Greetings everyone!
I've been a fan of BT and MW/MC since I was a kid, but I've never had a chance to play the tabletop game, so I'd like to get started.
When people talk about the TT game, are they referring to this:
http://bg.battletech...iniatures-game/
or this:
http://bg.battletech...ctory-products/
Which one would you guys suggest getting/starting with?
0
New To Tabletop
Started by AWOL 01, Aug 19 2016 09:06 AM
4 replies to this topic
#2
-
-
- Ace Of Spades
- 8,865 posts
Member
Posted 19 August 2016 - 09:57 AM
AWOL 01, on 19 August 2016 - 09:06 AM, said:
Greetings everyone!
I've been a fan of BT and MW/MC since I was a kid, but I've never had a chance to play the tabletop game, so I'd like to get started.
When people talk about the TT game, are they referring to this:
http://bg.battletech...iniatures-game/
or this:
http://bg.battletech...ctory-products/
Which one would you guys suggest getting/starting with?
I've been a fan of BT and MW/MC since I was a kid, but I've never had a chance to play the tabletop game, so I'd like to get started.
When people talk about the TT game, are they referring to this:
http://bg.battletech...iniatures-game/
or this:
http://bg.battletech...ctory-products/
Which one would you guys suggest getting/starting with?
This is the true BattleTech:
http://bg.battletech...ctory-products/
#3
-
-
- 1,523 posts
Member
- LocationFukushima, Japan
Posted 19 August 2016 - 09:58 AM
Hello, AWOL, and welcome to the fold.
The second one that you posted is the "Original" that most of the player base knows and loves, and has remained mostly unchanged since it's first release in 1984. The first one you posted is for a much more recent edition, called "Alpha Strike, which was made for players who wanted to put dozens of miniatures on the table at a time, but seems to have been more adopted by... well... I'll just leave it as "players with less-than-stellar attention spans". There has always been a minority of gamers who've adopted miniatures gaming over hex based, and though I've been reluctant to partake because hexes leaves far less room for arguments than felt-and-ruler, the rules have been mostly the same. Alpha Strike eschews the depth of the original franchise for "Speed", leaving you with a very bare-bones game that loses much of the character of the franchise.
I'm biased, but hell, I'm not an oldbie from the 80s, or even the 90s. I got into the game after Mechwarrior 4. A combination of disappointment with what Microsoft did with the licence, and the fact that there was absolutely no signs of life microsoft since the dawn of the x-box. I learned from the core rules and Megamek together, rather than from another player. Teaching myself wasn't easy, but I'd been buying the Technical Readouts and the CCG since the Mechwarrior 2 days, so it all just kind of fell into place.
For the tabletop game, the starter-box is your best bet. The absolute best bang-for-your-buck is the newest version of the starter box, which has an Alex Iglecias (Same artist as for MWO) Atlas on the cover. Inside you'll find hexmaps, record sheets, flavor text, 24 plastic miniatures, plus two extra higher-quality minis... Everything you need to start playing. The minis you'll find are going to look old, because they're based off of the original sculpts from 1986 - but there's a reason for this. Unlike other miniatures games (*cough* 40k *cough*) where the story doesn't progress, the Battletech universe is a constantly growing and progressing setting. You can find modern artwork for 'mechs, but they're with the modern era. I see this as a good thing, as... like with World War 2 stuff, it doesn't look at all like stuff you'd see on the modern battlefield, and the aesthetic changes between real-life sci-fi tastes work well with showing the change in eras of the Battletech setting. As you grow as a player, you'll get ever closer to the more modern Dark Age era, and find art done by Shimmy and FD, as well. It's only players stuck in the "3025/3050 forever" mindset who get stuck with retro minis. There are literal hundreds of mechs in this setting, and each faction comes more into their own as the lore progresses. No use shoe-horning yourself into using the same stale 80s mechs for the rest of your gaming life.
When I started for the first time, I first found a friend who wanted to play a boardgame about giant robots, and then used the Quick Start Rules to teach each-other how to play. When I tried it in 2004, the quickstart rules didn't use tanks or infantry, but instead used only the Hunchback, Enforcer, Hermes II, and Cicada. I prefered it that way for simplicity, but don't hesitate to expand on the currently provided scenarios by having HBK+ENF vs HBK+ENF for an even match. You've probably got some six-sided dice rotting away in an old copy of Monopoly somewhere that you can use, so as long as you have a printer, you're golden.
Compared to me, I consider you lucky. When I was getting started, there were no starter boxes worth getting. Everything still cost the same, but contained only cardboard chits, and the Canadian dollar was... less than forgiving in those days. So long as you are getting a starter box with "Catalyst Game Labs" on the side and make sure that nobody's short-changing you on the minis, you'll be getting a fantastic deal - and more than enough to get started. I wish you the best in your endeavors, and maybe one day we'll even meet at a con in the future.
Other things worth picking up:
For games:
-Freeware: Solaris Skunkwerks - For printing canon mechs and making your own.
-PDFs: "Unabridged" series of Record sheets PDFs from Battlecorps - Especially 3039 to start out, these are handy for containing not only canon record sheets for mechs, but the vees as well.
-Classic Battletech Map Compilation 1. There are many "Map Packs" out there, but "Map Compilation 1" is a big, fat collection of the hex maps you'll use most often, printed on thicker paper, and easily swapped out to make randomised battlefields. Compilation 2 and Map Pack 7 are handy as well, but MC1 is by far the best bang for your buck.
-Total Warfare: Once you've mastered the intro-box, Total Warfare (And a few pages of Tech Manual) will be everything you need to have a better understanding of the game than 80% of the people who claim to play Battletech. This gets you right up into the Jihad period of the lores' rules, and you'll be comfortable with just about everything the setting can throw at you from that point, on. I skipped the introbox and went straight into these. Skip rules for anything that isn't a mech, at first. the chances of ever using them are so minute that it's not worth it. Tanks follow, then Battle armor, then infantry. Even I, as a 10-year player, have only ever used aerospace once.
For reading:
-TRO 3039/TRO3050 - The Technical Readouts series of books are Battletech's best sellers, and for good reason - they contain what every player actually cares about - the mechs and other usable units. 3039 is a great modern print run, combining the old TRO 3025 and TRO 3026 into one big, fat book. The art is mostly the original, so expect retro aesthetic, but as far as bathroom readers go, bar none, one of the best. If you can find the original TRO 3025 second-hand (Side-view of a marauder, not a front-view of Awesome and Atlas), That's worth picking up, too, as it contains all the no-longer-able-to-legally-show unseen versions of mechs that created the foundations of everything mechwarrior
-The Novels: There were a lot of novels in the 90s that have since gone out of print. You can still find them as e-pub, or through second-hand markets, but there hasn't been a print book since 2002 or earlier. I highly suggest starting with "Decision at Thunder Rift" or "Wolves at the Border". The Warrior Trilogy and the Blood of Kerensky trilogy are also hugely important, but also present the BattleTech setting from the perspective of kings, not soldiers. Also, Michael Stackpole seems to think that Nuclear Fusion = Nuclear Fission and created a generation of players who thought that mechs were walking nukes. Bad Stackpole, Bad.
-Housebooks/Handbooks series - if you like an inner sphere faction - great. While less equipped on the field, they're far better equipped for lore. The five successor states (Not rasalhague) have TONS of history to go with them. The new print Handbook - House (Somesuch) is great, but I've also seen electronic versions of the 80's Handbook series floating around for free, less a few pictures, of course. Both are treasure troves for understanding the lore and history of your favorite factions.
The second one that you posted is the "Original" that most of the player base knows and loves, and has remained mostly unchanged since it's first release in 1984. The first one you posted is for a much more recent edition, called "Alpha Strike, which was made for players who wanted to put dozens of miniatures on the table at a time, but seems to have been more adopted by... well... I'll just leave it as "players with less-than-stellar attention spans". There has always been a minority of gamers who've adopted miniatures gaming over hex based, and though I've been reluctant to partake because hexes leaves far less room for arguments than felt-and-ruler, the rules have been mostly the same. Alpha Strike eschews the depth of the original franchise for "Speed", leaving you with a very bare-bones game that loses much of the character of the franchise.
I'm biased, but hell, I'm not an oldbie from the 80s, or even the 90s. I got into the game after Mechwarrior 4. A combination of disappointment with what Microsoft did with the licence, and the fact that there was absolutely no signs of life microsoft since the dawn of the x-box. I learned from the core rules and Megamek together, rather than from another player. Teaching myself wasn't easy, but I'd been buying the Technical Readouts and the CCG since the Mechwarrior 2 days, so it all just kind of fell into place.
For the tabletop game, the starter-box is your best bet. The absolute best bang-for-your-buck is the newest version of the starter box, which has an Alex Iglecias (Same artist as for MWO) Atlas on the cover. Inside you'll find hexmaps, record sheets, flavor text, 24 plastic miniatures, plus two extra higher-quality minis... Everything you need to start playing. The minis you'll find are going to look old, because they're based off of the original sculpts from 1986 - but there's a reason for this. Unlike other miniatures games (*cough* 40k *cough*) where the story doesn't progress, the Battletech universe is a constantly growing and progressing setting. You can find modern artwork for 'mechs, but they're with the modern era. I see this as a good thing, as... like with World War 2 stuff, it doesn't look at all like stuff you'd see on the modern battlefield, and the aesthetic changes between real-life sci-fi tastes work well with showing the change in eras of the Battletech setting. As you grow as a player, you'll get ever closer to the more modern Dark Age era, and find art done by Shimmy and FD, as well. It's only players stuck in the "3025/3050 forever" mindset who get stuck with retro minis. There are literal hundreds of mechs in this setting, and each faction comes more into their own as the lore progresses. No use shoe-horning yourself into using the same stale 80s mechs for the rest of your gaming life.
When I started for the first time, I first found a friend who wanted to play a boardgame about giant robots, and then used the Quick Start Rules to teach each-other how to play. When I tried it in 2004, the quickstart rules didn't use tanks or infantry, but instead used only the Hunchback, Enforcer, Hermes II, and Cicada. I prefered it that way for simplicity, but don't hesitate to expand on the currently provided scenarios by having HBK+ENF vs HBK+ENF for an even match. You've probably got some six-sided dice rotting away in an old copy of Monopoly somewhere that you can use, so as long as you have a printer, you're golden.
Compared to me, I consider you lucky. When I was getting started, there were no starter boxes worth getting. Everything still cost the same, but contained only cardboard chits, and the Canadian dollar was... less than forgiving in those days. So long as you are getting a starter box with "Catalyst Game Labs" on the side and make sure that nobody's short-changing you on the minis, you'll be getting a fantastic deal - and more than enough to get started. I wish you the best in your endeavors, and maybe one day we'll even meet at a con in the future.
Other things worth picking up:
For games:
-Freeware: Solaris Skunkwerks - For printing canon mechs and making your own.
-PDFs: "Unabridged" series of Record sheets PDFs from Battlecorps - Especially 3039 to start out, these are handy for containing not only canon record sheets for mechs, but the vees as well.
-Classic Battletech Map Compilation 1. There are many "Map Packs" out there, but "Map Compilation 1" is a big, fat collection of the hex maps you'll use most often, printed on thicker paper, and easily swapped out to make randomised battlefields. Compilation 2 and Map Pack 7 are handy as well, but MC1 is by far the best bang for your buck.
-Total Warfare: Once you've mastered the intro-box, Total Warfare (And a few pages of Tech Manual) will be everything you need to have a better understanding of the game than 80% of the people who claim to play Battletech. This gets you right up into the Jihad period of the lores' rules, and you'll be comfortable with just about everything the setting can throw at you from that point, on. I skipped the introbox and went straight into these. Skip rules for anything that isn't a mech, at first. the chances of ever using them are so minute that it's not worth it. Tanks follow, then Battle armor, then infantry. Even I, as a 10-year player, have only ever used aerospace once.
For reading:
-TRO 3039/TRO3050 - The Technical Readouts series of books are Battletech's best sellers, and for good reason - they contain what every player actually cares about - the mechs and other usable units. 3039 is a great modern print run, combining the old TRO 3025 and TRO 3026 into one big, fat book. The art is mostly the original, so expect retro aesthetic, but as far as bathroom readers go, bar none, one of the best. If you can find the original TRO 3025 second-hand (Side-view of a marauder, not a front-view of Awesome and Atlas), That's worth picking up, too, as it contains all the no-longer-able-to-legally-show unseen versions of mechs that created the foundations of everything mechwarrior
-The Novels: There were a lot of novels in the 90s that have since gone out of print. You can still find them as e-pub, or through second-hand markets, but there hasn't been a print book since 2002 or earlier. I highly suggest starting with "Decision at Thunder Rift" or "Wolves at the Border". The Warrior Trilogy and the Blood of Kerensky trilogy are also hugely important, but also present the BattleTech setting from the perspective of kings, not soldiers. Also, Michael Stackpole seems to think that Nuclear Fusion = Nuclear Fission and created a generation of players who thought that mechs were walking nukes. Bad Stackpole, Bad.
-Housebooks/Handbooks series - if you like an inner sphere faction - great. While less equipped on the field, they're far better equipped for lore. The five successor states (Not rasalhague) have TONS of history to go with them. The new print Handbook - House (Somesuch) is great, but I've also seen electronic versions of the 80's Handbook series floating around for free, less a few pictures, of course. Both are treasure troves for understanding the lore and history of your favorite factions.
Edited by ice trey, 19 August 2016 - 10:06 AM.
#4
-
-
- The Sureshot
- 10,282 posts
Member
- LocationNAIS College of Military Science OCS courses
Posted 20 August 2016 - 05:52 AM
Also a wonderful source is the free Mech Factory app for Android devices, it's got everything but the boards and miniatures needed to play. It also contains PDF record sheets for the Mechs.
#5
-
-
- Little Helper
- 347 posts
Member
- LocationWisconsin
Posted 20 August 2016 - 05:06 PM
ice trey, on 19 August 2016 - 09:58 AM, said:
Hello, AWOL, and welcome to the fold.
Thank you so much for all the info! I can't wait to get started!
1 user(s) are reading this topic
0 members, 1 guests, 0 anonymous users
