Vote Results:
"... so then the agent flies in on his broom stick and shoots photon torpedoes down the exhaust port!" Thud tells Fury. "And as the whole thing blows up, he sends it off by saying 'told you never to make a deal with a dragon.'"
Fury rolls her eyes. "Which movie's that again?"
"It's a book." Thud responds indignantly. "Star Matrix: Potter Wars"
"Nerd."
"Yeah, well, I'm not the one always painting vacuum wolf toys or whatever."
"They're collectible miniatures. And painting is relaxing."
"Great. Cut the chatter and form up." El Guapo cuts in, sighing and recalling with fondness not being in charge and being able to yammer on about random nonsense en route to the next mission area. "Our aerospace fighters are vectoring in, ETA forty seconds, so we need to draw some attention. Watch the blast radius, those fuel-air bombs are something else."
In addition to the mechs, tanks and plethora of turrets, there's also a substantial number of infantry, including high-caliber autocannon field guns.
Round 1:
In a not-too-good sign for the start, one of the allied merc centurions slip and slides along the pavement and crashes into a building.
On the plus side, El Guapo gets line of sight on the Thumper tube (there's actually three tubes) and opens up with the Marauder's long range weapons, hoping to take it down before it puts too many rounds down range. His mech heats up quite a bit with both PPCs going off in addition to the gauss rifle, but the gauss slug punches through the ammo storage and collapses the entire building.
Our Cyclops takes a couple of headshots from LRMs coming in at an oblique angle, but armor holds up for now, thanks to the armored cowl providing extra protection to the sides of the head.
Round 2:
One of the allied artillery shells lands on top of a building, smashing a small laser turret. Less relevant than one might think, but every little bit helps.
A Jenner jumps in behind our Cyclops, but El Guapo is right there, shearing its right-side weapons mount off with a PPC (just the one, to cool off), and cutting into the right torso armor with a laser. The damage throws the 35-ton mech off, and it only scores a single SRM hit on the Marauder. A couple of laser hits from the Cyclops distract the light mech, and then El Guapo cracks its left leg in half with a kick as it attempts to run by. Falling over, the Jenner's on-board ammo bin is "lightly jostled" and it explodes.
To the west, Fury moves to cover Thud's back as a Stinger attempts to inflict some damage there, but can't resist the temptation to zap a Peregrine VTOL with the Grand Dragon's lasers. For some inexplicable reason, the VTOL pilot flies in a straight line, making it very easy to hit, and so it explodes in mid-air as the on-board ammo detonates. Fury doesn't forget about the Stinger, though, breaking its left leg and sending it to the ground.
Thud's main problem, though, isn't the Wasp, it's the Firestarter. Combined with SRM and MG fire from a nearby Scorpion tank, the light mech somehow manages a perfect precision focus on the Awesome's center torso armor with both lasers and one of the flamers, which allows a couple of stray MG rounds inside, where they rattle around. The Awesome staggers like a drunk frat kid at a kegger and slams the ground with its right side as the heat indicator shoots way up (our mechwarrior having fired all three PPCs to melt the Scorpion to slag).
An allied Centurion behind El Guapo and our Cyclops suffers a catastrophic malfunction with its AC/10 as a round jams in the barrel and the weapon explodes, taking off the arm. The auto-eject system fires, sending the allied mechwarrior for a little flight.
Round 3:
Thud gets the Awesome off the ground, but the heat alarms are still blaring and the mech is wobbly. The Awesome's heat dissipation system is actually pretty robust, but when you run, fire all your guns and your engine takes damage, it still takes a little time to work. Fury continues her improvised anti-aircraft role by shooting down a Warrior attack helicopter as it buzzes around Thud's mech, causing it to crash land on a rooftop after plowing three laser shots into it.
El Guapo and the Cyclops engage a couple of light units, causing some damage to a Scorpion tank, but weapons fire mostly just scores armor.
Round 4:
The allied artillery destroys another gun emplacement, a random one-shot rocket launcher mounted on a rooftop.
The good news, our aerospace fighters arrive and begin their bombing run.
Our Cyclops runs forward and lasers the damaged Scorpion tank apart. It takes a few LRM hits from some nearby infantry popping out of a building, but then the whole area is engulfed in a fireball from a mis-aimed fuel-air bomb and the infantry disappears (as does a large chunk of the Cyclops' armor).
Fury continues taking down helicopters shooting down a Peregrine with the Grand Dragon's lasers. It's not quite honorable mech combat, but it's still pretty fun.
The result of the bombing run is pretty spectacular. One of the Shilones carpet bombs at least five platoons' worth of infantry, getting a couple of tanks in the process. The Lucifer blows away a Wasp, while the other Shilone takes out a Bulldog tank (and accidentally drops one of the bombs too close to the Cyclops, but our mechwarrior doesn't mind too much, as it clears out the infantry swarming around. And the entirety of the base is now on fire. Our aircraft take a little AA fire, but barely enough to shake them.
Round 5:
Thund stabilizes his mech and begins pulling back - now that we've greatly reduced the "local available firepower" and covered the entire base in smoke, we should have a handle on this without making a crippled mech fight.
With the conflagration, the thump-thump-thump of artillery rounds is now hardly noticeable. Our Lucifer drops its last bombs on a cluster of AC/2 field gunners that have been pelting it, annihilating the group, while one of our Shilones takes out an isolated SRM Carrier. El Guapo and the Cyclops basically play soccer with a Hunter light support tank, kicking it back and forth until it falls apart.
Round 6:
The smoke reduces visibility for us quite a bit, preventing our mechs form engaging any targets. In fact, we're not really sure how many more mobile targets there are. Our Lucifer reports seeing "three... make that two mobile targets" (after destroying a Stinger with its direct-fire weapons). One of our Shilones takes AA fire from a Cataphract and loses some internal components, while Fury reports engaging a pair of Firestarters (one of which loses its right arm after an allied Centurion nails it with a burst from its autocannon). We also have an unaccounted-for Crusader somewhere in there.
Round 7:
As El Guapo and the Cyclops struggle through the smoke, Fury keeps trying to bail the allied Centurion out, but the Firestarters (backed up by a Pegasus hovertank) have got its number - the 50-ton mech takes a gyro hit and falls over. Fury's lasers and a kick do cause actuator damage to one of the hostile 35-tonners, though. Hopefully they'll figure out they're outmatched and back off.
Round 8:
El Guapo spots a Vedette at short range, annihilating it with a PPC blast, lasers and a gauss slug. Our Cyclops moves up ahead and engages a Hermes II, the brief interaction ending when the 40-ton mech's right leg comes off.
Our Lucifer circles around for a strafing run at the Cataphract that gave our Shilone trouble earlier and opens up on the 70 ton mech as it rotates its torso to fire back with an autocannon and PPC. The Cataphract's mechwarrior is a little slower on the trigger, so, by the time he fires his autocannon round, the barrel is already damaged and the round explodes inside the barrel. Since the ammo is stored in the same torso section, the ammo goes up as well, destroying the mech. The PPC shot does hit, however.
The Firestarters and Pegasus continue pounding the Centurion, disabling its autocannon. Fury blasts one of the Firestarters in the damaged leg, forcing it to a knee.
Round 9:
The damaged Firestarter backs off, leaving Fury alone with the other Firestarter, which loses some armor and is unable to inflict any meaningful damage on the Grand Dragon, but does manage to avoid a 60-ton boot. The Pegasus gets blasted quite a bit by a passing Shilone.
El Guapo and the Cyclops collaps a building housing a laser turret while El Guapo cracks the Hermes' other leg to make sure it stays down.
Round 10:
The fighting ends after we collapse a couple more turrets while our Cyclops Kool-Aid-Mans it through a building to get at a sensor reading for a Crusader that's been sitting in a cul-de-sac lobbing LRMs at us the whole time. Fury blows the right half off the Firestarter she's chasing, but lets it go when it powers down weapons and moves to retreat.
The Crusader gets away, as do the two Firestarters and the Pegasus. We systematically dismantle the rest of the turrets with weapons fire, then...
[] Call the salvage crews in, there's a good amount of loot
[] Pull back and return to base, the whole place is an inferno and who the hell knows how much ammo they have stored there