Campaign Background

I wanted to give you all a feel about the campaign I'm playing in.  It's my primary BT gaming experience on a regular basis, so I be discussing it often. 

The original campaign started by the GM many years ago set in the pre-Jihad.  We play as mercenary groups that work together as a "collective".  Meaning, we each operate our own lance, company, etc, yet on a mission by mission basis, we are deployed together.  The orginal campaign had the merc's on Outreach as the Jihad kicked off.  Eventually they made their way into the Capellan Confederation, and were deployed in Operation: Sovereign Justice.  At the end, they were made House Sponsored Mercenaries.  That's when the GM moved to my neck of the woods and looked to restart the campaign.  Him and his wife's merc units were still house merc units, but the new guys that joined, started as basic mercenaries being deployed in Operation: Thunderstrike.

For initial unit creation, we were given 275 tons to create a lance of battlemechs.  On a mission by mission basis, we get Tons instead of C-bills to streamline logistics.  Additionally, we get to salvage 'Mechs depending on the mission and as time allows for salvaging.  Repairs and refits cost their cost in tons.  From my experiences thus far (about 5 months), its working out pretty well.  We alternate taking turns as OpFor with the GM creating the scenario and determining what the OpFor units consist of.

To create my unit, I spend about 2 weeks evaluating my options.  I wouldn't classify myself as a power gamer or min-maxer, and if you know battletech, its very hard to cheese your units.  However, with my experience in gaming and wargaming, I have a good eye for what mechanics of a game are important and what options take advantage of those mechanics.  With that in mind, I choose the following mechs for my lance for Piotrowski's Predators, my merc unit:

2 Falconer FCL-8R
1 Shadow Hawk SHD-7M
1 Griffin GRF-6S

Bear in mind, I hadn't played Battletech in about 6 years, so I wanted something fast, mobile, and could pack a decent punch.  That way I could ease my way back into game, relearn the mechanics as they play (not in theory) and hopefully have decent sucess.  All the 'Mechs I took are 5/8/5 in movement.  Meaning, I could get +2 to +3 movement modifiers, making my forces hard to hit.  This also gave me 3 ERPPCs, 2 Gauss Rifles, a Light Gauss Rifle and 2 LRM 15s, giving me great range and a decent punch. 

The lance worked extremely well, but was never truly outstanding.  Often times, I was perched in cover pushing the range on my weapons to medium or even long.  As such, my overall contributions in the form of damage weren't great.  Probably no more than a kill or 2 a game.  But my lance usually took minimal damage.  If any of my snipers were pressured, they could manuver out of danger.  As I look back at the performance, the lance was a great setup lance.  At long range, I could pour all my fire into one or two targets that the rest of my teammates were going to target.  Since most of my weapons are "can opener" weapons (they do a lot of damage to one location), I would fire first.  Then, my teammates would pour fire into those units hoping to strike where the armor was weak.  Overall, I was really impressed with my lance because I look little damage and was able to save a lot of my income for expanding and upgrade and not on repair bills.

My next post will discuss how my inital merc unit transformed from a 4 'Mech lance into almost a company.