Sunday 16 April 2023

Sharpe Mechsuit

After dropping the What a Tanker mechanics from the mix, my opponent fleshed out the Sharpe Practice with Chain of Command elements rules for Mechsuits and sci-fi infantry a bit more.

In our 4th game in this series I brought two medium armoured power troopers, two AT squads and one light armour squad. They faced two heavy mechsuits with support drones and two armoured infantry squads.

The objective was to secure an outpost on an alien planet which contained something valuable to both sides (otherwise they could just nuke it from orbit).

We used the Patrol Phase from Chain of Command to determine jump-off points and deployed our teams.



Heavy mechsuit with drones and armoured infantry

Hydrissian AT team with portable ECM device

Hydrissian medium mechsuits

My opponent moved in and blew up the sentry gun guarding the outpost door.


My Hydrissians took a beating from the rifle fire of the armoured infantry (too bad that portable ECM device doesn't stop dumb kinetic projectiles).


They did take out half of the armoured trooper squad though. The purple smoke ball represents a lingering cloud of chaff/flares/disruptive nano electronics/etc. This is the only defense against smart ammo/missiles (we're not including force shields, anti-grav and that sort of thing in the rules; it's more The Expanse/Avatar than Star Wars/Star Trek technology).


Fully enclosed suits can move through a disruption cloud but moving around them is safer (and keeps the game dynamic).

Having taken out my two AT squads, my opponent's big guys converge on the Hydrissian mechsuits.


The lightly armoured Hydrissian squad attempts to get line of sight to the vulnerable back side of the heavy mechsuit, but they are spotted in time.


And are charged by the mechsuit!



Ensuing close combat leaves one Hydrissian standing with four shock, but the mechsuit also has two damage points (one remaining!). 


Since scores were equal, close combat continued. My lone, wounded Hydrissian was no match for the mechsuit and collapsed under the power fisted hammer blows of the mechsuit.

When one Hydrissian mechsuit lost his only weapon after being hit by a missile, they left the table, leaving the outpost to my victorious opponent.

The game went smooth and most mechanics work quite well. Eventually we need to come up with a points system of some sort for balanced games, support options and perhaps rules for vehicles.