BCM356 - Mob battle, ten Marine set-up with a Wraith

(6:10) Level 5 ('Assault on the Control Room') on Heroic. In BCM346 I set up a mob battle with ten Marines, but now here's a set-up demo in which the Wraith is left active. I also make a few other changes from before, including having the back Elite aboard a Ghost in advance. In the next movie I'll be battling using the set-up produced here. Don't miss it!

Released May 14th 2019, gameplay recorded May 12th-13th 2019.

Commentary

00:02 (Getting to the battle trigger) In the Banshee grab the pilot gets splattered which is amusing and saves me some shooting. As I fly to the end of the bridge I take the opportunity to blast a Jackal; that's one less bridge guy for me to kill later. One other little difference from before is that I only take one blast to overturn the Shade near the ground door.

01:08 (Grunts in the lead) As I step through the doorway to trigger the battle, I watch to see whether the leading covies are Grunts or Jackals. I specifically want Grunts, so that I end up with eight instead of only five (I find mob battling more fun with more Grunts). I get Grunts as desired; you can see one materialize. When doing the gameplay for this set-up, I reverted any time it was Jackals in the lead.

01:16 (Shorter flying) In regard to triggering chasing behaviour (and the associated checkpoint), notice that I don't fly as far as before. In BCM346 I flew quite a bit further than needed. I'm just being a bit more efficient here (and it's fun to see the Pelican flying past).

01:22 (Ejection stuff) I let a Ghost get boarded and meanwhile eject the Shade gunner, just like before. But this time when I eject the Ghost pilot, I have the Ghost deep in the corner area (loosely controlled by where I'm hovering). That's just to help ensure that when I later flip the Ghost back over to get the back Elite aboard, no other Elite beats him to it.

01:55 (Splatter check) I pause to check for anyone having been splattered by either the Wraith or the Ghost. Particularly the Wraith. Things look ok though, so I continue. Otherwise I would've reverted.

02:06 (Ghost moving) My next task is moving the other Ghost to a more central location - and I want it overturned. I've shown that operation before at the end of BCM350, but this time I'm having to do it under fire. I do my best to keep safe. There were a few takes when I got blown up doing this.

02:50 (Killing bridge troops) Unlike before, I take the time to eliminate the bridge troops. Not many left: three Grunts, a Jackal, and the Elite. I briefly play Shark to get the Elite to dive off. During my attacking I take care to try and avoid Banshee damage, but instead I could've been more gung-ho (hence faster) and switched to the platform Banshee later.

03:30 (Back Elite boarding) I want the back Elite mounted up in advance, and I think now's the time to do it. What you see here is my second attempt to right the Ghost. The first one failed.

03:39 (Stopping Wraith fire) I briefly go around the corner (high enough that I don't trigger that area) to stop the Wraith firing, and I maintain the checkpoint delay with Banshee fire. But when I return, I see that the Wraith has spotted the Marines and is firing again. So I quickly get its attention and try again - and hope that no Marines got killed.

04:38 (Checkpointing) After yet another bit of trouble which I've edited out (part of the mob ended up dangerously clustered around the Wraith), I finally get the mob reasonably well situated. Not quite as central as I'd been planning, but good enough; so I sink a bit and stop firing, to finally get the checkpoint. That was about 8 minutes after triggering the battle; rather slow because of my two bits of trouble. Just as I was doing that, there was an incident (around 4:46) in which I feared that a Jackal had been splattered by the Ghost. Blood could be seen. I paused a few seconds to look, but couldn't see very well and continued anyway. As it turned out, nobody died in that incident.

04:54 (Numbers check) Later I checked that no covies or Marines had been lost. This clip is just a demo of doing that, plus it serves to add a bit of action (and a teaser) to the end of the movie. Five Jackals and eight Grunts; yep, present and correct. Ten Marines? Yep. Mission accomplished! In further checking, I found that four of the Marines are on 8 health bars, and the others all on 7. So, a healthy bunch!

Closing remarks One other aspect of the set-up is that I've got Stacker this time, rather than Johnson. I specifically arranged that. The movie started from a delayed checkpoint for making Banshee grab attempts, and before continuing with the set-up work I checked that Stacker was aboard the Pelican. I wanted Stacker not only for the sake of a change, but also because if you have Johnson, you tend to hear his snowball speech a whole lot, which gets repetitive (especially in the context of a movie).

Battling coming next, very soon. Gonna be hot!