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To my earlier question, if I could get neoprene maps, how many do I want for a healthy sized tactical game? I found a few sellers with the older neoprene mats, but know they're usually super hard to get.

One mapsheet can easily service 2 or so 'Mechs per side. I doubt you'd ever need more than 4 map-sheets at a time, which I believe is two of the neoprene mats.

Issue with those might be that the designs don't really mesh well when put side by side.

This is why I stick to paper map sheets.

Nice, thanks. I ended up with huge lots of Heroscape hexes to build 3d-maps, but can only go about 32-hexes wide and maybe 60 long, which is probably too narrow, yeah?

Can "only" go that wide & long? You got plenty. Standard paper mats are 22"x18" and are 17 hexes long by essentially 17 hexes wide, width works out weird because of of the interlocking nature of hexes. Neoprene mats are sized to be exactly 2 of the paper mats side-by-side, so 17 hexes long and 34 hexes wide. The neoprene mats (at least the original 4 mats) are all double-sided and all have a unique landscape on one side like desert or moonscape or mountains and the other side is a grasslands that matches up across the different neoprene mats. One neoprene mat will be good for most games, a second mat would be the equivalent of a 4x4 paper mat or 34x34 hexes for large games.

Awesome, thanks! I think I wildly misunderstood what was meant by sheets vs. mats, which is why I thought things were already doubled up.

Even more photos!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/450703636/battletech-clan-invasion/posts/2940653

Roll on retail release, so I can get my goodies...

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
Nice, thanks. I ended up with huge lots of Heroscape hexes to build 3d-maps, but can only go about 32-hexes wide and maybe 60 long, which is probably too narrow, yeah?

But a 1.75 inch hex mat to be the base of your Heroscape so you don't have to build "Level 0." It works so much better and saves so much time. I got mine from Hotz Matz for like $60. Completely worth the investment.

 Mattlov wrote:

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
Nice, thanks. I ended up with huge lots of Heroscape hexes to build 3d-maps, but can only go about 32-hexes wide and maybe 60 long, which is probably too narrow, yeah?

But a 1.75 inch hex mat to be the base of your Heroscape so you don't have to build "Level 0." It works so much better and saves so much time. I got mine from Hotz Matz for like $60. Completely worth the investment.

I did actually, though I would never do business with him again. It took months to get my order and his customer service was hell. :-p

I'm basically super set for a big Battletech winter!

Does anyone know of any places that sell transparent mats with hex overlays that could go over the top of existing mats?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Does anyone know of any places that sell transparent mats with hex overlays that could go over the top of existing mats?

Haven't seen one of those since.... the Forgotten Realms box set back in the 80s (wrong scale and size, obviously).

If you want to do it yourself (to existing mats), Litko does stencils
https://litko.net/search?type=product&q=stencil

It'd probably be pretty easy to find a template to print out on normal sized transparent 'paper' though the inkjet reality might make that more difficult than I expect.
A decent print shop might be able to do it on larger transparencies... maybe.

Not the most helpful, but all I can really think of.

Turns out I just wasn't looking hard enough.

Thats a good find, i'll have to keep it in mind.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Turns out I just wasn't looking hard enough.

Nice find!

If you're going to use a mat, is there any particular reason to just not switch to hexless? Our group used to play hexless back in the 80's/90's a lot.

 Stormonu wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Turns out I just wasn't looking hard enough.

Nice find!

If you're going to use a mat, is there any particular reason to just not switch to hexless? Our group used to play hexless back in the 80's/90's a lot.

Personally? Hexes make disagreements go away.

As said above, hexes remove arguments. Everything is binary with hexes: You're either in range, or you're not. You move the exact correct distance every time. LOS is exactly defined. You never have to measure anything. You just have to know how to count to 35 (at most).

It's one of the beauties of the BTech rules.

Not being able to make 90 degree turns is annoying.

As of the latest update, shipping should begin in the early weeks of October.

And we got some new IS designs:

Blackjack (perfectly serviceable)


Panther (I need another Panther like I need a hole in the head...)


Wolfhound (nice enough looking)


Jenner (I have even more Jenners than I do Panthers, but I really like this one)

I'm not generally a fan of IS designs, but some of these are making me rethink them.

Getting supplemental stuff in anticipation of receiving this... which book(s) do I want for campaign rules?

I don't mean narrative campaigns, per se, but more like generic map campaigns, maybe with finite resources, persistent damage/repairs to track, etc...?

Was it the Tactical Operations book?

https://www.miniaturemarket.com/cat35003va.html

I really like the Wolfhound. It takes me back to the days of Mechwarrior: Mercs on pc, when I got permanently sidetracked by Solaris fights, and a Wolfhound was my fav. (Followed closely by an Uziel).

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
I don't mean narrative campaigns, per se, but more like generic map campaigns, maybe with finite resources, persistent damage/repairs to track, etc...?

That would be Campaign Operations, but if you want the really detailed repair/maintenance rules, those are in Strategic Operations.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
I don't mean narrative campaigns, per se, but more like generic map campaigns, maybe with finite resources, persistent damage/repairs to track, etc...?

That would be Campaign Operations, but if you want the really detailed repair/maintenance rules, those are in Strategic Operations.

Thanks! Do the Campaign Operations have at least rudimentary repair/maintenance elements for said campaign?

You may also want to look at the chaos campaign, which is provided free online https://bg.battletech.com/download/CAT35600_ChaosCampaign_Rulebook.pdf

various battletech books since the Jihad have done their own chaos campaign arcs with custom crafted missions. worth a looksie.

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
Thanks! Do the Campaign Operations have at least rudimentary repair/maintenance elements for said campaign?

A few different versions actually, of varying levels of abstraction (expenditure of "resources", expenditure of time via "strategic turns", the detailed spending of actual money should you be tracking a Merc unit or something similar, etc.).

I love it! Thanks guys. It really is wild how much Battletech is just a buffet of crazy that can be drawn on, with the game morphing into a different animal depending on a group's tastes.

Meanwhile, GW games ship with three ways to play, two of which are immediately villified, and the third still isn't an agreed upon "good" way to play. LOL

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
I love it! Thanks guys. It really is wild how much Battletech is just a buffet of crazy that can be drawn on, with the game morphing into a different animal depending on a group's tastes.

I love the fact that in Tac Ops (page 151-152) there is a diagram and a full page detailed example of how to apply the rules for what happens if a train runs into a dropship. To use these rules, you'd have to

a) have train tracks on the board
b) have a dropship actually land right on top of them for some reason
c) have a train actually come through
d) have the dropship not take off for some reason when it sees the train coming
e) not be willing to just say "both of them die" (because at the damage levels created by the rules, realistically that's what happens if you bother to calculate it all out)

I'd really be stunned if anyone has ever actually used those rules, but there they are, in black and white.

I know this has been asked before, but is there a master up to date webpage that shows every render of all the mechs?

 judgedoug wrote:
I know this has been asked before, but is there a master up to date webpage that shows every render of all the mechs?

Your best bet is probably this thread on the BattleTech forums:

https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=70200.0