Quick and Dirty Artillery Rules for Battletech: Beyond Electrodrome
The primary artwork (Long Range Delivery) for this post is by Tomi Vaisanen. Find more of his bitchin’ art HERE and give him a follow on Instagram. You’re great. He’s great. Great people gotta prop eachother up.
And before we get cracking, lets get in the BattleTech: Beyond Electrodrome mood. Gunship, John Carpenter, show us the future we were promised in the 80’s…take it away…
The Leftovers
Rudy took a drag of his cigarette and held it as dazzling lights flashed in the distance. He blew it out in a long, measured stream through his nose. He found it helped keep the stinging smell of the propellant at bay.
“‘Ey Boss! Wha’ you want us ta’ do? Our boy needs us!”
It was true. Their “boy” did need them.
A kilometer away in a canyon of shattered buildings, two monsters tore each other limb from limb inside a cloud of smoke. The sharp bark of autocannons reverberated up the wide street, the staccato matched with a counter-staccato a millisecond later as a chain of shells exploded, ripping into armor and synthetic muscle and the (please God) vacant slum blocks of the Northern Desolation. Lasers cut and danced through the air in glaring spears, casting the hulking ‘mechs’ shadows against a juddering, flashing haze. Here and there an arc of blue-white lightning reached out, a fist of super-charged particles tearing through the air with a divine roar, smashing the world to pieces.
“Best goddamned seat in the house”, Rudy muttered.
He spun to face the gun battery. Three heavy guns, lined up like the cannons of a man-o-war from the ancient world. His chest swelled up, filled with thick cigarette smoke and pride at what his family, his father, his own hands had brought into and kept in this world.
The Guns of Superflat Seven. The Roofstompers. The Three Wise Men. Mister Calderone’s Ladies. They had many names, and had been crewed by many hands. But they had only ever known one family of owners, and they had only ever known one single, deadly purpose.
“Load Copperhead!” Rudy he growled, smoke pouring out between his teeth.
“We’re all out!” came a voice from behind a clutter of men and big brass shells. Jenkins, likely. That cowardly little shit-chihuahua Jenkins, with his bug-eyes. Fucking Jenkins…pathetic twat.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake! Load Precision AP”
“Ain’t got none, guv!” came another voice, bolder than that little shit Jenkins’ thin yap.
The sound and fury down the avenue was growing less feverish. Spears of brilliant scintillating light pierced the haze, points of yellow light darted from one point to another, vanishing in a flash and a delayed roar. But there was a slowness hidden in the smoke. An impending finality. The cloud of smoke had taken on an angry orange hue, and slow grinding, crushing sounds bore down on the surrounding city.
“‘Ain’t got none!?’ What d’you mean ‘ain’t got none’?”
“Well,” Marquis said from beside the breach of Bella, “we only submitted the order on Tuesday morning, guv. And as you may know”, he paused to slowly examine something on the palm of his dirty leather gloves, “its only Tuesday evening now.”
Rudy felt his left eye twitch, and felt an incorporeal, ashen devil slash a note on the back of his heart: Once this is over, kill Marquis.
“Goddammit! Feed these guns and feed them NOW!” he roared, fire and blood and lightning in his voice.
His men, boys he had raised from the squalid kingdoms of the streets, given a task they could easily set themselves to, snapped to action. In a manner of seconds three massive concussions washed over Rudy’s body as the heavy six-inch shells streaked downrange, singing the joyous, howling song that murderous ordinance sings.
A kilometer is an awful short distance for something moving faster than the speed of sound, and before Rudy could bring his binoculars up to his eyes there was a blinding blue flash, a flash so bright he couldn’t see it, a flash so bright that it stamped itself into his visual field like a huge glowing bug on a windscreen. That light, that horrid noxious light…it made his skin prickle with countless invisible needles.
This strange blue flash was followed a moment later by a single enormous explosion, the second shell, down in the hellish smoke. It cast impossible shadows against the haze, shadows of giants suddenly torn to pieces, ripped apart and sprayed through the air like mere fragile men.
The third shell still hung in the air, reaching down in a languid arc, trailing a thin wisp of smoke. It seemed to fall with deliberate slowness, and the gun crew drew and held a collective breath.
As the tandem roar of the previous rounds punched Rudy’s ears the third shell erupted and released a greasy cascade of liquid fire that reached down into the glittering, roiling cloud below with a hundred burning tentacles, like a jellyfish born in the pits of Tartarus, searching for fuel upon which to feast.
White smoke was choked out with oily black, burying the 'combatants in darkness. After the last round’s report, the only sound was that of a roaring, toxic conflagration.
Rudy turned to his crew, cigarette dangling from his ashen lips.
“By God, boys. What did you give ‘em?”
A reedy little voice reached out from behind a stack of crates.
“Well that was the leftovers, boss, innit?”
Artillery With Half The Trouble And Double The Fun
Look, I love the idea of using artillery in BattleTech. Random explosions vaporizing light ‘mechs and trees with equal disregard is my jam. Cluster munitions, smoke rounds, minefields, heavy ordinance…my, oh my.
But when I look at the rules, the intellectual and temporal COST of using the stuff, when I think about tracking round travel times, targeted hexes, spotting, ammo, cross-referencing the rule books, scatter, windage, c-bills, I invariably reach the same decision:
But I still want to blow shit up! I still want that sweet, sweet arty! So I’m going to have to strip it to its core.
And whats that I see lurking at the heart of offboard artillery?
Delightful chaos.
Artillery isn’t about precisely placed explosions. Its not about blowing up the bad guys. Its about the long-shot possibility of obliterating the bad guys. Its like praying for lightning to blast the tyrant as they wave on their balcony, knowing that there’s at least a chance that God is listening.
Its about indifferent destruction. Maybe your enemy dies. Maybe. But maybe that 16-inch shell is gonna slap you upside the back of your head and send you on to the shadow realm. Landing rounds on the “X” isn’t all that important so long as you’re able to destroy the ballpark around the “X”.
The fact that its so easy to miss with artillery, that its so easy for rounds to scatter, to terrify, disappoint, to surprise and elate you…that is the core joy of offboard artillery support in BattleTech. Maybe you picked the wrong target hexes. Maybe your intended targets zigged instead of zagging. Or maybe you can’t roll higher than a 6 to save your life. Odds were against you the second you picked up Tactical Operations and found page 179 in the table of contents, or cruised to page 77 of the BattleMech Manual (the rules there are slicker, but still not to my liking).
So how do we fix this rule set? How do we get twice the juice for half the squeeze?
Easy.
Just make it super fucking hard to hit things with artillery.
Lets be honest; your shots would have missed anyway, me harty. I just helped you miss in a tenth of the time with a twentieth of the putzing about.
Which is to say you owe me one.
The Artillery Support PDF
Below is a link to a PDF I have created, not only to solve the problem of complex artillery rules but also as a supplement to the ever-evolving BattleTech: Beyond Electrodrome module. Which is so far awesome and promises to climb ever-higher up the scaly spine of Kickass Mountain.
Artillery Support PDF
Quick and dirty, just like me.
Gone are the days of spotting, anticipating your enemy, remembering designated target hexes, ammunition, and realism. Why plan out an attack when you can just pull the trigger?
As a bonus, I have included a number of new and interesting artillery rounds, including t-shirt canister rounds, flash rounds, nerve gas, coolant foam, polymer anti-mobility resin, and low-yield tactical EMP rounds.
It should be noted that in a perfect world these artillery resources are printed up on cards to be drawn at random (out of a deck containing other similar resources such as aerospace assets, traps, infantry units, animal units, audience participation, vehicles, etc.) by each player.
However, seeing as the PDF file is NOT a deck of cards, I will leave it up to you to figure out how to distribute artillery assets in a way that is reasonable and maximizes fun for you and your people.
Also it should be noted that this resource is designed to integrate with the Spectacle Rules of BattleTech: Beyond Electrodrome, which I haven’t published yet but will publish next.
So with all of that having been said…
Git after it.
