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agustin wrote:

paulson games wrote:Also Hawken looks like it'll be awesome, dying to see how that plays.

It's a first person shooter. If they replaced the mech textures with people and the weapons with rifles, it'd totally work. The mech-ness is pretty much appearance only.

This.

I was highly disappointing during testing :( It's basically Call of Duty: Mechs. Not saying it's bad, but definately not what I was expecting or want from a mech game.

I like the old MechWarrior II: Mercenaries
You could play the Campaign or just build a custom Mech and go out and battle. It was also a good way to field test your own custom designs and see how they should work.

agustin wrote:


Armor Grid: Mech Attack - a fast play game with classic batltetech sensibilities. Originally designed as rules to support a line of printable paper miniatures, but the game is solid enough to use with any miniatures.

That's what we do. We use 10mm (n scale, 1:144) Mechwarrior clix that have been rebased and sometimes repainted. It was a cheap and quick way to convince some of the club members to try a new scale and style of rules.
A couple of AAR's
http://rpgdiehard.blogspot.com/2010/12/rebased-mechwarrior-clix-in-action.html
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/399309.page

We also have used the figs for Future War Commander and Panzer8 Sci-Fi. I hope to try Mech Attack in 6mm/8mm (1:285, 1:300) scale when I someday get around to painting up my battletech mechs.

I've actually only played AG: Mech Attack! once and I don't remember how much the hex bases matter. If you had things on circle bases, would you need to mark every 60 degrees? How much does have hex bases actually matter?

Circle bases work fine in Mech Attack. It's a bit less clear exactly where the facing and sides are, but not overly so. I prefer the ease and look of hex bases (very BT'ish), but it's not entirely necessary. I did use rectangles for my larger armor, though that's almost as good as hexes in MA.

We rebased our minis because the look of the clix bases gives away their origins. However, one of our members used the same round metal washers (in a larger size of course) that he uses fo all his minis, as it allows him to store them in magnetic box trays.

You can see pics of a few of them on round bases in the second link above.

I have my 6mm sci-fi stuff on flames of war bases. It has nice obvious front and back, but is missing the 60 degree demarcations of a hex. Glad to know it doesn't matter. When we played last year, we used a friend's old BT collection of metal miniatures all on hex bases and I just couldn't remember how much it mattered.

One thing I do remember though are the damage patterns where different weapons apply their damage in different ways, creating weak points for the right kind of follow up attacks.

You should be fine.

You can always print out a paper base from the game files and use it as an arc template to lay over the units to check facing/arcs, but it probably isn't necessary.

 warboss wrote:
OP, is your hobby store a dedicated gaming hobby one or one of the "everything under the sun" types that stocks as much shelves of lava lamps and novelty gag gifts as gaming minis? I can understand a young employee maybe not hearing about battletech but not the usual 35+ year old store owner types who were likely gaming during the game's heyday. Battletech's look and gameplay style never fit my personal preferences but it's definitely one of a handful of games that basically started a gaming genre.

My original hobby shop is a very generalized hobby shop. They have a far more impressive model train layout than wargaming stock, so in all fairness, that shouldn't have surprised me. But my current shop is a dedicated LGS. They'd never heard of it either.

If they want your business, ask them to look to see if their distributors have it and see if they'll order it in for you. Then start doing a regular time where you show up and run intro games for people. Maybe they'll want some stuff, order it in and the store might start stocking some stuff.

 Terentius wrote:

My original hobby shop is a very generalized hobby shop. They have a far more impressive model train layout than wargaming stock, so in all fairness, that shouldn't have surprised me. But my current shop is a dedicated LGS. They'd never heard of it either.

Wow, a LGS that hasn't heard of BT, must be the least knowledgeable LGS in the country! Did the owners and staff start gaming this year?

I've never been in an LGS that hadn't heard of BT, especially with the re-release of the boxed set a year or so ago.

While stores might not carry BT I would expect that most every gamer has at least heard of BT or at the very least has had some exposure through Mechwarrior due to the video games being such a huge hit. It's kind of like a game store owners saying they've never heard of D&D. I suppose it's entirely possible but just really unexpected.

 BlueDagger wrote:

agustin wrote:

paulson games wrote:Also Hawken looks like it'll be awesome, dying to see how that plays.

It's a first person shooter. If they replaced the mech textures with people and the weapons with rifles, it'd totally work. The mech-ness is pretty much appearance only.

This.

I was highly disappointing during testing :( It's basically Call of Duty: Mechs. Not saying it's bad, but definately not what I was expecting or want from a mech game.

I'm not sure what differance people are seeing on that, the older mechwarrior games pretty much play as a first person shooter replacing the downbarrel view and hand with a cockpit window.

Mechcommander and some of the turn based games played eitehr on a grid or with an overhead view are certainly more of a tactical game but most of the Mechwarrior series IMO would qualify as redressed shooters.

Compared to Hawken, those are flight sims. Hawken is more like Unreal Tournament than any of the old Mechwarrior games. Hawken is all about fast twitch FPS play with mechs that are more agile than a human could possibly be. I recently played through a couple of the old games and the difference is night and day

Right but shooters at the time weren't all that sofisticated either, duke nuke em, quake, doom all of those were out around the time of the mechwarrior games and they don't play all that differant. The shooters were in more confined spaces, where mechwarrior games usually took place in larger open areas but still comes down to center target in screen and pull trigger. If you look at newer shooters like battlefield the maps are far more open and feel a lot like the Mechwarrior games.

And yet Mechwarrior online feels a lot more like a mech sim than Hawken does.

Hawken is a good spiritual successor to the Unreal Tournament games. It even has the three classic game modes of the original Unreal Tournament.

If you want a mech skinned version of Unreal Tournament, it's a great first person shooter. If you want a mech sim, MechWarrior Online is far, far closer to what you want.

The game was brought up in the context of getting one's mech fix in through a video game rather than a war game. Hawken won't do that. If you don't believe me, go give the game a try for yourself.

Eilif wrote:

 Terentius wrote:

My original hobby shop is a very generalized hobby shop. They have a far more impressive model train layout than wargaming stock, so in all fairness, that shouldn't have surprised me. But my current shop is a dedicated LGS. They'd never heard of it either.

Wow, a LGS that hasn't heard of BT, must be the least knowledgeable LGS in the country! Did the owners and staff start gaming this year?

I've never been in an LGS that hadn't heard of BT, especially with the re-release of the boxed set a year or so ago.

They have an near religious obsession with CCGs. They aren't big on wargaming, despite the stock they carry.

Love battletech clan wolf my self but Heavy gear is a fantastic game great rules and minis

Drahazar1 wrote:
Love battletech clan wolf my self but Heavy gear is a fantastic game great rules and minis

I have looked at Heavy Gear a few times, I can't seem to find a faction I like the cohesive look of. On top of that the number of units even in a starter box game puts me off of the game.