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 Ghaz wrote:
Pics and a brief review of the Wolfhound IIC kit can be seen at https://hpgstation.de/2022/02/25/wolfhound-iic-premium-mini-bilder/

Thanks - that's a lot of legs...

So hold off ordering anything on the CGL store right now guys, there's, presumably been a bug on their shippping and only the most expensive option is avaliable.

BrianDavion wrote:
So hold off ordering anything on the CGL store right now guys, there's, presumably been a bug on their shippping and only the most expensive option is avaliable.

It's back down to normal for me in the US, but the site now has a disclaimer that the charges may be wonky for the next couple days as they correct.

New Salvage Boxes are in the CGL store

18 player Classic Battletech this weekend. The tables are ready.

Looks nice we need some game pics when it happens.



Nifty find for the Btech fans. i found this webstore that does custom battletech shirts and hoodies- i ordered one to try them out


https://www.otakuplan.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=battletech

For the clanners

https://www.otakuplan.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=mechwarrior







Oh and Xmas sweaters, because ....reasons

I got my two Wolfhounds in yesterday. Put the first one together, a LOT of mold line cleaning needed to be done.

That Liao sweater....

M.

I can't tell from the site if those shirts are officially licensed. They are fantastically ugly and I'd consider grabbing one but I try not to support unlicensed work at this level.

Our slow plod of printing out steel warrior studio terrain moves forward. you can see a bit of the solar collector, generator and radiators in some of the shots. we have a few more bits to print of that then we move onto the defense walls and airfields.

This was a city battle so i broke out loads of terrain. as it is with battletech there were all sorts of critical shenanigans that sped the game along. the jaggermech crited the atlas's engine. the templar had an ammo explosion that killed the warhammer standing behind him. and other such sillyness.

I need to play more Btech. Haven't played since last year.

M.

Who needs Barnes & Noble, really?





EDIT: I are the stupidz! I ordered the regular Blackjack, not the Wolf's Dragoons one!

Ah well. Back to eBay...

Sooo....

I've recently made the decision to get into BattleTech. Still haven't played. I'm curious what the customary protocol is for, like, arranging a balanced casual game with a friend (or even a pickup game with an acquaintance/stranger).

Would you say something like, "Wanna play a XXXX Battle Value game?" Does that work, can you generally build a list towards an agreed-upon value even though there's such a wide variance in BV numbers? What's the widest gap between BV totals where it would still be considered a fair pitched battle?

Welcome! Typically, you'd do a BV and a number of mech limit for a casual pickup style game. Just in case you get somebody who wants to pour a dozen Locusts onto the field.

Additionally, you'd agree on a rules level or era limit, because some of the later gear, (clantech especially) can be tough to deal with.

BV is only really useful for scenarios or structuring an event.

As somebody who has been playing BT regularly for the last 20 years the reality is

The critical system exists in BT that negates BV quite quickly. in a game last week, a RAC jagger mech killed an atlas in the first round of shooting by taking out its engines with a critical hit.

The easiest way to run a pickup game is follow the lance/star layout.

1 vehicle, battle armor squad, mech, aerospace fighter etc... = 1 point of the lance (of 4). you can mix and match as you please as it is a combined arms game.

Our group tends to favor theme overall. using the mechs/units or specific loadouts your faction would use. As an example, a davion player would be more likely to run a house specific mech like a templar VS a steiner running a hauptmann or a RAC loadout VS a heavy gauss loadout.

against clans the rules are 1.3/1- meaning to have a "fair fight" with standard pilots on both sides (4/5 for inner sphere, 3/4 for clans) you need to bring 2 lances of 8 mechs to face off against a single clan star of 5 mechs. one small cavoite for clans with vehicles. clanners consider vehicles less than honorable so they are usually crewed by lower quality pilots. unless you're playing hells horse most clan vehicle pilots are 5/6s but they get 2 vehicles for every mech you replace as a point in the star.

Another one of the optional official rules we like to use to speed things up is forced withdrawal. battlemechs are very expensive and as such in the lore fighting to the death is rarely done.

Forced withdrawl rules retires mechs from the fight when they have taken 2 engine hits, 1 gyro hit, or have gone to internal damage on 3 limbs or 2 torsos.

I'm still figuring out the whole "clans are way better than IS" element of the game... are the pilot characteristics the primary difference? And could that not be addressed merely by using 3/4 pilots in IS mechs?

At the moment I have no interest in using era- or faction- specific builds, and very little interest in the lore. My gaming group generally agrees with that, although I could see us changing our minds down the road. But for the moment I kind of just want to field mechs I think look cool (partly because, for me, there's a huge gulf between ones that hit that feeling and ones that look ridiculous).

 Altruizine wrote:
I'm still figuring out the whole "clans are way better than IS" element of the game... are the pilot characteristics the primary difference? And could that not be addressed merely by using 3/4 pilots in IS mechs?

That isn't the primary difference, no. (And depending on the pilot generation or advancement rules in use, you might not even notice).

Tech is the big difference. Range and damage and tonnage and critical slots. You'll see the first two particularly on energy weapons, weight on missiles (clan LRMS are literally half the weight which makes a HUGE difference) and XL engines, ferro-fibrous and endo-steel take up significantly fewer critical slots (as do a fair few clan weapons) which makes a big difference on mech assembly. Its almost a completely different game (douly so in campaigns where you track repair and refit times)

At the moment I have no interest in using era- or faction- specific builds, and very little interest in the lore. My gaming group generally agrees with that, although I could see us changing our minds down the road. But for the moment I kind of just want to field mechs I think look cool (partly because, for me, there's a huge gulf between ones that hit that feeling and ones that look ridiculous).

The easiest 'fix' to that is that the clans do use inner sphere designs as reserve and garrison mechs. And regularly fight and raid each other, so if you want to mix things up without worrying much about lore etc, clan raids are the best excuse to do 'anything goes.'

Voss wrote:

 Altruizine wrote:
I'm still figuring out the whole "clans are way better than IS" element of the game... are the pilot characteristics the primary difference? And could that not be addressed merely by using 3/4 pilots in IS mechs?

That isn't the primary difference, no. (And depending on the pilot generation or advancement rules in use, you might not even notice).

Tech is the big difference. Range and damage and tonnage and critical slots. You'll see the first two particularly on energy weapons, weight on missiles (clan LRMS are literally half the weight which makes a HUGE difference) and XL engines, ferro-fibrous and endo-steel take up significantly fewer critical slots (as do a fair few clan weapons) which makes a big difference on mech assembly. Its almost a completely different game (douly so in campaigns where you track repair and refit times)

Pretty much.

The Ballistics see the lowest reward for taking Clan over Spheroid, but it is often enough. For Inner Sphere, the base AC/10 is 12 tons, LB-10X is 11t, and the Ultra AC/10 is 13t. In Clan tech, both their LB-10X and Ultra AC/10 are 10t.

A Spheroid LRM-20 is 10t, while the Clan one is 5t. They both do the same damage and the same range bands, except the Clan LRMs don't have a Minimum Range.

It's most noticeable with the heavier energy weapons. The Large Laser is 5t, 2 Crits and does 8 damage with a range of 15 with the Spheroid ER going out to 19. The Clans don't use a standard Large Laser (though, they do have more primitive Chemical lasers), their ER Large Laser is 4t, 1 Crit, and does 10 damage to a range of 25.

Then there are the exotic weapons. Clans have Advanced Tactical Missiles (ATM) which can fire 3 different missiles with 3 different range bands and 3 different damage profiles. Spheroids have the Multiple Missile Launcher (MML) which can fire either LRM or SRM loads. The Clans have the Hyper-Assault Gauss weapons which Cluster their damage, while the Inner Sphere have alternate ammos for their basic Autocannons. The Clans developed Heavy Lasers which do double the damage of their classic counterparts for a severe heat price, but the Spheroids developed Re-Engineered Lasers which ignore armor special rules that Reflective, Hardened, and Ferro-Lamellor have which would reduce every other laser's effectiveness.

Now, to make things more confusing, there are Mixed Technology units like the Atlas III, the R Configurations of Spheroid Omnimechs, and others, where there is some Spheroid tech and some Clan Tech used in its construction.

Doing a triple lance per side battle right now on one of the larger hex maps, alpha strike rules.

24 mechs on the field is pretty nuts! A daishi got taken out on turn 1, shockingly enough.

 daedalus-templarius wrote:
Doing a triple lance per side battle right now on one of the larger hex maps, alpha strike rules.

24 mechs on the field is pretty nuts! A daishi got taken out on turn 1, shockingly enough.

Actually, that isn't shocking at all. alpha strike rules were meant to be fast and easy to allow huge forces to be played in a short amount of time.

You can still take out a big boy like that in normal battletech if you get one of several lucky critical hits or do enough damage to the head to kill the pilot outright, but generally it is going to be loads of work to wear down a daishi.

 daedalus-templarius wrote:
Doing a triple lance per side battle right now on one of the larger hex maps, alpha strike rules.

24 mechs on the field is pretty nuts! A daishi got taken out on turn 1, shockingly enough.

A while back for our campaign, our company was sent on a mission to salvage what we could out of a crashed dropship. We were supported by a lance of Combat Vehicles.

We faced a merc company sent to secure it in the name of ComStar. We also faced the Black Widows. Took us a good while, but we had a person controlling each of the OpFors, and our side where we were controlling our pilots with an attached CV.

All told, 40 models on the table, not including the Dropship (which was non-operational).

Most of our unit made it out, and we only lost one mech all told (my just modded Centurion, and the pilot had lost his Thunderbolt just a a couple missions earlier) and all the CVs, but we did manage to salvage some gear and some unusual mechs bearing the insignia of the state of Minnesota: a Mercury II, Stag II, Pulverizer, and Wolverine II. Our boss also gifted us a Star League vintage Lancelot.

That game was pretty fantastic, ended up with like 6 of my 'Mechs left and the other team was a smoldering ruin.

Next game we are gonna do a classic game of clan v IS, like 10k BV per side.

Daishi, Turkina, Mad Dog, Grendel, Locust

v

Marauder, Bigger Marauder, King Crab, Longbow, Archer, Warhammer, Mercury

Should be pretty nuts

Some jade falcon boys.

RazorEdge wrote:
Northwind Highlanders Command Lance

https://www.acdd.com/bt-northwind-highlanders-command-lance.html

Did you all see they are doing some blind booster boxes with a single mech for a pretty low price point? Up for pre order on mini market.

 Shrapnelsmile wrote:
Did you all see they are doing some blind booster boxes with a single mech for a pretty low price point? Up for pre order on mini market.

The new Salvage Boxes? They've been around for a few weeks now.

beast_gts wrote:

 Shrapnelsmile wrote:
Did you all see they are doing some blind booster boxes with a single mech for a pretty low price point? Up for pre order on mini market.

The new Salvage Boxes? They've been around for a few weeks now.

They've been around for a few weeks now via Barnes and Noble or the Catalyst store--not general retail.

I may have grabbed a bunch...
Ended up with 2 complete Direct Fire Lances(Atlas, Crusader, Marauder II, and Orions) out of them, alongside a few other goodies. No Kodiak though

 Kanluwen wrote:
They've been around for a few weeks now via Barnes and Noble or the Catalyst store--not general retail.

Ah - OK. Given some of the posts in FB groups I thought they were general release in the US.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Ended up with 2 complete Direct Fire Lances(Atlas, Crusader, Marauder II, and Orions) out of them, alongside a few other goodies. No Kodiak though

Apparently there's a code on the box that might give a hint as to the contents - I'll see if I can find the FB thread about it.

ACD Distribution has the salvage boxes marked for a March 23rd release along with the new two volume Interstellar Operations.

I need one more Locust for this unit. That happens to be the 1st merc unit I created after I bought the 2nd ed box.

There are 5 mechs out of place because I don't think some second rate mercs would be able to buy a top of the line Raven, or a Ti Ts`ang in 3025, but I'll use them as something else in 3025 games.


M.