Mekong Incursion

Heavy Gear Blitz! Tournament System – Incursion!

Mekong

Western Frontier Protectorate

Table

• Water – Designated as difficult terrain for Wheeled/Tracked vehicles and Infantry.  Mechs with legs treat it as normal terrain.
• Vegetation patches – Area light cover
• City buildings – Medium cover
• Terrain, Landing Pad, Large Containers – heavy cover

Missions Selected

Mekong:

• Break The Line
• Assassinate: Infantry CGL, Mt. Hunter CGL
• Detailed Scan: Stinger CGL, Mt. Hunter CGL

WFP:

• Break the Line
• Capture: 2 objectives placed about 12” to either side of the center board control point
• Detailed Scan: Visigoth Khan CGL, Command Fer De Lance CGL

Deployment

MP squad used Airdrop to counterdeploy the Razorback and White Cat squad.  Wound up taking 1 point of damage on an Iguana MP and on the Skirmisher.  Visigoth Khan took a threatening open stance on the bottom objective.  WFP Badgers took the upper right flank to try to jump between hard cover points to prevent the Khan from taking shots.

WFP got first activation. 

Perceived large threat by Mamba Duelist, moved Badgers up.  Used Let Them Have it on the whole squad.  Threw up ECM bubble, shot with Lion Heavy Rotary Cannon at Duelist.  Duelist took 1 point of damage.  Mt. Hunter also fired, but missed.

Duelist activated next.  Moved and split shot on Badger and Mt. Hunter.  Crippled both.

WFP moves up White cat squad, declaring Let Them Have It.  First, moves up White Cat to attempt Detailed scan from his white cat on my Fer De Lance, succeeds.  Razorbacks move up to shoot with their Medium Snub Cannons at the Iguanas – ECM+ from the Skirmisher, cover from Shield+, Shield rerolls, and Agile prevented any damage.  White Cat CGL succeeds on a Forward observe, chaining it to the Stingers and the Field Guns.  All attacks caught both an Iguana MP (main target) and the Skirmisher as the secondary target.  No damage was dealt though.

Iguana MP squad activates next to counter punch.  Commander FDL issued a Charge order.  White Cat and Razorbacks had retreated, but not enough to prevent me from moving top speed into the back arc of the foremost White cat and smashing it to bits.  Iguanas one by one moved into a back arc, whacked, and then moved to a new defending position, allowing the next Iguana to attack the same back arc.

WFP null activated the Infantry, keeping them inside their Badgers.

Mekong rushed up the Lizards across the table, succeeding on a detailed scan on the Mt. Hunter.

Visigoth Khan used the Blackbox Iguana’s sensor range to try to shoot the Lion, using a bolstered shot with the Heavy Tank Gun and then again with the LLC.  Both missed.

Infantry then emerged from the Badgers, firing what heavy weapons they could against the Duelist Mamba and repositioning.  Mamba wound up taking another point of damage.

Mamba, sensing impending death, declared Let Them have it and moved up the field to shoot the Mt. Hunter and a Badger in the back using split fire.  Crippled the Badger, finished off the Mt Hunter.

Zeroster’s group activated, blasting the Duelist Mamba in the back, killing it.  Lion rushed forward and APGL’d the lone Lizard rider to death.  Badgers moved up forward and threw up ECM.

Visigoth Khan used Black Box Iguana’s sensors to draw line of fire across the field and blasted both Northern Field Guns to bits.

Memory about the details of the rest of the game are a little hazy, as it was getting late and I hadn’t eaten dinner at all, but roughly:

The Iguana MPs continued whacking the Razorback’s group.  The Razorbacks got a chance to shoot some of the Iguanas at optimal range with their snub cannons, choosing the Iguana that had suffered a point of damage from the Airdrop fall, but rolled exceptionally poorly and failed to do any damage.  Igauna MP’s (and the Fer De Lance, with its precise LVB) wound up whacking the entire combat group off the map.  The group positioned to scan and kill the Stingers.

Stingers, sensing impending death, spent their activations trying to deal damage with their Light Machine Guns.  Iguana’s agility and shields held strong, and continued to take no damage.

The Lizard combat group leader wiped out an enemy Infantry squad and then retreated behind the forest on the hill.  The cover protected it from the Infantry group’s attempts for retribution.

Once the Skirmisher had scanned the Stinger CGL and an Iguana whacked it to bits, the Iguana squad was able to rush up and contest the far objective and position to take the middle objective.

The Visigoth Khan continued to sit comfortably guarding my zone’s objective.  It managed to blast a Badger off the board.  At this point, the surviving enemy units were a couple Infantry squads, a crippled Badger, and the Lion, so we called the game there.

9-3 Mekong Victory!

Mekong controlled all points, had scored both points of Break the Line, both points of Detailed Scan, and one point of Assassinate.

WFP had scored both points of Detailed Scan and had enough surviving Infantry to be able to comfortably capture one of his Capture points.

Thoughts

Enjoyable scenario, but having 3 objectives for each player is really mentally taxing.  Especially at the 150 point value, time for games and mental energy are the primary scarce resources, so redoing scoring of this scenario so that there would be only 2 selected secondary objectives would be really helpful.  

Probably also really need some custom tokens to designate Assassination and Designated Scan targets to place down next to units on the board for easier tracking.

I really should’ve put some hard terrain between the centerline of objectives so that the Visigoth Khan didn’t have such a commanding view of the board.  He doesn’t have a lot of dice available to him, so he didn’t really kill a lot, but obviously when he hits at all, whatever hits is very likely to die.  Really, the most value he put forth was his commanding presence that made my opponent duck his head down and alter his deployment plans.  You just don’t want to leave your mechs out for a Visigoth Khan to be able to brace and shoot you.

Iguana MPs, when I’m able to get a good rhythm of top-speed moving and whacking/shooting, do really well for me.  I think had my opponent immediately start top-speed retreating and ECM’ing my Iguanas to slow them down and do chip damage would’ve been more damaging.  I can’t whack or shoot well if I can’t top speed!  Moving his entire 5-6 mechs directly towards my Visigoth probably would’ve made me poop myself, honestly.  Yes I might’ve been able to take 1-2, maybe even 3 mechs out, but soon enough I would’ve been eating snub cannons in my rear arc.  I was relieved to see NO Wild Ferrets across from me, so, maybe those would’ve been the answer – just cheap ECM attacks to slow me down and redirect my whacking.