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Good afternoon all, I'm trying to do some research on a good alternative to playing 40k all the time and i'm looking for a game that is easy to get into and requires little to buy. I used to play battle tech back in the 90's and was wondering how accessible it still is or if there is a newer game system out there?

I never played Heavy Gear, i just know that it was similar to Battletech but in a different scale. I only heard of CAV because i saw it in another post and just google'd it. So far i like the models of CAV best because they seem more contemporary and less 1980's cyberpunk like Battletech.

Are any of these 3 systems still supported?
Which is the easiest to get into?
Recommendations?
Any other Mech war games out there?

BattleTech: Still a good Community and no need to really learn that many new rules.

Heavy Gear/Gear Kreig: Cool Minis and fluff, Locally I am the only person I know that has played it. The mechanics are a little wonky, but if you want to check out the rules there is a free “Learn to play game” available. There is a new rules set out for playing with the Battlefield: Evolution Rules, I really like that system and I think they have quick start rules also.

CAV: Love the minis, Mechanics ??? never tried them.

BattleTech gets my vote.

so far here is where i stand...

Battletech = nostalgia. Found my old Atlas, Marauder, Direwolf, and Axeman. I like that I really only need to pick up 4 more mechs so i have enough for a small 1v1 game with the only cost left being the rulebook and some hex mats. I personally like the depth of the system, but its gonna be hard getting my gaming group into it.

CAV - So far i like thier mini's the most and they seem to still be in production. I'm interested in the R.A.G.E game system and want to know if its as simple to pick up as it seems. Hopefully someone who has played this system can tell me if it is group friendly for a bunch of stuck in their way 40k players

Heavy Gear - I don't know if i like the mini's but i like what looks like a slightly larger scale = easier to paint. Now i have to go figure out what Gear Kreig is (thank you)

Right now the fluff, rules, and stability would have to go to Heavy Gear. While I played Battletech since 86, the past couple of years and all the changes and the whos going to be running have just turned me off to bad. Never could really get into CAV.

You can get Classic Battletech which more or less takes you back to second edition -- no Clans, and so on.

The downside of Classic B'tech is that the models have been OOP for many years due to the copyright situation between Harmony Gold, Revell and various Japanese anime publishers.

I've never played the Heavy Gear rules. The models look nice. You could buy Heavy Gear models and make B'tech stats for them if that makes sense. One of the things that keeps my out of Heavy Gear is that I have plenty of classic B'tech models from the long extinct Ral Partha range.

I have to admit I've never heard of CAV.

If you have heaps of space, there are any number of Gundam models on the market. If you need to fight in a small space, there are Gundam gachapon models which are pretty cheap.

CAV is Reaper's mech game. I've never played it.

The few times I played the DP9 system it visually looks like Venerable Dreadnaughts fighting each other. Lots of firing and occasionally some light damage from big guns. Then some guy will pop off a LMG rolls great, you blow your rolls and presto smoking feet

Mech games should have Electronic Warfare rules.
Heavy Gear +1

I am, admittedly, a compensated shill for the Pod so take everything I say with a grain of salt. My overall philosophy is play what you like, and I'd say look at the starter rules/freebies each game line offers before spending a lot of money.

For Heavy Gear, the current main rules is Heavy gear Blitz! Locked & Loaded which just got a new, revised, printing (the '1.1 rules'). It's a nice book with a lot of different army lists and such in it (Essentially, everything but rules for the scarier CEF, the Caprice 'bug walker' Mounts, and the Golems.) as well as the main rules. The rules encourage a sort of combined arms approach as Gears, Infantry, and Armor all have designated roles. A big thing is that Gears are generally less powerful than tanks, which is the reverse of most mecha games.

Gear Krieg started as a kind of weird alternate-history Heavy gear then became a pulp-inspired WWII setting. The current rules, by Dakka member AAN, are based off Mongoose's Battlefield Evolution: World at War stuff and are intentionally made so you can use different scales, based or unbased minis, etc. The minis DP9 sells are 15mm.

Both game lines have older versions. In general, the older versions are a bit more cumbersome: for example, in HG Tactical, Gears took specific systems damage which meant fights could go much, much longer. There were also optional rules for nearly any situation you could think of, and a lot of 'baggage' as the system was originally designed as hybrid with the RPG rules.

The 'philosophy' of Heavy Gear is more or less 'mecha as giant infantrymen' whereas in Battletech it seems to be more 'Mecha as Land Battleships' or possibly 'Mecha as Feudal Knights'. There's nothing wrong with any of these approaches, of course, it's jsut what you feel like playing.

So Battletech hasn't changed much in the 12 years since I've played... except minatures being OOP.

Still no word from any CAV players on dakka? None of my local FLGS carry it either.

Heavy Gear seems the way to go and has the best support so far. What is the smallest army you can play with in heavy gear? is it squad based or individual?

Spartacusbob wrote:
Heavy Gear seems the way to go and has the best support so far. What is the smallest army you can play with in heavy gear? is it squad based or individual?

It is squad based, but models are very individual. Basically, the players alternate squads, but each squad's members move and shoot as individuals. No forced coherency (except infantry) but sometimes being in a group is rewarded (I.E. Squad Leaders can use an action to signal 'Coordinate Fire' to give the squad a bonus against one specific target.

As for game size, there's some small 'lightning tournaments that are around 375 points that are usually 1-2 squads. This is kind of the equivalent of the 'lunchhammer' games where some forces are inevitably going to feel really limited on options. More normal games are a 1,000 points, which is normally 3-4 squads and somewhere around 15-20 models. Infantry raise the model count a lot (A platoon, or 12 bases of infantry (representing 40 men) is about equal in points to 2 medium Gears) and the main battle tanks (like the one below) are massive point sinks at a couple hundred apiece. One guy on the DP9 forums was posting some reports of games with three of the Allers (below) with upgrades that worked out to 1,000 points!



The newer CEF and Black Talon stuff are going to be low-model-count as well, a s they're mostly highly advanced units.

Spartacusbob wrote:So Battletech hasn't changed much in the 12 years since I've played... except minatures being OOP.

Still no word from any CAV players on dakka? None of my local FLGS carry it either.

Heavy Gear seems the way to go and has the best support so far. What is the smallest army you can play with in heavy gear? is it squad based or individual?

Battletech really hasn't changed from a rules standpoint since it was released. That is an amazing strength for a game. It gets my vote for simple longevity and strength of rules. If you played 12 years ago, there are maybe a dozen rules that are different, and you might not use half of those any given game. As an official Demo Agent for Battletech, I highly recommend it. You can get FREE quick-start rules from www.classicbattletech.com and Battletech can be by FAR the cheapest of them, since you don't technically need miniatures at all.

On the OOP minis, no big deal. There are updated versions of them, and in the end only 14 of them are completely gone (the Robotech ones). You can still use them in games, as long as you aren't an official agent. You can find a Demo Agent near you by signing up at www.catalystdemos.com and join in some games if you want to.


This is a personally skewed version as a hardcore Battletech guy, Heavy Gear seems to be a very hit and miss game. It is popular for a few months to a year, then seems to disappear for a long time. In the years I have consistently run Battletech, I have seen Heavy Gear rise and die at least 4 times in my area.


As for CAV, it never even seemed to rise. I played first edition when it first came out, and the big advantage it had was it was FAST. You could play a decent sized game very quickly if everyone knew the rules. But it could almost play TOO fast, like having a 40K game finish on Turn 2. The mechanics were more like a click-based game in terms of damage to units and damage quickly degrading a unit's performance. It wasn't a bad game, but I like a little more meat to a game. Fluff of the universe was excellent, the rulebook and other books were decent books to just read fluff from.

Spartacusbob wrote:So Battletech hasn't changed much in the 12 years since I've played... except minatures being OOP.

Still no word from any CAV players on dakka? None of my local FLGS carry it either.

Heavy Gear seems the way to go and has the best support so far. What is the smallest army you can play with in heavy gear? is it squad based or individual?

I played B'tech from when it was launched until later in the 80s. Before I stopped playing the consolidated 2nd edition rules had been issued as "Rules Of War". These still used the original core system and Mechs but included some advancements such as indirect fire.

From what I know of it, a lot of changes were made later in FASA's ownership and also by WizKids and by FanPro -- there is another owner now (check Wikipedia article...) These changes were done to introduce the technologically advanced 'Clan' mechs, partly because almost all the original designs were found to be not copyright of FASA. They are now called the Unseen mechs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_BattleTech
http://www.classicbattletech.com/index.php?action=products

I don't know what all the changes were or when they came in, however the original rules are still popular enough that they have been republished.

The advantage of B'tech is that the design rules allow you to make game stats to match any models you like. This allows the use of pretty much any humanoid robot model or vehicle.

Well, both mechanic and mini-wise, Heavy Gear is currently leagues above Battletech, but suffers from crippling balance issues that significantly reduce the tactical aspect.
On the other hand, there's a lot more Battletech players around.
The two games have very different scopes, Battletech is really designed for medium-sized Mech slugfests with a handful of units on each side, while HG is more about combined actions with a mix of infantry, tanks and gear squads.

Hi All,

All three systems are good games, I tend to promote Heavy Gear as I'm the President of Dream Pod 9. :-)

We have had a fetish for giant robots at the office since way before we published the first edition of Heavy Gear some 14 years ago. Before that the team worked on the Mecha Press and Protoculture Addicts magazines published by Ianus Publications. One thing we realized back then was people like different styles of Mecha, so when we started designing Heavy Gear we tried to give each faction a slightly different look. The North faction has all square blocky designs for its Gears, South faction is all rounded designs, Peace River is in between with some larger units like the Red Bull and Cataphract, the CEF (Earth) faction are the bad guys in your game have big Hovertanks, GREL infantry and Frames. As we add newer factions we try to give each a new look as with the Caprice faction with its Crab like walkers.

If you would like to see what the miniatures look like visit our website at www.dp9.com and checkout the different Heavy Gear Blitz faction galleries.

Is there a download of basic Heavy Gear rules available?

Kilkrazy wrote:Is there a download of basic Heavy Gear rules available?

The quickstart for Blitz is available on dp9.com. The full books are available as PDFs from drivethrustuff and e23. Drivethru Stuff also has the old Tac Mini rules as a free download...

Thank you everyone for your replies

I'm starting to get all my info together to show my group costs and what not and see if they want the small one on one of battletech or the 40kesk squad combat of heavy gear.

Heavy gear
Pro's
Art style of models looks good/modern and varies by faction
scale works good with tanks and infantry
Free starter rules

Con's
Balance issues akin to what 40k has
Cost of 2 army's more than battletech

Battletech
Pro's
Rules are stable and fairly balanced as long as mechs are from same timeline
8 mechs is a cheap start compared to most tabletop games
also has free starter rules

Con's
Models look dated and hard to find (though easily subbed for anything)
Hard to tell which books are current or balanced or even needed at a glance

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http://ironwindmetals.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=16_21 is this the only manufacture of battletech mini's currently? Besides eBay, where is a good place to buy online for a range of battletech mini's plus rulebook?

Same question for heavy gear, besides the DP9 store and eBay, what is a good online source for heavy gear models?

Also how far can i go in a game without buying the full rule book for either game?

*************************************************************************

For battletech I prefer a simple innersphere vs clan setup of 4vs4.

For heavy gear, What are the balance problems between factions? and what do i have to buy book/rules wise to play a faction (is it like a 40k codex)?

Spartacusbob wrote:Thank you everyone for your replies
Heavy gear
Pro's
Art style of models looks good/modern and varies by faction
scale works good with tanks and infantry
Free starter rules

Con's
Balance issues akin to what 40k has
Cost of 2 army's more than battletech

For heavy gear, What are the balance problems between factions? and what do i have to buy book/rules wise to play a faction (is it like a 40k codex)?

If anything, it's quite worse than 40K as far as balance is concerned. There are balance issues at several levels.

At the basic gameplay level, you have a serious weakness with ranged fire, so you need to reach point blank (3 to 6" max) to have any chance of inflicting damage, and since it's pretty much impossible to prevent units from reaching that close range with ranged fire, it means most battle usually degenerate into scrums in the middle, with little maneuver, save for that rush to the middle (Compare with 40K, where you can inflict casualties at 12/24" ranges).
You can choose your objectives at the start of the game, so you can tailor your tactics appropriately, but then there's a few ones that are pretty much mission impossible, some others that are quite random (very difficult or total cakewalk depending on your luck), and a handful that are total no-brainers. So after a while, you just pick the easy, reliable objectives, not the fun ones.
There are other unbalances at the army level too. Basically, the point costs are a legacy of previous editions, and weren't always adjusted, despite rules changes. Some units are total no-brainer (imagine if the scouts had the same exact stats as full marines, but costed less), while others will never leave the shelves (Take a Land Raider, reduce armor all around to 10, but don't lower the cost. That's how bad certain units have it). With the 2nd book, some army variants got better stuff than the others too...
That's the main ones...
Now, if your aim is just to put some cool minis on the table, and throw some dices while doing "dakka-dakka" sounds (and there's nothing wrong with that !), Heavy Gear is definitely a fine choice, and you only need 2 books to have the complete rules and armies (no codex buying required !). If you're looking for something tactical with gunfights and maneuvering, you might as well stay with 40K.

Iron Wind Metals is the only licensed Battletech miniature producing company for pewter minis. There is another company (called Ghost something) producing plastic Lokis and Thors.

The Battletech Intro Box is $40 with ll the start up rules you will need, universe info and 24 plastic 'Mechs in it for $40. DAMN good deal, although the 'Mechs are pretty crappy considering plastic technology these days.

A 4 Clan 'Mech vs. 4 Inner Sphere 'Mech fight is NOT going to be fair unless you use Battle Value for balancing purposes, and even then the Clanners will be much lighter than the Inner Sphere forces. Generally 5 Clanners vs. 8 Inner Sphere 'Mechs is a little more balanced, unless the IS 'Mechs are 3025 tech, then you might need a total of 10 or 12.

Here is a breakdown of Battletech rulebooks:

Total Warfare: All you really need. It has all the tournament level rules and equipment. It does NOT have construction rules.

TechManual: Construction rules for all unit types (except WarShips) and equipment fluff.

Tactical Operations: Every friggin' alternate rule you could possibly want. And more equipment. With this book you can have the following take place: BattleMechs fighting on the hull of a wet navy battleship in the middle of a hurricane made out of insects. In a tornado-blizzard. In space. Tac Ops is not a required book at all, but is very fun.

Strategic Operations: This is more of a campaign book, also contains rules for BattleForce. BattleForce is designed for HUGE combats in Battletech, such as regiments vs. regiments or BIGGER. There are also Quick Strike Batteltech rules with use a similar rule set to BattleForce, but adapt it to small games. You can easily do a 12 vs. 12 fight using Quick Strike in under 2 hours.

Also remember, you don't need minis for Battletech unless you play on terrain. Using map sheets all you need is a marker/token that can identify the unit and what direction it is facing. Battletech can be one of the cheapest war games out there if you don't need it to be pretty.

I really don't want to get into an argument with Hudsond, but I do feel he overstates Heavy gear Blitz's balance problems. There's a few, but it's more "Unit X is a sub-optimal choice" than "This faction is utterly broken."

As he did say, the main rulebook (Locked & Loaded) has the equivalent of several 'Codices.' It's got the info for building forces from the North (and 3 sub-factions), South (4 sub factions), Peace River (1 additional), and PAK, and Leagueless, which is pretty much the 'other' choice.

The miniatures are in pretty good shape. The guys are making a real effort to do minor updates to provide better product... Over the last month a lot of box sets and blisters have been revised with updated molds. They're the same designs, but new molds with differing parts arrangements to provide better casts.

One thing I like about HG is that there's a lot more cohesiveness. After a short period getting into the setting, it's relatively easy to look at a new design and say if it's a North, South, Peace River, or CEF design. That means a lot to me, as it makes things look a lot more cohesive to me.

Balance wrote:I really don't want to get into an argument with Hudsond, but I do feel he overstates Heavy gear Blitz's balance problems. There's a few, but it's more "Unit X is a sub-optimal choice" than "This faction is utterly broken."

Oh, actually, if we're only talking about the armies and not the gameplay issues, I quite agree : as far as the main factions go, it's indeed fairly balanced, and there isn't any faction that's really broken. The relative levels of sub-factions has changed with Return to Cat's Eye though, with the Northern Guard and Southern Republic Army getting some very shiny upgrades, while the other sub-factions get... very little.
It's not so good at the unit level though, some units are broken, good or bad. The stripped down versions of the base troopers (Hunter/Jaeger) are 40% less expensive, while keeping the same offensive and defensive effectiveness. In any faction that can deploy them, they've totally replaced the base troopers.
If we're talking broken bad, suffice to say there's a reason you're not supposed to mention the Northern striders on the DP9 forums. A pity if you ask me, as the minis are way cool. (Northern striders would be the armor 10 Land Raider)

Balance wrote:
The miniatures are in pretty good shape. The guys are making a real effort to do minor updates to provide better product... Over the last month a lot of box sets and blisters have been revised with updated molds. They're the same designs, but new molds with differing parts arrangements to provide better casts.

Now that's good news, the older molds were showing their age on the casting.

I wouldn't call BTech models hard to find - you just order them from the people who make them. Really not that difficult.

H.B.M.C. wrote:I wouldn't call BTech models hard to find - you just order them from the people who make them. Really not that difficult.

The Hobby Towns here have TONS of BTech(including, I think, a Leopard Dropship) and Aerotech models.

Platuan4th wrote:

H.B.M.C. wrote:I wouldn't call BTech models hard to find - you just order them from the people who make them. Really not that difficult.

The Hobby Towns here have TONS of BTech(including, I think, a Leopard Dropship) and Aerotech models.

Really? A Leopard? Can you take a pic of the box. I might have you buy it for me.

Steer clear of Areo space. its one of the worst space combat games ever. and using areospace in BT is a bit silly as well.
As for the availibility of BT mechs, you can find just about any of them around if you look.

Ebay usually has a ton.

And for that matter, you can take the plastic Mechwarrior minis and put them on a regular base rather than the 'click' bases.

Hawkins wrote:Steer clear of Areo space. its one of the worst space combat games ever. and using areospace in BT is a bit silly as well.

Aerospace combat in BTech is one of the things that has undergone the biggest revisions. How Conventional Fighters/Aerospace Fighters work with the game has been revamped, and how DropShips/WarShips work has been redone. It's what takes up most of the space in the fourth core rulebook - Strategic Operations.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Vulcan wrote:And for that matter, you can take the plastic Mechwarrior minis and put them on a regular base rather than the 'click' bases.

They are out of scale, not to mention hideously ugly and cartoonish in a lot of cases. That's not to say there aren't any ugly or cartoonish regular BTech designs, but the Dark Age ones are particularly guilty of that.

The Dark Age infantry though are perfect.

I would certainly say you should give Heavy Gear a chance, but your mileage will vary. I tend to recommend that people try out the rules 2-3 times with proxy models to figure out if they will like them or not before investing in the game rules. The rules tend to inspire either hatred or love, depending on what background you are coming from. There are more tactical choices than 40k (electronic warfare, artillery & airstrikes, cross-fire situations, etc) but less than Infinity. The game plays faster than Battletech Tech Level 2 (Clans era) across typical point values (750-1000 TV for Heavy Gear, 150 tons for Battletech for the games I've seen), but is a touch slower than Tech Level 1 (Classic era).

In addition, army creation is *BLEEPING* complicated, which is either a turn-on or a turn-off, depending on who you are, and the faction differences are pretty minimal until you get into the Return to Cats Eye book. A newbie will have a steep learning curve to figure out how to form an effective army across the firepower - manuever - EW axis, and as you add more rules it becomes even more complicated. If you buy into the game, expect to have to go to the forums at some point to get advice on what's 'efficient' or not - as Hudson points out, there are some choices that tend to hinder more than they help.

Both games tend to be something you have to be willing to swallow some bile to enjoy. The concept art for Heavy Gear - and thus the miniature style - tends to be quite a bit nicer than Battletech, with better casting quality across many of the molds. There do tend to be mold problems across some of the model lines, but they are extremely good about replacing bad parts or helping you with bits. Battletech miniatures tend to be less customizable, but the Heavy Gear miniatures are not cakewalks to customize either, due to being metal. Overall I tend to prefer the Heavy Gear miniatures far and away in comparison to the Battletech miniatures, but everyone is different.

However, if you're looking for people to play with, you probably want to consider Battletech. Heavy Gear works well if you either have older HG players or are introducing either game into the community, since the game plays smoother, but if there is an established base it might be difficult to get mindshare for HG.

TL;DR - Try the rules for HG with proxies, *before you invest*. It's not for everyone, but many people do end up enjoying it.

Good luck! I'm a fan of HG, but not a fanboi, so if you have questions I can try to answer them objectively.