Gruntz 15mm: Battletech Project: Black Company simulator run

Travel in the Inner Sphere can take weeks or months. While the Black Company are en-route to the world of Laconis Captain Black orders simulator runs of the mission with other lances taking turns being the OpFor and using stats for the Green Machine forces believed to be on world. Captain Black takes the first run with his Headquarters lance. Hammer Lance recruited Sgt O'Keefe to assist in a 5 v 4 representing unknown forces of the Green Machine in  varying configurations. The mission represents a mis-drop and the HQ units attempt to link up with the rest of the company.

The HQ lance has stumbled upon a Green Machine forward arming and re-fueling point (FARP) along with a hodepodge of mechs that were assembling there.

Defenders

Muskateer

Centurion a

Centurion b

Griffin c

Griffin d

Yojimbo and his lance take up positions on a nearby hill to pour down fire on the FARP.

I used the card activation to randomly determine initiative and turn order to best simulate the chaos of battle.

One of the Griffins moves up and takes a hard shot from Yojimbo's Assault Plasma cannon.

That one shot almost completely wrecks the Griffin and damages all of the Griffins systems. It staggers under the impact and smoke pours from a huge hole in its torso. The mech moves sluggishly and has difficulty aiming its guns.

One of the Centurions takes aim at the Command Sergeant Major's own Centurion and does heavy damage, leaving a smoking whole in the CSM Centurion's chest.

CSM takes a hard round from the enemy Centurion's large cannon.

The HQ lance takes position on the hill and pours heavy though not very effective fire into the FARP and its defenders.

Sergeant Major Buncombe's Centurion goes down to another Centurion's missile strike. The CIWS protective systems did a good job of protecting the Black Company's mechs with this one exception.

One of the Griffins goes down to concentrated fire from the rest of the Lance.

The Green Machine's Muskateer also takes heavy fire from Yojimbo's Marauder III and goes down with a smoking hole from Assault Plasma cannons.

Lt. Burke's Warhammer goes down to return fire from the other Griffin and one of the Centurions.

The heavily damaged Griffin takes cover and fires but misses due to its heavily damaged targeting systems.

Yojimbo eventually goes down to concerted fire from the Green Machine medium mechs with the near crippled Griffin finishing him off with a lucky plasma hit.

Feral Daryl in his Rifleman managed to miss every shot for the last two turns and goes down to ever more accurate fire from the Green Machine mechs.

All in all the Black company learned valuable lessons about the expected fighting conditions and the capabilities of the potentially very deadly enemy mechs. (Basically I forgot to apply my +2 to Guard for my CIWS a couple of times and had some really bad rolling while the Green Machine rolled far to many double sixs at long range.)

Yojimbo will be ready to run Hammer Lance through an exercise tomorrow against a different selection of Green Machine mechs.