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 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Sorry to bother you guys, but I've never played Alpha Strike before...

Can I use my Republic of the Sphere 'Mechs, like the Ares in it?

Yes, you totally can. Just like Classic, the first thing you should probably do is establish which era you are fighting in, and the Master Unit List has Alpha Strike cards and unit/faction availability from everything from the Age of War to the ilclan era.

I have been tempted to get a 3-D printed Ares mech, just because they look so cool. Their Alpha Strike stats are crazy, as well.

I just wish I could have gotten the BT players in the area more interested in Alpha Strike. They deem it "too simple" because it doesn't have the required minutia of Total Warfare.

I was sold on the idea of returning to the game after the "dark times."

I really got into it once they started with the return of less-than-stable Stone and super heavies that weren't tied to the Word of Blake.


I've been looking for more, since my "Helios" configuration of my Ares runs well.

I took the Hephaestus Configuration and stripped off 2× ER Large Laser (C), 1 × Light PPC, 1 × C³ slave unit, and all the A Pods from the three legs.

I put 1 × Small Pulse Laser on each leg, and added a second set of 2 × Large Pulse Lasers (C) and a couple more double heat sinks.

I hadn't thought of putting an Ares on the table. I must give this a go.

We play in 10mm with rebased MechWarrior clix and I've got one. It's huge.

There's an Etsy seller in the US that sells 3D prints of them (in all the common variants) for less than 15 bucks each. Even at the proper Catalyst scale, they are big hombres.

My Mercs pledge arrived just before Christmas, it too late for me to get anything done with it until now.

Finally managed to get the time to unpack and sort. I now have 2 full mixed mech/vee battalions of IS (with basically an extra battalion of assorted support lances) and a Clan trinary with a supporting/leading Stratcom star.

I had a happy time about a year ago assembling lances and stars that seemed to make sense against a made up TO&E. So the IS forces are split into a line battalion and a heavy battalion, with the companies assigned to security, recon purposes etc. after the heartache of CGLs horrendous delivery phase I hope that I can recover a bit of joy by coming up with colour schemes for the remaining units.

So glorious! I hope to see many more photos from you and others, as folks get their kickstarter rewards painted...!

Deal Alert!
The current oddly-titled "Battletech RPG" $18 Humble Bundle includes Battletech Total Warfare, Alpha Strike Commander's Edition (love it) and A Time of War RPG as well as a bunch of other stuff including some of the more recent readouts and sourcebooks.
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/battletech-rpg-collection-catalyst-game-labs-books?hmb_source=&hmb_medium=product_tile&hmb_campaign=mosaic_section_1_layout_index_1_layout_type_threes_tile_index_1_c_battletechrpgcollectioncatalystgamelabs_bookbundle

Be sure to "Adjust donation" before checkout to give a better percentage to charity. They let you aportion the price without raising the cost but the default doesn't give much to charity.

I definitely got it, as I needed Destiny for a reference to play Battletech: Override, from Death From Above Wargaming. A pretty sweet game, by the way. Sits somewhere between Alpha Strike and Classic in complexity.

The bundle is a pretty awesome deal.

Working on some Jade Falcons this long weekend. I've finished a light star and I'm working on two others:

Just got my rulebook for this. It's so packed with stuff, I've not seen a modern rulebook like it in a long time.

Going to take me a while to look through it all, but it feels so comprehensive from my flick through.

And it's almost all rules too, very little is spent on background and so on.

Anyway, definitely looking forward to trying this game out. I will probably have to do some solo games at first to teach myself the rules properly before I go and introduce it to my main gaming opponent because it's certainly not as simple as the rules-light games I've been playing up to now (and this is the simplified battletech?!).

At present I have 16 Mechs, 16 Tanks, and enough infantry to make 16 stands of battle armour, 12 stands of jump infantry (by converting normal infantry) and 24 stands of normal infantry. I'm planning to paint the mechs with all individual schemes and split the infantry in half, half in a blue-grey scheme and half in an olive green scheme. The tanks are going to get a green-grey scheme. The idea being that I'll have two forces with mirror infantry and the ability to mix and match tanks and mechs between the two sides for maximum flexibility.

Good Luck!
I highly recommend sticking with the basic rules at first. Maybe even sticking mostly to the "introductory rules" available here...
https://battletech.com/game-downloads/
Try a couple of games with just Mechs (all the intro rules cover) and then add just enough from the main rulebook to incorporate infantry and vehicles.

Over time Alpha Strike has expanded to try to encompass much of the systems and such that are in Battletech. IMHO, this is not always the best for a system that is designed to be streamlined. I suggest starting with the basic or standard rules and adding additional elements only as they benefit your game experience. Alpha Strike can be a nice fast-paced game, but Battletech fans do tend to like their crunch and details and that is reflected in the optional aspects of Alpha Strike as well.

One other way to keep things simple is to stick with the succession wars era (tends to have more simply-outfited units) and pick the versions of units in the MUL that have less special rules. They may not be the most optimized units, but there are almost always many versions of each unit and usually at least a few that are special-rules-lite.

Also, you're very right. The core Battletech rulebooks tend to have less fluff than some other games and this is even more true for Alpha Strike. There's some good free primers on the the various eras and factions on the Battletech website and deeper information on Sarna.net and from there you can determine what era you wish to game in and what fluff you want to explore.

Regardless of how you proceed, enjoy the ride, Alpha Strike is alot of fun!

 Da Boss wrote:
Just got my rulebook for this. It's so packed with stuff, I've not seen a modern rulebook like it in a long time.

Going to take me a while to look through it all, but it feels so comprehensive from my flick through.

And it's almost all rules too, very little is spent on background and so on.

Anyway, definitely looking forward to trying this game out. I will probably have to do some solo games at first to teach myself the rules properly before I go and introduce it to my main gaming opponent because it's certainly not as simple as the rules-light games I've been playing up to now (and this is the simplified battletech?!).

At present I have 16 Mechs, 16 Tanks, and enough infantry to make 16 stands of battle armour, 12 stands of jump infantry (by converting normal infantry) and 24 stands of normal infantry. I'm planning to paint the mechs with all individual schemes and split the infantry in half, half in a blue-grey scheme and half in an olive green scheme. The tanks are going to get a green-grey scheme. The idea being that I'll have two forces with mirror infantry and the ability to mix and match tanks and mechs between the two sides for maximum flexibility.

Cheers, that all sounds like eminently sensible advice. I'll probably start with a small 4v4 battlemech game and see how I get on from there.

I definitely get the impression that the game is built with an "add seasoning to taste" approach. Find your own level of crunch.

And I've been looking at the unit list and already came to the conclusion that I'd be using the most simple units for my infantry - there's a bewildering array of units which is cool if you're trying to do a very accurate historical scenario or something but I think I'll keep it simple with my infantry - probably equip them all with the same weapons to keep it straightforward.

In the end, I want to be able to do 6mm combined arms. I've alway been a 40k guy, but epic never really interested me - I found the units a bit TOO big and ridiculous, and could never get into the mindset for it. I've been a fan of Mechwarrior for 30 years or so by now, the video games I mean, and I just decided that if I was gonna do 6mm I'd do it in a totally different fictional universe that was always built for it.

Also, my interest is mostly in the 3025 era for now. I might do some Clan stuff later on but everything I've got so far is inner sphere basic stuff. I know battle armour technically doesn't happen til the Clan era but I think the models are really cool so I'm going to use them anyway. It's fun to have three types of infantry of varying capabilities.

Reading your posts on these threads also pointed me at Mech Attack, which I also definitely intend to give a go, but I have to admit the formatting on their PDF is so terrible it just made me move on to full fat Alpha Strike instead. I need to head to an optician anyway and get some reading classes and the font in that PDF was giving me issues!

 Da Boss wrote:
Cheers, that all sounds like eminently sensible advice. I'll probably start with a small 4v4 battlemech game and see how I get on from there.

I definitely get the impression that the game is built with an "add seasoning to taste" approach. Find your own level of crunch.

And I've been looking at the unit list and already came to the conclusion that I'd be using the most simple units for my infantry - there's a bewildering array of units which is cool if you're trying to do a very accurate historical scenario or something but I think I'll keep it simple with my infantry - probably equip them all with the same weapons to keep it straightforward.

In the end, I want to be able to do 6mm combined arms. I've alway been a 40k guy, but epic never really interested me - I found the units a bit TOO big and ridiculous, and could never get into the mindset for it. I've been a fan of Mechwarrior for 30 years or so by now, the video games I mean, and I just decided that if I was gonna do 6mm I'd do it in a totally different fictional universe that was always built for it.

Also, my interest is mostly in the 3025 era for now. I might do some Clan stuff later on but everything I've got so far is inner sphere basic stuff. I know battle armour technically doesn't happen til the Clan era but I think the models are really cool so I'm going to use them anyway. It's fun to have three types of infantry of varying capabilities.

Reading your posts on these threads also pointed me at Mech Attack, which I also definitely intend to give a go, but I have to admit the formatting on their PDF is so terrible it just made me move on to full fat Alpha Strike instead. I need to head to an optician anyway and get some reading classes and the font in that PDF was giving me issues!

3025 (4th succession war I think) is the right place to start. Back when BT was divided by "levels" of complexity, 3025 was "Level 1" and the default setting for starter sets and introductory rules. As you have correctly surmised you can add and subtract as necessary. Nothing wrong with backdating Power armor in your universe.

I usually use the comparatively simpler unit profiles from in the 4th succession war though Clan Invasion era or shortly thereafter though I'm using mostly rebased Mechwarrior clix miniatures (32nd Century) so the factions and tech don't always align exactly.

A word about Mech Attack. It's a great game, and very easy to play, but its more of a replacement for Battletech than Alpha strike. Mech Attack is a amazing for lance vs lance battes that wrap up in 1/2 the time or less compared to Battetech. However, Mech Attack begins to slow down once you get up to about 10 units per player. On the other hand, Alpha Strike seems too sparse if you get much smaller than 10 units per player and works great for big battles. Both games work well with combined arms but it really shines in Alpha Strike.

One suggestion I will make for either Mech Attack or Alpha Strike. In order to make infantry, tanks and APC's more useful, try sometimes making some or all of your objectives claimable only by infantry. Mechs will still rule the battlefield, but everything else becomes useful as well. Infantry claims objectives, APCS move them around, Tanks hunt APCs, Mechs hunt everything, etc...

Alpha Strike is far more streamlined than Classic is. Roughly half of the equipment rules are simply baked in to Stats. You don't have to worry about how Pulse, Targeting Computers, Artemis, and a lot of other things work. You don't have to worry about being in Medium Range for X Weapon while Short Range or Y Weapon and Min Range of Z Weapon.

Everything else is in Specials and work a lot easier than in Classic (for the most part).

Our campaign GM even uses it for big battles to bring more of our guys on the field.

I'm still going to look into Classic but I mostly want to do big battles with combined arms so I think this is really the right game for me. But I think duels and lance vs. lance might be worth checking out for me in Classic.

I'm not annoyed that the game has a pile of extra rules btw - it's actually kind of refreshing!

It is possible to do company v company in Classic in a reasonable time, but the players have to be on the ball, know their rules, and it helps to have good Skills to help it process quickly. I've done it in campaign, even done company v 2 companies (to be fair, lighter units).

The only thing I absolutely hate about Alpha Strike is the main rules for list building. It's too focused on having specific sets of models to unlock free special rules. Especially like where vehicles have to be taken in (matched) pairs. It feels like you are working too hard to win a game by list building, which is something that gave me a bad taste in 40K.

I have found it's much more fun to just build a force from the total available points you have agreed on for the game, and then using the alternative way of giving just a select few models some SPA's based on their skill value, so they feel more like characters.

And Alpha Strike is definitely the best way to have battles that feel like the ones in the books. We had a special event last year where Randall Bills attended, and my table was a 3v3 game that had more then 18 Inner Sphere mechs/vehicles on either of the two teams, and we played it to a pretty firm ending in 3 or 4 hours even taking tons of table talk into account and having to teach at least 1 or 2 of the players most of the rules as we played.

I looked at the list building and decided I probably wouldn't bother with it. I hate "free rules for having this exact combo of models" style of list design, always have and always will, so I'm just gonna ignore all that stuff. If I ever join an active community I'll put up with it, same if I go to an event, but for my own games with my friend I'm gonna skip it.

I can see why designers choose to go that way but I really dislike it as a list building paradigm.