Tired of playing the NPCs, tonight I set out in command of the Fox’s Teeth on a Recon-in-Force mission that Randy and I had decided upon a few weeks ago. As Randy was still engaged in various performances, Nash was my teammate and Derek and Sara played the opposition.
The team was as follows:
Fox’s Teeth:
Black Knight Ian
Cataphract George
Enforcer Daniel
Jenner
vs.
Kurita House
Dragon
Cicada
Wolverine
Banshee
The early stages of the battle saw the Cicade run up to my Cataphract and lose a leg (although it did get a head hit in against George Lytton). I then ignored it for the rest of the battle. It occasionally attempted to move and fell over.
The Dragon sat on one of the buildings and shot at us a lot. The Wolverine and Banshee moved in to engage, and the Black Knight and Enforcer found themselves in the thick of it.
Things started to go wrong for us: the Enforcer’s prototype Gauss Rifle jammed on its first shot. Ian McKinnon missed with every hatchet attack he made… and then started suffering head hits. Three of them, from various sources (mostly SRMs). Luckily, the head wasn’t destroyed, but he was knocked out and then suffered a fourth point of damage when the Mech fell over from taking over 20 damage.
The Wolverine and Banshee were taking a lot of damage, but none of it critical. Things were going horribly now.
I had piloted the Jenner to scan the first building (of three), and now ran decoy with it. 10 hexes of movement was a +4 to hit, and though it took a few minor hits, mostly it was unscathed. Ok, ok: the armour on one leg was stripped, but it was drawing more fire than it was taking and was making sure the Enforcer and Cataphract could stay alive long enough to take out the remaining forces.
Eventually, the Banshee had its right torso armour stripped, exposing its ammo. Derek decided to eject the ammo, at which point Nash piloted the Enforcer around behind him and shot it – hitting the ejecting ammo and causing an 100 point explosion.
At this point, the Black Knight finally regained consciousness and it and the Enforcer retreated off the battlefield.
The Cataphract was mainly using its prototype Extended Range Large Laser and AutoCannon 10 – firing at either the Dragon or the Wolverine. At long last, the Wolverine took a pair of centre torso criticals through a lucky roll, and took an engine and a gyro hit. It fell over once or twice, and then the Cataphract moved out of its effective range (having disabled its Autocannon) and just took it down.
The Jenner rushed around to scan the second and third buildings, and ended up behind the Dragon (which had remained on the building). Launching attacks with its 4 medium lasers and SRM 4 (and caring not about its heat), it stripped the rear armour and eventually got a critical on its ammo. The Dragon, with a last shot, destroyed the leg of the Jenner, but the Mech had survived the combat.
Derek and Sara gave the Jenner the Most Valuable Pilot award (and the extra XP).
In all, the House force had gotten seven head hits against our Mechs: three vs. Ian, two vs. Daniel and one each against James in the Jenner and one against George Lytton. We’ll heal most of those wounds by the next mission, but we were terribly worried about them during the battle! With two of the Opposing Mechs only crippled, our salvage should be quite good, although the damage to our own mechs was pretty high.