From: Indy Kochte <kochte@s...>
Date: Tue, 05 Aug 2003 15:55:36 -0400
Subject: Dirtside combat mini-AAR
Greetings, gang, This past weekend Scott Field (ex-lister) was out from New Mexico here in Maryland and came by Friday evening for an overnight visit. I managed to find some other gamers in the area who were available and we got together for a little dirtside fun (Oerjan, I'll tabulate the weapons fire stats for you asap). This is a real quick write-up of the action. ESU: Noam Isenberg, Mike Hudak, Joel Frock NSL: Scott Field, Indy Mike took pics and posted them here: http://gallery.theplothooks.org/album19 The game lasted from ~9:00p to 2:00a. The maniacs who played are in photo 100_1889 (this was pre-pizza, pre-die rolling, immediately after set-up). The first photos were taken from the ESU side of the board. The ESU were armed with GEV tanks mounting MDCs (Andromedas, Deimos', and Triton IVs from the Future Wars series). The NSL were mostly GEV tanks with HKPs (Thors and Lynxes from Brigade minis). The ESU had heavy arty onboard; the NSL had light arty in some APCs. There were many ESU units. Only a few NSL units. This was because the NSL also had...an Ogre (Mk V, of course ;-) (used Tom Pope's recently posted DSII Ogre rules for it). Turn one had the NSL units (sans Ogre, who was not going to show until the end of Turn 2) bunched up in a corner in order to avoid the firelane the ESU Andromeda's had down the center of the board (the Andromeda's boasted MDC/5s and were turret-down near the middle of the field). The ESU looked on gleefully and dropped MAK shells all over their formation (photo 100_1890; Noam, looking on, was the ESU arty commander). It didn't take everyone out, but it softened up the NSL enough for weapons fire from other ESU units to open up and start picking off the survivors (100_1891 through 100_1894 spanned the remainder of Turn 1 and 2; Noam was enjoying this FAR too much!). The end of Turn 2 the NSL trump card was played: the Ogre began its march! The hapless few surviving NSL units hoped and prayed that the Ogre would draw fire away from them so they could regroup - or even retreat! Photo 100_1896 shows you an overview of the table; the NSL armour units to the upper right (see all the fire and smoke?), Ogre is moving in the upper left, and the ESU are arrayed along the bottom half of the field; clicking on the image after you've gotten past the thumbnail will give you the larger picture). As soon as the ESU could, they began hitting the Ogre tread units in order to slow this thing down (photo 100_1899 throug 1902). While the ESU regular and veteran units were thumping on Ogre tread modules, the ESU green units were having a field day with the remaining NSL armour (100_1903). Artillery played a roll here, too. The NSL arty didn't do too much; knocked out a couple of tanks. But the ESU arty was deadly and thumping and wailed on the NSL arty units hard. However, with the Ogre closing in on the ESU position (even with 2 tread units destroyed), and started taking a toll on some of their armour. The ESU turned their arty attention to the monstrosity bearing down on them. They had to make a successful call back to HQ in order to use the nuke, and the call got through on the first try. Then HQ had to approve this (another opposed die roll and HQ approved the nuke request, to the cheers of the ESU players). The ESU put their crosshairs on the Ogre (100_1907), and the Ogre, still having not yet activated any movement modules, moved ahead 3 inches - putting it JUST outside ground zero, or the Inner Zone! The nuke arrived moments later, with a devastating explosion (although this was a tacnuke, only affecting things out a couple of kilometers at this scale). The Ogre's tower could barely be seen in the inferno (which even hid Noam's joyous grin). See images 100_1908 through 100_1910. While the nuke melted one of the remaining tread modules (100_1911), the Ogre KEPT COMING! (100_1912 through 100_1916). The ESU moved tank units up to chop away at the remaining tread unit, and eventually they succeeded (100_1919). The Ogre was stopped cold. The ESU "charged" the Ogre, moving up to better range bands for their MDCs while staying a range band further away from the Ogre's HKPs and DFFGs, and slowly drilled each module away, rendering the Ogre ineffective. But while they did that, the Ogre dished out its own brand of damage as best as it could. Until it could damage no more (when a green unit that had been laying waste to Scott's NSL armour got into the fray and removed the last of the Ogre weapons modules). The rest of the NSL (comprising of one Thor tank and one Lynx APC) managed to scuttle out, damaged, but alive. It was a solid ESU victory. They knew they had been in a fight, but they had more than blunted the NSL assault. I hope you enjoyed this little AAR/dialogue. Complements to Mike Hudak for the photos. And thanks for Noam, Scott, Mike, and Joel for gathering to play. :-)