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Exploring The World Of BattleTech: Part One – Introduction
August 22, 2016 by crew
Good afternoon, Beasts of War. My name is James Johnson, better known on Beasts of War as @oriskany. Just in case you’ve heard the rumour that my next article series will in fact NOT deal with the fire-scorched, gunmetal majesty that is military historical wargaming … well, what can I say? I’m afraid those rumours are true.
Now before you build that bomb shelter and stock up on canned goods, let me assure everyone that the Apocalypse has not arrived. No zombies are coming, no missiles have been launched, and Donald Trump hasn’t been elected (yet). It’s just time for a change of pace, is all.
So here’s an idea. How about we take a hard left turn down Science Fiction Boulevard and kick the lid off one of the most influential, widely-published, and iconic classics of the genre. Before 40K, Warmachine, Dust, Hawken, Titanfall, or Pacific Rim, there was the monolithic classic that undeniably helped inspire them all: BattleTech.
BattleTech: A Primer
Defining what BattleTech is … actually isn’t easy. Simply put, it’s a far-future wargame universe where interstellar nations of humanity engage in a near-constant state of high-tech, neo-feudal warfare. Cities are razed, planets are taken, and kingdoms fall in an endless procession of colossal battles, shaky treaties, and dark, backstabbing politics.
The central feature of these wars is the “battlemech.” Essentially the “tank” of this universe, battlemechs are war machines with a vaguely humanoid, robot-like appearance, usually on two legs and standing about ten meters high. Thickly armoured and sometime very fast, they pack firepower to level city blocks in a single salvo.
Yet these aren’t actually “robots” at all. Battlemechs (often called a ‘mech for short) are controlled by elite pilots, housed in a cockpit usually located in the ‘mech’s head or torso. While I’m sure this sounds all very familiar to countless sci-fi gamers, what sets BattleTech apart is the fact that this game ALMOST invented the idea.
A Place In Wargaming History
BattleTech was originally developed and released by FASA in 1984, the same Chicago-based company that created other classic franchises like Renegade Legions, Star Trek Tactical Combat Simulator, a Doctor Who RPG, Earthdawn, Crimson Skies, and most of all, Shadowrun.
Founded in 1980 with just a few hundred dollars, by the end of the decade FASA had become an incredible force in the world wargaming market. Indeed, US-based wargaming giants like FASA are why I always chafe a little when people talk about GW as “the only real gaming company” of the 80s and 90s. Not even close, my friends.
This isn’t to say that BattleTech was without external inspiration. Giant piloted walkers can be traced to “The Empire Strikes Back” or even H.G. Wells’ 1897 “War of the Worlds.” “Mobile Suit Gundam” came out in Japan in 1979, while the “mech” idea seems to have first appeared in the manga / anime series “Mazinger Z” in 1972.
Whatever inspiration BattleTech took in, however, the franchise would pay back a thousand-fold. Japan’s famous “Robotech” franchise kicked off the same year. 40K wasn’t created until 1987 (with Titans appearing in 1988). Then there’s Warmachine and Dust, video games like Titanfall, Hawken, Steel Battalion, the list is practically endless.
The point is, countless games where pilots stomp around grim, gritty universes in immense walking war machines owe no small measure of inspiration to BattleTech. And this isn’t just about the idea of the ‘mech itself, other aspects of the BattleTech universe make it not only one of the originals, but still one of the best games in the genre.
What Kind Of Game Is BattleTech?
Originally, BattleTech was a tactical wargame, a hybrid of hex-based maps and 3D miniatures. Players would build a points-based force of ‘mechs (with the option to supplement their force with “aeromech” aerospace support craft, armoured vehicles, and infantry), square off, and battle it out in scenario or campaign-based play.
With piloting and gunnery skills individually tracked for ‘mech pilots, together with design and customization features added for the ‘mechs themselves, it was only a matter of time before BattleTech launched into a full-scale RPG known as MechWarrior.
Yet even this isn’t all. BattleTech also boasts a collectable card game, a twenty five year library of arcade and home video games, multiplayer online games. This truly is a “franchise universe,” with multiple highly-accessible start points for anyone interested in one of the most fully-developed settings in the history of sci-fi wargaming.
How Big Is BattleTech?
Let’s just say that when measured by the sheer breadth and scope of its science fiction backstory, BattleTech is huge. As in Star Wars, Star Trek, and 40K “huge.” How huge? Let’s start with at least seven separate tabletop games (NOT counting editions or expansions, that would push the number well over twenty).
BattleTech also has the aforementioned CCG and fully-developed RPG with almost hundred support books. Twenty-one video games have been produced, not counting the MMOs, arcade games, or fully-enclosed cockpit ‘mech simulators that were introduced in the 1990s, with updated models showcased again at this year’s GenCon.
We’re just getting started. The thousand years of BattleTech history has been chronicled in over 160 novels, fan movies, and a full TV show. There are sixty four “technical readout” books with information on the 3000+ models of ‘mechs players can choose, PLUS tanks, APCs, power armour, aeromechs, helicopter/VTOL craft, and dropships.
In all, the product list for BattleTech runs over 600 items, and this doesn’t even count miniatures and accessories made by associated companies like Ral Partha or Ironwind Miniatures. To truly get an idea for the staggering scope of this universe, I recommend checking out the BattleTech wiki site at www.sarna.net.
BattleTech: What Happened?
So if BattleTech came out thirty two years ago and gathered one of the biggest followings in wargaming history, what happened to it? Sadly, for all its success, FASA never enjoyed a “smooth ride” in the 1980s and 90s, and when FASA had to finally sell the franchise, ownership of BattleTech was scattered across many companies.
Microsoft purchased the video game rights, continuing to publish their successful Mechwarrior computer game series through the 1990s. WizKids bought the tabletop and RPG rights (in turn acquired by Topps), while Piranha Games eventually secured the rights from Microsoft to develop Mechwarrior Online, released in September 2013.
With the IP scattered across so many companies, each with its own ideas for BattleTech (and developmental priorities), the license suffered something of an identity crisis and soon began to stumble. Once the powerhouse of sci-fi wargaming, its place was subsequently taken by licenses like 40K and a Gundam Wing resurgence in 1995.
BattleTech Today: A New Day?
But for every “Dark Age,” there is a Renaissance … and after twenty plus years in the wilderness, BattleTech is back.
Things started to turn in June 2007, when Catalyst Game Labs launched a revival of the BattleTech franchise, under license from Topps. With streamlined rules and great new starter box sets that get players everything they need for a potential lifetime of play for about $50, the sleeping giant that is BattleTech … began to stir to life.
I own this Origins Award-winning starter box myself and can personally recommend it. The unpainted minis are admittedly soft plastic, but there is practically no assembly required and remember you’re paying about a dollar per ‘mech.
There’s also a new “Alpha Strike” edition of the game, eliminating the bookkeeping associated with BattleTech (more in dispelling that little myth in a later article). This is a fast, “quick draw” game that allows a BattleTech engagement to be played in one-two hours, much the way “Tanks” does for Flames of War system.
These reduced rules are an important course correction against the franchise’s former trend of ever-increasing complexity and paperwork in a cumbersome mechanics system. This is a reputation BattleTech has always struggled with (very unjustly, I might add), one which Catalyst Game Labs is striving to put to rest.
More is on the way. Harebrained Schemes has recently completed a Kickstarter for an upcoming BattleTech PC-based Wargame with Jordan Weisman, one of BattleTech’s original creators. The game seems to be getting back to BattleTech’s tactical roots, correcting many of the complaints that have plagued Mechwarrior Online.
What's Next?
So where do we go from here? Well, we’ll be rolling out three more articles in this BattleTech series.
In Part Two, we’ll take a deeper dive into the backstory and setting of this incredible series, examining what makes it such an icon of sci-fi wargaming. In Part Three we’ll review some of the core features and mechanics of the many choices available for BattleTech play, including tabletop, RPG, computer gaming, and even the CCG.
Finally, Part Four will include an epic battle report of an actual classic-edition BattleTech game, played in full miniature. Which of the great Star League Houses will rise or fall? Which Clans will conquer or be crushed?
Stay tuned as we wade deeper into the fusion-powered hurricane of epic sci-fi carnage … that is BattleTech.
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great article again, thank you! I never realised that Battle Tech and Shadowrun have been published from the same company, but I never really played Battle Tech only Shadowrun.
@oriskany thank you, thank you, thank you 🙂
This was my first tabletop wargame! 🙂 Alongside with AeroTech and the Compendium. These were all published in Poland I believe somewhat around 1993 by Encore, at least the BattleTech game. I believe it was based on the American 3rd ed.
I remember spending countless hours with my uncle playing the game, designing Mechs, plainly having fun. The game is a blast. It’s re-playability is really high even with the book keeping. Of course back then we did not make terrain pieces but it was still fun. It was also cool to combine the AeroTech space combat in campaigns in which you were making drops on planets and such. Clan Jade Falcon was my choice 🙂
Wow, what a great response already!
@donlou – it sounds like we’re “mirror images” of each other in the world of old FASA games. I played a lot of BattleTech (and Renegade Legions) and only a few sessions of Shadowrun in the early 90s. Dark, gritty, and dangerous world, an RPG that doesn’t “hold your hand” – one bullet in the wrong place and you’re dead. 😐 I only know a little about it as one of the guys we play B’Tech with is also a huge Shadowrun fan, so I pick up some by “gamer osmosis.”
@yavasa – I’ve always heard that BattleTech was big in Poland. We were playing a quick scrimmage game just yesterday (my g’friend’s first BTech game – she killed one of my Ghost Bear light mechs!), and I was sitting there with a huge smile on my face, thinking . . . sigh . . . remember when gaming used to be like this all the time?
Jade Falcon, great clan. A little wild, mischievous, and aggressive for us more deliberate “warden” Ghost Bears. Then again, you’ve got Clan Wolf on one side and House Steiner / Lyran Alliance on the other. A rough neighborhood, to be sure. 😀
@oriskany it got smaller but we still have some fans gathered around the Solaris7 webpage and forums. The problem is the availability of models nowadays, at least in my opinion. You have to buy directly from the manufacturer since I don’t know any Polish retailer having them in their offer.
Yeah, I totally agree bout that “gaming used to be like this all the time” part 🙂 Well, it had upsides and downsides, but I liked it more back then than now.
How could you now love Jade Falcon with the leader being a tough woman with more balls than whole House Kurita?
It might be cheaper for you flying from Poland to Liverpool for the day and going directly to Ral Partha Europe than having to pay the postage and packing
Yeeeep 🙂 I don’t know why mail from the USA must be tracked and costs 25$ despite the fact we are in the EU and the same package to for example Spain can be sent for like 5$. 😉
@yavasa – Man, I just love the Clans in general. In fact, I wound up settling on Clan Ghost Bear because they seem like one of the more mellow clans (well, moreso than Wolf or Jade Falcon and definitely the really crazy ones like Wolverine or Smoke Jaguar – OTHER CLANS had to wind up putting them down in a genocide).
Sorry to hear you have supply chain and logistics problems with shipping. I have a BoW friend in Australia and sometimes he has an excruciating time getting materials shipped to him. That, and the $AUD vs. $USD exchange hits him hard.
Hey, we still play BattleTech in Poland. Check out http://www.solaris7.pl website. 🙂
@brathac 😉 Been lurking on the forum for some time now.
Thanks, @brathac and @yavasa – I will check out that link! 😀
Sure thing @oriskany It is in Polish but we can have a game of MegaMek one day http://www.megamek.info
Oh damn, @yavasa , this link and the great. I love the sample screen shots! I guess I’d better start learning to read Polish! 😀
So pleased you started this series love classic battle tech and mech warrior
Great stuff (never in doubt!). I’m compelled to embark on a trip to the loft to dig out my CCG folder now, I had a huge collection of the BattleTech CCG cards – I think that may be in part to the fact I was the only one who bought them in my circle! The rules were a little clunky after some of the faster playing stuff like Magic The Gathering and Netrunner, but it was great fun.
And yeah, BattleTech has long suffered from that notion that it’s weighed down by book-keeping. Yes, it is borne of an era where games liked to have a rule and chart for everything, and it can be slowed down with more elements on the table, but the book-keeping adds so much to the atmosphere of the game. And two experienced players will have the rules ingrained so the game flows nicely.
It’s actually that loss of detail that can make Alpha Strike a little hollow for me. As much as I like putting a Trinary of Clan Mechs on a table for playing AS, something is lost in translation.
Looking forward to part 2 now!
Thanks, @ishibei and @ckbrenneke ! 😀
I was watching a B‘Tech video the other day made by a guy who came into the franchise through the CCG. This was a great idea for a product, I think, given the popularity of MtG in the mid-late 90s and the huge number of CCG / TCG / LCG fans in the community.
Man, I could not agree more about the “Myth of Bookkeeping.” I built TWO whole armies yesterday morning before our game (12 mechs for me and 8 for my girlfriend) complete with BVs (build values), a few modifications to weapons loadouts and sensor suites, re-totaled the weapons heat, the total heat disspation rates, all the record sheets, everything. One hour, the SAME hour that would be spent building TWO army lists is practically any wargame. Once the game started, damage and heat management were so fast, so easy. Those record sheets “look” complex because they have all the information for you, you have to carry nothing in your head. The only snags we had were (1) we were teaching a new player and (2) we were using ground vehicles for the first time, so had to look up a few special rules. Still, with a whole new chapter of rules and a new player, we got through a 4-on-4 game in less than 3 hours.
I also agree on Alpha Strike, although I haven’t actually played it yet. When my g’friend bought some of her Lance Packs, she got the Alpha Strike Cards with them. Looking at the mechanics and the level of abstraction, I think Alpha Strike has two basic “roles” in the B’Tech universe – just my opinion here . . .
1) introducing new players to BattleTech.
2) running really big “Battle of Tukayyid” games. 😀 Putting 20-30 mechs on a table for a colossal smackdown might be fun in Alpha Strike, but honestly not workable in a full scenario of classic BattleTech. 😀
The CCG was fun given its premise.
You formed faction specific decks (usually Steiner and Jade Falcon for me, although I genuinely had enough cards to field a 60 card themed deck for every faction in the game), then you started placing assets which would allow you to build units, and also formed targets for your opponents. Your Mechs and vehicles would need to be constructed over a number of turns usually, tapping assets for the resources needed to complete them. You’d then assign the constructed units to either guard your assets, or to assault enemy assets. You could then upgrade units, or give them named characters as pilots, or play subterfuge against an opponent.
That’s it, screw the housework tomorrow, I’m getting the bullwhip and fedora out and I’m going to dig those cards out!
Alpha Strike definitely handles larger numbers better than BattleTech. I remember one game where I fielded a company of Kurita Mechs using C3 with vehicle support against a binary of Jade Falcons, a good mix of lights to assaults carrying Elementals. Some 25 to 30 units fighting over two hexsheets. We barely managed 4 turns in 6 hours. It was a bloody fun 6 hours, but the added complexity of the tech and advanced rules in play didn’t help the pace (one of the reasons pre-invasion is still so popular).
Compare that to the recent game of Alpha Strike I played with two binaries of Clan Mechs, 10 Star Adders vs 10 Wolves, using zellbrigen honour rules in a (Dropzone Commander) cityscape, and the battle was done in just over 3 hours with a conclusive outcome – so much so that we even managed a quick BattleTech fight between an Atlas and Grasshopper vs a Mad Cat Prime in less than 5 hours, including prep time.
BattleTech suits smaller actions, but if you have the time and experience, it still scales up well. It’s what Alpha Strike is designed to do though, and it does it well.
Its been forever since I busted out the CCG. I remember the old Kai, Champion of Solaris card….You win initiative.
@ckbrenneke – That’s it, screw the housework tomorrow, I’m getting the bullwhip and fedora out and I’m going to dig those cards out!
Aaaaand there goes another victory mark on my “attic and garages” scoreboard!
How many veteran mechwarriors can I send into attics, garages, basements, storage lockers, etc, on the hunt for their old BT “LosTech” ??? 😀
We’re bringin’ it back folks!
Just thought I would chime in about Alpha-Strike from the view of a Long time Battletech veteran. It’s basically a modified and streamlined version of “Battleforce” the existing large scale combat form of Battletech which allowed players to play out large battles faster. It is also designed to be much more accessible by newer players as well and Catalyst has been edging it towards 40k/Warmachine/other wargames.
Personally I enjoy both but since my group can slam out a 12 vs 12 battletech game in about 3-4 hours Alpha strike is usually reserved for quick picks ups and large battles. Even so I would heartily recommend it to anyone interested in Stompy robots without having to be scared of massive record sheets.
Thanks, @lagcat – this is kind of the impression we’re getting as we explore Alpha Strike. Great for on-boarding new players into the fusion-powered “badassery” that is BattleTech, or for running large / very large battles (we’re not up to 12-on-12 classic BT matches in 4 hours yet . . . 😀 ).
That said, our actual battle reports to be rolled out later in the forums and later in this series, will be the full version of BattleTech. 🙂
Great article. I’ve played some iteration of Battletech for almost 30 years, and it truly is a long-lived classic that deserves respect.
Great article. Battletech was my second love in gaming (after Warhammer) and it took over my gaming in my late teens. A great game. (I just miss the banned mechs)
Thanks, @ silverstars . I completely agree that BattleTech is a franchise that “deserves respect.” I didn’t want to hit this angle too hard in the article, but the number of game that have come out after BattleTech that shamelessly use elements largely introduced in sci-fi wargaming by BattleTech (including some very *ahem* popular and widely-played *cough* games that *clearing throat* wouldn’t be nearly as big today if FASA had held together through the 1990s …) Of course, original BattleTech drew plenty of inspirations from mecha and mecha-esque creations, especially Japan.
Uh oh, @ hedleyb – “banned mechs?” I’ll have to look that up, I hope we’re not using any in our games. I’ll be honest, I think our group is about to “ban” the Mad Cat / Timberwolf, I only play one at a time and my opponents haven’t found a weapon that can beat it yet! 😀 Admittedly, I have been rolling some monster dice. Our last three games have seen two one-shot kills with headshots (double-6 boxcars on hit location) and a critical center torso hit that cooked off 20 rounds in an Autocannon 5. BOOM! Pieces of that mech were raining down all over the field. Man, I love my twin ER PPCs. 😀
The “banned mechs” were never actually banned. There was a lawsuit that after all was said and done, FASA was unable(unwilling) to use the images for. These were called the “unseen”; but as of this year, that is no longer the case. Catalyst has finally made the decision to re-image those mechs and they are now back. http://bg.battletech.com/news/news-and-announcements/drop-pod-sequence-initiatedthree-two-one/
Whoops. Last year, they made the announcement last year around GenCon
That’s good to hear
Gotcha, @ravehnhuhrxt . Thanks for the heads up. See, this is the kind of “BattleTech Expertise” I know is lurking out there in the community, and I like to see come out in the threads. (Lord knows I don’t know all this stuff). 😀
I’m a Catalyst Demo Team agent for BattleTech, so preaching the gospel of BT is my jam 🙂
Awesome, @ravehnhuhrxt – the second person from Catalyst Game Labs to contact me in the last 24 hours . . . I must be moving up in the world. 😀
Just to clarify..I’m on the demo team, that means I’m a volunteer that tries to promote BT. I don’t speak for CGL in any capacity.
Oh wow – didn’t know they were back. I may have to get out my Battletech 🙂
My first love was 3025, the Archer, the Warhammer and the Rifleman. Missed those mechs. 🙂
@hedleyb – I think 3025 is the setting date for the new HBS BattleTech PC game coming out next year, the original launch-point for BattleTech when the game first published wayback in 1984?
Great idea for a series. I’m from the UK but played Battletech much more than GW stuff. Even after not playing the game for a few years I got sucked into the PC game of the 90s (was it that long ago). The box cover featuring the Warhammer mech still looks good today.
Correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t Battletech have the idea of humans using technology they didn’t know how to make anymore? IIRC the different houses largely had access to mechs by virtue of the still working factories in their territory. This was before the return of Kerensky.
..So it was 😀
Nice article James
I suppose the strangest part if the history of the game us that it wasn’t meant to happen
When FASA released Battle droids ( the original name). It was just meant to be a stopgap while FASA fine tuned their Renegade Legion trilogy
Looking forward to part 2
Thanks @seldon9 –
Wow, interesting to hear that, as a UK gamer, you played Battletech more than GW games. I don’t exactly have “hard data” on this, but I was always under the impression that since BattleTech came out in 84 and 40K in 87, by the time BattleTech really got rolling overseas (started in the US), 40K was already getting established in the UK. Thus, BattleTech was never as big in the UK as it was in many other countries. I could be totally wrong about that.
Re: box art with the Warhammer mech (for other readers, Warhammer = type of mech, not the Warhammer game). Are you talking about the original 1984 box art, or more recent starter kit? The art on both is awesome, but small warning . . . if anyone’s looking to pick up one of the newer starter boxes from Amazon or some such, make sure you get the one with the Atlas mech that’s pictured in the article above. The post-2007 starter box with the Warhammer mech on the cover doesn’t have the nicer components, I hear. Of course, I’m not talking about the classic 80s box set, which I agree stands the test of time.
Yes, the technology level of humankind really took a nose dive as the Succession Wars started after the departure of Kerensky. So much infrastructure, resources, capital, intellect, and talent was destroyed that on many planets society lost the ability to make or even maintain mechs. Technology dropped from a 29th Century level to a late 21st Century level in some places, and working mechs became regarded as quasi-magical artifacts. More on that in Part 02, where we get into the lore.
Thanks, @torros
I had never heard that about BattleTech’s origins, although as you know I used to be a huge Renegade Legions fan. I know BattleTech was originally titled “Battle Droids” but had to change the name because of Lucasfilm’s trademark on the “droids” term. But of course, Renegade Legions (talk about a franchise that may have influenced the eventual release of 40K) was ironically part of the reason I didn’t get MORE into BattleTech back in its glory days. Strange how BattleTech would “outgrow” RLegions and become one of FASA’s flagship IPs (along with Shadowrun, I feel).
Our group always played BT over 40K as well
I think the problems for FASA started with the law suit with Robotech over the original mechs that they had in the game which eventually led to the so called ‘lost mechs’
Is that what it was? I know there were big legal issues with a company in Japan, but I always assumed it was Sunrise (the people who produced Mobile Suit Gundam in 1979 … i.e., BEFORE BattleTech). Robotech came out the same year as BattleTech, so I guess these were ‘mechs that were released later that resembled mechs in Robotech too much?
FASA always had a rough ride. Lucas, Robotech, Gundam, even companies that licensed out their IPs (i.e., Paramount with the Star Strek tactical simulator wargame, still the best Star Trek game ever made). Lots of issues with creative control over canon, the timeline, the wars, the background starships, etc.
Robotech is an American creation. A company called Harmony Gold stitched together 3 different anime (Super Dimensional Fortress Macross, Super Dimensional Cavalry Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber Mosepdia). FASA had used some designs from Macross and if I remember right they had approval from the Japanese company that owned Macross….but not with Harmony Gold who held the rights to those designs in the US
But they are back
Hopefully we will see Crimson skies and other games returning
There’s a Crimson Skies Collectible minis game Wizkids released in 2003, I bought some of the minis on clearance just for fun. I don’t know if anything’s been developed after that.
FASA licensed the designs from 20th Century Imports, but found out during the lawsuit with Harmony Gold that 20CI shouldn’t have done that. FASA and Harmony Gold settled out of court and FASA decided to never use images not produced in house again. This is why the IIC “unseen” exist. They were created by a 3rd party for FASA and not part of the lawsuit, but out of caution they were declared “unseen” as well.
FASA vs Harmony Gold (the US producers for Robotech) lawsuit came about because FASA was using images from Robotech and it expanded world in models. Wasp, stinger, wolverine, thunderbolt, battlemaster, warhammer, and such every image from the core game, and 2/3 of the first tech readout. During the lawsuit come to find out that neither had the rights. Harmony only own the production right to show it. It got real messy in the end when FASA redid the book they removed all the stats and images and renamed them the “Unseen”. This was about the time frame they did clan wars they did do reimagined versions calling them clan secondary mechs and warhammer II, stinger II was born.
Great information, @drakefire and @ravehnhuhrxt – have you seen the enormous post on the next page where the history of these franchises has been laid out in such amazing detail?
Yeah, BT had more than Robotech license, there were several others as well, butt when they tried to go legal for Robo, they hit Harmony Gold WALL……
Great article again @oriskany Battletech was my intro to wargaming waaaay back in the 80’s and will always hold a special place in my lead heart 🙂
Joe90
Wow, blast from the past for me. We used to play BattleTech back with the Cardboard fold-ups. It was a fun game. Might have to try to revive my interest and look into the game again. Great Article, looking forward to the rest.
Thanks, @joeninety – BattleTech is indeed a classic. It will never die. Trust me, “they” tried to kill it through the 90s and the early 2000s . . . but games like this just don’t fade away. 😀
@fjlilly – Ah yes, I remember those little cardboard standies. Of course they don’t look as great as full-blown miniatures, but in a functional sense they get the job done by showing the mech’s identity, position, and facing. And hey, if you want to play a new type of mech, it’s certainly easier to whip up a new standie than find the new mech, order and pay for the new mech, build the new mech, paint the new mech, base the new mech . . . 😀
Hey, I’m measuring the success of this article series in “Garages and Attics” – i.e., the number of old-guard mechwarriors that I send into garages, attics, and storage facilities to unearth their old BattleTech games! 😀
Hmm… I no longer have my Mechs (I played the House wars pre-Clan return era) but I do have a heap of 6mm Scifi Resin buildings, tanks and infantry …. Must resist ….. Strength fading ….. 🙂
Joe90
Just give up now, @joeninety . . . just give up now! 😀
This brings back very fond memories of my early wargaming life, and Mechwarrior3 was the only computer game that kept me coming back again and again. So glad Mechwarrior Online exists to keep me entertained.
Excellent article @oriskany, I am looking forward to the rest of the series so I can get even more nostalgic.
Don’t forget Wizkids BattleTech CMG of all things using their clicks bases. The extra rotating one for dealing with heat was a nice touch. Plus this had tons of ground units, not just mechs.
Thanks, @maidel . Mechwarrior 3 and 4 are indeed classics. MWO certainly looks amazing, and I like some of the new mech designs. My only issue is that because it’s a primarily a 12-on-12 deathmatch kind of thing, MWO may have swerved too far in in interest of “game balance.” I’ve seen some people say in forums, etc., that many of the weapons are too “samey” – and this has slightly diluted the lethality and tension of the BattleTech / Mechwarrior universe.
The one I’m really looking forward to is HBS’ BattleTech PC title next year, only because I hear it’s going to be a turn-based wargame much like the original BattleTech wargame.
Thanks for the tip, @ trodomir – I’ve looked some of these up and many of the clix-pieces look great. Were these pre-paints? Indeed, we like the inclusion of conventional ground units, too. Just yesterday we had a came with some monstrous 100-ton ground tanks (2200 BV) with 20-point Thunderbolt missiles. Once I realized those new weapons had a minimum range, I closed the range as quickly as I could to under 6 hexes (12” on our miniature table). This was pretty easy to do once I scored some “motive critical hits” and immobilized the tanks.
Yeah, I’ve dipped my toe into MWO but the lack of the campaigns found in the earlier Mechwarrior games is sorely felt. Thankfully MW4: Mercs got a spiffy fan mod that gave you all the Mechs you could want and more 🙂
And yeah, the Dark Age/ Age of Destruction minis were all pre-paints. Crazy variety of troops, vehicles and Mechs in there….
Damn, @dawfydd – I actually found and downloaded the freeware MW4 Mercs but can’t get it to interface with my video card. I really want to give this a try one of these days. I think I got through MW2 back in the day but that was it (might have been MW3).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjEeDz51pHE
Take a look at what HBS have so far on it.
I remember when I wanted to get in to giant stompy robot fun I had the choice between BT and Dream Pod 9’s Heavy Gear. I went with Gears because their models just looked better. Even now BT models from Iron Wind just look sub par to me. The art and lore is just awesome and that is what have kept me interested in BT. Hoping a much better company will get their hands on the Mech casting. Or IW get with the 21st century and make better models.
Battletech was one of the first miniature games I owned, before I even really knew much about tabletop wargaming. I remember being a kid with birthday money and looking at novels in the sci-fi section. Saw some of the Battletech novels and it all snowballed for me from there. Grabbed Mechwarrior 2, the 4th edition box set, some more novels, the CCG, and various setting books.
Started with the Jade Falcons, the novels I had grabbed were the Jade Phoenix Trilogy about Aiden Pryde and the Falcon Guards, but as I get more into the setting I found my true loyalties with the Federated Suns. Hate the Davion Guards silly color scheme, seriously look it up and yes I know I could camo them up but it would still be there haunting me, so I went with the 7th Crucis Lancers RCT.
Clan wise I still hold a soft spot for the vicious Jade Falcons, but have been kind of won over by the Sea Foxes (formerly Diamond Sharks formerly Sea Foxes) with their weird merchant fleet.
@Battletech was one of the first miniature games I owned, before I even really knew much about tabletop wargaming. I remember being a kid with birthday money and looking at novels in the sci-fi section. Saw some of the Battletech novels and it all snowballed for me from there. Grabbed Mechwarrior 2, the 4th edition box set, some more novels, the CCG, and various setting books.
Started with the Jade Falcons, the novels I had grabbed were the Jade Phoenix Trilogy about Aiden Pryde and the Falcon Guards, but as I get more into the setting I found my true loyalties with the Federated Suns. Hate the Davion Guards silly color scheme, seriously look it up and yes I know I could camo them up but it would still be there haunting me, so I went with the 7th Crucis Lancers RCT.
Clan wise I still hold a soft spot for the vicious Jade Falcons, but have been kind of won over by the Sea Foxes (formerly Diamond Sharks formerly Sea Foxes) with their weird merchant fleet.
Yes, @wayton – the Jade Falcons are nasty, just as cunning and scheming many times as they are violent. Well, who am I kidding, everyone is violent in the BattleTech universe. 😀 I remember when I first looked at BattleTech back in the early 90s I was partial to Free Worlds League and House Marik (was joining the US Marine Corps at the time, so kind of over-patriotic in those days), but that gawdawful purple . . . We used to call it the Jimmi Hendrix brigade. 😀
Nowadays, as I get back into it, I’m sticking with Clan Ghost Bear. To be completely honest, it was just the logo, and I have a soft spot for bears. The more I read about them, though, the more I realize the really are the best clan for me. Badass (as all Clans are), but as a Warden Clan they’re a little more restrained than some of our Crusader cousins. 😀 Remember, Kerensky said we were supposed to protect these people!
The only issue I have with Clan Ghost Bear at the moment is that they technically don’t exist anymore in the most up-to-date periods of the BattleTech timeline, i.e., assimilated first as the Ghost Bear Dominion and then the Rasalhague Dominion. I’m reminded of the Vikings in the Dark Ages, they invaded and kicked seven shades of crap out of Ireland, Scotland, and England … only to eventually settle there and be Christianized and absorbed into the local population.
I guess I can sympathize with players who enjoy Succession War-era play before the Clans, since I have to play a “historical” era of BattleTech myself when my Clan still exists as its own entity.
Still, it’s nice to think my old Ghost Bear mechwarriors can enjoy a long, cozy retirement into the 3100s. 😀 Oops . . . “Gray Monday” and the Dark Ages. Aw, crap.
The Ghost Bear Dominion, to be fair all the invading clans changed rather drastically. In addition to the Warden/Crusader split the clans had a Home/Invading clans. Basically the Home clans felt the Invading clans had been tainted by contact with the Inner Sphere and kicked them out. The Ghost Bears actually went native before that though.
During the invasion Clan Wolf captured the presumptive heir to Rasalhague and handed him over to the Ghost Bears. The heir Ragnar Magnusson managed to win a position as a warrior and was somewhat instrumental in the creation of the Domain. Which proved productive for both the Rasalhague natives and the Ghost Bears. Its a sort of hybrid government with the elected Rasalhague officials sharing power with the Ghost Bear Khans and Bloodname council.
Thanks, @wayton . See, everyone? The kinder, gentler Ghost Bear Clan . . . 😀
I’m going to read up more about this, because I’m honestly interested in seeing how far forward in the BattleTech timeline I can have my Ghost Bears be actual Ghost Bears. I mean, besides resorting to the classic “it’s my game and I’ll play it like I want to” . . .
Which, while always viable, gets a little tired after a while. I mean what’s the point of all this fluff if you’re just going to ignore it? I don’t want to ignore it, and want to see if there’s a legitimate “old guard” option to Ghost Bears that continues a little while into the Ghost Bear Dominion / Rasalhague Dominion (3060, according to BattleTech wiki).
It may be heresy but I kind of like the way the Invading Clans have changed with contact with the IS. You had groups like the Nova Cats and Ghost Bears go native…with various degrees of success. Some maintain their warlike demeanor while still having to give some ground to the conquered populations, see Jade Falcon and the now crusader Wolf. And then you have Sea Foxes and Snow Ravens which have gone full on nomad and just sort of drift around as essentially armed merchants.
The changes the Diamond Sharks had going back to their old name Sea Fox is one reason I switched to them as ‘my clan’ when I go clan. Also their treatment of Freeborns after Tukayyid. The Sharks were one of the cruelest in their treatment of Freeborn warriors, and included a unit of them to enhance their bid for first landing. Then the lone Freeborn unit saved them from total disaster. In something of a break from usual human history, the Sharks took the lesson to heart and both honored the Freeborn unit and become more open to their service in the Warrior Caste.
Indeed, @wayton – the elitist caste-based militarism of the Clans is one of the few things about them that kind of puts me off. Maybe it’s just my own past, but I prefer to think of the military as a “way up” for people, either in the US (join the military for GI Bill or vocational training) or all the way back to post-reform Romans (land grants at the end of your service).
But, there have also been plenty of societies where you had to be some kind of elite (noble or landowner) to join the military, especially in the “knightly” societies of Sparta Greece, Republican Rome, feudal Japan, feudal Europe, or BattleTech. 😀
A policy that often comes under quick review when the first casualty lists come in . . .
@oriskany Clan society makes a sort of demented sense given its chief creator, Kerensky’s son Nicolas, suffered a lot of trauma in his early life. Son of a living legend…who was larger then life before the Coup…and stuck on Terra during the coup. Then of course he sees his noble father ‘betrayed’ by some of the his once loyal soldiers. And of course his elder brother dying to an ambush alone.
I think by the time he was required to step up young Nicolas was a little unstable mentally and a lot disillusioned with human society. Clan society seems reflects his attempts to ‘fix’ humanity. Add in isolation from the mainstream and there you go.
Of course the IS has a militarist elite, understandable given that for the most part they were just passing irreplaceable Battlemechs from parent to child. Its an interesting contrast with the SLDF which was very much a professional soldiery in a nation that could easily replace vehicle losses. Of course the downside was much the same as in real history…the SLDF were far more willing to wage total war then the Houses(post 1st Succession War) or Clans.
Very interesting article @oriskany . Never really heard much about this until i saw your figures starting to appear a few weeks ago. Looks like something Matty would like (the quick fire version), he loves the giant robot genre.
Thanks, @biggabum . I haven’t actually tried Alpha Strike yet. but we have some of the cards and indeed, the game seems very straightforward. The standard four-on-four “Lance vs. Lance” fight seems to take an hour or even less. The lance packs from Catalyst Game Labs are very reasonable, and I think come with 4 soft plastic minis and 8 dry-erase Alpha Strike Cards, not bad for like $15 USD.
The scale is ROUGHLY 1/200, so the mechs are about 2″ high, depending.
The first game I ever bought was Battledroids and still have that dog eared copy in my game room.
Wow, @lee337 – an actual surviving copy of Battledroids? That might actually be worth some money. Hold on to that thing. 😀
Thanks @oriskany for a great article. You gotta love Mechs. Not done anything Battletech wise for a while now (which should be remedied). I seem to remember one of my favorites being a Catapult I think it was with 2 banks of LRM20’s .
I loved the game Mechwarrior Mercenaries, Me and my brother @sumchien only had 1 PC between us at the time so one of us would be the gunner and the other the driver/pilot.
Nothing like linking all your ERPPC’s together and hoping it hit (as you would shut down from overheating immediatley after)
I don’t want to put a downer on this already but one of the problems we had with BT was the silly way the weapons damaged the mechs. What I mean is that a PPC damages a mech exactly the same way an MG or flamer or SRM 2 does. Some years ago someone did a conversion of the previously mentioned Renegade Legion and converted it to BT.
What this does is give different weapons different damage types so an AC 20 does damage differently to a large lazer etc
Anyway if anyone wants a look then please follow the link
http://www.ourbattletech.com/2014/renegade-tech-2-0-released/
Oops The download is here
http://www.ourbattletech.com/downloads/
Thanks, @thedace – Yesterday’s game had quite a few LRM packs in it . . . it wasn’t until we were hgalfway through the game th at we realized we were doing them slightly wrong. Rather than rolling each hit location individually (as you do with SRMs), turns out in the new Catalyst Game Labs rules you’re supposed to roll them in groups of 5. So those LRM20s and 15s on my girlfriend’s Trebuchet and the LRM10 on my Grizzly were really taking up too much table time. Our fault for not knowing the rules fully.
God, yes! Those ER PPCs each generate 15 points of heat! I fire them both (MadCat/Timberwolf A) and I’m already at 30 heat! For most of the second half of the game I was firing only one at a time. But good grief, the damage I was doing with that thing . . .
@torros – as a longtime Renegade Legion fan, I know what you’re saying (and agree) about how damage was tracked in those games. Not just the amount of damage, but the shape of the damage profile and its exact location on the facing struck. Weapons fire could splatter all over the place, OR, hit the exact same location and go immediately to internal components. I mean, it wouldn’t happen often, but when you’d hit an enemy grav tank with a high-powered laser, say a 7.5/5 or 6, and then send a TVLG missile STRAIGHT DOWN THAT HOLE to explode completely inside the tank . . . the look on your opponent’s face was always priceless. 😀
But for BattleTech, a game that’s already sometimes characterized (UNJUSTLY) as being too complex with too much paperwork? I guess I should say until I try the material offered in your link. But for anyone who thinks BattleTech has a lot of detailed combat rules and paperwork, try a big Renegade Legions game, and you’ll never say that about BattleTech again. 😀
As I mentioned before BT is one if the simplest games I’ve ever played. No idea how people can think it’s complex
Absolutely, @torros, we are in complete agreement on that one. 😀 Yesterday was my GF’s first game of Btech ever, and she was scoring kills on me like a veteran.
Back in the day we ran day long games involving around 40-50 mechs, with supporting armour, though little to no infantry (unless in a built up area – the ‘Hunt the Long Tom’ city fight game with played (as part of was our on-going campaign) was a hum dinger – Battalion assault on a built up area (we used cardboard tiles with the buildings drawn on as we where playing with miniatures).
So, is this a complex game, I don’t think so – but people got used to the last decades move toward paper free games.
Damn, @kbog – there’s some old-school s*** right there, folks. 40-50 mechs in classic BattleTech longhand? Please tell me you were playing with teams or some such. Still, i would have to imagine that yes . . . that game would take all day . . . as in 24 hours all day.
Never did that for BattleTech, but once had a 37 hour non-stop marathon in Renegade Legions, playing the full 6832 Invasion of Mysia (planetary invasion) game. 17:00 Friday to 12:00 Sunday . . . straight.
I know you won’t believe me, but as God is my witness it came down to the last couple of die rolls. 😀
I had a go at playing with these rules 15 years ago or so.
Really cool, taking chunks out of armour with Autocannons and then later drilling a Laser of some description through the messed up armour – so cool, but a wee bit more complex than regular BT.
Love the article. Mechwarriors 2 was one of the first games I played on PC.
I replayed it a lot, trying out other mechs to get the job done.
Tweaking weapons, armour, power supplies.
Thanks, @caledor2 – There are some great fan-made .ssw tools out there now that make the modification / customization of the mechs so easy, and even update the records sheets for you so you can print as .pdfs and use for tabletop play. 😀
….Good Times…. Long Live STEINER-DAVION!!!!!
But not so much of the Steiner bit LOL
Have to agree with @torros
House Davion was just fine before we muddied the water with the Steiners. I’m sure Steiner loyalists feel the same in the opposite direction.
Bwahaha! You IS guys are so funny with your little feuds and spats. Then the Clans show up and show you what war really looks like.
(just kidding, don’t hate me). 😀 😀 😀
I wouldn’t worry…the IS was more then happy to set aside old difference to fight the clans. See the Battle of Luthien and the later Operations Bulldog and Serpent.
Battle of Luthien especially…Kell Hounds and Wolf’s Dragoons Mercenaries fought for House Kurita, whom they both loathed and were loathed by, at the behest of House Davion, Kurita’s biggest rival and most ancient foe. There was a lot of mutual hatred and distrust put aside for the sake of stopping the clans.
Katrina Steiner-Davion is the true heir to the Federated Commonwealth. Victor just couldn’t accept that.
Oh, absolutely, @wayton . The only thing more abrupt than the start of the Clan Invasions was the END of the Clan Invasions. 😀 I still say ComStar owes us a thank-you note . . .
@ckbrenneke – “Katrina Steiner-Davion” man, that just sounds sexy. Until I looked her up on sarna.net and saw where she blew up her own mother with a bomb. Beware the false peacemakers. 😀
Using the Dancing Joker, the Battletech boogeyman of assassins.
Katrina would use him again to murder her brother Victor’s lover, Omi Kurita.
Played the first 15+ years of the game, right until FASA broke it up. But I also purchased the new starter box almost a year ago, and am really glad I did. Made me pull out the old Stackplole / Charrette / Coleman novels and enjoy this IP all over again… Still playing catch-up on the more recent Steiner-Davion civil war and subsequent Comstar / Word of Blake schism and subsequent Inner Sphere Jihad…
I played Mechwarrior 2,3 and 4 on the PC, including as many supplements as I could find. I also enjoyed the MechCommander strategy variant. One of the joys of the game was accumulating the components from defeated opponents and having a suite of weapons and armour or even entire spare chassis to work with. Tailoring for missions could be critical. Madcat was a favourite of mine.
Thanks – @langeleb – Yeah, the new starter box really is pretty awesome, especially for the extremely reasonable $50 USD. They even give you some things you don’t “need” – like record sheets for ground vehicles even though the introductory rules set that come in the box don’t include rules for that (they really try to keep it manageable for new players at first).
The Jihad / Word of Blake era is pretty much where we are loosely at the moment in our group. We wanted clans, but didn’t want the clan tech to be “exclusive” yet – i.e., we didn’t do the initial 3050-52 invasion when ONLY clans have clan-tech (or clan-inspired) tech. My “company” of twelve (three lances of four) has only six mechs that are bonafide “clan”, and two of these (my Grizzlies) arelisted as “Clan / Successor Wars” – i.e., they’re pretty old for a 3060s-3080s period.)
Thanks, @dorthonion – MechCommander is definitely something I want to get into. In the old FASA days I think there was a “BattleForce” game that allowed the next step up in echelon levels, playing units of mechs instead of individual mechs. You know me. The second I get started in a wargame, I’m immediately looking for the “operational scale” angle. 😀
Battleforce came in 2 flavours – both versions designed to handle Battalion level and up forces, including armour, aerospace and infantry forces. I have Batteforce 1st ed. (that covers the Succession Wars (up to 3030 – no improved tech, you could push it to around 3043-5), Second had a different rule system and included Clan (set around 3055 I would think – Onmi’s and initial IS improved tech). 1st had a ‘blind’ system for units (lance was the smallest), so you knew it was a mech lance, and its class, but nothing else until contact.
And if you want you got higher – ‘The Succession War’ covered the entire 4th Successor War, all 5 Houses, Mercenaries and all other fun things.
Thanks very much for the heads up, @kbog – I will totally check out the 2nd Edition, see what I can dig up on eBay or the like. 😀 Battalion level and up! Man! That’s where I eat and sleep! 😀 😀
Literally just bought myself a 12″ high Battletech Mauler with Zack Hawkins Walker from 1994 😀
Think ill convert it into a 40k titan lol.
D’oh! @deaddave, you’re going the wrong way! Convert Space Marines into Clan Elementals, Titans into IS LosTech battlemechs! Repent, repent! LOL – Just kidding of course. 😀 Thanks very much for the comment! 😀
Oh man, you haven’t lived till you roll head location with an ER PPC or AC20 and blow a pilot to smithereens. Good times.
Yeah, totally. My very first game (since getting back into this after a 25+ year hiatus) . . . I s**t you not, MY VERY FIRST ROLL. We just decided to re-learn the rules by playing through some hex-scenarios, we hadn’t even painted the mechs yet . . .
First round down range, my Mad Cat’s ER PPC hits location 12 on a Cicada of all things. Right between the eyes. At least the pilot never felt a thing . . .
It’s all been downhill from there, strangely.
My little Clan Ghost Bear Bear Cub had another incredibly lucky shot on a little Clint light mech yesterday (25 tons, 650 BV or so, little baby thing). ER Medium Laser hits the Clint’s right arm. 7 points vs. 6 points of armor. 1 point internal = possible crit. Score the crit. Ammo explosion on her autocannon 5. Shes fired once out of her 20 shots, so 19 x 5 = 95 points of damage internal.
“Clint Confetti” raining down all over the battlefield.
My poor girlfriend, her first game. I was afraid she was going to quit right there. 🙁
Then other times you do nothing but peel away armor. I had a friend whose Gunslinger had almost no armor bubbles left before it finally went through into structure. It actually won him the game since the guy he was playing become obsessed with bringing it down and let the rest of my buddy’s lance do what they wanted.
That was my opponent yesterday vs. my Mad Cat. Right arm down to 1 armor dot. Left arm 90% gone. Left and right legs 50% gone, left torso 50%, right torso 75%, even some damage on the back. He finally got internal via center torso (20 point Thunderbolt-20 missile) and eventually knocked out two engine bubbles (-10 heat dissipation) . . . but never QUITE killed it.
Seriously, by the end I was actually starting to feel a little bad. 🙁
Hey guys. Sorry I’m late. I teach school and class is now back in session, so it’s a busy week. Had to log on, though, when I heard @oriskany was making fun of how bad he won Sunday’s game. Blowing up my poor Clint light mech . . . he’s lucky he’s not sleeping on the couch! Hey, my Trebuchet got some payback, though, dropped that little Bear cub next turn.
Come on, now. Now one likes a sore loser. Those dice came up fair and square. 😀
Great article.
I love battletech and mechwarrior. (Wish they still produced mech warrior packs)
It’s been so frustrating watching beasts of war when they have a copy of battletech on the shelf and never talk or use it.
I’d love to see some beast of war videos on playing the game and battle reports.
I know what you mean, @fox40 – but I think the response we’ve gotten on this article alone and the Weekender segment indicates the kind of “BattleTech Underground” that’s been lurking in the shadows of the BoW community. 🙂
To be perfectly fair, I think in many sci-fi wargaming circles (but certainly NOT all), groups are either Warhammer 40K fans … OR … BattleTech fans. Certainly I was the latter. I was deep into big games as early as 1984, designing games by 1989, briefly part owner of a gaming store by 1992 . . . and NEVER HEARD of 40K until 1997, and never met another person who actually played it until late 2002. True story.
I think the fact that many of the BoW team comes from more of a 40K background, accounts somewhat for the fact that they haven’t been too deep into BattleTech.
Also, I was happily surprised to hear @johnlyons was into BattleTech via the Mechwarrior PC game series. 😀
Yes, it’s heartwarming to see BattleTech is still really quite popular among the BoW community, despite the problems the IP has had in the past. Good to see.
I know, right, @ckbrenneke ? When it’s time to write the “history” of BattleTech, you have to write two articles. One with the cutthroat wars between the houses and clans . . . and then another with the cutthroat “wars” between FASA, Microsoft, Harmony Gold, WizKids, Lucasfilm . . . 🙁
Before anyone says anything … this is how I remember the series.
Battletech was something I heard stories of in the early days when I began to hear about this hobby.
It kind of existed somewhere as a hardcore game for grognards willing to stare at paper pieces.
I’d be tempted to say it had the same mythical status as Advanced Squad Leader.
ie : not a game that anyone could play and hellishly boring.
I’m glad that it at least sounds like they’ve done their best to fix that aspect.
There was also another problem with the setting (IMHO).
And that’s the impossibly gigantic machines that are the ‘mechs themselves.
Then something changed … the pc games were introduced.
I remember MechWarrior as one of the best fictional simulators out there with an awesome pre-rendered intro.
There is something oddly satisfying of having to deal with a fictional machine in a semi-realistic manner. Choosing weapons and heatsinks was a really neat balancing act both before and during the mission.
The fact that you were a walking tank was also nicely represented.
And IIRC sitting in a river also helped cool. This was when we the world in games was seen in triangles and polygons.
It’s in the same list as Freespace, Elite, Xwing and Heavy Gear.
I’m not sure if I’d dig a turn-based pc game, but if there are franchices that could use a proper reboot for the modern era then MechWarrior would be up there with the rest of the fictional simulators.
I know there’s MechWarrior on-line, but it’s not the same as playing against AI.
Oh, damn @limburger – my response to your post wound up on the next page. I hit “reply” in the wrong place. Apologies, and thanks for the comment! 😀
http://www.beastsofwar.com/battletech/exploring-part-one-introduction/comment-page-2/#comment-295429
…have you never tried XCOM?
Who, me or @limburger ? 😀 Me, no. I’m not usually a video game guy.
Great to see Battletech back in the fold, have spent many an hour playing MechWarrior on the PC but strangely I preferred the MechCommander series. I have the new introductory box sitting on the shelf for over a year but I might just blow the dust off it.
Looking forward to the next part.
Probably my favourite tabletop game, it is great to see Battletech getting a series of articles!
Thanks @hairybrains and @vensersrevenge . Yes, I definitely recommend trying the Catalyst Game Labs starter kit, especially if your copy has the Atlas mech on the cover (as opposed to the Warhammer mech on the cover). 😀
If it was not been for Mechwarrior 2 I would had never learned about Battletech and it might not like it as much as I do. WotC had Battletech TCG (I still have those cards) back in day but that went down after vehicles ruined it by being far too effective to they low cost. WK also tried out franchise with they clix based CMG Mechwarrior: Dark Age (later Mechwarrior: Age of Destruction) while allowing classic Battletech go on and creating direction that Battletech lore was going towards.
Battletech has never been miniatures game since units are tied to record sheets instead of to miniatures. How ever shiny miniatures are what sell game systems so Battletech will always be niche system unless Catalyst Gamelabs changes that. But I doubt that considering that most of mech designs are from 80’s and don’t please everyone these days besides of us that are used to those.
What Battletech also has going for it besides of tried and true system that has changed very little during all these decades is lore. It has so rich and complex sci-fi story going on that one can waste hours while delving into. Sure it’s not perfect and has some what I consider miss steps but none of those have stopped me from enjoying all good parts.
Battletech is also reason why I hate Harmony Gold and Robotech as much as I do considering that they are reason why we lost so many classic designs based on classic 80’s mecha anime like Macross and Dougram making those unseens. Granted that so called reseens do look lot better than original designs but I can’t deny power of nostalgia.
Thanks for the comment, @mecha82 –
You write:
Battletech has never been miniatures game since units are tied to record sheets instead of to miniatures. Not sure if I understand that 100%. I’m not saying I don’t agree. After all, original BattleTech was published with cardboard standies and played on a hex grid, no less. But if its a wargame, and you’re using miniatures, doesn’t that make it a miniature game?
By way of example, would 40K “not be a miniatures” game because the units are tied to a stat line instead of a miniature? That’s basically what the record sheet is, a “stat line” that’s just much more detailed and developed.
Again, please don’t get me wrong. I’m not going to insist that BattleTech is “a miniatures game.” Guys who know me on this site know that I consier the best wargames ever made to have nothing to do with miniatures (Panzer Leader, ASL, Rise and Decine of the Third Reich, GDW Assault, etc).
I am really learning a lot about this Harmony Gold / Robotech business. I feel like I owe a lot of apologies to my friends who ware Mobile Suit Gundam / Gundam Wing fans. 😀
Re: “BattleTech missteps,” I can certainly agree with that. To my mind, and this will be a rough analogy here, what happened with Btech can be compared to what happened with Flames of War. The game came out, and it was a monster smash hit. The publishers (after recovering from the shock) tried capitalizing on that success with all kinds of additional supplements, rules, expansions, etc. For a while, all was well. But as they game system grew organically, it starts to get disorganized, overly-complex, self-contradictory, and problematic.
Then comes a “page one re-write,” back to basics. For Btech this was the WizKids/Catalyst Game Labs era. For Flames of War it was Team Yankee. Not too much changed, it’s just BACK TO BASICS. And presto, the game is clean and runs like a champ once again.
I think for BattleTech what made this problem worse in the late 80s and early 90s . . . was so many of these “optional” rules were optional in name only. In other words, so many groups, tournaments, and conventions were running with very experienced players with these hyper-complex rules, that in order to play, you almost HAD to play with all these “optional” rules to fit in. So yeah, the game started to crumble under its own weight.
Maybe the new market, with so many other options and competition (especially with all these fast, quick, and in my opinion, sometimes simplistic games), will help BattleTech keep the lid on optional rules and self-perpetuating complexity, ensuring a long healthy life for the decades ahead. 😀
Well because of record sheets pretty much being units miniatures are not needed and you can use anything you want as stand ins so in that sense Battletech is not really miniatures game as miniatures (and optional terrain) are there only to enchant experience but are not needed to play game if you so choose. It’s more like traditional wargame with it’s hex maps but in sci-fi universe rather than being historical.
In 40k units might have stats but miniatures are main thing with whole WYSIWYG being thing and miniatures themselves being highly detailed and company clearly focusing on those instead of licensing those to some other company.
Yes, I did try to track down miniatures when I still had chance to play but that’s because personally I want to have those instead of using anything as replacements because look so much better on hex maps and can also be used with terrain.
@mecha82 – “It’s more like traditional wargame with it’s hex maps but in sci-fi universe rather than being historical.”
Gotcha. Now I completely agree.
We’re also playing with miniautures, just because 🙂 . And once you make the jump to miniatures, I honestly don’t see the “point” of playing with hex grids.
This coming from a dyed-in-the-wool lifelong hex-junkie, myself – people on the site joke that Oriskany’s house is decorated in hex-pattern wall paper. 😐
So we’re playing on full-miniatures table with terrain, etc. Rules have been published to support this, converting from the original hex system. 😀
@oriskany, You don’t need to track down the old BattleForce 2 box set, the rules were updated and included in the Strategic Operations rulebook (and from there became the core of what’s now Alpha Strike). And Interstellar operations, which was released a few months ago features new updated rules for games on a continental, planetary and Inner Sphere wide games.
The way Randall Bills, chief creative officer at Catalyst and sometime BattleTech Lead Developer described it was that you could zoom in and out to play in the BattleTech universe at any level. So say a group of players are doing a 4th Succession War campaign.
They can play at the point where they’re controlling a full state (Inner Sphere At War)
Then, let’s say the Davion player is invading Tikonov, which is a major planet, so they want to go into more detail. They switch to Abstract Combat System, where the map is a representation of the Solar System and each counter represents a Batallion or so.
Then, the battle closes in on Tikograd, the capital city. they move to Strategic BattleForce, where the map is now the city and surrounding countryside. The crux of the battle hinges on a few companies, so they switch to BattleForce, and the fight concentrates around a specific gate in the city, and they want to go into maximum detail for the fight, so they switch to BattleTech or Alpha Strike.
At the end of that game, the defender’s commander ejected, and is on the run. They decide to game out his attempt to get back behind friendly lines with A Time of War, which even includes a tactical combat system alongside the RPG.
@lorcannagle – okay, I misread some information I saw on BGG and CGL’s BattleTech website. I thought BattleForce had been re-written into a single-mech variant of the game that had become Alpha Strike. I see now that BT: Strategic Operations has been rolled out in 2008. From BGG:
Another volume in the Classic Battletech core rules series, Strategic Operations focuses on “forces in solar system” (as opposed to “forces on world” for Tactical Operations and the even-wider-ranging scope of the forthcoming Interstellar Operations). This book’s main sections consist of general rules covering a variety of topics (including a system for abstracted aerospace gaming); rules for advanced aerospace movement, combat, and unit construction; maintenance, repair, salvage, and customization rules; and miniatures rules (as opposed to using miniatures on a standard hex maps).
A significant portion of the volume is taken up with standard and advanced rules for a revised version of Battleforce 2, a fast-playing game system amenable to mass combat. Rules for converting standard Battletech units to Battleforce are also included.
Strategic Operations updates not only Battleforce but also BattleTech: AeroTech 2, integrating both into the current rules framework.
Okay, when this article series is wrapped up, that may well be my next project.
@oriskany It can be a little bit confusing, when Strategic Operations came out it was mostly for the advanced aerospace options, campaign rules and BattleForce, but they included a tabletop version of BattleForce as well called Quickstrike. Quickstrike was a huge hit with the players and was expanded into Alpha Strike, but the rules are still almost identical between the two games
I’ve just found the Quickstrike .pdf download introductory cards. Indeed, they look very similar (in function) to the Alpha Strike cards my girlfriend got with her Lance Packs.
I’ll do some research into Strategic Operations.
Back in ’88, I introduced a lad to Adeptus Titanicus. In return, he introduced me to Battletech 2nd edition.
I got to pick up a mech’s arm that had been blown off and batter one of his mechs around the head with it…
History will decide who got the better deal out of those game introductions.
After that, I bought boxed sets, map packs, TROs, novels, computer games… you name it!
My most cherished BT item? My copy of the original 3025 TRO with all the unseen mechs.
Best BT discovery? Discovering that Ral Partha Europe operated out of a warehouse in Liverpool, back when I used to live there. I spent far too much time and money in that place – hence owning far too many minis and novels!
Right! That does it! I’m digging my stuff out – this is going to be great!
AND THERE’S ANOTHER ONE! 😀 Like I said on the previous page, I’m measuring the success of this article series in “attics and garages” – how many gamers I can send into deep storage to retrieve and bring out all their old BattleTech materials!
Thanks for the comment – @chillreaper ! have a blast hurling yourself back into the awesome franchise! 😀
@oriskany
Great article, great to read all the comments. Can’t wait till next Monday 🙂
Let me start a petition to get your backside over to NI for a Btech battle report!!!
@warzan
@lloyd
@dignity
@johnlyons
C’mon guys, you know you want it too 😎 😎
Gotta find me some Mechs to paint and a computer that’s still runs all my MechWarrior games..
a video well worth watching
come on guys you’ve just been challenged.
HEAR YE, HEAR YE~
Clan Ghost Bear backs down from NO challenge!
I would get on a plane to help build / coordinate / film a BattleTech Weekend / Week.
Good afternoon, @limburger –
Before anyone says anything …
Too late for that. Have you seen this thread? 😀
Battletech kind of existed somewhere as a hardcore game for grognards willing to stare at paper pieces.
The term is counters. 😀 And we prefer the term “Grognard-Americans.” 😀
. . . mythical status as Advanced Squad Leader.
Indeed, ASL is a mythical, legendary, awesome game. Almost as much as PanzerBlitz, Panzer Leader, or Arab-Israeli Wars. 😀
. . .not a game that anyone could play and hellishly boring.
No one can play it and hellishly boring? Ooooh, you’re talking about the over-simplified sci-fi wargames that come out today. 😀 Got it.
Totally kidding about all of the above, of course. But it does actually go to show that virtually every bullet point listed as a “negative” is one that many of us see as a positive, to be wistfully remembered from a bygone golden age when games were actually tactically nuanced, complex, challenging, and . . . oh yeah . . . GOOD. 😀
On the other hand, I agree with just about everything you say about MechWarrior. The way the mechs are presented, how it “feels” to “drive” one, and some the crucial decisions forced on you by the highly-technical and granular mechanics of the game (both before the mission and during the mission). I just might differ in opinion on the tabletop games, since I feel that these features (again, in my humble opinion) are highlighted to an even greater degree than in the PC titles.
‘counters’ ah yes that was the word I was looking for.
And yeah .. boring. :p
As awesome as those stories about getting a headshot on bit of plastic/paper are … nothing beats shooting the legs out from under a ‘Mech in Mechwarrior, especially those bloody Jenners with their jump jets.
If you were feeling really mean you would first target their arms and then their legs.
There was also that initial learning curve when you realised that your mech had shut down because it was overheating and then hoping you could reactivate before the enemy killed you …
Okay, I’ll agree with that. Blowing up Jenners is always fun, just because they’re so damned goofy looking. Two questions to the person who designed THAT beauty. What are you smoking, and WHY AREN’T YOU SHARING? 😀
I think the same can be said for the entire franchise 😉
Seriously … what the heck stops the average mech from collapsing in on itself.
Never mind that a Jenner would probably crash down into a sewer if it landed on the average street in the real world 😉
Tue enough, @limburger . But similar questions can be leveled at just about any sci-fi series. I mean 40K “elite” infantry who can’t turn their heads and barely see past their own armor? Not to mention the fliers would slam into the ground like bricks with those aerodynamic designs. Why do the need ships at all in Star Trek when they have transporters – especially after Into Darkness? Why can you HEAR a TIE fighter’s laser blast in space in Star Wars? Why aren’t the ships in Star Trek completely driven by AI, especially considering the state of our own planetary exploration programs today? Don’t tell me you think you will ever, EVER, EVER see a “fighter pilot” in space or a captain sitting in his chair (ahem, where’s the gravity coming from again?) ala Star Trek, Star Wars, or anything else. Think HAL 9000, not Captain Kirk.
Indeed, the future of robotic warfare is NOT 100-ton mechs that mechanically would probably trip over a wrecked car or collapse through the street. Tank designs have been getting lower and lower in profile over the last 70 years, not taller and taller on big vulnerable legs. “Robotic” warfare of the future is drones, UAVs, RPVs, and remote crawlers for mine clearance, bomb disposal, and bomb delivery.
But that’s just no fun compared to an Atlas kicking another mech in the f***in’ face! 😀 😀
All this Battletech talk reminds me of my dream to one day build the entire 7th Crucis Lancers.
For reference a Davion RCT is more like a Division.
1 Regiment of Battlemechs (the namesake 7th Crucis Lancers)
2-3 Regiments of Vehicles
5 Regiments of Infantry (including a Jump regiment)
1 Battery of Artillery
2 Wings of Aerospace Fighters
It’d be a beautiful sight…something like 500ish models/infantry stands.
@wayton – Sound like a Project Blog to me. 😀
Someday…someday!
A good article but you will have to work hard at dispelling the paperwork ‘myth’. I used to play BT and I have enduring memories of pencils, erasers and stacks of paper!
Nothing wrong with having paper and pencils round the table though we used pocket protectors and non permanent markers
@ugleb – have no fear, sir. I work hard at everything I do. 😀
I mean, in just about every game there is, you have to build an army list, right? There’s paper work there, right? I built two full BattleTech companies yesterday in about 60-75 minutes.
And as far as playing the actual game goes, it’s marking off dots and crossing things off a list. Literally tic-tac-toe has the same level of paperwork. Admittedly, you have to track heat. But that’s add up some small numbers, subtract the sum from another number, and consult a list printed right on the sheet. i.e., the same amount of math involved in calculating unit wounds in Kings of War.
Strike that, that process in Kings of War gives you a number you have to roll against. You don’t usually do that here. So mathematically speaking, it’s even less complex that Kings of War.
I guess it just depends on your preference. Some people like dice, counters, clickers, markers, charts in a book, cards, or just carrying numbers and data in your head, all in the name of avoiding “paperwork.” Maybe it’s because I work in an office, I don’t mind one sheet of paper with all this information already on it, I simply tick off things that are hit and follow instructions clearly laid out on the same page.
Now I will admit . . . once you get into designing your own mechs or modifying weapons loads or sensor suites, etc . . . some heavier paperwork is definitely involved. (1), this stuff is beyond optional, and (2), new fan-built tools are now available that not only allow all this to be handled with a few clicks of the mouse, drawing data from a comprehensive BattleTech database . . . and they even update the record sheet for you so it goes straight to a standardized printable ,pdf.
I like @torros ‘ answer re pocket protectors and dry-erase markers. My girlfriend was doing that yesterday in her first ever B’tech game,
Missile strikes is about obtuse as it gets in game. When you start stacking ECM/Artemis IV/etc
Even then its: figure out modifiers or lack there of and roll on a chart, then roll location on groups of missiles.
Other then that needing to mark or note torso position if you made a twist. Even with four mechs it gets easy to forgot which turned where in the heat of battle.
Man, @wayton , I know what you mean about the missile hits, at least the locations. The game we had on Sunday just happened to have a lot of mechs with big LRM packs. Got a littletedious.
For torso twists, well, I have that beat (at least for my personal mechs). These have mostly been cut at the waist, with torsos and “pelvis” drilled out to mount jewelry magnets, before painting. So the mechs can actually “torso twist” on the table like tank turrets. 😀
A nice start I do remember the timberwolf from the game I played, its scary the amount of fluff out for this game when its written down would give 40K a good run for its money @oriskany
So excited to see some Battletech coverage in Wargaming news! As a longtime player I’ve been hoping the new game would kindle new interest. Thanks for plugging a great game @oriskany The BT community at large can sometimes feel a little stagnant.
@zorg – I actually haven’t compared it, 40K might have more. BTech has 160 novels, 64 TROs (Technical Read Out books), and 200+ other sourcebooks, expansions, support publications, etc.
What I wonder about is what might have happened in an alternate 90s timeline, where FASA never had to break up and sell off the franchise. What if BattleTech had always enjoyed the firm, secure protection of a house like GW? Would 40K have had the opportunity to expand into market sector left open by what happened to FASA and BattleTech, at least in some market sectors across the world?
You know what they say . . .
If that comet hadn’t wiped out the dinosaurs, none of us would be here . . . 😀
Thanks very much, @t9nv3 – very glad you liked the article, and hope you like the rest of the series. I know what you mean about the BT community being a little, well, I would say “quiet.” I mean, when I was putting this article series together, I wondering if it would get any traction at all because you never hear from BattleTech fans on the site.
Well, we’ve heard from them now, haven’t we? 😀
true true @oriskany I don’t think many people under 25 may have heard of battletech?
but we may have had real battletech dino herders or rex races instead of horse races?
That’s okay, @zorg – WE’RE BRINGIN’ IT BACK! 😀
@ugleb as far as the paperwork myth goes, take a look at Alpha Strike. 😉 you can play a company on company game within an hour and a half, all rules/units are kept/even advanced rules, movement is still key…they just dropped the giant stack of papers for small cards….which are all free to download. The game really shines for how seamlessly it incorporates combined arms.
I would agree, @t9nv3 – the Alpha Strike rules look really straightforward, espeically if you want to have very large battles (which is where combined arms tactics really have a chance to unfold). I knew the cards came “free” with the CGL lance packs, I didn’t know they were available for download! I’ll have to check that out. 😀
Even in Alpha Strike, though, don’t you use dry-erase cards to put occasional dots here and there? No math, and literally just ticking a bubble here and there, less than you would for a fast-food customer survey. 😀
Ahhh Battletech, my first love of miniature gaming. Just a few years ago, I sold off most of my collection, including all FASA TRO’s (unseen versions), Battlespace, Mechwarrior, Battleforce, and around 60ish novels.
I did keep my original rule book, it is so beat up, pages taped together, everything you would expect from a manual well used, along with the most recent rulebook, around 20 mapsheets (in a art folder, so they don’t have to be folded), and every mech I could get my hands on, with no gaming store for several hours drive, around 150 or so mechs all told.
Once a year my buddy and I have a massive B-Tech day, just to remind ourselves on what it was like when we were both kids in highschool.
I was also an avid Mech 3 and Mech 4 player (go CiE!), but I have never been able to get into the new MWO. Although the pre-alpha footage of the upcoming turn based battletech, has got me hankering for a game of the classic on the table.
Thanks for the stroll down memory lane. I remember most of this stuff coming out. My brother was into it more than I was but I still played my fair share. I am looking forward to the rest of this series.
@wizardv12222 – oh NO!!!! Damn, I wish I had known, I would have bought a lot of that stuff. 😀 I wonder how many of those books are even still available.
Keeping the old map sheets in an art folder . . . now THERE is a great idea. I have a lot of those older paper maps sheets, but a they’re all folded up in a box.
Yeah, a lot of old B’Tech fans aren’t terribly into MWO, samey weapons, revamped mech-designs, 12-on-12 match ups ala World of Tanks. But I’ll tip my hat to it for bringing in a fresh generation of new B’Tech fans.
Thanks very much, @tibour – I hope you like the rest of the series! 😀
@oriskany no worries, I got a really good price for everything on ebay. Felt it was better to go to someone else who wanted to do something with them besides just sitting on a bookshelf.
Art folder! Genius!
I always wondered why my subconscious mind made me stare at them when I was in the shops.
Buying one.
Very good article I will be looking forward to the next one thank you.
Thanks, @scab1234 . 😀
My four-page Chronology on the relations between Battletech, Robotech, and their Japanese inspirations:
{DISCLAIMERS: This document is not meant to be all-inclusive; many details have been omitted for brevity. I’m a fan of both franchises—AND their Japanese influences; my intent is not to slam one side or another.}
1981) FANGS OF THE SUN DOUGRAM premiered on Japanese TV and ran a year and five months. Takara, the company making many of the scale model kits for the series, also released two DOUGRAM board wargames: THE BATTLE OF STANREY and THE BATTLE OF KALNOCK.
1982) SUPERDIMENSIONAL FORTRESS MACROSS debuted on Japanese TV and ran for eight months. Tsukuda Hobby, a Japanese company affiliated with the Avalon Hill boardgame company, eventually released four games based on the franchise: VF-1 VALKYRIE, CITY FIGHT, DOGFIGHT and SPACE FOLD. Like the two Takara DOUGRAM games, these are hex-based battlegrounds in differing environments.
1983) SUPERDIMENSIONAL CENTURY ORGUSS followed MACROSS in its timeslot, and GENESIS CLIMBER MOSPEADA premiered on Japanese TV that fall. The CRUSHER JOE feature film debuted in Japan that spring as well. The DOUGRAM feature film compilation (with the Super Deformed short CHORO-Q DOUGRAM) debuted that summer. Tsukuda made additional boardgames from the ORGUSS, MOSPEADA and CRUSHER JOE properties; the CRUSHER JOE one is human-scale and square grid-based.
1984) Harmony Gold acquired the outside-Japan rights to several Japanese TV shows, including MACROSS. Carl Macek released a MACROSS pilot video in August; encouraged by the positive reaction to the video, he sought a TV syndication package for the series. Macek also filed U.S. trademarks on both the MACROSS title and logo. Comico made an official comic book adaptation of the pilot video, which was retroactively made #1 of the ROBOTECH THE MACROSS SAGA serial comic. FASA released BATTLEDROIDS in November, possibly derived from the Takara and Tsukuda board games, and using scale models (from DOUGRAM, CRUSHER JOE and MACROSS) as player pieces, supplied by T.C.I. (Twentieth Century Imports). The Revell company imported many DOUGRAM, ORGUSS and MACROSS model kits under the blanket brandname ROBOTECH (the idea may have come from their French branch CEJI); DC Comics produced an original mini-series ROBOTECH DEFENDERS (based loosely on the DOUGRAM mecha) but this was curtailed after only two issues. The MACROSS DO YOU REMEMBER LOVE movie debuted in Japan in July; it was eventually released overseas by Toho as CLASH OF THE BIONOIDS. SUPERDIMENSIONAL CAVALRY SOUTHERN CROSS followed ORGUSS in its timeslot. SOUTHERN CROSS was cancelled about halfway through its intended run (because its main sponsor, the Bandai subsidiary Popy, lost their independence and withdrew financial support).
1985) Harmony Gold’s ROBOTECH TV series went into syndication, with the title trademark licensed from Revell. The content of the series combined episodes from MACROSS, SOUTHERN CROSS and MOSPEADA plus an extra recap segment. In addition, Harmony Gold edited together a featurette expansion of the fourteenth episode of MACROSS for syndication, and two home video featurette “specials” (with no connection to the canon) as premiums sold with selected Matchbox ROBOTECH toys. FASA was forced to drop the name BATTLEDROIDS due to legal resistance from Lucasfilm and re-released the game as BATTLETECH in the fall. (At the same time the ROBOTECH TV series appeared, Harmony Gold sent FASA a cease-and-desist order about the use of the MACROSS mechanical designs in their games. FASA cited their contract with T.C.I. and the matter was dismissed for the moment.) MEGAZONE 2-3 Part 1 was released in Japan on home video; Cannon Films and Harmony Gold licensed it for ROBOTECH THE MOVIE. A combination of bad luck and poor management at Cannon Films doomed any widespread release of ROBOTECH THE MOVIE, and an abrupt change in the exchange rate between U.S. Dollars and Japanese Yen forced Harmony Gold into abandoning the effort to co-produce (with Tatsunoko, the original studio for MACROSS, MOSPEADA and SOUTHERN CROSS) the intended second season to the TV series, titled THE SENTINELS. A sequel to MOSPEADA, LOVE LIVE ALIVE!, was released to home video in Japan. Comico’s comic book adaptation of the TV series as ROBOTECH THE MACROSS SAGA, ROBOTECH MASTERS [SOUTHERN CROSS] and ROBOTECH THE NEW GENERATION [MOSPEADA] started the same month as the end of the DC Comics version and ran till February of 1989.
Just before ROBOTECH TV began airing, Testors cornered the supply of the Nichimo MACROSS model kits T.C.I. was using for BATTLEDROIDS/BATTLETECH pieces. These kits were repackaged again as “R.O.B.O.T.”, but it appears that Testors got their own cease-and-desist order from Harmony Gold or Revell and were forced to unload them at discounter stores for a loss.
The economic chaos of the Dollar-to-Yen exchange rate and the failure of SOUTHERN CROSS and GALVION (the follow-on to MOSPEADA) on Japanese TV were factors in the collapse of the Imai Science and L&S companies, which produced many of the ROBOTECH model kits. Imai’s MACROSS license and molds went to Bandai while their other molds eventually went to Aoshima; L&S’ assets went to ARII Works. Nitto (who was a partner with Takara on DOUGRAM merchandise) also went out of business and Doyusha acquired many of their molds.
1986) The “big year” for all concerned: FASA released a large number of new products in support of the BATTLETECH universe, including the first metal miniatures from Ral Partha, the first Technical Readout books, the CITYTECH and MECHWARRIOR first editions, the first novel in the series (DECISION AT THUNDER RIFT) and THE SPIDER AND THE WOLF, a combination graphic novel/adventure module that sets up much of the greater saga of the game settings. On the ROBOTECH side, ROBOTECH ART 1, the coffee table album on the making of the series, was released in April and became very popular. Comico put out the GENESIS ROBOTECH graphic novel prequel to the TV series storyline, and Palladium released the first volume of the ROBOTECH ROLE-PLAYING GAME series. MEGAZONE 2-3 Part 2 was released in Japan; a version dubbed by Harmony Gold’s partner Intersound (featuring many ROBOTECH voice actors and the new footage made for ROBOTECH THE MOVIE) was produced but never officially released in America.
1987) Notable for the debut of the first ROBOTECH novelizations from Del Rey, the appearance of the SENTINELS featurette cut on VHS from Palladium books, the Nova Game Designs BATTLETECH duel play books, the RULES OF WARFARE book (that combined for the first time the rules to BATTLETECH, AEROTECH, CITYTECH and MECHWARRIOR), and the BATTLETECH and BATTLEFORCE comics from Blackthorne. Blackthorne simultaneously published the series HOW TO DRAW ROBOTECH, based in large part on ROBOTECH ART 1 plus “new” material. In Japan, the epilogue to MACROSS DO YOU REMEMBER LOVE, MACROSS FLASHBACK 2012, was released on home video. RED PHOTON ZILLION, Tatsunoko’s repurposing of the design work done for THE SENTINELS, premiered on Japanese TV and ran for nine months. Doyusha begins sponsoring DOUGRAM reruns in Japanese TV syndication, the start of its involvement with the franchise.
Two important legal developments happened in the summer of 1987: Harmony Gold bought out Revell’s trademarks on ROBOTECH and renewed them, and T.C.I. went out of business, breaking FASA’s “paper trail” back to the Japanese licensors.
1988) With Harmony Gold’s interest in translating cartoons for TV markets waning, Carl Macek left them to found Streamline Pictures, a business oriented around cartoon feature films and home video. Eventually Streamline would take over the ROBOTECH home video work from Palladium and F.H.E. Also in this year, Eternity Comics would start their adaptation of ROBOTECH THE SENTINELS, and on the BATTLETECH side, THE CRESCENT HAWK’S INCEPTION, the first video/computer game based on the franchise, was released. BURNING NIGHT, the epilogue to ZILLION, was released on home video in Japan.
Celebrity Home Entertainment released CLASH OF THE BIONOIDS to the U.S.
1989) Activision followed-up the two CRESCENT HAWK games with the MECHWARRIOR game sub-franchise, which went through several iterations for both personal computers and home video game console systems.
1990) The “Clan Invasion” changed BATTLETECH fandom while the release of THE END OF THE CIRCLE novel changed ROBOTECH fandom. Streamline Pictures released some episodes of ZILLION plus BURNING NIGHT to American home video; some of the voice cast were veterans from ROBOTECH’s production.
1992) Release of MACROSS II on home video on both sides of the Pacific; the English-language dub was accomplished by U.S. Renditions (a sidelight of media import company Books Nippan). A cartoon project for TV involving Universal, Sonos and Playmates Toys (in the works since 1990) officially was titled EXO-SQUAD. Playmates, who had been courted by FASA for the possibility of marketing BATTLETECH toys for FASA in connection with the upcoming BATTLETECH TV cartoon (produced by Virtual World Entertainment [VWE]), rejected the license and FASA instead partnered with TYCO Toys.
Streamline reissued ROBOTECH TV on home video and as a parallel product subtitled home video versions of MACROSS, MOSPEADA and SOUTHERN CROSS.
In Japan, Kadokawa Books released a version of BATTLETECH under license from FASA, with mechanical designs completely reimagined by Studio Nue.
1993) EXO-SQUAD premiered on TV that fall in syndication. The MACROSS II feature film cut appeared in American theaters; Palladium and Dream Pod 9 co-produced the MACROSS II role-playing game as an off-shoot of the ROBOTECH game. ORGUSS 02 was released on Japanese home video. Victor Musical Industries (VMI) released a version of the MECHWARRIOR video game to Japan as BATTLETECH; mechanical designs made for this version were repurposed as “Clan refit” variants of the original BATTLETECH machines (Technical Readout 3055).
Streamline partnered with Best Video for mass-market home video cuts of their content.
1994) Playmates reissued former Matchbox-produced ROBOTECH toys in conjunction with the EXO-SQUAD toy product line, at the same time TYCO’s BATTLETECH toys began hitting store shelves. BATTLETECH TV series aired on FOX network; FASA and VWE sued Playmates. MACROSS PLUS was released on home video. MACROSS 7 debuted on Japanese TV. Streamline ran theatrical showings of MEGAZONE 2-3 Parts 1 and 2, and partnered with Orion Studios in an attempt to get more anime into Stateside theaters.
1995) Playmates and Harmony Gold countersued FASA and VWE. Phase I of FASA & VWE vs. Playmates took place in June. The MACROSS PLUS and MACROSS 7 feature film versions were shown in Japan.
1996) FASA & VWE vs. Playmates was decided in favor of Playmates. The Harmony Gold & Playmates vs. FASA & VWE countersuit was allowed to proceed, but some time into the suit Harmony Gold asked that some of the evidence be set aside under a protective order and was denied by the court. The parties were made to settle out of court. FASA’s BATTLETECH trading card game went on the market.
1997) The settlement between Harmony Gold and FASA was completed. As a result, the MACROSS, DOUGRAM and CRUSHER JOE-based machines in BATTLETECH were declared “Unseen” and their usage was curtailed for the time being. MACROSS 7 DYNAMITE was released in Japan.
Orion Pictures was bought out by MGM and shut down, effectively ending the partnership with Streamline.
1998) An appeal by Playmates demanding FASA pay Playmates’ legal fees was rejected. Best Film & Video Corp. (who had taken over much of the Streamline Pictures and Celebrity Home Entertainment content for re-release) went out of business as the result of a lawsuit against the estate of a deceased celebrity.
1999) Harmony Gold renewed their trademarks on MACROSS and ROBOTECH, in advance of the possible release of ROBOTECH 3000, which failed. Doyusha re-issued some of the Takara DOUGRAM scale model kits; in later years they would do the same with the Nitto kits as well.
2000) Wizkids founded. Celebrity Home Entertainment went out of business.
2001) FASA restructured and left the game business. The Ral Partha division, which FASA bought outright in 1998, reformed as Iron Wind Metals. FanPro, a German company who handled FASA’s business in Europe, took over the rights to many of FASA’s products.
Because of a dispute over licensing fees and royalties with Harmony Gold, Palladium abandoned the ROBOTECH RPG and it officially went out of print.
2002) The MACROSS ZERO prequel appeared in Japan. Streamline Pictures disbanded. Studio Nue and Big West won the first suit in Japanese court over the ownership of MACROSS’ intellectual property.
Bandai bought out Tsukuda Hobby and eventually folded it into its subsidiary Megahouse.
In Russia, the Tehnolog company put out two boardgames, in theory sequels to BOEVYE ROBOTY, titled FIRST FIGHT and IRON BLOW. The plastic robot figures made for these have subsequently been exported to Italy, Britain and Canada and repackaged.
2003) Another lawsuit in Japan affirmed Tatsunoko’s copyright on SDF MACROSS (the original TV series only) but also affirmed Studio Nue and Big West’s ownership of the overall MACROSS intellectual property and franchise. DARK AGE, the first installment of Wizkids’ MECHWARRIOR Collectable Miniatures Game, went to market. At the same time, FanPro’s BATTLETECH Technical Readout PROJECT PHOENIX assigned new mechanical designs to the “Unseen”. TDK Mediactive put out ROBOTECH BATTLECRY, a console video game based largely on SDF MACROSS TV.
2004) Tatsunoko (and Harmony Gold) lost an appeal in Japanese court, blocking Harmony Gold from asserting any claims on the MACROSS sequels or prequels without permission from Big West or Studio Nue.
ARII Works abandoned the plastic model business, spinning off their subsidiary MicroAce and selling some molds to Platz.
2006) Intersound went out of business. Takara and Tomy merged into one company.
2007) Catalyst Game Labs was founded; FanPro was forced to give up their rights to BATTLETECH and SHADOWRUN. The ROBOTECH sequel video SHADOW CHRONICLES was released.
2008) MACROSS FRONTIER began its run on Japanese TV. Palladium re-acquired the ROBOTECH game license and relaunched the ROBOTECH RPG with a new edition based on SHADOW CHRONICLES.
2009) Wizkids was bought out by NECA. Nichimo released their last batch of products before going out of business; the company was officially declared bankrupt in 2013.
2010) Carl Macek died.
2012) Harmony Gold founder Frank Agrama was found guilty of tax evasion in Italy.
That is an impressive rundown of the events. I knew the gist of it but never dug much deeper. A lot of complication and bad timing it seems.
Holy crap, @fpilotbierce . 😀 Why don’t I just copy/paste all that, toss in some photos, and call that Part 05 of the article series? I’ll give you credit in the article. 😀
So Ral Patha BECAME Iron Wind Metals. I get it now. Never knew that. I always kind of wondered by “two companies” were producing the miniatures, and whether the two product lines were compatible (scale, etc.) That actually helps in a very real way, because now I know I can buy from either stock and get consistent product that will look good together on the table.
Thanks for the great post! 😀
I would be honored! BTW, back in the day I was a contributor to MECHA-PRESS, a Canadian magazine devoted to all things robotish.
The Anime-Sourced Unseen Body Count:
MACROSS – ROBOTECH – BATTLETECH
* Glaug – Zentraedi Officer’s Battlepod – Marauder
* Regult – Zentraedi Standard Battlepod – Ostsol
* Missile Regult – Zentraedi Missile Battlepod – Ostroc
* Scout Regult – Zentraedi Scout Battlepod- Ostscout
* Valkyrie VF-1A – Veritech Fighter (soldier) – Stinger
* Valkyrie VF-1S – Veritech Fighter (squadron leader) – Wasp
* Super Valkyrie – Super Veritech – Phoenix Hawk
* Armored Battroid – Armored Battloid – Crusader
* Tomahawk – Excalibur – Warhammer
* Defender – Raidar X – Rifleman
* Spartan – Gladiator – Archer
* Phalanx – Spartan – Longbow
DOUGRAM – ROBOTECH – BATTLETECH
* Dougram JAKT – Zoltek – Shadow Hawk
* Roundfacer – Thoren – Griffin
* Ironfoot – Gartan – Thunderbolt
* Blockhead – Talos – Wolverine
* Bushman – Condar – (not in Battletech officially)
* Mackerel – Aqualo – (not in Battletech officially)
* Bigfoot – Ziyon – BattleMaster
* Blizzard Gunner – Assault Squad – Scorpion
* Crab Gunner – Commando – Goliath
CRUSHER JOE – BATTLETECH
* Minerva ship -Leonard Class Dropship
* Fighter 1/Fighter 2 – Stuka
* Siren fighter – Corsair
* Harpy fighter – Sparrowhawk
* Ostall security robot – Locust ‘Mech
* Galleon tank – Galleon tank
Seriously, @fpilotbierce – you should get in touch with Ben Shaw (BoW: @brennon ) at Beasts Of War. The e-mail is: ben@beastsofwar.com . He can send the latest BoW style guide and get you lined up to submit some articles. 😀 They’re always looking for great content!
I am looking forward to part 2…even if its a dauntless task. The earliest start is all the way back to when our timeline diverges with Battletech’s, the USSR survives to the 2000s in their timeline. The rise and fall of the Terran Alliance, the formations of the Houses, the rise of the Terran Hegemony and formation of the Star League, all the minor wars in the Star League era, the Amaris Coup, the Succession Wars, the concurrent Pentagon World Wars in Clan Space and the creation of their whole system, the formation of FedCom and the wars surrounding it, the Clan Invasions, the Great Refusal at Strana Mechty and the destruction of Clan Smoke Jaguar, the FedCom Civil War, the WoB Jihad, the Rise of the Republic of the Sphere, the Dark Age, and current timeline.
Most of those have sourcebooks on their own…a few have multiple sourcebooks covering them. Though if you stick to just the first Battletech playable era then its Third Succession war to Age of Destruction/Sphere…not much better in terms of fluff to dig through.
Well, @wayton – it’s cooking 160+ novels down to less than 1600 words. So . . . lots of summary. 😀
Thank you man , I found in that box in the attic, all of my books first gen. and some awesome toys as well. But in the Box next to it I found my Revel model kits unbuilt wolverine, griffin, and a shadow hawk, plus three armorcast resin ones mad cat, vulture, and an atlas. @oriskany I forgot I had them, the resin are 1/56 scale. Man thanks again you are awesome .
😀 Thanks, @pepsidan . 😀 Hope the rest of the article series keeps going this strong!
Putting these articles together is a s***-ton of work, but comments like that make it totally worthwhile.
Amazing article, can’t wait for part two.
I’m a Battletech player since late ’84 , and now I’m trying to introduce my kid into it. I think I got over 500 mechs painted and hundreds still in blister pack. ( yes I’m a bit of a hoarder )
Wow I’ve played, citytech, aerotech and regular battletech. Got books novels computer games and still, now when I saw what Harebrain Games did for Battletech to be released next year I had tears on my eyes.
It was a blast from the past.
Needless to say I was on the bandwagon and pledged in a heartbeat. 😉
But talking about the craziest Battletech story; I remember back in the day, in my old game group we had a campaign. But we decided to take this campaign and play it for pink sheets.
( destroy a mech keep the mech as spoil of war if you win the game )
That made a lot of people very careful about how to play and when to retreat or push your luck.
Out of the 10 players I was the only one playing IS those were the longest 4 months of my life. Let me tell you, my unit survived and we got very good at killing clan mechs.
😉
Brother G
Awesome, thanks @goochman70 . 😀
BattleTech player since ’84? Damn, you’ve been in it since the beginning. 😀 Sounds like you have a huge force. 500 mechs? That would be amazing to see that all set up on a terrain table, just once . . . 😀
Definitely looking forward to seeing what Hairbrained Schemes does for BattleTech next year. I hear they’ll be setting the game Mercs style, at the end of the Third Succession War in 3025. There will also be options for arena play at Solaris VII.
Playing for the actual miniatures? Wow. I’m not sure I could actually do that, only because I (*cough*, ahem) paint miniatures a little better than most of the folks I game with (cough, clearing throat). 😀 Sounds especially challenging since you were sticking with IS mechs vs. I assume Clan mechs or at the least Improved Tech IS mechs?
Honestly, I don’t think Clan mechs are that overrated, especially if your scenario is faithfully sticking to the BV value. LIGHT Clan mechs like my Ghost Bear clan “Bear Cubs” are worth 1052, up against Clints that only cost 600+. So yeah, I’m killing them like wheat before the scythe, but they’re outnumbering me about 2-1, too. I lost one of my Bear Cubs to a Trebuchet of all things the other day. It’s like when you take a Tiger, Panther, IS-2, Pershing, or Firefly on a WW2 gaming table . . . you’re GONNA pay some heavy points for that.
It’s great that we’re finding so many hard-core BT fans in the BoW community. Thanks again for the comment, and I hope everyone likes Part 02 as much as this one! 😀
Count another player from the 80s who now prowls BoW. I have played Shadowrun continuously of over 30 years and have played Battletech on and off for just as long. We have between 80-100 mechs on the shelves but few others that remember the heyday (next oldest player is under 30) so other games are usually chosen. Hopefully these articles will get more players off their keyboards and onto the tables. Never liked any of the digital games (except the Chicago Center where those pods were leading edge state of the art) and always thought of the table as the forward command center a holographic view of the world around me was played out. The paperwork was me sending commands to by commanders and watching as they attempt to follow my plan. The tactile, tactical side is what makes this game so amazing. 1000 years of history, multiple events almost every year not a few events each millennia, and stories of the Med Tech who saw the battle. or the farmer who his the warrior and lost their lands as a result make this universe real in a way that GW dreams it could do to this day. Only Star Trek and Star Wars come close in Si Fi. The Foundation series and Man-Kzin novels try.
The old novels are being re-published in digital format as the BattleTech Legends line at [url=http://www.drivethrurpg.com/index.php]DtiveThroughRPG[/url] and all the TROs and rulebooks as well.
Remember to always have a lake or river near your battle. Submerged heat sinks double their efficiency and make PPCs much more fun.
Thanks, @tekwych –
I completely agree with what you say about the table as a “forward command center a holographic view of the world around me was played out.” Sure, we all like to think about stomping around town in a 100-tom mech “with guns for arms” as @johnlyons says. And I guess for the Mechwarrior electronic games series this is what we’re talking about. But once you put a lance, company, or “star” on the table, you’re a battlefield COMMANDER.
Yeah, I was trying the “stand in a river” strategy Sunday until I realized my Mad Cat and Grizzly mechs had no heat sinks in their legs. 🙁
I’m so happy to see you publishing this article. Battletech is the second miniature game I ever played, the first being D&D Battlesystem. The hard science fiction and the realistic future setting, coupled with giant robots of course, really captured my attention. The Stackpole novels were icing on the cake. I have a large collection of the books and box sets that my parents hung onto for me during college but I parted with my mechs long ago. Interestingly after college and starting a family it was Battletech, or more specifically Mechwarrior CMG, that got me back into the miniature hobby. It’s been full steam ahead since 2004. Dang it I want to build and paint up a lance right now!
Cool premise for a set of articles. I did the battletech kickstarter as I have really enjoyed harebraineds take on Shadowrun of which I am a huge fan. Oddly the RPG was my first introduction into pen and paper and after a long hiatus I got into the sister property of Shadowrun. Can’t wait to learn more.
Thanks, @liono – It’s always great to hear about how people loved this game back in the day, set it aside for a while, and inevitably came back to it – this time with even more force, focus, and determination since this time it was also fuelled not just by love for the game, but a powerful feeling of nostalgia as well. 😀
Thanks, @ghent99 – Great call on supporting the HBS KS. I wish I had. Now I’ll just have to wait my turn with the rest of the free-born plebs. 😀 We’ll also be covering the RPGs (Mechwarrior 1-3 Edition and A Time of War) a little in these article series, so stay tuned!
I was thinking about BT last night and it must be 10 years since I played it. Even now I can remember all the modifiers and hit location rolls more than I can remember rules from other games I was playing in the 80’s like Star fleet battles etc
Just being able to remember it all makes it either simple off memorable or both
Thinking back torso twists is something that never really played a huge part in the game for us. Given the firing arcs it was something that was never really necessary to think about too much
My two favourite mechs would have to be the P-Hawk ( greatest mech ever invented) and the Jaeger Mech
That’s what I meant in an earlier comment about having experience playing the game making it so mucb smoother. I’ve been playing since about 1994/5, and even though I went through almost 15 years with barely a game played, and all my BTech stuff sold off, I was able to sit and play a game of it against others at the club who played it regularly and even correct them on the bits they were getting wrong, without having to refresh the rules. But when I’m playing anything today, I often have to reread the rules to get up to speed before gameday, as so many have similar mechanics that they blur into each other.
Playing Megamek online irregularly may have helped that.
In fact, I know what you mean about torso twisting, but I think Megamek helped us out in that respect. When we started at 4th edition, torso-twisting had its own phase where you had to declare all torso-twists before the firing phase. We just ignored it as it was a bit convoluted. They changed the phasing in the Master Rules, IIRC, to declaring twists as you fire each unit, and then Total Warfare came out just as I left the hobby. But as Megamek, age and experience taught me to take better advantage of speed and manouevreability, it also taught us to counter that using torso-twists and arm swings into the rear arc.
I agree about the torso turn, @torros. Usually (at least in our games so far), during the targeting declaration phase, the arcs are wide enough (and we pick mechs with guns all in the arms and shoulders) where we can simply declare which mech is shooting at which target (within the 60-degree arcs designated by torso turn). We did have one small issue where one of @gladesrunner ‘s mech was being attacked by one of mine close up, within minimum range of some of her heavier weapons. She wanted to launch those heavier weapons at my Mad Cat, further away. We realized later this Mad Cat was too far to the right to allow this kind of “split fire.” (She was firing to the front, and firing these longer ranged weapons way over to the side). But it didn’t matter much. 🙂
Indeed, @ckbrenneke – we’re finding that the games are running exponentially smoother with almost every playthrough, but to be honest some in our group are still very early in their BattleTech career, so the “positive learning curve” has yet to plateau.
Oh, and I agree with the JagerMech, its a rather overlooked design. Same as my personal favourite from the starter set, the Grasshopper. My old 4th edition card standee Grasshopper was a bit worn from all the use it saw.
Damn, @ckbrenneke – you still have some of the standees? Awesome. 😀 My old Renegade Legions BOOKs from that era are all in shreds . . . I can’t even imagine still having any of the old cardboard tanks and planes that came in those old sets.
I have 2nd edition (actually got 3 copies) 1st edition CityTech (2 of these), 1st edition Battleforce, 3rd edition, 4th edition, and the two CGL boxes, the one with the Atlas and the older one with the Warhammer (it’s actually a Hammerhands, but it does look like a Warhammer). I’m a bit of a fanboy….
Great coverage of Battletech! Nice to see it getting attention here. It was the first table top game I played back when the Clans first invaded. Can’t wait to read more.
Wow, my first sci-fi game. I bought Citytech (the one that included the vehicle rules) back about ’86 or ’87, and I’ve loved the back story ever since then. The sourcebooks are so well “researched” (if I can use that word for a fictional setting). The Battletechnology magazines were fantastic too – I have a few and wich I’d bought more when they were available – they’re like pink unicorn droppings now (if you can find them second hand they are silly money).
Nice article. You have just inspired me to get my Battletech minis out, start painting again and play some games,,,
Thanks, @blackspiral – So you joined when the Clans first invaded. Excellent timing, sir. You show outstanding taste! 😀 😀
@felixpike – I know what you mean by “researched” – even a fictional history has to feel “real.” Also, once a franchise really gets going, bad “research” means that new books contradict old ones and before you know it you have all kinds of canon problems, retcons, etc.
The physical books are indeed a little hard to find from the old FASA days. Conversely, the old .pdfs are available with a little internet searching.
Glad to hear you’re getting out your old BattleTech minis. Chalk up another one for the the “garages and attics” score!
This is my favorite game setting the Tabletop game i started with 3rd edition after playing The Crescent Hawks’ Inception / revenge and mechwarrior, there was a bike shop that use to have tabletop games and spotted the box and blew 3 week pocket money and enjoyed it for years. did some cleaning up a Christmas and found all the “unseens” that came in the starter box except the archer have slowly been building up again i got two new 25 anniversary stared boxes one is the reprint and hope to get some games soon
Yeah that pink slips campaign was crazy, but I think that I had luck mixed with very good dice rolls during the whole thing.
Some highlights that have made it through the years and we ( the friends that still keeps in touch talk about )
* me taking down a Daishi Widowmaker with a hax to the head with a Scarabus ( Widowmaker was without a scratch on it, cockpit hit, pilot dead )
* me me taking down a Stone Rhino with the cheapest Warhammer in the books because I needed something to fill the gap in my list, so I went for it. Boom head shot Stone Rhino dead, my friend was Ghost Bear player and got so mad that spent the rest of the game trying to get the Warhammer but he couldn’t get it and to make things worse I kept ganging up on his units.
Do I need to say that he lost that one?
😉
Brother G
@melfor – Crescent Hawk’s Inception – I saw some video play of that recently on YouTube (clunking around 1001 sites pulling together research for this series). The world’s first true RTS game? 😀 So if I read your comment right, you have BOTH the Catalyst Game Labs starter boxes? The one with the Warhammer and the one with the Atlas? I’d be very interested to hear what real differences there are between those two. I have the Atlas one and it’s great, but have heard bad things about the Warhammer one. But since I don’t have one, I don’t know firsthand.
@goochman70 – I won’t even lie to you, so far since our BattleTech revival started, my luck has been very sweet. Combat roll on the first turn on the first game, double-sixed an ER PPC through the head of a far-off Cicada. It’s never really let up, I’m half-afraid some of my players will quit. I’m also rolling plenty of snake-eyes, though. So gaming with me has been an experience as of late.
One thing we haven’t had an opportunity to try yet is weapons or melee combat (you mention the Widowmaker being converted into a “Widow-made” with a cleaving axe through the dome :D). We probably won’t get into that too much, it’s just not our thing, but I am looking forward to seeing another “Death from Above” maneuver executed. Haven’t seen one of those on the tabletop in 25+ years.
Yeah, players can “go on the tilt” when something bad happens to them and they get personally angry at a particular vehicle or unit. Happens in all kinds of games. Sunday my opponent kept trying to take down my Mad Cat. He wasn’t angry or anything, but so far this Mad Cat was waltzed through every battle racking up kills, and we just wanted to see if he could finally take him down a notch. SOOOOO close, in all honesty he really should have put down the Mad Cat, just really lucky “splatters” of damage all over the place instead of focused on one area.
Which reminds me, do you guys play with -3 called shot rules?
Hello @oriskany the only difference between the two box sets apart for the premium mechs is the step up in quality the first set is okay, but the reprint every thing on the mechs is sharper
Thanks, @melfor – that was pretty much what I heard, and the old set sometimes had paper maps instead of the thicker cardboard map sheets in the newer “Atlas-cover” one. 😀
@oriskany
@melfor – Crescent Hawk’s Inception – I saw some video play of that recently on YouTube (clunking around 1001 sites pulling together research for this series). The world’s first true RTS game? 😀 So if I read your comment right, you have BOTH the Catalyst Game Labs starter boxes? The one with the Warhammer and the one with the Atlas? I’d be very interested to hear what real differences there are between those two. I have the Atlas one and it’s great, but have heard bad things about the Warhammer one.
As a point of pedantry, the mech on the prior introductory box set is a Hammerhands, not a Warhammer. In the fluff it’s a predecessor to the Warhammer (though of course the Warhammer predates the Hammerhands in real life), which is why they look alike.
To go into more detail on that @melfor said, there are actually three editions of the Introductory box set.
The first one came out in 2007, and has a Catapult on the cover. It had a quick start guide, full rulebook, universe book, record sheets, hobby guide, reference cards, 2 mapsheets (double sided, with the same varying between laminated and non-laminated paper. Like all prior sets, this was two copies of the same map), and 24 plastic minis. These are the ones that are pretty low quality, they’re a softer plastic than the current plastics, they didn’t hold detail well, the bases were inconsistently cast (the Grasshopper’s base is only a couple of mm thick, for example) and the heavy and assault mechs were significantly smaller than their metal counterparts, to the point that many people I know converted the Catapult to represent a Jenner or Raven
The second one is called the 25th Anniversary box set, but due to production delays came out in 2011, and has the Hammerhands on the cover. Changes to the prior box: The mapsheets are replaced with heavy cardstock ones, and each one has a different map on each side for a total of 4 maps (though of course you can only use 2 at a time). A BattleTech Primer booklet is added, detailing the different ways to play the game and access fiction. 2 “High Quality” minis are added to the set – a Thor and Loki. The Thor comes assembled and the Loki is on sprues. These are virtually identical to the metal minis. The Universe book adds a short story about Natasha Kerensky, which has a companion piece published on Battlecorps.com
The third iteration is once again the BattleTech Introductory Box Set, with the Atlas on the cover. The main change here is replacing all the minis. The 24 “ready to play” figures are replaced with the new ones, which retain the detail from the mold much better, are scaled better to the metal minis (though the heavies and assaults are still a bit small), and are a higher quality plastic (though still not GW or PP standard). A quick way to determine which minis one has is to look at the bottom of the bases – the new ones have numbers there. The “High Quality” mechs are replaced with a BattleMaster and Mad Cat, but these are simpler to assemble than the Loki from the prior box.
17 of the minis from the Atlas Box set are also in the 8 lance packs currently available from CGL, 2 per box (except one has three), with 2 (and one for for that last box) ‘new’ minis.
Yep! This is the set I have – with the Mad Cat and the BattleMaster to “build” (like 4-5 parts tops) – soft plastic but not bad at all, and the numbers under the bases (which are now covered up by my corrected, full-hex bases instead of that bizarre half-hex).
@oriskany The half hex is there so newer players can see the Hex number and the terrain type, if any in a hex occupied by a mech without having to move it.
Yes sorry i meant the 25th anniversary box sets. The third edition is from the FASA days 1994. The Alpha strike lance boxes are on par with the last starter box and quite cheap
@oriskany, Yes we did use the -3 called rules.
I remember that in most of my lists I brought a couple of Scarabuses, something with TAG and my Arrow IV mechs.
That was a great combo, I had them running all over the board. LOL
😉
Brother G
Thanks, @goochman70 – We’re seriously thinking about bringing TAGs into our next game. One side had a serious problem with minimum ranges, especially with their Thunderbolt 20 “super LRMs”. They hardly got to use them since they came on the board too fast and and I closed the range to “choke ’em out” distance . . . and stayed there. We’re going to try putting some of the TAG systems BACK on the lighter mechs from which we initially removed them, using them to spot for massive LRM and Thunderbolt fire missions, probably from under cover.
You can also try MRM’s , swarm missiles, etc. This will help you with the short range problem.
🙂
Brother G
Non-historical? I knew invasion of the body snatchers was a true story!
We used to play 2nd edition, but I never had time to get fully into it. How can anyone not want to pilot their own Mech…
Another excellent article and I cannot wait for the battle report.
p.s., did you tell everyone those buildings are home-made?
As per always covered in the same expert style and depth many have come to not just find but expect. An absolute joy to read and remember such an icon of the gaming world looking forwards to firing up the hud releasing the safety holding fields and striding out once more to grind the enemies into the ground. Get a copy of this game just to say you have one.
Thanks again mate great opening waiting with bated breath .
All the best mate CG
Thanks, @unclejimmy –
Non-historical? I knew invasion of the body snatchers was a true story!
While odd, the event is not unprecedented. We did have that Star Wars Pocket Models article series about 2 years ago. 😀 But no, my body has not been “snatched.” Trust me, nobody would want it. 😀
And while I may not have said it on this thread, those scratch-built homemade buildings have been entered in the Hobby Lab Open Challenge. I know “buildings” are not normally considered “scatter terrain,” but bearing in mind that BattleTech is played at scales 1/200 or higher (8mm-6mm) – buildings are soon “scattered” around the way fences, barrels, and other more conventional scatter terrain is at larger scales like 28mm – 1/56. Also entered in @chrisg’s August Painting Competition. 😀 (hey, I like to hedge my bets).
And thanks very much, Chris – those who play this game will probably know what you mean about the feeling of power you can get playing BattleTech. Smashing through buildings, “Death from Above” attacks (jump jets up, come crashing back down in a flying drop-kick straight through someone’s head, all while firing your weapons down into his fusion reactor). BattleTech is not a game for nerf-players (one reason MWO gets some grief from older-school players). ER PPCs or AC 20s blowing tunnels through lighter mech’s torsos . . . or (if you’re playing the little guys) four or five light mechs or pursuit mechs descending on a lumbering Atlas like a wolfpack taking down a wounded bear.
Balance?
That’s what the BV points are for.
Other than that, tell the devil that Clan Ghost Bear sent ya!
Wow this bring back some good memories. i played battletech for about 10 years until Wizkid introduce Dark age. i didnt like the cheap plastic mechs. After reading this article i will give Catalyst game a look
thanks
Bargain well and Done :).
I first started playing Battletech in the 80s. Still play today. My main focus is Battletech and Alpha Strike and my Inner Sphere force is a Lyran Commonwealth (House Steiner) force consisting of the 1st Royal Guards RCT and mercenaries from the Gray Death Legion and the Eridani Light Horse.
Thanks, @tomd – I honestly don’t know what the WizKids mechs looked like, but I haven’t heard good things (except for maybe the clix-based ones, which look pretty good for pre-paints). I can also say that the Catalyst Game Labs ones you get in the starter box (and the lance packs) are soft plastic, and not QUITE as sharp as old Ral Patha / Iron Wind Metals. Nor do they come on full hex-bases (actually a requirements for the game, at least when not playing on a hex grid, as you do in Alpha Strike, a big part of what those lance Packs are made for ???) Then again, the Ral Patha / Iron Wind metals ones don’t come on bases at ALL.
I personally find the CBL mechs okay, on about a “Zvezda” level – as opposed to Battlefront or PSC. I actually like soft plastic, I can more easily cut them open to mount magnets, modifications, new weapons, etc.
However, the price you can’t beat. You get 24 mechs in the starter box, which only costs $50 USD or so. Along with maps, an Inner Sphere poster, two rule books, a background booklet, dice, etc. So you’re really paying about $1-2 per mech. The lance packs are $15 or so, for four mechs, and you get the Alpha Strike cards.
@blipvertus – awesome. Lyran Commonwealth, you must go up against my friends in the Jade Falcon Clan and Wolf Clan quite a bit, although with those merc outfits you can also fight pretty much wherever the campaign takes you. I’d be interested to hear about what you think of Alpha Strike. I’ve looked over the rules, have some of the cards, read some reviews, but haven’t actually tried the system yet.
@oriskany
I posted this in the UK thread. Thought it might be useful to you and others for finishing your mechs
http://www.fightingpirannhagraphics.com
Awesome, @torros ! Great link! Man, I’m getting tired of cutting out all those Clan Ghost Bear icons I have printed veeeeeery small on thin copier paper. 😀
I will say that while Fighting Pirannha makes excellent decals they can take upwards of a month to ship.
Yikes. Good tip, @ghostbear . 😐 Yeah, I’m kind of an impatient man.
Heh, my gaming group did an order of FPG decals recently and I picked mine up (one sheet of Republic of the Sphere, one of Regulan Hussars) tonight!
Awesome, @lorcannagle – welcome to Beasts of War ! 😀
Donald Trump hasn’t been elected yet? Good – I like war gaming in post-apocalyptic universes, not living in one.
It is great to see another of your excellent articles @oriskany. For myself, and as a Brit, I have always been interested in the Battletech universe but have also always had the unfortunate sense of being on the outside looking in, since as you say the game never really took off to the same degree in the UK.
That said, its influence can still be felt everywhere in UK war gaming and broader sci fi, and 40K wears that influence on its sleeve, most obviously with regard to the Knight Households who owe more than a little to the Mechwarrior Lances in terms of their originating concepts. Indeed, in the lore of the Knight Codex there is are several references to the Knight Households predating the Imperium by many centuries, making use of ancient and advanced technologies, and being found on far flung colony worlds of an earlier human interstellar civilization that fell in the Dark Age of technology but left the Knight Worlds as its enduring legacy – all of which I like to think of as the game’s background writers tipping their collective hat toward Battletech and acknowledging its role in helping to bringing swathes of the 40K universe into existence.
There is something undeniably alluring about the big stompy mech suits of Battletech, along with the very dark political undertones of the setting, that mix Cold war paranoia (where peace is at best watchful and apocalyptic violence is never more than an ill judged button press away) and another enduring staple of dark sci fi; neo-feudal Great Houses who like to supplement their noblesse oblige with a healthy helping of high energy weaponry and a total disregard for the ‘little people’. It works just as well in Battletetch as it did in Dune.
These are all great ingredient, and the fiction mixes them together well as can be seen from its far reaching influence even outside the war gaming sphere. While there is (sadly) not a single big stompy mech suit in sight, I still get the feeling that the creators of contemporary TV shows like Dark Matter and Kill Joys owe more than a little to the mercenary stylings and dark political maneuvering of the Battletech universe.
Hey, @vetruviangeek – I was hoping you’d show up 😀 as i tip-toe once more into the bewildering maze that is sci-fi wargaming.
Donald Trump hasn’t been elected yet? Good – I like war gaming in post-apocalyptic universes, not living in one.
Can you imagine how many times I went back and forth on whether or not to include that line? Politics can be a bad topic to bring up in the continental-scaled hurricane of pant-shitting idiocracy that I used to call the United States. Damn, I can’t wait for this election to be over.
. . . always had the unfortunate sense of being on the outside looking in, since as you say the game never really took off to the same degree in the UK.
Yeah, I don’t have any hard numbers on that, and we have plenty of UK-based mechwarriors here on this thread. But I always got the impression that BattleTech was basically conquering planet Earth’s sci-fi wargaming markets in the 80s and early 90s with the exceptions of UK (where 40K was really finding it stumpy ork feet) and of course Japan where anime goof-fests like Robotech and Gundam held sway.
I agree about the influence of FASA properties on early 40K. The BattleTech ones you’ve listed below. There are also Renegade Legions by FASA (far, far future, Mankind against just about everyone else in the galaxy, a galactic society strongly modeled on Imperial Rome, ruled by a distant Emperor, let me know when any of this starts sounding familiar). My only reservation on that score is the fact that the Interceptor, the first game to publish for Renegade Legions, came out the SAME YEAR as the first 40K. So who inspired who?
I also agree with what you say about the setting, which manages incredible cohesion along with scale (not easy to do, especially when your franchise changes hands more often than a bong at a Grateful Dead concert). Furthermore, not only do they have a lot of factions, but different types of factions with different flavors for more inclusive play. If you’re not into the whole feudal, noble house thing . . . play in a Periphery State or a Clan. Not into genetic engineering but still want the freedome of hyper-militarization? Play a merc! Some mercs are bound by long-term contracts to certain houses or successor states, so they can build up a long “Hammer’s Slammers” military tradition and record . . . while still retaining the inherent freedom that comes with mercenary status.
Glad you liked the article, hopefully the succeeding three also find favor with the almighty Vetruviangeek! 😀
Hi @oriskany. The maze like nature of sci fi is familiar to me, and it is not that I am any good at navigating it so much as I have learned to enjoy the experience of being lost.
I understand your hesitancy about the Trump reference; politics is always a perilous topic, hence the old saying about the best way to maintain friendships being to never discuss politics or religion, though to my mind if you can’t talk about the big stuff with someone you think of as a friend, then you have to ask yourself how much that friendship is really worth – people of honour can disagree in good faith, after all, And in a public forum like this, even where the primary topic at hand isn’t politics, it is still important that the issues of moment of the day can be discussed, since these are the issues affect us all even if we would rather not admit it.
Plus, at this juncture I think that the worrying nature of Trump’s campaign really isn’t even controversial outside the most extreme arms of the US alt-Right – you can’t go around calling Mexican’s rapists, advocating for the exclusion of entire religious groups from the US, inviting foreign powers to hack your opponent’s emails, implying that NRA members might choose to employ ‘second amendment solutions’ to remove said opponent from the race, and suggesting that difficult questions posed to you by a female journalist are the product of her menstrual cycle (just to offer a brief and far from comprehensive set of Trumpian… err… ‘highlights’) without becoming the butt of a few grim jokes.
To put my money where my mouth is, Trump has even gone so far as to bus in one of our ‘best’ home grown UK idiots to bolster his campaign, leaving me to wonder what kind of person actually seeks an endorsement form Nigel Farrage, poster boy for the little Englander strain of reactionary, xenophobic paranoia about the world at large.
A link in case anyone is interested:-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37177938
And now we return you to your usual on topic service…
I don’t have numbers on the uptake of FASA properties in the UK, just my own personal experience of the profile and accessibility of the games in the UK war gaming scene (a terminology that probably makes UK war gaming sound way cooler than it actually is or ever has been), but from my personal experience, for whatever it is worth, the company and its products never had the profile it deserved over here. I suppose that the UK, being the heartland of GW, just didn’t have the bandwidth left in is regional sci fi wargaming market after 40K really got going, which is something of a shame – I have always love dark and compromised settings of political horsetrading, neo-nobility, mercenaries, untrustworthy corporations and the like.
Renegade Legions is not a title I am familiar with, but it does sound very familiar indeed – it is true what they say; there really is nothing new under the sun. As to who got there first, it seems we will never know – a sci fi version of the Roman Empire has been a trope in science fiction for as long as a sci fi version of the US Civil War (hi there Blizzard), so it is likely that both settings were hearkening back to earlier works with regard to this aesthetic, but also in other regards – 40K owes much to Dune, and it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the Great Houses of the Battletech setting also link back to House Atredies and its contemporaries in one way or another.
My knowledge of the Battletech setting is very limited, but what I know of it definitely makes me feel that it is full of wonderful potential for compelling story telling and human drama (here’s a notion – a Battletech version of Game of Thrones made by HBO, replete with big stompy mechs, great characterization, and political betrayal. It will likely never happen, but a geek can dream…)
I have always enjoyed your writing @oriskany. I look forward to reading the next three articles. Also, while my favour is constant, almighty might be a bit of a stretch – I am pretty sure omnipotent beings don’t have to take out the garbage…
I’ll say this much, @vetruviangeek – if they made a BattleTech TV series, I have a feeling it would run neck-and-neck with Game of Thrones on the cutthroat intrigue, put GoT to shame on destructive grandeur . . . and fall short probably only in nudity category. 😀
Ehhh . . . and you just reminded me. I actually have to take out the garbage. **(sigh)**
Wow! Nice change up from historical armour @oriskany. Looking forward to the rest of the series! Well done! 🙂
Thanks, @cpauls1 – either way, these article have big armor plating, big tonnage, and big guns! Ahh . . . all the GOOD things in life! 😀
Oriskany, what is best in life?
Heavy armour plating, massive firepower, and hearing the lamentation of the footsloggers… 😉
I feel like Lord Raiden in Mortal Combat:
“Good. At last one of them has understood . . .”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k69U-nQvw1A
😀 😀 😀
Woo! Loved the intro, as it may be obvious I am a huge Battletech fan, so much so I have the logo you see in my avatar tattooed on my right forearm. I’ve loved the video games, Crescent Hawk’s Inception anyone? The tabletop game and even the card game. I actually quite enjoy Alpha Strike when I want a game with 50 mechs that won’t take 5 days to complete.
I remember trying to play the wargame in the 90s and me and all my friends had 100 ton mechs with a million weapons and i was the killjoy who figured out that we were basically cheating. However this made the game far more enjoyable to me. Plus I still have a TON of source books and the old hex maps!
Great intro to the franchise @oriskany , I can’t wait to see what you have in store next week.
Hey, if the hard-core, lifelong mechwarriors are liking this series, my work is complete. Is it weird to say that if I’d known there were this many dyed-in-the-wool BattleTech fans on the site, I might not have written these articles for fear of screwing up too badly in front of the experts?
Like I was saying earlier in the thread, I was trundling through YouTube in my BattleTech research and ran across some gameplay of Crescent Hawk. The guy claimed it was the first true RTS game. Just chalk that little factoid up to the list of influences BattleTech seems to have given the gaming industry over the years.
Why cheating with 100-tom mechs? Dropship limitations / constraints? Or design / customization errors?
I still have tons of the old BattleTech hex sheets folded away somewhere. Over the decades I’ve used them for Renegade Legions, god knows what else, every game in hell’s creation EXCEPT BattleTech. 😀
Thanks very much for the post.
We just had far too many weapons/armor/everything. Hah
One of the big problems we had in Sunday’s game was minimum ranges. Our friend Alex had a couple of heavy tanks (can’t remember the name) with big Thunderbolt missiles that did like 20 damage, but once @oriskany ‘s mechs got too close, couldn’t shoot. I have a Raven light mech that has a “Tag” target system on it, I’m reading where it picks out targets that the big guys can shoot from behind hills and buildings from much further out. My tweak the equip on my Raven and other mechs for the next game next weekend.
*** cut to scene of Clan Ghost Bear spies carefully taking down notes . . . ***
😀 😀 😀
Try taking an SRM carrier with them or even an urban mech . That will help
Fortunately for me, @torros , not really an issue since Clan LRMs don’t have minimum ranges. (evil chuckle) As for my opponents, I’m afraid they’re just not putting in the time and effort to build a cohesive list. They can either take clan mechs themselves, use the same SSW Solaris Skunk Werks tool to easily modify their mechs to where they don’t have these range problems, or put together a force that can make the best use of these long range weapons (i.e., TAG systems to integrate long-range indirect fire weapons like LRM 20s or Thunderbolt 20s we saw on those Demolisher heavy tanks last week.
As for me, I’m keeping it simple. ACs, pulse lasers, the odd gauss rifle on my Grizzlies, and of course ER PPCs. And yes, next game I’ll make sure to use plenty of IS mechs to make sure the game balances out (although we’ve been sticking to the BV totals, these games are even already).
I dunno, man. Like Sun Tzu says (if there ever was such a person): battles are won or lost before they’re fought. In wargaming, sometimes it’s down to the person who thinks through his list and comes up with a game plan.
Loved BT back in the 80s played that along with car wars almost to death, I also remember the movie Robot Jox that was so based on BT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Kd642Ix5ks.
CAR WARS! Yes. Another classic. And yes, Robot Jox! The poor guy who tries to save a few people in the stands by blocking a missile, and winds up killing hundreds when his mech falls over and levels half the stadium. At least his mom makes him a welcome home supper, a special occasion . . . so “we’re having real meat!” A single sad-looking sausage in a puddle of grotesque, watery soup.
Post-apocalypse at its best, folks!
Robo Jox, LOL
😀
I remember that, I thought that a real Battletech movie should have been made. We’ve seen what cheese movies like Starship Troopers but no Battletech. 🙁
But Battletech is without faults, I’ve love it, but there are some rules that I have to learn to deal with it.
For example; CASE ……ohhhh the mighty CASE.
I never understood why they had CASE in Battletech because if you really come to see it only works for the RPG.
Clan Mechs, yeah they can have CASE and get away with it. But IS Mechs, get screwed. Must of them have XL engines and that’s “Game Over” for the Mech.
Why couldn’t they have done the rule ( only the ammo are explode ) that’s what CASE it’s for not the whole torso.
I can understand you loosing that ability “IF” you get an critical hit on the CASE. ( since the rules says nothing happens and you need to re-roll )
But that’s just me. 🙂
Brother G
Funniest thing about RobotJox is the fact that they’re fighting over Alaska. I’ve BEEN to Alaska, I have family there. Pretty (for two months out of the year), but beyond the oil . . . worth fighting a war over? Much less a robot war (heh heh heh).
Never forget, Alaska gave us Sarah Palin. For that alone we should give it back to the Russians . . . 🙁
Maybe this is a new rule vs. old rule thing, I’ve thought so far that CASE allows an ammo explosion to be vented outward, i.e., not basically nuke the mech (much like the blowout panels and blast-proof doors in the real-life M1A1 Abrams). I mean sure, the tank is toast, but the crew has a vastly increased chance of survival
A mech with a light or standard engine that suffers an ammo explosion will generally survive the destruction of a side torso, so it’s not all bad.
Also, there’s now CASE II, which only does (IIRC) 1 damage to the internal structure and vents all excess damage out of the mech, but it weighs more than standard CASE (as in Clanners have to pay for it and Spheroids have to pay more
Gotcha, @lorcannagle . That’s probably what I’m thinking of. 😀
CASE II? I never heard of it. Where can I find that information?
CASE information you loose the torso, leaving mechs with xl engines dead in the water.
Brother G
@goochman70: CASE II is in Tactical Operations, alongside a whole host of other new and awesome weapons. The more recent Technical Readouts feature canon designs using the advanced weapons and equipment in TacOps and Interstellar Operations.
If you’re using mech design software to make custom units, you’ll be able to find it in Solaris Skunkwerks or MegamekLab if you set the tech level to experimental. I’m not sure if HeavyMetal Pro includes it, there’s a patch that apparently includes all the new equipment from TechManual and TacOps, but I stopped using in favour of the other two long ago so I can’t say for sure if the patch includes CASE II.
Yes, @goochman70 and @lorcannagle ! Solaris Skunk Werks! This was the database tool I was mentioning earlier, I just couldn’t think of the name. Man, what a great little tool this is. A lot of people point to the “paperwork” and “bookkeeping” – but the only time (in my opinion) that’s really true is when people start modifying, tweaking their own mechs, changing weapons and sensor layouts, or building / designing their own mechs from the ground up.
This Solaris Skunk Werks handles all of that. Some quick selections from menus, it tells you if you’re over-budget on weight, lets you allocate the new weapon’s location (i.e., where to assign the crit locations), all automatically, THEN updates the record sheet for you! Print, done, pick up your dice!
@oriskany, Solaris Skunkwerks was my mech editor of choice for a long time, but the developer has no time to work on it, so the vehicle, aerospace and infantry modules are not great, and the mech editor hasn’t been updated to include the new Dark Age-era weapons and equipment like Superheavy mechs, tripods, the new armour types, Re-engineered lasers, or RISC technology. Because we play a lot of Dark Age games I’ve switched to MegaMek Lab for printing record sheets (which I generally used for vehicles, aerospace and BattleArmour anyway).
@lorcannagle – MegaMek Lab, eh? I will check that out. So far we haven’t “broken” Solaris Skunk Werks or reached the end of its utility (at least for our group). But one of my opponents is very interested in ground vehicles and infantry, so we’ll give it a look.
SSW is great, but I’ll admit I sometimes have issues with links to the installed database (i.e., finding the mech I want, sometimes I have to hunt for it in the folders and load it manually). Also, it stacks the armor dots in neat rows in each section, I like the dots spread across the section like the original mech sheets. I know, little things. 😀
@oriskany, Solaris Skunkwerks was my mech editor of choice for a long time, but the developer has no time to work on it, so the vehicle, aerospace and infantry modules are not great, and the mech editor hasn’t been updated to include the new Dark Age-era weapons and equipment like Superheavy mechs, tripods, the new armour types, Re-engineered lasers, or RISC technology. Because we play a lot of Dark Age games I’ve switched to MegaMek Lab for printing record sheets (which I generally used for vehicles, aerospace and BattleArmour anyway).
– See more at: http://www.beastsofwar.com/battletech/exploring-part-one-introduction/comment-page-3/#comments
SSW is great, but I’ll admit I sometimes have issues with links to the installed database (i.e., finding the mech I want, sometimes I have to hunt for it in the folders and load it manually). Also, it stacks the armor dots in neat rows in each section, I like the dots spread across the section like the original mech sheets. I know, little things. 😀
There’s an option in SSW to change that, when you go to print your sheet there should be an tickbox for canon dot patterns.
Ha! There it is! Just tried it. What a great little tip (clearly I’m still tinkering with all the bells and whistles on this thing. Thanks!
Just tried slapping two ER PPCs on a late-model Atlas. I managed the weight and thought I had a real beast on my hands, until saw that its heat dissipation was 30 and weapons heat . . . 54. This thing would have kicked serious ass for ONE turn. 😀
. . .and then melted into the core of the planet. 🙁
@oriskany, if you want PPC beastage, go look up the Hellfire. 95 ton Clan Hells Horses design. It’s got 4 Clan ER PPCS, moves 4/6, and 30 Double Heat Sinks. It only goes 2 overheat if it runs and fires all 4 guns.
And then, for laughs (or terror), look up the Quasimodo. A Free Worlds League mech with a Blue Shield (an electromagnetic shield that halves PPC damage while it’s on, but has a chance of exploding) and triple-strength myomer (it gets a speed boost and doubles physical damage once it’s 9 or more overheat). It can walk towards the Hellstar laughing, and then tear it apart in close combat.
I might look into that Hells Horses idea. The problem is my opponent’s aren’t having much luck against my Ghost Bears so far. And the Hells Horses seem to be major rivals against the Bears, so maybe Hells’ Horses is providing “my enemies” with some secretive arms shipments. 😀 😀 (i.e., one or two mechs)
I dunno, we’re not getting bogged down THAT much in the background. That’s what historical gaming is for, and this whole BattleTech project is supposed to be a break from that. 😀
I actually remember when FASA died and not long after WizKids brought out Mechwarrior Dark Age (I believe that was the name). My group was pretty torn up about FASA falling, which happened not long after their attempt at a fantasy game.
That said, a close friend of mine and I tried a game of battletech a few years ago using the Crimson Skies rules for damage tracking. It was really fun, and added a better level of realism to the game overall.
I really hope some day someone properly revives this IP in a modern way with proper miniatures to suit the quality of the era.
Thanks, @stryker778 – actually, I really like what Catalyst Game Labs has been doing so far in reviving the franchise since 2007. Better hex maps (no more paper), rules for hexless miniatures play for those so inclined, a supporting website, accessible and affordable miniatures, a streamlined rules set, and a real quickfire edition in the form of Alpha Strike.
I will certainly admit the will admit the sharpness and detail on the miniatures are not quite the old Ral Patha / Iron Wind Metals level. I actually have two IWM Mad Cats and a CGL Mad Cat, and have painted both, so I have a real side-by-side comparison. But those older miniatures are still available on eBay, Iron Wind Metals website, etc (for those who want to pay x4-x5 the price for that extra detail and don’t mind working with metal).
Personally, I’m using a combination of both. IWM for my Clan Ghost Bear “favored baby” mechs, and CGL for all their opponents and other army factions.
It’s worh noting that CGL’s plastic minis are intended to supplement, not replace Iron Wind’s metal ones. I frequently mix and match both in my games.
I appreciate you taking a dive into this game and enjoyed reading this, as well will continue to follow your articles on Battletech. More what I meant was, I have this image in my head of Battletech redone using plastic at a slightly larger scale to really do the IP the justice.
I personally always played house Davion myself, and always tried to use forces with combined arms, not just mechs.
@stryker778 – a slightly larger scale would be great. Right now, with a 10+ meter mech (40 feet approx) being 2 inches tall, the scale is roughly 1/200 or 8mm. Kind of an oddball scale. Just nudging it up would make it more compatible with DZC terrain, aerospace craft, ground vehicles, buildings, etc. 😀
Although, as @warzan says in last week’s XLBS . . . we need mechs in 15mm so we can put them in Team Yankee! 😀 😀 😀
Great timing. I received the boxed set 1 week before, 2 days ago i was reading for the universe of the game, trying to find out for which factions should i paint my models (i want at least 2) and really got lost. It seems that almost everything fighted for everyone, only the numbers changed.
I really hope you can do a presentasion of which mech served for whom, as this is a bit difficult for someone new to find it out.
Okay, @aparadektos – I sort of had the same experience when I first got back into BattleTech after such a long hiatus.
ONE – Part 02 (next week) will go into the background and primary factions (about the top 15 or so). Of course, there are dozens more.
TWO – Here’s a resource I found helpful: http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Main_Page It’s the BattleTech wiki site. You can put in a mech’s name in the search, up comes the article, which tells you somewhere which houses / clans / successor states PRIMARILY used that mech.
e.g., I look up JagerMech: and in the article, I get:
During the Succession Wars the largest numbers of JagerMechs served the Federated Suns and Capellan Confederation, with relatively few found in the other Great Houses. The ‘Mech became especially associated with the Suns, not least because it’s primary factory was located on the moon Talon, and was used extensively by the Armed Forces of the Federated Suns. It was most often used to form fire support lances, working in conjunction with similar ‘Mechs like the Dervish and Rifleman, while also being deployed as part of attack and strike lances to provide support for their lancemates. After the Fourth Succession War Kallon contracted out with Independence Weaponry on Quentin to increase production of the JagerMech, but the planet was captured by the Draconis Combine in the War of 3039 and the production line fell under their control. Although the Kuritans were never big fans of the ‘Mech it slowly began appearing in large numbers in their armed forces.
THREE – Conversely, you can type in “Category:BattleMechs” and you get a directory of subcategories, probably with the house / faction . clan you’re interested in. Presto, lists all the mechs COMMONLY used by that faction.
FOUR: I think BattleTech is specifically designed where just about any mech can be used with most factions. The only exception might be clan tech vs. non-clan. If you have the starter box, I think the Mad Cat is the only clan mech. But even these become available to other factions later in the storyline (sales, capture, theft, reverse engineering, etc).
In short, BattleTech is not a game that puts an encyclopedia between you and the game table. 😀 It’s not like WW2 where you can’t put a red star on a Panther or a black cross on a Sherman. Actually you, can but that’s another topic. 😀
Is there a faction(s) you were most interested in playing?
The Master Unit List is a great resource for determining faction units as well. And also for free Alpha Strike stats for almost every unit in the game.
http://www.masterunitlist.info
Thanks, @lorcannagle . I’ll bet that master list is quicker than looking these mechs up one by one on the BattleTech wiki. 🙂
I normally use Mech Factory, get record sheets for all the variants, can pull up mechs by year, and vehicles as well.
http://battletech.rpg.hu/mechfactory_frame.php
Thanks. I’m intrested in House davion and periphery, but not a specific faction. The problem for me right now is that i want to paint the miniatures from the boxset for two sides, so i can play with an opponent without buying extras. Of course, i’ll buy some miniatures later. It’s that as a new player, i find it a bit difficult to clear out the arsenal of each faction. Maybe i’ll go for a mercenary army, so i can have everything.
@aparadektos – that’s kind of what I did, as a new (or a returning after an extremely long hiatus) player.
1) I picked clan Ghost Bear (more of less just because of the logo) 😀
2) Picked out a handful of specific “Clan Ghost Bear” mechs and ordered them extra. (6 altogether)
3) Filled in the rest of my Ghost Bear force with some of the better ones from the boxed set (about 6 more out of the 2 that come in the box). I figured these could be battle replacements, repairs, salvages, etc . . . whatever my company could do to keep itself in the field in the face of battlefield losses. Also, in a meta-sense, this helps keeps the forces a little better balanced since Clan mechs are typically pretty powerful.
4) Painted the other 18 or so from the starter box in different, semi-generic colors (red and gold, desert camo, jungle camo, crazy yellow-and-orange camo), in 4-6 mech batches. That way I had 4 additional lances I could put up against my Ghost Bears, either 1 lance for a small battle, 2 for a lager battle, 3 for a really big one, etc. They’re clearly distinguishable from either other and from my Ghost Bears, so I always have an “opposition force” ready for the Ghost Bears to face off against.
But for House Davion, here are the ones they’re known for (at least according to BattleTech Wiki). They’re a big faction, so it’s a big list. If you have the same boxed set I do, I know you have a big-ass Atlas you can use to base your Davion force around, with the Battlemaster as the lead figure in one enemy force, and the Mad Cat / Timberwolf as the “flagship” for an enemy clan force:
Antlion
Argus
Atlas III ******
Avatar (BattleTechnology)
Axman
BattleAxe
Blackjack (BattleMech)
Bushwacker
Caesar
Cataphract
Centurion (BattleMech)
Centurion (OmniMech)
Cuirass
Dart (BattleMech)
Dervish
Devastator
Emperor
Enfield
Enforcer
Enforcer III
Falconer
Fennec
Fireball
Garm
Gunslinger
Gunsmith
Hammerhands
Hatchetman
Hellspawn
Hollander
Hornet
JagerMech
JagerMech III
Javelin
Legionnaire
Lynx
Maelstrom
Night Hawk
Nightsky
Nightstar
Osiris
Owens
Penetrator
Prey Seeker
Rakshasa
Raptor
Sagittaire
Salamander (BattleMech)
Scarabus
Scarecrow
Sentinel
Sentry
Spector
Starslayer
Stealth
Strider
Sunder
Swordsman
Talon (BattleMech)
Templar
Templar III
Thanatos
Uziel
Valiant
Valkyrie
Vulpes
Warlord
Watchman
Wolfhound
Wow, thanks a lot. I think i’ll follow your advice. I’ll go for clan Jade Falcon (mostly because i saw some episodes from the animated series) and with the list you gave me at least the list for Davion, it got cleared a lot.
No worries, @aparadektos 😀
The original Battletech computer game was great. I’ve also backed the KS and looking forward to the latest incarnation.
Managed to find my old Heavy Metal Pro files and got them working on my current rig!
Started reading Warrior: En Garde.
First game of the 21st Century planned for this weekend!
Indeed, @multifish – definitely looking forward to HBS’ BattleTech PC title. 😀
First BattleTech engagement since before 2000 AD, eh, @chillreaper ? A historic moment! Is that another victory mark for the “garages and attics” score? 😀
This weekend I’ll be playing the big BattleTech game for the Part 04 Battle Report, so I’ll be with you in spirit, strapped into my cockpit and neural helmet, reactors fired up, capacitors nominal, targeting systems on-line . . .
“Attention Ghost Bear Lance, this is Ghost Bear Actual. We are cleared to engage. Weapons free!”
Great article. I started playing BT when it was first released as “BattleDroids” and had the two 1:144 scale Shadowhawk and Griffin in the box. I continued to use the BD mech sheets over the BT ones as they held two per page.
Still have the original books, to include 3025 with the original mechs (Robotech style) and even have an original lead Behemoth. Sucker weighs about .4kg. It’s the one with the huge turret head and three battleship sized cannon coming out of it. Still unpainted ugh.
It’s a great game although my group modified the dice mechanic to use D100 vice 2d6 as the +1 modifiers quickly made shots untenable, such as having a light mech move 12, stand right in front of you (1 hex) and you couldn’t hit it due to movement mods.
It has been, and probably always will be, one of my favorite miniature games of all time. Book keeping got a bit hairy when you only had two players, each running 3 or 4 lances, but hey, back in the day, we didn’t mind playing a 4 – 5 hour game.
You’ll definitely remember those epic moments.. like: turn 1 – hitting your opponent’s big mech.. rolling 12.. head hit.. PPC.. head armor destroyed and points internal, roll for crit.. pilot dead, mech out. Bwahahahah
Thanks, @gryphonheart . Man, BattleDROIDS, you really have been in it from the start, but damn, three or four lances on a side? Those sound like massive games (triple-quadruple size). Did Battledroids play faster than BattleTech? (You mentioned half-sized record sheets)?
Battledroids played the same. Virtually the same game, just rebranded. The mech sheets were redone to show a single mech per page and were printed in portrait vice 2x per page in landscape. Made them easier to read.
Some of the fluff was a bit different. In BD, the mechwarriors were classified similar to knights. Each flying their own colors. It was serious bad juju to lose a mech as that was your livelihood and honor. A warrior was more apt to withdraw from the field prior to losing his mech than fighting it out. It was, after all, ‘lost’ tech.
When BT came around, it developed into houses, etc where the warriors normally flew house / unit colors on their mechs. The rest is ‘history’.
The original Ral Partha Behemoth was actually the HWR-00 Destroid Monster Mk II. I’ve only seen it once in a store (unpackaged counter display) and had to snag it up. Cost me $15 at the time, which in 1984 was considered a bit expensive for a single mini when other single mechs were only $3.95 Still sitting in my box o’ BattleTech stuff, not even put toegher yet.
@gryphonheart – This is what I read while doing my research for these articles. “2nd Edition BattleTech” was basically BattleDroids rebranded . . . after what must have been a brusque phone call from Lucasfilm’s legal division. 😀
If you want to see good Battletech batreps go to youtube to the Anthony Wilson page and he has some great batreps.
🙂
Brother G
Some of the best Batreps I have ever seen, and his explanation of the rules is super helpful. I definitely recommend him to anyone who likes Battletech or if they want to learn Battletech.
You’re talking about “Ouchies BatReps” right? Agree they are great videos with great information and a great sense of humor. He actually reached out to me on the YouTube comments section from Saturday’s Weekender! 🙂
Yep, Ouchies….. I consider his Batreps one of the best out there.
Anthony is very friendly if you have any questions and he’ll answers right away.
Brother G
I’ll say. He asks me to reach out to him if I ever want to do some kind of collaboration. I’ll have to figure something out on that front. Anyone who plays BattleTech on the 30,000 – 50,000 BV level is pretty awesome in my book. 😀
I really love the article got me nostalgic for my early forays into battletech. I started with Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries which I bought with money i was given for my 16th birthday. I loved the game but what really hooked me was the little diary entries from the between mission reports. The backstory and groups within it seemed so fleshed out. After playing the game multiple times I learned there were novels and a board game set in the universe. I remember going to the only remotely local shop and finding the second edition boxed set and a copy of Lethal Heritage as well as a metal Catapult. I convinced my best friend to try the board game with me we played a couple of times. After that though i maintained my interest and picked up novels from time to time.
Many years later, around 2006 I walked into a conversation with some friends of my friends and heard the words “Hell’s Horses” my ears immediately perked and I asked if they were talking battletech. I joined into their regular game and my greatest gaming love came to full bloom (being honest I’ve only loved maybe two women as much as I love to see a completely blacked out center torso on my enemies). Since that time I’ve delved even deeper into the hobby and played many other wargames but my first love is and has always been Battletech. Though they are not in my attic you have inspired me to take my kit i built up for teaching alpha strike back up to the local game shop and teaching a couple young pups about big stompy robots. Again great article can’t wait for the rest of them.
Thanks, @moebiusstrip . Ah, no attic “point.” Fair enough. 😀 I wasn’t playing BattleTech at 16, but I was playing FASA’s other big scifi franchise – Renegade Legions. I know, some people just need more time. I will agree that a filled in center torso or head on an opponent’s record sheet is about as beautiful to look at as (since you mention women) a nice, firm … Eh … I mean a great set of … Ah … You know what I mean 🙂
I loved Battletech in the late 80s, but personally felt the clans were the Scrappy Dooof the game and I lost interest when they entered the picture.
To each their own, I guess, @petdrb . Honestly I find the idea of “militaristic space Germans” and “just but firm space Brits” and “overly-honorific space Japanese”, etc . . . sometimes a little simplistic. Even “House Marik” is rather un-creative in some ways. Really? If you follow House Marik . . does that make you “a Merikan?” A league of free STATES that are UNITED under a federal republic? Wow. Doof indeed. 😀
I’ll admit, though, that some of the genetics vat-baby and honor-code material from the Clans we just basically ignore from our narrative.
Death to the Inner Sphere!
Long live the Wolf!
You must mean Vlad’s Wolves because both Clan Wolf during Operation Revival and Phelan’s Wolves are wardens that consider tasks of Clans to be protecting IS instead of invading it like crusaders.
Awesome! How did I know @wittmann007 would support the Clans? And not just any Clan, but Clan Wolf, the true bloodline of none other than Kerensky himself?
@mecha82 – don’t many of the Clans switch camps between Wardens and Crusaders? From what I understand, Clan Wolf was originally hard-core Wardens, and had to be basically dragged into the Inner Sphere invasion of 3050. Once there, however, they conquered more worlds than any other clan, including Jade Falcon, Nova Cats, Smoke Jaguars, and yes . . . admittedly even Clan Ghost Bear. Then the Jade Falcons turned on the Wolf in the Refusal War (presumably over leadership of the Clans?) and how the survivors are full-blown Crusaders (with a Warden remnant with Clan Wolf-in-Exile)?
I don’t know all the details, obviously. I took a quick spin through the BattleTech wiki and now I’m even more confused. 😀
Yeah, those that followed Phelan Kell (Clan Wolf-in-Exile) after Refusal War to IS are wardens that carry iKhan Ulric Kerensky’s will of warden way while Clan Wolf led by Vlad Ward that stayed in Clan Space and were allied with Clan Jade Falcon led by Martha Pryde until being kicked out with all other IS Clans by Home Clans (Clans that don’t have territories in IS) are hardcore crusaders. Clan Wolf-in-Exile are staying in Lyran Alliance just like Clan Nova Cat is staying in Draconis Combine.
It’s not so much that the wolves switched as much as got exiled and some remnants reformed by a crusader clan. And yes the wolves did conquer more of the inner sphere than any other clan, but they did it so that their leader could use it as a defense when the other khans accused them of trying to hinder the war effort (which they in fact were trying to do). Khan Ulric used their successes to also propel him to the il-khan (supreme commander) of the clans. He used this so he could engineer a proxy battle at tukayid that would result in a cease fire (despite the wolves achieving they’re objective). So yes they did conquer the most, but they did so with the endgame of leveraging their victories into an end to the invasion.
I really wish you could edit posts.
To be accurate it was warden part of Clan Wold that become Clan Wolf-in-Exile while what was first Clan Jade Wolf and then Clan Wolf led by Vlad Ward was formed by crusader part of Clan Wolf that were left behind. Basically whole crusaders vs wardens is so serious business that it effects politics within Clan as much as it does politics between Clans.
Success of Clan Wolf in Battle of Tukayid was they success alone and it did not effect other Clans as IIRC other Clans would had had to win as well to continue invasion and get free route from ComStar to Terra. Clan Jade Falcon got draw thanks to Aidan Pryde’s sacrifice but it only gave them glory.
Basically Refusal War started when Clan Jade Falcon demanded Trial of Refusal and Ulric Kerensky (knowing that his Clan would back him up) said that he would do it with entire Clan Wolf making Trial of Refusal war rather than trial.
So hold on . . . Crusader clans and factions are the ones still chillin’ back on the Clan worlds (way the hell out in the Kerensky Cluster, I imagine) while the Warden clans are the ones with territories actually closest to Terra, the ultimate objective of the Warden clans? That’s actually an interesting twist, and without reading about 20 novels I can kinda see how that’s happened over the 80-90 years since the Clan invasions (the furthest date I’ve read in the BT timeline being about 3145, late Dark Ages).
I’m guessing the Ghost Bears are the most “extreme” case of this “naturalization,” eventually forming not only permanent settled worlds deep in the IS, but also merging to a certain extent with the society and government of the Rasalhague Republic.
During my research I found some maps with what looks like a Clan Wold enclave of about 20-40 worlds deep, DEEP in the border areas between the Lyran Alliance and what’s left of the Free Worlds League. It actually kind of confused me, it didn’t seemed attached to any of the old Clan Invasion corridors (there’s a lot of crap out there on the Internet, so I didn’t want to use it in any of my articles). I can only assume these are the Clan-Wolf-in Exile? I’ll see if I can find it again and link it to thread below.
Yeah, @moebiusstrip – I’ll start a support thread in the forums for this article series soon, where people can post their own images, maps, game tables, and best of all, in the forums you can edit your posts (unlike here in front page content . . .)
@oriskany, the Wolves were the only Warden Clan in the original 4 invading Clans (Wolves, Jade Falcons, Ghost Bears and Smoke Jaguars). Of the two reinforcement Clans – Steel Viper and Nova Cat, the Steel Vipers were warden.
Over the 10 years between the Battle of Tukayyid and the formation of the Second Star League, the Nova Cats and Ghost Bears switched to Warden, and the Wolves switched to Crusader (as a result of the War of Refusal, when the most strident Wardens were sent to the Lyran Alliance to take Refuge).
The Warden/Crusader divide was largely rendered irrelevant when Task Force Serpent and Task Force Bulldog destroyed the Smoke Jaguars and defeated the other Clans in the Refusal Trials. After the Wars of Reaving (which lead to roughly 33% of the Clan Homeworlds being depopulated and the destruction of most of the Clans still resident there), the Invading Clans are cut off from the Homeworlds, The Hells Horses have fled to the Inner Sphere, and the Snow Ravens and Goliath Scorpions (after absorbing the last Ice Hellions) have fled to the Periphery. The remaining 4 Clans in the Homeworlds are divided into two political groups: Bastions, who feel they need to rebuild their strength before invading the Inner Sphere and killing everyone; and Aggressors, who want to do it now. As the Wars of Reaving ended in 3075 and the Homeworld Clans have yet to return as of 3145, it’s safe to say the Bastions have won that debate for now – or something else horrible has happened to the Homeworlds.
@oriskany
I meant to talk about this bit in my last post”
During my research I found some maps with what looks like a Clan Wold enclave of about 20-40 worlds deep, DEEP in the border areas between the Lyran Alliance and what’s left of the Free Worlds League. It actually kind of confused me, it didn’t seemed attached to any of the old Clan Invasion corridors (there’s a lot of crap out there on the Internet, so I didn’t want to use it in any of my articles). I can only assume these are the Clan-Wolf-in Exile? I’ll see if I can find it again and link it to thread below.
That’s the Wolf Empire, the descendants of Vlad Ward’s Crusader Wolves. Late in the Dark Age novel series, the Lyran Commonwealth came into a deal with the Wolves where they’d invade the Free Worlds League (at the time divided into dozens of micro-states) together, and the Lyrans would transport the Clan’s civilians to the new territory the Wolves would capture.
The Lyrans attempted to double-cross the Wolves by transporting their civilians slowly and de facto holding them hostage, and the Wolves turned on them as a result, carving out a new holding from Lyran, Free Worlds, and abandoned Republic territory.
At the same time, the Jade Falcons have invaded the Lyrans and Republic remnant and taken massive amounts of territory. We don’t have all the details yet, but Technical Readout 3150 suggests that the Wolves in Exile have either been heavily damaged or completely destroyed attempting to defend against the Falcons.
Aha, @lorcannagle – I see what happened. Checking back on BattleTech wiki, I find:
Originally of the Crusader mindset, they were one of the four original Clans to participate in the Clan Invasion in 3050, but following the Battle of Tukayyid their philosophy changed towards the Wardens, which they officially announced on the eve of the Great Refusal. Since then the Clan has moved whole-sale into the Inner Sphere where they renamed their realm the Ghost Bear Dominion.
Of course the Rasalhague Dominion follows, but I’m not going to copy/paste the whole page.
Yeah we’re totally playing after the initial Clan Invasions have ended, after Tukayyid, after the Refusal, etc. etc (for reasons I’ve already belabored in this thread). Looking into the Ghost Bear – Draconis Wars.
OOOHHHH …. and Clan Wolf In Exile for the win……
Nice article a great overview of the origins of Battletech. I’m not a fan of the “Classic” rules, but Alpha Strike is a ton of fun and it is definitely one of the the most deeply-developed game universes in existence. It’s also notable that successive Batteltech editions didn’t render previous supplements and sourcebooks defunct. Except for the rulebooks themselves, nearly every battletech product ever produced is still useable with the current ruleset!
I hope at some point in the series you’ll explain the origin of the original Battetech mech designs (many of which still survive to day in some form) since nearly all of them come from the Japanese Anime series’ Macross (Repackaged in the USA as Robogear), Crusher Joe or Dougram.
Thanks @trukdawg and @eilif – That’s actually a really good point about the “reverse compatibility” of all these BattleTech products, not bad for 32 years of publishing and God knows how many companies owning different pieces of the franchise at any given time. 😀
Thanks for putting a spotlight on one of my all time favorite games. I started playing back in the summer of 87 with a friend from work. We had paper maps and the cardboard standees to represent the mechs. I still own almost 100 miniatures. Somewhere along the years my technical readouts and mech sheets have vanished but my maps and source books are still piled on my shelf, just waiting for me to tap into the fun once again. My friend and I set up a Battalion on Battalion battle on a table in my apartment that took a month to finish. 40 mechs per side, 3 companies of 12 mechs and one 4 mech command lance. Would be much easier to do in the modern era with cell phones and tablets with excellent cameras, we could just photograph where everything was and not have to leave the minis on the map with dry erase codes on the map itself and number taped on each mech.
My love for the game has been re-invigorated by the Hyper RPG channel on Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/hyperrpg) On Friday nights they have a show called Death From Above, a hybrid between Mechwarrior and Battletech that is a ton of fun to watch. They have a Role playing session first, then they set the battlefield and have the Battle. All the episodes are available on You Tube, (tonight’s episode will go up next week and it was Awesome!), so if you wish to catch up you can. 2 weeks ago they had Ryon Day from Geek and Sundry on as the guest villain (new one every week), and he was so over the top it was hysterical (https://youtu.be/ufd_Eaj1EyI). They play a modified version of traditional Battletech, with some of the rules adopted from the upcoming Battletech game from Hare Brained Schemes, with 8 inch tall hand painted battle mechs that they drill critical damage into.
Holy SH*T…this community has shown such support for Battletech that Catalyst Games has actually put this article and a shout out to BoW on their website! We’re starting a revolution my friends. Come out of the Attics, Basements, Storage sheds and be part of the stompy robot like movement!
It’s crazy, right @gladesrunner ? Type “James Johnson Battletech” into Google and it’s current the first thing that comes up (the BoW highlight for this article series on Catalyst Game Labs’ Tumbler feed):
http://catalystgamelabs.tumblr.com/
Thanks very much, @rgreenparadox –
Indeed, I still have tons of the old paper FASA maps. We never had the “standies” – but I’ll confess that a huge number of our minis were unpainted, and many were the games with coins on the table, little white dots painted on pennies and quarters to show which way “front” was.
Ah . . . the “good old days.” How did we survive?
Somewhere along the years my technical readouts and mech sheets have vanished
Most of the old 80s-90s TROs are available as pdf downloads on the internet with a little digging, and of course tools like Solaris Skunk Werks can print canon or customized records sheets for something like 3000+ models of mechs.
My friend and I set up a Battalion on Battalion battle on a table in my apartment that took a month to finish.
Good grief! That’s like 120,000 BV points on the table at once! And man, you had to make the map able to be taken down, with dry erase markings, etc. That is hard-core dedication, man.
Death from Above sounds great, it has also been recommended by some other guys on this thread and last week’s Weekender. I’ll totally have to check that out.
Thanks again for the great post!
I’m on the same boat……
I’ve played games that lasted months, writing everything down just in case because we had Battalions of mechs on the table.
I still have some custom made patches that we had made for the Mercenary group we created back in the day and I still have the most of the papers. I did the transfers for the mechs with the help of one of the guys that still works at Fighting Piranha Graphics.
Now, I live so far from my old gaming group that I barely play B’tech and I miss it a lot.
I only spend most of my time reading the fluff and painting the ( still in blisters ) mechs, infantry, tanks and areospacefighters.
Which brings me to my question;
* Are the 5 Battle Corps Anthologies the only ones in production?
🙁
Please let me know.
Thanks
Brother G
Brother G
@goochman70, the 6th Battlecorps anthology was released at Gencon this year. There are also two new full-length novels out: Embers of War by Jason Schmetzer, set on Hall just before the Jihad; and Betrayal of Ideals by Blaine Lee Pardoe, which is the story of the destruction of Clan Wolverine (this is a print version of a Battlecorps serial, with a new prologue and epilogue)
See, this is what I was saying on the comment thread for the Weekender XLBS. I fully agree that the BattleTech fanbase is highly-fueled by nostalgia, but before we categorize BT as “nostalgia,” they are still releasing new product, stories, and games to new fans. Nostalgia = past. BattleTech is also a force in the present and the future.
One of the funniest things I remember about those day was getting the mech sheets photocopied. Who ever had time would run down to the copy place (Kinkos for us) and they would run off the sheets everyone asked for, usually a couple copies so we could run more than one battle. Never occurred to us to use sheet protectors and dry erase markers so we could use the same sheets over and over again (would have been tough with the tiny little dots too, but we would have tried).
One of our favorite scenarios to run, were Clan style Trials of Position. Of course we always opted for the Kai Allard-Liao varriant and made them 6 on 1. (a 1 to 5 tonnage ratio, instead of 3 on 1 at a 1 to 2.5 tonnage ratio) nothing scarier than facing down all your friends trying to hunt you down.
@rgreenparadox – I’ve honestly never had an issue with the sheets. Sure, you need a few at first (like four at the most, if you’re playing a lance), but I always just make my marks on the sheets lightly, then clean them off very quickly afterward with a kneaded eraser.
Some of the other players in our groups, however, do make the marks a little harder, then clean them off later with lower-quality erasers. Yep, those sheets have much shorter life spans, resulting in much more frequent trips to the printer. 😀
As I mentioned before we use picket protectors means you can put 2 mechs in one sheet
The beauty of the game is its simplicity and easy enough for one person to run a company by themselves
@torros – Ran almost a company per side today . . . nine mechs / heavy tanks per side. Got through it in about 5 1/2 hours. Not bad at all, especially since we were (1) still looking up a few rules on arcs vs. LRM indirect fire, rotary autocannon, and MASC units. Definitely getting into a more free-flowing combat style with this system.
@gladesrunner definitely uses your system with the sheet protectors, though. I may become a fan of it myself.
I remember pissing off my friends that played the clans, because after they did their challenges I did the good ‘ol ” Dances with Wolves ” move with other mechs in front of them with the mechs that the weren’t allowed to shoot at setting them up for an ambush and BOOM………
HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE
😀
Yes I play like a IS surat.
😉
Brother G
So is this like an honor duel, as “Ouchies” Battle Reports details in Episode 63? 😀
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3n-MLGTeX0&index=30&list=PL3AB99EF1E33535B6
“Yo’ momma’s so fat . . . she tripped over the Capellan Confederation and shattered the Free Worlds League!”
When’s the next article @oriskany might help battle tech pop up locally
Part 02 should roll out on Monday (August 29) about 12:00 noon GMT. Parts 03 and 04 will also roll out on succeeding Mondays, I believe at 12:00 as well.
I was thinking last night that one if the hardest fights we had was at Tikonov when as we were approaching the walls got attacked by a squadron of mechbusters and guardians
Annoying little things they were to
Oh man, we’re still a ways off from bringing full-scale aeromechs on the board. Although those Mechbusters, damn! An AC20? That’ll put a hurtin’ on ya. 😀
Thanks a lot for all the advice, everyone, on the TAGs and LRMs. We had another big game today, and it really helped a lot!
Yeah, thanks a lot guys. (sarcastic grumble) A biiiig help that was. A really big help. 😀 happy to say today’s game against @gladesrunner and @arras was a lot tougher-fought than previous games.
@oriskany, What happened? The TAG’s got you running?
LOL
😀
Brother G
Anytime brother, just gotta keep tweaking your list and playing stile a bit.
😉
Brother G
The TAGs didn’t get me running, its was the endless swarms of LRMs and Thunderbolt-20s that came right after them. 😀
After I had a relatively easy victory last week, this time my girlfriend @gladesrunner and new BoW member @aras definitely had a better game plan and the battle was much, much tougher.
We’re gettingbetter at the game, though. 18 total mechs and heavy tanks, three players, and we managed it in about 5 1/2 hours. And even that was slowed down a little because the game we being heavily photographed.
Not to put pressure on you bro but I gotta say…. You’ve got a girlfriend who will play Battletech with you for 5.5 hours?!
You gotta put a ring on that and quick!!!
Ha! You’d assume I’d HAVE him! 😀 😀
🙁 🙁 🙁
I too, have very fond memories of Battletech. Last year, for TableTop day here in Canada, a few of us organized a large event at a local church. It was mainly to host a D&D Epic event but we had all kinds of games going all day. There were some guys who came from Catalyst Game Labs demo team and they set a big table of Battletech free-for-all. That game tab from morning till night and you could not people away from it. I never got to play, I was busy running other stuff, but man….I really regret not joining in!
Anyway, chalk another one up for the attic count. I’ve been sitting on the intro box for a couple years now ( my original stuff is long gone). Time to crack it open and teach my son how to play.
@dreadknot69 – Indeed, @gladesrunner has always been a little into gaming (not full-blast, admittedly), that’s sort of how we met. 😀
Glad to year you’re cracking open that starter box, and passing the glory that is BattleTech down to another generation! I would have liked to sit in on that BattleTech table as well. Was it known in advance they’d be running it? i.e., could you have brought your own ‘mechs if you had them? I might have been fun to show off my Mad Cats and Grizzlies. 😀