86 replies to this topic

[Manei Domini]

Nah! There's no Word of Blake around here...

[Creel]

My issue with the jihad has always been that it doesn't make a lick of sense any way you look at it. If anything was going to unite the reborn Star League and the remaining clans, it's a bunch of anti-humanist zealots playing fast and loose with the eridani edict. The blakists would have been crushed, no contest.

[Razor Kotovsky]

Hell, the entire ComStar could be subdued by cumulative efforts, let alone their splinter faction.

There is only so much trouble an FTL communication disruption can cause.

[Jack Gallows]

jezebel, on 04 November 2011 - 06:58 PM, said:

A Star League had arisen - but was it the Star League of Kerensky's vision?

Quite a bit more in spirit then what the Clans were trying to do. The Clans unwittingly became the anvil upon which the reborn Star League was born.

Consider Alkexsandr Kerenky's words to the Inner Sphere....

"Thus, we have left the only homes we have ever known to place the destructive capability of this armada beyond the reach of those who would use it, not for defense, but for conquest. Perhaps, with the might of our 'Mechs and ships out of reach, the leaders who now grapple with one another will relinquish their dreams of subjugating their neighbors and learn to live in peace with them.

"Perhaps, one day, should mankind step back from the brink of the abyss, we, our children, or our children's children will return, to once more serve and protect and guide the Star League in mankind's quest for the stars."

Do you REALLY think he wanted the Clans to come back and start a massive destructive invasion? Doesn't that seem completely opposite of the original reasoning of WHY he left in the first place?

Edited by Jack Gallows, 04 November 2011 - 10:55 PM.

[CycKath]

That's the thing, even the Clans themselves disagreed on what Alkexsandr Kerensky wanted them to do (the Warden and Crusader split), not to mention I very much doubted Alkexsandr expected his brain fried son to raise a warrior culture which pretty much warped what he intended. Of course that's much like Conrad Toyama warping and almost perverting Jerome Blake intention.

At the end of the day the Clans would never succeed because, out of universe, IS faction fans greatly outnumber Clan ones, thus the large gap in producing Clan only books like WoR. Maybe now that the numbers have been culled down post Jihad and assuming Clan fans opt to stay Clan.

[Stormwolf]

Wow, a lot of hate for the Jihad, personally totally enjoyed fighting the MD with all their advantages.

Though I have to admit that WoR was the most interesting part of the Jihad era.

[Nebfer]

stormwolf, on 05 November 2011 - 03:34 AM, said:

Wow, a lot of hate for the Jihad, personally totally enjoyed fighting the MD with all their advantages.

Though I have to admit that WoR was the most interesting part of the Jihad era.

I suspect that much of it was due to FASA closing its doors suddenly in 2001, and Wizkids picking up the slack but creating a new game some 70 years latter, and only telling you the cliff notes of the cliff notes of what happened in the intervening years.
I mean all we where told was, in 3067 the Star league Mk 2 was disbanded, WoB went nuts due to that and started a war with every one, at one point a guy named Stone brakes out of WoB Jail and forms a coalition that eventually wins the war... Forms a new nation where the Terran Hegemony used to be... Tells the houses to get along (with them ceding a number of worlds to his control), and reduce military's sizes, The Home clans are no longer heard from and the other clans wont say what happens... All of a sudden all HPG coms goes down... And well that's that...

It's enough to make you go what the hey? It also did not help that the first 12 or so books of the new line where heavily bent to this new nation and not to mention much of the other information we got was also bent to them. So we got very little of what was going on with the rest of the IS and Clans...

So the Jihad was already tainted even before Fanpro/Catalyst started telling you what really went on.

However even if FASA did not close it's doors in 2001, we will still of had the Jihad as that was already planed out from the mid 1990s. While their was changes much of it was in the details.

In fact here's a quick look of what that plan was going to be. This was in a recent chat with the head of Catalyst
<DarkISI>: How much of where FASA wanted to go with the Jihad has been done the way they wanted it to go?
<Habeas2>: DarkISI - Aside from the final hero and the length of time taken, most of it went as FASA planned. The Manei Domini, the Five Worlds, and Stone were all add-ins, but many of those would likely have appeared in some form or another...
<Habeas2>: DarkISI - Actually, there were some changes we also made from the plan, some were even made by the PLAYERS:
<Habeas2>: Allow me to expand on this.
<DarkISI>: was just going to ask you to
<Habeas2>: The original FASA plan for the Jihad was still a war that begins as a temper tantrum when the allied leaders scrap the Second Star League for no good reason....
<Habeas2>: The plan held that, upon that failure, ALL FIVE CAPITALS would be assaulted by Word of Blake fleets appearing without warning to bombard and seize them....
<Habeas2>: Victor and company would run to Tukayyid to regroup, at which point the false Thomas Marik would "come clean", reveal his identity, and join their side....
<Habeas2>: Meanwhile, all of the CHaos March would be under WoB assault, while Wolf's Dragoons and NWH banded together to forge a mercenary protectorate around all nearby worlds willing to meet their price. (Yup; no noble sentiment at all here. This was pure "pay or die" politics)
<Habeas2>: Victor would again rally the various factions to put down the Word, a process that would take two years, and be nearly lost before suddenly the slumbering Ghost Bears, with their powerful WarShip fleet and such, would join the war berserker style, believing that the WoB is in league with the long-lost Wolverines.
<Habeas2>: The Bears would essentially lead the charge on all fronts as the allies led by Victor brought us to Terra (CapCon once again sat it out, going "turtle" while the rest of the IS fought and bled) and be stopped only in Terran orbit, when Victor points out that their landing of troops would unravel the truce between IS and Clan, something the Warden Bears were not ready to do.
<Habeas2>: That, in the short form, was the FASA plan

[Jack Gallows]

I like the bit of twist at the end, remembering that the Bears would break the treaty if they actually landed on Terra.

[sorcerror]

SquareSphere, on 04 November 2011 - 03:41 PM, said:

Don't get me wrong, the CONCEPT of Jihad and Dark Age are actually very good. The story, execution, merchandise, and the fracturing of the Battltech/Mechwarrior IP are what caused the down fall.

I tried to like dark age, but the fiction of the new arc treated the old heros and characters like garbage. And since we didn't actually get to "play" though the rise of Stone, he felt so marry sue (perfect implausible character) that he was easy to reject.

I think part of the problem was how we got (or fell into) the Dark Age in the first place. To me the Word of Blake never seemed like a credible threat. WOB was the impoverished splinter of Comstar surviving with the largesse of the Captain General and then suddenly (relatively suddenly anyway) the Blakists manage to take over the entire show?

To illustrate just how powerful WOB became, it even managed to defeat Wolf's Dragoons. Seriously the Dragoons taken out by... Blakists?! The mind reels. I will accept big giant robots running around with fusion hearts firing lasers, missiles, autocannon and whatnot at each other but I just can't accept WOB managing to hoodwink basically every hero and state in the Inner Sphere

[Alizabeth Aijou]

Gremlich Johns, on 04 November 2011 - 05:08 PM, said:

"After all, much of ComStar and Word of Blake is made up of the descendents of Clan Wolverine."

According to what?

Rumours. Just rumours.
Other rumours suggest that the Wolverines are the Umayyad Caliphate, while other rumours suggest they disappeared somewhere south of the Taurian Concordant. The only sort-of confirmed location they've had during their exodus was somewhere near the Outworlds Alliance (supposedly have passed through the Draconis Combine on their way there). Also funny is that around those attacks, Jinjiro ordered increased units around the periphery border in anticipation of an invasion (which came some 225 years later). And that was even before Adrienne Sims's visions, which she started having in 2959. If one believes the rumours from JS:TBD, those visions were granted by the Blood/Wolverines.

Quote

How were the clans supposed to 'revive' the Star League when the Inner Sphere had already done it?

The Inner Sphere is dezgra to the Clans, and as such could never restore a proper Star League.

Quote

However even if FASA did not close it's doors in 2001, we will still of had the Jihad as that was already planed out from the mid 1990s. While their was changes much of it was in the details.

Early 90s, even. The old ComStar sourcebook (FASA1655) touches the subject of the Jihad and what might come.

[dervishx5]

Yeah, the WoB was created basically to be the new "enemy" after the clans by FASA.

But with the release of the final Jihad book last month, it's over.

Well, except for all the missing WoB divisions and 3 Hidden Worlds.

[Riyal Galen]

Well, since the WoBbies aren't really much of an issue circa 3049-3050, except as religious extremists in the futuristic AT&T/Scientology cult of ComStar, what about ComStar itself? Is that going to be allowed to be a playable (and DEv supported) faction, like the Great Houses (and Rasalhague and the periphery), or is it and the ComGuards, pretty much the first hints of WoBby-ness, going to be merely another player run guild kind of thing? After all, the ComGuards were a viable and functional, albiet purely defensive, force by 3049. And even in that time period there were some WoB extremists even in the ranks then.

[Stormwolf]

Comstar was essentially was essentially already split between WoB and Focht's followers.

Operation Scorpion, is a good example of this.

[Souske Sagara]

All the Wobblies do is remind me that I owe T mobile money, and even Arasaka pays their phone bills cooms.

[Lima Zulu]

Looks like WoB wasn't a big power at 3049-3050, so they ingame presence will depends on ComStar role. If ComStar will be an non-player paction, WoB, obviously, will be a subfaction of it. Otherwise, noone can forbid people to create some WoB-oriented mercenary units.

[Glare]

Word of Blake didn't technically exist until the Schism sometime after Tukayyid.

[VYCanis]

mustache twirlers they may be, but they do have a point

http://imageshack.us...97/wobbie1.jpg/
http://imageshack.us...13/wobbie2.jpg/

[Riyal Galen]

VYCanis, on 11 November 2011 - 03:11 AM, said:

mustache twirlers they may be, but they do have a point

http://imageshack.us...97/wobbie1.jpg/
http://imageshack.us...13/wobbie2.jpg/

You know, after reading those, as well as the Propaganda of both the Clans and the Inner Sphere.....I almost want to say I want to stake a claim with the WoBblies myself.

[yarddog]

Blake's blood. We already have to start worrying about the toaster worshipers?

[VYCanis]

also might want to read this

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ZMHRFUQ7

story from the POV of a wobbie trooper, told as a series of journal entries.