Battletech

[Pnut]

Well I went and bought myself the Battletech 25th Anniversary Introductory box set. I’m quite impressed with the amount and the stuff you get with it for 30 quid:

Quick-start rulebook.
Introductory rulebook.
Inner Sphere at a glance.
Painting and Tactics guide.
Reference Cards.
Playing Maps.
Record sheets/quick-start tables booklet.
26 plastic miniatures (2 premium).
Inner Sphere poster map


All the books are of a good quality and the maps and reference cards are printed on sturdy cardboard. The 2 premium models you get are well made (1 needs assembling but I don’t have any glue). The other 24 miniatures are not of the best quality, cast lines and bits of flash, but they are not bad as a start. I will post pics at some point tomorrow, but for now heres the Mechs I got:

Light Mech (20-35 ton)
Commando
Hermes
Jenner
Spider
Panther
Cicada

Medium Mech (40-55 ton)
Hunchback
Clint
Whitworth
Trebuchet
Vindicator
Assassin
Enforcer
Dervish

Heavy Mech (60-75 ton)
Thor (premium)
Loki (premium, needs assembling)
Dragon
Grasshopper
Jaggermech
Catapult
Quickdraw

Assault Mech (80-100 ton)
Atlas
Awesome
Zeus
Cyclops
Banshee

[Dog Pants]

I'm so tempted to get one of these boxes. Although I randomly chose a house and got Kurita, who don't use any of the Medium or Assault mechs in that set. Even so, I'd love to get my hands on some to paint. If only I could ever have a game.

[Pnut]

Just found this as well, http://megamek.info/ . Anyone fancy giving it a try?

[Dog Pants]

Ooh!

[Joose]

I would certainly be up for giving this a try at some point. Ive not had a chance to look properly at it yet, is it a direct port of the game?

[Pnut]

It appears to be, but I have never played the table top game and have only read the quick start rules.

[Dog Pants]

My goodness, just trying to work out how to choose which mechs you need in this game is difficult. It spans about 400 years.

[Pnut]

Its not just mechs, there's vehicles, battle armour and conventional infantry, possibly VTOLS/aeros as well. Its 600 years worth of stuff too 2500-3100.

[Dog Pants]

*Whimper*

[Joose]

Might I suggest we start off with something out of the quickstart rules? Theres a starter scenario in there that is just 1v1, with both players just having the one mech, then it scales up. Rather than diving in at the deep end and ending up just shouting "WTF is a MadCat!" at each other

[Dog Pants]

Yeah but I want to buy some mechs to paint and I don't want to buy one that's obsolete/not invented yet.

[Dog Pants]

Played the first MegaMek scenario this morning. All works really well, seems pretty clear once you work out how to set it up. I battered the AI mechs in a 2v2 with one light and one med each. My Wasp spent half of the game kicking his Stinger to death after I destroyed his leg with a PPC hit from my Griffin on turn 2. Come to think of it, the light mech also got the killing shot in on the AI Wolverine too, turning it into a crater.

[Pnut]

Me and Bits managed to get a game going last night through hamachi. We didn't get to finish the game as it we were both knackered but it was quite a closely fought affair with us both losing a mech, hopefully we will get to finish it off today. The only problems I have with it is it takes ages to play, I'm sure this will get quicker as we start to get our heads around the rules though. It has the potential to run some pretty epic campaigns, as there are rules for planetary assaults and full system conquests, but at the min I'm happy to use basic rules until I fully understand them(might take awhile!).

[Dog Pants]

The tutorial was going pretty quickly by the time I finished. Click to move, select target and weapon, click fire button. Watch lovely numbers come in as you blow a mech's foot off. It was only a very basic 2v2, but I didn't have any issues with it. The stuff about persistent characters, mech damage, salvage etc would be a great complimentary system to a Mechwarrior (RPG) game on the forums.

[Pnut]

That's what i was thinking, use the forums for the RPG elements, then jump onto MegaMek for the combat.

[Dog Pants]

Played a fairly quick 4v4 with Pnut earlier and it went pretty well. As far as the game bit goes, at least. Took about an hour. The actual results of the game left something to be desired - Pnut took the head off my 100t King Crab assault Mech with a single shot from a 30t scout on the first turn. The game ended with Pnut's mechs gang-raping my last survivor and stamping on its head. 4-0 to Pnut, but the crazy headshot was worth it. These were kind of freak events, but one thing's for sure - this would make a pretty unforgiving RPG.

[Dog Pants]

We had another game of this afterwards, a co-op 3v3 with myself, Pnut and Bits vs three bots. Worked really well.

[Pnut]

I enjoyed both games last night, apart from that jumpy bastard that was hopping from cover to cover, well until he got stuck in a swamp. Only problem is that I don't think I will ever top the opening shot of the first game, but I suppose that was a bit of a 1 in a million shot.

[Anery]

Ive settled on Clan Jade Falcon, Gamma Galaxy, 9th Talon Cluster.

I'll be putting together a Talon (Assault Star/Lance) with the following (still toying with varients)

Thor (Summoner)
MadCat MKII
Highlander IIC
Turkina
Fifth point free, any suggestions?

I've managed to source most of the mechs from total wargamer but I can't find the Turkina. Iron wind want to charge me $14.75 plus P&P and the cost of a base, which is a bit steep.

[Dog Pants]

Oh I see. I get a 4-mech heavy lance and you get a 5 mech assault lance. I'll have to up my game. You look to be severely lacking in short range capability there, they're all long range hitters. Unless you're deliberately going for that I'd try to even it out with the C variant Summoner and a heavy short ranger like a Gargoyle C.

My Draconis Combine heavy lance is from the 16th Galedon Regulars and consists of:

Kintaro KTO-20
Daikyu DAI-01
No-Dachi NDA-1k
Wolverine WVR-8k

Incidentally that's a BV of 4845 total.

EDIT: According to canon Jade Falcon never bought any Madcat IIs, but Draconis Combine did. So I might get one :p