Krellshand, on 21 April 2016 - 08:36 AM, said:
Hey, thanks for the replies, great read!
I got most of my books in kind of a garage sale so its not easy to determine which are new or upt to date and which are not.
I have read about Level 1-3 rules now, and git the "Maximum Tech" and "Master Rules" books, are they kind of up to date?
The webiste
http://www.masterunitlist.info/ is great to build units and lances, thanks for the hint. And I guess I will start with 4 mechs and slowly build the "army" up. It is really kind of weird to change from warhammer and flames of war to Battletech, as its a really different approach. i will see that I get my hands on some more lore books to get it right (and great bathromm books are always appreciatet)
As for the minis, I don´t have a problem dropping money on some minis to start with, but I got used to building my own (greenstuff, fimo and milliput) and I planed on using the great MWO models as a resource.
Do you know the scale of the minis used for tabletop? I would like to put them at least half way into scale, if I put in the work to model one or two
Andone question to the battlefields: Are they scaled (warhammer and flames of war provide rough estimates how big a battlefield should be in inch), or is every map pretty much different?
And are all games played on "flat" printed maps? I have seen some different gaming tables for Alpha Strike I think
Your input is much appreciatet !
Okie dokie. So you know, while 40K/Flames of War are very clearly made to be miniatures games for pickup games at an LGS, BattleTech is, as you can tell, a beast of a very different nature. Early on, the emphasis on "Campaign games" between players and a GM took hold, though it's just as good at Player Vs Player pick up games and scenario games. Player vs Player campaigns, though... it's not currently that well supported, sadly. There aren't any GM-less systems that you can use out-of-the-box for campaign games.
Also, timeline progression works out best for the game, because much of the universe is based on "Salvage" and taking the spoils of war that, while the Draconis Combine might be the chief user of the Dragon, it wouldn't be completely impossible to find one in the Free Worlds League, for example. Further, with "Building a mercenary unit" being a huge draw and often the main theme for campaign games, there aren't really any borders - besides cash - to what units you can take.
As far as "Obsolescence", Nothing is stopping you from playing with old books at home, but some pretty major gameplay changes happened in 2006 with the release of Total Warfare. The game is fundamentally the same as it's always been, but some of the ways the rules apply have changed. An example being "Partial Cover". Old rules had anything with partial cover recieve +3 TN (Defensive modifier), but required that you use the Punches table rather than the full body table. The new edition does away with that, instead only gives you a +1 modifier, but continues using the full-body hit location tables, and negating any hits to the legs that result. In the old edition, taking partial cover meant that you went from a 1/36 chance of any hit being a head hit to a 1/6 chance. Maybe worth it when playing against someone with gunnery 4, but against good pilots you actually increase your chance of dying by hugging hills. The new edition fixed this problem.
You can see what I mean, that the rules changes are small tweaks, but they change the gameplay rather dramatically. Battletech makes heavy use of terrain and it's modifiers, and these rules can make massive differences based on how you play, what you bring, etc.
For the record, "Level 1, Level 2" etc has been done away with. Terms that replace them are "Introductory", "Tournament", "Advanced" and "Experimental". Level 1 pretty much lines up with Introductory, and can be played with just the intro box rules. Level 2 with "Tournament" and requires buying the rulebook. Anything high-tech or clan makes it's way into this level. Level three can be said to be the later two rules. "Advanced" meaning that it's low-enough tech to not be ultra-rare, it's just that they moved it out of the core rules because the mechanics are more complex or might slow down gameplay, or just simply because it's not used enough to devote room in the core rulebook. "Experimental" meaning tech that isn't/can't be mass produced that you would rarely see on the battlefield.
Master Rules was a well laid out book, and is an intuitive read, but again, many of the rules have since changed. It's totally playable, but keep in mind that if you play against someone keeping up with the rules, you might find changes in the rules that catch you off guard. By all means though, keep the BMR. Not only is it a pretty book for B&W print, but it tends to condense the existing rules to what players usually use now. It's also handy to keep around to see how the rules have changed over the years.
Miniatures Scale: Z-Scale / 1:285 / 6mm. Almost everything BattleTech can be bought from Ironwind Miniatures for North America, or Ral Partha for the EU. The recent Alpha Strike boxes sell pre-made 3025 lances in plastic for about... I think it was $20 or so? The introbox comes with a good 24 plastics (Not GW quality, mind. Think GW starter boxes compared to their normal figures). However, the legit pewter minis range from between $10-16 each, and sometimes are sold as pre-made lancepacks (especially through the "Online exclusives" section) for $30 or so. However, keep in mind that with Battletech, WYSIWYG doesn't really apply. The record sheets (Papers with stats to track damage and ammo, etc) are what needs to be legit, but you aren't obliged to have the exact mini, or even a battletech mini for that matter. So long as the forward facing is clear, you're good. One thing you might notice is that old miniatures are considerably smaller than new miniatures. Scale Creep is a real thing. The sculptors seem to have chosen that in order to increase detail and ease of sculpting, they should make minis bigger. Scale creep won't affect anything except making it difficult to keep two units adjacent to each other on the mapsheets, but you might notice it with minis rules, where you're actually looking at miniatures to figure out LOS.
There are some people who like using the figures from the old clix game from the mid 2000s, since you can get them as lots for cheap off of second hand markets. However, compatability becomes an issue. At N-Scale, they're too big to play against normal Battletech miniatures in miniatures rules, and they are too big to fit inside standard Battletech hexes. Maybe it'd work on heroscape tiles, but the scale difference is clear. Many players use the infantry tokens from clix, though, as they're small enough to fit. I opted for the official infantry, though. Those official things are downright tiny at 6mm tall, but you get a lot in a blister.
Battletech Hexmaps are scaled at 30-meters per hex and are properly scaled with each other, meaning you can mix and match the terrain as you please, or randomly. It's nice because random rolling means that you're not playing "Terrain chess" with your opponent before a match, and often feels more organic because of it.
As far as hexes: Battletech was made as a hex-based game. The lions' share of players still prefer to use hex maps for gameplay. there are a number of benefits, like being able to random-roll up maps, not needing measuring tape, and best of all, portability. Being a giant robot game and not an infantry skirmish game like most other titles, most of the "Terrain" available at various LGS'es are made at a much different scale, and it can look silly to have mechs walking past 6-storey tall shipping crates, and 8-storey tall outhouses. There have almost always been miniatures rules, however, and while Alpha Strike is made with miniatures rules (Hexless) in mind, Battletech does still have support for miniatures rules. I think that there should still be a section on it in BMR, but if not, there are definitely products for minis-rules support. Usually it just involves saying "So many inches per hex", 1" or 2" is the most common listing, but for to-scale gameplay, you'd need 4" or so, which would make your table feel really small, really fast. The BMR edition of the rules had a "Miniatures Rules" rulebook published, but the most modern version of miniatures rules for standard Battletech can be found in Strategic Ops. If it sounds like a hastle, just remember that it's not the way the game was "Meant" to be played, but rather is a supplement for those people who want to play that way and have official rules to back it up. At some cons, you might see people using different methods. One popular way of doing things is buying old Heroscape tiles (Heroscape was a simple game for children that bombed, but the plastic hexes made for it proved to outlive the game by leaps and bounds) from the second hand market. There are also some fan-sellers who've started selling fan-made maps using satellite images, and are often very beautiful. Both of these options look great, but are not made or supported by Catalyst, so you'll have to go hunting.
Edited by ice trey, 21 April 2016 - 10:06 PM.
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