More Battletech Quick-Strike

Another game of Quick-Strike on the planet strangely reminiscent of 19th century America. We picked 50 points worth of mechs from my mech deck and played a simple meet-em greet-em blast-em-to-bits game on my Port Republic board. My opponent picked four medium and heavy mechs: Archer, Wolverine, Rifleman and Warhammer. I picked two lights, Javelin and Wasp, one medium Phoenix Hawk, one heavy Crusader and one assault mech, Battlemaster.

A selection of mech cards you use to keep track of your mechs in Quick-Strike

We advanced our mechs in pretty much a straight line towards each other. Simo left his Archer into a forest near his deployment zone to provide LRM support, I sent my Javelin to threathen his left flank.

Simo's Warhammer deals out hot PPC shots with frightening accuracy, tearing the Battlemaster's and the Phoenix Hawk's armor to bits but not managing to score internal damage. I manage to take the woods in the center and use the cover to my advantage. The Crusader and the Rifleman sit in water features to be able to cool off excess heat generated by shooting.

My Battlemaster retreats into the cover of the woods and together with the wounded Phoenix Hawk take down the rifleman. The Wolverine dances with the quick Wasp and is forced to block access to his rear by facing the table edge (most realistic). The Javelin gets a rear shot on the Warhammer with his SRM's.

The extra cover of the woods proves to be a game decider as I score more hits than my opponent and take down the Warhammer too, even though my Battlemaster is just barely on it's feet.

The Archer and the Wolverine retreat to their deployment zone and are taken down by superior firepower. The Battlemaster is destroyed by the Archer.

A straightforward game, but I found myself wanting for a couple of modifiers. Straight vanilla, Quick-Strike doesn't impose penalties for moving and shooting, and uses the maximum movement of a mech to decide how hard it is to hit. This means, that a stationary mech is just as hard to hit as one that moved full speed, and light mechs are able to use jump packs to jump behind the enemy every turn and score easy hits. So, I think I'll try these alterations taken from Battletech 3rd ed. for our next game:

Mechs' own movement makes it more difficult to score hits:

Stationary  +0
Walking     +1
Running     +2
Jump Jets  +3

The total distance (not expended MP) moved by a mech during the turn makes it more difficult to hit:

0-4”        +0
5”-8”       +1
9”-12”     +2
13”-18”   +3
19”-34”   +4
35”+        +5
Used jump jets +1 in addition to distance

So now the speed at which the mech moves affects both the shooter and the target. I think it will not bog the gameplay down after I make some counters you can toss next to the mech or on the mech card to remind you of the speed.

EDIT: Here's a PDF of the markers I made, in case someone else finds them useful: link