Very cool - plastic lance packs for Battletech - $19.99 each. They begin releasing this summer and follow every couple months with a new set.
Also come with 8 Alpha Strike cards!
These will sell out immediately.
http://bg.battletech.com/?p=5585&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=introductory-box-set-reprint-lance-packs
So my group (DFW Mechwarriors Guild of Arlington TX) just wrapped up an Alpha Strike game. I took pictures with my phone so they aren't all that great, though I was able to bring my Alpha Strike company I painted for the book and had cards on hand thanks to Charlie Tango's amazing ninja job at GenCon. so... the forces:Roughly 160 point limit. Two TeamsTeam One: Inner SphereAlpha Strike Marik companyAlpha Strike Lyran companyDavion force with a Devestator, Pillager, some BattleMaster variant, and a 5J Grasshopper along with two ziblers, two sorteks, two grenadier points, two gun trailers, and two artillery pieces of some sort.Team Two: The ClansClan Hells Horses (maybe) from the 3070's: Dire Wolf D, Mad Dog D, Warhawk unknown, Gargoyle E, royal Thug, four points of elementals Clan WiE: Dire Wolf Widowmaker, Hellstar, Pack Hunter, Wolfhound IIc, 2x Timber Wolf A's, elemental point.Ghost Bear Klondike company: (most are royal or star league variants) Atlas II, Orion, Guillotine, Marauder, Vulcan, Wolverine II, Shadow Hawk, Assassin, Hunchback, Black Knight, Rifleman II, PantherAnyway, we played several turns (probably two or three) before I remembered to start with the pictures. In a nut shell, the WiE and Bears deployed in each other's midsts while the Lyrans (me) deployed closest, the Davions in our corner, and Mariks on the opposite map edge. I quickly decieded to put my Pursuit and Cavalry lances (minus the Hollander who went up stairs to the Tower of Doom) in the woods to form a road block until we could get organized. My assault lance and hollander discouraged any backstabing adventurisim on the Bear/WiE's part.You can see on the far left the Mariks making it to the edge of the mountain range and start engaging the horses, while the Davions slowly catch up to my position. The Horses take up position in the trees, engaging in My Little Pony tree hugging antics while sending out long and medium range fire into the Mariks, which starts to take it's toll. His elementals were also surprisingly effective. In this turn, I introduce the Bear Guillotine to five or six of my faster medium and light 'mechs, and it dies.So after the Guillotine goes down, the WiE assaults move up. The Hellstar catches some love from my assault lance and from some of my line holders and I believe I managed to get a weapons hit on him. The Mariks and Horses trade more shots with the Mariks coming up on the short end of the stick IIRC. Other than that, we pretty much wiffed with most of the TH numbers needing 8+ across the board. The WiE Pack Hunter and Wolfhound IIc start to pile up the damage on my Stalker though as only the Zeus landed a hit right before the files started to strip all of the armor off of the pack hunter.Okay, in my area, the Bears Orion moves up, as does the Hellstar. The Davion player and I decide to try and humiliate the Hellstar for the final kill (it needed two damage to internals to kill it.) His Zibler's get to fire first, both connect, and each does a point. My Vulcan wasn't needed after all! The rest of the forward unit fires on the Orion, taking it to one internal with the Zeus or Banshee finishing it off with extreme overkill. Other that, our flank was quiet as most of the shots from the Bears/Wie missed (my Falconer took the final fury of the Hellstar, stripping it's six armor off.) Mariks and Horses keep playing tag... Davions are starting to creep up to reinforce my line. I believe i lost my Bushwacker this turn, though he'd passed out at least six damage throughout the game.My Stalker has drifted back to partial cover as the two clan lights have gotten it to two internals. The rest of my force minus the Falconer are doing well enough. The Atlas II moves up to the spot that the Guillotine died and the Hellstar received most of it's punishment, misses it's shot, and all but the Hollander fire on the Atlas, killing it. From pristine to the Zeus overkilling for the finish. The return fire wasn't too bad for me, though the Mariks are starting to enact our on-the-fly plan and start to move over towards us while the Horses let the elementals "rush" forward while they hug the trees and engage at medium and long range.Now, I missed a turn... fuzzy, but the Bear Vulcan jumps behind the Falconer, who pivots to avoid backstrikes, but takes a crit hit from the Vulcan who rolls a 12, killing him anyway. The Falconer finishes off the Rifleman Iic, while the Banshee curb stomps the Bear Vulcan. The Stalker takes a medium range hit from the Wolfhound Iic and dies, while the Mariks keep littering their advance with a military hardware... but... it's almost time for them and the Davions to charge over the hill. Notice as a good Steiner I'm letting someone else do my dirty work for me?So the Marik/Davions charge (why does that sound like a bad Isis joke?) into the teeth of the WiE and Bear units, with horse elementals getting into the mix on the far right flank. My Assault lance + Hollander fire on the Horse Gargoyle taking it to two internals, while my line of fast picket 'mechs is missed a lot and dumps a lot of fire into the Bear Shadow Hawk, doing several crits to it but not killing it. The Bear/WiE attention is suddenly not on me for the first time of the day, so it's time to show them what true Steiner's are made out of.I unlesh my little guys, with the Commando, Vulcan with a rear shot, and Battle Hawk knocking all of the armor off of the Dire Wolf Widowmaker. My Nightsky attempted a 7 damage DFA but missed while the Dire Wolf ignored everyone, wasting the Marik Orion. My Salamander or Hollander finished off the Gargoyle at long range and I lost my Vulcan to a Timber Wolf A (an unholy terror of terrifying damage, speed, and heat proportions!) I'm starting to forget exactly what happened, but the best line of the day for me anyway was Atlas3060 telling me he'd told the WiE player to get ready, because "he's going to do all the sneaky, jumpy, bastard stuff and jump all over the map." They were surprised I didn't, but then it's Alpha Strike! A lot of other stuff just disappeared this turn as you can see in the next photo... stuff just started to drop.My Battle Hawk and Commando stick with the Widowmaker and finish it off, but the Widowmaker nukes the 'Hawk and the Bear Hunchback puts down the Commando (or maybe it was a TWolf A? I can't remember...) and my Nightsky is dropped by the Wolverine II. So in one turn my highly dangerous mobile unit is gone. My assault launce did uh, well, i don't remember, but we were quickly running out of Mariks, though the ones left were tough and hard to hit. The Davions were mixing it up and the Devestator was just getting to the party in time. The Horses Dire Wolf is plain mean and was going on a killing spree as well.Last photo, sorry it's blurry. This turn, my assault lance focused on the Twolf A that was out in the open, taking it down to three internals while the Devestator killed it with a 7 damage shot. My Zeus was taken down to one internal, while the remaining Mariks killed the Mad Dog and Warhawk for the Horses. Davion lost his Grasshopper down at the bottom and thats about all I remember. We called it after that.Thoughts: I held the line with my picket forces backed up by my Assault lance. It created a no go zone of death that killed everything that came in front of it save for the Bears picket units. We just couldn't hit each other. This allowed my team to mass, strike, and then pour into the enemy. We won by at least 40 points (we added up our remaining point values to determine a winner) though I feel it was still anyones game, as the TWolf A is a killer at all ranges and that Dire Wolf D still had some life in it. My Banshee, Salamander, and Hollander were still fine, but who knows. I was very lucky as the WiE player and Bear player missed a lot of 7's and 8's that I managed to hit to drop their units while mine were a pain to uproot. It was also awesome to field my company with the AS cards compared some of the more "tailored" forces that were brought.The Davion artilliary didn't do much but miss all game so I can't say much about that. We all had 3 pilots to speed it up a little... I think it was pretty successful and numbers do win out in the end, though the Clanners can at times really scare you when they dump 7 or 8 damage into something and make it disappear (like my Pursuit and Cavalry lances!)
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| From the IronWind site. |
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| From the Ironwind site. |
The pack pictured is from the ERA Report 3062 sets. It is Clan Jade Falcon Heavy/Assault Star [MP-038]. For $55.16, it includes the following mechs:To help support Alpha Strike release geared towards the Clan Invasion ERA, we have put theERA Report 3052 and ERA Report 3062 Online Exclusive Mech Packs back up for sale in the webstore.Coming in the future are some Online Exclusive Mech packs based on the Force Lists in the Alpha Strike Rulebook.
After a week we picked up where we left off, and wow talk about a brutal face fisting.
So we begin with maneuvering our forces, Klats luck with the dice on init did not bode well for him for the rest of this game.
I run my bulldogs and remaining Tokegawa's through the city into the mesa maze forcing Klats lance to deal with the tanks, or get shot up while focusing on my mechs, he went for the tanks and ... well it was bloody.
Our first turn of shooting left a lasting impression as the damaged mechs began to fall like flies. Two of my bulldogs were destroyed with the remaining two left to cause enough of a headache.
The grand scrum in the mesa maze began in earnest and holy crap this turned into a scrap yard within two turns of shooting.
My poor marauder got knocked out on the first turn of shooting and died standing. Klats mechs in the mesa converged upon the Flankers while his commander in his Marauder II jumped into the thick of the fighting
The Tokegawa's began their breakthrough and ended up with a single Thunderbolt 10-M to impede their progress, the Bulldogs however were unable to shake off Klats forces and resigned themselves to at least slow down the lance to allow the rest of the tanks to get to the mesa. My scout lance ran to support the Tanks after his Heliopolis (AKA Grappa) was killed by my Raven in his rear arc. The Grappa missed with its direct artillery fire but it drifted into my commando and Cicada, nearly destroying them both.
The grand scrum in the mesa began to take its toll, Klats commander was flanked by my commander in his AS7-D (yes I flanked somebody with an Atlas) yet lost my Longbow to the 10-behind it, one of my Bulldogs was killed with the other surviving yet again to harass another turn.
Klat fought on despite the loss of his commander and a majority of his mechs by the third turn of shooting and kicked the last Bulldog killing it, my scout lance approached with the rest of my forces turning towards the final two mechs on the board. The locust killed the Defiance, but in turn got blasted to scrap by the same mech, the penny was wiped out by focused fire from the three remaining Tokegawa's.
All in all that was a rather brutal 4 turns of shooting. Within the first two turns we gave it as good as we could, and so did Klat. But he was still out numbered, those Tokegawa's and Bulldogs were the star players of this game as they managed to tie up everything they encountered, preventing Klat from sweeping in from behind my mechs. His Marauder II really held its own for the entire game, but attrition brought it down, all in all it was a blast and I cant wait for our next game.
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| Destruction City |
The big thing tho is if you want solid mechs 3025 is the way to go. at Skill 4 your not going to hit often, but you will out number the Op-For if they run newer generation stuff. Take a few cavalry lances as they will serve you well if you use them properly, and the big thing is tanks are not there just to die. They can hold a line fairly well and dish it out in return. At 6 points each the Bulldogs were more than able to survive a few turns of shooting, but the Tokegawa's are twice as armored and do a little more damage at 7 points each. Those numbers are not to be laughed at and I plan on taking these guys whenever I can get a chance to.And now Klat's perspective:
Having come back to the game my initiative rolls were miserable. Faced with an overheated BLR-4S that couldn't hit the broadside of a barn and what was turning into a dog pile nearby I elected to have the BattleMaster melee with the Hatchetman while my Marauder II maintained the high ground. Most units went for a badly weakened Marauder in the hopes of lessening the OpFor's numbers once the unavoidable scrum started.
This poor BattleMaster failed to do any worthwhile damage before dying to a Hatchetman
The next turn an entire Lance of 'Mechs got hung-up on a group of Bulldog tanks that they simply could not kill fast enough. A Penthesilea, Defiance, Black Knight and Rifleman all tried and failed to wipeout the Lance of Bulldogs while getting themselves hit from behind by a collection of light 'Mechs. The Helepolis managed to do some damage to the light 'Mechs but found itself outmaneuvered...
Thanks to its TAG the Raven called fire in from multiple 'Mechs sporting semi-guided munitions and the Helepolis died an ignoble death to counterbattery fire.
The scrum in the mesa went poorly for me; a Verfolger died in melee with a Banshee after taking fire and the Hatchetman hacked my BattleMaster to pieces.
With the forces in the mesa area taking a severe beating I decided that it was time for my MAD-4S to jump in and assist. Without realizing it I jumped in behind the Banshee and exposed my back arc to the AS7-D
My forces fell quickly to the close range onslaught brought forth by the OpFor's ancient machines. The die cast I found myself with only a Lance left to fight an increasingly bold enemy. My decision to fight on served only to delay the inevitable
The older 'Mechs are, simple put a better buy in AS. The AS7-D costs 19 points and demonstrated itself aptly against the 26 point MAD-4S. While my force went for quality units the OpFor demonstrated that quantity does indeed have a quality all it's own.
Numbers are a very big deal in AS. As an example my MAD-4S had a heck of a time dealing with an AS7-D despite costing significantly more points; which in turn meant I got flanked easily as my opponent could field more units. Being outnumbered means you don't get many back shots but almost always have something behind you. That, combined with the AS7-D stats meant that the only real advantage my MAD-4S has was higher defense. As long range shots don't hit often anyway I was not in a good position when Atlas and friends came after me.
That being said my rolls were garbage the whole game; I loaded TC in everything with an SRM special and got nowhere with it, my Helepolis shot like he was drunk and my BattleMaster could not even score a hit at close range. Whenfielding a quality over quantity army every shot has to count, quantity armies have the advantage of multiple rolls if not the best damage.
The two big delays came from making cards and having to lookup the rules for direct fire arty. I need to keep a copy of the critical tables nearby as well since having to flip through the book took time too. Without those delays and cigarette breaks\fending off the local feline overlord I'd say the game will take a total of two hours.
Besides being really hard to hit anything the scatter made for some hair-raising moments. In my hands arty is a clunky dangerous beast, with support from spotters with TAG and probes it could be devastatingly effective. The rules work but do cause delays once scatter occurs; direct fire has a great deal of difficulty hitting. I'd say I'm very happy with all the rules, including artillery thus far.clansittingducks opinion of the game:
I like it to be honest. We were amazed at how fast it played. Our first time playing Alpha Strike, we sat there stunned after turn one.Klat's follow up to csd's comment:
Numbers in this game are a big deal, cheap units are useful in this game set as while sure the Op-For will have clan tech and skill 3 pilots, you can swarm them fairly easily and just unload upon them. Try a cavalry company vs a heavy/assault company and have fun!
To be honest its nice to try to figure out how to replay this game, tactics in the regular game can work in Alpha Strike; but it still forces you to change up your thinking on the play aspect.
^ This; light fast jump capable units are scary hard to hit and can maneuver into your back arc in quick brutal fashion. I fear the day 'ducks puts a Dola on the table as can backstab very effectively. That the Dola can also ruin your ability to use C3 and call accurate arty is just scary. I'm going to field an 8S Uziel in my Lyran Regulars soon just because it's so bloody hard to hit and can go where it likes. Speed can be armor in AS.clansittingducks sums it up well for me, though I've not played this big of a battle yet:
Im glad Alpha Strike came out, its doing somthing good for Battletech, faster play style and the ability to quickly do big battles. Its kinda awesome seeing 40 some odd mechs on the table and not have it take a few weekends to finishI hope to see more from these guys and hopefully i can keep posting them here. They do a very thorough job of covering the game and have some good thoughts on it.
Klat and I got our second Alpha Strike game in today. Had to put the game on hold right as it started to get interesting, all our figures were left where they were for when we continue it later this weekend hopefully. Onwards to the report!
Points limit was set at 222. Special Munitions authorized and the location was longside 4x4 area. Fight took place in a small city with a mesa maze off to the side.
Klat fielding his Battlecorp forces (3 lances worth of mechs with his commander in his Marauder at Skill 3. Everybody else on his force was skill 4.)
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| I'm ignoring the hand prints - they scare me just a bit! |
My personal merc company the Mclarens Flankers showed up 4 lances strong of mechs, with two lances of tanks for support. Commander was located in my AS7-D. The entire command lance was given precision munitions as they had the highest concentration of autocannons.
Turn one was spent maneuvering our various forces, no serious shooting took place. Turn two resulted in ineffective fire from both sides. However on a lark and in order to try our hand at direct fire/indirect fire from arty, Klat lobbed death at my locust and missed, the shot however drifted into my spider and nearly killed it, causing a critical hit ammo explosions. Thank god for the ENE special ability.
Turn four my command lance began to maneuver towards klats forces while my fire support lance provided cover fire... hitting several counties over. My scout lance began towards the objectives I had set out for them and poured fire into a few of klats mechs to little effect. With my wild card lance attempting to call down indirect fire yet screwing that up.... such shame. Klats forces had about as much effect as mine did, however he did score a nasty weapon hit on my sentinel reducing it to a punching machine. A turn later the same thing happened to my own marauder.
Turn six began with some nasty fire via klat and myself... he managed to rip the lead tokagawa tank apart and kill it while his kochei was killed by the bulldogs at the lead of the konga line of death. the Bulldogs raced ahead to begin their assault while the tokegawa's took a detour.
By this point our time was running short so we opted to call last turn for the day. By the end of it, one dead Kochei and one dead Tokegawa. Several mangled but still threatening mechs remained in the fight. When we pick this game back up we should have a fun fight.
One thing that helps immensely is to use glass bead counters for tracking what mechs have moved, when you are done moving go in reverse and remove them as you shoot.
We noticed that 3025 era stuff is very viable and cheap compared to newer generation stuff. I had one mech that had case, and a Raven on the table for new tech stuff. This gave me a grand total of three lances more than what Klat could field after I added up all my mechs, granted his stuff has plenty of options, but once you crack them open, they will fall apart rather quickly. I think I will need to add about 30 or so Savannah masters to my army list. At 2 points a vehicle it should be entertaining.
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| Real People play Alpha Strike - Klat I believe |
Should have this done by at the latest monday. After this game is wrapped up I think we are going to go for VTOL's and Aerospace fighters next.Thanks guys for the permission, part 2 will come tomorrow. Also, just because it may get asked, the buildings are Game Craft models.
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| Board at Setup |
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| First "blood" Jagermech inflicts damage on the Trebuchet |
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| End of Turn 1 |
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| End of turn 3 and last picture - watch the video for the whole thing |
