316 replies to this topic

[iliashan]

It was high school in the Philippines.. I had a battletech boxed set and together with a couple of new friends I met through other gaming endeavours, we ended up playing a good amount of time till I left for the US. Those were good memories... I've always fancied my Phoenix Hawk and Crusaders.

[The Centurion]

Virtual World and the old school Battletech pods were my first experience with this awesome, and sadly neglected, setting. Later on, after VW sites began closing, I would hit up LAN parties blasting away at friends in various Mechwarrior games. It was fun, but nothing came close to climbing into a full sized pilot pod with all of the advanced settings on and turning my enemies into slags of burning, twisted metal. Going up 1v3 against the best pilots around to earn your Master's title gave legitimate bragging rights, and I still have a lot of fond memories of the VW Invitational held in Cincinnati back in 2000.

[Thom Frankfurt]

It was back in '97 my girlfriend moved off to Ohio and I didn't want to be alone so I was hanging out with my homie and he was going over to the Naval base that night to play. I tagged along and though it was more 'Munchkin Tech' than Battletech, I was hooked. Later got into the novels and now I'm the Liao fanboy you all love and hate.... and in some cases, love to hate.

[Spiderwire]

My first Battletech experience came in 1990, that is probably a period most of you youngsters refere to as the before-times. One of my friends gave me a technical manual for the game, he couldn't make heads or tails of it, and most importantly it didn't contain dragons or magical swords. I fell in love with the artwork and the side stories to each mech.
Several months later, I bought the $19.99 Battletech board game. Started playing it with my little brother who was more interested in chucking dice than playing. I pretty much understood the mechanics before I set out to buy my first metal figurine (they were made from lead back then). I painted that thing about 20 times before I was satisfied with my work. The amounts of spraycan vapors, along with the paint remover, would have been enough to kill a small village, not to mention the lead exposure; but I pressed on. I took my figurine to play an actual board game at a hobby store. It was 14 year-old me and 6 other people, all of whom were old enough to drink.
About an hour into the game I decided to pull a newbie maneuver against the most veteran player at the table. A 40 year old army captain who played this game with a strategist's passion. My light mech charged his assult unit in a flagrant disregard for my safety or my newly created pilot. I turned, rolled a skill roll, slipped, plowed into his unit's leg, toppled him, and then I exploded. It was technically a kill, but he didn't think so.
That's also the first time in my life that I thought an adult was going to beat me senseless, but it turns out we all had a good laugh. I was hooked on BT from that point on. Every now and then we still roll the old board game out, and we never fail to split our guts at some ridiculous move.

[Mastr]

I remember playing MW 2 when I was around 8-10 seeing the Wolf and Jade Falcon intro's left a huge imprint on me from being so cool. I started playing online through mechcommander which is still my favorite game of all. I played all the other games after that but never really got into online play until late in the Mechwarrior 4 mercs timeframe, by then things were starting to die down mechwarrior wise.

I never really played the tabletop game, I have played around with megamek alot though, and have always found it fun.

Edited by Mastr, 28 February 2012 - 05:30 PM.

[PlanoChase]

The Crescent Hawk's Inception!!! On our 512k computer! And I was never able to finish the game!!! After the city gets attacked and you and that guy wander the countryside/small towns you meet other people who were with your father. After a while you have a little group of 3-4 mechs. I came upon a lost Star League cache but there was no way to get into it (I think I didn't have the password) and I never could figure out what to do. Of course this was way before the 'net and I had no way of solving this problem. I would restart it every so often but never able to end it. I read a lot of the paperbacks after that though.

[Rinsler]

My friends and I played DnD with this guy who was a ******, so I decided I would find a new game to play. Went to the hobby store and there on the shelf sat the first version of Battletech. I bought it soley for the picture of the warhammer on the front. That was in 1991 ish. We started out playing with the little cardboard guys, then moved up to minitures and a nice board made of train set materials. Many nights we played until dawn. I have since develped a VB application to keep track of damage and modifiers which we use to play about once every couple months. I tried to do senarios and things but it always ended up being a batte royale, so that just what we play anymore. My friends could never resist shooting each other.

Edited by Rinsler, 28 February 2012 - 05:46 PM.

[Samuel Kaine]

I started playing the table top game when I was in the Navy around 1990. I was recovering from surgery and another guy had these robot mini's. I was hooked I had to learn how to play. We would spend the entire weekend drinking beer and destroying mechs. lol I still hate his Tony the tiger colored Atlas.lol I have a lot of the old mech books and I have read most of the books. My favorite mechs are the Crab, Maruader, and King Crab.

[Wyzak]

My best friend in high school introduced me to Battletech about the time that Mechwarrior 2 came out. Soon I started watching the series and reading the novels for back ground. We both bought Mechwarrior 3, and shortly thereafter I bought all the other Battletech games as well. And keep buying them.

[Marvin Martian]

My start seems unique to what everyone else, so I decided to share my experiences. I got interested in the gian tobots from the Robotech cartoon series, but I didn't find Battletech until my older brother came home from the store with a Battletech gamebook - not a TRO, but a gamebook. Each book was a different mech, and you would pick an action, an opposing player with their own book would pick an action, you'd look at a table that combined the actions and had you turn to a page number in the book, which would show an illustration of what happened plus a list of consequences, such as damage or being knocked over.

I found them for sale online at http://paizo.com/sto...combatBookGames

Here's a pic of one of them




It was awesome for a 10 year old kid. Shortly after, I was introduced to the tabletop version by my brother. That was kind of a funny story. We were trying to play RPGs, my dad found out about it and told us it was of the devil, told us about a college student that got so into D&D that he became delusional and killed his parents. So while we couldn't play the Mechwarrior RPG, we could play Battletech as long as we didn't create fictional pilots. Funny stuff.

Played that as a teenager along with Mechwarrior 2 and 3.

[Pad]

got my first comp back in the mid 90's,got dileup, shortly after noticed mw3 on the store shelf and was hooked ,online and in a clan/guild was where i met cpl of the best friends ever been gaming together ever since. mw4 ,tho good just didnt seem as fun as 3 so we fell away ,went to shadowbane till wow came out benn there for a wile now and cant wate to get back to my pvp roots


Pad

[Crave]

David Decoster, on 26 December 2011 - 01:21 AM, said:

MechWarrior 2 -> MechWarrior 4 Series + MechCommander -> MWDA + Novels

dito.

[rolling thunder]

Marvin Martian, on 02 March 2012 - 10:05 PM, said:

My start seems unique to what everyone else, so I decided to share my experiences. I got interested in the gian tobots from the Robotech cartoon series, but I didn't find Battletech until my older brother came home from the store with a Battletech gamebook - not a TRO, but a gamebook. Each book was a different mech, and you would pick an action, an opposing player with their own book would pick an action, you'd look at a table that combined the actions and had you turn to a page number in the book, which would show an illustration of what happened plus a list of consequences, such as damage or being knocked over.

I found them for sale online at http://paizo.com/sto...combatBookGames

Here's a pic of one of them

I still have a few of those books amongst my collection.

[Lord Doom]

Kristov Kerensky, on 25 December 2011 - 10:10 PM, said:

High school..84 or 85, Battledroids, which was renamed and released as BattleTech in 85 due to a certain word in the title being copyrighted by Mr Lucas. Group of us in high school had been playing D&D for a while and we branched out into various other games in our last couple of years in high school, 84 and 85, picking up Battledroids, Warhammer Fantasy Battle, Star Wars, Starfleet Battles..all kinds of stuff. Been hooked on BTech every since.

There was a cartoon series that came out during the late 80's about the Battletech Universe and the Battletech masters. I cant remember the name of the cartoon though. It is what led us into the mechwarrior universe.

[Munkerz]

I started with MechCommander (which a friend lent me), and continued with the Mech games as I grew up. Somewhere along the line I learned of Classic BattleTech (I think it was in a semi-local comic book shop) but never went further than acknowledging it's existence. I've been out since MC2, for no particular reason, until earlier this year when I decided I'd give CBT a go.
Downloaded the quick-start rules, purchased some LITKO wargame counter stands (as a stand-in for miniatures at this early stage), and gave it a few runs. I just received my hardback of Total Warfare a few days ago and bought a few technical readouts and printable record sheets. I'm pretty damn shiny~

[Reinhardt Drescher]

My best friend's older brother bought MechCommander when it first came out, and I was instantly hooked. Still get excruciatingly nostalgic whenever I think about it, especially when you first encounter a Mad Cat, charging towards your little light 'Mechs, ppcs and rockets tearing it up.

[Deightah]

Good post!

I started back in the 80's like most of the posters I have so far read. I remember a friend at the time inviting me over to another friends house to play some game call Battletech and thinking why not AD&D, since that was what we normally did. They were all sitting on the floor, maps set out, lances all over the place and worksheets in everyone's possession! My friend set me up with a 'mech' and since then I was hooked. The turn based enviroment was more orderly than AD&D and seemed to keep a fair and balanced game.

After a while, I started making my own mech's following the rules in the books and after a time I was destroying those same friends on a regular basis and watching them scratch their heads and check the books only to find out the mech I was using was legit!

Years went by and eventually I married (talk about a mech war... but I digress) and I was going to a local game shop I frequented. Turned out they were having a "Gunslinger" event going on downstairs. Since I had nothing to do that day (being a weekend) I headed on down. the basement was full of people (about 50 people or so) and maps I had never seen were out with all kinds of painted figurines placed here and there.. it was exciting to see it all. I was told the rules by the game referee and went to choosing the mech i wanted to use. You only got one and could use it from the original game and the clan mechs... They had a point system that balanced out the game no matter what you used so I went with what I knew, the original mech's.

After about 12 games and getting late in the day, I finished off the last mech on the board with a head shot. Totally ticked the guy off but it was a fair play and I was titled "Gunslinger Champion" - got the shirt, certificate and trophy awarded to me. The game shop wanted to hold onto the trophy and display it and put my name on it but unfortunately they "lost" it (I think it was stolen by an employee.. but I digress) but I did get the T-shirt with the warhammer on the face in combat and the certificate saying I had won the tourney.

The shirt and certificate were lost during my last clan war (divorce) , with the lawyer mechs. Moving has a way of causing things to get lost or misplaced at the wrong time. But I still have the memories and those are all I really need. Looking forward to M.W.O even though I highly doubt I'll be what i was, I'll still enjoy it thoroughly!

See you on the fields!

[Jenin]

It was 1990, I had just moved from out of state, and been making new friends. A high school buddy of mine talked me into playing some table top games, and I groaned at the idea we were going to be playing dwarves, elves, wizzards and crap. Then he came over one weekend and had these books with hulking robots and huge guns and... well, I was sold instantly. We spent many a weekend nights, several of us, setting up mechs and tearing them down with dice rolls and bravado. After our high school years we played the video games here and there, and even took a weekend trip to one of the Virtual World Centers for a couple hours of simulator fun. However, I will always remember having the most fun with my friends sitting around a hex board plotting moves and rolling dice all night long.

[Dagger D]

I first got started in Battletech back in 1986 after I saw the first couple episodes of ROBOTECH. I started playing the table top Battletech with my father, a few other family members and a coulpe friends on the same block. Ever since then I've played almost all of the different versions of Battletech/Mechwarrior. RPG, Table top, Pc, and the X-Box.

[GrimRATS]

I cannot remember how old I was then but the first and only BattleTech game I have ever played was MechCommander 2. I really liked it and well it just kinda stuck with me untill now.