There is much satisfaction to be had from marking off hit boxes on mecha sheets.
I set up the first of the scenarios in the rulebook that comes with the Battletech: A Game of Armored Combat and played it out solo to refamiliarise myself with the rules. The scenario features two identical lances fighting until one side is no longer combat effective. I took control of one side and left the other to be controlled by a solo bot I found online.
The forces (each side had the same):
- Locust
- Commando
- Catapult
- Shadow Hawk
The Game
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| The good guys charge in from the left (multicoloured mechs). The bad guys enter from the right (red and unpainted mechs). |
The game was fairly simple and I made many tactical mistakes, resulting in my lance losing its light mechs early on when the bot sneezed on them. Who knew my Locusts and Commandos were so vulnerable and the enemies' light mechs were built of hardened adamantium plates? Lesson learned.
Beyond my tactical mistakes, I also concluded that my dice were fifth columnists determined to sabotage my chances. They missed easy shots, while the enemy poured home all kinds of improbable hits. It only took a single internal hit for the enemy to score a critical on my Commando that detonated its ammo and blew it to smithereens, for example. Meanwhile, the enemy mechs took hit after hit to their internal structure and never once suffered a critical hit.
The bot added a layer of uncertainty to the proceedings. For some reason, the enemy Commando spent a lot of the game running away from my force or hiding behind the enemy Catapult. It's pilot clearly saw what happened to my Commando and decided not to suffer the same fate!
It was a dice-intensive game, but with four mechs per side it was larger than was comfortable for solo play and took a lot of energy and brain power to keep everything straight in my head. As a result, I played a couple of turns a night over the course of a couple of weeks. In the end, I finally got my game together and ganged up on the enemy light mechs, taking them out, then turned on the Shadow Hawk and Catapult. This became a slugging match where the enemy Shadow Hawk had no armour left at all, but stubbornly refused to suffer a life-ending critical hit, fighting to the very last internal structure point on its central torso.
Meanwhile, my Catapult ran out of missiles and had to close on the enemy Catapult which had also run out of missiles. In a brutal slog, both mechs blasted bits off each other until only the core of each remained. The two mechs faced each other and went for their lasers. Mine missed. The enemy hit. My pilot was forced to eject from their destroyed mech.
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| They don't look it in this picture but both mechs are trailing armour plates and shedding bolts at this point |
My Shadow Hawk limped over to the enemy Catapult and faced it down. The duel could have gone either way. Both mechs were trailing critical bits of their structure and dropping bolts all over the place, but the gods spoke and the last mech standing was my Shadow Hawk.
This was a brutal game in many ways, but good fun.
The Second Game
The second game was the second scenario in the rule booklet. It was much shorter. It featured a Battlemaster attempting to break back through to its own lines. A Wolverine, a Commando and a Locust were all that was in its way. I chose to pilot the Battlemaster myself and let the bot take the others.
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| The Battlemaster enters from the left. The enemy is massed behind the hills awaiting their chance |
I raced towards the enemy, trying to use cover to stop them from ganging up on me. As I neared the enemy, I managed to single out the Commando. After a huge number of missed shots, a PPC to the chest followed up by a couple of laser shots disintegrated the Commando. The Battlemaster's cockpit was heating up but it was still manageable. Time to single out the Locust. Damn, it was fast and hard to hit! A lucky PPC shot took its leg off and it fell to the ground. I kicked it until it stopped moving.
But the Wolverine had moved up on me while I was doing this. No way I was going to escape the faster mechs so I took cover and fired a series of shots, needing only a 6+ to hit. Every single shot missed. The Wolverine blasted my Battlemaster's head, ripping all the armour away and melting bits of the internal structure. Blood dripping from my head, I tried to focus on hitting the Wolverine with everything I had. The situation was critical, so I went full alpha strike. Again, every single shot missed and as the heat built up in my cockpit, the Wolverine took aim and fired. It was the last thing I ever saw.
Two turns, two head hits, no more Battlemaster. Wildly improbable shooting from the bot, but a great fun game. From a solo perspective, having a non-combat related goal is more interesting than just blasting the other side, as this game showed.
Final Words
I have found other solo bots online, including scenarios, so I shall try some of those out, and am very tempted to combine them with the mercenary campaign rules found in the Mercenaries boxed set and in Hotspots: Hinterlands. Restricting solo games to a couple of mechs a side max will reduce fatigue and make the games go more quickly. I can easily play larger games if ever I find a group to play with, but I can see the option for a nice little solo campaign building up the Full Throttle Lemmings using yet another different rules set. It will be like Fox Tales with much more situational humour and dad jokes (not that Fox Tales is not already the best Battletech fiction around, but, you know)!
On the solo front, I cannot wait for Battletech: Aces to be released. I feel like Alpha Strike and the solo system in the Aces boxes will suit me nicely, although I have not actually played Alpha Strike yet. It is up for playing in the near future though, as soon as I have painted all the mechs from the boxed set. Not sure when that will be though. I am right off painting at the moment.
Hello again, Ruaridh. I played 'classic' BattleTech for 20 odd years, then quit years ago (my only opponent was super extraordinarily lucky - far too extraordinarily lucky, if you get the hint), and I got sick to death of losing almost every game to 'lucky' dice runs of 2, 12, 12, 2, 12, 2, 12 ... which prompted me into quitting ... I'd had enough of that!
ReplyDeleteAfter about 15 years, I got back into it as I had a nasty bout of nostalgia & remembered to 'good old days' (which is always a bad idea) ... but I've found BattleTech has changed far beyond what I remember! Although I've invested again heavily in miniatures, but getting the desired source books & rules has been an exhausting & also very expensive task (and I've refused to pay over £500 for the one book I did want!)
I don't really like what Catalyst have done to BattleTech (and even my friend thought Alpha Strike was poor - serious balance issues, he said), so as my lead mountain is already enormous, and I no longer play BattleTech enough to justify the shelf & storage space given over to it, I've decided to cut my losses & sell up. I've contacted a bulk buyer - hopefully he'll be interested enough to take it all off me.
It's a good game, but not for me anymore - I'm done.
Hi Vic. Thanks for your comment.
DeleteIt's no fun if the other person is unfeasibly and improbably lucky. Personally, I would try to sell the opponent rather than the mechs! But, if you cannot find a better opponent and don't want to try other rules for stompy mechs, best to invest your money somewhere else. It's a shame that you have hit the wall with Battletech after reinvesting though.
It's an absolute pain getting the new source material in the UK and Europe, so there is that too. Balance is less of an issue for me, because I am playing solo, but I can see how issues there would affect games with other people. Fortunately, I have a tonne of 6mm sci-fi, so even if I do not play Battletech, I can use the mechs for a whole range of other games.
I've been playing BattleTech against my friend for nearly 40 years! When we first met he was the big BattleTech fan, whereas I played SFB. We compromised and each played the other at his favourite game - I played BattleTech, he took up SFB.
DeleteWhen we first started gaming g together he regularly beat me at BattleTech - I got hammered! But I learned, got better, learned more ... and eventually I was able to win about 50% of the games we played. However, at SFB my friend refused to 'learn' the (complex) tactics and so wasn't able to win that often ... so he quit playing SFB. To humour me he'd go through the motions of playing it with me, but I could tell he wasn't trying. For me the challenge of out-thinking someone was the thrill - with him simply going through the motions there was no challenge and so no fun. So eventually I stopped asking him to play ... and then quit SFB myself - it's not a good solo play game!
It was about that time I also noticed his originally cunning & devious BattleTech skills had gone - now all he seemed to want to do was run into short/point blank range and roll buckets of dice, looking for 'lucky' dice rolls. His preferred weapon was the Streak SRM, and he relied on getting lucky rolls. It drove me mad how 'lucky' he was.
In one game, company sized (12 mechs a side) every time I combined fire & destroyed one of his mechs he'd promptly get a lucky roll or two & destroy one of mine! This happened for about 9 turns.
Another game he destroyed my Catapult with one 5 point hit (roll of 2 to a side torso, roll of 12 for number of critical hits, hit to ammo - boom!) ... then did exactly the same to my Hunchback, then all but destroyed an undamaged Atlas with 13 pts of damage in 5 separate hits of 2, 2, 5, 2 and 2, by getting three rolls of 2 (center torso possible critical - he got 5 critical hits - 2 engine, 1 gyro, both Md Laser) and two rolls of 12 (head hits). He rolled only 2's, 12's and an 11. Until very recently that was the last time we played!
We played recently (for the first time in 15+ years) ... using his lucky dice he won the initiative 15 turns in a row with rolls of only 10+.
I give up!
That or his dice are weighted! And I've wondered that ... :(
Yes, that is no fun and a shame after 40 years of gaming.
DeleteI had a friend who was ridiculously lucky at ASL. We were doing some playtesting and recorded all the dice rolls. His average on 2d6 was a 6 (low is good) and mine was an 8. The problem was that when we swapped dice, both of our averages remained the same, so I could no longer blame the dice! :(
I see you have gone from the THW simple system back to the very crunchy original Battletech! I feel I sometimes want to do that for some periods (WW2 I reread Tactics every year) but then remember how long it took to play. It would be fun though, and it seems your trip into the past definitely was.
ReplyDeleteI am in an experimental phase of my life! :D
DeleteBattletech is not for me as a solo game. These playthroughs have shown me that, but it would be brilliant if I had a full day and a few friends to play against. THW is brilliant for solo play, and I really like the campaign stuff too. It works really well regardless of the rules you use for the games themselves. The issue for me is settling on a middle ground between the two that is low enough effort for solo play but still has some crunch and granularity. THW is not sufficiently crunchy, while Battletech is too crunchy. I have a tonne of other rules to experiment with, so expect more experiments in the future.