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i was always a fan of a TAG/Arrow combo. in my most recent games ive done this with light TAG mechs and Arrow from tanks.

my favorite mech is the Catapult.

I have to say Archer. It isn't really perfect, but it's the mech of choice for Jaime Wolfe and Cranston Snord, two of the best commanders in early IS history. The reason being that it was the ideal design to just take a high vantage point and oversee everything from a commander perspective, but up close it could still feth you up with those big 70 tonner fists. I don't like that all those designs from that era got banned for wierd copywrite reasons. Get a later version with a TAG mech and you have a sicko combo, but even in the early days, they represented a kind of overseer role for the field, and had armor enough to just stand there and keep dishing it out.

Crusader was what I did best with though as it was almost as armored and had more of a mid-range punch with the awkward leg SRMs and yeah I pushed the heat on that thing so many times because that's how we roll yo. No guts no galaxy. I think thats the only reason my crusader survived... not because it was a great design, just because I thought it was a tough piece of gak so risked it all the time. I seriously survived so many 4 vs 4 games with that piece of gak specifically because I was suicidal with it and everybody knew to stay away from it.

For those of you that do MegaMek, do you participate in The Shack's MekWars Role Playing version? I just started last night and I have to say its alot of fun. You play it with the same game engine but you join a House or Clan or whatever they are doing for the next several month and try to get your group to take over the galaxy doing raids, assaults, etc.

Anyone else do this?

Guitardian wrote:I have to say Archer. It isn't really perfect, but it's the mech of choice for Jaime Wolfe and Cranston Snord, two of the best commanders in early IS history. The reason being that it was the ideal design to just take a high vantage point and oversee everything from a commander perspective, but up close it could still feth you up with those big 70 tonner fists.

It's funny that you list Clan warriors as he best commanders in early IS history

The biggest flaw with the Archer is the mediums mounted in the arms. This makes it not as good as a brawler.

Granted, the Archer is my favorite mech, though I perfer the Archer S. (Or my custom Archer II or III based off of the REF Gladiator...The original Archer is based off of the RDF Gladiator)

It is true that as the game timeline changed, it was eventually "revealed" (or invented) that they were both clanners, both the Dragoons and the Irregulars were existant long before all the new tech existed. Im my mind, Cranston Snord will always be remembered as the leader of a gang of misfits in half-broken mechs who pulled off amazing and improbable victories back during the succession wars, before the clans were even an idea for the writers.

I didn't like the mediums on the arms either. With a good pilot though (and we'll assume most company commanders are) kicking is far more brutal, even if it is a bit risky. Sweep the leg bobby. Punching is for the less skilly pilots and while the 1-in-6 chance for a headshot is kind of tempting to go for, more often than not you just end up swinging at their arm or torso and only doing a little damage. A couple of good kicks from a heavy will take out a leg. Especially on some of the mechs with very disproportionate armor values (warhammer has more on its arms than on its legs for instance). An Archer could knock a leg off a warhammer with 2 or 3 kicks. That's two fall risks, but a good pilot would be unlikely to fall.

Kicking while you're 1 elevation level higher is fun though. All that massive kick damage using the punching table. And of course there's the whole imagery of kicking another mech's head clean off.

I just imagine a mech going like an American Football umpire with his arms after something like that.

BAWTRM wrote:Kicking while you're 1 elevation level higher is fun though. All that massive kick damage using the punching table. And of course there's the whole imagery of kicking another mech's head clean off.

I just imagine a mech going like an American Football umpire with his arms after something like that.

We used to have a Epic Eldar Jet Bike running around the field pained like a Ref just for those events

Hordini wrote:To be fair, wouldn't it make more sense to run 3050 IS mechs against the Daishi? Isn't running 3050 Clan mechs against 3025 IS mechs kind of like running Fokker Triplanes against P-40 Warhawks? If you don't like Clan tech, okay fair enough, but it just seems kind of strange to say you don't like Clan tech because they can rock mech designs that are 25 years older than they are.

The TRO 3050 mechs were just starting to reach the frontlines when the Clans arrived and the frontlines were no where near where the Clans actually invaded. Realistically until the ilKhan got capped by Tyra the Clans were primarily facing 3025 designs. Even after that 3050 designs weren't plentiful and most of the ranks were made up of 3025 mechs upgraded to various degrees with some 3050 mechs interspersed. Not until Tukkayyid could you really claim most of the IS mechs were 3050 equivalent designs.

Tyyr wrote:

Hordini wrote:To be fair, wouldn't it make more sense to run 3050 IS mechs against the Daishi? Isn't running 3050 Clan mechs against 3025 IS mechs kind of like running Fokker Triplanes against P-40 Warhawks? If you don't like Clan tech, okay fair enough, but it just seems kind of strange to say you don't like Clan tech because they can rock mech designs that are 25 years older than they are.

The TRO 3050 mechs were just starting to reach the frontlines when the Clans arrived and the frontlines were no where near where the Clans actually invaded. Realistically until the ilKhan got capped by Tyra the Clans were primarily facing 3025 designs. Even after that 3050 designs weren't plentiful and most of the ranks were made up of 3025 mechs upgraded to various degrees with some 3050 mechs interspersed. Not until Tukkayyid could you really claim most of the IS mechs were 3050 equivalent designs.

Actually exceopt for CASE you can miss out on all the IS tech upgrades and still give the clans a good kicking. 3025 mechs are significantly cheaper whether costed in C-Bills or points. Ammo explosions are the kicker, single heat sinks full weight engines and no special structure materials, you can do withoput that, and many of the upgraded weapons augment failure as much as success. Unless you minimax horribly that is. For every laerge pulse laser you are delighted to receive you might get a grossly heat inefficient ERPPC.

Numbers count and many solid 3025 designs are available en masse, the ammo carrying designs do need CASE, but thats all you really need.

Not really what I was speaking too but in a BV balanced game I have never failed to slap 3025 designs around royalty in all but the most advantageous terrain for them, namely very very congested maps with short lines of sight that let them get close. If I can find long shooting lanes and keep the IS mechs in them they're butchered.

If the IS guy lets you do that, then you outgeneraled him. If the IS guy is smart, he makes you come to him by keeping out of LOS.

That would be a pretty prolonged standoff. Any IS player would be stupid to take his mech out from behind LOS facing off against a bunch of ER LL and so on whacking him the moment he steps out. And any clanner would be stupid to go in and face all the ganging up fire when he gets himself into the ugly range to find his target.

This is why I liked playing with a group where each player just has his own mech. There is a lot more psychology coming into play... like"Andy go draw that Vulture out from its dominating cliff position so I can make it over to those low hills"... Andy says "Hell no, you're just gonna have to run for it and hope because that thing will tear me to pieces"... Real conversation in a 8 person game. My Commando did not survive the next two turns and I was out of the game pretty early on.

This is why my Crusader consistently did well. Every other player was scared to engage it because they knew how much I just didn't give a feth with how I used it. Once it died, I could have a chance of getting a cooler mech for the next game. It just didn't die though, because nobody wants to engage the guy who will just blindly charge at you and thinking feth the consequences because you know he hates his mech and wants a different one for the next game. Nobody wants to provoke the completely suicidal guy.

If I was playing a full lance by myself, I would never think like that, I would play a lot more conservatively. But in a big friendly group game where you only get your one mech, it scared all my opponent friends when he showed up, all wild crazy swinging punching kicking overheating at their only mech they had in the game. Sorry buddy, you picked the wrong suicidal lunatic to mess with...

So he became like our team's Khorne Berserker of the unit and everybody knew it on both teams. That was the only mech I never had shot out from under me. Not once in two years of weekly games where he probably showed up at about a good third of them. Those results couldn't be emulated if I was playing a whole lance of my own. Only feats of heroism like "Lionheart" performed could happen because we had 1-pilot-1-mech games. Although there were teams, everyone (except me) was out for themselves and to keep their mech and pilot for the next game, whereas I just didn't care because I was angry about being assigned a stupid Crusader. And therefore he kept going and going and going because of the fear my playing style put into everyone else.

"Don't even start pissing that Crusader off, just let him sit back and do his thing with the shoulder missiles... don't get near him that guy's crazy... worry about this guy instead".

Hence the suicidal king Lionheart survived time and time again because by the time everyone else had beaten each other bloody and he had run out of LRM ammo, he could just punch the gak out of their wounded arses with only a bit of surface armor damage when he engaged.

Psychology is a lot more important when everybody just has their one mech but you are still supposed to work as a team.

Unfortunately, all those friends are scattered, married, dads, etc and live in different states. Can't pull together 8 battletech fans at the same time where I'm at now.

http://theshack.freeforums.org/

if anyone is interested in an online campaign. I've been loving it myself. Just have to download TheShack client to go with mekwars and get the updates and such.

Right now I believe the campaign is at 2777

Vulcan wrote:If the IS guy lets you do that, then you outgeneraled him. If the IS guy is smart, he makes you come to him by keeping out of LOS.

If the map is set up for that. There are typically precious few pieces of terrain on most maps where you can actually hide and ensure the other guy has no LOS to you at all and all the terrain around it makes them come right up next to you before he can get LOS. The other big benefit the Clans had in the early going was speed. My heavies can run like mediums making it trivial to flank you and turn your cover into a big limit on where you can move. And just sitting and waiting for your opponent to come to you might work if your just playing an annihilation game but in most scenarios that's a very good way to lose.

City fights are about the only place 3025 IS mechs can take on Clan mechs with any hope of winning, unless you're playing on a map that's solid hills and forests. The BV system is actually pretty good at balancing things given how incredibly diverse units can be in CBT but it doesn't handle those big leaps in technology base very well and 3025 IS mechs vs. 3050 clan mechs is a pretty huge tech jump.

Scenarios help balance the early IS vs Clan games. Clan should always be the attacker and it helps if the IS side is dug in and at a minimum of a 10% BV advantage. Destroy the Ammo Dump in 10 turns was a popular mission for me back in the day where the clan mechs would have to pass through a city or dense forest to get to the ammo dump. The IS guys would be setup behind buildings, in trenches, etc. We also forced the clans to use the honor system so if my archer shot at your black hawk, it was one on one until that battle was over. Of course, the IS guys always used that to their advantage, as long as it suited them anyway.

Oh, yeah, if you've convinced me to let you do Clans aganinst my 3025, you are going to play by Clan ROE until I open things up by multi-targeting. If you are enough of a 'TFG' to ignore Clan ROE in that scenario, I pick up my mechs and go.

Please save the 'You're a bad person if you don't play the way I want' arguments for the 40k section.

skyth wrote:Please save the 'You're a bad person if you don't play the way I want' arguments for the 40k section.

Well, to be fair the fact remains that if you pitch Clan forces against IS 3025 tech during the early Clan Invasion era without enforcing Zellbrigen ugly things will happen.

I had the misfortune to take part in one multi-player game during the early days of the coming of the Clans. A Clan Star vs a IS Company without Zellbrigen in effect. It was brutal,short and not at all fun for the IS side. The after action "discussion" got a bit too heated and personal for everyones comfort.

I wasn't aware we were argueing, just sharing ideas. Playing 3050 clans against 3025 is a 'realistic' scenario for the timeline. I would hate to be on the IS team without clan honor as an assumption. It is not a rule though, just that there is a small role-playing aspect to the game that many people enjoy. If you want to be the clan mechwarrior who loses honor then go right ahead. You'll probably kick some butt, and become the butt of all the jokes from your peers during the next game.

It would be a short game and not very fun at all for either player. The best the IS player could hope for is to do some damage; he is NOT going to win. And given that we already know the Clan player is going to win, and win cheaply, what is the point of even playing?

At least under Zellbringen I can bait the clan player into a bad position (or, more likely, just a less good position) before combining fire on one guy and taking him out...

Just before he does the same to me in the aftermath.

If it's a scenario and part of a campaign, then maybe there is a point to it. More likely, I'll just go looking to play someone who doesn't thrill on cheap victories. If that seems harsh to you, sorry. I play to have fun too; the fun should NOT be restricted to your side of the table.

That's why the power imbalance of different tech levels when clans were introduced had a lot of players scurrying off to other games. BV in Classic Btech is a flawed system as it can't take into account lance combos that work well together (just look at that Marik 'house mech' matchup as an example. I would never want a stupid stock Hermes II unless I was in a lance with some bruisers to knock em down as I flush em out, for instance.) But it worked great for the lance as a whole.

Just adding up the value of each mech does not give an adequate representation of that mech's potential usefulness. I remember my horrible game where I had a few savanah masters, a lot of mediocre tanks, various infantry and my only mechs were a upgraded gauss cannon cyclops and some light mech I don't remember. He had an equally BV force comprised of entirely Wraith spam. He mopped the floor so bad I didn't have a chance. However we both had the same total BV.

You don't play Btech to win, you play it to try to figure out how to win. So many times I got stuck with a flawed mech and had to figure out how I could make the best of it. It's no fun if you can just claim a Madcat for every game. Clan tech, light engines, ferro fibrous, endo steel, lighter weapons, double sinks... etc... just screwed up that balance, drove away a lot of old players and recruited a bunch of new ones. Literally second generation Btech. That's why Classic is still so appealing. It's balanced by the fact that, barring a couple of competent exceptions we have already brought up, who you might be lucky enough to get, all the mechs have a bit of a janky side to them and force you do think hard to pull off how to use it.

Stamping a heavily armed Vulture to the top of a cliff and raining down death on the inferior IS punk is a no brainer, but figuring out how to use an Urbanwreck, Hermes II or a Vulcan or Jagermech in a lance together effectively, that is a challenge. It's never about who wins, it's about who figures out the coolest use for a flawed tool to win, or at least put up a good fight in an otherwise one-sided battle of mixed matchups.

We have had few 3025 vs. Clan games that worked. The trick we found was a IS Company vs. a Clan Star with 3-4 Mechs and 1-2 Elementals.

Guitardian wrote:Clan tech, light engines, ferro fibrous, endo steel, lighter weapons, double sinks... etc... just screwed up that balance, drove away a lot of old players and recruited a bunch of new ones. Literally second generation Btech.

I wonder on what generation we're now? I'm probably 2nd generation. I was introduced to the Battletech universe through the Mechwarrior 2 PC game which a friend had and which we literally played to death (take care of your CD-roms kids, scratches are bad). There was actually a load of fluff incorporated into that game through the mission background material and the library, but if you only played the battles you could completely miss out on that.

I loved all that material but didn't make the link with Battletech yet. Untill me and some friends were on a visit to our nearest game store (1 hour travel back then) and a pocket novel title and cover caught my eye. I believe it featured the iconic Timberwolf on its cover. But this was called Battletech, not Mechwarrior and I was a little confused, though a quick browse made it clear this was exactly the same universe.

But wait, wasn't there some kind of boardgame with the name Battletech in this store? Don't know if I bought the box on that particular visit (probably had my pocket money slated for some RPG materail) but that was the beginning really.

Despite my 'Clan upbringing' and being '2nd generation' I'm a big pre-3050 fan though. Exactly for the reasons stated by Guitardian. Playing battles with quirky mechs gives great satisfaction.

Vulcan wrote:It would be a short game and not very fun at all for either player. The best the IS player could hope for is to do some damage; he is NOT going to win. And given that we already know the Clan player is going to win, and win cheaply, what is the point of even playing?

Well first off all you should never play a pick up BV balanced game and pit 3025 IS vs. 3050+ Clans. The only time you pit those sides agaisnt one another is in a scenario and in most of those scenarios the IS player should DRASTICALLY outnumber the clan player. Remember in the early going the clans were assualting multiple regiments with what amounted to reinforced companies and short battalions. So unless an IS player outnumber the clan player 3 to 1 or has incredibly advantageous terrain then its not a good scenario.

At least under Zellbringen I can bait the clan player into a bad position (or, more likely, just a less good position) before combining fire on one guy and taking him out...

Just before he does the same to me in the aftermath.

If it's a scenario and part of a campaign, then maybe there is a point to it. More likely, I'll just go looking to play someone who doesn't thrill on cheap victories. If that seems harsh to you, sorry. I play to have fun too; the fun should NOT be restricted to your side of the table.

The problem is that Zell has multiple levels and only under the most restrictive can you actually pull that off and make it work. You might swing it against a Smoke Jag or Jade Falcon player who plays it to the nines but vs. a Wolf or Ghost Bear player they'll catch on to what you're doing, declare that you're violating the rules of zell (it's a two way street), and blow your ass away like the bandit scum you are. I've played too many games where the IS player assumed I was playing the most restrictive level of Zell and he could abuse it all he wanted and I wouldn't do anything about it. The old use an LRM Locust to distract the Dire Wolf trick. They were shocked when he ran off and I'd turn my Dire Wolf and level some mech he'd been about to try and back shot me with.

Guitardian wrote:That's why the power imbalance of different tech levels when clans were introduced had a lot of players scurrying off to other games. BV in Classic Btech is a flawed system as it can't take into account lance combos that work well together (just look at that Marik 'house mech' matchup as an example. I would never want a stupid stock Hermes II unless I was in a lance with some bruisers to knock em down as I flush em out, for instance.) But it worked great for the lance as a whole.

Just adding up the value of each mech does not give an adequate representation of that mech's potential usefulness. I remember my horrible game where I had a few savanah masters, a lot of mediocre tanks, various infantry and my only mechs were a upgraded gauss cannon cyclops and some light mech I don't remember. He had an equally BV force comprised of entirely Wraith spam. He mopped the floor so bad I didn't have a chance. However we both had the same total BV.

Which is why the BV system isn't one you just blindly use. It's meant to balance out roughly comparable forces when the people playing know what they're doing. Throwing together a random list vs. a specialized list is going to get the random list torn up no matter what the BV says.

You don't play Btech to win, you play it to try to figure out how to win. So many times I got stuck with a flawed mech and had to figure out how I could make the best of it. It's no fun if you can just claim a Madcat for every game. Clan tech, light engines, ferro fibrous, endo steel, lighter weapons, double sinks... etc... just screwed up that balance, drove away a lot of old players and recruited a bunch of new ones. Literally second generation Btech. That's why Classic is still so appealing. It's balanced by the fact that, barring a couple of competent exceptions we have already brought up, who you might be lucky enough to get, all the mechs have a bit of a janky side to them and force you do think hard to pull off how to use it.

I have to point this out every time it comes up but "Classic" Battletech lasted only 4 years before the Clans were introduced. We have literally played with Clan mechs and tech for five times longer than we did with just the old 3025 style. There weren't exactly a lot of "old hand" players to drive away by the time the Clans came out and anyone who left because of them completely missed the point where the 3025 level of play was style perfectly valid. Even today there's absolutely nothing stopping you from playing a 3025 level game.

"classic" came out around 1980. clans joined in the fun around 1991. I think you got your timing off a tad. The only thing stopping a 3025 hexmap board game is that everyone else at the FLGS is into new supertech mechs and doesn't want to regress to the simpler, more balanced times. Now that all your mechs are good, all of your models are essentially plastic toy versions of collectors cards, why would any new player want to go back to before they were born to pilot a mech which isn't a deadly awesome high tech killing machine?

Close enough, 1984.

The original box set only had 13 mechs in it though, right? When did TRO 3025 come out? Battletech doesn't feel like battletech before TRO 30250 IMO.

Endgame wrote:The original box set only had 13 mechs in it though, right? When did TRO 3025 come out? Battletech doesn't feel like battletech before TRO 30250 IMO.

That’s funny our group thought that the 3050 destroyed the feel for the longest time.

Endgame wrote:The original box set only had 13 mechs in it though, right? When did TRO 3025 come out? Battletech doesn't feel like battletech before TRO 30250 IMO.

It had 14. The 'hidden' mechs that they later had to change the images of for copywrite reasons.

L: Stinger, Wasp, Locust (Gimme a Wasp, at least it doesn't suck quite as bad as the machinegun lights)
M: Phoenix Hawk, Shadowhawk, Wolverine, Griffin (Griffin FTW, Phoenix for the jumpy game)
H: Rifleman, Thunderbolt, Crusader, Archer, Warhammer, Marauder (Marauder of course, but they are all actually pretty good)
A: Battlemaster

Shortly after, the 'citytech' expansion came along with the Orion, Centurion, Javelin, and Victor mechs in the box, and the origional vehicle, infantry, and building rules, plus a new map, and added varieties of AC weapons unseen before. Origionally AC/5 was the only one and it was just called "autocannon".

Mechwarrior RPG book added a lot of the origional House Mechs: Zeus, Commando, Hermes II, Panther, Enforcer, Valkyrie, Vindicator, Dragon.

Add those sets up and you have 26 mechs in the origional releases.

Finally FASA came out with the tech readout:3025 that conglomerated all that stuff in one and added a few new designs and variants bringing the number of mech designs up to 55.

I remember the City Tech boxset, and I think that we started playing just before that. We really started playing with TRO 3025 and thats that era that really felt like battletech to me. 2750 and 3050 were excellent additions and really felt cannon IMO. After that it was kind of hit or miss, especially as the glut of soft, rounded edge mechs started coming out (I hate the new Warhammer Art BTW). The loss of Michael Stackpole as the lead author for the timeline and then the Word of Blake stuff kind of ruined it for me and I quit paying attention after that.