Dirtside combat mini-AAR

Greetings, gang,

This past weekend Scott Field (ex-lister) was out from New
Mexico here in Maryland and came by Friday evening for an
overnight visit. I managed to find some other gamers in the
area who were available and we got together for a little
dirtside fun (Oerjan, I'll tabulate the weapons fire stats
for you asap). This is a real quick write-up of the action.

ESU: Noam Isenberg, Mike Hudak, Joel Frock
NSL: Scott Field, Indy

Mike took pics and posted them here:
http://gallery.theplothooks.org/album19
The game lasted from ~9:00p to 2:00a. The maniacs who played are
in photo 100_1889 (this was pre-pizza, pre-die rolling, immediately
after set-up).

The first photos were taken from the ESU side of the board. The
ESU were armed with GEV tanks mounting MDCs (Andromedas, Deimos',
and Triton IVs from the Future Wars series). The NSL were mostly
GEV tanks with HKPs (Thors and Lynxes from Brigade minis). The ESU
had heavy arty onboard; the NSL had light arty in some APCs. There
were many ESU units. Only a few NSL units. This was because the NSL
also had...an Ogre (Mk V, of course ;-) (used Tom Pope's recently
posted DSII Ogre rules for it). 

Turn one had the NSL units (sans Ogre, who was not going to show
until the end of Turn 2) bunched up in a corner in order to avoid
the firelane the ESU Andromeda's had down the center of the board
(the Andromeda's boasted MDC/5s and were turret-down near the middle
of the field). The ESU looked on gleefully and dropped MAK shells
all over their formation (photo 100_1890; Noam, looking on, was the
ESU arty commander). It didn't take everyone out, but it softened
up the NSL enough for weapons fire from other ESU units to open up
and start picking off the survivors (100_1891 through 100_1894 spanned
the remainder of Turn 1 and 2; Noam was enjoying this FAR too much!).

The end of Turn 2 the NSL trump card was played: the Ogre began its
march! The hapless few surviving NSL units hoped and prayed that the
Ogre would draw fire away from them so they could regroup - or even
retreat! Photo 100_1896 shows you an overview of the table; the NSL
armour units to the upper right (see all the fire and smoke?), Ogre
is moving in the upper left, and the ESU are arrayed along the bottom
half of the field; clicking on the image after you've gotten past
the thumbnail will give you the larger picture).

As soon as the ESU could, they began hitting the Ogre tread units
in order to slow this thing down (photo 100_1899 throug 1902).

While the ESU regular and veteran units were thumping on Ogre tread
modules, the ESU green units were having a field day with the
remaining NSL armour (100_1903). Artillery played a roll here, too.
The NSL arty didn't do too much; knocked out a couple of tanks.
But the ESU arty was deadly and thumping and wailed on the NSL arty
units hard. However, with the Ogre closing in on the ESU position
(even with 2 tread units destroyed), and started taking a toll on
some of their armour. The ESU turned their arty attention to the
monstrosity bearing down on them. They had to make a successful
call back to HQ in order to use the nuke, and the call got through
on the first try. Then HQ had to approve this (another opposed die
roll and HQ approved the nuke request, to the cheers of the ESU
players). The ESU put their crosshairs on the Ogre (100_1907), and
the Ogre, still having not yet activated any movement modules,
moved ahead 3 inches - putting it JUST outside ground zero, or
the Inner Zone! The nuke arrived moments later, with a devastating
explosion (although this was a tacnuke, only affecting things
out a couple of kilometers at this scale). The Ogre's tower could
barely be seen in the inferno (which even hid Noam's joyous grin).
See images 100_1908 through 100_1910. While the nuke melted one
of the remaining tread modules (100_1911), the Ogre KEPT COMING!
(100_1912 through 100_1916). The ESU moved tank units up to chop
away at the remaining tread unit, and eventually they succeeded
(100_1919). The Ogre was stopped cold. The ESU "charged" the Ogre,
moving up to better range bands for their MDCs while staying a
range band further away from the Ogre's HKPs and DFFGs, and slowly
drilled each module away, rendering the Ogre ineffective. But
while they did that, the Ogre dished out its own brand of damage
as best as it could. Until it could damage no more (when a green
unit that had been laying waste to Scott's NSL armour got into
the fray and removed the last of the Ogre weapons modules).

The rest of the NSL (comprising of one Thor tank and one Lynx APC)
managed to scuttle out, damaged, but alive. It was a solid ESU
victory. They knew they had been in a fight, but they had more
than blunted the NSL assault.

I hope you enjoyed this little AAR/dialogue. Complements to Mike
Hudak for the photos. And thanks for Noam, Scott, Mike, and Joel
for gathering to play. :-)

Indy