Battletech: An Infantry Game?

Fritz and I tried a bit of an experiment this week, an experiment in the infantry lists we've been developing. 6K in battle value, with a max 2k spent on mechs. Everything else needed to be vehicles and infantry. And we took a lot of infantry. I my case, all 8 stands I had painted up, and a lot of vehicle variants I'd been wanting to try out for a long time.  Since it's infantry, a city fight seemed best.

Fritz's Crimson Hand force lined up.  Two Demonlisher tanks, tons of infantry, two vanilla goblins (each with a squad inside, a Karnov VTOL, and... a firestarter mech.  That's something to worry about.

I decided to throw in a lot of VTOLs, because they've been burning a hole in my case. 2 Ferrets and a warrior here.

A MG Stinger mech that cost less than my tanks...

2 Karnov transports, each with 2 platoons (one SRM and one MG each) inside...

And some support:  A Zeus, LRM carrier and the PPC variant of the Von Luckner, along with two Infantry Support Goblin tanks, each with a platoon inside.

The action began with helicopters whipping around between the buildings.  Two enemy LRM carriers can be seen in the background below.

...and the slow movement of a column of tanks down the central boulevard.

The enemy Karnov transport had eyes on my Stinger...

...Which meant so did those pesky LRM carriers...

Thankfully all 120 missiles missed... this turn.

Fritz moved his infantry up into the buildings from the ground, and my men executed a daring drop on the rooftop, able now to shoot down on the LRM carriers.

Nothing ruins your day like a Demolisher tank with 2 AC-20s coming around the corner. The Goblins carefully backed up out of range while the hidden heavies dropped their LRMs on the enemy tanks.

The stinger tried to hide...

But the Karnov got aggressive!  Despite shots from the warrior, it was able to spot for the LRMs.

The LRMs connect, and blow a leg off the Stinger, effectively removing it from the game.

More daring zipline drops ont the roofs, the infantry dropping SRM shoulder mounted missiles onto the tanks below.

Meanwhile Fritz's Goblins get close enough to unload the squads inside. The Infantry support Goblins, bristling with MGs quickly wipe out both squads.

While the tanks deal with the infantry and the infantry deal with the approaching Demolishers, the Zeus became the enemy target. A crazy zip line attack on from the Karnov saw two platoons attempt to jump onto the Zeus for an anti-mech attack. One squad successfully latched on.

Meanwhile, the Firestarter finally joined the fray, rushing to engage my isolated infantry. Neither Fritz nor I had ever seen flamers actually used against infantry in this game, and boy was it not pretty. The PBI never stood a chance.

For several turns, the foot platoons in this tower building climbed the stairwells to dislodge the infantry on the roof. These two platoons had kept the enemy LRM carriers out of range of my main force for much of the fight. Now, as the enemy neared the roof, the Karnov made a combat landing and extracted the infantry.

Scattered damage was done to the Zeus by the anti-mech attack, but not enough to fell the nearly undamaged machine.

The center of town had turned into a massive fireball. Demolisher tanks were getting destroyed or immobilized, as were the enemy goblins, taking hits from all sides.

The firestarter finished off my infantry, cleaning up that side of the table.

The enemy goblins took rear and side shots from VTOLs, immobilizing them.

The Demolisher's last shot was not against the Zeus, as I thought it would be. Instead it brought down the building on some infantry, and reduced the Zeus' cover.

More infantry swarmed over the rubble and onto my hidden LRM carrier.  Both ferrets arrived to spray them with MG fire (we allow units to fire MGs at swarming units, but this also damages the unit being swarmed).

With the main part of the enemy force neutralized, only the Firestarter remained as a threat.

It couldn't hope to last long.

The extracted platoons land on a rooftop to the rear of an immobilized and turret locked goblin to finish it off.

While in the center of town, the von Luckner and Zeus' PPCs felled the Firestarter.

The order was given to retreat, and the enemy made a break for it with their infantry transport, with VTOLs hot on their tail.

An excellent game - I really like using combined arms in Battletech, although considering we had about 17 units (!), it was a LOT to keep track of. We played pretty fast and loose, so the game only took about 4 hours.  Not bad for so many explosions!