First off, I had made a cheat sheet of the tables and most common modifiers. Indispensible when you are trying to game quick. I didn't format it, so not pretty, but very effective.

We chose the following forces: I played NorAm with two alpha Raptors, two alpha Lynxes and a beta Wolverine (FTW!!!!) Ironbovin played with two alpha Goshawks, two alpha Ospreys and an Alpha BlackWolf. We deployed the full DPM Entire Town in a Box in a loose buildings formation, with tree copses in the middle and all around, with a more industrial section to one side. We deployed opposite, about 6 to 10 inches from the table edge. N scale buildings need to be at least four storeys high to hide more than a light mecha. Three storeys do a fine job with those.

We played around a bit with movement at first, doing no more than ranging shots at each other, feeling the terrain for the first and second turn.

By turn three, his Blackwolf suffered an engine failure, as did one of my Lynxes. Turn four he lost a Goshawk after I had pummeled it ridiculously for three turns, but he downed my second Lynx and my Wolverine. With only light mecha left and his two medium mecha almost fresh, I gave him the game.

We had a few rules quandaries, but essentially the book-keeping was light, will be made better with proper mech cards and a good cheat sheet (à la Battletech 2nd Edition, that sucker had everything!)

Here are our impressions, some stuff we had questions about and our suggestions. I tried to put them in order of importance:

0)We didn't use anything else than rookie pilots, it influences my comments on initiative and edge.

1)Initiative. We need this to change. Bad. By rolling everyone publicly, a savvy player can totally game the system and there is little tactical decision left to players, it becomes lockstep. It was fresh, we tried it, and we didn't like it. We thought of a way to combine "reactionnary fire" with an initiative system that randomizes activation order but not so much as to make it hard to keep tabs on, and lets players be tactical. We're taking a page from Two Fat Lardies, with a deck of cards representing all units (one card per unit). We even keep the variable turn length by having the "Commercial break" card that can shake things up a bit. First mecha is revealed. He declares how many actions he will perform, between 1 and 3(N). Any mecha can interrup this turn by performing, immediately before this mecha, N-1 action. Once these have been resolved, the original mecha can then "do his thang." When the activation cards are revealed for mecha having interrupted an activation, they are ignored for this turn.

2)By having the potential to call up to three actions, we see this as supplanting the need for an edge pool. I used edge to engage in reactionnary fire twice during the game (we weren't sure if -1d was applied to reactionnary fire or not, so we did). The rest of the time, we would use edge to grant our units a third action 90% of the time, and it was very often to duck behind cover. We feel that with the initiative mechanic proposed above, it would become an extra layer for comparatively little gain.

3)We love the concept of sensors, and we thought of more ways to make use of this. a)we were foggy if target locks remain until the end of the turn or until the issuing mecha's next activation. b)What if the issuing mecha or target break LOS, does the target lock remain? c)what is the difference exactly between a target lock and a sensor dice? Can anyone at any point in the turn claim the sensor dice, but the target lock needs to have the mecha itself enter LOS of the target? d)we'd love to see sensor points spent to counter a target lock or a sensor point usage. An ECM if you will. Sensors could become EW points instead. d)Ironbovin would have loved to use a target lock or a sensor point to be used for a called shot. Either as a general sensor dice expenditure (I think this is too powerful) or requiring a LOS at some point during the turn by the sensor-sporting mecha. The BlackWolf would then really become a hot commodity, which he felt was not that hot.

4)Missiles. The rules need to clarify if they are auto-hit or not. The bold seems to say auto-hit, but then the paragraph discusses to-hit dice and such. If you need to roll to-hit, he feels they are not worth it. I tend to agree.

5)I didn't find a definition for a "Rapid" weapon in the document. Oops. I'm curious though.

6)He wanted me to write this down verbatim: Make regular damage faster and critical damage slower. My interpretation is this: regular damage came in very slowly, usually two or three points of damage per action, even with my linked quad-autocannons on my Wolverine. Critical damage, however, was relatively easy to achieve and tended to incapacitate mecha either completely, or not at all. Out of five dead mecha, two were engine shut downs, often on their first critical hit. His BlackWolf had almost no scratched paint, but its engine was busted. Another 2 were cockpit hits after engine damage did nothing at all. He proposed to randomize critical damage on the hit location rather than automatically get your engine slammed right away. We also think that engine damage should be a recurring roll every turn, so you might be able to restart the damn thing, but it might shut down on you again. We also noticed that there is no 7-9 Engine Damage result on the chart. oopsie!

7)Leg actuator damage might be even better if it was half-movement, so there is a penalty to having it damaged. You can still do a "full move distance" but at the cost of shooting.

8)Ironbovin suggests we could maybe tweek damage potential between classes of mecha, because right now it really feels like light ones, unless they are very lucky, can't do much to a heavier mecha fast enough to survive the encounter. (Although I will temper his assessment by saying that he still used his very well by circling my force and getting shots at my blind sides often enough)

9)Y U 8 LaZ0rs so much? He felt like the laser was the red-headed step-child of the weapons groups. He felt his BlackWolf was a bit emasculated with them, and that for a coherent beam of light that can literally reach anywhere instantly, they suck. I'll admit I didn't even fire my Raptors' lasers, I used the machine guns instead. Moar dice felt like better odds. Even with the modifiers.

10)We didn't feel like "infinite range" was an issue. -2d modifier is more than enough to make fire wildly inaccurate at best.

11)There needs to be a little bit more oomph to buildings, otherwise they fall like so many houses of cards. Had we realized this earlier, make a killing field would have been child's play. Especially using edge points to do so.

Don't get a negative impression, we got the feeling this game can be a lot of fun, and we really tried to pick it apart as much as possible. I listened to Rob's podcast today and it was fresh in my mind (as much as I could remember). I need a lot more terrain, and much higher terrain. With what is coming in the mail, I should have almost enough buildings, but styrofoam hills (that I gave away...) are a necessity.