Friday night saw Martin take Adam, Greg and me through the end of part 5 of the Dawn of Defiance campaign, The First to Strike. We’ve struck a blow for the rebellion and the rights of all enslaved aliens everywhere!  The campaign may need another player with Nathaniel likely having to leave. Any takers? Note that this is a high-roleplaying campaign: you need to be able to stand up to the other strong personalities in the group.

Saturday saw Randy, Laurie, Rich and me meet an old friend – Sarah – and play a few interesting games. Sarah brought along the Vampire game Dark Influences, which I found quite engaging, especially since I won, bringing my Machievellian mind to the details of Vampire power plays was no trouble at all. Well, once I’d disposed of Randy, my arch-rival, that is! (Yeah, I got lucky).

We followed that by an extremely good game of Cosmic Encounter. Randy looked on the way to victory with that one, but he betrayed Sarah when she offered him a deal to get them both to a shared victory, and after several more turns of blocked endgames, Laurie ended up as the victor… with only two home colonies still active and his alien power gone!

Then it was time for a Eurogame, Amun-Re, one of the best of Reiner Knizia. Laurie built hardly any pyramids in the first age, and I was the most affluent throughout the game, but Randy bought the key provinces to seal a narrow victory. 

After dinner, we had a game of BattleTech – Randy, Sarah and I ganged up on Laurie and Rich and completely destroyed their militia force with the McKinnon’s Raiders company. Rich prolonged the game for an hour by running about and hiding with his last remaining (jumping) mech, which we had much trouble hunting down. It managed to seriously hurt our Enforcer by a Death From Above! attack, but it was shot out of the sky when it tried it again and we finally took the spoils.

Then we just had time for one game of Wits and Wagers (with Pat joining us unexpectely) before we had to go. Less said about what the US considers the “World Series” the better!

Sarah indicated she should be available for our next BGD, so that’d be excellent if it comes to pass!

On Monday, being a holiday for us, Rich, Josh, Greg, Randy, Pat and me gathered at various times to play a couple more BattleTech scenarios. I was rather hoping to get in more than two, but the first one – a Pursuit mission with 8 militia mechs trying to get past a gauntlet of 6 mechs of Sorenson’s Sabres – turned into a brutal war of attrition. It didn’t help that Randy, Greg and I had control of 3 Jagermechs amongst our 8 militia, which on the lake-filled maps we were using weren’t the most mobile of vehicles.

However, they had range, and we made full use of it. We plinged what became a massive amount of damage against the advancing ‘mechs, with the Sabres’ Longbow only surviving by a couple of threads of myomer cable. When two light mechs of the Sabres came into our midst from behind, we let them have it. For the Sabres’ member Grace Shiro, it wasn’t something she survived: Greg rolled amazingly, and inflicted four head hits in two volleys of SRMs. Then she fell, and died when her ammo exploded. (Ejection couldn’t save her from the feedback). 

We took down three of their Mechs in all, but could only escape 3 of the 4 Mechs we needed to get off for victory. Seeing a Jagermech limping with Sensor, Engine and Gyro damage towards a Hunchback was rather amusing…

After dinner, we ran three of the Fox’s Teeth against a group of four hapless militia mechs. Poor Pat and Rich didn’t have much of a chance as the defenders. In the very first round, a Stinger, perched unwisely on an outcropping, took LRM hits from the Dervish, Stalker and Atlas we’d assigned to the mission, and exploded. From there, we took out the other militia mechs one by one.

Their Hunchback (with its massive Autocannon/20) was scary indeed, and obliterated the armour on the left side of our Atlas, but it died when the Atlas used its own AC/20 to score a head hit! Pat’s Shadow Hawk had all its front armour completely obliterated: no armour left on either arm, or any of its three torso areas. Then we finally hit the ammo, and that was it.

I’ll post up in a note the salvage/repair costs for Rich and Josh to work through with regard to the Sabres; there are a few decisions they need to make before their next mission!

So, that was our gaming weekend: lots of fun had.