The mechanical way that the Tabletop Game Battletech plays (ie, mechs are relatively durable until they aren't, and you roll goddamn chance cubes which flout the suggestion opf probability) means that it is actually shockingly common, especially in ye olden second edition, for a game to wind up with a bunch of nigh-victorious mechs surrounding a single final opponent, and - despite having almost no rational probability of missing - having to chase them and shoot for rounds after round after round to finish them off: Missing, stripping every stupid point of armor off non vital locations, and alpha strike after alpha strike refusing to generate any fatal critical hits.
In fact it is so fundamentally common to the way that Battletech played out that there was a canonical 'urban legend' in an early novel, written by none other than Michael Stackpoole. While the wiki (and in some cases, the fandom) will get in a tizzy over the "one supernatural thing in Battletech" it's extremely obvious to anyone who has played the wargame that it's just a thing that happens with alarming regularity in the game.