From: ses52823@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Marius)
Subject: Fire Fluff (BTech)
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 09:27:42 GMT

Ah, the days of pre-Clan... when all was peace and bliss...
and a Banshee-S was all you needed to worry about in the way
of curveball mechs...

Oh well.

The reason I'm writing is to merge a couple of stories with a question --

A while back I was running a Wolverine (one of my favorite mecha of
ANY manual) and came across a BattleMaster (eek)... my solution was at
the time considered a deviant piece of genius.  I backed up into a
city edge (not being stupid enough under any circumstances to get into
slugging range inside the city with the BattleMaster), and spontaneously
discharged all weapons capable of lighting forest terrain.  I seem to
recall setting about 4 hexes on fire, which spread and made an awfully
large zone of smoke.

The Wolverine began utilizing an alternating jump-or-run out of smoke,
fire at opponent, then zoom back into cover next round.  I encountered a
surprisingly high degree of success using this strategy, and the enemy
BattleMaster took a few good hits before it determined it needed to get
in closer to stand a chance of retalliation.  My Wolverine withdrew into
the further reaches of the cloud and took the mech out with Death From
Above after judging its damage levels were high enough to indicate a
probable kill... (I was holding my breath regarding the 'to hit' roll,
however...)

The Wolverine took surprisingly low amounts of damage (considering the
lineup) and went on to strike a few telling blows against the surviving
enemy Mecha (this was an 8 on 8 battle, each side having one heavy lance
and one light lance).  

I became progressively fonder of this tactical sequence and began to
work on variants of the technique.  Flaming to increase the opponent's
heat level, IMHO, is just plain stupid and useless;  but using the smoke
to generate temporary no-line-of-sight zones behind which the heavier
sluggers can congregate was of definite use.  The game, obviously,
became much more diabolical under moderated miniature rules (two game
boards, separated by a screen, with one player dedicated as GM laying
down the lines for what could and couldn't be seen from each player's
team's perspective... this was obviously difficult and had to be put off
until we all had a sizeable miniatures collection encompassing most of
the old Tech Readout mecha, including doubles for both game boards.
Probably the most fun I've ever had in the game) where mecha would come
running out of large smokescreens (guided by C3 systems on some
occasions when I chose a Cyclops... ugh)

Anyway, my interest was rekindled in recent years after I used, more or
less, the same tactic with a Panther, which succeeded in cutting down a
Zeus (see my previous post regarding the long-range/short-range combo
the other guy was using, putting a Zeus and Hunchback together on a
killer romp across the battlefield so that nobody was safe at ANY range)
before getting eliminated by the accompanying Hunchback.  This has led me
to believe that fire can be a decisive advantage in the game... it's gotten
so that the wiser GMs will assign arbitrary rainstorms or hurricane-force
winds so that we can't collect on the herbiage.

What are your impressions on fire out there?  Anybody have stories to tell
regarding its use or disadvantages or petitions for disallowment?  Please
do respond... (and yes I know the Firestarter is no good)

Machine guns rule!!!

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Marius
ses52823@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu

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