Andy44
owner: Oil Creek Astronautix
Our first scenario convention had the following evil combination for playing the first stage of the scenario on the surface of a large asteroid mine:
- parallel secret movement
- low gravity
- vacuum
We allowed quite large units, around batallion size. After this first stage, only a few lances had been left. Most died by friendly collisions causing depressurizations because players of the team did not talk with each other and simply optimized their movement egoistically. Was important for teaching, but also very frustrating for the teams.
In the end the winning team won the scenario by a single Phoenixhawk without legs. While all other teams fought a major melee on one of the lower levels of the mine, they managed to drop the Phoenixhawk on a huge minecart and let it travel completely ignored through the mine.
Was a very important convention for us the PhoenixCon I in 2000... we learned a lot about designing scenarios and eventually reduced the scenario to a short event on the saturday for the interested players and offered more variety on our convention.
If you are around in Germany and want get some battletech (or good meals), the PhoenixCon XVII is scheduled for the 26th October (A thursday) to the 29th. We host the German Battletech Championship again.
http://con.phoenixguard.de/
That sounds great! Unfortunately I don't know when I'll get to Germany, but when I do someday I'll try to fit in at least a visit to a BTech con. Been a long time since I actually played, but I loved the immersion in that universe.
I always wanted to do some kind of double-blind rules for max realism, but it requires a referee and seems to be slow and clunky.
I'm also curious about the depressurization and collision thing, I'm guessing they were custom rules for the scenario?
When I did the War of the Worlds I used the standard low-G rules, but I did have to make up a damage table for a 3-legged Mech and weapons tables for the Martian heat ray and missile weapons.
In the novel, Wells described a sort of chemical weapon delivered by a large rocket/recoilless rifle kind of device carried by the Tripods in a cylindrical launcher. The poison gas was used on British artillery crews. For BattleTech I expanded it a bit; the gas would work on infantry and unsealed ground vehicles, but for BattleMechs there were different varieties of projectiles available to the Martian players, such as a high explosive warhead, smoke shell, etc. I even built the table for a small tactical nuke warhead which would wipe out anything within a few hexes, but I don't recall it ever being used.
The Heat Ray was very powerful at close range, but the effectiveness dropped off with range to balance the scenario. I purposely didn't tell the human players what its capabilities were, so they got a dramatic shock when they came face to face with a Tripod and their armor was melted off their Mechs lol. In the Noctis Labyrithus this made the tactical problem difficult because the rock formations prevented the humans from keeping the ranges long and forced them to rush the Martians and try to overwhelm them with fire at close range.
The first battle took place in Manassas, Virginia, near the site of the two American Civil War battles. The Martian reentry pod landed and as the local Virginia militia Mechs, under command of ComStar, showed up the "Battle of 3rd Manassas" ensued.
The second battle took place on Mars during the ComStar counter invasion. The Martian base was underground in the Vallis Marineras and the approach avenue was through the Labyrinth of Night. The Martians had a large anti-satellite cannon mounted atop one of the mesas (it looks like the ion cannon in Empire Strikes Back) which prevented the DropShips from landing with the main invasion force, so a company of Pathfinders in medium and heavy Mechs made an orbital drop and were sent into the Labyrinth to destroy the cannon and secure the landing zone.
(ETA: The anti-satellite cannon was a giant heat ray which would vaporize any Mech which tried to jump up onto the tops of the Mesas, forcing them to stay down in the canyons.)
Both battles were fought on tabletop with minis and no hex maps. Had a great time that convention. My little homemade Tripods were popular. I still have them in a case somewhere.
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