Howdy Mechwarriors and welcome to my first Tournament Report! Peri, myself and two of our buddies made the trip on out to Richmond for the yearly Richmond open and had a blast! The competition was great, the competitors fun and the atmosphere an absolute joy to be part of, many thanks to everyone who had anything to do with setting it up or just came along for the day of gaming!
I love competition in nearly all of its forms and as such actively seek out tournaments, semi-competitive multiplayer games, and bars or goals to pass for myself or my friends. I am personally of the opinion that measured, friendly competition keeps life, and its many endeavors, interesting and it is a big draw of why I picked up a game like BattleTech in the first place! Well, that, the sick as fuck aesthetics, the fun gameplay, the camaraderie of doing and sharing things with friends and the overall idea that ‘big robot with guns’ just goes hard as fuck. Something that’s almost an equation, that lets me look at something like a ‘mech sheet and just game out in my head what it could do on the table is an eternal joy for me, granted I don’t usually have to just game it out with how often Peri and I actually end up playing every week.
That being said this is a report about a tournament and as such it has a purpose beyond my love for BattleTech: Talking about how Goonhammer and Associates shitted up the Richmond open.
I went last year when I was still quite new to BattleTech and, as such, did horribly. I want to say my first match of that tournament might have been like my eighth time playing BattleTech at all. And I came in something like eighth, I think; not great, not terrible, but a seed was planted of just craving more of it. I’ve spent the last year looking for any form of tournament enter into and always coming up ‘oh well shit there was something in ‘INSERT TOWN HERE’ last week… apparently’. It got very frustrating.
But I already knew about this one and as such was not going to miss it.
We went into it this year with the intent of winning, of course. It is a tournament we were paying for after all, it’d be a shame to spend the money, drive on out there, spend the day playing, and then not go for the gold! Better to shoot for the moon and land amongst the stars than to never even take off at all and all that. As such we did a lot of prep, a lot of trying different lists, a lot of different factions and ideas for combinations and strategies to just have some idea of what the tournament would turn out to be so we could all have some amount of game plan.
Peri:Â We should have an article out about our preparations around the same time this one goes out, if you are curious about it!
Table of Contents
The Richmond Open
The Richmond Open is an alright sized event held out in the Meadow Park Event Center North West of Richmond and is a pretty good time.
The tournament itself was on Sunday but there were a few events on Saturday that seemed at least vaguely interesting, and one of our friends was going up anyhow, so we popped in to participate in a public Grinder and a narrative scenario, the ‘Ares Assault’, about a Merc force trying to push the Davions off of an old base left behind by the Republic of the Sphere that had an Ares in it.
The Grinder was a blast and absolutely chock full of chaotic idiocy. About half of it was Peri, our friend Connor and myself having a shitfight in the corner with occasional intercession by other players. Also the GM for the Grinder let someone drag in the level they were at during the morning Grinder and as such walked into the kiddie pool with a Warhammer. This was the result by turn 2:
Got chewed to death by fuckin’ bugs man. Horrible way to watch a man die I tell you h-what.
Once the Grinder wrapped up we grabbed a quick lunch before the Ares Assault scenario which was… I’ll just say: Never have I been more disappointed by $16 convention center chicken fingers. The chicken fingers were adequate and the fries were definitely chopped and fried potatoes without any form of salt. Overall: bland as fuck.
Peri: I ate an entire can of Ravioli, cold, for lunch because I was not spending 16 dollars on convention center chicken strips. I have been to enough events to know to just bring food. It was fucking great. [In awe of this technique. –Ed.]
Disappointing.
The Assault Scenario on the other hand was a blast! A fun concept that turned out to be a bit tougher than we’d thought it would be. Ultimately we lost by a point or two, having run out of time on the clock before it was time to pack up. Had a great time with it and would definitely recommend participating in something similar if you see it and it piques your interest!
Now, on to the main event.
The List
I am a simple, steadfast and stubborn man. I was going to build from my predetermined forces or lose the event trying.
See, I’ve got four options when it comes to doing a faction limited system like this: The Colonial Marshals of the Fronc Reaches, my 392nd Assault Cluster of the Rasalhague Dominion, the custom Fleet Arm Mercenary Company, and the ever venerable, also custom, General Motors Generalist Mercenaries Division. I tried some variation of lists from all four of them, pushing and prodding the Fronc, Rasalhague, Merc and Davion MULs to try and find something that fit within my self-imposed gimmicks of each force until something surfaced to lead me to glory.
Throughout testing I came to the conclusion that doing any form of movement not explicitly tied to objectives wasn’t really worth it as these rounds are only two hours and limited to 12 rounds. The best answer to deny points and win is simple: just don’t be physically capable of being killed in the allotted time. As such, after trying the rest I built something out of the GM-GM and, as such, settled on the best:
The Corporate Enforcers. A Davion MUL list that only uses ‘mechs and Battle Armor built by my beloved General Motors Corporation.
Meet the Boys. The list is simple, straightforward, and, most importantly, fucking hateful.Â
C-Suite: Nightstar NSR-9J with a 4/5 Pilot, because someone has to be in charge around here.
HR Department: Templar III TLR2-OA with a 4/5 Pilot, because who else is going to deliver them?
Performance Review: Marauder MAD-5T with a 4/5 Pilot, because the enemy needs to know how they’re doing today and the MAD-5T is always happy to sit someone down and inform them it’s nowhere near enough.
Dave: Wasp WSP-5A with a 5/6 Pilot, because every company has a Dave. He doesn’t do much but that one thing he does do is indispensable.
Behavioral Adjustment: Grenadier II A BA with 4/6 Pilots, the them to the HR Department’s dynamic. These things were dragging Assaults into the grave in some of the testing scenarios and laughing while they were doing it; not okay. So many SRM hits its not even funny.
My Last Email: Grenadier II B BA with 4/6 Pilots, the A’s less hateful cousin but not to be discounted, BA squad with 4/6 Pilots that plod along in the back line slinging salvos of LRMs at the most opportune shot. Somehow vaguely effective at bothering light mechs.
In the GM-GM we have a saying: Buy the Best and Smash the Rest, General Motors.
This all boils down to one big question then: Can you win, or at least do well at, a tournament when restricting yourself to machines only made by one manufacturer, in this case General Motors?
The Fit
Ask my friends and they’ll tell you I’m fucking gigantic.
Ask them again and they’ll also tell you that I rarely do anything in half measure.
For every possibility I had an outfit. For the Marshals there’s the obvious Cowboy outfit, for the Dominion there’s a few options that mostly land somewhere on the spectrum of going all in on dressing up as a ‘mech warrior on a ghost bear hunt or a Rasalhaugian dignitary, and for the Fleet we have the classic American Naval Captains outfit. But what of the venerable GM-GM, you ask?
Simple: I’m from the Union and I’m here to help. You, dear reader, don’t know what I look like but whoever you’re picturing isn’t big enough, nor Irish-Italian enough. It is not hard for me to look the part of a brick wall, let alone a Union enforcer.
The boys are here to enforce the Company’s will, and I’m here to enforce the writ of their labor contracts.
To the letter.
They will be taking their union mandated breaks between engagements and if you’ve got a problem with it you can damn well try and go through me about it. Go on, make my day.
My work boots, a pair of well worn jeans, an undershirt, my favorite bloused button up, a reliable navy vest and a genuine 1980s General Motors ‘UAW Quality Network Suggestion Plan’ jacket to really sell that original 80s BattleTech vibe that lives rent free in my head. Top it off with a nice flat cap I picked up on a trip to Ireland a few years ago and it all comes together to make a pretty fine fit if I do say so myself.
Now.
It’s Hog Killing Time.
Peri:Â Liberty is not the tallest person I have ever met, but he is 6’4″ in all directions and built like a locomotive. He honest to god looks like he could have been a mob legbreaker in the 30s.
Round 1: It Begins.
The morning starts with Peri and our friend Jessie pulling up to my house in Jessie’s Child Annihilator 9000, a lifted F150 on knobby off-road tires far too aggressive for a vehicle that I don’t think has ever actually been off-road. They arrive with Bo Jangles breakfast sandwiches. But not one for me, because Jessie didn’t think about me when picking up Peri, ‘cause he’s a dick. As such I have a breakfast of my daily combat stimulant Adderall (medically prescribed), a sour cream donut and a large Dunkin Donuts Caramel Macchiato.
Peri:Â I plead my innocence on the Bojangles front because Jessie had already bought the Bojangles before I got in his fucking MRAP of a truck and I didn’t think to double check that he had offered Liberty food too.
I am absolutely vibrating by the time we get to the tournament.
Round 1 started with the mission that we had found in testing to have the potential to be the biggest problem due to how it actually worked. Both players have two buildings to deploy within a band on their side of the map 15 hexes away from each other, marking them 1-4 as they go. These objectives ‘turn on’ at random, rolling a D6 to determine which will spin up and begin being available for points. Due to the random nature of this we had spotted rather early in testing that it had a good chance that you could just have an immediate problem if both of your opponents objectives came on before yours did which would force you to push in some manner to get, or deny, points.
Luckily that did not happen here, to either of us.
My opponent in this round had brought out a very fun Capellan list comprising a Kontio Standard, a Tian-Zong TNZ-N2 , a Fire Moth H (the most common ‘mech in the event btw), a Goshawk II Standard, and a squad of David Gauss Rifle equipped Shen-Long quad BA. All with some manner of skill shifting to fill the remaining BV left over. I’ll admit that this list scared me a bit; largely on the back of the Kontio as, if it managed it, it could just run in and try to knock the block clean off of my Nightstar with those claws.
The map we were on was simultaneously incredibly open and also incredibly tight quarters with the right hand side just being an open plain with a few stands of trees dotting it and the left hand side being absolutely flush with elevation changes, woods and rough terrain.
Luckily for me the Nightstar passed the intimidation check and the Kontio was far more concerned with trying to keep my BA from scoring on one of my objectives as the Wasp, Marauder and the Templar soldiered on towards his.
The Fire Moth moves to intercept the Wasp on its way to harass the Tian-Zong on the back left point, managing to strip the armor off an arm and not much else before taking an LPL to the CT from the Templar III as it runs in, doing a hit to the gyro. It falls over, flops about for a movement phase, pops up and runs straight to the Templar III only to fall over and inconvenience the assault for another turn as it makes its way towards the Tian-Zong. By the end of Turn 2, the Fire Moth is dead and the Templar III is on his way to deliver the onboard Behavioral Adjustment. The Nightstar and Tian-Zong exchange some long range fire all game with the NSR’s bigger guns tearing away far bigger chunks of armor than his, hitting consistently even through the activated stealth armor. Eventually the combined might of the Templar, Nightstar, Wasp and Grenadier IIs drags the Tian-Zong into the dirt by XL destruction while the Wasp was also stealing points off the objective it was defending, and distracting its fire from the Nightstar, by knocking it over and just being a general nuisance. Unfortunately Dave does not survive this engagement.
While all this is happening on the left, the Marauder is in the thick of it, on his own, with the Kontio and the Goshawk II. Luckily the Kontio gets somewhat frustrated and goes to keep me from scoring points while the Marauder goes about turning the defending Goshawk II inside out. Within three turns the Goshawk is dead and the Marauder is looking hungrily at the Shen-Long suits until the Kontio reappears and trades a turn of fire with the MAD, chewing on the armor a fair bit before shutting down due to a shitload of heat plus already having the TSM up.
This occurs during the last turn of the round due to me winning on points and, as such, the Kontio is not introduced to the concept of ‘overwhelming firepower called into the CT, sparing it a terrible death.
All in all this round ends with a win for the GM-GM and I score about 120 points while my opponent scores 20 points from objectives and 4 for murdering poor little Dave. How cruel.
Peri:Â This was my only loss of the event; I ran in to the guy who Liberty ended up playing in game 3. I got caught by my own hubris and he had taken a Banshee due to our articles. Grumpy about it.
Lunch
The cruel mistresses known as ‘the power company’, ‘my mortgage’ and ‘putting gas in my car’ have consumed much money this month and as such lunch is a bag of jerky sticks and some combos with a gargantuan water jug. Disappointing but honestly better than those chicken strips from yesterday.
Peri:Â I am still not paying 16 dollars for convention center chicken strips. I had a cold, shelf stable turkey and dressing meal. It was fucking great.
Round 2: Time for a Performance Review
Round 2 was a mission we had done some extensive testing with and found to be quite fun! There’s three boxes in the xx08 or xx09 hexes of the map, with the first being placed by the attacker, winner of first initiative, in the 1608/9 hex that is farther from them. Fun Fact! This is always 8 hexes away from the defender’s home edge, this is Dave’s job that no one else in the Company can do.
There must also be at least 5 hexes between any given box at start which leads to the ability for the defender to choose where the engagement is going to happen by placing it in an advantageous position within reasonable distance of the starting hex. I quite liked this mission as it forces a big fight to occur and that’s all I ever really want from BT games at the end of the day.
It’s also all that the MAD or the Templar III want so everyone’s happy!
My opponent in this game is actually a Goonhammer reader! Great sport and an incredibly fun opponent that was running a custom Mercenary group called ‘Eyes Open Mercenary Company’ comprising an Orion C2, an Axman AXM-1N, a Phoenix Hawk PXH-3PL, an Icarus II ICR-2S, and a Javelin JVN-11D. Two big heavies and a pile of movement options, with good light hunting, is a pretty good recipe for the boxes mission so it’s definitely possible I get out maneuvered here, need to keep an eye out for that. Side note: I absolutely love the colors on the Icarus II and Axman here, btw, they are so vibrant and incredibly fun looking on the table.
The map we’re on is incredibly open and only has irrefutable partial cover on my side of the map which leads to the Nightstar meandering into it on the first turn and staring into the soul of man as he watches over the center for the remainder of the game. Have to keep my MAD and Templar on the move to get whatever TMM I can manage, on a flat plain like this it’s not hard to get outmaneuvered when you’re only 4/6 which could quickly spell doom for the pair of bruisers.
The round starts with the Wasp dive bombing directly onto the center box, hoping to grab it for himself or at least be a nuisance to prevent someone else from taking it for a round or two. The Marauder and Templar III run directly up to the Phoenix Hawk on the right hand box, with the Templar dropping off his BA. The Orion and Icarus II deploy to the left, trying to grab the box my opponent had dumped out there for safe keeping while the Javelin swings to the right, prepared to do some form of striking while the Axman trundles into position to support the Phoenix Hawk.
The Marauder and Templar drag the Phoenix Hawk into the dirt by the end of round two, having savaged the armor and structure enough to pop the Targeting Computer in round one and then leaving the side torso vulnerable to destruction by the Grenadier II B’s LRM strike. This kills the Phoenix Hawk and drops the box it is carrying in a spot for the Templar to come take it next turn, which it does.
The Nightstar trades constant fire with the Orion and Icarus II for the entire round, only occasionally switching his attention to the Axman. Interestingly this is the only time I’ve ever seen effective use of an ELRM which was quite cool and incredibly funny! The Marauder and Templar set their sights on the Axman and begin doing their daily ritual of consuming anything that comes anywhere fucking near them which they, with mild assistance from the LRM BA and one shell of the Nightstar, manage to do via ammo explosion within another three turns.
While consuming him they also take a moment to turn the Javelin inside out.
The game ends, once again on points, with my opponents Phoenix Hawk, Axman and Javelin dead and me having scored all the objective points I could manage plus score for destroyed units totaling out to 109 points. He takes home 40 objective points and a trio of Performance Review’s as written up by the Marauder.
Another win for the GM-GM that breaks the 100 point band.
Round 3: Hog Killing Time.
Round 3’s mission is simple: Kill that guy.
That’s it. That’s what we’re here for. Killing the opposing force until time is up or someone hits the point cap.
My opponent in this game was another Goonhammer reader! Incredibly funny guy and a joy to play with, if he didn’t live so far away we’d invite him by the local to come hang out sometime! Fun fact, this guy took the first game of the tournament off of Peri which knocked them from the top-end bracket we found ourselves in. Now, let’s take a look at what he brought. Running a personal Merc group, the Burok Mercenary Company, he’s brought along a pretty stiff force that has some serious threats in it.
Centered around a Banshee BNC-3S, which he confirmed was in fact due to Peri’s glowing love of the machine, a Thunderbolt TDR-60-RLA AKA: The Gorilla, a Grasshopper GHR-6K, a Locust LCT-7V, and a Wasp WSP-3M. (I think, it was a pulse laser one and I forgot to write it down. Wasps are all the same in the end. Oopsie!)
I’ll be honest, there were a few missions in this packet that we looked at for the Corporate Enforcers and said ‘Yea no I win this if we get it’ and the Kill mission was one of them. This list has so much armor, structure, damage and hate in it that any engagement I get to dictate is liable to go hardline in my favor.
As such, I lost initiative, became the defender, and got to pick my map edge.
Welp. Time to dictate an engagement.
In my notes I described this as ‘Stacky Desert Hell’ and I stand by that. The terrain here is brutal and, more importantly, allowed the Nightstar to park his ass in a beautiful overwatch position on the first turn from which he decried, ‘I SEE NO GOD UP HERE EXCEPT FOR ME.’
The first few turns were spent with some light mech poking at each other as he brought his force in close on the center rock to try and bait me in. I will admit I slightly bit on this bait with the Marauder and Templar III but only to try and counter bait his Banshee out into the open to give the Nightstar a friend. The bait worked and the Banshee stepped out and started getting hosed by the Marauder, Nightstar, Templar and Grenadier II Bs.
We continued to play the bait game for a round or two before the Gorilla decided enough was enough and, with the TSM on blitzed up and over the hill after the Nightstar, vaguely encountering my Wasp, Grenadier II As and Templar III along the way before getting in nice and close with his target. This is a problem, and could spell incoming death, or at least significant forced movement, and therefore loss of position, for the Nightstar.
If the Gorilla hadn’t proceeded to fail three PSRs in a row, thusly never actually being in a position to throw Billy-Big hands with the Nightstar. Eventually the Banshee explodes to an AC/10 bin explosion followed by the Gorilla being drug to hell by the Marauder while the Templar III beats the Locust to death.
That all happened within a span of three turns. This match went from largely lacking in meaningful engagements with a lot of position jockeying to an absolute font of glorious ultra violence.
Somewhere before that both of our Wasps just kinda died which… I don’t remember when, I only remember that my Wasp got swatted by fire from the Locust before the Templar III and Grenadier II As ate it and that his Wasp died to the Templar III having problems with it having the audacity to exist. Also the Templar III fell over killing the wasp and then fell over again trying to get back up which almost lead to it not being in position to intercept the Gorilla as it passed by..
By the end of the match the only thing still standing on his side was that Grasshopper that’d been mostly out of the range of, or not worth being the primary target of, fire while harassing the Marauder and Templar III all game. I had lost the Wasp and suffered a crippling on the Marauder by having internal damage on two side torsos.
All in all this netted him 25ish points and me north of 100 points again.
Thusly the GM-GM has won all of its matches in glorious fonts of violence and destruction and over 100 points in each round.
Hail to the King Baby.
The Awards
Or ‘I went to the Richmond open and all I got was this shitty ‘won the entire fucking tournament 3/0 with 336 points.’’
Yea. I won. All of it.
I came in first overall on wins and points and also was awarded ‘Best Sportsmanship’ for overall play, ‘best/favorite opponent’ choices by my game partners for the day and painting votes! Took home a whole bunch of toys I’ve been looking to pick up for a while and a coupon for ALL of the Hextech STLs which one of my buddies is going to print off for me! Guess those battle reports are gonna start looking a lot cooler!
The second and third place pole positions were filled by the other two players who had won all three of their games, I believe neither of them cracked 300 points but am not entirely sure. Know who did though?
Peri.
Peri actually came in second on points overall but, due to losing in the first round to my third round opponent, they did not make it into the final bracket. They did on the other hand win best painted so congrats to them on that! Their paint job went hard as fuck, look out for them in their upcoming article about tournament prep!
All in all it was a great day of fun competition, great conversation, new friends and acceptable enough food! I absolutely intend to go again next year and look forward to giving it another go!
With the games over it was time to pack up, pop in to the IWM booth to grab some new toys I’d been wanting to grab: A Bandersnatch to use as the ‘Horus’ variant for my Marshals and a pair of Solitaires for my Dominion forces! After everyone was satisfied and had perused all they wanted to look at we piled back into the car, dropped Connor off at the hotel and got going!
To Dinner.
Peri:Â I had some incredibly high scoring games after getting knocked into the loser’s bracket. My list was insanely mean and well tuned, and I had some opponents who were great fun to play against. Shoutout in particular to my game 2 opponent who lost a mech a turn for the whole game and still was in good spirits about it.
Dinner
I had a giftcard for 50 bucks to Longhorn Steakhouse and a hankering for an ‘I’m the best BATTLETECH player in the car and I can bully Peri about it’ sized steak. So we went to Longhorn!
The bread was good, the Tonion was great, the Steak was astounding after a day of coffee, donuts, jerky, and combos and the company of friends was even better.
Peri:Â Longhorn actually had pretty decent Chicken Strips for, believe it or not, about 16 dollars. I am still not going back to Longhorn though.
Conclusion
Tournaments are fun! Win or lose you can have a great time doing it! As well, don’t be afraid to build something a little silly, every list I was looking into had some stupid self imposed restriction or theme it was inherently built around.
Now that we’re at the end of the day, Richmond’s lights fading into the rear view as we head home it’s time to answer that question I posed earlier: Can you win, or at least do well at, a tournament when restricting yourself to machines only made by one manufacturer?
Well, can you? Yes. Yes you can.
So that leaves a second question: Should you?
I mean that’s up to you. Are you here to just send it on winning and that’s all you care about? Then probably not. I did and I certainly won but I’m also lucky that GM makes some fucking ANGRY machines, not that that’s news to me. As well I play a LOT of BATTLETECH and as such knew what I was looking for and went in with a solid game plan; not to mention a list that had a set of goals with assigned jobs and targets for every round with the mechs set in roles and sub-teams to actually do them.
Do you not care about outright winning and just want to have a fun time? Then fuck it. Pick a secondary restriction for yourself and have a time about it! Throw some stupid idea together and beat it against peoples head until either it or they break. Grab a shitload of rocket launchers and pick something to detonate into scrap! Pick a specific unit with a known method of attack and try just doing that! Hell, just make something up and have a grand old time with it! I sent a buddy to a tournament in Atlanta, we actually had a report on it from Lynn and it was great so you should go read it, with a Marion Hegemony list that was full to bursting with rocket launchers and he had an absolute blast!
In the end, whatever you do I want to know about it! If you do go to a tournament with a stupid gimmick let me know! I’ll be happy to see what you come up with! As well, don’t be afraid to go all in on the gimmick! Get dressed up! Have fun with it! I was joking all day that the success was due more to feeling the part and the careful oversight of Brucie the GMGM’s shark mascot. If you’re having fun with it from the get go then everything can only really get better from there!
Interestingly this same TO is running another tournament in July which we’ve decided to go to! There’s a fistful of packet changes which look kind of fun so keep an eye out for that one because I’ve got one thing to say for that tournament’s list:
Cowboy Time.
Remember, even with this copious talk of tournaments, my love of competition, and gunning for a win, what matters is a good time. All the ‘mech reviews, the pretty plastic and the shiny mathrocks aren’t worth a damn if you don’t use them to have fun with friends! So go grab a drink, a good pack of snacks, your favorite game partner(s), a box of funny ‘mechs, a cozy spot, and a fun map then get to making some good memories, at home or at a tournament!
Until next time! Fair weather, good seas and happy gamin’! Go tear shit up out there and have fun!
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