Episode 2: Pirates in Training?

Welcome back! We left off with The Azure Phoenix making it to the Almotacen Hiring Hall in the Hinterlands. This is where we’ll be getting out first contract, and negotiating the terms, as well as looking for mechs to buy or pilots to hire.

Since The Azure Phoenix The Buzzard Boys are a new merc outfit, we’re looking for a nice simple job to get our feet wet. After looking through some recent ones, Sven spotted a good one, guard duty for a clan mech factory owned by the Alyina Merchant League. The AML are former members of Clan Jade Falcon, who, after the Falcons zerged towards Terra and got beat down, gathered their trade related resources together and are focusing on their merchant caste. They’re still getting their barrings, but working for them could be very lucrative for the Buzzards, as a good source of jobs and clan mechs. Sven signs them up, then looks at the terms, and realizes this job is actually through the Lone Wolves, a merc company that acts more as a middleman, taking a cut for themselves…

Normally we’d get to change the payment terms for a contract, but the Lone Wolves already did that, and we just get stuck with some OK pay. 100% monthly pay is always welcome, this will cover operating costs. 0% support, so we have to pay for all repairs and any mechs we lose, which sucks, but I’m fine with it. 0% Transport as well, so we gotta pay for our jumpships, it’s a short trip, so no big deal. Last, my favorite, and why I’m cool with the rest, 100% Salvage! This means we get to keep what we kill, only having to pay to repair any mechs we destroy or cripple, cheap mechs here we come! Last is command rights, which is Liason, but these don’t do anything for this contract, so it’s whatever. The contract will also last 3 months, which is mostly for accounting, and will influence which contracts are available after we’re done here.

Hot Spot: Alyina Contract Start!

This contract is meant for 2 players to face off with opposing merc forces, or one side can use a table to roll up a random opposing force (OpFor). One side, us, works for the Lone Wolves, who have contracted the work out, so they can make some easy cash while some nobodies take the risk. The other side is working along side The Night Owls, a group of space pirates! While I rolled a random OpFor for them here, I ended up trading out the original heavy mech, and Orion, for a Marauder 5M, since i happened to get one out of a salvage box today, so I finally have the model! So maybe the Buzzard Boys will have this classic heavy instead? 100% salvage rights mean we just gotta bring it down! Though surviving the marauder is also required…

Before leaving for Alyina, Miriam has the idea that they could look for a temp hire at the hall, just in case something happens. They have enough c-bills to bring someone experienced along, and a temp merc at the hall surly has their own mech, so it should easy enough to bring them along. So I roll on the random temp hire table for the hiring hall, and we get a double edged sword…Olivia is a character I’ve hired in some test games, and she become a fun addition to the crew. She’s a clan pilot who lost her unit to pirates and is looking for work, especially against pirates, easy peasy! The book doesn’t specify a clan, so we’re making her a Ghost Bear here, cause to me she’s an aggressive heavy or assault mech pilot that loves a good fight. Pirates are also a problem near Ghost Bear territory, so it fits enough for me. Plus I’d like to mix a few clans together in this crew, for some fun culture clashes and stuff. Anyway, Olivia is also a bit of a ringer, being Piloting 4, and Gunnery 2! plus having some rerolls from the Lucky Special Pilot Ability! Really bringing some power to the Buzzard Boys. The big down side is, she doesn’t have a mech! So we need to provide one for her. The mechs at the hall are a little pricy, and I keep rolling a Warhammer C 3, which is just too much for scale 1, and will drain our funds. So we decide to bring her along, saying we totally have a spare mech, it’s in the shop, you’ll see it on Alyina, it’s great. Olivia will cost us 50sp per track she fights in and will leave if we don’t fights pirates within 3 contracts, or we do pirate stuff ourselves. No big deal, we’re not interested in the One Piece anyway.

The BB’s travel to Alyina and train with the Lone Wolves, alongside the AML Mercantile Militia, we do this for 2 of the 3 months of the contract. No money really earned due to only 100% pay, but we don’t lose money outside of travel, so all is good. As for the pirates, here I’m saying this is a small group looking to join the Night Owls, and this raid is their final test to become full fledged space pirates. The Night Owls are mostly just messing with them to get some free labor and such, but if they succeed, will happily welcome them to the crew. This doesn’t make the Pirate Trainee badges any less silly though.

Our pirate trainees are, Troy “Anteater” Morosini piloting a Wolverine 9R, Nicholas Sartika in his tiny but fast Flea 17 and their “leader” Merri “Lynxheart” Varo piloting her Marauder 5M. These 3 were run out of their last merc company, for trying to steal anything not nailed down. They’ll tell you they quit and told everyone off and that their old crew were too dumbstruck to stop them from taking the mechs. Who really knows? Now they’ve found the Night Owls, who have been talking up a big score they have coming on Alyina. The trainees are the distraction, since the Owls know the AML are hiring mercs to help with security. Distract the extra mercs, while the Owls hit the factory in Factory Zone 4, and make off with a bunch of top of the line Bird Mechs from the Jade Falcons! The Owls will have super strong and thematic mechs to terrorize the Hinterlands with, and all these trainees need to do is mess with a few mercs, easy money.

Foreshadowing: money? maybe, easy? No…

Track One…FIGHT!

With this contract, we have 2 tracks, or games, in the last month of the contract. So back to back fights, with only enough time to fix armor and refill ammo. I’m going to give the other side a little slack on this, since I’m not entirely tracking them as a full on merc company. A few of our antagonists will be, but not these small fries. I guess a Marauder isn’t much to worry about…Anyway, the first track is randomly rolled for on a small table. I got a 5, so we had to do a Strike track, meant to be on a wooded jungle map, which I don’t own, So I grabbed grasslands 2. I’m working on 3d printing some terrain for these maps, but it’s not quite ready yet, so 2d for this episode. Oh and the Pirates are the attackers, with the Buzzards on Defense.

Strike is a pretty simple, but kind of tricky mission. The defenders start all on the map, and set up 4 buildings around the middle of the map. We also picked a long edge of the map for our home edge, and the pirates got the opposite side as their home. The pirates then come onto the map on turn 1, from their home edge, but can leave up to half their models to come in on turn 2 from a short edge, for a flanking move. The rest of the game is the attackers scanning the 4 buildings, looking for the HQ, then destroying it. If they can get away after, and not take too many losses, the attackers will win. The Buzzard Boys have to try and cripple or destroy the attackers mechs, and stay near the buildings, and can get bonus points for taking out the attacking commander. Scanning gets tricky since it leaves the mech unable to attack for a whole turn, though they can move around, they just need to stay close to the building to complete the scan. I totally don’t forget about this halfway through the game, everything went fine!

The Teams

The Buzzard Boys/Azure Phoenix are going with Sven in his Adder, and Miriam in her Archer. Olivia is fine sitting this out, as long as they promise to let her fight in the next one. They all pinky swear, and all is well. This force is just under the 3000 BV limit for scale one, so I also take some Battlefield Support as well, getting 32 points(BSPs) to work with, I wanted to try out some Elementals, since I’m coming around a bit on non-mech units, and BFS is a simple way to handle them. So we have a skilled up Elemental BA asset, 20 pts for a skill 4 jump 3 unit that can deal 2 groups of 6 damage, which jumps up to 4 groups if they swarm, seems good to me! I round out the last 10 points with a simple light air strike, practically just free damage, 2 groups of 5. I usually don’t take BSPs for enemy lists in solo games, just a bit too much to follow, so i always give them the extra 500 BV instead, which their list takes advantage of.

So from here, I did take some notes but forgot to start until the end of turn 2, oops, so I’ll the pictures and recount what I remember and wrote.

Start if the game, we have Sven off on the left, looking for cover and carrying a unit of elementals, I want to try them out and luckily the adder is capable of carrying these guys. Miriam is on the right here, looking to cover as much as she can with her many many missiles.

The pirates opt to bring in the flea through the river, hoping to slip by with the marauder walking down the road looking to get the buzzard’s attention. Miriam goes for the marauder, with Sven takes his posse off toward the flea, looking to end that little guy ASAP.

They succeed, the flea took a big hit from Sven’s guns and lost an entire leg, faceplanting into the river. Rough start for the little guy, the elementals are also chomping at the bit to finish this.

Miriam got some hits on Lynxheart in her marauder, and avoided any fire, which is better than my first few tries at this campaign haha.

Turn 2! The last pirate comes in on the right flank, with his wolverine, to support the flea and get some scanning done. Both our heroes are caught off a bit, luckily Miriam has cover behind her, and the elementals have her back. Sven on the other hand, seems to have tunnel vision on the flea, leaving his backside in the line of fire.

I have some pictures of dice rolls, not posted, but the one before this pic would show that I failed an easy roll and the flea dropped…AGAIN. Things weren’t getting any better for the poor little dude, so Nicholas Sartika slams that eject button, bailing out on the fight, leaving us our first piece of salvage, if we win.

So with one less mech on the field, the buzzards stay split up, Sven now wanting to punch up into the 75 ton marauder. Miriam, actually having battlefield awareness, covers his back along with the elementals swarming the wolverine, he also isn’t able to fight back this turn, since he is scanning the building Miriam is guarding.

Some bad rolls later, the wolverine takes very little damage, and Sven does his best impression of the flea, taking some serious damage from his ill-fated fight with a mech twice his size.

So, here is where I messed up a bit. The end of the turn saw waypoint A be revealed, and during the game I was all, “damn! what luck! Got it in one!” Then, like a day later(also after I started writing this haha) I remembered, waypoint H for HQ is what I had designated as the HQ. I forgot my own clever idea, so the pirates take advantage of this and aim to turn this place to rubble.

The wolverine looks to shoot at the “HQ” and break LOS to as many buzzards as possible. The elementals follow him, while Sven limps back, looking to catch his breath and refocus. Lynxheart follows through the lake and has him in her sights! Miriam screws up though and has ZERO targets unfortunately. Sven takes some pot shots at the marauder, and Lynxheart ignores him to smash up the “HQ”.

There’s like 3 more dice roll pics, and well it was for the light air strike that not just smashed the marauder, but knocked her over onto her back. Lynxheart makes her hull breach check, but fails almost all the others. The elementals and wolverine, by contrast, are kind of just flailing limply at each other.

With the “HQ” dead and gone, the pirates are looking to get out of dodge! Sven and Miriam are looking for some more salvage, that marauder might as well be theirs!

This might just be for a torso twist, but this is where the game ends. The wolverine is entirely untouched, and the marauder does go down, crippled, but I forget how. So, with this board state, I negotiate with myself, seeing that the wolverine can make it off in 2 turns, within the turn limit, but under fire for most of that. The deal is that the Azure Phoenix let’s him go, but that they accept the loss, so we can take first pick of salvage. They take the deal, and we take the marauder, while the pirates scoop up their pilots and the flea’s corpse and skedaddle.

Aftermath

So we got ourselves an awesome new heavy, but took some lumps ourselves. the marauder is obviously being repaired, but so is the adder, it went internal in a limb or two, so won’t be fixed in time for track 2. We also need another mech, Olivia is pissed about having to sit out, I’ll go into why next episode. So we roll for some sea fox merchants and, well, the mech that has been following me through all my test games, the Phoenix Hawk PXH-9! I love this mech to be honest, so I’m glad it makes it on the team so quickly. It costs just shy of 1250 SP, and after that as well as repairs and XP for Sven and Miriam, we profit a cool 15 SP!

NEXT TIME!

Ok, we have one more track to go! Since the pirates lost, we’re moving into an Objective Raid track, as they are called back to the main factory raid. The Azure Phoenix/Buzzard Boys run back as well to help play some defense. Though there will be a few changes to this, since I seem to have misunderstood Olivia’s character…I’ll explain next time, but it’s going to be a much bigger fight than I originally anticipated. See you next time on The Rise of The Azure Phoenix!

Our first lance, just need some more pilots!

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