Update 108

Hey there backers,

Here's our weekly update:

US/CAN/RoW without hubs: Wave 1 and 2 are complete except for a few stragglers. See info below for some more detail.
UK: In progress.
EU: We've been informed of stock getting stuck at customs. We've also received comments from the community that no EU backer has been able to confirm getting an Address Verification. We've asked QML to reverify with our EU hub, and they said that they decided to hold off on Address Verifications due to the customs hold-up. We just didn't get that updated info in time for the backer update last week, so apologies for the false alarm. The hub, QML and CGL are all working on getting this pushed through as quickly as possible.
Asia: In progress.
AUS: Stock still in transit.

Stragglers in US/CAN/RoW without hubs: There were a couple of extra stragglers for additional stock shortages. QML is fulfilling those, and missing product will be passed to CGL's warehouse for fulfillment.

Additionally, we've gotten a few questions from backers that haven't gotten address confirmations or shipping notifications yet. After researching, we've identified about 200 backers who were somehow filtered out of the backer spreadsheets. We have requested stock from QML to be shipped to CGL's warehouse, and those backers will be fulfilled directly from there. Apologies for the inconvenience to those backers and we'll communicate as soon as this is underway.

Mercenaries Rules in PDF: You asked, and we listened! The rules from the Mercenaries box set are being finalized into their pdf format, and we'll upload that to all backers as soon as we are able (give us a few weeks to get it all configured).

Have a great week, everyone!

EU: We've been informed of stock getting stuck at customs

we've identified about 200 backers who were somehow filtered out of the backer spreadsheets

Lorcan Nagle wrote: Episode 35



3rd December 2024
Guests: Brent Evans, CGL Art Director; Jason Hardy, RPG Director; Opti, Voltron RPG Developer

News
-Black Friday sale is still ongoing. Items at 50% off are:
--BattleTech Essentials
--Clan Invasion box set
--Legend of the Jade Phoenix Trilogy
-Last day to ship before Christmas for domestic is December 16th
-Pax unplugged is this weekend. CGL will be streaming on their YouTube channel. The first stream link is up on YouTube. Lots of product announcements

Q&A
-On a scale of one to killing Coach’s linebacker, how excited is Brent for the upcoming BattleTech material? Very excited. Rem said she’s really looking forward to the Pax announcements
-Any updates for BattleTech products in December? Only McCarron’s Armoured Cavalry, which streets on the 11th but was up for order already.
-ETA on restock on Alpha Strike Commander’s edition? When Kickstarter fulfillment is complete, the rest of the current print run will be returned to PSI and released for shipping.
-When will the Star league Assault Lance be out? It and ilKhan’s Eyes Only are out January 15th
-Does CGL have any sort of Service Level Agreement for UK Mercs Kickstarter fulfillment? They said 5 weeks and they’re about 3 weeks into that.

The Mercenaries Box Set Rulebook PDF has been uploaded, and can be accessed using the "Get Your Digital Downloads" button located on your survey at https://battletech-mercenaries.backerkit.com/.

The link also contains a number of digital goodies first made available in Backer Update #45, including Fortunes of War #1 and #2, Shrapnel: Year One Collection, digital wallpapers, and more!

 BrookM wrote:
How steep were the KS shipping fees for EU and UK backers? Kinda curious, as I wanted to order something from Catalyst during their sale and well.. after some messing around I came across this, wooooh! feth you ROW indeed.

Friday:
11am - 12pm ET: Leviathans News
12pm - 1p: BattleTech Announcements
1p - 2p: BattleTech Fiction
2p - 3p: BattleTech: Aces Announcements
3p - 5p: BattleTech: Aces Co-op Game
5p - 6p: BattleTech: Aces Solo Mode Game

Lorcan Nagle wrote:BattleTech
https://www.youtube.com/live/n8fCnbSKirs?si=r8CDUQlWYac1FbB1&t=3730
Panel: Rem Alternis; Randall Bills; Ray Arrastia, BattleTech Line Developer (by video); Aaron Cahall, BattleTech Assistant Line Developer, Ray’s Therapist, External Hard Drive and Wartime Consigliere (by video)

-Recent book releases:
--Force Manual Kurita
---BattleTech and Alpha Strike force building companion
--Universe
---Randall told Ray he felt a little bad for him, because he’ll be working on BattleTech for many years to come and he didn’t thin Ray would make a better book than this
---If the plastic minis are the most important thing done for BattleTech in the last 25 years, this is the second
---Ray was incredibly stressed out when the proof arrived, everyone left him alone with it for a little while
---It’s already gone back to reprint despite a large initial print run
---The book was a massive collaborative effort for all involved
--Hot Spots Hinterlands
---Randall had much less to do with this one - Ray, Aaron and Randall collaborate on the macro-scale, he gives them his ideas which they “run into the ground wonderfully”
---Ray shouted out Josh Franklin as the developer/Alpha Strike overseer/revamper of the campaign rules
---An expansion of Josh’s rules in the Mercs box set
---Even if you’re not running a mercs campaign, there’s a lot of useful material that you could use in your own games/campaigns.
---Aaron described it as the payoff for Tamar Rising, the way to bring it to the table
---He also shouted out the original 90s Hot Spots book, a collection of plot hooks for your Saturday game
---There’s a mission where you’re hired to protect nukes but you can steal them and deal with the aftermath
---There’ll be an AMA with Josh Franklin soon
-Upcoming releases
--BattleTech: Mercenaries box set
---Should be at retail in January
---The philosophy for the current box sets is that each one adds something else to your game, in this case campaign and battlefield support
---BattleTech is a combined arms universe, but mechs are the kings of the battlefield, the Battlefield support rules are meant to reinforce that.
---They’re not getting rid of the existing vehicle and infantry rules, this is just a way to bring support elements to the table easily. Randall doesn’t see himself going back to the old way fully
---Randall pointed out that you can mix and match. At Masters and Minions last year they had four SM1s on a table, three were battlefield support and one was Callandre Kell in a full record sheet version.
--ilKhan’s Eyes only
---Randall notes the campaign map in the back, Randall frequently apologies to Ray for dropping it on him and adding it to the book series at the last moment
---Randall shouted out the art team, saying that the space combat art is reaching the levels of what Doug Chaffee used to do, which is the highest compliment he can give
---The final sourcebook in the “clock face” series of campaign books and the first book of the ilClan cycle
---We get to see what’s happening in the middle of the Inner Sphere, and what’s happening on Terra
---We’re going to see things we’ve never seen happen in the Inner Sphere before
---Brings the Capellans, Wolves and the ilClan-loyal clans up to 3152
---Aaron shouted out Josh Perian, Stephen Toropov and Eric Salzman for developing and writing on the book. They took the top-level story ideas and turning them into a book. Paul Shardin did a lot of the early work, especially the logistics of unit moving around the map
---This was the most difficult of the books to make, and it makes a capstone for the arc.
---Aaron feels it’ll be well-received, and will turn the ilClan era into more of a setting that players will want to inhabit.
---The first two-thirds of the book is going to be similar to the first three books in the series, while the last section will recap the prior books and update the setting for each by a month or two
-Because of audio issues with Ray and Aaron’s video connections, Rem is going to have Ray and Aaron on Tuesday Newsday stream to talk through their points on the panel.
-While they had more products to show and talk about last year, the first half of the Kickstarter items are hitting retail between January and July.
-Randall was asked how he sees BattleTech going over the next five years. He talked about the world tour being so amazing, he hit 100,000 miles of travel during his flight to Pax. He has some side projects he wants to do, like the new 4X game, COMMAND, and writing his Nova Cat novel, but his big goal is to have BattleTech be mentioned in the same breath as Warhammer, D&D and Magic, so if a granny is going into a game shop to buy a present for her grandkid she’ll know the name when she’s talking to the staff. He mentioned a YouTube video from a couple of years back called “the coolest SF universe you’ve never heard of”, and how they’re still in that niche.
-Rem asked Randall for his one sentence pitch, he called it “Big stompy robots blowing stuff up.” Rem has two: “Game of Thrones with robots” and “40K but with hope”
-Mike Richie asked Randall what was BattleTech like, and Randall replied “I’m gonna talk for 20 minutes, is that OK?” Mike said yeah, so Randall proceed to infodump, and at the end Mike said “wow, this is much deeper than the box art suggests”
-Ray is very happy to see people finally getting their stuff, the videos and photos of unboxings
-New minis:
--McCarron’s Armoured Cavalry Assault Lance
---Barnes and Noble exclusive for six months.
---B&N have been very happy with BattleTech and having it in new venues is great for the game’s expansion
---Tian-Zong
---Jumping Starslayer
---Black Knight repose
---Awesome 9Q
--Black Remnant Command Lance
---Surprise!
---A lance covering the Penny Arcade guys’ let’s play series that’s been running for a couple of years
---It all began when the PA guys open the Alpha Strike box on-stream and Jerry was almost complaining that the box was too good, there was too much stuff in the box for the price
---They decided to stream the game and their Destiny/Alpha Strike hybrid with no house rules and it worked fine
---They approached CGL with the idea of doing a forcepack and it was developed in secret, it’s on sale at Pax
---Dragon Fire
---Blood Asp I
---Flashman repose
---Cyclops 11H (rocket launcher variant)
--Randall talked about how so many people talked to him on his world tour about how much they loved using rocket launcher mechs
---General release in Q1
--Third Star League Strike team
---Pre-painted Lament
---Kintaro
---Hammerhead
---Jackalope
---Havoc
---J-27
--Battlefield Support: Emplacements
---A selection of bunkers and turrets
---These will be modular, so you can swap the turrets between the different bunkers and towers
---They’re working to make the turrets compatible with the LRM and SRM carrier missile pods
---The box will include BSP and Alpha Strike cards
---There will be BattleTech structure record sheets for them as a download too.
-Randall will be at the Roundtable in Gwelf in Toronto on Tuesday and Zulus on the 14th
-Randall talked about how he, Bryn and some friends who aren’t as BattleTech-literate have been playing MechWarrior 5: Clans. He and Bryn were excited when they got to Turtle Bay, while their friends were wondering what had them so giddy.

BattleTech Fiction

https://www.youtube.com/live/n8fCnbSKirs?si=YNdJRcqLCYWpA-JB&t=7778
Panel: Michael Ciaravella, Author, CGL Events Manager; John Helfers, CGL Executive Editor; Bryan Young, fiction author (by video); Phil Lee, fiction and sourcebook author, Shrapnel editor, “CGL Swiss army knife” (by video)

-Letter of the Law by Phil Lee
--Not exactly a sequel to Hunting Season, more another novel in the FWL
--About a member of the Stewart family who decides to retake their homeworld now the Wolves aren’t defending it, and a lot of people are unhappy
--Phil ended up being the FWL expert by stepping up to write about then for a number of projects, and he ended up becoming an expert
When Shattered Fortress was being written, they had the idea to write and publish some novellas to promote it. Phil’s idea was to do the investigation into Jessica Marik’s death, and it became Hunting Season much further down the line. Phil basically fell in love with writing the League during this process.
-Shrapnel 19 drops next week.
--A lot of new authors
---Spirit Cat, Sea Fox and Periphery stories
---A fun article where a bunch of ComStar Adepts argue about which era of their history was best
-Fox Patrol
--Fox Tales was mentioned, a compilation of the initial Shrapnel stories plus a new one
--Lone Wolf and Fox will be released in a single volume with a new story called Jade Foxes, showing the battle of Sudeten from the Patrol’s point of view
--A short novel about the Lone Wolves after they arrive at Almotacen, ties into Hot Spots: Hinterlands
-Bryan has plans for Jiyi’s Falcons, one of the most consistent questions Bryan gets is when do they meet up with Stephanie Chistu, and this is still up in the air. Michael holds the keys to Stephanie’s side of the equation and Bryan the Jiyi, so they’ve been discussing it but there’s a lot of story to tell before it happens
-John is calling the next year for fiction “the year of Terra”
-Trial of Birthright by Michael Ciaravella is done!
--Out by the end of December
--The first of the Star League novels
--Picks up moments after the end of Hour of the Wolf
--Alaric need to figure out what he’s going to do and how he’s going to change the universe
--It’s more of a challenge than he’s expecting
-Voidbreaker
--Out January 24th
--Also starts moments after the end of Hour of the Wolf
--The Sea Foxes are trying to find Tucker Harwell following his disappearance and the chase for him
--The events are all about the attempts to control the HPG network into the future
--As much as the book is stompy robots, it’s also a spy thriller
--Puts the technology and changing nature of the universe in the spotlight
--They’re going to be catching up with a lot of the surviving Republic and Dark Age characters over the next few novels
-Blood will Rise by Tom Leveen
--A follow-up to Blood will Tell by Jason Schmetzer
--Tom’s first full-length novel
--Out in April
--Deals with the Capellan attempts to breach the Fortress Wall, and Danais and Daoshen’s evolving relationship.
-The Long Road by Jason Hansa
--About Tara Campbell post-ilClan
--Out maybe for Gencon
--Jason pitched this to Ray last year and got it ready for publication in record time
-Other works brought up
--The founding of the Clans Trilogy, as a jumping on point for people who came in with MW5 Clans
--In The Shadow of the Dragon
---About Yori Kurita solidifying her grasp on the Draconis Combine
---Went through a lot of revision to encompass more detail around the Combine in the late Dark Age
---Starts with a murder mystery, ends with a mech battle
-Michael has three more BattleTech projects on the go
--A Treachery of Ravens, about the Snow Ravens is the only one mentioned
-They’re in the process of bringing back the BattleCorps anthologies back, new cover art, revised, proofed interiors
--The Corps is out now
--Some of the short novels will be brought back too
-Den of Wolves is progressing. John said three quarters done and he’s cracking the whip whenever he can
-Wars of Reaving Trilogy
--Craig and Jason are making good progress on their books
--Hoping to have them out next year
-Bryan has turned in a series of 4 novellas in the 30-40,000 word range covering the Ghost Bear civil war.
-Mike Stackpole and Bryan are hard at work on the graphic novels, the writing is almost done and it’ll be turned over to editorial soon.

BattleTech Aces
https://www.youtube.com/live/n8fCnbSKirs?si=AJH6JoWQiPh7WnFw&t=11151
Panel: Michael Ciaravella; Randall Bills; Josh Derrickson, Aces Developer; Tommy Grofton, Lynnvander studios

-CGL have had a relationship with Lynnvander for some time, they’ve worked on games together. When Covid happened Randall and Bryn said they had a lot of time on their hands, so what can they do? Randall decided to become a miniatures games expert. One of the many games he played was Star Trek Alliance, a Lynnvander production. Randall and Bryn had a spreadsheet tracking elements of the games they played and Alliance had one of the best AI systems they’d seen. Randall and Bryn were thinking about how they could do something like this for Alpha Strike as they were working on the box set at the time. They pitched the idea to Tommy, and the initial idea was a deck of cards and a booklet. And then the project spiraled.
-Tommy talked about how they’d been pitching a lot of games unsuccessfully to Wizkids, and eventually they bit on Tommy’s offhand idea of making Attack Wing co-op. The game was barely being supported and Alliance ended up being a major revitalisation for Attack Wing.
-They are working on a BattleTech Aces version, but Alpha Strike was easier to do and was a better place to start.
-Aces is built around 200-400 point games, a couple of lances on the table. But there’s potential to build it out.
-When they decided the product shouldn’t just be a deck of cards they fixed on adding a narrative focus as BattleTech is such a narrative game and universe. The campaign has a sort of choose your own adventure vibe
-Randall noted that Lynnvander did a lot of work to delve into the universe so there was very little feedback CGL had on the detail front.
-Randall taught Josh BattleTech two years ago, he’s since read like 40 of the novels, many of the sourcebooks and TROs, and he says he knows BattleTech as well as Star Wars, which he’s been into since he was 14
-CGL believe so strongly in Aces that they are committed to four box sets, each one linked to one of the ilClan-era sourcebooks
-The first box is called Scouring Sands, set in Tamar Rising, followed by one for Empire Alone, Dominions Divided, and IlKhan’s Eyes Only
-Cover by Marco Mazzoni. New cover style, does a full wraparound onto the sides of the lid. Each box is themed to a biome
--New terrain
--Randall talked about the cardboard terrain in the Alpha Strike box, he didn’t get to see the buildings until a production set after championing them during production. He knew they had to add them to the Aces boxes as well.
hills. They’re functionally the same as buildings in terms of how they’re put together, but they help to break up the terrain. Josh was inspired by the depictions of Hall’s terrain in Embers of War. The larger hills are strong enough to hold 4 metal mech minis. They’re stackable and designed to easily be put beside each other to make bigger ones
--2-sided river and canyon pieces, they have jigsaw connections on the ends. 6 pieces in the box with endcaps, it’ll run about 4 feet long in total, pieces allow for bends in the rivers
--A trussed bridge
--MSRP is $79.99
--New reference card to make it easy to do combined arms
--Campaign book, at its core it’s a variation on Chaos Campaign
---Book may be spiral bound, the prototype they showed is but it might not make it to production
---The campaign is set on Apolakkia, on the border between the Alyina Mercantile League and Jiyi’s Falcons
---Each scenario has a 2-page spread, has some fiction by Russel Zimmerman and preface on one side, mat and force on the other
---Lots of tokens that trigger cutscenes as you play, there’s waypoint that triggera blurbs, many with gameplay effects in the back
--Edge point tokens with triggerable edge ability cards. Because Aces is meant to be co-op, players will have a small number of units so you can’t
--Cardboard tokens for infantry, armour and emplacements, plus Battlefield support cards even though there’s no other BattleTech content in the box
--Alpha Strike cards for a lot of units that have yet to have colour cards, such as Elementals and emplacements
--Aces decks, many changes since the open beta.
---There are now two card types, commanders and units
---The unit cards have three stances: balanced, aggressive or cautious.
---The commander cards will alter these behavioral stances, giving the units personalities
---There are now specialist roles, such as a Skirmisher (JMPS) that will more aggressively exploit the ability
---Wheeled and hover vehicles have a special deck, VTOLs will have a special deck too in a later product
--Randall talked about how a lot of people on his world tour told him their friends, family, partners and so on have gotten into BattleTech via Aces, because it’s co-op, which is a lot more popular these days. He hopes this will spark more co-op modes for minis games
--Minis
---Similar to Alpha Strike, there are two brand-new minis in the set
----Thunderbolt IIc
----2 Fulcrum hovertanks
---Locust IIc 4
---Baboon 6
---Thor H
---Marauder IIc 6
---Rifleman C 2. The Project Phoenix-style fins will be an optional piece
---Kraken 3
Aces Actual Play
https://www.youtube.com/live/n8fCnbSKirs?si=D7ZxvdKI4q3V7DPQ&t=15871
Players: Tommy Grofton, Josh Derrickson, Randall Bills

-Randall was up in Canada filming a MechWarrior Destiny game series with Lynnvander. The team is the Mech 7.
--Randall pilots a Banshee
--Tex an Awesome
--Tommy a Highlander
--Big Red a Wolverine
--Paul from Focht's News in a Spector
--New players Maryam and Sage piloting an Ostroc and Scorpion
-They played mission 00, which is going to be in each box set’s version is slightly different. It’s meant to have you playing a minor variation of the second training game in the Alpha Strike box set. But they’re using the Scouring Sands minis for the enemy and playing with the Mech 7
-After table setup they shuffled the waypoint tokens and placed them face down on the table.
-Objectives:
--cripple three enemies
--Destroy up to 4 supply caches
--Lose no more than 4 units
--Game ends after 7 turns or when one force is wiped out
--Both sides were under forced withdrawal, there’s an aces card to cover the AI behaviour
--When a player unit is in 6” and LOS of one of the waypoints, reveal the token, 4 of them are cache buildings with CF 4, and have story elements that are revealed when the tokens are flipped
-Three named character units were given a random edge ability. In the regular games players get to pick their ability when creating their force.
-One player is designated commander. If the force commander on either side is destroyed, you have -2 to initiative for the rest of the game.
-There is an initiative track, allows you to note which turn you’re on and who won initiative.
-Aces defaults to front-loaded initiative
-You place the aces deck for a unit below the unit card, and just slide the unit card off to check turn order and instructions,
-The aces cards have conditions on them to determine whether they fight cautious, balanced or aggressive in a given turn. The commander card will help with target selection.
-The attack instructions are now on the back of the card, so after you move you flip the card over and put it back under the stat card after movement to indicate the user has moved and you can’t see the fire instructions yet. The attack instructions also have an order of actions, which isn’t always the same as the move order. After you fire you just slide the card to the bottom of the deck and you’re ready for next turn.
-Aces uses multiple attack rolls by default.
-There are three default edge abilities you can use
--Increase or decrease one weapon dice roll by one per turn
--Reroll a motive crit on a vehicle a character is controlling
--Reroll a critical hit against a unit a character is controlling
-The commander’s deck changes at the end of the turn based on the events in the current turn, you check conditions and might swap out the commander card based on the instructions.
-Some events will trigger on turn changes as well, for example in turn 2 the players got a -2 to their initiative roll. But still won the roll.
-At the start of Turn 4 a waypoint on the turn track was triggered that gave the AI player reinforcements
-At the end of the game there's an evaluation that gives different dialogue depending on the victory conditions

In the comments section :

Q : Given the Kerenskycon roadmap was given and the mechs you have been working on, we can infer based on the rough roadmap how far you are in the redesigns. Without naming anything specifically, are you able to disclose if anything on that roadmap has changed? i.e., have any changes been made, like the content of any force packs changed or new force packs inserted? I understand if you are not able to even say that much, but I thought it was worth asking.

A : Definitely changes. Hence seeing things that aren't on the road map. We're not that far ahead haha.

 Elmir wrote:
Still not a single update for me (or anyone) in Europe, despite posting 2 weeks ago about the lack of updates.

Since then, CGL has had to retract their statement about adress verifications being send out to the EU and had to come clean that the EU shipment is suddenly stuck in customs.

How on earth does something suddenly get held up for weeks in customs now... When CGL has been claiming that most of the EU product has been in the EU hubs since their update on Agust 28th about only a few more items being missing to begin fulfilment in this region.

Things are seriously not adding up here. Honestly, it just seems like CGL isn't shy about lying about these sorts of things and even had the audacity to e-mail backers of BT mercenaries about yet another KS they are launching despite having several active ones in various stages of fulfilment.

This KS came with a "premium shipping pricetag" (I've honestly had several tons of equipment/statues/concrete delivered for my garden for less than what they charged me) only to end up with bottom of the barrel shipping and handling. Never again.

Lorcan Nagle wrote:Randall is going to be on the Six Sides of Gaming YouTube/Twitch channels today at 1PM Eastern for an Aces tutorial

http://www.youtube.com/@SixSidesofGaming
https://www.twitch.tv/sixsidesofgaming

Lorcan Nagle wrote:Episode 36



10th December 2024
Guests: Ray Arrastia, BattleTech Line Developer; Aaron Cahall, BattleTech Assistant Line Developer


News:
-Recap of Pax announcements
-Mercenaires retail release
-Aces

-Ray talked about Hot Spots Hinterlands, about how the book picks up where the campaign material in the Mercs box leaves off. The Hinterlands has been very popular, reminding a lot of players of the chaos March and a great place to put your unit.
-Hot Spots: Draconis Reach. Expected in late 2025, maybe 2026, a book on the FedSuns/Combine border post retaking of the Dragon’s Tongue
-Aaron talked about how a lot of the sourcebooks in recent years were more story than game aids, and they want to change the balance so there’s more gaming material again.
-IlKhan’s Eyes Only.
--The last in the line of Sourcebooks about the aftermath of the battle of Terra.
--Goes through what happens behind the Fortress Wall, the space around Terra and what happens when the wall comes down.
--Takes place over about 18 months.
--Will have a section that moves beyond the ends of the prior three books.
--The book was very hard to do, which is part of why it was the last of the 4 books to be done.
--Aaron described it as “the Dog caught the car, what next?”
--Aaron shouted out Josh Perian as developer, and Wunji Lau, Stephen Toropov and Eric Salzman’s work on the book
--Alaric’s comeuppance will come, but they want people to almost feel bad for him when it happens, and they hope that journey starts here.
-Force Manuals
--Mercs is up next
--Invading Clans is well into development
--In early Development on Steiner
-They’ve had some pitches on other books, they’re looking at FASA products as well to see what kind of books they could bring back
-Ray would like to know what people would like to see
-They’re slowing down on plot sourcebooks for the moment while the fiction expands into the space they’ve created
-They’re going to focus on the rules side, slowly revamping and developing.
-Ray is looking forward to faction-oriented packs, two FedSuns ones are up first, then two Draconis Combine
-He’s also looking forward to retooling things. He mentioned Fox Patrol has been added to the list and is going to try and get that pushed as high up the list as he can.
-Ray and Aaron are both looking forward to the Ares forcepack. It’ll have all the omnipods for the different weapons configurations
-There are a number of products they’re working on now that they can’t talk about yet that Ray is looking forward to people seeing. He talked about how he doesn’t get jaded about waiting for work to get out after he’s finished with it, he feels like the payoff is worth it when people are excited to see it. Aaron likes the hype cycle as they build up to releases


Q&A:
-Any word on the Premium BattleMaster and Wolverine being added to the Webstore? Unsure, Rem will ask again
-When will the patches from the Mercs Kickstarter be available for sale? They haven’t seen anything on the schedule. As the patches would be webshop/con products they’re not on the retail list.
-Any update on EU Kickstarter fulfillment? Rem hasn’t heard, she usually follows up with QML on Monday but missed that due to travel, she’ll be contacting them this week, hoping to have an update this week.
-If we’re not going to see awesome warship battles in the ilClan era, can we get some more in past eras? There’s naval action in ilKhan’s eyes only at least
-Is there any insight into why tanks traditionally operate in matched pairs? It’s way before Ray and Aaron’s time. There’s a lot of military tradition involved in the early history of BattleTech but Ray doesn’t know it.
-Can we have flare LRMs back? No
-Can we get light mech-centred forcepacks? It’s on the list, Ray still wants to do a Bug Company with lances made up of wasp, stinger, locust and like one more light, maybe the Valkyrie. Nothing solid yet, though.
-Any updates on the Brush Wars PDFs? The problem is the layout pipeline, they don’t have the assets to spare right now. It’s neck and neck between it and Print on Demand for stalled products that needs a layout person attached.
-When will the ELH Dice pucks and athletic shirts be back on the webstore? Not sure on dice pucks but a T-shirt order is going out soon. QML will be returning unused dice pucks from the kickstarter soon but no idea what will be in the list.
-Are all forcepacks planned for Clan Invasion, will they all need ilClan supplements, how much will the PDFs cost? Yes, yes, and price isn’t finalised yet. When the first two supplements are in the can they’ll know more.
-When will the force manual supplements will be out? Probably Q1 2025
-Any plans for Destiny sourcebooks? Not yet.
-Any RPG stuff in the pipeline? Nothing solid
-Any plans to offer the plastic minis individually? No, it’s not an option presently. They said it’s not an issue because of IWM’s license, which is a common assumption. It would be a lot of SKUs to add to the product line to do all the forcepack minis individually
-Any updates on MUL 2.0? Not at this time. Josh Perian is moving forward, Aaron shouted out Josh’s heroic efforts
-Are there plans for improving logistics to get products to us? There are plans in motion like a webshop upgrade, discussion with international distribution partners, but they’re reluctant to make any statements until contracts are signed or delays happen.
-There will be a Hinterlands AMA with Josh Franklin in the CGL Discord on Saturday

Update #110 wrote:This Week's Update

Hey there backers!

Here's our latest news:

US/CAN/RoW without Hubs: Other than the Company Store Retailer orders, Wave 1 and 2 are complete, or in final packaging. We should have an update for you soon about Wave 3..

If you are from the above regions and have not received your shipment, please check Backerkit for any outstanding balance. Over 1,500 backers have not finalized their pledges, and about ¼ of the messages we have received asking for the status of their orders show they have not completed their pledge or paid shipping yet.

UK: Shipments continue

EU: Still processing through Customs – hoping to have more news for next week’s update. We are actively working to get the shipment through as soon as possible.

Asia: Packaging continues.

AUS: Short stock shipment still in transit

Note that retailer shipments and exclusivity dates will continue to be pushed based on fulfillment completion.




Other Updates
Here are a few updates for you about some of our outstanding projects:

Lostech Orders

Of the 200ish backers that were missed, 58 of them were US, CAN or RoW without Hubs. We will be fulfilling those directly from our own warehouse as soon as the QML stock arrives. For the rest of the world, those orders are being sent directly to the hubs to fulfill with the rest of their shipments.

Damages

If your shipment items were damaged in transit or you believe you are missing a package/shipment, please contact QML as they will be handling the replacements at the end of fulfillment.. Here is the link: https://www.qmlogistics.com/contactUs.html

Defectives

If an item in your shipment was defective in some way, such as a manufacturing error, please contact us at tbuckner@catalystgamelabs.com and include a photo of the defective product in your first email.

Lorcan Nagle wrote:Episode 37



17th December 2024
Guest: Randall Bills, CGL Creative Director

News
-There’s an end of year sale on the CGL webstore, running until 2nd January. Anything ordered now will probably not arrive by Christmas. 25% off your total order if you spend $50 or more
-Don’t forget to join the webstore mailing list!
-December releases
--McCarron’s Armoured Cavalry is out at retail in Barnes & Noble now. Exclusivity period is 6 months
--Shrapnel 19
--A Night in the Woods, a novella by Michael Stackpole about the Kell Hounds Death Kangaroos
-No Tuesday Newsday for the next two weeks.
-There were 300 Mercenaries backers in Asia
--All orders are packaged at the distributor.
--After this all orders for a specific location will be loaded onto a container, which ships out to the location when it is full
--Once the container ships, local partners will pick up the packages and ship to the backers.
--This means that from a logistical perspective Asia is complete, even though it’s going to be some time before the actual shipping will happen

-Randall noted that he’s a very ambitious person, but even then he didn’t realise how huge an endeavour the World Tour was going to be.
-He described it as Glorious, Amazing and it beat the living crap out of him
-He determined the areas or regions he would attend by picking a con he was going to attend, and then figure out locations he could visit. He liaised with Alliance to find stores that were the biggest sellers, mapped them out, and then went to the Demo Team to see what locations had really good support.
-Randall had stories about different stops on the trip, shouted out locations and shops and cons, I’d say you’re better off listening to this section instead of reading a recap
-They talked about the Freddie Prinze Jr stuff

Q&A
-No time for Q&A!

 Ghaz wrote:
From the BattleTech Forums:

-There were 300 Mercenaries backers in Asia
--All orders are packaged at the distributor.
--After this all orders for a specific location will be loaded onto a container, which ships out to the location when it is full
--Once the container ships, local partners will pick up the packages and ship to the backers.
--This means that from a logistical perspective Asia is complete, even though it’s going to be some time before the actual shipping will happen

 Altruizine wrote:
I mean you're dishonestly sticking "late" in there, and then the other things should obviously be QML's jobs since they have all the stock.

 Altruizine wrote:
I mean you're dishonestly sticking "late" in there, and then the other things should obviously be QML's jobs since they have all the stock.

 Dysartes wrote:
Here's a question - do people tend to go for a paint scheme they like first, or figure out which faction they like the background for and go with that scheme?

I may be experiencing a little paint scheme paralysis when it comes to Battletech at the moment...

 porkuslime wrote:
So, painting my mechs like my Space Marine chapters or Death Guard is.. not ok?

I kid, I kid.. but those ARE paint schemes I know by heart..

BATTLETECH JANUARY RELEASES:

Mercenaries Box Set - $74.99
IlKhan's Eyes Only - $49.99
Clan Cavalry Star - $34.99
Battlefield Support: Assault & Cavalry Lances - $39.99
Mercenaries Salvage Box - $7.99
Battlefield Support Salvage Box - $11.99
Map Pack: Savannah - $29.99
City: HPG Heliport BattleMat - $39.99

Lprcan Nagle wrote:
Episode 38


7th January 2024
Guest: Jennifer Brozek and Kat Hardy, managing editor and art director for Augment

News:
-Mercs Backer update should be out today. They’re waiting on confirmation of one piece of info from Talon
--New releases
---Jan 15th
----IlKhan’s Eyes only
---Jan 22nd
----Mercs box set
----Rifle and command Lance
----Clan Direct Fire Star
----Map-scale DropShips
----Battlefield Support Salvage box
----Mercenaries Salvage box
----Second Star League Assault Lance
---Jan 24th
----Voidbreaker
-Trial of Birthright is out now
-Bryan Young wrote Christmas-themed fiction for Shadowrun and BattleTech, they’re free on the webstore.
BattleTech Aces discussion from Pax mentioned
-Next week’s guest will be Josh Perian, lead developer on Ilkhan’s eyes only
-Two weeks after that the guest will be Bryan Young, author of Voidbreaker.

Q&A:
-Is there a plan to cover stock shortages and damaged stock for the remaining Mercs fulfillment? This was attempted to be planned for - they ordered 115% of the stock in the first place but the issues with production caused an issue of course. It’s very different to get a running inventory during fulfillment, so when a region completes fulfillment they’ll do an inventory and any excess will be transferred if there are issues in other regions, either direct from hub to hub or back to CGL who will handle it centrally
-Will the Mercs box be available to ship outside the US? If yes how does that square with CGL’s plans to release in regions one by one? This was explained in part in a backer update, the delays for regions obviously weren’t part of the initial plan but they need to help out their retailers. They can’t shut off international shipping on the webstore but given the high shipping cost issues on the store they feel it’ll discourage people ordering. They’re planning to hold to international street dates, keeping as best as they can to the spirit of their promise.
-Who do you contact if you received a package from the CGL webstore that was missing an item? Email Store@catalystgamelabs.com, and if you have emailed them already check your spam filter, they have issues with email that are being worked on.
-Whatever happened to the City/Lunar BFM? Rem couldn’t find it on the product schedule quickly, she’ll check it out. The last she saw it was due for release in September.

 Dysartes wrote:
BFM?

-Is there a plan to cover stock shortages and damaged stock for the remaining Mercs fulfillment? This was attempted to be planned for - they ordered 115% of the stock in the first place but the issues with production caused an issue of course. It’s very different to get a running inventory during fulfillment, so when a region completes fulfillment they’ll do an inventory and any excess will be transferred if there are issues in other regions, either direct from hub to hub or back to CGL who will handle it centrally

 Ghaz wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:
BFM?

According to Sarna.net it stands for Battalion Forces Mat. Where the normal BattleMats are 34” x 22”, the massive BFM measures 72” x 48" and incorporates eight maps per side and is largely intended for convention play.

 Dysartes wrote:

 Ghaz wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:
BFM?

According to Sarna.net it stands for Battalion Forces Mat. Where the normal BattleMats are 34” x 22”, the massive BFM measures 72” x 48" and incorporates eight maps per side and is largely intended for convention play.

Thanks for that - TLAs are a pain when you're still wrapping your brain around a game/community

 Dysartes wrote:

 Ghaz wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:
BFM?

According to Sarna.net it stands for Battalion Forces Mat. Where the normal BattleMats are 34” x 22”, the massive BFM measures 72” x 48" and incorporates eight maps per side and is largely intended for convention play.

Thanks for that - TLAs are a pain when you're still wrapping your brain around a game/community

The initial production run of the product was originally named the BattleTech: MegaMat only for Catalyst Game Labs to realize when first introduced at Gen Con 2021 that Chessex had a similar series of neoprene maps under the MegaMat name. To avoid any name confusion CGL voluntarily chose to rename the product, settling on the BFM title for any future production runs. Discussion about just what BFM stood for (Big Field Mat and Big F****** Mat being offered alternates) and vague rumors that the company had been subject to a cease and desist order over the MegaMat name were later discredited by CGL staff; specifically, Line Developer Ray "Adrian Gideon" Arrastia clarified that "There wasn't any sort of legal action. The naming conflict was brought to CGL's attention right when the mat premiered at GenCon, and it was decided then and there to change the name. Throughout the weekend, it was mentioned and joked about in the booth with customers and subsequently blown out of proportion.".

beast_gts wrote:
I've got the "Your QML Catalyst order has been shipped!" email (UK)!

 Flinty wrote:
Like container ships heading to Oz…

Spoiler:

 Flinty wrote:
Nice. Good luck with the delivery.

 Flinty wrote:
Mine was also delivered by Evri and it was a smooth ride. The tracking was accurate and the package got to me undamaged. Hoping this is a national thing!

 Morskul wrote:
My Evri package arrived 4 days late and had been crushed. Thankfully the contents were in one piece. I was sorely disappointed to learn QML had chosen Evri as the courier, they quite literally couldn't have picked a worse company. But hey, at least QML didn't have to pay them much to ship our packages!

chaos0xomega wrote:
Im sure its that they are cheap, and whatever bad reputation hermes had is pribably not beibg picked up on when people deal with evri

beast_gts wrote:
I've got the "Your QML Catalyst order has been shipped!" email (UK)!

Lorcan Nagle wrote:Episode 39



14th January 2024
Guest: Joshua Perian, developer on ilKhan’s Eyes Only

News
-New releases
--Ilkhan’s Eyes Only is out tomorrow! Should be on the CGL webstore on Friday
--Voidbreaker, a new novel is up for pre-order
--Trial of Brithright, Michael Ciaravella’s new novel about Terra post-ilClan is out now
-There should be a mercs kickstarter update today with some more detail around the EU customs issue

Discussion
-Josh was introduced to Battletech via the fiction.
-He created a BattleTech club in high school to get it into his yearbook
-When he was 16 he travelled to Chicago to visit the FASA offices, he showed up with his mum and coffee and doughnuts and got to meet a bunch of the old school people
-In 2012 he got the opportunity to write for BattleTech and he’s gotten deeper and deeper since
-Before BattleTech he did some writing for Games Workshop, mostly on the corporate side.
-His start with BattleTech was the micro-PDF products
-He’s written a lot of touring the Stars and Spotlight on, written for a lot of sourcebooks but no solo sourcebooks yet. He wrote much of the death of the Republic from the sourcebook side of things, and the return and death of ComStar.
-As product developer/manager, he’s responsible for working out who’s going to work on the book, generating art prompts, that the rules annex is done, and even writing.
-There are two short stories in IKEO, one by Bryan Young and one by Michael Ciaravella.
-The book tells the story of Alaric’s first pivotal year in the
-The book is written from the POV of Spurlock Connors, head of the Watch as a report for Alaric, with notes from a variety of commentators from before its publication
-Marco Mazzoni was the art lead for the book.
-Josh bigged up Eric Salzman for running with the idea of how Alaric is going to govern Terra while isolated from basically any help and what he can do while his worldview is crumbling around him
-Josh is also working on MUL 2.0. Work has restarted on it and they’re close to getting an early release, Josh is hoping for Q1 2025.
--It will have record sheets
--It will be able to combine Alpha Strike cards and record sheets for force building
--The search filter has been rebuilt from the ground up
--The look and feel will be updated.
--They’ll be able to show more detail closer to release and talk about features that are planned but further out.
--They’ll have advanced aerospace cards as an option instead of the PDF on the CGL shop
-The devs are aware of the perception that Alaric wins all the time and they’re definitely working to combat that and give him more defined wins and losses, and the idea that he’ll lose by winning. The recent and upcoming novels: Trial of Birthright, Voidbreaker, and Blood Will Out will help to flesh out the sourcebook and create a more nuanced story.
-IKEO is very much a beginning, not a finale.
-The book has a complete timeline for the back half of the Dark Age and updates for each segment of the Inner Sphere

Q&A
-Did Josh ever get Touring The Stars: Antietam? Yes, it’s in the queue but they’re very backed up
-Will the new MUL also have the BSP cards? Not sure if it’ll be at launch or added later
-Why are sourcebooks the main story drivers while novels fill in details but assume the overall story is already known? Novels can’t capture the big details in the same way but it’s zoomed in. Sourcebooks don’t drive the story though, they’re deliberately written from slanted points of view while the novels are “the truth”
-How many new paint schemes for the new SLDF are in the book? Just one, and it’s SLDF olive drab. Associated units like the provisional Clans have different paint schemes with the Cameron Star added.
-Any news on non-US partners to improve distribution speed and store shipping? They had a director’s meeting today and it seems there’s been some roadblocks recently that seem to be related to GSPR. Rem doesn’t have all the details though. They do have a sales manager now who is handling a lot of this.
-Who do I need to send requests to for plus-size shirt restocks? store@catalystgamelabs.com. Restocking is slow right now as they’re sitting on a lot of Mercs stock waiting release
-Any updates for the Premium mech line? Unsure, Rem dropped a question in to the group chat
-Do the Snow Ravens get a lot of IKEO? Yes, as do all the Clans except the Ghost Bears and Hell’s Horses
-Will Trial of Birthright have print copies? Print on Demand is already out
-Does IKEO have a mercs-compatible chaos campaign? Yes.
-There’s a new merc unit that Marco Mazzoni came up with and Josh designed the logo for. They’ll be on Camospecs soon
-Any chance of getting more salvage boxes? 450,000 were printed for the kickstarter, they’re waiting for remaining stock to be shipped back from QML when fulfillment completes.
-What happens if you’ve sent off a mail for canon characters and not heard anything back? (also, no mail in spam filter). Rem detailed the issues, basically they have multiple incomplete lists of people, and have been trying to compile a master list. They’re trying to get the list of people eligible from the old Crowdox back-end but that times out when they try to download. So there are still missing names and they’re still working on it.
-What’s the best way to dive into the ilClan era? Josh says to get the sourcebooks first: Tamar Rising, Empire Alone, Dominions Divided and ilKhan’s Eyes only, and then go into the novels starting with Hour of the Wolf.

Hey there Backers!

Here’s the update for this week:

US/CAN/RoW w/o hubs: Wave 3 began last week and is rolling along.

UK: Waves 1 and 2 are expected to finish this week. We will then receive an inventory report to check for any remaining shortages as we move into Wave 3. If so, we’ll be looking at air freight options to keep things moving, if possible.

EU: This week, we got some insight into the conversations between CGL and Customs. This container was originally flagged by customs for random audit. After sending the required paperwork twice over the holidays, the Customs Department is declining to review the documents as the bank and wire transfers from invoices are not linked to specific items, but to orders. Additionally, since the container has different SKUs from across 8 companies, manufactured across a year and a half to 2 years, it’s causing additional issues with the documentation. We’ve reached out to several EU contacts for assistance. We are waiting on further guidance from customs and our contacts.

As a note, there will NOT be any additional charges to backers, just the time needed to resolve the issues.

AUS: Our QML contact is on vacation this week, so we haven’t gotten an update for Australia just yet. We’re hustling for news as soon as possible. If we hear back before our usual Tuesday update, we’ll send an additional backer update this week.

Asia: Wave 3 should begin after Chinese New Year.

Other Updates: Some of these projects haven’t changed, so the update is the same from last week and copied here. Some of them have taken the next step forward, so double check the details.

Retailer Shipping Compensation: During the Kickstarter, we promised to offset shipping with merchandise. Because of the shortages, we stalled to ensure individual backer orders could fill first. We have a plan to fulfill, which leads to a very special announcement made right here first!

We are launching a new website and online store within the next couple of months:

Functionality is in final review and approvals, bug fixes are being worked on, and imagery is being updated. More information will be released as we get closer to launch.

The new site will finally allow for Direct-to-Retail purchases! So once we launch, we will be uploading your retail pledge shipping costs as credits to the webstore so you can order whatever you like! We’ll keep you posted as we get closer.

Vehicles in Salvage Boxes:
Early on in shipping, our wonderful backers brought to our attention that some of the Mercenaries Salvage Boxes came with Vehicles instead of ‘Mechs, which was a production error. We instructed QML to send 1 extra Salvage Box to all backers. Anyone who was already sent that hadn’t yet received Art of War or the Cookbook would be receiving their extra Salvage Box with those shipments. Over the holidays, we prepared an order with our warehouse to send out the remaining Salvage Box to any backer still owed one. Additionally, if anyone got multiples of their salvage boxes and reported to either tbuckner@catalystgamelabs.com, store@catalystgamelabs.com or Kickstarter messages, these have been added to the order as well. Please include “Mercenaries - Salvage Box Vehicle” in your title line to help expedite this process.

LosTech Orders:
The UK, EU, Australian and Asian orders from this list have been sent to QML to forward to the hubs to add to their existing shipping lists. For US/CAN/RoW without hubs, we had planned to fulfill through our own warehouse, but some items are still in transit and QML has a more complete inventory. To get these orders out as fast as possible, we have asked QML to fulfill those orders at the top of Wave 3. You should be getting address verifications soon, if not already.


Overage Credits in Backerkit:
Some of you still have outstanding credit in Backerkit. We’ve run a report, and a lot of the people with credits still haven’t completed their surveys or paid shipping. Tyler has been working on these and has been able to get some of the legitimate credits refunded, but we’re still working through the list. Please note that if you paid with Paypal, we will need your paypal email to be able to issue the refund. Please email tbuckner@catalystgamelabs.com if you have gotten your shipment and still have outstanding credit in Backerkit. Please include “Mercenaries - Store Credit” in your title line to help expedite this process.


Reminders:

Store Credits

If you requested store credit to offset some of your shipping fees, our list has now been fully processed. Check your Catalyst Store account at store.catalystgamelabs.com to double check your credit. If you believe you’ve been missed, please email store@catalystgamelabs.com.

Damaged and Missing Items

If your items were damaged in transit or you believe you are missing any items or packages, please contact QML directly as they will be handling the replacements at the end of fulfillment. Here is the link: https://www.qmlogistics.com/contactUs.html

Defective Items

If an item in your shipment was defective in some way, such as a manufacturing error, please contact us at tbuckner@catalystgamelabs.com and include a photo of the defective product in your first email.

Retail Street Dates: We have continued to receive occasional reports regarding retailers in unfulfilled regions releasing Kickstarter products prior to established street-dates. As these cases are identified, we are taking appropriate action as necessary.

Wave 1: Orders finalized and shipping paid on or before May 17th, 2024

Wave 2: Orders finalized and shipping paid between May 17th, 2024 and August 12th, 2024

Wave 3: Orders finalized and shipping paid between August 12th, 2024 and October 22nd 2024

Wave 4: Orders finalized and shipping paid between October 22nd, 2024 or later

This week, we got some insight into the conversations between CGL and Customs

As a note, there will NOT be any additional charges to backers, just the time needed to resolve the issues.

 Graphite wrote:
Apparently there is only one human in Australia capable of receiving a shipping container. Must be a busy person, no wonder they need a vacation.

 Ghaz wrote:

 Graphite wrote:
Apparently there is only one human in Australia capable of receiving a shipping container. Must be a busy person, no wonder they need a vacation.

The person on vacation per the update is their 'QML contact'. QML is Quartermaster Logistics, the fulfillment company Catalyst hired for the Mercenaries Kickstarter and located in Orlando, FL.

Update #114 wrote:Hey backers!

One of our contacts helped us with a few phone calls and got the right customs person on the phone and...we're CLEARED!

The shipment has cleared customs and will be continuing on to the Hub! We don't have an ETA just yet, but more news should hopefully be available by our next update. But we wanted to pop in and let you know as soon as we found out and confirmed!

Have a great day!

Santtu wrote:
Clan Invasion went relatively smoothly (Covid-19 aside), so I don't understand how this Kickstarter ended up like this.

 Graphite wrote:

Fair. So instead of it being one person in Australia, they're only able to talk to one person in the logistics company they hired.

Cool. Cool cool cool. Nobody sets an out-of-office e-mail with details of who to contact instead then. That's perfectly normal and sensible.

beast_gts wrote:

Update #114 wrote:Hey backers!

One of our contacts helped us with a few phone calls and got the right customs person on the phone and...we're CLEARED!

The shipment has cleared customs and will be continuing on to the Hub! We don't have an ETA just yet, but more news should hopefully be available by our next update. But we wanted to pop in and let you know as soon as we found out and confirmed!

Have a great day!

nekooni wrote:

beast_gts wrote:

Update #114 wrote:Hey backers!

One of our contacts helped us with a few phone calls and got the right customs person on the phone and...we're CLEARED!

The shipment has cleared customs and will be continuing on to the Hub! We don't have an ETA just yet, but more news should hopefully be available by our next update. But we wanted to pop in and let you know as soon as we found out and confirmed!

Have a great day!

and address verification mail from gamesquest.co.uk arrrived - am a bit confused why a UK company is handling this for EU customers, but hopefully that doesn't mean they're shipping from the UK, too.

 Flinty wrote:

nekooni wrote:

beast_gts wrote:

Update #114 wrote:Hey backers!

One of our contacts helped us with a few phone calls and got the right customs person on the phone and...we're CLEARED!

The shipment has cleared customs and will be continuing on to the Hub! We don't have an ETA just yet, but more news should hopefully be available by our next update. But we wanted to pop in and let you know as soon as we found out and confirmed!

Have a great day!

and address verification mail from gamesquest.co.uk arrrived - am a bit confused why a UK company is handling this for EU customers, but hopefully that doesn't mean they're shipping from the UK, too.

Gamesquest have an established presence in fulfilling European crowdfunding campaigns. I did some digging a while back and they seem to partner with a German logistics company near Frankfurt for European deliveries. It shouldn’t be coming from UK. It’s had enough difficulty as it is!

Update #115 wrote:Australia has arrived!

Hey there Backers!

Here’s the update for this week:

US/CAN/RoW w/o hubs: Wave 3 only has about 170 orders remaining. We are hopeful to finish up within the next couple of weeks. QML will then send remaining merch back to our warehouse and we will fulfill any Wave 4 or beyond backers internally.

UK: Waves 1 and 2 are completing, which includes Company Store orders. Exclusivity has officially begun, though we will still wait on street dates for all of Europe until EU fulfillment is complete and their exclusivity period ends.

EU: Now that the shipment has been cleared from customs, we are hearing that there may be storage fees owed, so we are working on clearing that up as soon as possible. The community let us know that many are beginning to receive Address Verifications from the EU hub in anticipation of the shipment arriving from customs. Fulfillment is so close!

As a note, there will NOT be any additional charges to backers, just the time needed to resolve the issues.

AUS: We met with QML today and confirmed that the shipment was received and is being checked in by the Australian Hub. QML has asked the hub for an update if fulfillment begins before the end of the week so we can let you know!

Asia: Wave 3 should begin after Chinese New Year.

Other Updates: Some of these projects haven’t changed, so the update is the same from last week and copied here. Some of them have taken the next step forward, so double check the details.

Missing Items: For US/CAN and RoW without Hubs. As QML wraps up remaining shipping, they’ve identified additional items that are short. We’ve asked QML to fulfill what they have, then send us a list of what’s owed for each order. We will fulfill these items from our own warehouse once QML is complete and has the full list. In the meantime, you should still reach out to QML in case an actual mistake may have been made. If they respond that any missing items are due to inventory levels, then you know that you are on the list for us to fulfill.


Retailer Shipping Compensation:

During the Kickstarter, we promised to offset shipping with merchandise. Because of the shortages, we stalled to ensure individual backer orders could fill first. We have a plan to fulfill, which leads to a very special announcement made right here first!

We are launching a new website and online store within the next couple of months:

Functionality is in final review and approvals, bug fixes are being worked on, and imagery is being updated. More information will be released as we get closer to launch.

The new site will finally allow for Direct-to-Retail purchases! So once we launch, we will be uploading your retail pledge shipping costs as credits to the webstore so you can order whatever you like! We’ll keep you posted as we get closer.

Vehicles in Salvage Boxes:
Early on in shipping, our wonderful backers brought to our attention that some of the Mercenaries Salvage Boxes came with Vehicles instead of ‘Mechs, which was a production error. We instructed QML to send 1 extra Salvage Box to all backers. Anyone who was already sent that hadn’t yet received Art of War or the Cookbook would be receiving their extra Salvage Box with those shipments. Over the holidays, we prepared an order with our warehouse to send out the remaining Salvage Box to any backer still owed one. Additionally, if anyone got multiples of their salvage boxes and reported to either tbuckner@catalystgamelabs.com, store@catalystgamelabs.com or Kickstarter messages, these have been added to the order as well. If you have questions, please include “Mercenaries - Salvage Box Vehicle” in your title line to help expedite this process.

Overage Credits in Backerkit:
Some of you still have outstanding credit in Backerkit. We’ve run a report, and a lot of the people with credits still haven’t completed their surveys or paid shipping. Tyler has been working on these and has been able to get some of the legitimate credits refunded, but we’re still working through the list. Please note that if you paid with Paypal, we will need your paypal email to be able to issue the refund. Please email tbuckner@catalystgamelabs.com if you have gotten your shipment and still have outstanding credit in Backerkit. Please include “Mercenaries - Store Credit” in your title line to help expedite this process.


Reminders:

Store Credits

If you requested store credit to offset some of your shipping fees, our list has now been fully processed. Check your Catalyst Store account at store.catalystgamelabs.com to double check your credit. If you believe you’ve been missed, please email store@catalystgamelabs.com.

Damaged or Missing Items

If your items were damaged in transit or you believe you are missing any items or packages, please contact QML directly as they will be handling the replacements at the end of fulfillment. Here is the link: https://www.qmlogistics.com/contactUs.html

Defective Items

If an item in your shipment was defective in some way, such as a manufacturing error, please contact us at tbuckner@catalystgamelabs.com and include a photo of the defective product in your first email.

Retail Street Dates:

We have continued to receive occasional reports regarding retailers in unfulfilled regions releasing Kickstarter products prior to established street-dates. As these cases are identified, we are taking appropriate action as necessary.

Wave 1: Orders finalized and shipping paid on or before May 17th, 2024

Wave 2: Orders finalized and shipping paid between May 17th, 2024 and August 12th, 2024

Wave 3: Orders finalized and shipping paid between August 12th, 2024 and October 22nd 2024

Wave 4: Orders finalized and shipping paid between October 22nd, 2024 or later

Lorcan Nagle wrote:Episode 40



21st January 2024
Guest: RJ Thomas, Shadowrun Line Developer

News
-January 22nd releases:
-(Kickstarter-funded products are US-only)
--Mercenaries Box set
--Forcepack: Clan Direct Fire Star
--Forcepack: Rifle and Command Lances
--Forcepack: Second Star League
--Map-scale Dropships
--Salvage Box: Battlefield support
--Salvage Box: Mercenaries
-Audiobooks
--Hour of the Wolf is available on Audible now
-Guest next week is Bryan Young to talk about Voidbreaker


Q&A
-When will the rest of the Gencon 2024 interviews be up? They’re coming out slower than Rem would like. One of the support people does the editing and he’s been prioritising dealing with Mercs issues.
-When will the Third Star League pack be out? As of right now, June 15th, but that might change
-Any update on reprinting/restocking Hot Spots: Hinterlands? They ordered as many copies as normal for a first print run and it sold out in days. They’ve re-ordered and rushed shipping on a new print run.
-Any more updates on the audiobooks? They’re hoping for six BattleTech releases and four to five Shadowrun, but that’s subject to change

 Miguelsan wrote:
I'm Asia "wave 1" where is my pledge?

Cue in X files music. Rem: "We send it to the hub, Asia is finished."

M.

 JoshInJapan wrote:

 Miguelsan wrote:
I'm Asia "wave 1" where is my pledge?

Cue in X files music. Rem: "We send it to the hub, Asia is finished."

M.

Mine arrived on Friday (24 January). I haven't had time to open it yet, though.

Update #116 wrote:EU Stock has arrived at Hub


Hey there Backers!

Here’s the update for this week:

US/CAN/RoW w/o hubs: QML has a handful of orders remaining and will then send remaining merch back to our warehouse and we will fulfill any Wave 4 or beyond backers internally.

UK: UK Wave 1 and 2 are largely finished. They’ll be checking stock and starting on Wave 3 soon. Exclusivity is 1 week in, though we will still wait on street dates for all of Europe until EU fulfillment is complete and their exclusivity period ends.

EU: The shipment has reached the Hub and is getting checked in!


AUS: QML expects to get the fulfillment timeline from the Hub this week, and will communicate with us as soon as they know. We’ll send out another update if we get any news.


Asia: Wave 3 should begin after Chinese New Year.

Other Updates: Some of these projects haven’t changed, so the update is the same from last week and copied here. Some of them have taken the next step forward, so double check the details.

Missing Items: For US/CAN and RoW without Hubs. As QML wraps up remaining shipping, they’ve identified additional items that are short. We’ve asked QML to fulfill what they have, then send us a list of what’s owed for each order. We will fulfill these items from our own warehouse once QML is complete and has the full list. In the meantime, you should still reach out to QML in case an actual mistake may have been made. If they respond that any missing items are due to inventory levels, then you know that you are on the list for us to fulfill.


Retailer Shipping Compensation:

During the Kickstarter, we promised to offset shipping with merchandise. Because of the shortages, we stalled to ensure individual backer orders could fill first. We have a plan to fulfill, which leads to a very special announcement made right here first!

We are launching a new website and online store within the next couple of months:

Functionality is in final review and approvals, bug fixes are being worked on, and imagery is being updated. More information will be released as we get closer to launch.

The new site will finally allow for Direct-to-Retail purchases! So once we launch, we will be uploading your retail pledge shipping costs as credits to the webstore so you can order whatever you like! We’ll keep you posted as we get closer.

Vehicles in Salvage Boxes:
Early on in shipping, our wonderful backers brought to our attention that some of the Mercenaries Salvage Boxes came with Vehicles instead of ‘Mechs, which was a production error. We instructed QML to send 1 extra Salvage Box to all backers. Anyone who was already sent that hadn’t yet received Art of War or the Cookbook would be receiving their extra Salvage Box with those shipments. Over the holidays, we prepared an order with our warehouse to send out the remaining Salvage Box to any backer still owed one. Additionally, if anyone got multiples of their salvage boxes and reported to either tbuckner@catalystgamelabs.com, store@catalystgamelabs.com or Kickstarter messages, these have been added to the order as well. If you have questions, please include “Mercenaries - Salvage Box Vehicle” in your title line to help expedite this process.

Overage Credits in Backerkit:
Some of you still have outstanding credit in Backerkit. We’ve run a report, and a lot of the people with credits still haven’t completed their surveys or paid shipping. Tyler has been working on these and has been able to get some of the legitimate credits refunded, but we’re still working through the list. Please note that if you paid with Paypal, we will need your paypal email to be able to issue the refund. Please email tbuckner@catalystgamelabs.com if you have gotten your shipment and still have outstanding credit in Backerkit. Please include “Mercenaries - Store Credit” in your title line to help expedite this process.


Reminders:

Store Credits

If you requested store credit to offset some of your shipping fees, our list has now been fully processed. Check your Catalyst Store account at store.catalystgamelabs.com to double check your credit. If you believe you’ve been missed, please email store@catalystgamelabs.com.

Damaged Items

If your items were damaged in transit, please contact QML directly as they will be handling the replacements at the end of fulfillment. Here is the link: https://www.qmlogistics.com/contactUs.html

Defective Items

If an item in your shipment was defective in some way, such as a manufacturing error, please contact us at tbuckner@catalystgamelabs.com and include a photo of the defective product in your first email.

Retail Street Dates: We have continued to receive occasional reports regarding retailers in unfulfilled regions releasing Kickstarter products prior to established street-dates. As these cases are identified, we are taking appropriate action as necessary.

Wave 1: Orders finalized and shipping paid on or before May 17th, 2024

Wave 2: Orders finalized and shipping paid between May 17th, 2024 and August 12th, 2024

Wave 3: Orders finalized and shipping paid between August 12th, 2024 and October 22nd 2024

Wave 4: Orders finalized and shipping paid between October 22nd, 2024 or later

Lorcan Nagle wrote:Episode 41



28th January 2024
Guest: Bryan Young, author of Voidbreaker

News
-The Black Remnant Forcepack is live on the CGL webstore
--The lance is based on the player characters in the Penny Arcade BattleTech livestream game
-Release schedule (Kickstarter products US and Canada-only for now)
--February 5th
---Map Pack: Savannah
---Inner Sphere Recon lance
---Clan Cavalry Star
---Battlefield Support: Battle and fire lance
---Battle mat: City HPG heleport
--February 19th
---Inner Sphere Security lance
---House Davion Heavy Battle Lance
---Sun-Tsu’s Art of War, annotated by Jamie Wolf
-Guest next week is Brent Evans, CGL art director, and he has big news!

Discussion
-Bryan felt Without Question, the most recent novel about Jiyi Chistu’s Jade Falcons went really well
--He’s hoping to tell more stories around the Falcons in the Hinterlands
--Bryan talked about how people have come up to him at cons and events and sworn at him because they like the Falcons now.
-Bryan completed Voidbreaker before Without Question came out, and he’s written quite a few new stories since then
-Voidbreaker is a mission impossible/bond-esque spy thriller. The main character is Sea Fox Star Colonel Kendra Rodruigez, tasked with finding Tucker Harwell and getting him to repair the HPG network, while he’s being hunted by other factions
-Bryan is a big fan of spy thrillers from youth and he wanted to bring some of that energy to BattleTech.
-He said it was the most fun he had writing BattleTech to date
-He wrote both of the free 2024 Christmas short stories in a very short timeframe
-The BattleTech one featured Katie Ferraro trying to find presents for the Fox Patrol towards the end of Lone Wolf and Fox
-The first few years he was writing for BattleTech and Shadowrun, he felt a deep fear that he was going to screw things up, that the universes were too big and he was going to go off the rails. But now he’s more familiar with them he knows where the rails are and how to work within them and around them
-Bryan is hoping to write more spy stories in the BattleTech universe but it depends on sales and critical reception of Voidbreaker. The book ends with a degree of a team being formed that could go on other adventures.
-Bryan’s been doing events in and around his home state of Utah. He liaised with a demo agent near him to do a BattleTech game based on a big mech scene towards the end of the book at a launch party, and CGL are intending to put this scenario up as a free download. It takes place on the big HPG map from Map Pack: Cities
-Bryan will be making the following appearances to promote the book
--2nd weekend of February: store appearances in Utah
--3rd weekend of February: GenghisCon in Colorado
---There’s a group of Fox Patrol fans running games based on the stories at the con and Bryan is planning to play in them
--March: Saltcon in Utah
--March: Indianapolis Comiccon
---He’ll be doing a BattleTech panel
--He’s 50/50 on Adepticon
--He’ll be at Gencon and Dragoncon
--He’ll also be at a film festival in New York in March with his new short film, and Star Wars Celebration in Japan in April
-Next up is a collection of Lone Wolf and Fox, the Fox Patrol serial from Shrapnel 13-16, plus a new story showing the battle of Sudeten in Without Question from their perspective
-When he first approached CGL to write he wanted to work on Shadowrun, but there wasn’t availability at the time, and John offered him BattleTech instead. He’s glad to get to write for both now.


Q&A
-How long is CGL going to make us wait for Bryan’s next book? That’s a Jon Helfers question. He’s written ahead a lot to help the release schedule to try and help smooth out the release schedule and get things coming out more regularly.
-How many works has he submitted that are yet to be published? A lot. He and Stackpole have turned in the first script for the graphic novel, he’s turned in a book, a novella, a few short stories
-Do you ever feel weird referring to yourself in the third person in the promo videos? Yes, but he kinda puts himself into a radio announcer mode when he’s working on them and he’s concentrating more on the pronunciation and stressing words so it’s a bit abstract
-A viewer talked about how much he enjoyed the Bazaar scene. Bryan talked a bit about how he, Ray and Josh Perian who worked out Tucker’s movement across the Inner Sphere in the story and how it ties into IKEO, and as he did this he imagined the Indiana Jones line moving across the map motif, and then he felt he needed a scene in a Bazaar like in Raiders of the Lost Ark
-In IKEO there’s a scene where Tucker makes a call to arms on Terra, but it feels out of character, wlll we see how and why this happened? There are plans to tell that story, but no word on when and where it’ll happen
-Do we know who from CGL will be at Adepticon? Not sure yet. The Directors (Loren, Randall etc) probably, Rem won’t, unsure about others.
Will there be a restock of the Shadowrun 1st edition reprint? There are copies still in the warehouse, email store@catalystgamelabs.com if you have questions about it.
-Is there a retail date for Black Remnant? Once it’s on the CGL store it should be released to retail as well, but because this was a sudden drop Rem needs to follow up. Unsure if it’s on the February docket. Rem will follow-up
-What will retail purchasers if they get a vehicle in a mercs salvage box sold at retail? Rem will follow-up.
-Any update on the Wars of Reaving novels? Bryan said that Jason Hansa , Craig Reed and Phil Lee have said it’s the hardest thing they’ve ever worked on in terms of working around the established events, but he thinks it sounds rad
-Any idea what happens to people who’ve paid for portraits with the Clan Invasion canon character, the questionnaire didn’t mention this? The questionnaire is the first step in sorting everything out, so they can cross-reference with the list of people who’ve already got a character and then move forward. They’ll be in touch with everyone with next steps.

Hey there backers,

Popping in after getting some news from QML today to keep you posted. EU fulfillment is expected to start on February 10th!

Hey backers!

Just got another update from QML. Australian address verifications have begun, and orders should start shipping early next week!

Have a great weekend!

Lorcan Nagle wrote:Episode 42



4th February 2025
Guest: Brent Evans, CGL art director

News
-BattleTech new releases (Kickstarter products US-only for now)
--February 5th
---Map Pack: Savannah
---Inner Sphere Recon Lance
---Clan Cavalry Star
---Battlefield Support Battle and Fire Lances
---Battlemat Urban: HPG Heliport
--February 19th
---Inner Sphere Security Lance
---Davion Heavy Battle Lance
---Sun-Tzu's Art of War translated by Jamie Wolf
-Loren has been issuing challenges to the directors over the last while. The January challenge was to play BattleTech, Shadowrun, or a CGL board game. Rem decided to level up and play all three with the community. The February challenge was to read a short story, a novella and a novel from a CGL property and Rem is levelling up as well. Tomorrow (February 4th), she’ll be doing a live-read of Leviathans: A Monster In The Sky by Stephen Mohan on the CGL YouTube, then a BattleTech story next week and something Shadowrun after that.
-Next week’s guest is probably Michael Stackpole


Discussion
-Brent is stepping down as art director of CGL!
-As CGl has grown he had to train in Ian King and Marco Mazzoni as shadowrun and BattleTech art directors while Brent took over a more general position
-Brian Weissman, of Magic the Gathering and Grinding Gear games headhunted Brent for a new computer game startup.
-A new art director will take over for board games general RPGs and tabletop games, with Ian and Marco retaining their roles
-Brent described his job as largely finding talented fans, getting them up to speed with how CGL do things and getting them work.
-Brent talked about how he worked hard to convince CGL to go to full colour, trying to do more full-figure character portraits, incorporating 3D assets. He described it as playing Blackjack and somehow winning all the time.
-It’ll be a good while before all the products Brent worked on will be out of the pipeline, and he’s looking forward to when CGL do some promotional reveals for products he’s not going to be aware of due to production being anywhere from 6-18 months ahead of what the public sees.
-Brent’s been working in illustration for a long time, and it’s very much been more about what engages him as opposed to money in more recent years. He talked about how he could be asked to illustrate a chair, but regardless of how much effort he’d be asked to put in he’d be bored to death. People have tried to recruit him over the years, but nothing was as exciting to him as BattleTech and Shadowrun. But Brian Weissman’s project really got him and he really wants to bring it to life
-Loren and Randall’s reaction was to congratulate him and be excited for him.
-He worked out a plan on how to replace him and keep CGLs creative processes on track. As part of that, he’s going to continue to do some work for CGL as an advisor, and continue to direct the current mapsheet team.
-He’s considered submitting illustrations for CGL again
-Brent was asked what he was most proud of, and he talked a lot about stuff that excited him, including the Shadowrun 5th edition cover and the Elven Blood cover. For BattleTech he talked about how he’d been asked to crank out images on a tight deadline and they didn’t need a lot of detail, only to walk into Gencon and see them on big banners and go nooooooo. So he loves the level of detail they get into the current work and how great they look blown up on big banners. The six-panel-wide Eridani Light Horse art is a major example. They had to get a special exemption to hang the banner of that at GenCon because it created fire safety issues because of how it affected the airflow, and that was after they cut 15 feet off it. The artist who made the map of Seattle for Shadowrun recently went to amazing detail similarly to the point of doing wireframes of all the buildings. When he realised all the detail, Brent doubled the artist’s rate and told him to go wild.
Brent loves the dedication of the fans, he talked about a guy who was deployed to the Middle East, took a 4-day pass to get to Gencon just to play in Masters and Minions. He was only at the con for about 6 hours, the rest of the time was getting to and from. He also remembered a chunk of the German fans who came over from GenCon and had a chat where they came away feeling he was doing right by BattleTech.

Q&A
-What are Brent’s favourite moments of success in his time in CGL? He remembers the time he was art director and lead developer of BattleTech and they were written into a corner and he worked hard to get through that to get them to a point where the sky was the limit.
-When will the Mercs box be released to retail in the UK? Stores who backed at Company Store will have it in stock. It won’t be on general release until after EU fulfillment is done.
-Will the Fanroll dice be available outside of the Kickstarter? Not to general retail, but they should be on the webstore. Rem is looking to get a release schedule for webstore stuff like they have for retail.
-BattleTech carry case is showing as out of stock/coming soon for Canadian stores and distributors. Rem has now sent this up the chain.
-Status on the next print run of Hot Spots: Hinterlands, will it incorporate errata? It’s shipping now, might not be on a boat yet. It’s an identical reprint, there was no time to do errata. They ordered what they thought would last 18 months and it sold out in a week.
-Any update on what will happen if you get a Mech salvage box with a vehicle in it at retail? Still no decision made, some people are still out of communication since last week.
-Any updates on MUL 2? Not since Josh was on.
-What is Brent’s favourite piece of art that someone else created? He got into BattleTech via MechWarrior 3 and he’s loved the Bushwacker ever since. Germán Varona Galindo, an artist based out of Colombia who somehow got a copy of the rules as a kid, made his own hex maps and carved mechs out of wood to play with, did a Bushwacker piece as his test, that was used as the cover of Shrapnel 13 and he loves it.
-Favourite ’Mech redesign? Probably the Sentinel

Lorcan Nagle wrote:Episode 43



11th February 2025
Guest: Michael A Stackpole. Who literally needs no introduction

News
-New releases
--BattleTech
---Out now
----Map Pack: Savannah
----Inner Sphere Recon Lance
----Clan Cavalry Star
----Battlefield Support Battle and Fire Lances
----Battlemat Urban: HPG Heliport
---Feb 19th
----Inner Sphere security Lance
----Davion Heavy Lance
----The Art of War translated by Jaime Wolf
-CGL will be at GAMA at the end of February. Rem will be on a panel
-There will likely be no episode on the 25th as Rem will be at GAMA

Discussion
-Mike’s most recent fiction release is Heir Apparent, the first of four long novellas he wrote for Harebrained Schemes as Kickstarter rewards for their BattleTech computer game.
-A dozen people bought the rights to be included as characters and he spent about an hour with each of the backers to find out what they’d like to see. He asked if they were OK with dying and some were, some less so.
-The story begins in the Aurigan Reach, then ventures into the Inner Sphere and back out.
It’s set in and around 3005, which was the earliest set BattleTech work he’s done. He includes Quintus Allard as a younger man, alludes to his sons Dan and Justin as in it.
-The cover art is new, but it hews close to HBS’s art for their edition
-The series is likely to be released one per quarter
-In terms of his own books, Mike recommends the Warrior or Blood of Kerensky Trilogy, depending on which era sounds more interesting.
-His favourite book that probably isn’t newbie-friendly is Assumption of Risk, and how it concludes some arcs set up in Blood of Kerensky.
-Why write for BattleTech? He started in the gaming industry and knew the FASA guys well enough to chat to, and when they started publishing fiction he offered his services as an author while chatting at Origins. They were a bit skeptical but he sent a sample and they liked it and gave him a shot. Because it was his start as a novelist he’ll always make time for BattleTech.
-As a game designer, he noted his work on the Wasteland and Bard’s Tale 3, some Star Trek games Interplay brought out, Neuromancer. Tabletop-wise he mentioned Tunnels and Trolls, the Renegade Legion RPG, other work for FASA, TSR and many others.
-He got into Star Wars because he had a two-book deal with Bantam for some fantasy novels. They had a license with Lucasfilm for some Star Wars novels, but Lucas wouldn’t sell them any more books, but offered them an X-wing license. They asked him what he thought of doing a game tie-in series because he worked in computer games, and he was skeptical until they said it was a Star Wars game. He was tapped to write the books because he was fast, reliable and could do military SF.
-Around the time he signed the deal, he was out at dinner with a friend and they were discussing how daunting it was. And a kid at the next table overheard them, came over and put a piece of paper in front of him, saying “I don’t know who you are, but if you’re involved in Star Wars I’d like your autograph”
-For working in established properties, his favourites are BattleTech and Star Wars, but he loves writing licensed work overall because he enjoys playing in those worlds.
-He listed out a lot of the different properties he’s worked on, as well as his own series. He’s published about 70 books so far.
-For Shadowrun, he writes the Wolf and Raven stories. He learned about Shadowrun in the same meeting he learned about Renegade Legion and was tapped to design the RPG. He wrote the first Wolf and Raven story in a day and handed it to Jordan who passed it on to the design team.
-He’s got new Wolf and Raven stories in Augment and in a recent anthology.

Q&A
-Any stories from Wasteland? It’s a classic CRPG. Neither he nor the programmer had approached a game like this and they didn’t know what they could do. They spent a lot of time on the phone figuring out what could happen as a result of decisions and choices. Like if they put in a locked door they’d keep adding ways that it could be opened, like picking it, finding the key, blowing it up and so on.
-What was his favourite character to write/character he’d most like to write? Quarrel Hamilton from the Death Kangaroos right now. Victor and Kai back in the day.
-What is the one thing he’s most proud of adding to BattleTech? At the risk of sounding egotistical there’s so much he’s added he can’t pick one thing. He never expected the Kell Hounds to get so big and popular.
-What’s his favourite part of the Kell Hounds? That they’re still going strong, and everything Morgan Kell went through and his character development.
-Will the Art of War be available at retail? Yes
-Will the novellas be a single PoD volume or separate? Probably a compilation.
-Any word of Mercs EU shipment? Shipping was due to start today, they’re waiting for confirmation form QML. There will be a backer update today
-When will we get the full Alaric book that was teased? (meaning the Hungry like the Wolf April Fool’s day joke): You just gotta make it worth his time
-Who are his favourite authors? He name dropped Roger Zelazny, Fred Saberhagen, Dennis McKiernan, Mick Heron, Stephen King. He loves writers who’s work inspires him to do more.
-What were the reasonings behind making the Wolves the protagonist Clan? At the time the Clans were just names, most of which he came up with, and he had an affinity towards Wolves. It’s easy to look back at the setting now and saying this was the plan, but it just developed organically. If it was another author it might have been the Falcons or Bears or whatever Clan they liked the sound of.
-What About Den of Wolves? Mike is waiting on copy from Loren so he can finish doing his part. Loren is, of course very busy so Mike has not been pushing as hard as he might.
-What cons will Mike be attending? Adepticon, A small show in Phoenix on February 27th, Soonercon in Oklahoma and FanFusion in Phoenix in June, GenCon and Dragoncon
-Is there a BattleTech subject he wants to write about? More Death Kangaroos! He’s in a unique position where if he wants to do a story John will find a slot for him, he’s got a lot of assignments stacked up so he’s more likely to build something into one of those.
-Why do some clans have two word names, but the Wolves and a couple of others one word? In a lot of cases an animal-only name didn’t quite work, like Falcons on its own is meh, but Jade Falcons works better.
-How much of the X-wing games did Mike play before writing the novels? All of it. He even had a pre-release copy of TIE Fighter, and burned through at least three joysticks playing them to death.
-Can you bring back Clan Wolverine as ilClan? They are dead, they are dead, they are dead, they are dead.

Lorcan Nagle wrote:Episode 44



11th February 2025
Guests: Christina York, author of Hungry Like The Wolf and Jennifer Brozek, editor on the novel.

News:
-New releases
--19th February
---Battletech (Kickstarter items US-only)
----Inner Sphere Security Lance
----Sun-Tsu’s Art of War
----House Davion Heavy Battle Lance
---Hungry like the Wolf came out on Valentine’s Day, surprise!
---March
----Shadowrun: Deadly Arts
---Augment came out last week
-A BattleTech Kickstarter update will be out later today
-Shadowrun: Takedown is still in manufacturing
-Leviathans
--Still on the boat to the US
--Randall just got about 50 boxes of production samples, so expect photos soon
-Runefire is still moving forward
-Frostpunk is launching in a month, launching the same day as 11-bit’s fiction and art anthology. Each kickstarter has an early bird award to enhance the other one
-Voltron pledge manager is being tested right now.
-Fanroll, who make a lot of CGL swag have just launched their Luxury Catan upgrades kickstarter. It funded in an hour!
-Next week is GAMA, so no Tuesday Newsday.


Discussion:
-Hungry Like the Wolf started as a poll on big Red 40-tech’s youTube where his fans voted to have art of Alaric Ward shirtless commissioned, and it ballooned from there
-Loren approached Christina and asked her if she wanted to write a romance novel with giant battling robots, and she couldn’t stop laughing long enough to say no
-John Helfers, in a quest to make Jennifer’s life more complex came to her to edit the book because she’s edited traditional romance stories before. She insisted that she’d edit it on some caveats like it had to hew to traditional romance tropes, and it couldn’t be a tragedy
-Why? Why not? Because there’s interest, because it might introduce people outside the milSF sphere to BattleTech, because the BattleTech fans are well-rounded and want to experience more of the universe.
-While it sounds like a joke, this is an actual BattleTech book. It wouldn’t stand without the ilClan’s conflict with the Terrans and ’Mech battles.
-The core characters were likened to Romeo and Juliet in that they’re from warring cultures, and that’s vital to the story
-Bryan Young assisted with the combat scenes as Christina didn’t know the universe well enough to do them justice.
-This is a story of leaders coming together to make the situation better for both sides
-The story is a serious relationship with a Spheroid woman, which is way outside Alaric’s sphere of influence, with different expectations on what comes out of the relationship. Things like the concept of commitment and the family unit are very alien to Alaric and that’s important.
-Christina’s first professional short story was sold to the first Star Trek: Strange New Worlds anthology in 97/98. She’s written in a lot of different worlds, for example she heard about a call-out for Alias fiction without having seen any of the show, she put her name forward and when they asked her to put in a proposal she dashed out to rent all the episodes she could to do a proposal, it was accepted and she got to write two novels in the end
-Christina’s husband Steven wrote a couple of mechWarrior novels so they had some research material, and John sent on a stack of novels with crib notes to mark where Alaric was in them
-Christina has a long history of writing romance novels and short fiction. She’s been working on a series of cosy mystery novels called the Haunted Souvenir Shop. Originally published by Berkley, she’s been reissuing them herself in anthologies. Set in North Florida, the lead character indeed owns a haunted souvenir shop, and a parrot who’s the shop’s ghost’s spokesman.
-Jennifer thinks she’s written more romance in her BattleTech and Shadowrun fiction than in her other stories. She said when Jason Schemtzer approached her to write BattleTech she said “I don’t write ’Mechs and I don’t write romance”, and that hasn’t lasted.
-Jennifer’s had very good feedback on her BattleTech romance arcs, but she noted that she got a lot of criticism for the opening chapter of Makeda Red being on a party train, someone said it was “like literotica”
-Some people have said that Hungry Like the Wolf has made Alaric more likeable to them
-Will there be more BattleTech romance? If the market supports it. At least one author has approached Jennifer about it and Christina is down for more.
-Jennifer talked about how nobody wanted to be the butt of the joke, and even though the book started as an April Fool’s joke they wanted this to be a serious take on the subject so it wouldn’t just be making fun of BattleTech or Romance.
-Christina noted that the idea seemed hysterical, she couldn’t just laugh it off and throw something together. She knew she had to treat the setting with respect
-Jennifer mentioned a review of a D&D book called Kinks and Cantrips she’d just watched, and how it’s a really good book that adds a lot to the world while being outside the usual RPG wheelhouse.
-Jennifer called out that there are no consent issues in the book.

Q&A
-When is the physical copy out? It’s on Amazon PoD now.
-When will the BattleTech 40th Anniversary hoodie restock? Unsure, Rem has asked Talon for an update
-When will the restock for Hinterlands be in stock? They’re still on the boat, the looming tariffs mean that a lot of material has been shipped and that has led to delays.
-Any ETA for Alpha Strike Commander’s edition? Most of the core books are either still at QML pending the end of Kickstarter fulfillment or are already on the way back to PSI
-Any update on the 3rd Star League strike team release? Tentatively down for June 15th
-When is the estimated date for Leviathans fulfillment? It may well be in the jam. They’re still hoping to begin fulfillment in March but it all depends on arrival in the warehouse.
-For those due a salvage box, will there be a tracking number? Rem’s not 100% sure, PSI usually sends out a tracking number. The order has been submitted to PSI, who came back saying they need approval to break apart some POS displays to get enough salvage boxes for everyone
-Is there some sort of delay on non-Kickstarter shipping? Some US distributors show the 3rd Star League forcepack as coming out in June, but Amazon says May. PSI is meant to set release dates but there are a number of issues with distribution right now, from the aforementioned shipping traffic jam, Alliance's financial issues and so on, so a lot of things are in flux
-Can we get an estimate on the quantity and quality of the bodices ripped? No bodices are ripped, but there is a fall and catch and it does get hot in the cockpit… They do have to fade to black though
-Is Hungry Like the Wolf included in the Big Kappa 2-years of stuff? Yes
-Will the Mercs record sheets be put up online? They’ll be included in MUL 2
-When will Steven York write another BattleTech novel? Or Christina? She’d love to write another one but hasn’t been asked. And for anyone who remembers Steven’s books: Thank you!
-Now that we’ve had romance, can we expect other genre crossover like Westerns or horror? There’s been a bit, like one of Loren’s novels (probably Double Blind) had horseback soldiers, there’s some genre crossover in the Legacy Anthology, and always potential for more.

Anthony Scroggins wrote:Here you can see the gantry in the deployed position. If all goes well that will hinge up and down, along with the side doors of the gantry also moving (just not the little 4 end sections). I'm looking forward to (or dreading) to see how this one goes in product and how far we can push our vee sculpts, and the possibilities of miniatures articulation.

Update #124 wrote:Hey there Backers!

Here’s the update for this week:

US/CAN/RoW w/o hubs: Wave 3 is complete. They are doing some shipments to replace missing products/packages or damages. We have their inventory report of shortages they need us to fulfill. QML and CGL are currently coordinating to ship remaining inventory to us and we can begin Wave 4.

UK: Wave 3 is complete, except for a few shortages. We’ll be air-shipping those as soon as we’ve reviewed their shortage list (expected this week). Exclusivity has ended, though we will still wait on street dates for all of Europe until EU fulfillment is complete and their exclusivity period ends.


EU: Wave 1 and 2 are about 48% complete. It will start to slow down as they take their time with larger orders to ensure accuracy.


AUS: About 43% complete.


Asia: Wave 3 is complete and awaiting pickup.



Other Updates: Some of these projects haven’t changed, so the update is the same from last week and copied here. Some of them have taken the next step forward, so double check the details.

Missing Items: For US/CAN and RoW without Hubs. As QML wraps up remaining shipping, they’ve identified additional items that are short. We’ve asked QML to fulfill what they have, then send us a list of what’s owed for each order. We will fulfill these items from our own warehouse once QML is complete and has the full list. In the meantime, you should still reach out to QML in case an actual mistake may have been made. If they respond that any missing items are due to inventory levels, then you know that you are on the list for us to fulfill.


Retailer Shipping Compensation:

During the Kickstarter, we promised to offset shipping with merchandise. Because of the shortages, we stalled to ensure individual backer orders could fill first. We have a plan to fulfill, which leads to a very special announcement made right here first!

We are launching a new website and online store within the next month or so.

Functionality is in final review and approvals, bug fixes are being worked on, and imagery is being updated. More information will be released as we get closer to launch.

The new site will finally allow for Direct-to-Retail purchases! So once we launch, we will be uploading your retail pledge shipping costs as credits to the webstore so you can order whatever you like! We’ll keep you posted as we get closer.

Vehicles in Salvage Boxes:

Update: If you get a vehicle in your Mercenaries Salvage Box from your FLGS, return it to the store for a replacement and the store can report to us for a replacement.

Early on in shipping, our wonderful backers brought to our attention that some of the Mercenaries Salvage Boxes came with Vehicles instead of ‘Mechs, which was a production error. We instructed QML to send 1 extra Salvage Box to all backers. Anyone who was already sent that hadn’t yet received Art of War or the Cookbook would be receiving their extra Salvage Box with those shipments. All known reships have been completed. Please report anything new to tbuckner@catalystgamelabs.com, store@catalystgamelabs.com or Kickstarter messages. If you have questions, please include “Mercenaries - Salvage Box Vehicle” in your title line to help expedite this process.

Overage Credits in Backerkit:
Some of you still have outstanding credit in Backerkit. We’ve run a report, and a lot of the people with credits still haven’t completed their surveys or paid shipping. Tyler has been working on these and has been able to get most of the legitimate credits refunded. Please note that if you paid with Paypal, we will need your paypal email to be able to issue the refund. Please email tbuckner@catalystgamelabs.com if you have gotten your shipment and still have outstanding credit in Backerkit. Please include “Mercenaries - Store Credit” in your title line to help expedite this process.


Reminders:

Store Credits

If you requested store credit to offset some of your shipping fees, our list has now been fully processed. Check your Catalyst Store account at store.catalystgamelabs.com to double check your credit. If you believe you’ve been missed, please email store@catalystgamelabs.com.

Damaged Items

If your items were damaged in transit, please contact QML directly as they will be handling the replacements at the end of fulfillment. Here is the link: https://www.qmlogistics.com/contactUs.html

Defective Items

If an item in your shipment was defective in some way, such as a manufacturing error, please contact us at tbuckner@catalystgamelabs.com and include a photo of the defective product in your first email. We will be replacing these once we have all inventory back from QML.

Retail Street Dates: We have continued to receive occasional reports regarding retailers in unfulfilled regions releasing Kickstarter products prior to established street-dates. As these cases are identified, we are taking appropriate action as necessary.

Wave 1: Orders finalized and shipping paid on or before May 17th, 2024

Wave 2: Orders finalized and shipping paid between May 17th, 2024 and August 12th, 2024

Wave 3: Orders finalized and shipping paid between August 12th, 2024 and October 22nd 2024

Wave 4: Orders finalized and shipping paid between October 22nd, 2024 or later

Catalyst Game Labs wrote:Like many of you, the Catalyst Game Labs team has been watching recent economic developments. We have been hard at work developing strategies that would make our position more resilient to the rapidly changing world trade dynamics that we have been seeing.

Like much of the tabletop gaming industry, Catalyst gets hit especially hard by trade tariffs. Our industry is inherently international in nature. We are lucky that we have been able to be flexible with pricing in the past decade. However recent changes with the market have shown us that our flexibility was not quite prepared for a change of this magnitude.

With the current level of economic uncertainty, we have to make some tough decisions. In the next 60 days we will be releasing a comprehensive update for this process, including some unfortunately necessary price adjustments. These price adjustments will be applied to new products and product reprints that are directly affected by tariffs. As we adjust to this new situation, we will likely expand this policy across our entire product line in order to average out increases. We are working hard to ensure that we can keep or even improve our value contribution to you and your game tables. We have prided ourselves on maintaining our relationship with you and your local game stores throughout Catalyst Game Labs’ history and we will hope to continue that trend in the years to come.

The CGL team would like to thank you for sticking with us as we all work through this uncertain future together. We are happy to share our games with all of you and want to see our community grow through a shared love of the IPs and games we steward.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Tabletop gaming operates on incredibly narrow profit margins, the industry will be very highly affected by the tariffs. The "incredible markups" are there because its one of the last remaining industries that (mostly by necessity of how niche it is) still requires third party distributors to act as a middle-men between publishers and retailers.

 TalonZahn wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Tabletop gaming operates on incredibly narrow profit margins, the industry will be very highly affected by the tariffs. The "incredible markups" are there because its one of the last remaining industries that (mostly by necessity of how niche it is) still requires third party distributors to act as a middle-men between publishers and retailers.

Wholesale to Retail markup is, on average, 43% to 47% in the tabletop gaming industry. That's not "incredibly narrow" at all.

It also doesn't require "third party distributors" or companies wouldn't be selling Direct or Direct Only in the case of GW.

In that case the Publisher essentially gets their money twice, once from Publisher to Wholesale and Wholesale to Retail.

Now if you are talking about Walmart, then yes, you have a case as they rely on number of sales so they run 1%-5% over wholesale.

 TalonZahn wrote:
You can buy almost every major game out there directly from the Publisher; Infinity, Mantic, Bolt Action, MCP, anything Star Wars, CMON, Para Bellum, Battlefront, etc...

Direct from Publisher is not some rare GW case..

 TalonZahn wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Tabletop gaming operates on incredibly narrow profit margins, the industry will be very highly affected by the tariffs. The "incredible markups" are there because its one of the last remaining industries that (mostly by necessity of how niche it is) still requires third party distributors to act as a middle-men between publishers and retailers.

Wholesale to Retail markup is, on average, 43% to 47% in the tabletop gaming industry. That's not "incredibly narrow" at all.

It also doesn't require "third party distributors" or companies wouldn't be selling Direct or Direct Only in the case of GW.

In that case the Publisher essentially gets their money twice, once from Publisher to Wholesale and Wholesale to Retail.

You can buy almost every major game out there directly from the Publisher; Infinity, Mantic, Bolt Action, MCP, anything Star Wars, CMON, Para Bellum, Battlefront, etc...

The internet can carry everything at a discount and an FLGS cannot.

 TalonZahn wrote:
Most FLGS are 1 man, or 2-3, man stores that are staffed by the owners. Most of those are also in strip malls, not high rent top tier locations.

Mantic, Warlord, Para Bellum, Corvus Belli, Battlefront, CMON, etc. all do it and aren't one of your Big Two.

Lorcan Nagle wrote:Episode 45



11th March 2025
Guests: Jason Hardy, RPG division director and RJ Thomas, Shadowrun line developer

News
-New releases
--BattleTech
---March 5th
----Battlefield Support: Assault and Cavalry Lances
----Inner Sphere BattleArmour Platoon
---March 14th
----Shrapnel 20
---March 19th
----Map Pack: City
----Somerset Strikers
----House Davion Cavalry Lance
----Battlemat City HPG Engineering
----Salvage Box: Visigoth
----Legends II might also be out, Rem needs to double check
-Lots of releases to come in April
-Tentative launch date for new website is March 18th


Q&A
-Will Hungry Like the Wolf get a physical edition? It’s available now on PoD
-Will Dice Core be used for any new BattleTech RPG? That’s up to Ray
-Any update on a 40th anniversary Hoodie restock? Unsure if there will be one, email store@catalystgamelabs.com to let them know if you want it
-Any word on restock on Hot Spots: Hinterlands? Unsure. The boat with Flippin Ninja and Parachute Panda is due to arrive in 2 days, but Leviathans is stuck in the congestion of ships trying to leave China before tariffs hit. “A lot of BattleTech” is apparently on the water still.
-Any ETA for restock of Alpha Strike: Commander’s Edition? Any left over stock from QML will be returned to CGL’s warehouse, failing that a reprint is on the water.
-Any word on CGL-sponsored events at LVO? Not yet, GenCon events are a higher priority right now. They’re trying to get the word out over the newsletter, like the most recent one listed Adepticon events.
-Will there be a book signing for Hungry Like the Wolf at Adepticon? Not sure, but Big Red will be there and this came out of a joke in his community...
-Will the website relaunch include the new MUL? It’s just the website, the MULis hopefully close to relaunch too though.
-If we’re waiting on a salvage box, will we get shipping notification? Unsure. Stock of individual boxes ran short, so they had to authorise breaking up of the display units of 9 boxes, and that’s lagging behind.
-Is there some delay in non-Kickstarter items being released, for example Second Star League is listed as a May release in some distributors? There’s a lot of confusion around street dates right now, like some people aren’t being notified before the date, and distributors are going some things (Alliance for instance), so delays are happening.
-The BattleTech 40th Anniversary Mug is not visible on the webstore? It’s out of stock.

BrianDavion wrote:So here's some news I grabbed from discord
-TRO3025 Reprint - 1000 Year Anniversary Edition
Reprint of the original but with modern art.
3125-era appendix from the Republic discussing the oddities/factual issues of the original.
New art for Mechs, vehicles, ASF, DropShips, and LAMs.
Poster Map Set of the Inner Sphere throughout the timeline.
This is pulled from the Universe book with some changes.
-Force Manuals
Mercenaries is in print.
Invading Clans is next.
-Hesperus Box Set
Goes over the history of the Hesperus battles.
Should include minis (not confirmed).
-New BattleTech RPG
In development.
Bridges Destiny and AToW.
Will interface with both and other upcoming products.
-Celestial Force Pack
Pushed to 2026 by Aces.
-Interstellar Players for ilClan era
-Super Secret Thing
To be announced at Adepticon.

Since the cat is out of the bag re. Battletech: Gothic, I finally (after patiently waiting for almost a year) get to show what a treat these are to paint. Enjoy, y'all.
(This is a prototype print, and I'm CSO Wondergecko, to pre-answer some questions.)

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
This stuff isn't in the BT lore is it? Please don't let it.

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
Ugh.
This stuff isn't in the BT lore is it? Please don't let it.

I have an idea... Print the damn rulebooks.
My Alpha Strike Commander's Edition has been on back order since 14th November 2023.

 lurch wrote:
I'm not terribly impressed, its not bad in its self per say but it seems to me that its effort that could have been used to get more canon mechs into plastic sooner

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Looks like a high effort april fools

beast_gts wrote:

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
This stuff isn't in the BT lore is it? Please don't let it.

No - as it says on the box it's "A BattleTech Continuum Game", an alternate realty.

Catalyst Game Labs wrote:Explore BattleTech's first alternate universe with BattleTech: Gothic!

BattleTech: Gothic takes place during The Endless War. When humanity's Golden Age collapsed, humanity entered an unending civil war. But they were not alone, for vicious Abominations of flesh and steel rose up to enter the fray!

#mecha #grimdark #demons #alternateuniverse #AU #BattleTech #miniatures

 NH Gunsmith wrote:
.... who asked for Battletech Gothic lol?

chaos0xomega wrote:
Behold, Battletech Gothic:

Spoiler:

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Theres a trailer (sorry for the xitter link):

https://x.com/Lutra_Gaming/status/1903880821402161374

Catalyst Game Labs wrote:
The Endless War sweeps the Human Sphere and you are mustered to fight. But you need to know the horrors you'll face on the battlefield, be they BattleMechs, Abominations, or the great powers of humanity.

This is the universe primer to learn all about BattleTech: Gothic!

https://bit.ly/BT-Gothic-Signup
https://bit.ly/BT-Gothic-Primer

#mecha #grimdark #demons #alternateuniverse #AU #BattleTech #miniatures

Ray Arrastia wrote:This is a one-off. The continuum line, if we proceed, will be a series of one-off, reimagining the BattleTech in a series of different genres and aesthetics. Two versions in early development are Rockets and RayGuns and Anime (not final title).

 BrookM wrote:
Okay, would love to see the anime take on BattleTech. 🤘🏻

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
Ugh.
This stuff isn't in the BT lore is it? Please don't let it.

I have an idea... Print the damn rulebooks.
My Alpha Strike Commander's Edition has been on back order since 14th November 2023.

 BrookM wrote:
Okay, would love to see the anime take on BattleTech. 🤘🏻

 Shadox wrote:
Hmm, really hoped the emplacements would be more bunker-complex and less turrets. Don't really know if I want these now.

 BrookM wrote:
Okay, would love to see the anime take on BattleTech. 🤘🏻

beast_gts wrote:

Catalyst Game Labs wrote:
The Endless War sweeps the Human Sphere and you are mustered to fight. But you need to know the horrors you'll face on the battlefield, be they BattleMechs, Abominations, or the great powers of humanity.

This is the universe primer to learn all about BattleTech: Gothic!

https://bit.ly/BT-Gothic-Signup
https://bit.ly/BT-Gothic-Primer

#mecha #grimdark #demons #alternateuniverse #AU #BattleTech #miniatures

Catalyst Game Labs wrote:Gothic is the first themed-box release in the BattleTech Continuum, which explores alternate settings.

 parakuribo wrote:

Catalyst Game Labs wrote:Gothic is the first themed-box release in the BattleTech Continuum, which explores alternate settings.

This makes me think we could see an anime themed series should Gothic actually take off. The term anime pretty much means Robotech/Macross themed, so either they somehow get a deal with Big West, they make comepletely original designs, or it blows up in their faces(again).

 em_en_oh_pee wrote:

 BrookM wrote:
Okay, would love to see the anime take on BattleTech. 🤘🏻

We sorta had this way back in the day.

 Vulcan wrote:
Come on, guys, seriously? Am I the only one here old enough to remember how BattleTech got started?

Stinger, Wasp, Phoenix Hawk, Rifleman, Archer, Warhammer, Ostsol, Marauder, all straight out of MACROSS?

BattleTech's whole POINT was to play out Anime giant robot battles on the tabletop, with (what turned out not to be) just enough changed to avoid getting sued.

Lorcan Nagle wrote:Episode 46



25th March 2025
Guest: Picty Szczesniak, new business development lead, 11-bit Studios

News
-BattleTech Gothic
--A “Dark Fantasy” alt-setting
--The first of multiple alternate setting box sets
--More info coming via Adepticon, the newsletter and social media
-New release
--March 5th
---Battlefield Support: Assault and Cavalry
---Inner Sphere BattleArmour Platoon
--March 19th
---Map Pack: City
---Legends II
---Somerset Strikers
---Davion Cavalry Lance
---Battlemat City HPG engineering
---Salvage box: visigoth
--Some new premium mechs are up too
-Adepticon stream schedule:
--Thursday
---Introduction
---Lunchtable Secrets: BattleTech Gothic with Loren, Randall and Mike Ciaravella
---Actual Play
---Interview with Randall Bills
---Interview with Mike Ciaravella
---Shrapnel roundtable with Phil Lee and guests
---Actual Play
---Submissions Q&A fireside chat
---overflow/gaming hall stream
--Friday
---In the Beginning with Loren, Randall and Mike Stackpole
---Lunchtable secrets: Aces with Mike Ciaravella and Josh Derrickson
---Aces actual play
---Interview with Marco Mazzoni
---Interview with Bryan young
---Art roundtable with Marco Mazzoni and guests
---Actual Play
---Fireside chat/gaming hall stream
--Saturday
---Interview with Tommy Rice, Partha Wars minis game creator
---Lunchtable secrets: The Lok/Partha Wars with Tommy Rice and Randall Bills
---Actual Play
---Interview with Jon Helfers
---Interview with Mike Stackpole
---Fiction Roundtable with John Helfers and Guests
---Actual Play
---Q&A/fireside chat
---Tentative: Painting competition and Urbie Derby
--Sunday
---Secret Announcement with Mike Ciaravella and Tommy Gotfon
---Lunchtable Secrets BattleTech with Mike Ciaravella and Ray Arrastia
---Interview with Phil Lee
---Livestream wrapup with Talon and friends
-New fiction
--Fortunes of War 1 and 2
--A Night at the Lake

Q&A
-Any Aces news? Rem was only at Kerenskykon at the very end, but there’ll be an update at Adepticon, probably Friday
-When will the Kurita forcepacks be released? Ranger lance is set for July right now
-When is The Art of Food hitting retail? Currently set for April 16th
-Will CGL be at DragonCon? They don’t think so, they have to pull back on their con presence this year.
-Have the Premium Stormcrow B/TC swapped arms been fixed? They should have been, email store@catalystgamelabs.com if you have an issue
-Any update on Australian Kickstarter shipping? Rem has been travelling and doesn’t have anything yet. She’ll chase with QML and get an update ASAP.
-Any word on restocks, especially Hinterlands? Rem has chased with Talon, update next week.
-When will the 3rd Star League forcepacks go on sale? Strike Team is set for June 15th, Battlegroup is set for August

Lorcan Nagle wrote:Intro/Q&A with Randall, Loren and Mike Ciaravella
Gothic? Yes.
Loren has been watching the news with an amount of glee, he’s glad that people are passionate either way about it
It’s not an April Fool’s joke, it’s real
They’ve been working on it for about two and a half years
They love where their plastic minis manufacturing is at, and they want to push things further in that regards
Loren came up with the idea of doing a product with a different aesthetic, to see what they could do while keeping the main line going.
They kept it a secret because they didn’t know when it would launch
They missed the deadline to have it ready for Adepticon by a few weeks
It should be out before Gencon, hopefully sooner, pending shipping out of China
It did not push any other product downstream or off the table
Any forcepack delays were due to Aces rather than Gothic
Randall ran the project to keep Ray and Aaron’s desks clear
Was Gothic picked to be the first continuum product to capitalise on 40K refugees? Partially, but also the gothic aesthetic is popular in games like 40K and Malifaux and they wanted to play with it.
The three guaranteed Continuum projects are Gothic, a 50s style Rocket and Rayguns one, and an anime inspired one.
They wanna do other genres, like steampunk and solarpunk
Loren talked about how he didn’t like the original king Crab art and model, but it seems he was thinking about the metal mini rather than the new plastic, he forgot it had been done already.
He’s really looking forward to seeing players painting up the minis
Why kickstart mercs and not Gothic? When they kickstarted Clan Invasion, they literally couldn’t do it without the support of the players.They had the capital to do mercs, but kickstarter is a great marketing tool and it catapulted the game into more fame and took in a huge amount of money. They decided to just bring Gothic to market, having the kind of internet discourse we’ve seen for the last few days go on for 18 months would have been a lot though, and might have harmed the game.
The minis are bigger than the standard BattleTech plastics. The hex bases are the same, the scale is the same, they’re just beefier and sometimes taller. This is in part to support the increased detail
Will they do an Abomination forcepack? Maybe. One of the demo team printed out an Abomination large scale so they’re thinking about doing a forcepack
There are two Gothic products planned: The box and then salvage boxes. The salvage boxes will have the 7 regular mechs and each of the 5 atlas options pre-assembled.
If sales are good they might do the Abominations, maybe one other product.
The Rockets and Rayguns box is in development.
Why didn’t they put an Abomination in the box? The game is always about the mechs, so the box comes with cardboard counters for the Abominations.
Will it be easy to mix Gothic with regular BattleTech? Yes, there are special rules for the Abominations but the mechs are mechs. You could play Gothic vs Rockets and Rayguns, or against Regular BattleTech.
Will Abominations have BSP cards and regular record sheets? Yes
Will there be abomination construction rules? No
How about a world War II continuum set? It’s one they’re considering.
Will there be new weapons? A couple, plus some TacOps weapons will be in the core book
Some of the Abominations are effectively elementals. The biggest are mech-sized
Why alt universes instead of new minis? They’re doing both. Aces pushed the forcepacks downstream in part because they have new minis themselves. CGL’s business with Liya is a small chunk of Liya’s total work in a year, and they always make time for CGL so it didn’t replace another production run or anything.
Any word on Aces for BattleTech? They’re hoping to have an open Beta live by the time Scouring Sands comes out.
Why not an Annihilator in Gothic? A lot of designs were discussed, and were eliminated for various reasons
Status of the AS:CE reprint? The leftover kickstarter stock has arrived back with the distributor so it’ll be available soon?
Will LAMs be in the anime set? They didn’t answer, but they mentioned they’re testing new AeroTech rulesets
They’ll be reprinting TRO 3025 with new art soon.
Will there be a Transhuman continuum set, a la Eclipse Phase? Possibly, they’re looking at doing a Solarpunk set which would cover similar ground. This would be a few years into the line.
How about a Scythe crossover? Randall loves Scythe, he might look into that
Updated TRO: 3057? It’s possible, but they’ll have to get the new AeroTech done first. He loves capital ship games and his five-year plan is to have McKennas and Camerons clashing.
How about an alternate universe where the humans are replaced with human-sized birds? There might be something hitting the internet soon
Any timeline for MUL 2.0? Not right now, due to real-world issues. Randall is hoping for the next two months
Any word on international stores? The webstore has had a major overhaul which makes it easier to integrate with multiple warehouses. They’ve signed a contract with an Australian partner and are working on UK and EU ones right now. They’re planning a smoke test of the retail integration soon too.
They’re planning to do minis of the outstanding 3025 and 2750 mechs, they don’t have a set product yet.
CGL won’t make it to UK Games Expo this year, but the Demo Team will be there and CGL are hoping to be back next year,
They hope the local shipping hubs will have better support for Kickstarters too.
Any changes to the new printing of AS:CE?. Just errata, but they’re looking to do a bigger revision in the next few years.
Den of Wolves is “about half done”
Any more fiction like Hungry like the Wolf on the way? If it sells well enough
Will there be more ways to get the hardback rulebooks? They seem to always be out of print. CGL are selling out of print runs as soon as they come in, so they’re working to increase the print orders. The last year has been very bad as reprints were tapped for Kickstarter fulfillment first.
How about a forcepack of every mini released in a year? They could do it but it wouldn’t necessarily be profitable, the price point might be too high and it might not be viable at retail. A category on the webstore might be a thing.
Any word on fixing the layout of total Warfare? The Battlemech manual was specifically designed to be accessible, they’re taking lessons from it to rework Total Warfare
Randall still has some 40th anniversary patches if you meet him at a con
How about an all hunchback forcepack? They could, but Randall’s not saying he will.
The Bug company box is likely to come but production pressures from aces mean it’ll be next year at the earliest
Didn’t they say they were half done with Den of Wolves last year? Yes, but work slowed down for various reasons, Loren alluded to his son’s death. He figures he has four chapters left to do and Stackpole six, and then they need to work together on revisions.
When will there be more ilClan forcepacks? One of each of the two faction packs coming out now is kinda Clan Invasion-Civil War, and the other more Jihad-Dark Age.
The Kurita forcepacks are heading to the printer now
Why is Aces slowing production? Because it’s a giant development with lots of new rules, lots of new minis. They strongly believe Aves will bring in a lot of new players who are into co-op play. The rulebook in Scouring Sands will be tabled, the campaign book is spiral bound
Will there be Marik, Liao and Fox Patrol forcepacks? Absolutely
Any word on the new RPG? Not yet, they’re very early in development. They’re talking with a very well-regarded veteran designer about bringing them onboard for the project.
Mercs Force Manual is about to go to print, Invading Clans is in development
MechCommander’s Handbook is still being worked on. Loren joked it’d be done in the next 12 months because Ray wasn’t there to stop him.
Will the AS:CE rework make major changes? No, it’ll be closer to the BattleMech manual in terms of reorganising and streamlining
How about working with Cubicle 7 on the new RPG? They love Cubicle 7 but one of their licensors forbids them from working with CGL.
Top five mechs? Randall limited to 2: Banshee and Phoenix Hawk. Loren did 3: Saggitaire, Warhammer and Wraith.
Update on Brush Wars? It got caught up in the work on Mercs, they’re working on getting them out.
Any chance of more swag on the webstore? They’re working on it, the new webstore should make it easier.
Any chance of a Solaris Forcepack? Solaris is a conundrum for them. Randall feels BattleTech isn’t a good dueling game and they need a new rule set. He really wants to take it to the next level for when they do a set, especially for the arena maps.
Are there mugs for sale at Adepticon?
Will there be more support for Destiny? Part of what makes Destiny great is how light it is, but that makes it hard to expand it. They’ll continue to include RPG material in sourcebooks and Loren will ask Ray about publishing a few PDF products like adventures.
Any chance of new BattleTroops? There’s a possibility but it’s further downstream.
Update on Randall’s Spirit Cat/Nova Cat novel? He’s looking forward to getting back to it now he’s back from travelling the world.
Update on BV 3? They’ve looked at revising it a few times, they’re working on it slowly at present but the complexity of BattleTech means it’s hard going.
Any chance of Destiny scale minis? Loren would love to
Any word on audiobooks? John is doing a big push for audiobooks. He’s got 20 in some stage of completion.
Is there a BV or era they like to play? Randall is equal opportunity. Loren likes Clan Invasion. In terms of BV, he likes the setup for Masters and Minions where there’s a decent weight on the table, usually 10-15,000 points.
Was Gothic more influenced by 40K or Doom? All of the above. They’re gonna do an AMA about gothic with Ray and Marco in the near future to talk about influences.
Any word on a new German publisher for BattleTech? Still being worked on.
Any new stuff for sale? The brand-new stuff vanished in a half an hour.
Any chance of fiction for Gothic? Herb has a short story in the box, after that, let’s see. Loren suggested to Mike Stackpole that he rewrite the key scenes in the Warrior trilogy to Gothic and he liked that idea. Shrapnel is a more likely place to see Gothic fiction.
Will we see more customizable mech minis. Absolutely, the Atlas is part of the ongoing experiment in giving variants and option parts
I chose BattleTech because it’s not 40K: That’s fine, and it’s fine to not buy Gothic. The main game will continue to be heavily supported.
Reprint of Campaign Operations? It’s at the con, should be at distributors in a few weeks.
How about a fully-customisable plastic OmniMech? Randall would love to be able to do that
Any change of releasing a forcepack of PGI mechs? It’s possible but no plans.
When will the new AeroTech be released? They’re nowhere near announcing a date, they’re still comparing pitches they’ve gotten for new rulesets.
I wish we could see the Clans in the Gothic universe: They had to put the line somewhere. By comparison all the mechs in the anime inspired box will likely be Clan.
Aces release date? They hope to have it launch at Gencon and in stores in the autumn
What’s in the emplacements box? There are six turrets that are cross-compatible with the towers and mounts and about 70% of the turrets from the vehicles
The baseline AeroTech game will be fighter-specific
The gothic box was what Kerensky was afraid of: Aleksandr and Andrey sure, but Nicholas?
Any update on retailer support form the new Webshop? Talon might talk about it on-stream but he’s working on it
Any chance of getting the Haneastic Crusade mechs? Maybe but it’ll be far out. Loren likes the idea of doing a deep periphery box
Plastic Protomechs? Coming in the Wars of Reaving Forcepack
Succesion Wars boardgame update? It’s made a lot of progress in the last month, they did playtesting in-person at KerenskyKon, and hope to have open beta via Tabletop sim in May.
Santa-hat Atlas for Christmas and Pumpkin head for Hallow’een? Loren likes the idea (and a bunny-ears one for Easter) but do you really want him doing crazy ideas that slow down the schedule?]

Lorcan Nagle wrote:Fiction Panel with John Helfers, Mike Ciaravella and Mike Stackpole
For sale at the con:
The Art of Food
The Art of War translated and annotated by Jamie Wolf
Hardbacks of:
Close Quarters
Double Blind
Main Event
Mike Stackpole is working on more Death Kangaroos
The writers, developers and editors at Adepticon have been working out the plot and where it’s going to be presented
The first pass of the script for the first graphic novel is with Phil for comments. The art will have a number of big name guest artists
Upcoming fiction:
Blood Will Rise by Tom Lveen
The Long Road by Jason Hansa, about Tara Campbell. It’s seen as a conclusion for Tara for now, but she’ll be in a position for another writer to take up later if they want
The translation of Daniel Isberner’s Silent Reapers novel
Shrapnel 25 will be another double-sized issue
Recent releases:
Voidbreaker by Bryan young
Trial of Birthright by Michael Ciaravella
Mike Stackpole is working on a Red Corsair origin novel right now.
They mentioned CGL are publishing Stackpole’s HBS tie-in stories. Each of the four will get an ebook followed by a PoD compilation
Mike Ciaravella is working on A Treachery of Ravens, a Snow Raven-centric story with lots of Aerospace
He’s also halfway through two unnamed projects and planning his next thing
A Nelson Geist short story is mentioned at the start of Natural Selection, can that be republished? It’s in BattleCorps Anthology 1: the Corps.
Hour of the Wolf was added to Audible at the start of the year, and Fall from Glory is live now with the rest of the Founding of the Clans novels coming soon.
Can we get an Audiobook of Hungry Like the Wolf? Yeah
Can we get more Leatherbound novels? Maybe, they’re printed overseas and recent events make that harder. Costs and Scheduling are issues and John needs to get approval to get them printed.
Will there be any Terran Falcon fiction soon? Bryan Young has a pitch in, John is open to the right pitch for more.
Will the Big Kappas be getting copies of the novels and Shrapnel? Yes. The Kappas who made it to Kerenskykon got a big pile of stuff last week.
When will there be a sequel to Damocles Sanction? It’s on the docket, more a question of when.
Will there be more BattleCorps Anthologies? They want to reissue the old anthologies, they want to clean up and join up the serial novels, and they can probably do another couple of annual anthologies. It’s a lot of work
Will there be more Kell Hounds in the ilClan? Probably
When will we get more Rasalhague Dominion fiction? There’ll be a quartet of Novellas with an Omnibus later by Bryan Young picking up after A Question of Survival and going through the civil war.
When will the Wars of Reaving novels be out? No earlier than 2026
When will the Bounty Hunter anthology be out? Soon. They’re waiting on the last couple of stories
Can we get a Critter-Tek reissue? They’ll have to see who has the license, and if so they’d add it to the pile of sourcebooks for the PoD project.
Will the Scorpion Empire feature in more stories? If the right story comes along.
Any chance of a 21st Centauri Lancers novel? Or the Crescent Hawks? Again, if the right pitch comes in.
They’re jumpstarting the Jihad fiction line. John was stopped from giving more detail
I miss Spine novels! Some of the novels could be considered spine like Trial of Brithright, Damocles Sanction and Hunting Season. Stackpole said that because of things like Shrapnel, there’s a lot of options to have writers delve into major events in short fiction, allowing the major novels to focus more on core events.
Will we ever see the German fiction translated? Karma and one other novel have been translated and need to be put in the production pipeline
Will the Sea Foxes take a loss? Things that the Sea Foxes couldn’t possibly see coming are on the way.
Will there be a list of all the fiction? There’s an exhaustive list in the back of the books, and John has ideas for landing pages on the webstore
Any chance of Aerospace and BattleArmour stories? They’re open to good pitches.
Far country sequel when? There will not be one any time soon
Will the Jihad series give the Blakists a theology? It’ll be discussed, but to what detail is to be determined.
Any chance of getting revised copies of the legends if you got them through the Humble Bundle? John is working on errata for them now, when that’s done he might be able to get Humble Bundle to update them. Otherwise mail him and he’ll help you out.
What are you most excited about? Stackpole: Gothic: Mike C: Aces and Gothic. John: the graphic novels
Who’d win in a statecraft off? Albert Marik, Sun-Tzu Liao, or Siriwan McCallister-Kurita? Stackpole: sun-tzu, he's the only one alive
What are the seminal Dark Age novels? Ghost War, A Call to Arms, Blood of the Isle, Scorpion Jar and Sword of Sedition were all mentioned.
Any chance for a Sword and the Dagger reprint? Never say never, John’s been working with Ardath Meyhar’s estate but they’re resistant.
Will there be a novel on Anton Marik’s rebellion, maybe in Den of Wolves? It was in the BlackThorne comics/The Spider and the Wolf. Loren and Shackpole have agreed it won’t be covered in Den and its planned sequels
Any Steel Viper writing planned? Nothing planned but John’s open to the pitch
Any chance of reprints of Star Lord and Far Country? Like Sword and the Dagger, the author’s estates are reluctant to authorise them.
When will the next romance novel come out? Maybe Valentines day next year?
Will the next romance novel be Danai and Nikol? Probably not
Any plans for a tie-in with the MechWarrior 5 Ghost Bear DLC? Probably not, Mercenary Life didn’t do as well as they hoped.

 Ghaz wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:
Come on, guys, seriously? Am I the only one here old enough to remember how BattleTech got started?

Stinger, Wasp, Phoenix Hawk, Rifleman, Archer, Warhammer, Ostsol, Marauder, all straight out of MACROSS?

BattleTech's whole POINT was to play out Anime giant robot battles on the tabletop, with (what turned out not to be) just enough changed to avoid getting sued.

Not exactly. They licensed the 'Mechs from Twentieth Century Imports, who might not have been in a position to provide these rights to FASA.

Project Update #127 wrote:

Small Mid-Week Update

Hey there backers - got updated numbers from QML yesterday so we wanted to share:

EU: Currently at 75% - 78%

AW: Currently at 65%

Moving forward!

Lorcan Nagle wrote:Introduction with Michael Ciaravella, Marco Mazzoni and Randall Bills
Will Aces be compatible with vehicles? Absolutely
Marco is the new BattleTech art director following Brent Evans’ stepping down as CGL art director.
Any plans for more mechs? Yes
Randall showed off a Shiro render on his phone
Marco did a lot of art for Gothic
Gothic prototype box was shown on-stream.
Box is much deeper than the standard BattleTech box - three quarters of an inch taller than GoAC
8 minis - Atlas with customisable head, cape and bas-relief. The heads are friction fit
Full-colour, laminated record sheets for mechs and abominations.
Alpha Strike cards
Pilot cards
BSP cards for the abominations
Short story
Two counter sheets. The reverse side of the Abomination counters are generic so you don’t know what the Abomination is until it’s right on you.
A double-wide mapsheet
72-page Primer. The full-page front and back art of the atlases was added last minute, elements were at print when Randall saw the first one, asked Marco for more and made more space in the book at the last moment.
128-page Rulebook. It’s twice the size of GoAC’s rulebook partially for the abomination rules,it also has a TRO section for the Abominations and the Mechs
They didn’t go into gothic wanting to make a 40K ripoff. It was more a case asking what they’d do working in that sort of space.
Marco’s artistic influences on the project were 40K artists like Adrian Smith. Doom, Quake 1 and 2 were influences as well. They started with the Atlas redesign. The mechs have spikes and covered joints to protect them from being swarmed by Abominations, which synergised with gothic architecture.
They had a 3D printed large-scale Abomination which was painted by one of the CSO guys.
Will Gothic be Aces compatible? Gothic is 100% Classic BattleTech with Abominations (described as a combination of battlearmour and protomechs) plugged in. Aces is currently Alpha Strike so it’s not properly compatible but they’re hoping to run an open beta for BattleTech aces in the autumn.
Who is the POV character for Gothic? A lot of the writing is done from the POV of a Terra Noir character (Gothic’s equivalent of ComStar)
Do the Abominations have hit locations? Not really, they’re closer to BattleArmour. They held the record sheets up to the camera, they’re basically variations on BattleArmour.
Any chance of a Gothic Great Turtle? Randall designed it, he’d love to see it get more love. A lot of people have asked Randall if it was named for the character of that name and he confirmed it’s the case.
Will we get more gothic fiction? It’s up in the air. Maybe a novel.
How are the factions different in Gothic? They’re mostly the same through the Star League, the change point is in the early Star League when scientists develop the Abomination gene-splicing effect. The Great houses gain access to the tech around the fall of the Star League.
Will the Black Marauder be in Gothic? The Gothic Marauder mini does have the air of the Black Marauder around it
How about a western-themed box? Randall took the question as a segue into talking about the plan for the Continuum products, that they’re hoping to do many different setting boxes, and noted the upcoming 50s SF and anime-themed boxes and other genres they might do like Weird War II and Solarpunk.
Thoughts on box sets around classic campaigns like Luthien on Twycross? They’re doing a Hesperus II box that will cover all the battles for the world, possibly including a new one in the ilClan era. It might be where BattleTech Aces makes its debut
People asked about Solaris: Randall talked about how he wants to go next-level with the box, maybe get a 3D version of the Factory or the walls in Steiner Stadium in there. Aces is helping them work out in-box terrain. He also reiterated what he said yesterday about not being happy with BattleTech as a duelling game and wants to figure out how to do it better
Gothic’s RRP is $99.99
The mentioned again that TRO: 3025 publishes 1,000 years in the future. So they’re going to reprint OG TRO 3025, errors and all with new art including LAMs, and an afterword from 3125 or so that talks about why there are all these errors from an in-universe perspective.
Randall got a render for the Lobo just today
They showed off painted copies of the Rifleman and King Crab from Gothic, they were painted overnight by Amy Ciaravella and Josh Derksen

Lorcan Nagle wrote:Aces discussion with Michael Ciaravella, Tommy Gofton and Joshua Derksen
Aces will hopefully be out at Gencon.
They had a set on display, 99% the same as the one at PAX
They had a completed Campaign book and Rulebook
The playtesters have had another run through with the almost complete rulebook and campaign book and that feedback fed into these versions
The campaign book remains spiral bound, which has been very popular. It begins with tutorial games that bring you through setting up the table, drawing cards and how to apply the results on the table.
They confirmed Scouring Sands is the first of four boxes, each one based on one of the ilClan sourcebooks. No confirmation on the minis, the enemies, and the biomes. Most of that has been decided yet.
The minis in Scouring Sands are:
Kraken 3
Thunderbolt IIc - the personal mech of the Falcon commander in the story
Two Fulcrum hovertanks - the Wolfnet guys thanked Josh for it being in the box as it’s a fantastic Alpha Strike unit
Rifleman C 2
Thor H
Locust IIc 4
Baboon 6
Marauder IIc 6
Responding to a comment from someone who mentioned they had a special needs kid and didn’t have much time to game so Aces suits them very well, Tommy talked about how as we get old, we lose friends, we have different responsibilities or can take it badly when they lose and it can get harder to game. Aces drastically reduces the barrier to entry by adding solo and co-op play.
For competitive play, the system is malleable enough to let you run test games, to train to win in your local meta, to test against specific lances and the like.
It helps teach the basics as well, like positioning, activation order, target priority. In the Thursday Aces game the cards had most of the AI units decide the Marauder had to die, for example.
When asked if Aces uses the Hot Spots: Hinterlands campaign system. They were asked to make it as compatible as possible. Hot Spots: Hinterlands has conversion guidelines to use the campaign in Alpha Strike, but they don’t cover every element. It uses a lot of details from Chaos Campaign but some elements are put aside to optimise for Alpha Strike.
The rulebook contains infantry and vehicle rules so you can run Aces without just the Alpha Strike box set.
There’s a campaign record sheet to track your unit and work out expenses between missions. These let you bring your force over to another campaign set. Skill level and other factors will reduce support point earnings and limit the number of units you can bring
There are 21-22 missions with 4 possible endings and a campaign is 7 missions, so you could play this 4 times with totally different missions.
Russel Zimmerman wrote short pieces for each mission to help immerse the players in the story
Each Aces box set will have 2 new sculpts and the rest new variants/reposes. Total mini count in the box will be 7-9, and they’ll be the campaign’s opposition.
Players will create a named character will a pilot card with skill, edge points, and progression. If their unit is destroyed you roll a D6. on a 1 or 2 they die, 3-4 they’re wounded and have to skip a game.

 Ghaz wrote:
Anime covers any of a number of genres.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
The mechs look cool, and I could see them being fodder for some really crazy Blakist forces. I'm kind of worried about the time it will take to remove all the mould lines from all the detail, though. It's been my least favorite thing abut Restic since the material's inception about 15 years ago.

 Ghaz wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
The mechs look cool, and I could see them being fodder for some really crazy Blakist forces. I'm kind of worried about the time it will take to remove all the mould lines from all the detail, though. It's been my least favorite thing abut Restic since the material's inception about 15 years ago.

The BattleTech Gothic 'Mechs are being produced by Liya, so they should be PVC like the majority of the line (only the premium 'Mechs may be resin).

 Platuan4th wrote:

 Ghaz wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
The mechs look cool, and I could see them being fodder for some really crazy Blakist forces. I'm kind of worried about the time it will take to remove all the mould lines from all the detail, though. It's been my least favorite thing abut Restic since the material's inception about 15 years ago.

The BattleTech Gothic 'Mechs are being produced by Liya, so they should be PVC like the majority of the line (only the premium 'Mechs may be resin).

The models are at Adepticon and they're PVC. They're also slightly upscaled.

Lorcan Nagle wrote:Aces playthrough with Tommy and Joshua from Lynnvander, Paul from Focht’s Network, Bryan Young and Jason Hansa
The campaign sees the players hired by the Alyina Mercantile League to remove Star Captain Conrad Sender of the 18th Falcon Regulars and his skeleton crew of Jade Falcons from Appolaika so the world can join the League
The first mission takes place after an uncontested landing when the Falcons recon your landing zone.
After the mission description you might have recon options, and then waypoint setup. The waypoints are the “cutscene mechanic”, tokens that give narrative events triggered by various actions
The players are given a PV for each mission, with the PV being alterable The players went for Veteran difficulty, max 160 PV
The player team for the playthrough was a Highlander with the Jumping Jack SPA (Tommy), Raven (Paul), Wolfhound (Bryan) and Catapult (Jason). Total was 157 PV
The Jade Falcon force was the Rifleman C 2, Locust IIc 4 (Tommy was shocked at it doing 5 damage at short), Baboon 6, 2 Fulcrums
The players deployed into a courtyard space near one end of the table.
Objectives: to identify the enemy units, to reveal their waypoints, to destroy or immobilise three units.
The Falcons are under forced withdrawal and they can withdraw on three sides
Players can choose to attack with fewer dice for this scenario (Multiple attack rolls are default in Aces)
If they haven’t sprinted they can scan a unit in 6” and line of sight to reveal their waypoint. A unit with PRB has a longer range.
If they kill an enemy without revealing their waypoint, they lose the mission.
The Aces box contains Edge ability cards, each player has one at the start and can gain more via advancement between missions
The characters have a supply of edge tokens they can use to increase an attack roll by 1, to reroll a critical hit against them, or to activate their edge abilities. Paul had 3 edge, the other players had 2.
Initiative is front-loaded
The side that loses initiative gets a +2 bonus to the roll next turn.
Each Aces deck has six cards, you put the deck under the unit it controls, with the top peeking out to see the priority number.
Each aces card has a priority number, lowest priority goes front.The card has three behaviors on it, a decision matrix determines which behavior is used, and then you use the set of conditions on the card to determine movement. You then flip the card over and put it back on top of the deck. The flipped side of the deck determines the attack target.
Could you run the campaign with regular BattleTech rules? With a little work, yes.
MSRP is going to be $88, the same as Alpha Strike. They reduced the model count to be able to add more cardboard and books
What big lessons did they learn from the automation in Star Trek Alliance? In Alliance you had very limited move options because you use the move templates, while Aces has much wider movement options. They always look to keep the info simple and try and keep the AI unpredictable.
There are two news steps in the end phase for Aces. The commander card has a decision matrix to determine their behaviour matrix for the next turn. You also increment the turn track. In the mission they played there was a narrative event in turn 4.
Any hints for terrain in the later boxes? They’ll be different biomes and meant to be used with the buildings from the Alpha Strike box. No further details given.
The way the behaviour matrices work, it should help the game scale in difficulty with players as they improve by making decisions that become harder to counter and react to.
The Commander cards can be designed to match the behaviour patterns of different characters or faction tactics.
How many Aces decks are in the game? One per role, but you might need to split them between multiple units of the same role. Or you can mix and match role cards if you like to mix things up.
When the players scanned the targets, waypoints are flipped over, which reveal events to read out from the campaign book. Two of the waypoints in this case caused critical hits on the player mechs due to them being distracted scanning the units during the fight, another gave them a +1 initiative bonus.
Some events place a move last token on a unit, this overrides the priority on the cards for the turn and the unit moves last regardless.
They’re looking to see if they can make the turret on the Baboon turnable
The event at turn 4 in this particular scenario has the the Falcons decide to fall back and you switch to a specific commander card, which puts all units into forced withdrawal.
Following the scenario you get a narrative description of the aftermath, giving branching options on what mission comes next, rewarding support points for resupply, repair and upgrade, and possibly adding keywords to later missions.
You start with a roster of 400PV worth of units and can buy more with support points

Lorcan Nagle wrote:Interview with Marco Mazzoni
As an art director, Marco’s doing a lot of work on fiction covers and the 3025 anniversary book right now
Will there be more BattleArmour in art? Marco loves doing BattleArmour as it helps keep the mechs feeling big. He’d love to do some art from the BattleArmour’s point of view
Any Hornet art? Not that he’s worked on
They’re not addressing new LAM rules or anything like that in the 3025 anniversary book, just doing new art
Any chance of an art book? Marco would love to do one
Any chance of facelifts for the Initiate, Gurkha and Blood Kite? Marco saw the Blood kite in a list but not the other two
Will there be sequel map packs like Grasslands 2? More map packs are on the way, Brent is still working on them.
Can we get a blog on the redesign process? Marco would love to do something like that, they don’t know exactly where yet. He’d like to do a semi-regular update on new art.
Any chance of snow maps? One of the aces boxes covers snow
How about an Osiris in plastic? No plans right now
Will there be a champion redesign? Marco hopes so
Will we ever get coherent art on Warship deck arrangements? They’re going to look into it when and if Warship art gets redesigned
More RAC minis? Marco loves Dakka
Huron Warrior? Another one Marco loves but it’s not in the queue.
Will there be a box of card buildings/terrain after Aces is all out? No plans at present.
Plastic Raijn? Probably not soon.
Will there be more customization options like the Gothic Atlas? Yes.
Favourite Gothic design? It was the Atlas for a long time, but the Rifleman won out as the renders came out.
Are Celestials on the way? Yes
What’s the facelift art project Marco is looking forward to next? The Celestials. They’re still working on them right now
Any chance of cross-promotion with the MechWarrior 5 DLC? Nothing planned right now
Hollander coming out soon? Marco doesn’t know about that one
Are there renders and 3D designs for the Abominations? Yes. if Gothic goes well they’ll consider an Abomination forcepack
Any word on the new BattleTech RPG? It’s in development
Plastic Titan or Grand Titan? Not on the list right now
Can we get a release list for the coming year? It’s more of a Loren or Randall question.
Will CGL be at origins? Yes, a similar booth and Demo Team presence to last year
Conventional infantry minis? They’re looking into it. There are questions about making them readable at that scale.
Will the different eras be supported evenly or will ilClan be primary? They’re pushing forward with ilClan but other eras will get support.
When will the Savage Wolf be out? It’s coming in the 4th Star League pack
Any plans for the Po tank? No idea
Any word on unabridged audiobooks? John Helfers is working on it.
Will CGL be at Dragoncon? Not this year
Will we see a Vulture Mk. IV? It’s not in the schedule right now.
There is no Bellonna mini at all. Marco will make a note
Protomechs? They’re in progress, not ready to be shown off
How about new variants of 3025 mechs? Marco thinks so. Some of the art being done for the new TRO 3025 will feed back into the design process
What are you looking forward to aside from Aces? The novel synopses so he can work on the covers
Can Mike C do the audiobook of Hungry like the Wolf? He was ready to record a passage at KerenskyKon but was told it’d be too steamy.
Will the Protomechs still be mythical monsters? They’re going to tone it down a bit. Think along the lines of Alex Iglesias’ proto art
What do you think of the reaction to Gothic so far? It’s been very positive overall. They're OK with it not being everyone’s cup of tea
Any fun non-mechs to talk about in the next Continuum box? They’re going to give each box a unique hook. So Abominations were the thing with Gothic, Randall’s figured out the one for Rockets and Rayguns, anime is up in the air
Who’s doing the Romance novel covers? Probably Eldon.
Map-scale vehicles like the Rattler? Marco likes the idea of Objective vehicles but it depends on sales.
How would you rate the maps in Gothic? They’re gonna be a lot of fun and work well in BattleTech. One side has trenches, the other an ornate urban environment
Any plans to release the STLs for the city mapsheets? They’re always talking about it.
Will we see the Maelstrom as a plastic model? Probably, but don’t know when
How about a Wyrm as an objective? If there’s demand
Why is the objectives box so big? They use standard box sizes
Favourite novels? Blood of Kerensky and Wolves on Border
How does it feel working with and taking over from Brent? Marco’s been working with Brent for about 8 years. He didn’t realise it but Brent was basically training him to take over for the last 18 months. It was as a shock when he learned but the transition was smooth
What’s he looking forward to the most? Celestials
What is Marco’s favourite 3025 mech? The Warhammer and Hatchetman

 Miguelsan wrote:
I wonder what the Kurita Ranger lance composition is. Jump capable mechs with mainly energy weapons?

M.

Lorcan Nagle wrote:Discussion with John Helfers and Bryan Young
Hungry Like the Wolf has sold out
Bryan’s first exposure to BattleTech was an uncle who was only a few years older than him brought over a lot of RPG books which included some early BattleTech books including the original Shrapnel anthology
His first major exposure was the SNES MechWarrior game, then the PC games
He never really got into the tabletop version of BattleTech, but Shadowrun was his main FASA game. BattleTech was around but it wasn’t the game he played
When he was doing a lot of original and licensed work as a writer, was a friend of Mike Stackpole and ended up doing a lot of cons where he and CGL were and Stackpole introduced them.
He got to befriend the CGL editors and pitched writing some Shadowrun fiction. John said they had no Shadowrun slots right then, but how about BattleTech?
He asked Mike Stackpole for advice on where to start reading, who half-jokingly replied “just the stuff I wrote”. He started with BLood of Kerensky, found it a bit hard to follow so he went back to the start.
He ended up pitching a lot as the focus and direction of the fiction kept changing, Hour of the Wolf was coming up, and Bryan and Stackpole were tapped to do some kind of story about Callandre Kell going through the end of the Dark Age, which would have ended with an Hour of the Wolf tie-in where Callandre would end up on Terra to kill Malvina. After a 2019 plot summit Stackpole rang him to say “the bad news is that story’s been killed, the good news is you’re on the schedule. The bad news is the book is due out in four months… How much do you know about the Jade Falcons?” that became Honour’s Gauntlet.
It was an interesting experience writing fast, it was a month and a half from outline to first draft completion. Bryan was arguing that it needed some POV chapters from the villain, but John and Phil were reluctant. Jason Schemetzer read it and said he felt it needed the villain POV without knowing about the prior discussions, and John went back to Bryan asking to add it in.
The Fox Patrol started with a few ideas in Bryan’s head: In the SNES game he hated running out of ammo and would work hard to try and keep heat neutral so he’d always take jobs on planets with water so he could stand in a lake to stay cool. So what if the mech had to be abandoned? He then ha the image of a young girl finding it later, repairing it and it becoming her mech. John and Phil said “get rid of the lake” He sees now why the lake would be an issue in the context of BattleTech though. He was waiting to hear back about it and was talking to Stackpole, who said with John it’s better to beg forgiveness than ask permission. So Bryan wrote the first five stories, and as soon as the first was published, he mailed Phil the second, and so on.
Outfoxed, a new Fox Patrol story picks up after Without Question. They head off to Almotacen after the battle of Sudeten. It’s about Katie coming to terms with how much she loves mechs but hasn’t really come to terms what being a merc and the consequences can be. Like she’s never come to terms with how much she could lose. She gains a rival who hates Katie and what she stands for. We haven’t seen much rivalry between merc commanders in more recent fiction so that’s going to be part of this plot.
The Ghost Dogs are Bryan’s other merc unit, a Kell Hounds offshoot. Bryan wanted to write a very different merc unit to the Fox Patrol. The Kell hounds have a family feel but are hypercompetent. Ghosts of Timkovichi, a full-length novel featuring the Dogs is coming soon with Callandre calling the Ghost Dogs back to do a mission.
VoidBreaker came out of the first creative summit Bryan went to in 2023. Bryan pitched it as a spy story and there was some discussion around it. Ray liked the idea and went to bat to do it. A novel that had been accepted was axed - the plot became Let Slip the Dogs of War, and Bryan pitched VoidBreaker and Without Question at the same time. Unlike, say Blood Avatar which has very few BattleTech elements, VoidBreaker keeps the story more grounded in BattleTech, up to having mechs and mech combat feature prominently.
Bryan worked combat vehicles into the book as well to help anchor the new plastic minis in the fiction
He’s been on a book tour and playing games on the way, and he’s gained a big love for hovertanks, especially the characterful way they can skid and sideslip.
A Question of Survival was Bryan’s first full-length BattleTech novel. He was given the era, the faction and the goal and given free rein after that. Stackpole helped him with the plot, and Ray said he felt Bryan was the best person to handle the story. There were some characters and events from Dominions Divided they wanted to include, and had a meeting via Zoom. This meeting happened to take place during DragonCon and Bryan and Ray realised they were both at the con during the call.
He felt he needed to create characters that were going to be effected the most to pull people into the events we know from the sourcebooks, and that was when he figured out he’d need four POV characters: Jiyi, a subordinate of his, the Ghost Bear commander and a sibkid. He worked hard to make all the characters sympathetic and that neither side is good or bad. Bryan discussed who’s POV some events should be seen from with CGL’s developmental editor to figure out where things should be high notes and low notes as it would depend on which event was seen in who’s eyes.
Bryan is working on a series of novellas to delve further into the Ghost Bears and the fractures that came to light as a result of the Star League vote
They talked about more falcon fiction. There will definitely be more, if nothing else we’re going to have to have Stephanie and Jiyi meet.
If Bryan was in charge, what would he do differently? He’s very deep in the current setting and he kinda sees more things he’d tweak slightly to make his stories easier to tell. He far prefers to work within what’s there.
Any plans on getting Katie out of that Kit Fox? In character Katie loves that mech. He’s read the fox stories to his kids, who in turn always want to play the Kit Fox when they play BattleTech and it’s hard to not just slaughter them. Note that Katie has gone looking for omnipods for her mech in Merry Foxmas
Will we see novels outside the ilClan and Dark Age eras? Yes, but the majority of fiction will be in the ilClan era. As well as the Wars of Reaving novels they want to flesh out the Jihad, and Jim Long is writing two novels about the Black Thorns, possibly up to their potential end
What Periphery faction would Bryan like to write? He did a story about Isolde Centrella’s march to invade the Marians in Legends II and he’d love to either continue it or have someone else continue it so he could see how it ends
What variants are each of the Fox Patrol mechs? Bryan wrote up Spotlight: Fox Patrol and he picked out variants for it. But he doesn’t have them off the top of his head.
Spotlight on: Fox Patrol should still be coming out. It was one of many projects sidelined by the Mercs Kickstarter
Bryan’s had a lot of fun writing the graphic novels. They worked out what the series should have at Gencon two years ago. The first draft of the script is in. He and Stackpole have had a lot of fun working together on it. Often one of them will figure out what needs to be in a section and the other will write it, or one will defer to the other depending on which characters are in a scene. The first issue has a number of guest artists. No timeframe for release yet. The script isn’t complete and they’re not sending it for art until that’s done. Eldon has shared some character sketches with Bryan who thinks they look great.
If these graphic novels are successful John would love to adapt some classic novels to comic format
Were there other contenders for Katie’s Mech? He wanted an Arctic Fox but Fact Check said no, use a Kit Fox instead.

Lorcan Nagle wrote:Aces playthrough with Paul from Focht’s Network, Marco Mazzoni, Big Red, Joshua Derksen, Bryan Young and Mike Stackpole

The scenario in this game was area control with objectives being in three buildings - they score points for having more SZ in proximity to three buildings.
PV balance was “very close”
Aces is controlling the Mech 7
Player group: BattleMaster (Paul), Highlander (Marco), Wolverine (Big Red), Marauder IIc (Josh) Axman (Mike), Marauder (Bryan)
The Aces Deck has decision points around moving towards and taking objectives, ensuring it can have more units around the objective and the like
Some of the decks they used in the game are from later sets than Scouring Sands

Lorcan Nagle wrote:Webstore and general updates with Loren Coleman, Talon Coleman and Michael Ciaravella
Talon’s been working on the last ten months on the webstore back-end, it went live last week
Some features like filtering are still to come
The back-end upgrade also has support for international shipping
They’re working out contracts for EU, UK and AUS warehouses.
They’ll be able to send products from manufacturing partners to the local hubs, and then people can get local shipping costs and timeframes
The process has been a lot harder than they expected
A lot of elements on the webstore were hard-coded, meaning it was harder to do quick changes and development. This has been changed out for more modules that can be updated or swapped out.
When the hubs go live we’ll see a small number of items that are well-stocked, and then moving out to more products.
Talon thanked people for feedback on the store changes like issues with viewing on mobile devices
Patches, pins, shirts, the Lostech dice, and the liquid core dice will be up on the site soon
The plan for the hubs is that once they come online all new products would go out to them from manufacturing, with older items being shipped out from the US when they can or when they reprint. New items produced in the US, like mugs may move to the hubs slowly.
There’ll be an interface for store owners to order direct form CGL if you can’t get it from distributors
They might be able to offer some items to retailers via the store that aren’t available via distributors
Will CGL do monthly AMAs again? Loren would like to
They’re going to focus on the top 100 products for the hubs to begin with
The EU warehouse is likely to be in the Netherlands
When will the final wave of the US Kickstarters go out? Loren thinks anyone who filled out their survey and paid their shipping by July 7th should have their stuff now. QML are returning stock to CGL now, who will complete fulfillment for the remaining people. Loren estimates they’ll start going out within the next 30-45 days. UK standard fulfillment is done, EU at 75%, AUS around 60%
Will the store give better info on upcoming releases? The main feature right now is the newsletter, but there’s also a news/blog section in the store where people can post updates and Talon wants to get people to use it. They’re hoping to put out a semi-regular newsletter that would give upcoming releases for six months or so.
Will Lostech dice be back on the store? As soon as they’re back in stock, yeah.
Will items that were shorted early in the Kickstarter, such as Art of War and the cookbook be going out? That’s in process, Rem’s team are working on it.
Will there be another BattleTech Kickstarter? Yes. Which and when? Don’t know. They’ll do them when they think it makes sense for a product, when they can offer things that they couldn’t do outside of a kickstarter
Will Salvage boxes be back in stock? Yes. They’re reprinting Mercs, but they might add the Blood Asp and something else into the mix. When they sell out of Savannah Master boxes it’ll get added to the reprint of the Battlefield Support boxes. They might fold the Shilone and Visigoth into an Aerospace blind box set with other new fighters.
My FLGS has tried signing up for the retail support on the website and is getting charged full price? That’s because the feature isn’t live yet. There’ll be a smoke test with a small number of retailers before it’s open to general retailers.
My FLGS is having issues getting battlemats, is this a problem with Alliance? As far as they know Alliance has been stocking the mats, they bought a bunch recently. Loren will look into it, but the only mats not in distribution right now are the Legendary and fieldtech ones. And about half the mercs ones haven’t been released yet.
All mercs products should be in retail by the end of June
When will the Clan Tanks be here? No answer right now, they’ll be along at some point
The Grasslands mats were hard to get. They’ve just been reprinted, so should be available to order soon.
Will CGL be at Pax Australia again this year? Yes.
Will Salvage boxes include items from GoAC, Alpha Strike and so on in the future? The intention is that they will be at some point
Will anyone from GCL be at UK Games Expo even though they have no booth? Nobody is intending to be there outside of the demo team presence
Any more vehicle packs soon? Not outside of stuff like Aces, and they’ll end up in salvage boxes at some point
Email stock issues and distributor issues to store@catalystgamelabs.com
How about QR codes to link to record sheets for a forcepack on the box? That could happen after MUL 2
Will there be more 40th anniversary products on the webstore? Nothing new, but some stock they’ve found or consolidated is going to go up.
More shirts in general? Yeah, both new shirts and reprints.
Hawaiian shirts? Loren’s found a place that can do them and he does want to try one out
Hats? Yes, they have to do some work around economy of scale and rework the line. They’re looking at mixing up the colours and styles
Any word on restocks on the BattleMech Manual in the UK? A reprint of it and some other books has just hit the warehouse and will go into distribution soon. Beyond that it depends on who the stores order from.
UK stores generally order from Asmodee and they seem to have little stock: They notify Asmodee every time something comes out or is reprinted, so it’s up to Asmodee to buy.
Bobbleheads? Loren really wants to do it.
Could we see a BPL forcepack? Black Remnant is going well, so maybe.
Warhammer-shaped whiskey bottle? They looked at it in the past, it’s doable.
Posters? Sometimes they do really well and sometimes they do nothing. Blueprints have done well enough that they’re gonna do more. They’re gonna look at more poster sets in the future.
Is there any chance of getting all the Clan trial details in a single book? Maybe, it’s a Ray question
Shrapnel omnibus editions? Digital probably, and maybe a hardback best-of, like the fan-favourite stories from the first ten issues.
Atlas head-shaped coffee mug? Talon said yes!
Anything they’re eager for coming down the line they’ve not talked about? They haven't held much back this weekend.
Recruitment posters? They liked that idea, like the ones in the old Field Manuals. Loren says they’re gonna do it, but it’ll probably be a set of all the houses.
Poster of the Hot Spots: Hinterlands cover? Loren loves that cover and mentioned the large model Arthur Garlick made.
Art of the BattleTech factories on Hesperus? There’s a Hesperus box set coming…

Lorcan Nagle wrote:Fiction panel with John Helfers, Phil Lee, Jason Hansa, Mike Stackpole, Russell Zimmerman,Bryan Young.
Why does everyone keep coming back to BattleTech? Russell: Because there’s more than one world. You can always find a cool location to set your story. He really wanted a burned-out western space for his story Range War, and figured out a world that fell off the Outworld Alliance was the best way to go. This gave John the idea of a lost planets anthology. Mike: Having been involved as long as he has and being involved in the storytelling summits, It may be a tie-in universe he’s been able to build up huge chunks of it. Bryan: the more he gets into BattleTech, he finds deeper layers and you can really tell any sort of story you want in this setting. It’s ultimately about the people in the mechs. John talked about how the universe isn’t static and things change, prompted by a message in chat from Craig Reed. Phil likes that he can tell character stories, great triumph and deep tragedy centred around setpiece battles. Jason: There’s room for so many story types, be it noir, or spy, or western.
Which type of story do people like writing best? Jason: Novellas. If a short story is telling the end of the story, he likes the room to breathe and set things up a bit more but without the full length of the novel. Phil: Novels. When he seriously pursued novels he started with novels and perfected that form of storytelling. He found it difficult to switch back to short stories when he began writing for Battlecorps. Bryan: He loves the creative challenge of BattleTech regardless of length. He sees word count as another constraint to work in alongside factions, events he needs to reference and things he can’t touch. Russell: He likes the extremes of novels and short stories. He loves when he’s been given the go-ahead to do a novel and get into writing, but also when he gets a message saying “we need five linked one-page stories for Game Trade Magazine, you’ve got three weeks”. Mike: Whatever suits the story. He really liked the challenge of setting up the spine trilogues say, but also the punchy comedy of the Death Kangaroos. He had a joke in his story in Shrapnel 20 and people asked “is that a reference to Bryan’s stories?” and it’s a yes. He loves being asked to set things up for other writers to work on in their works, and the collaboration in BattleTech is more free than in other IPs he’s worked in.
What’s everyone’s favourite story and what do they wish they had written? Russell: Warrior: En Garde, it was his first and it’s always going to be special. It’s hard to top that like how it’s hard to surpass the first series or the pilot of a lot of shows. He loved the intrigue and the change of scale from, say Hanse Davion talking about the fate of the Federated Suns and then Dan Allard helping his lance work through love problems and they both feel important. And Warrior En Garde because then he’d have been writing BattleTech for a long time. Bryan: Ghost War. He feels a connection to the novel because it began the Blackout arc which he closed in VoidBreaker. He found it had a literary quality that BattleTech often doesn’t. He loves that everyone has a drastically different voice, a slightly different vibe for the universe. Conversely he got a note from Jason Schemtzer after VoidBreaker saying “I can’t write like you”, and Bryan said “that’s how I feel about your stuff”, so he’d love to write like everyone. Russell joked that John should commission the same short story from everyone and see what they come out like. Jason: Bred For War. It and Malicious Intent hit right for him at the right time. And a new story still in the slush pile in the War of 3039 that covers something similar to a story he had planned and felt it was better than he could have done it so he just deleted the pitch file. Phil: Way of the Clans/the Jade phoenix Trilogy. This was what got him into the fiction and the universe. He loved how much of a departure the culture was from the other BattleTech cultures he’d been exposed to, it transported him to another world. Mike: Wolves on the Border, it’s stunningly well-done. Of his books he’s got a fondness for Assumption of Risk for how it resolves Kai’s arc. He doesn’t think about writing other books that way, but he’d love to go back to Mallory’s World and do the death of Ian Davion. When he had Ian as a character in Kell Hounds Ascendent he was writing with the foreknowledge of Ian’s death and writing Ian’s relationship with the Kells to justify their decisions and actions after his death.
Update on Audiobooks from the mercs kickstarter? Close Quarters is complete, but the files are large so they’re trying to work out how to get them to backers on a wide scale. They hope to have a solution soon. John and Talon are working hard on it.
Update on the Graphic novel? The first draft of the script is in. John will be discussing his notes with Mike and Bryan over the con.
What’s the Audiobook schedule for Audible? Hour of the Wolf and Fall from Glory are out now, the latter has a technical issue that needs to be resolved. They’re hoping to get back to one every other month soon, lots of audio in the pipe.
More Screaming Eagles fiction? Jason has an idea, he needs to wait for the universe to progress a little.
Any Clan Invasion novels coming? John loves doing Historicals, but there’s a lot of Clan Invasion fiction out there right now. Jason noted Strength of the Pack 1 and 2 are out soon and are Clan Invasion. Mike noted that there’s only so much fiction they can publish in a year and they need to keep the universe moving forward.
Will there be a sequel to VoidBreaker? John is open to the idea but Bryan has a lot on his plate right now.
What’s Strength of the Pack about? A pair of Wolf sibmates who end up on two different paths, and meet up later in life to contrast how they changed.
Can you do another audio anthology? The idea is to release an audio version of The Corps after Founding of the Clans is done
Is there an iconic moment in BattleTech that defines the universe for you? John and Phil said the marriage of Hanse and Melissa and the inadvertent humour of Max Liao grabbing the plates. Russell mentioned a Discord message he read where someone had read the books very young and thought that scene had someone stealing a plate of cake and that was why everyone was angry! His iconic moment is Shin Yodama fighting an Elemental for the first time. Jason: In Malicious Intent when Victor goes up on the roof, offers Doc Trevena a job but then withdraws it if it’ll interfere with Doc’s relationship with Shelly Brubaker. Bryan: The Warrior Trilogy, Patrick sacrifices himself and the idea that someone’s got to go tell Morgan. The tragedy of the event that leads to a gutpunch moment and it worked well for him to combine mech action and character work. John brought up Wolves on the Border and how it’s a rumination on honour, duty and loyalty. Mike: The scenes that stand out for him are the ones with emotional impact. Like he put Victor through the emotional ringer a lot, he was a character who if you made the mistake of not killing him, you’re doomed. He picked the scene where Victor almost dies protecting Omi in Grave Covenant. If it wasn’t for the character development BattleTech would be another Men’s adventure series which died in the 80s.
Will there be more Black Marauder stories? None are in the pipeline. Lance Scarinci has told all the stories he feels he needed to tell, and has left it open to other people to tell stories about the legend. He has a conclusion story in mind, but it’d be 100 years in the future. Jason mentioned he was reading Shrapnel, noticed Lance’s name on the cover but didn’t realise it was a Black Marauder story until it showed up and he went YESSSS

Lorcan Nagle wrote:Post-Mech7 discussion with Tommy Gofton, Jesse Kay, Paul from Focht’s Network, Big Red, Tex (via voice chat)
Jesse, who GMed the game had two weeks notice to get the game together
Paul’s character is one he’s been roleplaying for many years, used him in their Aces playtesting and plugged him into Mech7
Similarly Tommy’s character is one they developed during Aces play
Big Red’s character was developed by Jesse
Tex played his persona of Randolph P Checkers and joked about coming into the game as an opportunity to get paid to hurt other people
It was filmed in Ontario at Six Sides of Gaming’s studio. Even though Big Red is also in Canada he couldn’t find the time to travel there, so he and Tex both joined by voice chat.
Series 1 is 6 episodes. The first two are roleplaying, then two of tabletop using aces, one more roleplaying and one more tabletop. If it goes well they’re excited to do a second game. Josh controls the Aces Decks for the tabletop episodes.
If they do a series 2 they hope to be able to get Tex and Big Red in studio
Six sides will probably be streaming Aces on Sunday
Episode 1 was released today to tie-in with Adepticon, the other episodes will be on a regular Sunday schedule before the stream so they can do a live after-show and then play BattleTech
They’re planning to have a website with character details up
They really enjoyed using Destiny for the roleplaying side of things, especially the collaborative elements and being more about storytelling than detail.
Costuming was difficult as most of the stuff they had was for D&D, so a lot of bits were ordered off Amazon
How did Randolph Checkers lose his eye? He’s going to reveal that story over time. It’s not stupid but it’s not a big thing.
In order to get people to roleplay in BattleTech I have to run modified D&D, how do I sell them on MechWarrior Destiny? They talked about how Destiny is more of a campfire storytelling game. If you want more crunch get A Time of War (Or Twilight 2000 because then you won’t want crunch any more after playing that for half a session). For Big Red it depends on what your group wants. Like if you’re playing D&D for the adventure game, Destiny will need modding to add depth, but if you want more narrative Destiny will be the way to go. Tommy talked about how before Aces comes out, as the GM you’d still need to control the enemy mechs and guide the story, but with Aces you can be part of the team. Ask why people want to roll dice in the universe - to fight people or to fight mechs. If it’s to fight mechs Destiny is better to set that up… Or threaten your friends
What has been everyone’s favourite part of the con? Tommy: Opportunities for grows. Paul: The burger he got for lunch at Dairyland. Jesse: They’ve been running a couple of aces tables and watching competitive players get into it and get into the narrative play has been great for him.

 Ghaz wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
The mechs look cool, and I could see them being fodder for some really crazy Blakist forces. I'm kind of worried about the time it will take to remove all the mould lines from all the detail, though. It's been my least favorite thing abut Restic since the material's inception about 15 years ago.

The BattleTech Gothic 'Mechs are being produced by Liya, so they should be PVC like the majority of the line (only the premium 'Mechs may be resin).

Lorcan Nagle wrote:Intro with Michael Ciaravella
Tommy was meant to be on for a Mech 7 Q&A but didn’t make it so Mike did a general one instead
They had 70 entries for the painting competition
Mike’s highlight of the con was meeting lots of people. The gaming’s been extraordinary, lots of tables packed.
How is development on the ilClan era version of Interstellar Players? Ray will talk about that later, Mike loves those types of product.
How much stock is left in the booth? Not much. They have two booths, a small one near the gaming area with the Virtual World pods, and a larger one in the exhibitor hall. They sold out of Emplacements in about 30 minutes, they sold out of one of the Davion Lances and only had a couple left of the other. The Lunar/City BFM sold out on the first day. They had some copies of the Precentor martial version of Universe
Will we be able to make custom mechs in the MUL? That’s a Ray question
Any work going on a BattleTech card game? That’s another Ray question. Mike got his start in gaming via card games and he’d love to see a BattleTech one
How is fiction selling? Very well. Trial of Birthright was almost sold out, Voidbreaker was for sale, Shrapnel was flying off the shelves, The cookbook sold out on Saturday, and Jamie Wolf’s annotated Art of War was selling well
Are they still planning to do the Bug company box? Another Ray question
Is the Great Turtle getting a mini? Mike thinks Randall said yes about that.

 Miguelsan wrote:
To be fair they said no KS for miniatures, they didn't close the KS pipeline completely.

M.

Lorcan Nagle wrote:BattleTech Lunchtime Secrets with Ray Arrastia and Michael Ciaravella
They’re currently working on the commemorative TRO: 3025. It’ll be as close to the original first printing of TRO 3025 as possible. It’ll include all the original mechs, LAMs, vehicles, and support vehicles.
Have the map-scale DropShips sold well enough to warrant the sale of the Leopard Loren talked about yesterday? Ray isn’t sure but he thinks so. They sold very well at the con.
Will we be able to make custom mechs in the MUL 2? That’s never come up internally. If they go for it it’d be some distance away
There was talk of a BattleTech card game some time ago, any update? Encounters is out now, They got a pitch for an expansion which is underconsideration. there are three other card games under consideration or in early development but nothing solid to report yet.
Have the Encounters: BattleTech promo card been done yet or is it stuck in limbo? Ray thinks it’s been done but he needs to look into it
Will there be mech-scale DropShips? Ray can’t say one way or another. He’d love to see it.
Will MUL 2 have an API like the current MUL? Ray believes so.
Will we ever get the buildings for the City Map Pack? It’s a possibility. They want to get the buildings out to the public in some form but it likely won’t be just STLs as a download
Any chance of a Canopian forcepack? It’s always possible. Ray’s pretty sure it’s on their list of concepts.
Will there be a TRO 3026 commemorative edition? Ray’s been expecting that question from someone and it was the first time it was asked. It’s possible but not at this time
Would CGL ever remaster old scenario packs? It’s a possibility, but not in the next few years due to the current workload
Will there ever be a CGL con event, like Kerenskykon but open to the public? They’ve considered it.
When will Liao get some love? They’ve got plenty of love over the last ten years. They’re lower on the priority list for forcepacks, and tried to balance that with the McCarron’s forcepack. They’re two books down in the Force Manual production queue
Any love for the home Clans coming? Like to fight the society? The WArs of Reaving Trilogy is scheduled for mid-next year with a Wars of Reaving forcepack set to hit around the same time
Any plans for future map packs? They have two more themes in development beyond the ones talked about publicly.
Will the BattleTech to Alpha Strike conversion rules be republished? Yes, as part of the upcoming refresh of the core rulebooks. The replacement for Total Warfare is in development right now. They’ll also have a replacement for Alpha Strike Commander’s edition and will publish the rules as a PDF around the time of it’s publication.
How long is the wait to move beyond 3152? They’re going to move slow, and are intending to spend the next eighteen months to two years fleshing out the current state of the universe. There’s a lot of moving parts and they want to make sure they all move in tandem.
Is there a possibility for models that are in box sets not currently in the salvage boxes being added into them? When they revise the core books they’ll probably revise the contents of the box sets, move the minis in different products around and rework the selections in the salvage boxes at the same time.
What new core books, Ray? The Total Warfare line is now eighteen years old. They’re going to give them a new presentation similar to the BattleMech Manual. There’s concern about the changes, but it’s going to be a case of moving some optional rules to standard, some standard to optional, minor tweaks, and it’s in playtest right now. If they have any potentially controversial changes that are well-received in playtest, those will be put to the player base as a whole to discuss.
Will the new core books have a spine art mural? Possibly
How about a Black Widow Company forcepack? They’ve discussed it since day one, but there are concerns about how well a box that big would sell.
How about Ace Darwin or House Arano focepacks? Probably not.
Would it be possible to get a PDF showing the in-universe order of the books? I’m trying to reread everything in order. It’s something they’ve considered a few times but it gets out of date quickly. They might try and have a resource along those lines on the new website.
Will Alaric and the Wolves stop winning? Look at ilClan’s Eyes Only, Trial of Brithright and Blood Will Rise.
Why does Ray let Loren on-stream with a gag? He’s only just broken out of Loren’s Trunk and he’s going to have to fix that
Any plans to design new mechs? How long does it take? They had several new mechs in the Recognition Guides. They’re up to about 3,000 unique mech chassis. They don’t want to throw out dozens of new mechs each year and it creates demand for new minis which they can’t fulfill. They want to take it slow from here on out. Johannes Heidler is in charge of mech design in general. Anthony and Marco are pretty good at putting art together quickly. It might take two weeks or so to make a single mech, but making a TRO is a much larger endeavour.
How about ilClan sourcebook companion forcepacks? They sort of are, but the delay of getting minis made means they aren’t out yet.
Are the Fox Patrol and Bug Company forcepacks in the pipeline? Fox Patrol is on the list, Ray is trying to get it to the top of the list. The Bug box has been discussed for about as long as the Black Widows, but might be easier to do as it has fewer unique minis in it. Still under consideration.
How about a TRO or forcepack of Shrapnel designs? It’s a possibility. Most of the Shrapnel designs are variants so they might show up in a forcepack but it wouldn’t be a dedicated Shrapnel one.
Are the Exiled Wolves dead as a faction now they’ve become part of Alaric’s wolves? The spirit of what they stood for is still there, we will see more of them. But the faction is no more.
Crab box? If we had a heavy crab it’d work, but it doesn't exist
How about PDF updates for the core box rulebooks? They should be there when a box gets reprinted but they’re less good about it than with individual books. It should be resolved by the time the new boxes come out.
How about a forcepack of notable followers of Blake? Focht, Apollyon, St. Jamais? Maybe
Will there be campaign or mission books for other major events like the Tukayyid book? Possible, some development’s been done. The main focus right now for that kind of play is Aces
ETA on the ilClan era updates for the Force Manuals? Davion and Kurita are waiting on Layout, print products keep taking priority. Mercs is still being worked on.
How about TROs for the early age of war? The founding of the great houses? It’ll be a PDF possibly with print on demand if it happens.
How about a wet navy battlefield support pack? It’s an interesting idea but Ray doesn’t see it happening. He said he’d make a note.
Stone’s Lament forcepack? Something to think about, especially as the Celestials are on the agenda
When will we see an Aces set for BattleTech? They’re working on it but no date at this point.
Can the descriptions of the RecGuide PDFs on the store be updated to include a list of what’s in the book? Maybe
When will the book for mercenary operations be updated? That would be in the MechCommander’s Handbook, which will give a narrative campaign structure for any force, not just mercs.
Will the ilClan-update PDF have new availability, new units or both? Both. It’ll have new units, including ones that were destroyed in the Dark Age era, as well as updates for units that survived into the era.
Any hope of organised play, like how MWDA had under their demo team? Ray would like to see that. Conversations were had over the weekend.
Any update on getting the old sourcebooks into PoD? It’s been going slowly. They add people to work on PoD, get trained up to do general layout and they end up being tapped to work on new print products
Bannson’s Raiders forcepack? Industrialmechs? Bannson’s: no, IndustrialMechs: maybe, they think it’d be fun.
Randall mentioned AreoTech playtesting and BV 3 earlier, anything Ray would like to share? Ray doesn’t know anything about updated BV. They’re looking to create new AeroTech game or games from the ground up.
They mentioned issues with availability of some forcepacks and core products. This is due to Kickstarter fulfillment and as that completes stock will return to the webstore and regular distribution.
Will we get BSP cards for more vehicles or do we need to wait for forcepacks to have them? Eventually they’ll be on MUL 2.
Where do you see the game going over the next five years? Ray’s priority is good new fiction that delves further into the recent sourcebooks. Products that expand the setting and gives players tools for their games.
What products are due reprints? This is outside Ray’s jusridiction
Can we get an Alpha Strike BSP deck? Yes
How about a deck of pilot cards like in the forcepacks, but new characters? Maybe
Any plans for random event cards? It’s something Ray wants to put into the MechCommander’s Handbook. Not sure what form it’ll take
Any plans to restock the original Inner Sphere lance packs? Yes
I’m not enthused about the ilClan era. That’s fair, and it’s why they continue to support earlier eras too.
Capital ship combat when? Eventually.
Any products you’d like to make like toys or statues? Larger-scale mechs and units like the Destiny-scale Marauder. Or even larger scale that can fit an action figure in the cockpit. A lot of what comes out is because of what Ray would like to see as a fan.
Will the Lostech dice pucks be reissued? Ray believes so
Why don’t they do the last 6 mechs from TRO 2750? It could be its own forcepack? That’s what Ray’s been saying
How about a new BattleTroops? It’s a possibility but not in the same format as the original one. It’s something they want to do
Smoke Jaguar forcepack? They’re on the agenda list somewhere
Will the vindicator be available outside the beginner box? Eventually.
How about nuke BSP cards to go with that one mission in Hot Spots Hinterlands? No
Will Aerospace fighters get non-nuke weapons to destroy warships? We’ll talk about that when the Aero game is further along
Will we see new hats? I want Hanson’s Roughriders! Ray too, Mike brought up Talon talking about it yesterday.
Any chance of BattleTech model kits like Gunpla? They’ve talked about it.
Locusts in the Salvage boxes please. They’re looking to cycle through that eventually
Will the minis in the Dominions Divided Aces set be Rasalhague or Kuritan-based? Dominion
Ray’s wearing a Goliath Scorpion shirt. Does this mean they’re getting at least 5 forcepacks? Yes.
Any plans for Clan Coyote or Minnesota Tribe forcepacks? No
Any teasers about the Opfor for the Aces boxes? Jade Falcons for Scouring Sands. Dominion in the second pack, Capellans in another one, and Snow Ravens in the last pack. All ilClan era. All include new minis.
A 50cm Atlas would be most impressive? Agreed
Hunchback forcepack? We’ll be seeing more but not a solo forcepack?
More VTOLs? Eventually
More Clan-Specific forcepacks? Yes
Can the support vehicles from the Star League forcepacks be rolled into the salvage boxes? Not sure.
For the Aces box where the Capellans are the Opfor, can you only play as the Clans against them, or them against the Clans? You’re not playing as the Clans in that box. You’re a team of mercenaries in each Aces box. The idea is that the minis in the Alpha Strike box are the core of your force for the Aces games.
Why didn’t CGL retcon the Dark Age as players didn’t like it? A lot of players did like it, just like everything else.
How about an Objectives II box with the J-27, Saviour and Coolant Truck? Probably not.
Any chance of an origins story for Apollyon? It’s possible.
How about using Aces to run drone mechs in a game? It’s a possibility.
Over the last few years, Ray is most proud of the team. Everyone from the Demo Agents up through the writers, artists, sculptors, production partners.
Ray said a special thank you to the fans for continuing to support the game.