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[Battletech] Please, won't someone think of the STOMPY BOTS!
Nips
He/HimLuxuriating in existential crisis.Registered User regular
He/HimLuxuriating in existential crisis.Registered User regular
Many elements shamelessly lifted wholesale stolen from previous OPs!
THE BIG NEWS
CGL launched their new Kickstarter for the Mercenaries box set and surrounding expansions, at AdeptiCon, on March 23rd!
Want to know what's in the ForcePacks? There's a compiled list here!
What is BattleTech?
Battletech! A Game of Armored Combat! Is a tabletop roleplaying wargame that usually takes place in the mid 31st century in a large region of space known as the Inner Sphere (roughly everything within about 500 light-years of earth, give or take up to 50ly.
Battletech itself concerns with the actually combat campaigns that take place between the various military factions of the Inner Sphere, and usually involves Battlemechs! Giant (well, relatively small actually) mecha that range from about 5 to 20 meters and weight between 20 and 100 tons. Battletech can also involve support vehicles such as tanks, aerospace fighters, and armored infantry, but the focus is obviously on the 'mechs themselves
Additionally, there is a roleplaying game called MechWarrior (not the video game), where the players are the mechwarriors themselves, and is more interpersonal. It is stylized much more like a traditional RPG, while Battletech is more of a wargame.
Getting Started
The best place for a new player or two to get their feelies is the two introductory box sets: the BattleTech Beginner Box contains two miniatures and quick-start rules and sheets to get players blowing stuff as soon as possible, while the BattleTech: A Game of Armored Combat box contains eight minis, standard sheets, a set of Alpha Strike cards and a fifty-plus page Introductory Rulebook for a more complete experience. Each set also includes the necessary dice and a unique novella set in the BattleTech universe.
The BattleMech Manual is the next step up. This book expounds on all the functionality a 'Mech will ever need to use on the battlefield.
For those looking to take it farther, following is the current selection of "core" rulebooks:
- Total Warfare - The "main" rulebook and a step up from the Introductory Rules. This introduces rules for advanced technologies and non-Battlemech units (such as vehicles, aerospace, infantry and battle armor).
- Tech Manual - Ever wanted to make your own BattleMech? This book contains all the details for building your own tournament-legal record sheets.
- Tactical Operations - Planetary conquest! Artillery, command levels, minefields and more for all your world-conquering needs.
- Strategic Operations - Rules and equipment for the whole solar system! WarShips, JumpShips, expanded Aerotech and extensive salvage and maintenance.
- Interstellar Operations - Take on the role of a House Lord and run an entire faction's military! Massive-scale warfare, alternate eras and the return of the Land-Air Mech.
- Campaign Operations - Split off from Interstellar Ops, C-Ops lets you run and maintain forces of any size, craft new battlefields to liberate (or conquer) and construct campaigns at all levels of play with this final rulebook.
Looking for new ways to play? - A Time of War - The RPG component of Battletech. Become a MechWarrior and make your place in the universe. Are you a member of a noble Great House? A vat-bred Clan warrior? Or a mercenary who lives only for their next paycheck?
- Alpha Strike - A simplified variant of the classic Battletech system which delivers more units in faster games. Turn your record sheets from -this- to -this-. Grab some Lance Packs and go to town!
Eras: When and Where
The story of BattleTech is divided into "eras" which determine the present factions and relevant technologies. The overarching eras go thusly:
Age of War: 1988-2570. Humanity's expansion into the stars, the formation of the Terran Alliance, Great Houses and Periphery, the conflicts that resulted and the invention of a weapon to rule the battlefield: the BattleMech.
The Star League: 2571-2780. The Star League, an overarching government, has been ruled for centuries by House Cameron. When its leadership is destabilized, the Great Houses are split between following a new leader or fighting back against the usurper. Aleksander Kerensky, leader of the Star League Defense Force, launched a fourteen-year war to reclaim the throne. The damage was done, however, and the Houses' old rivalries would ignite once again. Kerensky and half of his SLDF would depart the Inner Sphere, refusing to swear in a new First House.
The Succession Wars: 2781-2900 (Early), 2901-3049 (Late). Over the next three hundred years the five remaining Great Houses were constantly at war with each other over who would lead a reestablished Star League. A great deal of technological progress disappeared in the First and Second Succession Wars with the abundant use of atomic, biological and chemical weapons; the saying goes that the Houses "blasted the Inner Sphere back to the Stone Age". The Third and Fourth Succession Wars were fought under more old-fashioned rules of engagement. ComStar, a neutral faction with sole proprietorship over the galaxy's only method of faster-than-light communication, finds itself religiously hoarding Star League-era "Lostech" and stifling the technological regrowth of the galaxy. Only when a memory cache is rediscovered, its contents freely shared and traded to the Great Houses, does this growth resume. And not a year too soon...
The Clan Invasion: 3050-3061. Remember Kerensky and the SLDF who ragequit after the Star League broke apart? Yeah, their genetically-engineered warrior descendants have returned as the Clans. The Inner Sphere has been judged and the Five Great Houses have been found wanting, resulting in a near-total curbstomp of the depleted IS forces by the technologically superior Clans. Naturally, the offensive is blunted by inter-Clan rivalries and their disagreements on how to save the Inner Sphere from itself. The Sphere, in turn, mostly gets its act together and pushes back at the Clan forces, ending in ComStar proposing a final proxy war to decide the victor. The Clans lose and, bound by honor, dissolve their invasion and melt into modern politics.
The Steiner-Davion Civil War: 3062-3067. The heirs to a Steiner-Davion union, siblings Victor and Katherine, wind up in full-blown conflict as Katherine schemes to vault House Steiner to glory atop the dead bodies of their former Davion rivals. Several of the Clans make their mark in the war. Victor's half takes victory but not without cost: the largest faction in the Sphere is split apart once again while Katherine is spirited away by Clan Wolf.
Jihad: 3068-3080. With the religious reverence of technology losing its relevance, a radical splinter of ComStar known as the "Word of Blake" plots to recover the ways of old, feeling they are destined to come to power as heads of the new Star League. The Houses are suspicious and the League is dissolved. Understandably upset at the rejection of their prophecy, the Blakists attempt to reunite the Star League by lethal force in an all-fronts assault known as the Jihad. They're descended upon like a pack of hungry wolves and erased from the public eye, ComStar's Hyper-Pulse Generator network absorbed into common government.
Dark Age: 3081-3150+ (ongoing). From the ashes of the Jihad, another new Star League is formed, now maintained by the central Republic of the Sphere. With technology recovered from Blakist facilities and utilized by ultra-loyal Knights and Paladins, the Republic manages to stamp out most major conflict for a few decades. A sudden blackout of the HPG network spurs the many factions, Houses and Clans alike, to once again lunge at each other's throats and ignite the flames of war as if it's the only thing they know how to do. The central government sequesters itself as the Fortress Republic, building up its military forces as those citizens outside the "walls" must fend for themselves until the veil is lifted once more.
Links: Read Up
The Official Battletech Website: The definitive portal to getting into the BattleTech board game.
SARNA: The BattleTech Wiki: Everything you ever wanted to know about everything BattleTech.
Master Unit List: An online tool to help you sift through the thousands of combat units in the BattleTech universe. Includes Alpha Strike stat cards!
Iron Wind Metals: The official producer of BattleTech miniatures in the US. If it's not plastic or 3D printed, it's a metal mini made by these guys.
CamoSpecs Online: This website showcases the various color schemes in the BattleTech universe as demonstrated on actual minis.
MegaMek: An unofficial online version of the BattleTech board game. Some of us forumers are participating - ask in the thread!
Solaris Skunk Werks: This Java app will let you build Mech stats according to Tech Manual rules and print them out as official-looking sheets.
The Oosik Irregulars: The OFFICIAL CANON UNIT of the Penny Arcade forums
Don't be afraid to suggest any additions or fixes for this OP. I'll probably need to get different image links sooner or later.
Oh also there's JAPANESE BATTLETECH!
BOARDGAME: ONLINE.
STORY: ONLINE.
LINKS: ONLINE.
ALL SECTIONS NOMINAL.
Nips on
+11
Posts
Slightly strange design choice to condense every kind of weapon down to S, M, and L, and then try to uncondense them again with the keywords.
Steam: betsuni7
Thats the one thing that kinda bugs me about AS, all the little abilities. Yea, they're cool and all but it makes the game more complicated when you already have a billion dudes to keep track of.
I would say Flechs Sheets is a very nice resource to have bookmarked. You can print them off and they do look nice or you can use them digitally which is also super nice.
We only went up to 250 points so it wasnt bad. In the future Im going to edit the pdf to just spell out the stupid keywords and their meaning
It’s a side effect of the “one size fits all” conversion system; you’ll need the acronyms if say, someone drops a high end recon mech on the board, or a tank with lots of turret gear. Not to mention, keeping the unit card size down to trading card size.
You’ll find that a small set of abilities are used super often, and if players are considerate they’ll make a mental or physical note of what that ability is when making their force. In small pickup games, a lot of the abilities have little to no effect anyways, just like a lot of equipment in Classic.
It's funny though that Alpha Strike tries to be a simplification of Classic, but ends up just as complicated once you get past the surface layer. I think the rule book takes 15 pages just to list those special abilities.
Probably still simpler than most other miniatures games
Like 40k codexes putting data sheets in one section and point costs in an entirely diffferent one
http://www.masterunitlist.info/Unit/Details/1929/loki-hellbringer-prime
Like, this. Catalyst sells this mini in a forcepack. Should they just write every bit of information on the card? What, on the backside? You mean, where they put the other variant? Ah, but then they should just make a new reference card. That’s not a bad idea! What should they list on it? Every ability? Hm. Maybe they should release some kind of easy access physical listing of the abilities, or perhaps even offer a pdf of every ability! Oh, but at that point, why not just release one with all the rules in it, too, for convenience’s sake? Oh.
Come on. It’s not bad design to expect players to have a rulebook handy, or at least have players know what they’re fielding before hand.
I'll grant you this hits me in part because information design is my actual job.
The card isn't anywhere close to the lower bounds of legibility as it is. There are times that abbreviation and reference are necessary. The card design just does so as a matter of default, which is less than ideal.
One of all the minis or bust!
This is my stance. Going to go vehicle heavy though. Need at least 4 of each of them.
I need to see what pledge levels and whatnot look like. I want my vehicles in fours, but like Moses I'll be happy to shepherd them two-by-two if I get priced right out of the room otherwise.
in the holy name of the great Kerensky, my wallet will find a way!
If there's an Oosik I could trust to fund an entire House's worth of materiel for a Brian Cache, it's you Hydro.
Have scrap, will travel
Here we see a company of our fine Inner Sphere warriors in a standoff with the Clan, losing a Commando early.
Tactics were analyzed and it was determined this ridge was the best place to blob up and shoot into a nice firing lane.
The Marik lance closes with the enemy on the nearest hill, with deadly consequences. Both the Battlemaser and Wolverine would fall.
The firing line was borking as all hell, but it worked! Our brave Mechwarriors go over the top to engage with whats left of the enemy.
The last thing the Battlemaster saw before evaporating.
The Clans final stand and charge of the light brigade
The Locusts are finally able to engage the last couple rounds and pretend they were helpful at all.
Any other characters like this that come to mind? No posting your Kickstarter characters
Lumber-Cutting IndustrialMech? Slap a fuckin' gun on the arm opposite the chainsaw, and get stuck in! Mining 'Mech? Same, but with a fuckin' bigass grinder!
I am totally down with IndustrialMechs.
My only gripe about them in relation to Dark Age is that mother fuckers would've been doing this by the Third Succession War if not Second. Y'know the period of time that were the actual dark ages.
Yeah, it's kind of silly. For the latter 2nd into 3rd, I try to keep the fictional framing in my head that the "camera" is just always on those few(er) mil-spec equipped entities that are capable of broad, multi-planet action. Objective raids by the Great House units and the like, because those are the highlight-reel stories that get passed around at the bars and in the back of the 'Mech bays. Meanwhile, "in the real world" ICE-equipped Indy-Mechs are out there on the backwaters and largely-ignored Periphery planets, fending off the occasional likewise-poorly-equipped pirate raid. It's not sexy or glamorous, and no one pays attention to it because it's just the "typical" violence happening on the edges, the cost of doing business as the Houses go about their day-to-day muppetry.
My headcanon: The Periphery had been welding guns and rocket launchers to IndustrialMechs for centuries. Some Inner Sphere asshole saw one, copied it and claimed it as his totally original idea. The rest of the Inner Sphere celebrates Inner Sphere ingenuity. The Periphery rolls their eyes and go back to welding Rocket Launcher 20s on to anything and everything.
"Well Dale, first I think we're gonna need to get your truck. Second, we're gonna need ourselves a big ass crane!"
Honestly I think there's probably some Megas XLR shit going on in some of the more remote parts of the Periphery.
Is there anything more Periphery?
AP Daemonic Yellow is an absolutely fantastic yellow. Its straight up lemon without the sepia wash. With it they come out looking like its fresh from the construction yard.
Please tell me it's painted in a shiny metallic and not some unbelievably awesome NMM.