My thoughts now that I've gotten a real night's sleep (the drive back from North Carolina should take ~7 hours...it took 10.5, and I had all my usual Sunday classes to teach, so after I wrote up the scenario I racked the hell out).
Rules
The really dangerous thing about light fog is that it has the side effect of limiting your TMM, making it easier to hit everything on the board. That makes heavy/assault Mechs *much* more dangerous, because they don't care too much about their TMMs anyway, while it hurts lights and mediums who don't have the armor to soak up incoming fire. Additionally, the makeup of that FWL heavy lance is extra-mean under these conditions, because it's a really well-put-together lance for just *hammering* a target all the way from ~18 to 7 hexes. 2 PPCs and 3 AC/10s for hole punching and 2 LRM-20s and an LRM-15 for crit-seeking, and the longer it takes to close the longer they hammer you. Fortunately the best pilot in the bunch is in the Mech that's hurt most by heat (Orion).
Jumping movement is COMPLETLEY UNAFFECTED by fog (try it out on MM). If you want to move forward 3 hexes, that costs 6 MP with Walking/Running movement, or 3 Jumping MP.
Rerolls
My druthers here is to try and reroll the light fog specifically because we tend to have lighter forces that need to keep their TMMs up. I'm not so concerned about the hovertanks; Maxims and Saracens don't have a whole ton of firepower (Saladins are the AC/20 carriers), and they still get pillboxed pretty easy. I'm more concerned about getting in close to that heavy lance ASAP so we're under the optimal ranges for their weapons, which means we need the movement available.
I don't like dawn/dusk either, but a +1 TMM across the board hurts us less than it hurts them, and Dusk/Dawn does go away eventually, while Fog sticks around the whole game. I'd prefer my priority to be reroll Light Fog and see what turns up, and then if we get something more worthwhile, we can do a reroll on Dusk/Dawn.
For what it's worth, "hills" maps are pretty neutral; Rolling Hills, Woodland, Desert Hills, Classic BT, and so forth. There aren't any really terrible maps in the rotation, and we won't have any building for me to find the basements of from this selection, so I don't really want to reroll that. The battlefield size is pretty small; that's right on the line between either 2x2 map setup, or a 3x2 setup (in both cases fighting across the narrow way); a wide battlefield means that if we do use Light Fog, redeploying laterally will likely be a problem if the OPFOR spreads themselves out. That makes us vulnerable to a breakthrough or being rolled up by the flank.
Reinforcements and Deployment
My initial read on reinforcements is to deploy Dunedain and Dancer Lances as reinforcements. Reaper and Kong are downchecked at the moment due to casualties, and Crusher is in line for the next mission. Remember since we have a mission "tomorrow" too, we have to think of that deployment: Crusher deploys automatically, and I'm going to push hard for the inclusion of Bright Lance into that fight as well since we know we'll have heavy-class opposition (that'll mean we're fielding 4 heavy Mechs at a minimum) . The last lance that gets deployed into the Crusher-led mission should depend on who comes out of this mission in the best shape.
I'll be doing rerolls (etc) tomorrow evening, so by Wednesday morning we should have everything completely locked in and ready to go on Saturday. If you've got feedback, commentary, or are running Dunedain/Dancer lance and want to let me know why you should/shouldn't be deployed in this mission, say something ASAP. And, as usual, someone please confirm record sheet printing.
Brandon: I don't know if your Warhammer will be done by game day; I know I said I've have it done, but that was when we were playing later in the month and I didn't leave the state for 2 weeks for work. You will have *A* warhammer to use Saturday, I guarantee. Dan, I'm moving Brandon's WHM up over your War Dog in the painting queue for this reason.
Author
Topic: Operation THEMYSCIRA Mission 2 (Read 2612 times)