up balanced scenarios in other game systems. I could ask my gaming group in future games if they want to have more scenario-driven objectives than just story-driven skirmish battles.