Tairakana Plains, Luthien
While our rapid response unit returns to base - Assassin and Firestarter back into the action within an hour, the Spider within a few hours - the Phoenix Hawk will take until the next day to patch up due to extensive leg actuator damage - the rest of our mechs are deployed alongside Kurita, Wolf's Dragoons and Kell Hounds forces, backing up units that are short on firepower. The clans have basically finished landing most of their dropships, with a few stray units still battling it out in the upper atmosphere. Kurita aerospace forces have taken heavy casualties, but have mostly held their own and remain combat effective.
Calling the region "plains" is fairly generous - there's a good number of hills, rivers and forests to break up the flat terrain. Which is just as well when there's a trinary (15) of clan mechs coming our way. Our deployment across the theatre is a little disorganized, which is how nine of our mechwarriors from across three companies wind up to the south of three lances of Kurita units, facing down a large number of clan mediums and heavies (and a pair of assaults).
Thanks to our recon assistance earlier, we're able to plot out the projected route of the clan force and plant minefields. Additionally, the Kurita military has appropriated a large number of industrial mechs, which have been "disguised" (pretty poorly) as heavier mechs of comparable speed. To really help sell it, they even mounted some weapons on them. They've set up remote control rigs in each one of them and we're able to link up to the "little buddy" mechs and operate them remotely - although control latency and the fact that they're crappy industrial mechs make such operation a little bit difficult. The best use for them seems to be to attract fire while our actual mechs move into optimal position, then try to self-destruct them and maybe take out some elementals.
There will be a company of Kurita units operating to our north, and we are sternly ordered to "stay in our lane". They're mostly mediums and heavies, with a pair of assaults (a Battlemaster and an Awesome). They also all have paired industrial mechs. Technologically speaking, they're not too impressive, with only a single high-tech mech in there - a "Wolf Trap", which is a brand new Kurita design packing an LBX autocannon and an XL engine. They really missed the boat on jump jets with that one, but that's par for the course for House Kurita.
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Initial map state (ignore the red/green coloration, it's an artifact):
Spoiler:
Our deployment zone is anywhere to the east of column 16. Kurita mechs + buddies deploy to the north of column 18 while our mechs + buddies deploy to the south of column 17.
To begin with, each player will:
- pick a Kurita mech (it has a pre-determined paired industrial mech buddy)
- pick an industrial mech buddy for your mech
- pick a deployment hex in the relevant deployment zone for your mech and buddy, plus the Kurita mech and buddy
There are more Kurita mechs than players, so three players will wind up driving two Kurita mechs + buddies. Due to "engine limitations", we can't switch who controls which industrial mech beyond the start.
Available "little buddy" mechs (main stats are in the stats block post, but they're all slow and a single large laser blast will take off a limb or most of a torso section):
3x medium laser x2
2x SRM/6
2x LRM/5
2x large laser
Additionally, both the Kurita and our forces each have 4 vibrabombs configured for 50 tons and 4 density 30 minefields, so you will want to, as a group, decide where the mines go, within the relevant deployment zone.
Rules refresher and stat blocks to follow.
Let me know if you have any questions or if I messed up the stats blocks.
