On Sunday 28th 4 Mechwarrior players for SAD undertook the massive task of invading the nations capitol and attempting to teach them a lesson in how to play mechwarrior. The format for this event was to have a 1500point faction pure army and from that to select 600 points for each game. After the game any figures that were destroyed were then removed from your army and were unable to be selected in the rest of the event. Also any units that you captured during the game were added to your pool so you could use them later. I took my beloved HIGHLANDERS. Not the best in attack but an army with high defence, good special defence equipment and deep dials.After a bit of an early start (I didn’t get in from work till 6am and was up again at 9) Peter, Paul, Chris, and I set off for London. When we arrived it was good to see some old familiar faces. Both Steve and Phil had travelled from London last year to play in our faction war event, and Rob I had met at Gencon 03.

We took our out armies and were then drawn random opponents, in the first round I was drawn against Steve with his republic of the Sphere force.

Steve proceeded to show me how to play mechwarrior by slapping my force all over the table. I lost by big mech very quickly, without it even damaging an enemy unit and the game looked all but over……until Steve decided to base my infantry stand with his big mech Janella Lakewood. In an all or nothing move I declared a capture attempt against her and threw double six, for a critical success. Janella was mine and with no infantry in his force to hand to hand my capturing unit she was going to stay that way. The game ended in a win for me by 2 victory conditions to 1. However Steve really deserved the win as the game swung totally on a single roll of double 6.

With well over half my 600 point force dead I had to bring out a totally different army against my second opponent Sean. He had a LIAO force consisting of 3 mechs and an ATV. His good heat management and aggressive tactics left me with about 25% of my army left at the end of the game compared to his loses of just the ATV. I however had taken victory condition 3 and so only lost 2-1. This meant that with almost all the mechs from my starting army dead I had to take Janella in the next game.

Game 3 was against a Swordsworn force, commanded by James, that fielded more artillery than the entire British army. I had top go over the table at him, but every time I moved another set of artillery came at me. I managed to get over the table and destroy some of his artillery but took a lot of hits in the process. Janella charged one of his towed artillery pieces destroying it but also took 4 clicks of damage herself, thanks to an ammo explosion on the heat dial. I once again managed a 2-1 win but it was a very tough army to fight and very scary to have to move over the table against.

My last game was against Richard with another Republic army. This was a totally different type of army than the first one and had been with a number of slow tanks and 2 quick VTOLS. Unfortuantly for Richard the VTOLS lasted only 2 turns in my deployment zone before getting destroyed, and my 2 artillery pieces took it in turns to hit his tanks. The game ended just as his infantry had based my artillery, so if it had gone on longer the result might have been different but I walked away the winner again by 2-1.

So overall our 4 players did well. Our best player being Paul with 3 wins 1 loss, then me with the same win/loss ratio. Peter had a 2wins, 2 losses and poor Chris lost all 4. I did however buy him some D+D boosters to make up. We all said how we had enjoyed it and will at some point arrange a rematch, that’s if we don’t meet them in the nationals in June.