Let's Talk About Mechs, Baby! (Part 1)

 

Ahhh Battletech. I picked up Battledroids from my local comic book store back in '84. We had a good time with it, and picked two or three of the twin pack of plastic 1/144 scale mechs. A name change and  year later second edition was released. This was the core of modern Battletech. I played it obsessively for the next five years or so. Loved the expanding lore; the Clan invasion was one of the highlights of gaming. 

Alas Battletech's super detailed game system was a two edged sword. It felt great tracking all the damage on a full 8.5x11 sheet (per mech) you could really fine tune the tactics to the mech(s) you had on the table.

But...It was a slow game. Like, a really slow game.

It took a few hours to fight a 4 v 4 battle with experienced players. Any more than that and your whole weekend is gone. Which also meant there was a real shallow pool of viable scenarios, mostly just matching different types of Lances against each other. 

I guess it is a hyper detailed skirmish game? 

Still, I loved it. Painted a couple of companies worth of metal mechs, read all the novels, tried some of the variant games (Aerotech, Succession Wars, Battleforce, et al) still my number of plays kept going down. Then three things happened in the early '90s: The amount of good Battletech product releases approached zero, Good PC video games arrived and, of course, Warhammer 40K.  More specifically  Adeptus Titanicus, a giant mech game with (ahem) truly epic battles. That much pretty ended my tabletop Battletech gaming.

However, I never totally abandoned Battletech. I still picked up the novels (such as they were at the time) Played Mechwarrior 2, 3, and 4 a whole lot, and hoped for some kind of makeover of the game system.

Then came the Kickstarter...  To be continued! 

 

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