It's time to use the mechs I painted. I got the Battlech: Mercenaries set recently. It includes a mercs mini-campaign in the Chaos Campaign format, which I have used as the inspiration for this game. The mini-campaign consists of a single mercenary ticket where the mercs are guarding or attacking a mining facility. Given that 5150: Mecha Combat is eminently suited to solo play, I have decided to start there.
Galtor in 3025
Jennie Raytor was annoyed by the amount of paperwork she had to do as leader of the Full Throttle Lemmings. It almost felt like she did more replying to enquiries than she did actual fighting these days. She sighed. This was typical of any job, she supposed. You did the thing you liked and were good at until you got promoted past it to something you did not enjoy. In her case, she had only herself to blame. After all, she had founded the mercenary company Full Throttle Lemmings, so she had to take responsibility for keeping it going. It had all been so much easier back when she first set up in business. Her mind drifted back to those early days..
Wibbly wobbly timey wimey flashback cut
Zhongsha in 3014
The camera focuses on Jennifer "The Lemming" Raytor. Her face is enthusiastic as she explains her plan to her close friends Anna Dapter and Mike Hunt.
"So, you see, we take our mechs and set up on our own. That way we don't have to take orders from any of those stuffed shirts at high command. You've seen how they are with their spit and polish and saluting on every corner. We could be our own bosses and decide where we go and what we do ourselves."
Anna and Mike look doubtful. They know that Jennie has always had issues with authority. She has a tendency to charge into the unknown without thinking, hence her nickname "The Lemming". They both know that this plan will go one of two ways. It will either crash and burn in the most horrible fashion, or it will succeed beyond even anything that Jennie can imagine.
"Ah, what the heck! Let's do it." Anna gave up, "Me and my besties against the universe. At least we get to work together and the brass won't split us up."
"Stuff it," declared Mike, "Why not?"
Jennie hugged them and told Mike that the drinks were on him.
Zhongsha in 3015
Jennie squealed!
"Guys, we got a contract! A worker's collective is being harrassed by some Kurita-connected mining company. They want us to take our mechs and help fend off the Kurita goons. We're going to be eating something other than ramen noodles from now on."
Anna looked tired. The past six months since leaving military school had been hard with little work and little money. She perked up a little at the news. This sounded like the start of something big. Mike was barely paying attention until Anna whooped, but he refused to get his hopes up. Still, a bit of action and some better food would not go amiss.
A few days later, the three of them were on site and setting out on patrol. Their liaison officer, Michael Stand, had briefed them and they had studied the lie of the land. Now it was time to put all that to the test.
A Short Patrol
TwoHourWargame rules generally scale well, so I am starting with a mercenary team of three mechs to keep things simple. One mech will go on patrol while the other two can potentially arrive as reinforcements. This is smaller than the standard game which can feature up to about a company of mechs, so I shall scale down the reinforcement rolls to match my starting scale, assuming any are generated.
Jennie had decided that she would run the first patrol in her Thunderbolt. It was the heaviest mech they had and would be able to hold its own, while Anna's Locust and Mike's Wolverine remained in reserve, ready to join her if needed. As they needed to maintain a constant patrol schedule, it was better that each of them had some downtime unless they were absolutely needed on the battlefield.
She settled into the Thunderbolt's cockpit and fired up the turbine. It's whine was reassuring as she flipped through the checks. All lights green. Coolant gurgled through her chillsuit, designed to keep her from frying as heat built up from the engines and weapons. The neuralink helmet with her Lemming call-sign on it was giving solid feedback. She was ready.
"Lemming 1 moving out!"
"Roger that, Lemming 1. We've got you green on the scanner. No unknowns in the immediate vicinity. You are good to go. Proceed along the route. We'll monitor from here."
The legs of the Thunderbolt rose and fell as she guided it out of the compound. Puffs of dust rose up around it as Jennie guided it along the patrol route. It had been a dry summer, and the earth was dusty and torn up by heavy plant from the mine. The roads were really just dirt tracks, which did not help either. As dust rose around her mech's feet, Jennie directed it towards the small town of Serendipitous Longing, or Dorm 427 to give it the company name. It was here that the workers mainly lived. To her left was a wood. On the east side of the town, there were low hills, but all seemed quiet.
"Lemming 1, we see you approaching Dorm 427 from the south. Take care. Three possible bogeys north of you. We're tagging them on your display."
"Roger that, Control. Moving to intercept Bogey 1."
"Hold up, Lemming 1. We count two more bogeys in the middle of Dorm 427."
Jennie cursed and paused a moment as she looked at her display. The hesitation was enough for the first bogey to round the outskirts of the town.
"Control, this is Lemming 1. Contact! I repeat contact!"
Her hands moved as fast as they could to the firing stud. Luckily, the pilot of the approaching Phoenix Hawk seemed as surprised as her. She cursed as the display showed locking on but it seemed an eternity before she got tone. She hammered the firing stud to give the enemy mech everything she had.
She muttered as her light lasers melted armour on the enemy's chest and gut but did little more than cosmetic damage. Her real focus was on her PPG. Crimson fire streamed from her mech's right arm as she directed it at her opponent's head. She grunted with satisfaction as the mech's head exploded and the Phoenix Hawk collapsed backwards.
"Eat that, ya muddy funster!"
She breathed a short-lived sigh of relief, as another bogey approached through the town.
The Kurita Shadowhawk appeared from behind a building in the town centre, its pilot intent on revenge. Jennie swung her mech round as fast as she could, it's myalomar steel frame groaning in protest. The noise was heightened by the sound of her rocket launcher cycling through its reload sequence. Her heart hammered as she waited to get tone again. The enemy mech was sighting on her as she cut loose with everything once more. The heat rose in her cockpit and she was quickly drenched in sweat. The fast shot saw lasers and missiles impact the building around the Shadowhawk, throwing up clouds of concrete, but the PPG blazed crimson energy and punched a hole straight through the Shadowhawk's chest. The last she saw of it was the Kurita pilot ejecting as she pushed her trusty Thunderbolt on into Dorm 247. As she did so, one of the bogeys suddenly disappeared from her screen. She was not sure what it had been, but it was definitely not a mech.
"Control, this is Lemming 1. Scratch two bogeys. The third was nothing but I got a bad feeling about all this. Too many Kurita goons patrolling round Dorm 247."
Jennie's course through the town lead her from cover to cover towards the next bogey. She had paused for a quick breather, glad that the cockpit had cooled down a bit, when the bogey emerged from around the corner of another building.
"Control, contact. I repeat, contact."
Jennie was jumpy but still got her shot off before the Stinger could do anything. Chunks of concrete rained down around it as her missiles took out part of someone's living room. Again, her trusty PPG rained crimson hell on the Kurita goon and the Stinger exploded into a thousand pieces taking its pilot with it.
"Scratch one more hostile, Control. Continuing the patrol."
Jennie followed the patrol route, finding that the last bogey was actually a herd of the local cattle.
As Jennie reached the end of her patrol, Anna's Locust hurried up to the start point of the patrol route.
"Am I too late?"
"What do you think? Come on, lets get back to the bay and down a couple of brews. Mike can take the next patrol, while the Collective recovers that Shadowhawk. We earned some salvage today and that is worth celebrating."
The Campaign
I wasn't going to turn this into a full campaign, because I'm just getting used to this iteration of the THW rules, but it is fun to work through all parts of them in these training games, and the campaign system is really simple. So...
Full Throttle Lemmings: campaign morale starts at 3 and neither increased nor went down.
Kurita Goons: campaign morale also starts at 3 (these are not their first line troops) but goes down to 2 because they lost the campaign morale roll.
That's really all there is to it. Winning battles gives you chance of improving your morale. Losing them gives you a chance of losing morale. If either side drops to morale 0, they give up and go home in disgrace.
There is also an experience roll to see if your pilot improves after a battle. Jennie is Rep 5 so she needs to roll a 6 on 1d6 to become better. She did not learn anything she did not already know in this fight.
Because they did a Patrol Mission and won, the next mission for the Lemmings will be an Assault mission on the Kurita forces.
There are rules for recovering mechs and injured pilots. Those are not relevant for the Lemmings this time around and I am assuming that there is a horde of anonymous Kurita goons to be encountered, so I shall not be tracking them. However, in a future campaign I shall give each side access to all the mechs I have painted for them and shall keep track of mechs and pilots for both sides, including making my own encounter table based around those mechs. I like that type of campaign management!
Final Thoughts
I spent a lot of time flipping through the rulebook, but that was to be expected. I need to print out the charts and keep them separate, which will make things easier.
Jennie got lucky with the In Sight tests and got to fire first each time. That was crucial to her taking out all the enemy mechs without taking any damage. Also, the PPG is nasty. Most mechs will lose body parts if it hits them and smaller mechs are just toast even if it is just a glancing shot. I am a little concerned that my light mechs will be far too vulnerable in these games, but I do have ideas about how to use them as scouts, so we shall see how that goes.
There are a couple of things in the rules I was not too sure about and I suspect I played them wrong to my own disadvantage, but the game went smoothly enough and was quick, so I am not too bothered.
It should not be too much hassle scaling the forces up up to a team of three mechs as a starting force or even to a squad of six. But first, I have to see if Jennie, Anna and Mike can survive long enough for this to be the actual origin story of the Full Throttle Lemmings.
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