Ok. I'll post up a scenario thread in a couple of days.
November 10, 3034
En route from Landing Zone C
Gamma lance makes the rendezvous with the convoy and its escorts. The FRR actually sent a reasonable escort force - two Manticore tanks, a Devastator heavy tank and a Hi-Scout drone carrier. The drone carrier and Gamma's assigned CO communicate (the CO's name is, and I wish I was joking, "Engelbert Dorfmeister"). His piloting of the Assassin doesn't impress anyone in Gamma en route, leaving us less than enthusiastic about his contribution. The convoy itself is a couple of logger and construction mechs, a coolant truck and an ordnance transport. IFF confirms that the ancient-looking Shadow Hawk is also part of the convoy rather than the escort force ("Where's the LRMs and SRMs?" wonders Hyena).
Our assigned CO tells us that the Hi-Scout has detected a company of enemy units approaching from the south - a lance of hovercraft, a lance of Vedettes, a mixed medium lance and
three assault mechs. So we'll have our work cut out for us. The goal is to prevent the enemy units from blowing up the convoy, the escorts are expendable.
Round 1:
Sure enough we get sensor contacts to the south. The good part is that we're going through the woods, which isn't favorable terrain for things like hovercraft. From the looks of it, two of those guys have already crashed into trees and disabled themselves.
Round 2:
We advance through the woods. The convoy is to our west and east flanks, with the bulk of the opfor to the front of us. Unfortunately, none of the enemy units crash into trees this time.
Round 3:
Our overly enthusiastic Assassin-driving CO runs into a crowd of enemy units. Cylus and everyone else backs him up. There's a fairly substantial amount of weapons fire, but nothing hits.
Round 4:
The Assassin takes a couple of shots from medium lasers and SRMs, but its armor holds and the mechwarrior manages to keep himself upright. He exchanges fire with a Stinger, stripping armor off its right arm. Cylus is the only one on our end who has a shot and he nails the nearby Maxim transport in the front with the large laser, following up with a boot to knock one of the LRM racks out. He takes a kick from the Stinger, but stays upright as well.
Round 5:
The opfor decides to make a push through the center. We'll see how that goes. Hyena ducks under a flight of thirty LRMs from the Crusader, firing back. His autocannon burst and a large laser shot from Cylus both connect. Lt. Scrub opens up on the nearby Stinger, stripping armor from the right section entirely with lasers and removing the right arm, while shocking a Vedette's crew with a PPC blast. The Stinger's weapons were primarily in there, so the mechwarrior turns his mech around and heads away from the battle.
To the east, that flank of the convoy exchanges fire with an Awesome. Everyone takes some hits, but armor holds up everywhere.
Round 6:
The convoy and escorts to the east flank aren't doing too well. The Maxim disgorges some infantry, too. An allied Manticore gets disabled by one of the Ronin Awesomes, a PPC shot going through the engine block. The other Awesome fires on the derelict Shadow Hawk, blasting away at the torso armor and knocking the smaller mech down to a knee. It does get an AC/5 shot off, but come on.
In the center, things go a little better, with Xwraith disabling a Pegasus - lasers chase after the little tank, all missing, except the last one, which cuts off about half the air ducts on the rear of the vehicle, and it settles down in the grass. Cylus gets in behind the enemy Crusader, carving away rear armor with lasers and taking leg armor off with a boot.
Round 7:
Xwraith and Cylus team up on the Crusader, which fires everything it's got at Xwraith but whiffs. Xwraith hits with three laser blasts instead. Cylus continues carving away with lasers as well. The enemy mech falls over under the onslaught, and Cylus helps by stripping the rest of the armor off the right leg. Lt. Scrub hits the nearby Centurion with everything she's got, while all he does is aim the AC/10 at the center torso and crack the gyro, then kicks her. The Warhammer has to take a knee. Meanwhile, Hyena fires at a Vedette but fails to breach armor, then cracks open the nearby Phoenix Hawk's right torso with a backhand.
The Shadow Hawk relic from the convoy is consigned to the bin of history as one of the Awesomes blows up its AC/5 ammo bin. The rest of the convoy does better, with the Devastator finally spinning up its AC/20s and blowing away a Condor's motive system, while the Killjoy ordnance transport fires its SRMs and heavily damages the Maxim's motive systems.
Round 8:
That poor Killjoy is getting swarmed, and I'm pretty sure is about to be blown apart by several PPC shots.
Yep, I was right. One of the Awesomes has had enough and does a little pew pew, and the Killjoy melts.
Xwraith strips armor from the Centurion's left torso, while Hyena finally disables his target Vedette. Scrub gets up and puts a couple of PPC shots on the Centurion as it backs up, one to the head and one to the right arm, blowing out several actuators.
Hyena takes a second to throw a punch at the nearby Phoenix Hawk, breaking through its left arm armor. Cylus continues working on the Crusader, carving away at the weak rear armor, then giving it a boot. The larger mech trips up and falls over backwards, the impact being enough to crunch the already depleted rear armor and damage the engine casing, sending its heat through the roof.
Round 9:
Not so fast there, buddy! As the Centurion attempts to break east, Xwraith comes up behind him and puts a large laser into the AC/10 ammo bin from the rear, lighting off the fireworks. Cylus continues working on the Crusader, although the enemy mechwarrior does a good job taking the laser blasts on the armor. A boot trips the enemy mech up, popping the left hip actuator and ripping off the SRM/6 launcher mounted on that leg, at which point it falls over and damages anothe actuator on the way down. Good luck getting up from that one. Hyena is a little distracted by the PPC fireworks that comes at him, although they just set the woods on fire instead of his mech.
While the convoy elements to the west make their way past the battle, we continue engaging enemy units to the east. Hopefully the assault mechs will retreat once they lose their screening units.
Round 10:
Nope, no luck on getting up. Cylus' lasers now find their way into the internal structure. Out of frustration at the enemy mechwarrior's reluctance to give it up, he stomps on the rear torso section, cracking open the LRM ammo bin and lighting it up. Hyena blows away the slowed-down Maxim, the PPC and autocannon ripping it apart, while dodging a clumsy kick from the nearby Phoenix Hawk, which lands on its ass. The nearby Devastator knocks a Phoenix Hawk down with an AC/20 round to the torso.
With their screening units gone or not doing so hot, the enemy assaults retreat to the southeast. They did manage to blow up the decrepit Shadow Hawk and the J-27 "Killjoy" ordnance transport, but the construction mechs and coolant truck got through. It'll have to be enough for whatever the FRR guys have planned, and our assigned CO informs us that it's sufficient to consider the mission a success. The best thing we can say about the assigned CO on this one is that he didn't get in the way or get himself too shot up.
We send our appraisers down to evaluate the salvage once things cool down a little. Gbasden's Comstar bank account app dings, and we wind up credited about 2M - 800k for the fighters we shot down in orbit and 1.2M for the tanks the FRR was able to salvage. They were also able to recover their disabled Manticore. The only damage on our end is the gyro in Scrub's Warhammer, but that should be repairable before her next sortie if they return to base.
Question:
Do we want Gamma-One lance to stay in the field and support Alpha-One's upcoming enemy force harassment? On the upside, we'll have an anvil against which to smash the opfor. On the downside, those three assault mechs may make an appearance - a Battlemaster and two Awesomes, along with a couple of Vedettes and some beat-up Phoenix Hawks. The assaults have taken a little bit of damage but are otherwise fine. Gamma-One is also in pretty good condition, the random through-armor gyro hit notwithstanding.
