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Catalyst games, is planning the release of a box set for Battletech its rumored to include 12 plastic multi-part mechs. A loki was available at GenCon for $10, to show off what they're planning. It seems some delay is likely as a result of some of the models in the box set being the "unseen" and there appears to be alot of back and forth on that licensing agreement. They appear to be bigger than previously available miniatures (not counting the armor cast ones). They have hopes of supporting it with a number of other models and add-ons.

http://www.tabletopgamingnews.com/2009/08/14/29082

Assembled Loki: http://endgameoakland.com/chris/loki.jpg
Unassembled: http://www.classicbattletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,56020.msg1343565.html#msg1343565

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In my GW hating mood I'm glad to see some nice alternative rolling out. I think it speaks a bunch that it appears that Catalysts plan is to release a number of games that are much like GW's unsupported specialist games. From Elf Ball, for the Blood Bowl lovers, to a new game featuring an alternate history WWI airship combat game for the Battle Fleet Gothic type players. It will be interesting to see if GW bites and decides to react. Where I grew up Battle Tech was the only thing to compete with 40k, it'll be nice to see GW once again be forced to compete.

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Yessss, more hate, come on, more. Think of those poor hamsters.

You know how it is, the easiest way to break a cocaine (GW) addiction is to switch to heroin (Catalyst, maybe?).

There are three other options:
- get help
- kill yourself
- go cold turkey

Sweet, plastic mechs. And apparently IWM will still be making metal ones, so you can pick your poison.

Personally I'd go for the plastics. I want to cut up some mechs and put them in more dramatic poses.

It'll be plastic multi-part kits for the most popular I suspect. So expect maybe 50-ish kits (or less) in the end, a lot of them Omni's (to allow for multiple configs with a single kit). Don't expect plastic kits for all 300-400 'Mechs.

I think it's a great idea, and a long time coming.

Good for me, my favorite mechs are mostly the popular ones anyway.

That's a nice looking Omni.

I would be all over this if they were making plastic mechs up through the 3025 sourcebook. I have no interest in the clans, expanded IS, or any of the stuff that came after 3025, or maybe 3045.

Bah, never understood why people hate the Clans so much. If it weren't for the clans we wouldn't have cool mechs like the Madcat.

I liked some of the Clan sourcebooks (Jade Falcon was a fave), and I loved some of the mech concepts (and the mechwarrior video games, and intros).

What I didn't like was the evolving storyline, the 20 year update back in the FASA days, the re-scripting of the whole Inner-Sphere, marriages, etc.

I also didn't like that once the Clans hit, no one wanted to play Inner Sphere. Once the IS got 'clan-like' weapons, no one wanted to play Inner Sphere. It was all Clan, all the time.

I rather enjoyed the IS mechs, and the interesting games that were played up through 3025, before the "clan creep" so to speak, where their weapons and equipment were so much better (and rightly so, according to their fluff, Karensky returning, etc., which is fine). As a result, there were no longer any fights between Inner Sphere houses or Mercenary companies. There were only Clan on Clan battles, because their weapons and mechs were the best.

It'd be like playing 40k where each player has a different army, then GW releases a new army, which is so good, everyone in the group buys that army, and never plays their old one again. It got rather boring.

As an aside, I also felt that those games of Battletech took for-ev-er to finish. With all the armor points, internal structure, etc., it could take hours to resolve a simple 4 mech on 4 mech skirmish - have they changed the rules for the classic game in the new iteration, or is it still 'advanced battletech?

Well, I guess I can understand that, yeah. I'm guilty of that myself now that you mention the Mechwarrior game, it's all Clan tech on every single mech I use, and most of those are Clan mechs at that.

I like BTech specifically because it has an evolving story-line. Even the stuff I don't like I'm happy with because the story is moving forward.

Anyway:

Plastic multi-part 'Mechs = Awesome.
Plastic multi-part Omni-Mechs that come with all the options on the sprue = WIN!
The fact that this is finally a reality = EPIC WIN!!!

I remember wayyyy back in the day, the old Battletech plastics. Sure, they were kinda rough by todays standards.

But htey were alot better than the paper cutouts that came in the boxed set

Come to think of it- I think my first conversion ever was redoing the legs on those flimsy plastic Locusts. They were as bad as crisis suits! lol

They were vinyl before they were plastic.

Battlesuits, battlesuits, battlesuits.

Come on! :(

This thread is about bringing down the dictatorship known as GW, so you better be talking about Elementals.

Cruentus wrote:As an aside, I also felt that those games of Battletech took for-ev-er to finish. With all the armor points, internal structure, etc., it could take hours to resolve a simple 4 mech on 4 mech skirmish - have they changed the rules for the classic game in the new iteration, or is it still 'advanced battletech?

It's still the same old Battletech, which is why I gave up playing it: too much investment of time and energy for too little result. What they need to do is release a Heavy Gear compatible Technical Readout. Heavy Gear isn't the quickest game either, but you can do so much more with it.

I dunno. My first games were time-consuming affairs. Had a 12 IS v 5 Clan game that took the better part of 3 days to play.

Nower days, now that we're older and understand the rules, a 4 v 4 game takes a couple of hours. We played about 6 games in a single day once, usually 2 v 2, some of them were 1 v 1 v 1 v 1 v 1, or 4 v 1 v 1, things like that.

As for calling it 'advanced' BattleTech - the rules have always been like that. The simpler BattleTech - and I hesitate to call it that - was the ClickTech nonsense.

And the other thing is that if you wanted to play larger scale BTech there are always the rules for BattleForce, which just got updated in the latest core rulebook.

Yeah, back before we gave up on it my brothers and I could get a lance-on-lance (4 vs 4) game done in about an hour. Still felt like too much work, particularly compared to Bloodbowl or even Epic Space Marine (2nd edition). Your mileage may vary, I suppose.

YEAH. BATTLE TECH.

YEAH.

aka_mythos wrote:This thread is about bringing down the dictatorship known as GW, so you better be talking about Elementals.

Plastic Elementals will be in the Clan Boxed Set. Full Star of 'em.


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Nurglitch wrote:Yeah, back before we gave up on it my brothers and I could get a lance-on-lance (4 vs 4) game done in about an hour. Still felt like too much work, particularly compared to Bloodbowl or even Epic Space Marine (2nd edition). Your mileage may vary, I suppose.

Exactly. It all depends on what you want to get out of a game.

I play 40K because I want to have heroic leaders doing heroic things in a not-too-realistc fashion whilst legions of tanks fight around them. I play BattleTech because it is heavily (some would say overly) detailed. I play Necromunda for the roleplaying/team building aspects of it (always was a big X-Com fan). I play Bloodbowl for the madness of it all.

So the Clan Boxed set will be a full Nova?

Full Trinary actually. 2 full Stars plus a Nova w/5 'Mechs and 5 Points of Elementals.

It has 15 of the original 16 'invasion era' Omni's in it. Sadly, no Dasher. We get the Koshi instead, which is an odd choice given it's not really a combat 'Mech, but it's better than nothing.

aka_mythos wrote:This thread is about bringing down the dictatorship known as GW, so you better be talking about Elementals.

You are aware of the Inner Sphere and Gray Death's Battlesuits, yeah?

Same class as the Elementals, just different names

In my GW hating mood I'm glad to see some nice alternative rolling out. I think it speaks a bunch that it appears that Catalysts plan is to release a number of games that are much like GW's unsupported specialist games. From Elf Ball, for the Blood Bowl lovers, to a new game featuring an alternate history WWI airship combat game for the Battle Fleet Gothic type players. It will be interesting to see if GW bites and decides to react. Where I grew up Battle Tech was the only thing to compete with 40k, it'll be nice to see GW once again be forced to compete.

Yep, there were never any competitors in those areas before. Never. Never in the whole wide world. This is the first time.

It's sure to succeed.



As for the move to plastic, was there a specific reason? Battletech figures were never about the conversion work as far as my experience went and the runs are fairly small considering the high initial cost of the molds. Btech seemed the perfect game for pewter manufacturing. Low demand, and low cost.

Cruentus wrote:It'd be like playing 40k where each player has a different army, then GW releases a new army, which is so good, everyone in the group buys that army, and never plays their old one again. It got rather boring.

Or how DoC is over in the land of the square basers?

This is supacool, that Hellbringer is fragtastic. I didn't realize they were going to try to do multi-part plastics, I figured they were just going to stick with the single-pose plastics like in the current starter set.

I'm looking forward to the Clan boxed set too. Are those going to be single-pose, or is that the set that Catalyst is going to start with the multi-part kits? Or are the multi-part kits going to be its own seperate thing?

Well, I guess I don't care so much about Clan stuff, so long as I can paint up all my mechs as Wolf's Dragoons.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

aka_mythos wrote:This thread is about bringing down the dictatorship known as GW, so you better be talking about Elementals.

Plastic Elementals will be in the Clan Boxed Set. Full Star of 'em.


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Nurglitch wrote:Yeah, back before we gave up on it my brothers and I could get a lance-on-lance (4 vs 4) game done in about an hour. Still felt like too much work, particularly compared to Bloodbowl or even Epic Space Marine (2nd edition). Your mileage may vary, I suppose.

Exactly. It all depends on what you want to get out of a game.

I play 40K because I want to have heroic leaders doing heroic things in a not-too-realistc fashion whilst legions of tanks fight around them. I play BattleTech because it is heavily (some would say overly) detailed. I play Necromunda for the roleplaying/team building aspects of it (always was a big X-Com fan). I play Bloodbowl for the madness of it all.

The return of real Battletech and not just rubbery wastes of time on clickers. This sounds better all the time.

Kanluwen wrote:You are aware of the Inner Sphere and Gray Death's Battlesuits, yeah?

Same class as the Elementals, just different names

Yes. Elementals, were just how I was introduced to them. I thought they were the "bees knees". Well maybe not that far. Its just good to see a true full support of the game.

ShumaGorath wrote:

In my GW hating mood I'm glad to see some nice alternative rolling out. I think it speaks a bunch that it appears that Catalysts plan is to release a number of games that are much like GW's unsupported specialist games. From Elf Ball, for the Blood Bowl lovers, to a new game featuring an alternate history WWI airship combat game for the Battle Fleet Gothic type players. It will be interesting to see if GW bites and decides to react. Where I grew up Battle Tech was the only thing to compete with 40k, it'll be nice to see GW once again be forced to compete.

Yep, there were never any competitors in those areas before. Never. Never in the whole wide world. This is the first time.

It's sure to succeed.

Its not the uniqueness of those sorts of games, cause they aren't, really. Its that this is a single company, with all those previously established properties, developing what they need to put up a good fight against the $150,000,000 a year revenue GW juggernaught. They're not going to change things, but when a company like Catalyst, with big intellectual properties, recieves substantial monetary injections of investment capital it says someone out their does believe in them. I think anytime some company comes along and tries to compete with a larger company thats a good thing. If you look at the number 2, 3, and 4 of tabletop miniature gaming companies, GW is bigger than all of them by leaps and bounds. Wizkids was the next biggest and their colletive assets were only worth $29,000,000; GW makes that much every 3 months. Competition is a good thing. Competition by proven properties is an even better thing.

Even if you don't like these games, it maybe just the right thing to make GW give some attention to their specialist games.

ShumaGorath wrote:
As for the move to plastic, was there a specific reason? Battletech figures were never about the conversion work as far as my experience went and the runs are fairly small considering the high initial cost of the molds. Btech seemed the perfect game for pewter manufacturing. Low demand, and low cost.

The fact that their shooting for plastics goes to show they're planning something more substantial than low demand models. It shows they want to put the best effort forward and produce something more than what they did in the past. I suspect there will be a larger push for players to have one of every model. I also wouldn't be surprised to see Catalyst is having their plastics produced oversees to make them more cost effective.

Another reason is they wanted higher detailed models. They've seemed to also increase the size of the models. If the hex base on the new model is the size of the old bases, the figures about the size of a tyranid warrior. That allows way more detail. I also wouldn't be surprise if they started incorporating more add-ons into the basic game, items that might compel players to have multiple models.

That hex base is NOT the same size as a standard hex base. It is designed to keep the feet flat and mount inside the hex base.

The plastic Loki is the EXACT same dimensions as the current IWM sculpt.

And it is very nice. I will get to assembling mine shortly.