The BattleTech Dynasty - Chapter 8, Brother Against Sister - 3062-3067 - COMPLETE!!!!

[Abe Sargent]

June 21, 3064 – The clan folks have jumped out of the Dustball System.

Many nearby worlds have fallen to the first waves of Falcon folks such as Koniz

Victor Ian Steiner-Davion has brought a large number of forces with him, and he is teaming up with the Defense Cordon, Clan Wolf-in-Exile, Adam Steiner, Archer Christifori, and many others to bring some pain to the Falcons.

June 24, 3064 – We have been asked to attend a local conference getting ready on Arc-Royal. Command circuits are available. We are paid for the entire three months garrison deal, and told that losing Dustball is minor compared to all of the worlds under siege right now.

The Marauder IIs have joined us as well, in the 4th Union (which was supposed to be for clan salvaged mechs, but, okay, why not?).

They have become a 4th company under the command of Magnus and Kilts and Commandos–

Larsen Company (Their unit changed names after each person who ran it, so…)

6 Marauder IIs
5 other IS mechs we replaced
3 tanks

All mechs are elite, and the tanks are regular (We’ll figure them out later if we have too)

[Abe Sargent]

July 13, 3064 – Magnus unloads on Arc-Royal.

July 18, 3064 – A large set of battle-plans have been drawn up. Two major offensive are planed against the Falcon. One, Operation: Bludgeon, is aimed at hitting worlds the Falcons have just captured ,in order to retake them. The seconds, Operation: Audacity, is aimed at hitting the Falcons in their own territory.


We are offered a spot with Audacity. It’s ultimate goal is to hit and maybe retake Twycross, as well as many other worlds in the region. The goal is to break up lines ,force them to return and more.

Because we just raided Blair Atholl, our information on the Falcons is given to the local folks, and it seems like they are plucky, missing the on-going battles of Clan space, and this seems to be more about testing, blooding, and getting experience for their troops, as well as taking worlds.

We have been assigned to the deepest world in the Falcons territory – Butler, that is being targeted by Audacity. There are a few issues with Butler, including a local WarShip in the system that guards it. We are going in without any other units. We are loaned JumpShips with KF engines in order to get us in more quickly., and to better time our attack waves. Ours head back to CC.

We are signed on a retainer contract.

After getting things ready, we launch, along with the rest of the Audacity operation, which is led by General Christifori.


July 23, 3064 – While on Arc-Royal, the Black Aces introduce us to the Blue Star irregulars, who are also involved. They have a Fredesa class WarShip. The Aces told us they think the Irregulars might be ready to sell. They wanted it at first, but it’s been a major drain on their resources, and they’ve not kept it up well. We ask them if they want to sell, and they say no, not right now. But if they were to sell, they agree to approach us, since selling it to K&C or the Celestial Coalition would not upset the balance of power between the houses.

[Abe Sargent]

October 17, 3064 – We arrive, right on schedule, in the Butler system. There is a Black Lion class WarShip around the planet, and Magnus discusses it. This is a Battle Cruiser, very powerful, usually used as the command WarShip for galaxies and whole clans. While Jade Falcon has always had a lot (4 or 5?), Magnus has no idea why it would be out there, this far away from space.

Magus contacts the local leader. They have just two trinaries of the 9th Falcon Talon Cluster of Gamma Galaxy. Star Colonel Dev Iler responded to the batchall. His troops are veteran (equal to IS elite).

He will defend Butler with all of his forces.


We are granted safcon to Butler.

October 19, 3064 – On our way down, we notice that the WarShip is looking very beat up and savaged. It was damaged a while ago. The Butler Ship Yards, built by Falcon a few years ago and making JumpShips, is also here, but in another planet in the system, and guarded by a separate group of defenders. It’s naval only (no ground base, just the shipyards).

[Abe Sargent]

October 20, 3064 – We arrive on the planet of Butler and meet the Star Colonel.

We want Butler, but they can’t let us have the system, which would include the Ship Yards, the only place Jade Falcon can service and repair their naval assets. None are under repair, but we see DropShips and fighters out there. Defending the system would require the Star Colonel to add them to his forces.

We just want Butler in this Trial of Possession, not the Shipyards nor the system.

Agreed.

We will fight tomorrow, in the desert of Skava. We are using our entire force, but they have no aerospace assets guarding the world (they are by the Shipyards) so we bid away our Aces.

We will be using the full battalion. We have Command Company, plus the salvaged mechs from Dustball, and the folks there too. We have 46 mechs (we lost three pilots and captured two), and we have a point of 5 elementals as well. Plus the 18 tanks. We don’t feel Larsen Company is ready for action yet, they are still using a lot of new mechs and they have damaged Marauder IIs not fully repaired yet.

They will get the Broadsword we just captured if we lose.


Instead of fighting in a huge melee, we will be fighting three trials, one company of our mechs against two of their stars. The winner of two out of three wins the Trial of Possession.

[Abe Sargent]

October 21, 3064 - We have agreed to send out our weakest company to begin things, against their greenest one.


3rd Company:

Rooster
We moved a veteran pilot elsewhere here.


Cyclops
Blood Asp B (gauss, 2x LRM 20, 4x Medium pulses)
Highlander
Starslayer
Hunchback
Razorback
Uller
Sha Yu
Catapult
Shootist
Bushwacker
5 Elementals

We have 11 mechs, that are mostly regular, and the point of 5 elementals as well, (that are clan regular).

Our foes?

Cougar
Koshi
Thor
2x Loki
Fenris
Ryoken
Black Lanner
Masakari
Uller

It’s fairly light, and again, all are veteran for clans.


This is their Black Lanner omnimech, one of their common medium mechs.

[Abe Sargent]

The desert is cool today. We set up our units and get ready….



We win initiative. The Desert this chose is dead flat. No elevation, woods, roughs, nothing. This part of the desert does not have massive sand issues, it’s a rocky, flat landscape. They must have wanted to remove any chance of us using tactics or the landscape against them.


Turn 1 – We set up a wedge in the middle, led by our Cyclops, Highlander, and Blood Asp. The Elementals are right under the Blood Asp. I have a Hunchback and Shootist escorting them, due to their heavy guns. Everybody just races for each other, no attempt to hide, dodge, or run away. This battle could be very savage and very quick.

Despite the first turn, we moved at each other so fast that we are in medium range of most long range weapons (A few short ranges) and already within line of fire of medium lasers and such. We concentrate fire on that Cougar and Uller. I want to drop a pair of mechs to give us numbers, and I want to pull down multiple weapons right now. That is the Uller A with a gauss rifle, and the 2x ER PCC Cougar. Both are strong mechs with light armor (because they are light mechs). They focus fire mostly on our Cyclops.

Our Highlander’s gauss slug slips into the Uller’s LA and just smashes it. LRMs follow up and destroy it.
Their Uller’s gauss smashes the LT of our Cyclops, after other mechs peppered it, and goes internal, taking out an LRM 10.
Our Bushwacker’s LRM5 nails the RA of their Uller and hits the gauss rifle, it explodes, and destroys the arm.
After cracking open the Cougar in four places, our Sha Yu’s ER Large Laser knifes into their Cougar’s LL and destroys it. Dead leg. ER Medium Lasers from the Shootist adds a gyro hit to its CT.
Masakari weapons fire into the Cyclops and destroy its LA. It then hits a pair of leg actuators in the LL.


Their Uller falls and the pilot blacks out. He Cougar falls too, and in doing, breaks the RL off. Our Cyclops falls hard too.


Turn 2 – We lose init and keep on driving at each other. Our Bushwacker bases the downed Cougar, and our Sha Yu the Uller. They come in hard, and base our Cyclops with their Black Lanner and Ryoken. I keep it on the field as a way to even stuff.

They just dole out a lot of weapons into our Cyclops, and destroy both RT and LT for a shutdown mech (XL Engine), they also destroyed a leg too.
Our Shootist’s AC20 carves into their Fenris’s CT.
Our Hunchbacks AC20 hits the same spot, and the Fenris’s CT is destroyed

Unfortunately, we miss with a lot of major weapons on our mechs (they ran fast + we aren’t the sharpest shooters in the world).

After weapons fire, we kick the downed mechs, and the Bushwacker kicks and destroys the Cougar’s H (it was still firing this turn, so I needed to focus on it). Dead mech! We kick the Uller’s CT but nothing major follows.

Turn 3 – Their Uller is still blacked out. We win init and finish closing with everyone. Our Elementals have gotten on their Uller’s hex. Many mechs have based each other. This is going to be nasty. We do focus some weapons on the Masakari though.

Their Masakari just savages our Bushwacker, which had based it. The Bushwhacker loses a RT after an ammo hit and then it’s LA. (XL Engine shut down of our own).
Our Blood Asp goes internal on the Masakari in three places
Our Catapult destroys the Masakari’s LA.
Their Thor nails the ammo on our Catapult in a through armor critical and it ignites. Boom! CASE keeps it alive (no XL engine).
Our Highlander’s gauss shot cracks the H of their Loki Prime, and it’s dead. Barely even touched!
Our Elementals aim and blow off the H of their Uller.
Our Razorback nails the Masakari’s CT and hits an engine once.


Our Catapult falls, hard. The pilot blacks out as well (good for the goose, good for the gander I suppose)

Despite taking a massive ton of damage, and needed a 10 to remain standing, their Masakari does just that. That’s alright, kicks time!

We kick:

The Masakari with the Hunchback, Starslayer. Hit a pair of leg actuators. It falls hard.
Our Sha Yu kicks their Ryoken


They Kick:

Masakari glancing blow on the Hunch, it’s fine.
Their Thor A kicks our downed Catapult, and destroys its CT. Dead mech.


We lost a undamaged Bushwacker and Catapult. They lost a Loki and we finished that Uller. Meanwhile, we devastated that Masakari.


Turn 4 – Very little movement. Mostly just maneuvering for kicks, punches, and such. Their Masakari failed to stand twice, and broke its LL on the second fall.

Our Highlander’s gauss cracks open their Thor A twice.
Their Ryoken Prime nails the H of our Sha Yu, already a bit damage from missile fire earlier, and the pilot dies and the H is destroyed.
Our Starslayer’s large laser destroys the RT of their Masakari and it shuts down (engine hit) (we also destroy the other leg with our Uller).
Our Blood Asp destroys the Thor A’s LA.
Our Elementals destroy its LL.

They dealt 60+ damage to our Highlander, but it still stands. Other than their Thor’s lost leg, none of their tumbles.

After a ton of kicks, their other Thor is on the ground, the Thor A gets kicked in the LT and the ammo is hit and destroyed. Our Razorback is missing a RL.

We offer them hegira.

They have:

Basically dead Thor A
Thor Prime
Damaged Ryoken
Black Lanner
Koshi

Three untouched (ish) mechs, and not a lot there.

We have an untouched Blood Asp, lost about 40% of its armor Highlander, Shootist, Starslayer, Uller, Hunchback, 5 Elementals, Wolfhound and a damaged Razorback. They have four mechs standing and fighting, two heavies, a medium and a light. We have two assaults, a heavy Shootist, a full squad of Elementals, the nasty mediums of Hunchback and Starslayer, plus a light in the Wolfhound.

We are in a much better position. They have four mechs left. We have 6, plus the elementals, and our mechs are better and nastier.

They accept our offer, and we have won the first wave.

[Abe Sargent]

Them:


Uller missing LA, RA, H
Cougar, missing LL, RL gyro, H
Loki Prime missing h

Fenris, H, RT, LT, LL, RL, RA, LA

Masakari missing LA, RT, engine, LL, RL

Thor A, missing LA, LL, LT



Ours:


Cyclops,LRM 10, missing LA, hit actuators, RT, LT, LL
Bushwhacker missing RT, LA

Catapult RA, LA, LT, LL, RL, H, pilot blacked out.

Sha Yu missing H, dead pilot

Razorback missing Rl



Kills – Hunchback, Buchwacker, Elementals, Highlander, Starslayer,


We salvaged their:

Cougar, Uller, Loki, Masakari, Thor. We get the Fenris parts as well.

We lost a Catapult, and a pilot.

Two pilots of theirs were blacked out, we captured them as bondsmen.

[Abe Sargent]

After an hour of cleaning things up and such, we move to the second battle. This time, 2nd Company heads out on our behalf:



2nd Company:

Flash
Mother

Zeus
Blood Asp B (gauss, 2x LRM 20, 4x Medium pulses)
Highlander
Starslayer
Hunchback
Shadow Cat
Anubis Now a Black Lanner Prime (with LRm 10, SRM6, ER Large Laser, 2x ER Mediums)
Vulture
Raven Now a Cougar A (with twin LRM20 launchers)
Sha Yu
Shootist
Enfield Now a Loki B (Gauss rifle, LB5 X, 2x SRM 6 with Artemis, ER Small Laser)

This company has a few veteran, a green pilot in the Sha Yu, and some regulars.

Our foes?

Mad Cat Prime
Turkina Prime (With 2x ER PPC, 2x LRM15, and 2x LB 5X)
Thor Prime
Cougar
Man o War B
Vulture C (with 2x gauss)
Shadow Cat Prime
Fire Falcon
Nova
Black Lanner

Their assault class Turkina and Mad Cat are clan elite, the rest are clan veteran.

The Turkina is supposed to be like a jumping Daishi in a lot of ways. It's just a heavy, jumping, nasty, assault mech.




Alright here we go.

[Abe Sargent]

Once again, the featureless map is here, and ready to rock.

Turn 1 – We lose init, and the same battle strategy ensues. Just moving in fast….holy crap! Our Shadow Cat’s gauss rifle shell just blasted the H of their Nova. I wish I had targeted a bigger mech! Nasty, we focus fire on their Turkina, and open up its RL and hit two actuators. It took 60+ damage and fell. Otherwise, not a lot of hits by anyone. Two of our mechs, Hunchback and Loki B took 40+ but are fine.


Turn 2 – Now things are going to get serious. I hope! It’s all their Turkina can do to stand, and it can’t move (movement was reduced, and it’s normally just a 3/5 mech, so it just has enough movement to rise). As such I have much better numbers to hit it. I focus all of our fire on that assault mech. Of I can follow up the death of the Nova last round with the Turkina this one, I drop them to 8 mechs quickly, and remove their biggest threat.

Their Vulture C drops two gausses on the RL of my Hunchback and destroys it. Nasty!
Their Cougar tears into our Hunchback’s LA and destroys it too.
Our Shootist’s AC20 nails the RT of their Turkina and hits an LRM 15.
Their Black Lanner cascades an ER Large Laser at the CT (internal) of our Loki and hits the gyro twice. It falls down. Well, we both got in incredibly lucky shots I suppose.


Their Turkina and our Hunchback and Loki both fall down. The Loki is dead (destroyed gyro). Their Turkina took 100+ damage, but still no kill shot on it. That sucks.


Turn 3 – We push forward even more. I win init. We base their downed Turkina, and it again stands, but doesn’t move. I turn the Hunchback. I still have that AC20, and I intend to use it until they kill me. They run up a Fire Falcon and hop a Shadow Cat next to it.

We fire the Zeus’s hot laser lovin into their Turkina and destroy its RT.
Then our Cougar’s LRM volleys nail it and destroy its RL and LA. We also hit its gyro once
Our Highlander nails the ammo in their Cougar’s RT and it explodes. The pilot blacks out from the feedback.
Their Black Lanner destroys the CT of our Hunchback. Dead mech.


Their Turkina falls along with our Zeus (even though it just took 20+ damage). We kick the Turkina with our Starslayer and hit its engine once and gyro once – dead mech. Their Man o War kicked our Shootist but it’s still standing.


Turn 4 – We lose. We stand the Zeus, and like their mech, are unable to move it much afterwards, and they move some mechs next to it. Three all told (Fire Falcon, Black Lanner, Man o War). We set up some nice lanes of fire into their mass.

Their mechs cascade virtually all of their fire into the Zeus this turn, and it works. Takes 120+_ damage, loses a LA and LT, and shuts down (XL engine)


Our Starslayer destroys the LT on their Fire Falcon
Then our Vulture destroys the Falcon’s RT and it shuts down (engine hits in both torsos)
Our Sha Yu also destroyed its RL too.
Our Blood Asp tears open their Mad Cat, and it’s critical in two places.
Then our Shadow Cat lances a gauss slug and hits the LRM20 in the Mad Cat’s RT.

Kicking time! Our Shootist kicks their Black Lanner to the ground after hitting a hip actuator
Their Thor kicks our Black Lanner, then nails its RL actuators.
Our Sha Yu misses a kick and falls. Dummy!

Both Lanners fall.

Not a bad turn. We have them down to:

Thor, Black Lanner (with hip damaged), Shadow Cat, Vulture, Mad Cat (damaged in multiple places), Man o War. Their Cougar pilot has not woken up yet.

They have us down to

Highlander, Blood Asp, damaged Starslayer, damaged Black Lanner, Shadow Cat, Vulture, Shootist, Sha Yu, Cougar A.

That’s an advantage to us.

We offer them hegira, but since that would result in them losing the world, they keep on going.


Turn 5 – They wrest initiative from us. Our Black Lanner rises and moves a bit. Theirs falls once, twice, then rises. Just massive basing in the middle. Our Sha Yu scramble sup and away easily.

Their Thor just ends any chance of our Starslayer continuing this battle after it based the Thor, by destroying its LL and RL both.
Our Blood Asp nails the wounded leg of their Black Lanner with its LRM20s and destroys it.
Our Vulture follows that with a smashery of the Black Lanners RT. Dead torso.
Their Mad Cat just unloads with a full salvo of fury on the slowed Black Lanner and it loses three pieces .
But that’s the last salvo that Mad Cat will unloose, after our Cougar A’s LRMs just hit its exposed parts over and over again. We hit the ammo in both torsos (machine gun in right, LRM in left) and the pilot blacks out, and the mechs shuts down.

Most of the mechs that I wanted to target are gone. Umm….I’ll kick their Thor with my Shadow Cat I guess? It hits, but does very little.


Turn 6 – Cougar is still blacked out. They are just blood-frenzy now. They base all of our mechs. Although I run back with some.


Our Sha Yu destroys the Ct of their downed Black Lanner.
Their Thor hits the H of our Vulture with its LRM salvo. It goes internal, and hits the sensors and life support once each.
Our Vulture returns fire and destroys their Thor’s RA.
Their Vulture nails the LL of our Vulture and blows it off.
Our Blood Asp hits a pair of leg actuators on their Thor.
A gauss slug from their Shadow Cat blasts our Sha Yu and destroys its RA.
Our Highlander’s SRMs find the Thor and hit it s few times, and destroy its LB10X ac in the LA.


Our Sha Yu stands but our Vulture tumbles as does their Thor.

Our Blood Asp kicks and destroys the LL of their Shadow Cat. Their Man o War kicks the downed Vulture and nails the LA and destroys it. Our Shootist kicks and hits the Man o War, and it falls. Cougar still does not wake up.

Turn 7 – We win init. Their Man O War fails once, and the pilot blacks out. We base the Thor and it has nowhere to go when it stands. Our Cougar’s LRMs hit the engine once on their Thor. Then AC20 from the Shootist destroys the Thor’s LT after hitting the ammo there. Dead mech (XL Engine). Their Shadow Cat is hit numerous times and its CT and numerous other parts are destroyed. (Kill by our Highlander).


All of their mechs are passed out or dead. We have won the battlefield.

[Abe Sargent]

Theirs:


Nova missing H

Turkina missing RT, LA, RL, gyrox2, enginex3

Cougar missing RT, blacked out pilot.

Fire Falcon, missing RT, LT, RL

Black Lanner LT, LA, H, RL, RA

Mad Cat missing RT, LT

Thor missing RA, LB 10X, LT. engine x3.

Shadow Cat H, RA


Ours:

Hunchback LL, RA, RT, LT, H
Loki, gyro twice.
Starslayer missing LL, RL

Sha Yu missing RA
Black Lanner, missing RL, LA, LT

Zeus, missing LA, LT

Vulture hit sensors, life support; reattach LL, missing LA


Kills – Shadow Cat, Starslayer, Vulture, Cougar, Sha Yu, Shootist, Highlander



We capture three pilots and salvaged their Thor, Mad Cat, Fire Falcon, Cougar, Man o War, Turkina, and Nova.

Only our Hunchback is a pure loss, and we didn’t lose any pilots this time.


The third battle will not be fought and we have taken the planet of Butler.

[Abe Sargent]

Oct 24, 3064 – We are giving the Falcons about a week to get their things together and head out. The Black Lion Warship, the Red Eyrie, is controlled by a Falcon captain, and it was badly damaged in the Refusal War of 3057 against Clan Wolf. They brought it here and built the shipyards here, and began to do repairs when nothing more pressing was needed.

That was seven years ago. They have restored the engine and some weapons, but not all, and the internal structure since needs some work, but it structurally sound, and lots of outside armor is in bits and tatters. There is a lot more that needs to be done. They estimate it would take a while to fix it at full strength. More than a year.

The local Falcons will lift off for the shipyards and head there for a while.


We contact the captain of the Red Eyrie and send a batchall for a Trial of Possession for it.

They can’t use it in combat, so they agree to use their fighters against Hell’s Black Aces. But they demand something of equal worth.

Magnus points out that most Inner Sphere units would just take it. They would use a Trial at all, we could just capture it right now. The fact that we are using a Trial at all shows something. But, nevertheless, they won’t be budged. Magnus agrees to leave Butler if we lose, and our unit won’t come back for six months (although we can’t promise other units won’t follow). But they give us their full crew for it as well.

They agree.

We are using 18 of Hell’s Black Aces, upgraded with some fancy clan fighters, and we offer to loan them our two omnifighters for the battle, but they are fine with what they know.


They’ve captured one WarShip and DropShip already from Falcon. Can they do the same here?

[Abe Sargent]

We have –

18 elite fighters, Black Aces

They have –

20 regular fighters, Falcon


The clanners have lost a lot of battles in aerospace, and good pilots have been able to beat them again and again. Snow Raven infamously lost a battle against a periphery nation (Outworlds Alliance) this year too. Many battles were won (including the Aces, as a reminder, and they are some of the best fighters we have in the Inner Sphere, and they are….not)


Hold on…


Let’s grab some dice


The Aces win, and lost 8 fighters, three of which are salvageable.

The clans lost 13 fighters, four of which are salvageable

So we salvage the four from the clans, hand them to the Aces, and they use the extra fighter they had from the previous campaign to keep their numbers at 18, although it will take around 45 days or so to get them back in that shape.


We have captured the Black Lion class Red Eyrie (in in the major universe, the Black Lion was taken by General Christifori, who led the attack on Butler in lieu of us, and then just gave it to Wolf-in-Exile since he didn’t want it or want to fix it up. So we took it with a Trial, and now we have the right to it. And we won’t give it away.)


We discuss getting it refitted, since no major naval assets are being fixed right now. Could we barter for it? We offer money, or the Broadsword DropShip we took.

They aren’t really that interested. So we’ll just use it as a glorified JumpShip for now.

[Abe Sargent]

Nov 3, 3064 – The Falcon presence on planet Butler has ended as the last of their forces blast off to the local Shipyards.

Nov 5, 3064 – We get word that major strikes have been successful in multiple venues. Twycross is undergoing a huge battle on the planet. But the Falcons struck deeper into Lyran space as well.

Nov 12, 3064 – After attacking the Ghost Bear Dominion and getting trounced, Hell’s Horses are sent packing, and their leader is killed and replaced by a Warden Khan, and the Horses begin to move to a more Warden viewpoint.

Nov 17, 3064 – A huge naval flotilla from the clan front has jumped into the Butler system and move out to the Shipyards. They contact us. They aren’t interested in fighting for Butler, not right now. A damaged Aegis heavy cruiser begins to get repaired and serviced.

Nov 25, 3064 – General Christifori just captured Twycross, and blasts off leaving behind defenders.

The major battle remaining is Blair Atholl. Victor Davion has landed with ComGuards to fight against the Falcons here.

[Abe Sargent]

Dec 15, 3064 – Archer Christifori also arrived on Blair Atholl to support Vic.

We begin discussions with the Aces. We are choosing not to extend their contract via emergency clause as of right now, and if they want to leave and head out for something else, they are welcome to do so.

Dec 21, 3064 – General Adam Steiner arrives at the nearby system of Blackjack and begins taking more systems from the Falcons.

Dec 28, 3064 – After engaging in battle on Blackjack, saKhan Samantha Clees arrives in system, grabs the troops, and invites the General and his forces to come to Blair Atholl. They will be granted safcon there.

Jan 10, 3065 - The Aces leave Butler and head for Blair Atholl, where they have signed a quick contract with the Defense Cordon.

We pay them the balance of their deal. They make a ton of money (Less than we made, so our profit helped to defray their costs). Plus we gave them a lot more, because they helped us win the WarShip. Sure, there’s no WarShip clause in their contract, but we like to be nice when it’s warranted.

[Abe Sargent]

Feb 20, 3065 – Khan Marthe Pryde arrives on Blair Atholl and the strongest units begin to unload there.

Feb 27, 3065 – General Adam Steiner lands on BA as well.

March 11, 3065 – General Steiner, and Victor come to an agreement. The Jade Falcon incursion has ended, the planets held have, mostly, switched sides, and Blair Atholl will be held jointly as a sort of training grounds between Lyran and Jade Falcon forces.

We are contracted to keep Butler safe for now. We expect the Falcons to come and smash us soon. We have a planet deep in their LZ and next to their shipyards. They won’t let us remain free for long.

April 8, 3065 – Diamond Shark arrives at Twycross and issues a batchall for the system from the local defenders.

April 14, 3065 – Twycross falls to a very determined Shark attack.

[Abe Sargent]

June 8, 3065 – Another large Falcon flotilla arrives in Butler, this time they begin to make their way to the planet. Magnus grants them a safe conduct and passage.

They initially want batchall for our WarShip first. Magnus demands their Aegis WarShip, damaged in the Shipyards as the security in case we win. It’s only fair as a counter-demands, and the Clan admit it, and withdraw their batchall for the WarShip, but instead just make it for the planet of Butler.

Magnus agrees to meet them in the desert, with just one warrior, in an Atlas. If we win, we get another Broadsword DropShip, and if they win, they get Butler.

They agree.


June 12, 3065 -

We send out…


Steel in the Blood Asp. This is our best pilot, in our best mech.

They send out an clan elite

We are using the Blood Asp B, with the gauss rifle, 2x LRM 20, 4 medium pulse lasers, enough heat sinks to fire them all, 4/6 movement, and almost max armor for the 90 ton frame.

They have..


Turkina B, with 2x large pulse lasers, 2x er large lasers, 2x medium pulses, 2x er mediums, 3/5/3 movement, Targeting computer, 25/50 heat sinks. It’s a nasty Turkina of love.

BV?

They have 7661 with their elite pilot. We have 5655. Not that close, unfortunately.

But anything can happen, right?


Right?

[Abe Sargent]

Again, the flat open area awaits


Turn 1 – Steel runs, and they stand still.

Our gauss cracks their LL
Our LRms hits for 12 and a miss (we needed a 5 on that miss)
Medium pulses hit three times.

They cascade every singl weapon for a hit at the Blood Asp.

Asp took 60+ and the Turkina 40+ -= no one falls.

Turn 2 – We lose init. We run and turn five, and they run 4 and base us.

Our Blood Asp:

Gauss at the RT, LRM200s both hit for 12 missiles each, medium pulse laser nails the RT in a through armor critical and nails a jump jet and engine. We hit the LT, go internal and nail a heat sink.

Their Turkina:

Every weapon of their hits again. No misses. They smash the RA and hit our LRM 20 there and the shoulder, then the engine in the LT.

Each mech took 60+ and is standing.

We both kick. They kick us, and we them. Nothing else happens.

Turn 3 – We win init.

They are internal in the RT and LT. They went overheat last turn by 13 from the engine hit and their weapons payload. We are internal in the LT and RA, and 4 overheat from our engine hit. They don’t move….

Hmm.

I run around behind them. (There was nowhere they could run to overheat like that they had 1/2/2 movement and when we won initiative, we won.)

They can’t get every weapon on us. They only put another 40+ on us, and we drop another 60+ on them…plus…our gauss blows off their LL.

We kick the downed mech and nail it in the CT.



Turn 4 – We lose init. We walk around their mech. Despite the huge number they need, they stand (clan elite pilot is nasty) and turn to face us. They have all of their weapons when we have lost an LRM20.

Their ER Medium Laser lances out and nails the gauss in our LA, and it explodes the arm. ZZZT. A large pulse laser stabs us and smashes our LT. Then a final laser lances out and hits our exposed CT and nails the engine twice there and shuts us down. Suck!


But….

Our gauss slug smashes their LA, and then LRM 20 hits the RT a bunch. Then our medium pulse laser follows up and destroys their LT. They also have an engine shut down.


So….um….who wins?


We agree that we both destroyed each other’s mech, and thus both of us won, and we get the second Broadsword and they get the planet. Well bargained and done.



We like the name on this Broadsword as well (Roost of War) and keep it too.

[Abe Sargent]

June 24, 3065 – We leave Butler, and our contract officially ends as the planet fell to Falcon.

We earned….192 million after expenses (one year deal vs the clans, always worth a ton of money) and paid the Aces…65 mill.



June 28, 3065 – We arrive in Twycross, with the Black Lion, the borrowed JumpShips, our six DropShips we took, and the two Broadswords we gained

Clan Diamond Shark is happy to give us safcon down to the planet.


Diamond Shark has always been willing to deal, and make friends.

They make and sell mechs to the Inner Sphere, and so forth. They want to use Twycross as their new base of operations in the area.


We have fought against six of the invading clans, but never Diamond Shark.

We offer a Trial of Possession for help in fixing our captured mechs. We want 10 clan techs to accompany us, as well as full repair and refit of our salvaged units.

They laugh at Magnus, gently.

They are more willing to sell their services.

They offer to sell us the tech resources here on Twycross that we need, as well as provide local techs, free of charge, to fix our stuff.

We agree to it, and the estimated time of fixing is roughly 3 weeks.

[Abe Sargent]

Meanwhile, they offer to sell us some mechs they have ready for sale, Ha Otoko BattleMechs and Mad Cat Mark II. The Ha Otoko has no clan building blocks (no clan ferro, XL Engine, double heat sinks, etc). just clan style weapons. It’s cheap, feature a pair of LRM20s and LRM10s, and thus is better than an Archer or many other long range mechs. 6.5 Cbills for one.

Meanwhile they have an upgraded Mark II Mad Cat. It’s a 90 ton mech with 2 gauss rifles, 2 LRM 10s, and 4 er mediums. 4/6/3 movement, 13 tons of ferro armor, endo, the XL engine, and 14/28 heat sinks. If that’s our desire, we can purchase some of those, as well as license the techs needed to keep them operational. 25 mill for a Mad Cat Mark II.

They have a star of Ha Otokos ready to go, and a pair of MC Mk II.

We can buy as many as we want.

What about fixing up the WarShip? What’s the possibility of that?

Let me show you a secret!

The Diamond Shark representative reveals an underground production and restoration facility right here in Twycross. It was built by Steel Viper, when they controlled the planet. The DS Aero Assembly Site Rho is being configured to build one of the Shark’s favorite fighters, and it makes Broadsword DropShips too. It can do some repairs for ships that are atmospheric, and it has a lot of winches and ships that can fly out and do service to a ship in orbit, like,say, our WarShip.

So we could pay to get it refitted here, and they’d be happy to do it for us. It’s better to get them to do it, since the Black Lion was updated with clan tech over the centuries since it left the Inner Sphere with Kerensky.

Repairing it would be pricey, hold on.

The most expensive parts are fine (engine, KF battery, sensors, stuff like that).

It’s a lot of weapons, internal structure, armor, and more.

Looks like it would run around….

About 1 billion CBills to fix up.

We can pay 500k now, and then the rest after they figure out how much it’ll take. And it will take roughly 2 years to finish.

[Abe Sargent]

A Broadsword is worth a lot of Cbills, does the Shark want the two Broadswords we captured? Not really, so they would only take that deal if they are making money off it. They’d take two Broadswords now as down payment, (They are worth around 575k combined) and then we’d still owe 500k later. That way they make a little money off the trade.

After some negotiation, we get them to toss in a pair of Ha Otoko mechs as well.

Then we give them 100,000 Cbills of the money we made, as a future down-payment, that will reduce future costs, and give them cash to use now to help defray future costs. That’s pouts us at roughly 600,000, right?

Well, we have some mechs we took and salvaged what about them?

They a walk through our mechs to see what we have. Again, we would need to give a lot more than their value to make things work, but…




We have gotten these 30 mechs from this campaign, many of which are already fixed up from the Trials we won.

Kraken
Phoenix Hawk IIcx2
Griffin IIc
Vixen
Viper
Hellhound
Cougarx5
Rifleman IIcx2
Lokix4
Black Lanner x2
Night Gyr
Uller
Thorx2
Masakari
Turkina
Mad Cat
Fire Falcon
Man o War
Nova



We offer them Lokis (19 mill a piece)Thors, (21 mill a pop), and those 6 mechs are 120 mill. We also offer a the Man o War, (26 mill), Nova (11 million) and such. They are really more interested in newer designs, like the Fire Falcon, Cougar, and Black Lanner. (Cougar is 6.1 mill, Black Lanner 18 mill, and Fire Falcon 4.7 mill). We offer them some of each, and we come to a deal. We sell them

Lokix4, Thorx2, Man o War, Uller, Cougarx3, Black Lannerx2, Fire Falcon, Nova, Vixen

For:

253, mill sticker price, and they give us 200 mill in discount for it.

That leaves us just owing 200 mill on the far end, if the costs end up being that much, it’s possible they could be a lot less or more, after they crack it open


A couple of days later we buy the rest of the Ha Otokos with the money we made. We’re happy to be future buyers as well.

[Abe Sargent]

Things we are leaving Twycross with:


Bondsman –

4 regular, 5 veteran,


2 Vandal Omnifighters
1 squad of Elementals



We bought these!

5 Ha Otoko

These Garrison Units:

Kraken; Phoenix Hawk IIcx2; Griffin IIc; Vixen; Viper; Hellhound; Rifleman IIcx2

These Omnis:

Cougarx2; Night Gyr; Masakari; Turkina; Mad Cat


We lost:

Catapult, 2 Hunchbacks
5 pilots


We replace the Catapult with a Ha Otoko, and the 2 Hunchs permanently with a Hellhound and a Phoenix Hawk IIc

Our five dead pilots are replaced by the 4 regulars and one veteran bondsman. Then we have the other four vets take the Turkina, Mad Cat, Masakari and Night Gyr, and they will join us on our future battles.

[Abe Sargent]

This is an update for later, but I roll some dice, and here’s the update on our WarShip:

Red Eyrie, Black Lion class, Battle Cruiser, will be completed by Diamond Shark on the 16 of December, and it will run 930k total, so we owe the Sharks another 130k.

So let’s look at this ship more completely:

The Black Lion, clan version, is worth around 15 million CBills, and we could likely get more because it’s upgraded with clan tech through and through. If I approached an allied state, like the Free Worlds League, or a neutral one like the Combine, that’s a major offer.

What makes the Black Lion so lethal?

It is. The Black Lion, clan version, is the 4th most powerful WarShip of all time by Battle Value. What’s nastier? The Leviathan being used by Ghost Bear is #1, followed by the Mjolnir by the Lyrans, and the Farragut. Number 5? The Inner Sphere Black Lion.

Here’s the Top Twenty by BV:

Leviathan – 381117
Mjolnir – 273208
Farragut – 254469
Black Lion – 249326
Conqueror – 226970
Luxor – 202539
Stefan Amaris – 196548
Tharkad – 194645
McKenna – 193164
Thera (Carrier) – 190425
Defender – 177323
Atreus – 175777
Aegis – 174904
Nightlord – 167669
Dante - 166547
Agamemnon – 164084
Avalon – 156654
Liberator – 152215
Kirishima – 149893
Avatar – 137344

Those include a lot of Ships made right now (Thera for FWL, Agamemnon for FWL too, Avalon for Federated Commonwealth, Mjolnir for Lyran Alliance, Kirishima for Combine) and some of these are clan-only, like the Nightlord and Leviathan. The Black Lion fares well.

The Black Lion:

Has space for 4 DropShips, 10 small craft, and 20 fighters.

It’s faster than our Aegis. It’s the typical 3/5 heavy machine. It has no point defense weaponry for taking down fighters – all of its weapons are naval in nature, and in fact, all are missiles or autocannons.

Ours has the LF battery, the upgraded clan armor from the refit, and hull-sealant unit common among clans.

It’s an awesome piece of work!

[Abe Sargent]

Diamond Shark agrees to send a group of folks to the Coalition to make official contact. We send one of our DropShips home with Shark, the once-empty Union now full with Larsen’s Company and a lot of salvage. It’s raring to go. Larsen is leaving behind our extra IS mechs and taking some clan mechs to upgrade their unit even further. So we send the Union back home to the CC. We also have to return the JumpShips we borrowed from the Arc Royal Defense Cordon.

We ask to use Twycross as a staging post for raids against the local clans, but are rejected. Sadly.


July 29, 3065 – We arrive at Arc-Royal. We rent a pair of local JumpShips for the next bit, and return those we borrowed at no cost from the Cordon. General Adam Steiner, despite fighting for the pro-Katrina side, was elevated by Victor and put in control of the region. He won a lot of major battles, and Adam Steiner emerged from the Falcon Incursion as one of the heroes of the Inner Sphere, and is credited for not losing a lot more systems.


Magnus asks around for some contracts. We actually want to return and do some more raids. There’s no reason to stop simply because the Incursion ended.

However the Alliance is not interested in doing any raids into Falcon space right now, and other folks, like the Kell Hounds, Clan Wolf-in-Exile, or any others are not really interested in pushing against the Falcon, particularly in a state-sponsored manner. They want to spend money fixing their stuff and keeping the peace right now.

There’s no reason to stay out here then.

[Abe Sargent]

August 5, 3065 – Larsen Company, our mech parts, and mechs not being used, and two fighters, arrived at Epsilon Eridani. Duke Essex greets Larsen when they arrive to welcome them, and find out what sort of mission would they like. Sometimes after large battles, a unit wants some downtime. But they are raring to go, so we decide to give them some front line work, rotating them right in.

[Abe Sargent]

September 12, 3065 – We arrive at the Alyina System in the Falcon OZ. Clan Wolf attacked here in the Incursion, but were forced back off world about 5 months ago. The local units here are the:

5th Falcon Regulars (Mu Galaxy) – veteran, 80% strength
22nd PGC – green, (Lambda Galaxy)
Naval Attack Star - veteran

They grant us safcon down to their world and we have asked for a Trial of Possession for their Odyssey class JumpShip at the jumppoint (they have around 5 of them here), since we don’t own our own, and are renting the two we have.

We put up our Gazelle if we lose.

They would normally want to do an aerospace battle for it, but as we don’t have any fighters, they grant us a battle on the ground.

They are defending a fort they control

[Abe Sargent]

September 13, 3065 – Our battle gets underway

We are using Command Company of us, against a full trinary of their veteran front line forces from My Galaxy’s 5th. However, a reckless commander bid away some mechs, and instead is coming at us with 10 mechs and 5 points of Elementals, and a Binary of mechs (10 mechs, 5 squads of Elementals). However, she is coming in heavy for the battle

Our foes:

Turkina
Mad Cat
Night Gyr
2x Fire Falcon
Black Lanner
Loki
Ryoken
Vulture
Dragonfly

All clan vet, and 5 squads of Elementals are as well.



This is the current iteration of our Command Company:

Atlas
Blood Asp B (gauss, 2x LRM 20, 4x Medium pulses) (Steel)
Highlander (Ghost)
Starslayer (Dagger)
Phoenix Hawk IIc
Shadow Cat Prime (Gauss and some lasers)
Uller A (Gauss and some lasers)
Vulture Prime (Longshot)
Wolfhound
Lao Hu
Ha Otoko (with regular clan pilot)
Bushwacker (with new regular clan pilot)


This is their Fire Falcon

[Abe Sargent]

We are on a map with ferrocrete, some rubble, a few small buildings, all heavily reinforced, and a level 1 wall. But no elevation or trees.

Turn 1 – I lose initi. We are on the south side, and they on the north. I created an attacking wedge of our Atlas, Blood Asp, and Highlander in front, with major units, like our Vulture and Lao Hu and Bushwacker flanked around. The range and scout mechs are on the sides, and they have distance, and some building to move in and around. We can’t see two of their squads, the other three are guarding their rear. They move down to the wall on the north side, and use it for partial cover (no damage to the legs when we hit them, and +1 to be hit). We target a mech a few hexes back of the wall, and a little bit further away, their Night Gyr.

Our Atlas gets things started by cracking the Night Gyr with all of its long range weapons – Gauss, ER Large laser, and 20 missiles from the LRM 20.
More weapons converge on their Night Gyr, and blast away armor in a variety of places exposing it in three areas.
Their Loki carves into our Sha Yu, and opens it up.
A Fire Falcon’s er medium laser hits the Sha Yu’s RT and destroys I – dead mech (XL shutdown)
Our Ha Otoku’s LRMs cascade into their Night Gyr and hit the gyro once and shoulder of the LA.

Their Night Gyr falls after taking 120+ damage, and the gyro hit as well.


Turn 2 – We win init. We begin driving up the center and….wait….our Atlas gets hit by mines? They’ve heavily mined the area! Our Atlas took around 15 damage to its legs. That’s a clear violation of zellbrigen, the clans rules of honor. Magnus, on the sidelines, protests, calling this a surat, bush league tactic that shows no honor! But the response of the commanding officer on the field is that mercenaries like ourselves deserve no honor. Battle continues. Now expecting mines, we takes things more cautiously. Our Wolfhound runs across the area, triggering multiple minefields, and losing its LL in doing so, but opening up a path for our heavier units in the middle. We continue forward. They move their units to the wall, and their Night Gyr fails to stand, twice, and the pilot blacks out on the third fall. Just a couple of their lighter mechs are not against the wall this turn.

A gauss slug from our Uller smashes the RA of their Fire Falcon A and destroys it.
LRM5 shots from the Bushwacker tear off the RT of the FFA as well.
Our Starslayer opens up their Dragonfly Prime RT and LL. Then our Lao Hu’s LB20X smashes it for 12 pellets, and they hit the hip and lower leg actuators on the leg and the machine gun ammo in the RT – boom!
They carve a lot of armor from the damaged and fallen Wolfhound. It loses three parts, and then their Vulture B’s LRM20 missiles destroy the Wolfhound’s CT.
They hit the Atlas with some weapons fire.

The Atlas took 60+ damage (including mines) and is still standing. Their Dragonfly falls and hits it’s LA. It stupidly has SRM4 ammo there, and that it hit, and once again, the explosion blows off the limb, and the double explosion feedback is nasty, and it actually kills the mechwarrior – not blacked out. (MW took damage from the fall, and was hit in the head once already by LB20X shot). The Fire Falcon A also tumbles.

Turn 3 – We win init. Their Night Gyr is still out. We push forward even more. We’ve lost a Wolfhound and Sha Yu to their savaged Fire Falcon and Dragonfly, so it’s basically even by that count (one light and medium each). And we have the Night Gyr down for now as well. They pop their two elementals, hiding behind local buildings, right by our Phoenix Hawk IIc on the east flank. After falling once, the Fire Falcon stands and moves away.

Their Elementals just pepper the PXH IIc with their SRMs and lasers, twice. It took a lot of damage, but not that much in one place. They even hit its head twice for four damage.
Steel’s Blood Asp just pulverizes the LA of their Vulture B.
Our Ha Otoko nails the Vulture’s H with missile fire once, and then peppers the LT, hitting the LRM 20 there and it breaks.
Our PXH IIc fires ultra AC10s at their elementals, and kills two troopers.
Our Shadow Cat nails the LL of their Fire Falcon Prime, and follows with an ER Medium laser, and hits a foot actuator there.
More weapons fire into the Atlas, which is not open on its RL and LA.


Our Phoenix Hawk IIc is fine, and their Fire Falcon and Vulture remain standing. Our Atlas took 80+ and is fine.


Turn 4 – We lose init. I hope away the PXH IIC from their Elementals. They pull them back behind the wall. Our Bushwacker runs into some more mines on the west flank. It falls from the damage. I move our Lao Hu up to protect it in case anyone wants to come over and play. Their Black Lanner does. Their Fire Falcon Prime pulls back and moves away from the battle. We pull back in the center, and a few mechs push past the wall to keep the pressure on. I run the Starslayer next to their Black Lanner. They concentrate a lot of fire on the Bushwacker and us on their wounded Vulture and somewhat exposed Black Lanner.

Our Atlas smashes the RA of their Vulture and destroys it.
Their Black Lanner destroys the RL of tour downed Bushwacker
The Starslayer sets their Black Lanner reeling after an alpha strike with all of its weapons
Then the Lao Hu hits it with its LB20x for….20 shots. Doom! That thing is peppered through next Sunday, and its RL is destroyed, and it’s LL gets its hip, foot, lower leg, and upper leg actuators all hit, and that means it’s immobile (just as if both legs were destroyed) and that’s just rare. I don’t know if we have ever immobilized a mech that way before.
Mad Cat Prime weapons destroy the RA and LA of our Bushwacker.
Finally their Loki manages to destroy the RT and it shuts down (XL engine)
Meanwhile our Phoenix Hawk IIc knifes Ultra AC10 love into their Vulture for two hits, and one nails the CT and hits its engine twice and gyro once.

Their Vulture falls along with the Black Lanner who destroys its RA in the fall. Dagger’s Starslayer kicks the Black Lanner and destroy its LA. All of its weapons are gone, and it can’t move either. Their Night Gyr still has woken up.


Turn 5 – We win initiative again. They push forward with everything, seeking a blaze of glory, and Elementals expose themselves by jumping over the wall. The damaged Fire Falcons move in. Their Vulture tries to stand, fails twice, hits its engine a third time, and shuts down. We move some folks back from the Elementals, but our Atlas can’t retreat much. It’s too exposed. We use the Turkina as a target of force this turn.

Expecting it to die this turn, I alpha strike with the Atlas on the Turkina to open things up, and hit with everything, but just 9 LRM missiles.
Their Turkina returns fire and drops the Atlas’s RL.
We get a limb blown off crit on their Turkina’s RL as well, with our Uller.
Our Ha Otoko goes overheat to embrace their Fire Falcon Prime in the warmth of LRM missiles, and we destroy its RL and hit the engine once.
Steel’s Blood Asp has destroys the RA of their Turkina
Mad Cat anger eviscerates our Atlas’s RA.
Our Lao Hu hits the Fire Falcon A and destroys its CT.
Elementals hit the Atlas multiple times, and find the LRM 20 ammo in the LT and it explodes (CASE, no XL Engine so it’s still fine).
Our PXH IIc and Starslayer finish off the wounded Elemental squad.


Our Atlas just hits the dirt hard, and our pilot blacks out in the fall. Their Turkina and Fire Falcon Prime, newly denuded of legs, also fall. Their FF Prime destroys its LT and shuts down (enginex3).

Angered by our name-calling and that they are losing to mercs, they aren’t in any sort of a mood to accept hegira and we are not offering either. We are finishing this thing.

They have – damaged Turkina, Mad Cat, Loki, Ryoken. 4 stars of elementals.

Turn 6 – We lose init. I order forces to move in and protect the blacked out and fallen Atlas. That includes out Highlander Blood Asp, and Lao Hu. They don’t come in – smart. They only push with the Elementals. We focus fire this turn on that Mad Cat. I want it out of the equation. LRMs are on the downed Turkina to finish it, and we have some weapons at a nearby Elemental squad.

The Ha Otoko nails the Turkina with an LRM salvo, (just fired one LRM20 for heat reasons) and just for 12 missiles, but still manages to find the gyro twice on the mech and it is now fully immobile.
Mad Cat damage destroys the LL of the Atlas.
Elementals aim their lasers at the Atlas’s H, but miss and hit elsewhere. SRM missiles peppers it badly, and hit the head once more, and then destroys its LA and nails the gyro once.
Concentrated short range weapons on the Elementals finishes off a squad, by the Lao Hu’s LB20x.
Their Mad Cat dodges a lot of weapons fire coming its way, and only took 40+ damage this turn.

Turn 7 – We win init, our Atlas pilot awakens, and we eject it after waiting a bit for the Elementals to base it. Then I move in some Elemental killers. They move forward, and get ready for the end. We base a bunch of their mechs to get kick shots on them. Their Ryoken is based by four of our guys. They focus fire on the PXH IIc.

Ultra AC10s kill three Elementals from our PXH IIc.
Our Highlander’s gauss and LRMs tear into their Mad Cat and get a limb blown off on its RA.
Their Elementals carve out some damage on the PXH IIc. They go internal on the RA and hit a shoulder.
Their Mad Cat follows and destroys the RA.
The Blood Asp’s long range weapons (gauss, 2x LRm20) smash the Mad Cat some more, while the short range weapons (4x medium pulses) finish off the wounded Elemental unit.
Twin gausses from the Uller and Shadow Cat smashes their Mad Cat’s LL and destroys it


Our Pixie falls. Their Mad Cat falls. We kick the Ryoken with the Highlander and destroy its LL, and our Lao Hu kicks its LL, but it‘s not there, damage transfers to LT, and we destroy the LT as well. Our Starslayer missed a kick and falls. Our Blood Asp kicks and kills an Elemental.

Turn 8 – We keep init. I move everything forward, and I stand the PXH easily. We have based all of their remaining units – the downed Ryoken and Mad Cat, and the unwounded Loki, and the two Elemental squads.


Here’s what they do to us.

They stab fire into our PXH IIc with everything they can muster. They don’t have a lot left. They do 40+ damage to it, and hit a pair of leg actuators and it falls again.

We drop the unwounded Loki A after focusing 120+ damage onto it. The Blood Asp destroys its LA but then hits the machine gun ammo in its…center torso and it explodes. Who puts ammo there?

The Starslayer stood, based their Mad Cat, and fired everything into it, and hit its engine 4x in the LT, RT, and CT. Our PXH IIc, which was becoming a nice Elemental killer, took out two more soldiers. Longshot’s Vulture Prime finished them off.

We kicked the downed Ryoken and destroy its CT with our Uller.

We kick their Elementals and kill two people in the squad that is left.


Turn 9 – We kill the remaining squad of Elementals without taking any major damage. The kill goes to the Shadow Cat’s gauss slug.

We have destroyed all of their units, and captured one pilot.

[Abe Sargent]

Them:

Fire Falcon A, H, LT, LA, LL

Fire Falcon Prime, missing RL, LT, enginex3, LL actuator hit.

Night Gyr, gyro, blacked out pilot

Dragonfly, missing LT, LA, dead pilot

Vulture B, missing LA, RA, gyro, enginex3

Black Lanner, missing RL, LA, RA, LL all four actuators hit

Turkina, reattach RL, missing RA

Mad Cat, reattach RA, missing LL, enginex4

Ryoken LA, H, RL, RA, RT

Loki A, H, LL, RA

Us:

Sha Yu, missing RT.
Bushwacker missing RL, LA, RA, RT


Atlas missing RL, RA, LT, LL, LA, gyro

Phoenix Hawk IIc missing RA

Wolfhound H, LT, LA



Kills – Lao Hux3, PXH Iic, Ha Otoko, Blood Aspx2, Starslayer, Vulture, Uller, Shadow Cat




We salvaged these mechs from that battle:

Fire Falcon Prime, Night Gyr, Dragonfly, Vulture B, Black Lanner Prime, Turkina, Mad Cat,


Fire Falcon A, H, LT, LA, LL
Ryoken LA, H, RL, RA, RT
Loki A, H, LL, RA

We also took 4 injured, but not dead Elemental warriors, and heal them and take them as bondsman.


We have won the JumpShip

[Abe Sargent]

September 16, 3065 - Magnus issues a Trial of Grievance against the honorless Falcons that used mines on the battlefield. That is a surat Inner Sphere tactic and an abuse of the batchall system and against the rules of zellbrigen. Magnus’s Trial is, at first, not acknowledged, but after continuing to push, it is accepted.

A Circle of Equals is drawn up. And the units combine.

The pilot of the Turkina is fine, and she steps in, the leader of the group and the one who approved the tactic.


Magnus steps in as well.

As both are MechWarriors, they are unaugmented (not with armor or mechs or anything)

Magnus is the better pilot (he was on the fast track to a bloodname when we captured him). He has won many Trials of Grievance. He is faster, stronger, and smarter. She is enraged, and he uses that, calling her surat, tell her she is worse than the Inner Sphere trash, because actually knows what honor is, and then not using it. Where is the vaunted Jade Falcon ideal of true honor?

After getting her all worked up, Magnus punches her, and slams her to the ground. After about 15 minutes, a resounding crack is heard, and Magnus steps away. He has broken her neck, and she has died.

The Trial of Grievance is over.


Magnus addresses the assembled Falcons, and tells them to send a message to their people. Let them know what happened this day, and how the Falcons have lost their honor. He tells the Star Colonel that he knew that the violation and mines would be used, and was okay with it, either literally or tacitly. After all, if she had violated Zellbrigen without his okay, we would have killed her himself yesterday.

“We have re-taken your honor. That you learned a lesson about honor from a mercenary? That is your true disgrace”

[Abe Sargent]

September 17, 3065 – Didn’t want to stay too long and wear out that non-existent welcome. We gather the captured Odyssey JumpShip:

The Odyssey is a weaponized JumpShip – quite common among the clans. It features 4 ER Large lasers 4 large pulse lasers, 12 medium pulses, and 2 gauss. It also has 8 anti missile systems as well.

This gives us the ability to defend, a bit, against fighters that might see a JumpShip as vulnerable.

It has 4 DropRings.

We send one of the rented JumpShips back (We are just one jump from Lyran Space). On the Odyssey we’ll have everything but the Buccaneer. That will be on the Merchant JumpShip we are renting.


September 18, 3065 – We leave the Alyina system

[Abe Sargent]

September 20, 3065 – We land on the Lyran planet of Blackjack. After a few hours, a local HPG worker brings us a message, that was transmitted to all nearby places. It’s the Blue Star Irregulars. They are a couple of jumps away at Black Earth (just two jumps distant) and they ask for our aid.

October 1, 3065 – We arrive at Black Earth. The Irregulars, with their Fredasa WarShip, Kerensky’s Blues, are here. It was damaged in battle about a year ago, but it’s been barely fixed up. They are garrisoning the world after it was taken in the counter-attack from the Falcons. There are some Falcons here too, JumpShips and a small warship are in system.

They have been having trouble keeping the world. The Lyran Alliance doesn’t want to make the issue official, and we were still nearby, and luckily we were not under a contract.

On Black Earth, the locals really embraced the clan way of life, as opposed to many where they were simmering and wanting to be freed. The Falcon flag flowed freely here. After a year, the people have gotten very restless, and the Falcon knows, so they have send some unusual troops here. A bunch of infantry, battle armor and techs have arrived – not a mech to be seen. They begun to set up MASH stations and salvage camps for the locals, and since they have not attacked, nor been attacked, and they’ve been here for a while.

The Lyrans don’t want to start a ruckus. If the Blue Stars employed us then a units paid by a unit paid by the Lyrans would be doing it, and it would still be official. But if we take them off without being under contract, just of our own good will, then that would be okay.

[Abe Sargent]

October 3, 3065 – Magnus meets with a local leader of the clan forces here. They are here to help the locals and are not here in a military capacity. “Perhaps, but you haven’t won Possession of this world. You don’t have the right to be here.”

The Sphere people don’t care about nuances of possession. .

Maybe not, but we do.


They were told to be here by their leaders, so they are not violating their own orders or anything

Magnus issues a Trial of Refusal against their presence and orders here. They are here without winning a Trial of Possession against the holders, who won the planet from them, they can’t come back until they win it back.

Since when did Jade Falcon start skirting the rules of honor this much? Magnus tells them about the mines used against his team on Alyina and now this. That is beginning to tell a very dangerous story of Jade Falcon. Have you been corrupted by contact with the Inner Sphere?


We agree to a Trial that day.

[Abe Sargent]

They have no mechs at all on planet, and they are unwilling to do a Trial of any sort against ours. But we do have a unit of Elementals we have been using.

We use our one squad of Elementals, against theirs. Both are regular…



I’m not going to sim this, it’ll take a while. I’ll just toss one D6:

1 Total Victory, we only lose one Elemental
2 Normal Victory , we lose 2.
3 Pyrrhic Victory, we lose 3
4 Close loss, we lose 3
5 Normal loss – we lose 4
6 Total Loss – we lose the whole unit, all 5.

There we are. We roll a …3

It was close, but we win, and they agree to leave the world.

Meanwhile, we replace the three dead warriors with three we captured. We also captured one in this battle, so we still have 2 extras.

October 9, 3065 – The last Falcons leave the planet.

Magnus has been talking with the Blue Stars about their finances and WarShip. They are in debt, they really can’t afford to pay us post-battle. We were able to win a trial to force them off world, but if not, we would have had to have peeled off a lot of Elementals and perhaps some friends from the system that dropped down on us. (Fighters) That would have been rough to have compensated for.


Magnus points out that their unit used to be a proud three regiment unit. Now they are down to one after the clans, and they can’t rebuild as long as they have the increasing debt. We could offer them more than money. Imagine what they could do with another battalion of mechs, right now. Just think about it.

[Abe Sargent]

October 12, 3065 – We blast off from Black Earth.

We’re getting tired of teaching the Falcon about honor.

We jump into an uninhabited system halfway between us and our destination. With the KF battery on the Odyssey JumpShip, this is not as much of a big deal, since we can jump again in the case of a misjump.

We jump immediately with the military stuff, and the Merchant will follow after it charges up.

We arrive in the Derf system, about 20 light years coreward (up) from Butler. It’s way back there.

We find a pair of binaries from a PGC here, since Derf is not highly valued. There are no major naval assets here, no WarShips, not a bunch of assault dropships, nothing. Just a handful of JumpShips. And their 20 mechs.

October 15, 3065 – We arrive on planet after issuing a batchall for their Odyssey JumpShip. We’d like to capture another, and send this Merchant one back to Lyran space.

They are defending with all 20 mechs. They choose to defend a stretch of land with a few small hills and ridges, and some woods.

October 17, 3065 – Our Gazelle has landed, and the Trial is about to begin! We had to wait until it landed, since we are using it as the counter –possession if we lose the battle.

[Abe Sargent]

We have sent all of our forces like normal, are arrayed around the battlesite. We like to watch. There are no defending forces watching, like normal. We have 20 mechs of theirs, and we are sending out 16 of our own:

Command Company

Plus the lance of veteran pilots we captured – Night Gyr, Masakari, Turkina, and Mad Cat.

That means we have a heavy set of mechs getting added to the field on our side.


I’m not going to list all of our foes, but expect us to be facing the expected garrison stuff – a variety of IIc, stuff like Hellhound, Vixen, a pair of Spirits, a Pinion, and such. The usual.

Here we go!

[Abe Sargent]

We begin on the east flank, and they are arrayed on the west.

Turn 1 - We win init. I use the Atlas-Highlander-Blood Asp trinity to create a core to charge down the middle, again, with the Masakari and Turkina right behind them, and the Lao Hu, Bushwacker, Night Gyr and Mad Cat on the flanks, and other mechs patrolling the north and south flanks her and there. The map has a handful of small ruins, long since abandoned and destroyed. They move down the center a bit, but also to the north behind some buildings as well. None of the ruins are higher than level one. We focus fire on their Warhammer IIc. They split fire.

With our heavy weapons, we just lance a lot of weapons into their Warhammer IIc. Our Masakari’s ER PPCs, Blood Asps Gauss and LRMs, Ha Otoko’s LRMs, and more.
Our Shadow Cat’s gauss shells fits snugly into the RA crack of their Warhammer Iic and it is blasted off.
Our Highlander smashes the WHM IIc’s LT and nails two medium pulse lasers there.
None of our mechs takes more than 20+ damage.


Their Warhammer took 100+ damage and fell.


Turn 2 – We lose init. We move forward in the center, confident in the strength of that core unit. Meanwhile, we flank with our forces. They mostly keep at the same range, and their Warhammer IIc rises, and moves back a bit. All of the sudden, Elementals pop out from behind multiple places on the north and south flanks. That is a total violation of zellbrigen!

They lied about what units they had to us. They didn’t have any Elementals, they had just 20 mechs.

The first thing we’ll do is finish this round of battle, since the surprise is major. We have a few missile mechs focus on the Warhammer and finish it up while the rest move to a target of opportunity.

We fire on the Warhammer IIc and take out its RL with the Blood Asp and the Ha Otoko hits exposed sections for four engine hits and a gyro.
We have two major targets of opportunity. The first is that Hellhound. We fire a lot of mechs with big guns (gausses) at it first, and that means the Uller, Shadow Cat, Highlander, and the Masakari’s ER PPC which are essentially the same thing. We fill it with holes, and then some other mechs move in to exploit. The Vulture Prime just tears into it with pulses and LRMs20s, as a bridge mech that does both the holes and the missiles. It just lights up the medium mech, and we take out its RT and then its CT. Dead mech. (we’ll also destroy the RA and RL later on)

The other attack of opportunity was their lighter Vixen. It moved fast, but it got here quickly, so we use a lot of pulse lasers and close range weapons on it. If you remember, we captured a Turkina B, and we never changed it. That thing has 2 large pulse, 2 medium pulses, 2 ER larges, and 2 er mediums. And 25/50 heat sinks to fire them all. We basically just carve those energies into the light Vixen, and it’s LA and RL are destroyed. But a lot of other folks miss.

Their Elementals just take out our surprised Starslayer. It was badly positioned, and we lose four parts of it to the savaging it takes.

Meanwhile their mechs attack our Atlas, and carve off 60+ armor. It falls from the damage,


Before turn three begins, Magnus, has decided to declare the opposing unit dezgra. This means it is without honor, tainted, and the rules of engagement are off. We are bringing in all of the nearby units that were watching. The 15 tanks from the Gazelle, the 24 mechs on the sidelines, and our squad of elementals. This is such a violation of zellbrigen, that even our recent Falcon additions are pissed off at these honor-less surats.

Obviously, this is going to end quickly. They have ten units of Elementals, and the 17 healthy mechs left, against 39 of our mechs, 15 vees, and a squad of elementals. We offer no hegira, no safe way out, no honorable surrender.


They are honor-less. Dezgra.

Because of the massively overwhelming odds they are experiencing, we don’t want to risk losing any of our units, so we constantly eject when something gets badly damaged, goes internal, falls down, loses speed from tracks hit on a tank, loses a limb, a H hit that drops the armor, anything that could be a danger sign.

Because of this it takes awhile, but we take them all down.

[Abe Sargent]

Prior to dezgra announcement.

Theirs:


Warhammer IIc, reattach RA, missing RL, enginex4, gyro

Hellhound LT, LA, LL, H,

Vixen missing LA and RL



Ours

Starslayer missing LL, RA, LA, LT


Kill – Ha Otoko, Vulture,


Afterwards, we have killed one of their pilots in a H shot, another from damage to the H, explosion of the gauss, and falls, destroyed five of their mechs outright, and

Captured:

Warhammer Iic, Vixen, Spiritx2, Rifleman IIc, Hellhound, Kraken, Griffin IIc, Peregrine, 2x Baboon, Guillotine Iic, Great Wyrm, Pinion

9 Elemental warriors survived battle.


We take 18 regular warriors as bondsman. Now that we have they tell us that Khan Marthe Pryde, after the Incursion ended, issued an edict that Inner Sphere troops were no longer worthy to even engage in batchalls and such, and to begin to use the system that the IS was exploiting against them, and to be dirty, and exploit them back.

But we have never soiled the rules of the game. So Marthe’s edict seems to have stepped past the bounds of what is honorable, since they have used, multiple times now, honor-less tactics against us.

We were expecting to jump to Wolf Clan space next, but we have somewhere else to be, after we take the JumpShip we won and head out.

[Abe Sargent]

Oct 20, 3065 - After wiping out the local forces, we get a message from a some locals. Apparently, a mercenary command, Storm's Metal Thunder, a regiment strong, and was destroyed in the Jade Falcon incursion. Some of the destroyed members went into hiding here on Derf, and were doing small raids and such against the local Falcons. Now that we've cleared a path, they would either like us to take them with us, or to secure them transit back home (but there are Falcon JumpShips and DropShips in the system, so that probably won't happen).

Magnus agrees to take them with us. We load up 5 mechwarriors without a unit and 2 Devastators, a Spector and a Hunchback, for a total of 9 folks, all badly damaged, and veterans.

This is the second time we’ve helped keep the remnants of a destroyed merc unit and rescued them. There might be others out there we could help out, small units of resistance just trying to stay alive long enough on the hope that someone, somewhere, might come and save them, and throw them that life preserver

We ask if these remnants of the Metal Thunder know of any other folks in a similar set in nearby systems.

Umm….usually they were saved, like the death of the 1st Argyle Lancers on Crimond by the Falcons. They don’t know of any.




Oct 25, 3065 – Clan Ghost Bear just took Rasalhague from the Wolves.

Oct 30, 3065 – We arrive back in Twycross

Nov 1, 3065 – After arriving and speaking with a Diamond Shark representative, we give them footage of the battles, the first showing the mined defenses, and the second the hidden, and secret elementals. We tell them about the edict Khan Pryde issued, and they can see the results. This is useful political ammunition to use against them, and the Sharks are happy to use it. We want to head to Falcon space, and issue a Trial of Refusal against the edict, but we are tired of the Falcons and their crap. Besides, technically, the policy would not be revoked until the Trial was won by us, so they could cheat the Trial.

Typically clans tend to look down on that sort of circular logic – there should never be a hole in the Trail system like that, but the Falcons have recently veered off the deep end it seems. Conner Ward, an ex Falcon, will be pissed when he finds out.


We decide to head somewhere else, at the suggestion of the Sharks. We had intended to hit Clan Wolf space now. Might as well do just that. Seiduts is one jump away from Twycross, and it was Falcon until a few months ago, and Clan Wolf took it from them.

[Abe Sargent]

Nov 9, 3065 – We arrive in Seiduts. Wow are there are a lot of naval assets here. We are immediately flagged by a nearby Clan Wolf Warship, a Vincent mark 42, the Trailblazer.


They want to know who we are, and why we are here. Magnus reveals himself, we are here for a Trial on Seiduts for an escort and safe passage through the Wolf territory and to the Rasalhague system.


They ask us to wait.

About an hour later, a local star colonel contacts us. We want to get to Rasalhague to raid the Ghost Bears, that just took the world from the Wolves. They have forces en route to the border already planned, and we can just go with them, for free, after looking over our units info. We don’t need to fight for it. Alright then.

December 3, 3065 – We arrive at Rasalhague.

The Ghost Bear Leviathan, the largest WarShip ever made is here in the system. Magnus hails his former clan and then demands a batchall for a Trial of Possession for a lance of the latest Ghost Bear banner mechs that rolled off the lines. He misses them and wants them (Grizzly, Kodiak, Ursus, Arcas) to use personally.

They share a laugh and after verifying our information they agree to safcon for us.

[Abe Sargent]

December 7, 3065 - We land on Rasalhague. We have put up four mechs we captured in battle against the Falcons against the lance that we want.

Since the battle is for something smaller, the defending forces are smaller too. They have an elite star of front line mechs ready to punish us for our hope. Meanwhile we are sending five mechs of our own:

Steel in the Blood Asp B
Clan vet in the Turkina B
Longshot in the Vulture Prime
Dagger in the Starslayer
Clan vet in the Cougar Prime (2x Large pulses, 2x LRM10s)

Our Cougar:




Two assaults, one heavy, one medium, and one light, and four clan mechs in there.

We are facing:



Kingfisher Prime (2x large pulse lasers, LRm10, SRM6 Streak, 2x medium pulses, ER Small laser, max armor, 17/34 heat, 4/6, 90 tons)
Vulture B
Vulture Prime
Dragonfly Prime
Dasher B

All clan elite. So, really elite.

They have two heavies, the Kingfisher assault, and then a Dragonfly and Dasher as nasty little scouts. They both have powerful range due to their movement. (Dasher is 10/15 with MASC and the Dragonfly 8/12/8)


They only advantage we have is that we have two massively armored assault mechs, both that are bringing some heat to the battlefield versus one of theirs. The Vultures are a mech with one of the most painful weapons payloads you will find, and they are fast too, but they are a bit of a glass jaw mech. The B is a mech with 2x er large lasers, 3x medium pulses, LRm 20, and 2x SRM6 streak. With 12/24 heat sinks – not enough for everything. They only have 8.5 tons of clan ferro armor, (roughly the equivalent of 10 tons of normal armor). They have the payload of an assault mech, and the armor of a Hunchback. So the Vultures will be our primary targets. If we can take them down, we may have some strong momentum against them.

Our BV is 22126 with these five mechs and pilots. Theirs is 21391.

This is doable.

[Abe Sargent]

We are on the west ,and they on the east. We are using the Lake Area official map, and there is a small lake in the middle. (We have trees to hide in, they have hills and some trees)

Here we go!!!

For deployment, we win init, so they place first, then we drop the Starslayer in the northern part here on the west and see their Vultures in the south by the hill. I position our Vulture to move into some heavy woods beside that lake.

Turn 1 - We win init. Four of their mechs are here in the south by their hills, and I put everything else down there. I run the Cougar into some heavys. Our Vulture follows. Our Turkina moves up, and Blood Asp follows. Their Dasher runs behind the woods. I consider basing it with the Blood Asp. Instead, I don’t move the Blood Asp at all. I split our blood Asp between the Vulture B and their Dasher. Their Dasher moved 12 hexes and has a +4 to hit, so by standing still, I can better nail it.

Our Blood Asp’s medium pulses tear into the Dasher and destroy its RL and LA
Their Kingfisher gets a through armor critical and nails an LRM20 in our Blood Asp. Then another through armor crit hits a foot actuator. Annoying.
Our Starslayer nails the LRM20 and engine one their Vulture B’s LT.

Who falls? Our Blood Asp does, their Vulture does, and their Dasher does.

As it falls, their Dasher nails its engine once in the RT.


Turn 2 – We lose init. Our Starslayer hops over a river and begins to come on down. Their Dasher turns. Our Blood Asp rises and bases their Dasher. I don’t move our Vulture, Turkina or Cougar. Their Vulture stands. I hope they’ll either target me exclusively at the Blood Asp and thus give me good shots with the mechs in the woods, or they’ll target the closer mechs in the woods and give me a chance to keep my Blood Asp alive. Either way, we can take something from this. I can’t get a good bead on the Vulture Prime. Only our Starslayer and Cougar have lines of sight on it. Those two target it though.

Our Turkina destroys the LT of their Vulture B, and then hits the engine once on its CT and shuts it down. We also take out hits LA and LL.
Their Vulture Prime hits our Cougar and goes overheat to smash it hard, and they destroy its La and CT.
Their Kingfisher unloads on our Blood Asp and hits the gyro once.
Before it falls, it’s pulse lasers destroy the Dashers RA, hi ammo in the RT, destroy the C too.

Our Blood Asp falls.

So, we’ve taken each other’s light mechs, untouched each other’s mediums, We have destroyed their heavy and they have savaged our assault. Still pretty close.

Turn 3 – We lose initiative. I leap the Starslayer into a better angle of attack, and then I leave our Blood Asp on the ground. I have to charge out of the woods because we can’t see any of their remaining mechs. Their Dragonfly runs next to our Blood Asp. Only our Starslayer can see their Vulture Prime. But we continue to fire at it, I have to target the Kingfisher.

Uh oh.

Our Turkina;s large pulse laser sheers off the Head of their Kingfisher and it goes internal, and the head blows off. Dead mech! (The [pilot doesn’t die, the head pops off, much like a arm or leg pops off as well).
Their Dragonfly finishes off our wounded Blood Asp by destroying its RT and hitting the engine once in the LT. Dead mech.

Their Vulture nails our Starslayer for 40+ and we hit it for 20+ no falls though.

Turn 4 – We lose init. Our Vulture runs around behind theirs, and our Turkina leaps out. We leap the Starslayer close to their Vulture, and they pull back so we can’t see it.

Our Vulture nails the gyro and engine once each on their Vulture.
Our Turkina destroys the LL of their Dragonfly
They deals 80+ damage to our Vulture with just two mechs and hit our LPL and LRM20

Only the D Fly falls. Not even their gyro-smitten guy does (nice to be clan elite)

Turn 5 – We lose again, and I hop the Starslayer over. Their Vulture bases it. Battle is behind the level four hills, and our Turkina can’t get over. We back up our Vulture, and our Turkina moves over. We alpha strike the Vulture with our Starslayer. It hits the Vulture’s RT and destroys it, and then hits the gyrox2 with SRMs. Their Vulture is down. Meanwhile they destroy the LL and RA on ours.

Our mech falls and our pilot blacks out. Which doesn’t matter.

With just a legged Dragonfly left, we offer hegira, and they accept.

[Abe Sargent]

We also take the four mechs we won – Grizzly, Ursus, Kodiak, and Arcas.



Theirs:


Vulture B, missing RT, LA, LL and enginex3

Dasher H, LL

Kingfisher, reattach H

Vulture Prime, RT, gyrox2


Ours:

Cougar H, LT, RT, LL, RL, RA

Blood Asp, gyro, missing RT, enginex3

Vulture Prime missing LL and RA


Kills – Turkinax2, Blood Asp, Starslayer,



We salvage their Vulture Prime, Vulture B, and Kingfisher. We lost the Cougar.

We took a bondsman though, the severed H removes it from the electrical current, and there is no ejection, so she is ours. One elite bondsman.



For most of the mission, we have not had Magnus use a mech, he has been commanding things from afar, but he takes the Kodiak as his personal mech from here on out.

[Abe Sargent]

December 11, 3065 – We have been discussing potential Trials with the local Bears. Maybe for a DropShip or a JumpShip or something. But they really aren’t that interested in doing so, and it would require a huge battle. On the other hand, we could use some more aerospace fighters. So we inquire about a Trial for some of those.

They’ll give us a star of fighters, plus five pilots, for a star of garrison mechs, plus five clansmen we took in this campaign, strait up, if we lose.


We agree, and in a similar manner, we’ll have a star on star battle.

Us:

Magnus in Kodiak
Dagger in Starslayer
Clan elite in Kingfisher
Clan vet in Mad Cat Prime
Clan vet in Shadow Cat Prime

Since she knows the mech, and it was fixed very quickly, our captured pilot will be using the Kingfisher we just took. Meanwhile Magnus is taking the Kodiak out for a spin

Kodiak? It’s one of the nastier close range guys you’ll see:

100 tons
4/6 movement
Almost max armor (280 out of 307 possible)
20/40 heat sinks
Ultra AC20
ER Large Laser
2x SRM 6 Streak
8x ER Medium Lasers

We have a long range weapon to harass a bit with, and then its all about opening holes and using missile and lasers to exploit them. We only have two tons of ammo for the Ultra, and you can go through it quickly if not careful, but that’s okay, because you can fire a massive quantity of lasers at folks too (8 ER Mediums makes 40 heat).




Our foes are all clan elite:

Man o War Prime
Gladiator Prime
Black Hawk (Nova) Prime
Fenris Prime
Ryoken Prime

So they are using three mediums and two assaults. Not a spread out group. We have two assaults, a heavy, and two mediums as well.

They offer to have us fight in the same place as last time, it’s been cleaned. Why not?

[Abe Sargent]

Turn 1 – I set up similarly to last time – Mad Cat to take the woods, with the Starslayer and Shadow Cat, up top since they both hop around real nice like. Our Kodiak and Kingfisher are beneath the woods and should be quick in to smash. We win init and they move to the top of the hills, I hop our two mediums to lines of attack with their long range weaponry, and then our Mad Cat takes the spot our Vulture was in before, and then we charge ahead, Kodiak leading with Magnus enjoying his time here. Four of our mechs (not the Mad Cat) can see their Man O War, and that’s good target.

We fire the Kodiak first on the 80 ton assault mech (with light weapons, by the way) and savage it with the Ultra ac20 shot hitting it twice, followed by some lasers.
Their Ryoken’s ER Large Laser lances the H of our Mad Cat, and goes internal – no crit though. Nasty. That could have been a lot worse!
Our Shadow Cat’s gauss opens another hole, and Starslayer’ large lasers do too, and then our Kingfisher’s accurate lasers and SR6 streak follow, and we hit its SRM ammo in the LT and it ignites. Boom!

They carve damage into our Kodiak . It took 60+ and Magnus is fine. Their Man o War hits the ground so hard and fast that it breaks the hip on its LL doing so.

Turn 2 – We lose init. We do similar to last time. Our hoppers leap over the river to the north, and with some cover. They try to stand with the Man o War, and after one failure, they do. But it’s a walking target at this point. Their Fenris runs around behind our Mad Cat’s position and the Black Hawk leaps next to it, and inside some light woods. We fire some mechs at the Man O War, but we concentrate fire on their Ryoken, except for the Mad Cat, who wants to punish their Black Hawk.

Our Shadow Cat’s gauss snaps into a Ryoken, and our Starslayer misses it.
Our Mad Cat mostly misses the Black hawk
Our Kodiak though just launches a bunch of missiles and lasers at the Man o War and destroys is RA, and hits the gyro once on it, and nails another foot actuator.
Their mechs mostly miss the Mad Cat.
And their Man o War hit the Kodiak, but not even a full 20 damage.

Their Man O War falls and destroys its injured right leg

No physical combat.

Turn 3 – We finally win init. They move off the Mad Cat, we leap to the center where some woods are, and push on the flank. They turn the Man o War and move the Gladiator into a nice firing lane with woods and partial cove protecting it. We focus on the Ryoken. Mostly.

Our Starslayer smashes the Man o war with lasers medium and long, and SRMS too. It takes out the gyro and engine once it and its down.
Their Gladiator’s gauss rifle hits the Kodiak, goes internal, and gets a limb blown off on its RL.
Our Kodiak, before it goes down, tears into the damaged Ryoken and devastates its RT and hits the large laser in the RA.
Then our Shadow Cat destroys the Ryoken’s LA.
Our Mad Cat and Kingfisher fires a lot of stuff at that Gladiator and we begin the process of denuding its armor off

Their Gladiator took 60+ and is standing, their Ryoken fell and hit two actuators in the LL, one of which is a hip on its RL. Our Kodiak obviously tumbles as well.

Turn 4 – We win init. We move the Mad Cat next to their downed Ryoken after it can’t rise. Their Fenris bases the rear of our Mad Cat. Their Black Hawk leaps out and away. Our Kingfisher moves in to flank the Gladiator from behind while our hoppy mechs leap on top of the hill. This should push them away from the downed Kodiak.

The Gladiator can’t hit the downed Kodiak from where it fled, so it targets the Starslayer and hits a bit. Nothing serious.
Their Fenris does little to the Mad Cat
The Mad Cat turns and hit the Fenris twice with its RA weapons while it smashes the Ryoken up into pieces after destroying its CT.
The Gladiator is damaged by the ongoing weapons – gauss slug, and the Kingfisher unloading on it, and it is internal in for places with the Starslayer hits its gauss rifle in the la, which explodes and destroys the arm. The mech took an SRM shot to the H as well.
Black Hawk ER Medium Lasers go internal on our Mad Cat and hit its LA shoulder and large laser.

Then the Gladiator falls, the pilot takes damage (that’s 4 now) and blacks out. No one else falls. They have two mechs standing – Fenris, and Black Hawk, and we have an almost defeated Kodiak. We offer them hegira, and they accept.

[Abe Sargent]

Theirs –

Man o war missing LT, RA, gyrox2, Rl, enginxex3

Ryoken RA, LL, H, RT, LT,

Gladiator destroyed LA, pilot blacked out.



Ours –

Kodiak, reattach RL.


Kills – Starslayer, Mad Cat


We salvage their Man of War and Gladiator

We capture the elite pilot

And we take 5 omnifighters:

2x Avar
2x Turk
Jengiz


We have five fighters, plus pilots.

We don’t have the transport for them though – not of our DropShips or JumpShips can carry fighters.

All we can do is pack them carefully in the Buccaneer, and then, on arrival, unpack them – it’ll take hours to do it right. No fast deployment or anything like that.

We fight a few minor Trials over the next few days for small things, and we get another 5 suits of elemental armor, with no one in them, and now have 2 squads of Elementals.

[Abe Sargent]

December 22, 3065 – We launch from Rasalhague. I want to take some naval assets, like DropShips or some such, before beginning to head home. I don’t want to take anything else from Ghost Bear, but the Wolf is next door. Maybe we could just pop on over?

Actually, the Falcons pissed us off, but I don’t want to wear out our welcome. They might do some nasty stuff to us.

We launch and arrive at Dawn.

We issues a Batchall for a Carrier class DropShip we use to carry our fighters better. It’s a common DropShip and can be found in all of the clans. They have a pair in system, but we don’t have any aerospace assets, and they don’t want to fight for a DropShip over mechs on planet. They refuse the batchall.

Magnus talks with the locals, and sends them our full dossier of forces. He points out that we never have cheated and our record is spotless. We haven’t always had that returned, the Falcon surat just cheated us by hiding an entire Binary of elementals on the battlefield, and ambushed us with them. But we are still with honor.

Wait what?

Absolutely.

We are granted safcon.

[Abe Sargent]

December 26, 3065 – We talk about the Jade Falcon Trial, where they intentionally did not give us information about the Elementals, and then used them to attack us. When they tell them we declared their unit dezgra and attacked it and wiped it out , they enjoy that. Despite sharing similar Crusader beliefs, Falcon and Wolf have always been at odds. They are only allies out of necessity at times.

They ask what world we took out their entire defense on. Magnus smiles. Do you want to take it? Perhaps!

Then how about this. We do a Trial for the DropShip with crew. If we lose, then not only will we provide the location of the battle, but we’ll give you footage and tell you who else knows, so your clan and they can work together against the Falcons.


Hmmm….

That they agree to.


Sometimes it’s just about finding out what they want.

They want a quick little battle to figure this out. They don’t want to lose a bunch of mechs and a DropShip too just for some info. So we agree to a quick proxy battle with one mech against one mech. We’ll even use garrison mechs for it.


Magnus will be in the Kodiak

They have an elite pilot in their Behemoth.

The Behemoth is a 100 ton cracker of a mech, with 3/5 movement, no XL engine, 18 tons of armor, 10/20 heat sinks and its weaponry is simple and elegant. 2 gauss rifles, 2 large pulse lasers, and an small pulse in the head.

We have 5327 BV and they have 6722

Can we win this solo match?

[Abe Sargent]

We are fighting with some trees and other random elevation, it’s hear a bog, so we have some swamps around too.

Turn 1 - Magnus can’t see our foe. We win init and run at some woods.

Turn 2 – Same. We run into some heavy.

Same with turns 3 & 4.

Turn 5 – We lose init, run 6 into some light woods behind heavies in front of a small lake in the northeast corner, and we spot their Behemoth across the water and by some woods. They hit us more, since we are still at distance.


Turn 6. We lose init. We back out of sight.

Turn 7 – We win init. I move to closer to where they were behind some trees. They our maneuver us and again long weapons fire nails us more than them

Turn 8 – W have to close so we just run two space,s but we get 5 away, across the lake, and that’s short range of our AC20 ultr,a which carves into them twice. We took 40+ they 60+. We also hit their gauss ammo in the RT.

Turn 9 – We lose again We walk into the heavy woods in front of us. They ,move to better range. We nail them with the Ultra AC20 again twice, and hit some actuators. Missiles and mediums follow and we dole out 80+ to them this turn. Their gauss snaps into our RL, and a larger pulse into it again and they go internal, but hit nothing. We took 40+. No one falls.

Turn 10 – We don’t move, and they walk into some woods. We smash them twice again with the AC20 ultra and just destroy their RA. Lasers and missiles fire into the enemy mech and destroy their hip actuator on the RL and smash the engine once and gyro once on their CT. They reciprocate by smashing our LA twice and destroying it, and we both fall.

Turn 11 – We rise, and they fail to once, and then they do. Ultra AC 20 just devastates their mech, and destroys the RT and RL. SRMs cascade in and finish it off with a shot to the CT a few times, which is already open, and smash the gyrox2 and enginex1. It responds by gausses and a large it still has (the other was in the destroyed arm) and takes down our ultra ac20 and blasts off our RL’s external armor and nails the hip

We both fall. They are immobilized, and that is a win for us.


Them – Missing RA, gyrox3, enginex2, RL, RT

Us – Missing LA, hip, Ultra ac20.



We have won a Carrier DropShip and salvaged the Behemoth

[Abe Sargent]

A day later Wolf still wants the information, so they make us an offer. They will fill the Carrier with five more high quality Clan Wolf omnifighters in exchange for the information they want. We tell them we need pilots too, and they won’t give away their pilots, but Magnus points out that they have more than just Wolf pilots. After a few hours, they give us 5 bondsmen they captured from other clans, 3 Jade Falcon, 1 Ghost Bear and 1 Star Adder.

Welcome to your new unit boys!

The Carrier is a strong fighter carrier, it can carry 10 fighters, its very well built, clan made and designed, well armored, fast, and has a lot of weapons. It’s good in a battle as needed.

[Abe Sargent]

January 4, 3066 – We leave Dawn behind.

We have a battalion of mechs, plus tons of spare mechs, parts, and extra fighters that can be assigned to the salvage any time we need them, plus 2 squads of elementals, 15 tanks, 10 fighters with clan pilots, two clan JumpShips with KF batteries and a powerful unit.

After leaving behind with just a battalion and some DropShips and Trumps, that’s not a bad place to be. We have gained a full company of forces at home and more.

It’s about time to start heading back home. Before we do, Magnus looks around to see if there are any things we could or take. Any contracts running around? Perhaps from Rasalhague? Combine? Cordon?


Well, look at this, we do have one from the DCMS.