Full Throttle Lemmings: Bringing it home (5150: Mecha Combat)

 "Good to see you back in the saddle, Anna. Right, we've cleared the way, so this time we're going in. It will be the full team again. The goal is the Kurita base. We're going to cause some chaos and hopefully make it uneconomical for them to stay here. Any questions?"

Anna and Mike shook their heads.

"Good. This is the layout of the ground. As you can see, we'll advance through these woods in the centre and form up on the edge of them. Once we know where the bogeys are, we'll aim to use the line of hills between us and the bad dudes to sneak up. We're going in at night to make this easier. There's a low hill off to our right flank. We'll swing round from the centre to that hill. Once past that, we have a clear run at their main depot. The main issue will be that they have not fielded their heaviest mechs against us yet, so we need to be canny and try to take them out piecemeal. Our goal here is to clear the operations area. That will give us a straight run at the main Kurita depot. Remember, ff they gang up on us, we're toast, so we need to pick them off one at a time."

Anna and Mike did not seem particularly enthralled by that last comment, but they understood. They were mech pilots, after all, and this was what they lived for. And died for sometimes.

"Right, mount up. We're moving out in 30 minutes."

They all headed for their mechs and the start-up checks that Jennie insisted upon, surprisingly given her cavalier attitude to most other routine tasks.

"Ready, Lemmings?"

"Aye!"

"Sure!"

"Ok. Move out. You know the plan."

Control had reported bogeys ahead in a rough line covering the approach to the Kurita depot. One seemed to be in the open, so the Lemmings headed towards that one. Moving out as a tight group, they advanced through the woods until Anna had sight of the bogey on the right flank.

"Looks like a decoy, Lemming 1. I have a bad feeling about this."

The Lemmings moved as a group into the lee of the nearest hill. Anna manoeuvred her Locust to the crest line for a view over to the next bogey.

"Kurita Archer ahead!"

She backed her Locust swiftly back to join the other two.

The Archer's pilot quickly ducked back towards the remaining bogey. So far none of the bogeys had moved, which made it feel like the Lemmings were walking into an ambush.

Jennie suddenly felt unsure of what to do and the Lemmings waited where they were. The decision was soon taken out of her hands as the Archer advanced to the crest of the hill above them. The Lemmings got the first shots in, but apart from some minor damage to the Archer's left arm, their shots all went wide or churned up dirt just in front of the Archer. The Archer returned fire and the Locust's left leg flew off threw the air, taking a direct hit from a rocket that melted the armour and crushed the substructure beneath it. A volley from its other rocket launcher blasted Anna's Locust to bits. The explosion lit up the night sky as the Locust's chest disintegrated and its turbine blew up.

"ANNA!" screamed Jennie as she saw her oldest friend blasted to smithereens before her eyes.

Jennie and Mike let rip with everything they had, but again their shots were poorly aimed and just scratched the Archer. It returned fire. A volley from its heavy lasers blasted the legs off Mike's Wolverine. To her relief, Jennie saw Mike's autoeject deploy.

While this was going on, the other bogey was slowly approaching closer. It moved up to join the Archer on the crest of the hill, but turned out to be static on the scanner. Kurita was clearly struggling with funding the defence of their facilities now that the Lemmings had trashed so many of their mechs.

It was now the Kurita goon's turn to dither. Who knew what was going in his cockpit but he just stood there as Jennie fired everything she had at him. It caused little damage, but he decided to withdraw to cover.

Jennie followed up, taking up a position on the crest of the next hill. She fired again before the goon could react. Although most of her shots bounced off the larger mech's armour, she still blew chunks off its leg and a volley from her own rocket launcher blew its lower torso apart, just as she brought her PPG to bear and smashed a hole straight through its chest. The Kurita mech made an even more spectacular explosion than Anna's Locust had as its turbine went critical and exploded.

With the battlefield clear of enemy mechs, the way was open to the Kurita compound. Jennie's mech was a mess from missile and laser hits, but that could be repaired easily, and Kurita had no real defences left. She marched her Thunderbolt towards the compound, her faced hardened into a grim mask. She would make them pay for the loss of her friend.

Epilogue

The campaign had been costly for the Lemmings. Anna's loss hit Jennie particularly hard. Neither Mike's Wolverine nor Anna's Locust were recoverable either. Fortunately, they had been able to salvage and repair two of the knocked out Kurita mechs, so Mike was now back in the cockpit of a Wolverine, although this one would need repainting to something other than Kurita red.

The money for the ticket would tide them over to the next ticket though, and that was what they were here for. The worker's collective was happy with what they had done and was going to ensure they got good references too. The Full Throttle Lemmings were on their way.

Campaign

Lemming morale: 4

Kurita morale: 0

Despite the losses, the Lemmings achieved their goal and won the scenario. They then scored two more successes than the Kurita goons on the campaign morale table, so Lemmings morale went up one point while Kurita lost a point taking them to zero. That signals the end of the campaign.

A future campaign will see the Lemmings starting with a campaign morale of 5 because they won this campaign. On top of that, I shall deploy all my Lemming mechs, so that they have a full platoon of mechs available.

Afterthoughts

That was a rough scenario, even though the Lemmings only rolled up one opponent. The key problem was that I made a couple of mistakes, like forgetting to use Jennie's Marksman skill when rolling for hit location, and not applying Duck Back results on hits that failed to do damage until late in the game. No idea why I forgot both of these given that they are clearly written on the record sheets and reaction charts, but shit happens. I think the Duck Back issue would have made a difference to the outcome of this game, because the Lemmings consistently won the In Sight tests, meaning that they could have shot at the Archer and forced it to duck back before it could shoot at them. Lessons learned. I'll remember next time (possibly!).

I was also spectacularly disappointed with my dice. The Archer took up position at the crest of a hill, which meant that its lower half was protected and could not be damaged. I then promptly rolled leg hit after leg hit when the Lemmings did hit it. Worse yet, the Lemmings missed so many shots. I think the dice were making up for all the hits in previous games.

The final lesson from this mini-campaign is not to put pilots you like in light mechs. The Locust is great for scouting, and the way spotting and In Sight tests work means that it can pop up to spot and then duck back to avoid the consequences of spotting, which is very useful. However, the second it starts getting shot at, it is almost certain to be knocked out unless the enemy has only the lightest weaponry.

As far as this iteration of the 5150 rules goes, I like it. The games are quick and it will benefit from campaign play rather than single scenarios. I kind of wish light mechs were more durable, but I'll just have to keep that in mind when assigning pilots to scenarios, and also make sure that the light mechs never get too close to the main action. Some aspects of the rules require interpretation, but I'm ok with that. The main thing for me was the timing of when you react to something happening. So, does a mech duck back after you fire your first weapon at it and not cause damage, or do you fire everything and then apply all the effects? I interpreted it that all the weapons were linked by the fire control computer, so you fire everything you want to at one target and then apply effects, before turning to the next target, but I don't recall reading that in the rules anywhere. Maybe I missed it. I'm not sure how mech losses will affect campaign play. I suspect that once you start losing, then you will continue losing unless you get a lucky scenario or two and you could run out of mechs at some point, so maybe campaigns need to be relatively short. We'll see.