Heavy Gear: Millennium Con Scenario, First Test
2023-08-12 heavy gear / hgb-cef / batrep /
The scenario was a CEF hovertank formation with each of the HPC-64s carrying political prisoners gets diverted by attack down an older, favella like part of a city, and then ambushed.
Turn 0/1 - Setup and Deployment
Dr.Tree and I setup the board and get ready for a ambush. Jerboa directed indirect fire starts raining down on the big hovertank with the commander.
Turn 2 - CEF Attack
I go wide with the hovertanks, looking for a breakthrough moment with any of them, because they're all fast enough to capitalize on any luck I can find. Except I don't. I believe I did a single point of damage this turn, missing left right and center.
In particular, the center-board light hovertank gets completely outflanked by a pair of Chasseur MkIIs.
Turn 3 - CEF Defeated
That Jerboa in the middle pulls out a bazooka, the opening credits for his show rolls, and he starts blasting chunks out of tanks like the protagonist he is. We're rolling some huge margins here, like 4-5. The Espion finishes the job with the Jerb standing behind him lending him the fighting spirit.
The heavy hovertank dies to relentless chip damage from a monsoon of rockets.
And the other light tank gets it in the worst way possible. A repair gear, a Chargeur, smashes through a shanty building to grab the rear blower of the HT-67, reaches over the top for the barrel and pops the tank open like a tin of sardines, waving a drill around the crew compartment for good measure. (Another massive margin attack, it did 7 points of damage in one hit)
Turn 4 - Prisoners Rescued
NuCoal leisurely finishes off the HPCs, while mostly weathering light GREL retaliatory fire, scooping up the free prisoners and skedaddling out with a damn near perfect victory.
Post-Game Scenario Tweaks
The almost total lack of react fire on the hovertanks is more of a problem than I anticipated. It allows the attacking force to lean out and fire and duck back to cover with almost impunity. Dismounting the GREL earlier might have made a difference, or pre-seeding the route with them. The ABMs on the tanks also had no role in this close a fight, and I think I'd like the CEF to have some airstrikes to call in with all the TDs they have. OpFor also needs to be slighly less mobile, which won't be a problem for the Southies I'll be bringing when I run this next M-Con. Oh, and the hovertanks should deploy further onto the board, not come on from the edge (they had no targets first turn, but the NuCoal gears did, getting basically a full turn of attacks for free)
Need more terrain, and that's in the works, along with just finishing painting the Lazy Forger stuff.
Overall though, I liked the flow of it.