I just had my first battle of this Brush War Campaign. I thought I was in a pretty good position.
I was dug-in and Tony was assaulting this location by dropship. I thought he would be landing right in front of my pre-aimed guns.
It didn't work out like that.
I had a pretty conventional list for me:
A Longbow 12C with a 2/4 pilot, a Marauder 5S with a 3/5 pilot, a Crab 27B with a 4/5 pilot and two Glory Heavy Fire Assault Vehicles, with 3/5 and 4/5 crews. Because of the type of scenario, I also got for free a 4/5 Gun Trailer, which I selected the Mjolnir configuration, with an Improved Heavy Gauss Rifle. It only carries 4 shots, but those are good out to 19 hexes for 22 damage.
I figured Tony would bring some air, but sheesh...
Two Vandal E's, two Batu E's, a Jagatai X for EW support and a Kirghiz C. Oh, yeah and to hold the ground, the Kirghiz was carrying a single point of Battle Armor.
We were playing in the rain, which meant a +1 to all shooting. I got to hide the Longbow, the better Glory and the Gun Trailer. I set them up in a "left-right-center" arc to catch his advancing forces in a cross fire. The second Glory, Marauder and Crab were left in the open, up against cover to mitigate things.
The fireworks started before his aircraft even got to the board. Two Inferno Arrow-IV's targeted the Glory in the open. One of them (at 11+) actually hit the proper location. This upset the crew of the targeted Glory very much. They struggled to get their wounded vehicle out of the napalm fireball.
To introduce themselves in grand style, the aircraft proceeded to drop fourteen tons of unguided bombs from the very edge of the atmosphere, and in Tony's style, missed with every single shot.
Tony's aircraft then proceeded, in Jeff Foxworthy's words, "they were on him like a pack of dogs on a three-legged cat." Every aircraft converged simultaneously on one of my units at a time. First on the menu was my Marauder, which took a fair beating and managed to hurt one of the Batu's as payback. When they came around again, they concentrated on the Glory they could see, killing it. Before it died, it launched a fusillade of LRM's and AC/5 shells to bring down the wounded Batu. The pilot of other Batu had been through rehab, evidently it didn't stick. Tony rolled snake eyes on his Ultra AC/20, jamming it.
During the commotion, the Kirghiz dropped the battle armor behind a hill, where I had to advance the Marauder to try and get a shot at them. As Tony's aircraft came around again and swarmed the Marauder, this time they dive-bombed it, hitting it for 140 points of damage, coring his center torso and putting it down for good.
This is where the "Whack-A-Mech" comes from, the Longbow then revealed itself at the edge of heavy woods, then turned around and tried to advance toward the battle armor. Yeah, right. The aircraft dive-bombed from the back of the Longbow and ripped it to shreds, before an ammo explosion disintegrated it. The Longbow managed to hurt the second Batu enough that he had no offensive weapons, so he voluntarily withdrew and I received about 25% of his points for that. He was useless to Tony with no weapons, and if he came on the board again I could get more points by actually shooting him down. He wasn't technically in Forced Withdrawal, so I got "half-of-half-points" for my effort.
Okay, my two biggest units are gone. I'm at 47% of my points FW/dead, Tony's Battle Armor hasn't even been looked at harshly yet and and so my only option is to send the Crab half-way across open board, knowing Tony's air assets will be all over him in seconds. The Crab runs up to a stream he must cross and proceeds to wade in, failing his PSR. Sploosh.
This is where Marlin Perkins from Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom starts with his narration, "The Crab begins his return to his native waterways..." At least he didn't penetrate his armor when he faceplanted.
