It was day two on this uninhabited planet, and the dropship finally locallized the homing signal coming from the orginal probe that discovered this planet. Luckily, it wasn't far from the dropship landing site. It must have veered off course because it was absolutely nowhere near the estimated landing zone.

General Harrison Zaroff went out in his Dragon this morning to recover it. The data contained inside the probe could help immensely in the exploration of this world. The rest of the regiment waited patiently for his return, he was alittle behind scedule but nothing to worry about. Anyway, there was no one else here, no problem. The distress call was registered at 1100 hours.

Zaroff was under attack.

General Zaroff is under attack by an unidentified group known only to the battle computer as Hostile Alpha. Although the probe is immensely important, Zaroff's life is at stake. If the 351st does not react quickly, Zaroff will be a steak. However, the probe could give the unit an advantage in upcoming missions.

Lay out only one standard BattleTech map as seen in the diagram.

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Place a coin, rock, bead or other kind of marker on Hex0708, this is the probe.

The defending group consists of general Zaroff and the rest of the 351st Mechanized Assault Group. The defender may choose up to three mechs within 150 tons, these three mechs will be kept throughout the campaign, so choose carefully. At this time, choose a reserve mech. If any of your mechs are lost in combat, the defender will use this mech in the next mission. If the reserve mech is used, the defender may choose another reserve within a tonnage equal to the previous one, minus five. IE: A reserve Atlas is used, a mech with a tonnage of 95 or less may be chosen to replace it.

All three pilots are to be generated randomly.

Because Zaroff has been under attack, damage may already be widdling away at his mech. Make a Piloting Skill roll for Zaroff. If it fails, 10 damage is dealt to a location determined by a hit location roll. No critical hits are suffered, only a maximum of 1 internal structure hit is permitted (with the rest of the damage discarded), and all head shots are re-rolled.

General Zaroff (Piloting 3, Gunnery 3) DRG-1N Dragon

General Zaroff is already near the probe, taking cover in the heavy woods at Hex0610.

The rest of the defending group is deployed any where within three hexes of the southern edge of the map. Tight formation states that the mechs may not be any more than four hexes away from each other.

The unknown attackers have already fired several shots at Zaroff and are closing on his position. The attacker chooses up to four mechs within 120 tons, and four unnamed pilots are rolled randomly. The defender chooses three different ammo reliant weapons from any number of the attacker's mechs. Each one of these weapons loose 1 ammo point, as if it were fired once.

In other missions, the attacker may replace his destroyed mechs with new ones and any killed pilots are replaced in the same way. At no time may the attacker's group exceed the maximum tonnage defined by the mission.

The attacker's mech may be deployed any where north of the XX08 series of hexes, but not any closer than 5 hexes away from Zaroff's mech.

If Zaroff's mech leaves the southern edge of the map of the map, the defender is victorious. However, if the defender chooses, he may also go after the probe at Hex0708. If they retrieve the probe, it will give them an advantage in following missions. They may choose to continue the mission after Zaroff is saved, but if they fail to retrieve the probe, the attacker wins. The defender may also choose to go after the probe before Zaroff leaves the map, but if Zaroff is killed, whether or not they have retrieved the probe, they lose.

If the attacker can destroy all of the mechs defending Zaroff, they are victorious. If they destory Zaroff singly, they are victorious. The attacker may also decide to retrieve the probe, but it will yield no extra advantage to them. It will merely deprive the defender of that advantage.

Any defending mechs that leave the map any where but the south edge are considered 'lost' and may not be used in future missions.

The probe is a key object in this scenario. If it is retrieved or not will greatly affect the rest of the missions in this campaign. Picking up the probe occurs after the heat phase.

A mech in the same hex as the probe may choose to try and pick it up. It may not make any physical or weapon attacks nor may it move that turn. Picking up the probe requires an undamaged hand actuator, two critical slots in the mech's arm and a successful piloting skill roll.

If this roll is succesful, the probe takes up two criticals in the bottom half of the arm in which it is being carried, and no weapons from that arm may be fired as long as the mech is carrying the probe. If the mech does not have the required criticals in the bottom half of the arm, the probe may be strapped on to the top half, but this requires an extra turn to complete. While the mech is strapping the probe on, it may not move or make any attacks. It may not attempt to strap if there are two open criticals in the bottom half of the desired arm. If there are not two criticals open in the top or bottom halves of the arm, the mech cannot carry the probe.

If the probe is with a blown-off arm, it takes another turn to remove the probe from the hand clinging to it, during this turn, the attempting mech may not make any attacks. After this, the arm may be picked up and used as a club by any mech with enough available hands.

If the piloting skill roll fails, as well as with any other piloting skill rolls involving the probe, the mech does not fall down. The mech may make only one attempt to pick up the probe each turn.

Whenever the probe is picked up, remove the token from the board. When it is dropped, place the token on the appropriate hex so that all players know where it landed. (It's still emitting a homing signal.)

Every time the mech carrying the probe changes to a higher level, make a piloting skill roll adding a +1 modifier for each level being changed. If that roll fails, the probe is dropped to the hex before the level change. When running, make a piloting skill roll with the modifier of -2. If this roll fails, the probe is dropped in the hex that that the mech was in before the run. This roll is made after the mech moves, and the mech cannot abort the run.

If one critical hit is suffered to the probe, the probe is considered damaged. If both probe criticals are hit, the probe is destroyed along with the hand actuator carrying it, if any.

Other than the circumstances described in Carrying the Probe the probe may be dropped in several different ways.

If the hand actuator carrying the probe is destroyed, the probe is dropped at the mech's current hex.

If the mech falls, the probe is dropped in the hex opposite to the resulting facing direction.

If the mech's arm is obliterated, roll 2D6. If the result is lower than 7, the probe is destroyed, otherwise, it is dropped in the destoryed mech's current hex. If the arm is blown off because the torso on that side was destoryed, the arm holds on to the probe, and the probe must be removed before using the arm as a club.

For the defender, the probe must be carried off the southern edge of the map to be retrived. The mech retrieving the probe may not return to the battlefield. This rule is the same for the attacker, only they must take it north.

If both players agree, the MechWarriors on the defender's side may be existing, experienced MechWarriors. The attacker's may not.

If you're not confused enough about the probe yet, you may add a rule there too. Every time the probe is dropped, roll 1D6. If the result is lower than 3, the probe becomes damaged but still takes up two criticals to carry. If the probe is damaged again, the probe is destroyed.