Faction: Clan Steel Viper

Name:  Clan Steel Viper

Description: 

The Steel Vipers were made the Reserve clan in the invasion force and were first activated by the Ghost Bears to help garrison their worlds. After the death of ilKhan Leo Showers and the election of Ulric Kerensky, the Vipers were activated as a full invading Clan and assigned to share the Jade Falcon Occupation Zone.
The Steel Vipers faced total defeat on Tukayyid and their Khan, Natalie Breen stepped down to allow Perigard Zalman to become Khan. The Steel Vipers stuck to the Warden line and stayed out of the Great Refusal.
In 3061 they struck at the Jade Falcon worlds in the Occupation Zone and attempted to drive them out. Though initially successful, Falcon Khan Marthe Pryde rallied her forces, winning the pivotal battle of Sudeten. Ultimately, the Vipers' attempt completely failed and they were forced to accept Hegira, driven out of the Inner Sphere entirely. Khan Zalman faced numerous challenges to his position during the voyage back to the Clan home worlds, ultimately prevailing.
The Steel Vipers, again despite their talk of cooperation, are completely at a loss for allies among their fellow Clans. Their self-serving politics have alienated both Warden and Crusader Clans and their arrogant attitude towards others has not served them well. The Steel Vipers have feuds with the Fire Mandrills, Blood Spirits, Snow Ravens, Jade Falcons, and Ghost Bears.

Clan Steel Viper Mech Acquisition Table
Clan Goliath Scorpion Mech Acquisition Table

Honor Levels:
Zellbrigen (Dueling): 1
Physical Attacks: No
Retreat: 1

Adjustments:  After every battle the Steel Vipers take part in, Honor levels go up by 1.
After 2 battles, Physical attacks will switch to yes.

Current Players: None

Units:

1) 1st Viper Guards (Elite) 

• Khan Natalie Breen  (2) (Gargoyle A)
• Omni Mechs Only

2) 51st Battle Cluster (Elite)

• May not take light mechs

3) 2nd Viper Guards (Veteran) [AMMO 1] (Fought Battle #1)

• Omni mechs only

4) 57th Striker Cluster (Regular) (Destroyed Battle #2)

• No Assault mechs

5) Zeta Galaxy (Veteran)  

• No Omnimechs
• No Elementals

6) 8th Scorpion Dragoons (Veteran)  GOLIATH SCORPION UNIT

• SaKhan Ren Posavatz (2) [Fire Scorpion2]

Special Rules:  

• All Steel Viper units, May only take 1 ENE mech per star.
• Clan Goliath Scorpion along for the ride...SaKhan Ren Posavatz won a trial of possession against the Vipers for the right to come with them to the Inner Sphere for the invasion.  His unit the 8th Dragoons may be bid normally and moved as any other Steel viper unit.  There are couple of restriction.
• Combined arms focused.  Must be 50% mechs and 50% Battle armor if possible.  If 3 units are bid then 2 may be mech and only 1 battle armor.  
• Always fight at Honor level 1 for Dueling, No Physicals and level 1 for Retreat.
• May have up to 4 mechs with the ENE ability per Star

Faction: Clan Smoke Jaguar

Name:  Clan Smoke Jaguar

Description
Clan Smoke Jaguar is easily the most violent and aggressive of all the Clans. They are, however, not as brash and headstrong as Clan Jade Falcon; they are quicker to battle, but are also quicker to think before acting. This made a deadly combination, and Clan Smoke Jaguar was quite a strong Clan. However, the clan didn't have the immensity of the larger Clans or the autonomy of Clan Ghost Bear to support its claim. As such, Clan Smoke Jaguar was dangerous in combat, but never a serious contender to be the IlClan (ruling Clan) after the invasion of the Inner Sphere began and Terra supposedly free for the taking.

Clan Smoke Jaguar joined Clan Jade Falcon in the campaign for the Clan Invasion. They were amongst the first Clans to launch into the Invasion, although they did not rush headlong into the battle as the Jade Falcons and other Clans. The Jaguar's deliberated on the situation for a time, choosing not to invade Lyran Commonwealth territory, closest to the Jaguar's, as the Falcons had, but rather to cross to the other side of the Outer Rim and launch an offensive against the Draconis Combine. The Jaguars penetrated deep into the Inner Sphere, but as mentioned before, they did not have the autonomy to maintain proper defense. A lot of claimed territory was lost when the Draconis Combine went on the offensive.

Clan Smoke Jaguar was in great peril until Clan Ghost Bear followed them into Draconis Combine territory. With a new threat, the Draconis Combine was forced into a defensive stance once more, and Smoke Jaguar returned to the offensive with the combined might of its sister clan.


Clan Smoke Jaguar Mech Acquisition Table

Honor Levels:
Zellbrigen (Dueling): 1
Physical Attacks: No
Retreat: 1

Adjustments:
After every battle the Smoke Jaguars take part in,  Dueling Honor levels go up by 1.
After 2 battles, Physical attacks will switch to yes.
Retreat will remain at Level 1


Current Players: Jay



Units:
1) Sixth Jaguar Dragoons (Elite) 

• Khan Hoyt (2) Summoner Prime 

2) 267th Battle Cluster (Elite)

• Khan Weaver (2) Warhawk Prime
• May not take Light mechs

3) Jaguar Grenadiers (Elite)

• Brew Showers (3) Adder Prime
• Brandon Howell (2) Mad Cat Prime
• May not take Elementals
  

4) 122nd Striker Cluster (Veteran) (Fought Battle #1 & #2, Destroyed)

• Retreat rules at Level 4 for the 122nd Striker Custer
• May not take Assault mechs
• May not take Elementals

Special Rules:  

• No More than 2 ENE mechs in any star.
• Overly Aggressive Bidding.  Smoke Jaguars bid away two clusters to have the honor being the first on Tukayyid.  (Which is why they only get 4 units to start rather than 6.) They are also the only Clan that gets 3 Elite units.
• The Smoke Jaguar player will always be the first to declare their campaign movements
• The Smoke Jaguar player will always play the first battle of the campaign round.

To Do List for the campaign

Stuff left to do before the campaign starts...(each of these will eventually be a separate post with a link at the top of this page)

1) Finish the Solaris VII Campaign.  (Final two events set and ready to go.)

2) Complete ComGuard mech and Tank availability lists

• Check availability dates for each chassis and variant DONE
• Assign rarity (Availability die roll) DONE
• Decide if "Royal" mechs are usable. DONE
• Make excel sheet with Quickstrike Point costs and stats DONE

3) Complete Mech availability list for each clan.

• Check availability dates for each chassis, weapon loadout, and variant DONE
• Assign rarity DONE
• Decide to use "Royal" mechs or not. DONE
• Make Excel sheet with Quickstrike point costs. DONE

4) Assign Dueling, Physicals, and Retreat levels for each clan

• Which clan increases with each map turn, which stay the same...DONE
• Come up with an easy way to track dueling targets. DONE

5) Make Map Tile "Cards" each having...

• Stack of Cards for Desert, River (Water), Plains, Ruins, City. 
• Advance, Counter attack, or Supply lines/Landing zone
• Scenario details (Special scenario information)
• Table layout details (Terrain)
• ComGuard skill level and Force size adjustment.  (+% over Force bid by Clan player)
• Any special characters / units for ComGuard.  

6) Write rules for Bidding process... Scrapped...bidding takes place is separate phase now.

• 4 Units max (No more than 50% Battle armor)
• 5 Sizes (Assault, Heavy, Medium, Light, Battle Armor)
• Unit Skill adjustment.  Elite count as +2 Sizes, Veteran count as +1 size, Green as -1 Size.  Only comes into play when clanner has multiple units with varying skill levels to bid from. 
• Special characters are not part of the bidding, only units.  if their units are selected the special character may be used as part of the unit build.

7) Set Quick Strike point values for each size of force that may be built. Scrapped this plan

• Clan Stars
• Assault
• Heavy 
• Medium
• Light
• Battle Armor

• Comguard Level 2's 
• Assault Mech
• Assault Tank
• Heavy Mech
• Heavy Tank 
• Medium Mech
• Medium Tank 
• Light Mech
• Light Tank

8) Unit Building Rules. Scrapped

• Must build full units.  5 Mechs for Clans, 6 Mechs/tanks for Comstar...no understrength units
• At least 50% of the unit must be made up of the named size units, Medium Star must have at least 3 Medium sized mechs.
• Must use correct miniature.
• Bonus for having entire Mech unit in same paint scheme? (One mech gets a -1 to their skill?) both Comstar and Clanners can take advantage of this.  Tanks can not use this paint scheme bonus.
• No more than 2 mechs of a clan star may have the ENE special ability.  (Clan Wolf may ignore this rule)
• No more than 1 ARTY per unit?

9) Finish painting unpainted mechs that would be usable for this campaign.

10) Review Artillery Rules

• Modify rules to use 5" GW template, and any part of the base being touched rather than a 6" template and at least half the base being touched.
• Misses? >Deviation or outright misses?
• Which clans can use? Wolf only.

Rough Draft for the Campaign.

Ok Quick Strike is a go.  We will be using it for the Tukayyid Campaign.  So easy and quick...



Now for the rough draft part...

We will be using he Tukayyid scenario book as a guide, but not playing the scenarios out of it exactly as they are written.  This will make more sense in a minute

THE MAP:
We will also be using the Planetary Empires tile Set for our Map.  I'll update our map with an online version, but having a physical map to track progress on I think will be a nice touch.

There are seven "Landing Zones" one for each Clan.  After players have selected their clan and selected their starting zone, and Unit that will drop first...we will see whose landing zone meets with Comstar opposition.  Four of the initial clans landing will have a battle during their drop.  Those will be the first 4 games of the night.  The other 3 clans (one being Clan Wolf) will have unopposed landings and get their Landing Zones for free.  Should a clanner lose the opening drop battle, they will lose that unit for the remainder of the campaign, but get their landing zone tile.

There are two city tiles in the center of the board, surrounded by ruin tiles.  Only one clan may posses a tile other than the two city tiles.  The City tiles can be held my more than one clan.  The landing zone may hold all 6 clan units.  All other tiles may hold no more than 2 Clan units. 

Each clan is tasked with winning one of the ruin tiles and one of the city tiles.  For the clanners to win the overall battle of Tukayyid, they must take 8 total City or ruin tiles.

If a clan owned tile does not have at least unit of that clan deployed in it, the tile will automatically revert to Comguard control.  If a unit does not have a path of tiles connecting them to their landing zone, Any unit that does not have the ENE ability will reduce the damage at each range they can do by half rounding down.


THE MAP TURN:
Each Clan will get one battle during a Map turn.  Clan Wolf being the exception, as they will not get to go the first two map turns. The first map turn is the landing zone battles.

The second map turn will be the other 6 clans (all but clan wolf) taking their turns in a  random order.


THE PLAYERS:
The finishing order of the players from the Solaris campaign will determine  "Draft" order for clan.  Each Clan can have up to two players.    Each clan had differing strengths, weaknesses, and Mech sections.  They are by no means balanced, so look them over and decide how much of a challenge you would like before picking.

The first person to take a clan will be the Khan of that clan.  The 2nd player will be the SaKhan (in most cases).  The Khan will be in charge of force alignment (Where the 6 "units" of that clan are located on the map). 


THE FORCES:
25 Galaxies from the Clanners vs. The 12 Armies (144 regiments) of the ComGuard.

But for the campaign, each clan will have 6 "Units" to work with.  These "units" will represent a Cluster (Part of a Galaxy) of the clans.  Each one having a different base skill level for their forces [Elite, Veteran, Regular, Green].  Some units will have named characters in Italics, these are special characters of note that took part on Tukayyid. Special Characters sometimes have a different skill level than the rest of their unit, all will have a specific mech they they used on Tukayyid.  You do not have to use a special character as part of a force, it is mearly an option.  Should a Special character be killed in battle, You may not use them the rest of the campaign.  Should they lose their mech, they must sit out one battle.  Should a Clan lose both Khans (Killed) they will be ordered to withdraw and will give up any tiles they may hold.  
For example here is Clan Wolf 

Clan Wolf will have 6 Units.

• Silver Keshik (Silver Keshik) [Elite] - Khan Garth Radick
• 13th Wolf Guards (Widowmakers) [Elite] - Khan Natasha Kerensky, Phelan Ward
• 3rd Battle Cluster (Silver Devils) [Veteran]
• 4th Wolf Guards (The Cyclops Cluster) [Veteran]
• 7th Battle Cluster (Hungry Wolves) [Regular]
• 11th Wolf Guards (The Lightning Pack) [Veteran]

Should a force lose a battle and not retreat of the board, they are removed from the clan players pool.




Units on the board:
Each player will control no more than 2 stars worth of mechs or Battle armor.  So at most the clan side will have 20 units.  The players who are not running clanners will control one or more "Level 2's" of Comstar (6 Mechs or Tanks).  Normally, no more than 5 total "level 2's" will be on the board for the Comguards (30 units).  So at most there would be 50 units on a table.


Bidding:

To take a tile the Khan and SaKhan  players for a given clan will bid against each other with the lowest bidder being the overall commander for that battle.  The Khan always open the bidding.  There are 5 possible unit sizes (Assault, Heavy, Medium, Light and Battle Armor).  There will be an entire post later about the details of bidding.  It gets more convoluted when multiple units with different skill sets are involved.

Note, when you are bidding, you will also be bidding against another clanner for 1st picks for mech selection. when building your force.

Taking a Tile:
The Khan will decide which tile they wish to attempt to take.  Then they will Draw a card from the "Tile" deck for that appropriate tile.  Desert tile will draw from the Desert deck, the river delta will draw from the river delta deck, Ruins from the ruin deck, city from the city deck...
.  This card will have the scenario (Many from the Tukayyid book), opposing Unit (force skill level), any special characters the Comguards may have in that force.  Some cards are special one time scenarios that will be linked to a given tile (Devils Bath.)  Some cars will say Counterattack...and the Clanners will be hit in their tile before  they get a chance to advance (Using the same force they just bid on).  Some will say Supply lines hit, and the Clanners will have to fight using units not from the units designated to advance, but from those in the other tiles or landing zone of that clan.  If the card says "Special" it is a one time battle and removed from that deck, otherwise it is returned to the deck and may be drawn again.  


Should the clanners win the "advancing" scenario...then they will take the tile they were attacking.



Using the Correct Mini:
Clanners and Comstar will have to use the correct minis for their mechs when building their forces.  We will have two games going at once.  For the clanners, The lowest bid will get to build their force first (getting the widest selection of minis).   The Comguard force will be built first for the clan player with the highest bid, meaning bidding high will most likely get you facing off against  the tougher batch of Comguard minis.  Not much of a difference really , but a little more incentive to bid low.

QUICK STRIKE?

Ok...I've been out of the loop for a bit.   But in reading some stuff on the net....I'm very interested in the Quick Strike rules.

Essentially it cuts the mech sheet down to a baseball card size sheet.  Gives each unit a much easier to calulate point value.  Streamlines the rules, and speeds up the game.  Lets you run a MUCH larger force.  And seeing as I have the minis...

Wouldn't it be nicer to have each player running a stack of mechs rather than just one or two.

I was concerned that the battles we would be doing would not do justice to Tukayyid.

Stay tuned...The campaign might just have gotten a whole lot bigger.

Basics rules for Quick Strike can be found here...
http://bg.battletech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/BattleForce_QSR.pdf

Sample of a Quick Strike mech sheet...

UPDATE:

Yep.  We will be using the Quick Strike rules out of the Strategic Operations book.
Faster all around, easier to move multiple units, but just about everything Battletech has.

To sum up some of the key points of Quick Strike.
There are 3 weapon ranges...Short 6" or less, Medium 6+ - 24", and Long 24"- 48".
You do damage based upon what range you are shooting at.
So using the Atlas sheet above at short range you would do 5 damage, base of 2, +2 for the AC, +1 for the LRM. (They list the AC, SRM and LRM so you could use specialty ammos if you wanted)    

Pilots have a single stat that is used for gunnery and piloting.
All the physicals are in the game...damage based upon the mechs size.

One move stat.  Only terrain matters for slowing you down...no cost for turns.

No side hits...everything is on the front, rear shots do +1 to the damage total.

One target per turn...one fire stick. (May not even need these).

One critical chart that you start rolling on once you are into the structure.

Heat tracking...Only some mechs have enough weapons to overheat (OV stat).  The amount you overheat your mech by is the amount of extra damage you do that turn.  You only drop your heat back to 0 if you take a turn not shooting.

Stay tuned...

Zellbrigen & Clan Honor levels

One of the main differences with the clans that took the field on Tukayyid is how each one stuck to Clan honor codes in battle against the ComGuards.


There are three areas where Clan Honor come into play.

Dueling, Physical Attacks, and Retreating.

Each of these three areas has 4 "Levels" of Honor.  A "1" being the most strict adherence to clan honor, "4" being total disregard.

Each Clan will have an Honor rating like this...

Clan Wolf
Dueling: 4
Physicals: 4
Retreat: 4

Here is a more detailed description as to what each level of the Honor system means.

Dueling Honor Levels

1. Will use Clan Dueling engagement rules under all circumstances.
2. Any Mech that does not honor a duel, becomes "Dezgra" and may be freely targeted by any and all Clan mechs.
3. If any Mech breaks a Duel, then the entire battle becomes a Grand Melee, allowing Clanners to fire freely on all targets.
4. No restrictions on Clan targeting.

Physical Attack Honor Levels

1. Clanners will only make Physical attacks if their mech has no ranged weapons left that can fire.
2. Any ComGuard mech that attempts a physical attack becomes Dezgra and may be the target of Physical attacks by Clanners.
3. Should any ComGuard mech attempt a Physical attack, then all clanners are free to make physical attacks on any mech for the remainder of the battle.
4. Clanners may make Physical attacks from the start of the battle.

Retreat Honor Levels

1. Clanners will not retreat from the battlefield.
2. May only retreat if they are out numbered 4 to 1 (Mechs only)
3. May only retreat if out numbered 3 to 1 (Mechs only)
4. Clanners may retreat when ever they want.

Vehicles are considered beneath honor duels are not subject to the Clan honor system.  meaning, they may be fired upon by multiple clan mechs and or be the target of physical attacks no matter the honor level the clan follows.

Clan Battle Armor does not follow Dueling rules or the Honor codes for Physicals or Dueling.  They do follow the Retreat honor levels. Meaning, they will fire upon or make physical attacks against any comguard unit, even if that unit is engaged in a honor duel with a Clan mech.

More details on how Dueling works will come in a later post.

Early mech lists. ComStar

These will be tweaked but for the most part they are correct for the campaign...(Click the image to see a larger pic.)  Will get these all into a google doc to make it easier to read.