7 replies to this topic

[PAINLESS 42]

Getting back into TT after almost 20 years, and have started playing with my boys. I'm transitioning them from the intro rules to the full rules in Total Warfare, and I'd forgotten how long it can take to play. Anyone have any house rules to speed things up a little? I had a couple ideas,

1. Treat LBX autocannons and other cluster weapons differently, possibly like LRMs, and roll damage in 5pt groups.

2. eliminate the rules on skidding, its always seemed silly, and it takes 6 pages to explain.

[Karl Streiger]

Try Alpha Strike
Its a more streamlined game /with great rules (including tactical operations) for complete combined arms but its played almost as the normal game - so not much to learn new things.

Of course you can also take elements and use the standard micro management you are used to

Edited by Karl Streiger, 14 October 2015 - 10:54 PM.

[SnagaDance]

One of the most time consuming parts of playing BattleTech is doing all those dice rolls, in addition there's calculating all the movement/to-hit modifiers.

For the latter it's easiest to make yourself some tokens for movement type (walking/running/jumping) and tokens with the distance in hexes moved. Place these beside a mech after it has finished its movement and you'll no longer have thought processes like "Let's see, he moved from behind that building, but had to run to make the turn and get far enough for his liking so that makes......oh no wait, he couldn't get there running so he jumped instead, ok so that makes......what did my firing mech do in terms of movement again?"

For the dice rolling you can use one of those plastic bits boxes, you know the ones where you keep extra screws, nuts and bolts (at least I do) or maybe you keep stuff like in this picture: https://jewelfox.dre.../file/30594.jpg

Just put in two small d6 in each box and close the lid (taping it shut can be a good precaution). Top row can be for to hit numbers, simply going from top to bottom on the mech sheet's listed weapons (so you get no discussion lik: "No really that high roll was for the AC/20, honest, I said so didn't I?").

Second row is for hit locations.

Missiles/LBX can be tricky so I've seen people use a seperate (often smaller) box for those. First item hole is the to-hit, second is number of missiles that hit and the rest are all hit-locations.

Just remembered another time saver! Use popsicle sticks (or some other stick/hard cardboard etc.) for declared weapon fire. The name of the weapon is written on the popsicle stick, in addition the sticks are color coded or have something else to help distinguish them. The color stands for the weapons of a single mech. So a regular Catapult might have the color green and has 6 sticks, 2 Lrm15 and 4 ML. When it's time to declare weapon fire you place the sticks next to the targeted mech(s) so those 2 Lrm's might be put next to that exposed Atlas in the distance while all 4 ML go towards that nearby Jenner.

Presto! No more trying to remember which mech fired what weapons at which target, you just need to keep the secondary target rules in mind. You'll need a good amount of sticks but it will really help and it actually looks rather cool as all those sticks pointing at those targets give a real impression of the intensity of the weapon fire.

[RedDragon]

SnagaDance, on 15 October 2015 - 12:23 AM, said:

For the latter it's easiest to make yourself some tokens for movement type (walking/running/jumping) and tokens with the distance in hexes moved. Place these beside a mech after it has finished its movement and you'll no longer have thought processes like "Let's see, he moved from behind that building, but had to run to make the turn and get far enough for his liking so that makes......oh no wait, he couldn't get there running so he jumped instead, ok so that makes......what did my firing mech do in terms of movement again?"

Not really house rules, but when it's about keeping track of modifiers, just use dice. Most people use six sided dice for that because it is a lot easier than remembering or writing them down. Just get three sets of D6 in different colors. Now if a unit walked enough hexes to get a to-hit modifier of +2, put a die with the number two next to the unit. You can also add terrain modifiers etc. to that number. With a lot of units it becomes way easier to play because you don't have to calculate the numbers time and again, you just look at the dice. The different colors are for the movement types, i.e. (for example) red is for running, white for walking and black (=jet) for jumping. So you can additionally remember how the unit moved for calculating their own modifiers. E.g. a mech with a red die showing a 2 means it ran and gets a +2 modifiers for its own movement/cover.

[Mechteric]

LBX shot clustering is already supposed to happen like LRMs I think, in groups of 5 points. I think I recall reading that in the Total Warfare manual.


Your best bet for the fastest BattleTech game, other than Alpha Strike, is to use MegaMek to make all the rolls for you!

Edited by CapperDeluxe, 22 October 2015 - 07:31 AM.

[PAINLESS 42]

Excellent suggestions gentlemen. I especially like the craftbox mass dice rolling idea, that is simply brilliant.

[Jae Hyun Nakamura]

We have experienced our games gerting longer, because of very good rule knowlege and therefor longer time to think of all the different possibilities to place your mach on the battlefield.

We had to reduce the time to make a move to 1 min./mech and used a clock.

[Lollicus]

We use three different colored dice for walking, running, jumping; placing a die with each mech on the board. The colors let you know how much the pilot was effected and the numbers let you know how much the bad guys are effected. This is particularly helpful for games over multiple days.

I favorite house rule was changing up the center torso critical roll. If you landed a crit, you rolled again to determine a location with a second snake eyes being the center torso.

Also using sheets that have the weapon ranges on it make things a lot easier.