"Battletech: Alpha Strike differences from Quick Strike" Topic

Got my PDF and have been happily perusing it over the last 2 days. Most of it is the same as the rules I printed from the Strategic Operations.

I quickly found a few (IMHO) major differences:

AC and LRM/SRM fire is not added to a unit's firepower anymore (SO 345, 350, 352; AS 105, 107, 109.

YIKES! I havent seen any "new" Alpha Strike stats, but this is going to nerf the heck out of some classic mechs from Quick Strike/ Battleforce, including the Atlas 7D. I _have_ to assume that stats are going to change as a result of this rule.

Overheat: In QS, OV is added to all range brackets (SO 237; AS 20/44) but in AS, it has been changed to Short and Medium ranges only, with the Ability "OVL" being required to add it to Long range. Looks like the nature of overheating has changed too.

Most everything looks the same that I can tell on a quick read through.

They repeated a ton of rules (pretty much the entire section) in the different sections of Basic and Advance. In fact, there isnt any reason to even read the Basic rules if you dont plan on using them; everything is covered and more in the following Advanced section.

Guess I need to go about looking for updated AS Mech sheets. Rats.

Why the hell I *need* to hunt them down is beyond me. Hurry up and give me some finalized cards, or sell them to me. I guess they sold all the stop-gap ones they had at GenCon? Someone could have made pretty good flipping those on Ebay; a print copy of AS with cards is up to $87 USD right now.

This screams "rushed to print before GenCon". Or maybe it's par for the course at CGL. I'm not up on these things.

I picked up the book and cards at GenCon.

The more I read through the book the more I think it was rushed to get it out for the con. There are a lot of mistakes in it. Overall I like the idea of it but after a few times going through it I'm not sure it's going to work out.

Aside from that, Catalyst was a bit iffy on their support of it. While I was talking at their booth I was basically told that they may, or may not do another run of the cards depending on how the book goes over. There is already an update in the works for it to fix some stuff as the mech conversion rules from QS don't quite translate over to AS after the changes were made.

While there are a lot of things I like about AS, I'm not sure just yet it is going to really turn into a fully supported product.

Aside from that, Catalyst was a bit iffy on their support of it. While I was talking at their booth I was basically told that they may, or may not do another run of the cards depending on how the book goes over.

Do they really consider slick, printed unit cards to be nothing more than con swag?

How put out are they to print more cards, since (a) how hard is it to print MORE of something you've already printed (and presumably sold), and (b) how are they to "attract new blood" if the noobs have to worry about finding & printing out their own unit cards, which ain't going to be as pretty as professionally-made ones?

Is this a marketing facet that has eluded them?

I may not have been clear on that. I was trying to say that it may be the only set released as a physical deck like that. I think it stands pretty reasonable that if the AS book does not sell well that they won't be doing any other printed card sets for different mechs or that new cards will just be included in the new pdf releases.

I hear that the Master unit list is going to be updated with offical AS stats for all the units. They may be going that route that you can just print your own off of there.

The cards were for the units in the book and a few extras with historical pilots. I should imagine that those will go into full release later on. I don't see any reason they wont.

However,
I think marketing has been an issue for them for quite a while. That $200 USD Shadowrun book they were selling seems like a good example of that.

I'm saying that CGL needed to try and push this out to the wider market, to attract new players (a stated objective). Hard to do that if you don't have a sort of "here you go" offering right out the gate. CBT is daunting to newcomers- hell, it looked daunting to me, having been out of the game since well before FASA went down. I don't think that eBay auction has bid so high for the hardback (which the guy should have put on a short auction to get it sold & shipped before the release date), it is for the CARDS. Of course you don't NEED them, but you don't need lots of stuff companies market along with core products. They make the experience more enjoyable- and make for good business.

Quick Strike, crammed in the back of another CBT book, was apparently very popular, and they should have seen that as a call to try and steal some of GW's lunch. If they are so pensive about how this would "fly", they could have Kickstarted it, and used that as a litmus of how far they could/should push AS. That's what established companies use KS for.

The stats are being updated. Once they are verified they will update their unit website at masterunitlist.info with those stats and include a feature to create those cards.

I will be working to update the SSW program with the updated stat calculations so that it can be used to print game cards too.

I used this to print out a TON of cards for Battleforce, which of course I used for Quick Strike:

link

Check this guy's blog out for Alpha Strike stuff:
link

And his card maker:
link

Thanks for the links Kealios.

John

Wow…if I was new to the game I'd find this thread somewhat intimidating….

So as an update to anyone like myself who in the future will be doing research on TMP about Alpha Strike, I'd like to reassure future readers that QuickStrike was a prototype ruleset CGL placed in another publication to garner interest.
Since then a dedicated book has been released both as a PDF and printed version – a companion set has also been published, compatible to some degree with the CBT expansion books like TechManual and TacOps/StratOps.

The cards are available free of charge on the aforementioned Master Unit List, you just add your desired 'Mech to your list (up to eight per page, and make sure you're using the ones marked with a star for your desired timeframe unless you are intentionally wanting a modified model or playing a specific period – the ones with the stars are the "standard" models of any 'Mech), laminate the sheet and use thin tipped whiteboard markers to record damage.
As your collection grows, you print out more cards for 'Mechs/armor/BatteArmor/Protos/flyers etc…you've not previously used. All free of charge.

The aforementioned deck of cards has been published but isn't worth the money in my opinion, you can get it direct from CGL or through your FLGS – my suggestion is save the cash and buy a laminating machine instead (QRFs last a lot longer that way, too – and a laminator is always handy to have around for any gaming system, really – get an A3 if you can afford it)

Lastly, the P.R.I. link is full of valuable information – though the Quickstrike section is useless for Alpha Strike as is this website, as well link

There are times when I miss the original stuff we had when we started working on Quick-Strike. Not that I disapprove of what it has turned into, but I really got into the simplicity. Guess I can still do that, just to find all my old play-test files…