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https://i.warosu.org/data/tg/img/0414/59/1437867661045.png

If you are starting, here are some lovely printout mechs to use.

And here are some battlegrounds!

https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,520.0.html

Fortunately, the mechs are rated by technology levels. Stick to Basic, or Intro for now. That will leave you in 3025, during the time of the Succession Wars. At this level of tech, ton for ton matches are usually fair so you needn't mess with Battlevalue. Enjoy!

 judgedoug wrote:
The Battletech website actually is pretty useful.

You owe me a new keyboard.

Hopefully this core set won't have the horrible stock issues that the last one had.

Up until a while ago you could get all the Lance packs for 7.99 at the Warstore, but bunches are coming up out of print, now.

I'm amazed it took this long for Nurgy to show up and talk about Heavy Gear.

 General Helstrom wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:
The Battletech website actually is pretty useful.

You owe me a new keyboard.

Eh?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 General Helstrom wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:
The Battletech website actually is pretty useful.

You owe me a new keyboard.

Eh?

The phrase is traditionally used to signify that you've ruined a keyboard due to your drink spraying from your nose because the original comment made you laugh so hard. You then blame the original poster for the damage. In Catalysts case, it could also be because you've visited their webiste and, after a few minutes, smashed your keyboard to pieces on your desk in frustration. Both explanations work.

The website is a trainwreck, poorly organized, with broken links and pictures and long load times. It manages to tell you just enough to overwhelm you (wait there's two games? no, three. well two and a half maybe. oh and computer games too. wait what?) and just too little to make sense of it (ok so there are six different eras in battletech. that sounds like a lot. what does that mean for me as a gamer then?). It frequently links to something called battlecorps which is completely defunct. It promotes products like the 25th edition box that are long out of print. Mind you that this is supposed to be a new player's first experience! It reflects Catalysts poor product branding by referring to anything and everything as battletech, gleefully mashing the board game, the big battle game, the RPG and the slew of videogames together. Even google is like "screw these guys" and has relayed bg.battletech.com to its third page of search results.

I don't really have anything constructive to say about the website other than burn it down and build a new one, and fix your damn branding while you're at it.

Meanwhile with these new boxes coming out I may finally get to play this game with some friends as I've wanted to for years now.

As for the size and scale of mechs vs AT stuff, I'm curious how they'll scale too. if Imperial Knights are about the same size as a Battlemech mini then that could be handy from a terrain POV, as GW is making terrain kits for the game, AND there should be plenty of expertise online from the battletech community re making terrain at that scale. I could players of both games benifiting from this

AT terrain should probably be on the large side for BTech, as AT has upped their scale. That said, 6mm or 8mm scenery, well, doesn't make the difference too great to be unworkable.

 Albertorius wrote:
AT terrain should probably be on the large side for BTech, as AT has upped their scale. That said, 6mm or 8mm scenery, well, doesn't make the difference too great to be unworkable.

IIRC the AT box comes with terrain so if I snag that I might have to compare it to some of my mechs, even if it is slightly awkwardly designed I think there's eneugh size similarity that cross over experiance will be handy. This is good for both groups really.

There are some places that make BTech scale terrain. DFA Miniatures did a KS a while back and are about to go retail with their stuff.

Keep an eye out and you can use some terrain from different scales too. Here is the set I'm working on right now, a crashed spaceship in rugged mountain highlands. The trees are from AliExpress (less than €10 for what's seen here - thanks China!) and the ship is from blotz.co.uk in their 28mm sci-fi range:


Space Marine for scale:




After varnish (to take the shine off the plastic) and a drybrush with light green:




Trees make the spaceship look BIG:




The trick is to avoid pieces with easily identifiable human-sized aspects like doors, ladders and the like.

Thingiverse is a veritable treasure trove of Battletech gaming, nowadays. I'd recommend taking a look there too.

I can't say for the game, but in universe Titans are bigger. A warhound scout titan is 470 tons, or five Banshees

 General Helstrom wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 General Helstrom wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:
The Battletech website actually is pretty useful.

You owe me a new keyboard.

Eh?

The phrase is traditionally used to signify that you've ruined a keyboard due to your drink spraying from your nose because the original comment made you laugh so hard.

I guess for some reason the link to the useful page didn't show up in your browser nor in your quote.

 judgedoug wrote:
The Battletech website actually is pretty useful. Here's the info: https://bg.battletech.com/books/core_rulebooks/

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
There are some places that make BTech scale terrain. DFA Miniatures did a KS a while back and are about to go retail with their stuff.

all micro-scale, ie, 1/285 and 1/300 scale, are Battletech compatible. There's tons and tons and TONS of terrain made over the years. My favorite though is Gamecraft Minis. http://gcmini.mybigcommerce.com/

 judgedoug wrote:
I guess for some reason the link to the useful page didn't show up in your browser nor in your quote.

Oh, it did... It did. It's just the general idea of the Battletech site being "useful" that got me giggling

 Davespil wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sabotage! wrote:
To each their own I suppose, even if the dude is just trolling. I'd rather give Battletech a shot at 60 bucks (where I can read the quick start rules before hand) than spend 200+ on an AT starter where I can't read the rules first. Oh and Battletech has more than 4 total chassis options when the entire product line for the game is released. That is what really drives a nail into the coffin of that game for me.

Or, just buy the models you want and the rules instead of buying the starter. You will pay more for quaility. Battletech has more than 4 chassis cause it's been around forever. GW will add more titans as the game goes on.

Yes, obviously you can play with whatever models you want, and yes the GW models are higher quality and you will pay substantially more for it (though a lot of that is the scale of AT is dumb and the Warlord is more the size of a doll than a miniature). But who has any idea if the rules are remotely good? GW will likely not add more titans as the game goes on, at least not for Imperial/Chaos factions. I've been in the GW hobby since 1996, and the Titans are the exact same then as they are now. Imperators will also never get a model, or people will have to proxy them by using their 5 year old children dressed up in baroque cardboard armor to play. They might add Knight Armingers at some point, but that's about it.

I don't see AT as a game with any longevity because of the cost of entry and lack of options for expanding upon the initial releases. I really don't see GW retconning the fluff and adding in six or seven new classes of titans.

 Davespil wrote:
Or, just buy the models you want and the rules instead of buying the starter. You will pay more for quaility. Battletech has more than 4 chassis cause it's been around forever. GW will add more titans as the game goes on.

Battletech started with more chassis than AT will ever have.

I wonder, though... do you use to go to news threads about games you apparently have no interest in to crap on them? Because it kinda feels like a werid thing to do. I mean, there's no account for taste, after all, and the starter set has much more to do with regular boardgames than with AT...

 Sabotage! wrote:

 Davespil wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sabotage! wrote:
To each their own I suppose, even if the dude is just trolling. I'd rather give Battletech a shot at 60 bucks (where I can read the quick start rules before hand) than spend 200+ on an AT starter where I can't read the rules first. Oh and Battletech has more than 4 total chassis options when the entire product line for the game is released. That is what really drives a nail into the coffin of that game for me.

Or, just buy the models you want and the rules instead of buying the starter. You will pay more for quaility. Battletech has more than 4 chassis cause it's been around forever. GW will add more titans as the game goes on.

Yes, obviously you can play with whatever models you want, and yes the GW models are higher quality and you will pay substantially more for it (though a lot of that is the scale of AT is dumb and the Warlord is more the size of a doll than a miniature). But who has any idea if the rules are remotely good? GW will likely not add more titans as the game goes on, at least not for Imperial/Chaos factions. I've been in the GW hobby since 1996, and the Titans are the exact same then as they are now. Imperators will also never get a model, or people will have to proxy them by using their 5 year old children dressed up in baroque cardboard armor to play. They might add Knight Armingers at some point, but that's about it.

I don't see AT as a game with any longevity because of the cost of entry and lack of options for expanding upon the initial releases. I really don't see GW retconning the fluff and adding in six or seven new classes of titans.

with any luck the games detailed eneugh that 1 v 1 games are doable. if you only need 4 minis for your average "medium sized game" it should actually be reasonably affordable

In related news the lead in book for IlClan "Shatterered Fortress" is going to be physically available at Gencon and digitally for the rest of us first week of August so we can start to see what the post Dark Age era will be like. I can only hope this leads to a rules tidyup and rebalance so I can get cured of my 3025 forever ways.

BrianDavion wrote:


with any luck the games detailed eneugh that 1 v 1 games are doable. if you only need 4 minis for your average "medium sized game" it should actually be reasonably affordable

I'm sure AT will be plenty detailed, the rules will probably be okay as well, this is the same studio that did the new Necromunda, which at it's core is a very fun ruleset. It is however filled with so much ambiguity and so many typos however that extensive FAQS and some houserules are required to play the game as intended.

I guess it depends on your definition or reasonably affordable, the box set will be 200+ USD (probably 250), which will not be for full "medium sized game" armies. If you only need to add say a Reaver and a couple Warhounds to each side to make a army for an average sized game (which I'm guessing would cost about 100-120 USD) that's about 225 a person, which really isn't a bad deal at all. The issue is 200+ USD for a starter to try a game isn't any easy gateway for many people. Necromunda is 125 and Blood Bowl is 100, and both those games have a well established following and people have a general idea how they will play. It's not such a gamble to pick up one of those starters.

The point I'm trying to make is that I can buy the 60$ Battletech starter, after I read the quick-start Alpha Strike rules if I'm so inclined. If I don't like the game, it's a bummer and I'm out 60 bucks. I have to go into AT blind, and if I don't like the game I'm out 200+ bucks. If I do like the game, I have to try to convince other people past that starter tag, and have to buy special carrying bags/cases for the huge Warlord if I ever intend to play anywhere other than my home.

Finally they've started IlClan. Took 'em long enough.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Finally they've started IlClan. Took 'em long enough.

Can't say I much like the idea of letting someone win, especially when the result is going to be yet another god damned time jump.

BrianDavion wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Finally they've started IlClan. Took 'em long enough.

Can't say I much like the idea of letting someone win, especially when the result is going to be yet another god damned time jump.

Ah, don't worry. It's about time for mankind to beat itself silly, then our Manei Domini overlords will emerge from their shadow worlds and take their rightful place as rulers of the entire galaxy.

 Gitzbitah wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Finally they've started IlClan. Took 'em long enough.

Can't say I much like the idea of letting someone win, especially when the result is going to be yet another god damned time jump.

nah apparently someone conquers the inner sphere and we fast forward some time to the inevitable "imperial collapse into decadance and decay" being used as an excuse to right the ship and restore the Inner Sphere to a reckongizedable state with a unified tech base.

BattleTech is like the Marvel Comic Book universe - it loves nothing more than to restore the status quo.

 Formosa wrote:
Yes they look dated, that’s the point, battletech is very 80’s and I love it for it.

That's really the point of this release. They are basically rescupts of designs from the original 1980s release of the game. Players have wanted these for years but for various reasons (cough*harmony gold*cough) they could not be released until now.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
BattleTech is like the Marvel Comic Book universe - it loves nothing more than to restore the status quo.

Not really. in fact the problem with Btech is it's move so far beyond said status quo I think the writers might realize they NEED to "restore things" a bit.

Basicly I've heard the Ilclan is being used for a "soft reboot" of the franchise.

Why can't we have something like this in 6mm or whatever scale Battletech is?

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Xa690

 Malika2 wrote:
Why can't we have something like this in 6mm or whatever scale Battletech is?

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Xa690

Kinda looks like an anemic Madcat III

Yep. Definitely inspired by the Mad Cat.

Malika2 wrote:Why can't we have something like this in 6mm or whatever scale Battletech is?

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Xa690

This is why sadly Battletech will not take off. Great rules, lousy minis. When GW is what everything is compared to, Battletech will just fail. I HATED the art of battletech but stayed because at the time, the minis were good but in todays age, it's a joke. Even the new minis while better don't scream, I MUST HAVE THOSE. Maybe it's the hex bases for me that throws me off, but in todays times we should have the mechs to be able to torso twist especially they are part of the rules.

While it will be exciting for a while, it will not last. Their online store is a joke, everything is always said "small team no money" so how will Battletech ever grow if no time seems to ever be seriously put in? I can be perfectly wrong here, but as a person who loved Battletech when it came out, then left because it wasn't being sold in my area anymore and nobody played, trying to come back and this is all I see.

Heaven forbid you mention about aliens in Battletech or the Battletech forums become toxic even worse than the 40K community. You are just not allowed to have an opinion on that.

So I can't see Battltech growing big in like Warmahordes. I don't think it well ever go extinct because it still's here, but will it ever grow beyond what it is now? Not with these minis. Not with the way the online store is.