Get Started in BattleTech as The Introductory Box Appears
March 3, 2014 by dracs
Everyone loves a bit of mechanical mayhem and you are sure to find this in abundance as Catalyst Game Labs put the new BattleTech Introductory Box Set up for pre-order.
The BattleTech Introductory Box Set contains everything you need to get playing this classic board game:
- 24 unpainted, ready-to-play plastic BattleMech minis
- 2 unpainted, premium-quality plastic BattleMech minis
- One 12-page full-color quick-start rulebook will have players into the action in minutes
- 36-page book of pre-generated BattleMech Record Sheets
- One 80-page full-color rulebook
- Inner Sphere at a Glance, a 56-page full-color book of universe
background and BattleMech technical data - One 16-page full-color Painting and Tactics Guide
- Two heavy-duty cards of compiled tables
- Two 18″ x 24″ game-board quality maps
Now this set is a reprint of the previous introductory box set, but according to Catalyst there has been a significant improvement in the miniatures. Below you can see a comparison image, with the miniatures from the previous edition on the top and the new Introductory Box Set minis below.
Catalyst are also running a special offer for those of you who think you might like to get friend into this game too. Buy two sets and you will also receive an extra set of all the plastic miniatures contained in the box.
Is this a game you'd be willing to try? Have you played it before?
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I’ve played Battletech before. The full rules are rather complex, but it is a great simulation of mech combat. Despite the complexity, I like it. This boxed set is the ideal first step into the game and I hope the minis are better than they were in the anniversary set.
If the complexity puts you off, you can always try their new fast play ruleset, Alpha Strike which can played on a normal tabletop or on hex mats. The rules appeared in one of the main Battletech supplements, but they have expanded on them and made them a game on their own.
Did we need another introductory set of BT?, this must the 4th or 5th now
The last ones sold out in high demand, so yeah, they needed to reprint these.
The minis are a huge step up from the old ones, but I already own two of the earlier runs. Have to say, the Battletech universe is one of the deepest and most interesting in gaming. The history of the BT universe and its ongoing storyline really does put 40k to shame in the fluff department. But the original gameplay system isn’t weathering as well as some others. I think they’d be better served by releasing an Alpha Strike boxed set honestly. I suspect that’s where the long-term health of the series really lies.
I personally still intend to own all six of the core rulebooks once Interstellar Operations is finally published, but not everyone wants a game system that can literally model anything you can imagine, including tornados, active volcanoes, forest fires (intentional or otherwise), deep mud, earthquakes, metal fatigue, pilot stress and really anything else you can think of in space, hyperspace or on planet. Not everyone wants five volumes of optional rules for everything from calculating hyperspace transit times to how much a company surgeon should be paid.
Battletech is the RPG of wargames (and actually has RPG rules that are fully compatible with the wargame). It’s cinematic and narrative in ways other wargames can only attempt to be. But it is fiddly, and can involve a lot of book keeping. It’s about running a ragtag unit through a campaign of scenarios in the pursuit of goals that can’t possibly be achieved in one game session. It’s about keeping track of every scrap of ammo, every tick of damage and reenacting every dramatic scenario that results from the shortage of one or the abundance of the other.
Battletech is at its best when you’re using a spreadsheet to keep track of your supplies and personnel. It’s at its best when you’re running two players through a long-running narrative campaign (possibly with a GM). It’s at its best when you throw away concepts like points per unit or army lists and just scrounge up whatever is left lying around the battlefield and jury rig it to get to the next skirmish (rules for that too). It’s at it best when your unit has to negotiate off-world transport to another planet to continue their mission, or find supplies in enemy territory. It’s at its best when your unit’s skirmishes are only part of a greater conflict that you also play out the results of using slightly different, larger scale rules or when you intersperse RPG sessions between battle sessions.
It is not what most people consider wargaming, which is probably why it hasn’t spread too far outside of the US (and Germany for some reason). But if you give it a shot, and I mean really try it the way it’s meant to be played, it is as epic and customizable as gaming gets.
Yea I fell in love with BTech for the same reasons. Deep universe, and dark and grim without being grim derp.
It’s always great when you see someone with a real passion for a particular game. It’s contagious, and it is one of the reasons I read news entries on BoW for games I’ve never played 🙂
I always had a soft spot for BT universe (I guess my first exposure to it was the cartoon and MechWarrior 2) and although I didn’t get the opportunity to dive in to it beyond a few sessions of the RPG and a few skirmishes on a swish hex map, it was enough to make me pick up the boxed set, a few of the core books and a few of my favourite mechs in metal. Hopefully I’ll get the chance to play in a proper campaign one day!
We had a campaign that ran from 1987 to about 92 we played a regular unit ( 4th Crucis Lancers) so we didnt have to bother with all that bookkeeping that mercenaries had to do
I own the previous box and I’m very happy with it (well, apart from the minis maybe). If there are two other people in the UK looking to get the introductory box, I wouldn’t mind chipping in a little to get “extra” set of new plastic minis 🙂
I might pick this up just for the higher quality minis. I love Battletech (as my username probably suggests)
I think the minis are the same ones that were in the last starter set
After playing it for 25+ years and ( I think it all started for me in 87) so we actually got to follow the timeline as FASA released it ( we didnt know what the Clans could do until we first fought them as the GM was the only one that bought the new book with their stats in, and it all came as a bit of a shock I can tell you) we go back to it occasionally though we use Renegade Tech now, which is a homemade make someone did combining Renegade Legions damage and weapon templates and converting it to BT
That was me, I was the guy who bought the sourcebook and showed his friends what the clans could do for the first time. Battletech was my intro to hobby gaming. I found it before D&D, before TMNT (the other gateway RPG or our generation), before the cool board games, Magic TCG or even video games which my parents weren’t keen on me playing until I was older. Battletech was the first fictional world I could play in, really play in because it was designed for play. When I was a kid I could disappear into a BT source book for weeks, just poring over every page, absorbing every detail of the universe, its history, its politics and constant intrigues.
I know other games existed first, but BT is where I caught the gaming bug. It’s always going to be one of my favorites. Shadowrun too. FASA was one of my favorite companies back in the day.
I also liked it that the novels also drove the sourcebooks along
I wish they would re release centurion and the rest of the Renegade Legion range
No offence, I hope the game is good, because the sculpts are terrible, the toy range in the 90s looked better.
BT isn’t really about the minis. You can play without them (and I did happily for years). Sure, you can get some really excellent ones from Ironwind metals, but they’re completely optional. Like I said above, BT is the RPG of wargames. It’s very much about the theater of the mind, even with the mapsheets.
Plus, to really play BT the way it’s meant to be played would require an obscenely large variety of minis or a strict dedication to just one era of the game universe’s history (though that would still require a shit ton of minis to really play out properly). In BT games, you almost always end up proxying something. Plus, you can design your own mechs, vehicles, battle armor, etc. Any unit type in the game you can build your own custom design of from the ground up using the rules in the Tech Manual. They don’t make minis for the mechs you dream up yourself.
But I see that as a strong suit. You can play this game with scraps of paper or carved pieces of soap, and still have epic battles. It’s perfect for a kid with an overactive imagination.
Indeed, I use them mostly for folks not willing to invest in the Ironwind stuff.
Argh, I loved this game so long ago. I can’t make out the mechs that are included outside of ones in this article. Anyone know what mechs are included? I didn’t know they ever offered this so I for one am excited.
SDR-5V Spider; ASN-21 Assassin; CDA-2A Cicada; CLNT-2-3T Clint; COM-2D Commando; JR7-D Jenner; HER-2S Hermes II; QKD-4G Quickdraw; GHR-5H Grasshopper; ENF-4R Enforcer; DRG-1N Dragon; WTH-1 Whitworth; TBT-5N Trebuchet; DV-6M Dervish; CPLT-C1 Catapult; PNT-9R Panther; VND-R1 Vindicator; JM6-S JagerMech; ZEU-6S Zeus; AWS-8Q Awesome; BNC-3E Banshee; HBK-4G Hunchback; CP-10-Z Cyclops; AS7-D Atlas
It’s a pretty good array of mechs overall, representative of the kind of hardware that was in use during the 3039 era. Most of it will fit in just about any faction at that time, with a few faction-specific mechs like the JagerMech, Grasshopper and Dragon (though we all know any mech could show up just about anywhere after battlefield salvage). You should be able to download the record sheets for the intro boxed set from Catalyst’s battletech website.
Plus the set includes two very high quality minis that need assembly (injection molded styrene for the two really good mechs). This time around it’s a reseen Battlemaster and a Madcat (I don’t think they’ve announced what variants).
In the Anniversary version of this same boxed set that’s now out of print the two high quality styrene minis were a Summoner and a Thor. Those were some of the best minis BT ever saw, very high detailed kits.
I also really highly recommend the Starter Books for Battletech. They’re a great way to expand the intro set with a narrative campaign and all the unit stats you need to play the scenarios contained in them (might need Tech Readout 3039 if you don’t want to substitute a few units). The best thing about Catalyst, all their stuff is available as DRM-free PDFs so you don’t have to break the bank to get the TROs or era-specific sourcebooks. And they’re still fully supporting every era. They’re publishing stuff in the Dark Age now as the current timeline, but they’re also still pushing out Clan era updates, Succession War books, FedCom Civil War, Jihad, even 2750 Star League supplements.
Thanks so much!
Oh yeah, check out the Master Unit List (MUL) as well. It’s a living document, frequently updated that lists every mech, tank, battle armor, dropship, aerospace fighter, jump ship, war ship, whatever in the game. It describes the tonnage, battle value, years of production, what factory the unit was produced in (and what faction it’s most common in), estimated C-Bill cost and more for every unit and every variant of every unit (3150 total entries as of tonight). Plus pictures! Pics are both illustrations from the relevant TRO and pictures of minis from CamoSpecs when available for that unit.
It also lists what books contain the rules for that unit if special rules apply and what TRO it came from.
Slight typo. That’s 3150 entries just for battlemechs, not counting everything else.
Well, you’ve convinced me, besides it will be nice to have a nice Madcat model.
This might be relevant to your interests 😉
Painting a Clan Ghost Bear Scheme
I think I’ve heard of this “Ghost Bear Clan”.
Though I’m an Omega Galaxy kinda Ghost Bear.
http://www.camospecs.com/Miniature.asp?ID=6762
To me a no brainer would be to take the (quite spiffy) designs that Pirahana have come up with for Mechwarrior OnLine, and do ’em in plastic.
It’s not that easy, since the publisher of the game (CGL) does not produce the minis. IWM does. And all copyrights for ‘electronic’ BattleTech belong to Microsoft. So it’s a very complicated thing. But people nowadays (including myself) start to make Mech minis on their own, using 3D printers and MWO models.
Yeah, the IP for Battletech is sunk into several different copyright morasses. The fact that Microsoft can do whatever they want with the digital IP regardless of the rest of the franchise only complicates things. There’s no way CGL could afford to license those mech designs. It’s just one more complication thrown on top of the already complicated unseen-reseen issue created by Playmates’ blatant contract violations and Harmony Gold’s litigious paranoia.
As much as I like the work FASA produced back in the day, Jordan Weisman’s legal handling of intellectual property has always been ham-fisted at best.
Yeah, I know there are a whole mess of rights issues, but we can dream 🙂
I think people when they start playing have a soft spot for that era, for me and my friends it will always be 3025
Ral Partha Europe also stocks all the minis
Colour me interested.
I loved CBT back in the 1990s, and would like to start again with my kids…
The “buy-two-get-an-extra-set-of-mechs” offer is crap, they’re charging retail and charging $30 for shipping. It would be better to wait until it’s released and buy three full box sets at 20% off.
Try $91 shipping to the UK….
I loved BT back in the day and I still maintain my Battalion of Mechs and Armour.
But in all honesty, BT died with the clans. The universe did not but the gaming fun did.
I would love to play it again, but most (younger) gamers around here want the new tech, I would prefer 4th succession war tech, so I seldom play. Sad.
Couldnt agree more
What’s stopping you from playing only in your favourite era?
If you think the 25th Anni mechs are crap you should see the ones they had before… And yes I am so old school I remember getting the 1st boxed set that only had folding card stock mechs, and then only like 16 different ones… Also yes I am heading the 2fer deal… Just because…
Eerrrr getting…. Not heading…
Much as I’d love a battlemaster in higher grade plastic, I’ll probably pass on this boxed set. I’ve already got the 25th anniversary boxed set, so i don’t really need it, though the battlemaster and timber wolf are tempting.
That seems to be rather nice boxed set for Battletech. Too bad that I already have previous version and I am not sure if better quality minis justifies getting this boxed set when everything else seems to be very much same as before.
Played this with cards (stand-ins for the models) and it was excellent – GREAT, GOOD ruleset, the miniatures are irrelevant.
Which is just as well as I have no idea why there hasn’t been a massive drive to make better models.
There are better minis, they’re just cast in metal and too pricey for an intro set (plus they’re made by a different company). Part of the problem is the complexity of the mechs. It’s hard to represent them well cheaply (as is evidenced by the representations in the intro set). 3025 designs are a little dated too. Some of the best-looking mechs popped up in the 3060s and 3070s. There’s always something that’s intentionally ugly though, to make the universe seem more real.
the new “improvements” looking much better! 🙂