"If Battletech was too slow then try Alpha Strike" Topic

Alpha Strike being a quicker play set of rules for the Battletech universe which allows you to use more mechs in less time. I've gotten my second game of Alpha Strike in and I'm sold! So for all you Battletech fans that thought battletech was just a bit to slow give it a go.
Alpha Strike free PDF includes: quick starter rules, mech counters and cards. Mostly 3025 goodness.
link

Also a big Alpha Strike fan. System is not perfect, but it gets like 80% of the feel of Battletech with 20% of the work.

-Will

As a BT player from 88, first thing I noticed was losing all the bubbles for internal and external armor…looks like killing another mech is much faster, is this so? I do like the small cards over the sheet of paper with weapons and armor date to keep track of, can you get cards that are covered to be used with grease pencil, or do you have to laminate them yourself? Appreciate the input.

In Classic Battletech, the Warhammer has 260 armor and structure points (roughly), in Alpha Strike, it's got 13. It can do 3 points of damage in AS. So a one on one duel would last 5 turns if they just stood there and got a 100% hit rate each turn.

purchase cards: link

print your own cards:
masterunitlist.info

Print your own from the master unit list. Costs nothing but time and ink plus they are the newer format cards with the critical hits section on the card.

Hey Jammer, I print mine from masterunitlist then put them into page protectors.

For Alpha Strike, I believe the armour values were divided by ~30, and the damage values by ~10. So yes, mechs should die quicker. Those reductions, and the offset reductions, contributes to this game worker so much quicker for larger battle scenarios.

The newer versions of the laminated cards are in the works. Some were available at Pax East, but sold out before I could buy any. But I've come around to working with the Master Unit lists, and in the long run, that will work better for me.

With a bit of cropping and resizing, I'm doing each card at 2.5" x 3.5" (and increasing the size of the Crit Hit box). I can cut those out individually, and also lay out 4-up on a 5" x 7". And then run those through my home thermal laminator. I'm so glad I got that laminator on a flash deal at Amazon a few years ago!

I've just finished test print runs to make sure that I'm happy with that size. Next step will be to take photos of my mechs, and paste those onto their cards. That will make it super easy to spot which card is for which mech, especially with multiples of a type in a lance or company.

Also, make sure you get the 2015 corrected second printing of the rulebook, not the first! There is no difference in the cover or title, and so Amazon still lists it with the first printing date since the later run was not relabelled as version 1.1, although they will very likely have the second printing….

The second printing made corrections from a 37 page errata document developed from the first printing!!!!

There is a new errata document coming in June for the 2nd printing, but that should be a lot smaller than the earlier one.

one of the good things about old mech sheets is you could change weapon configurations easily, once you've printed out these cards and laminate them, still possible or just have to make new cards. MiniMo I like the idea of putting the printout on some kind of card stock, thicker. Has anyone used say FedEx to print on thicker stock?

I've had other stuff printed on thicker stock at Staples, no problem.

For the bulk of my games, I know I'll be happy sticking with the basic 3039 versions of the mechs. Though before I laminate, I will likely choose 3059 options too, print and cut them all out, and then lay out 2 sheets back-to-back before doing the actual laminating.

If I ever want to do other varieties, then I can just print those on paper, and maybe laminate if I decide I'll use them regularly. Did I mention that I ove having a home laminator ^,^

I'm hoping to get up a game within the month. I'm tweaking things a bit. I'm doing the alternate firing rule, but with 3+ to hit(to roughly split the different between 100% & 50%), and [0*] die hits at 5+.

I'm also tinkering with the crit tables. I don't like that 'less durable' engines, etc are factored into the stats. Customized the CHT would have fixed that; doing it for other stuff would have added TONS of granularity, without slowing anything down. They did it for ammo storage, but that's pretty much it.

I didn't look that close, is there a table/roll for ammo jams?

Sounds like what they did with Fed Commander for Star Fleet Battles.

Lfseeney-

Very similar. Another nice feature I found was that AS breathed more life into the older mechs.

With the simplification of the construction rules all of the fiddly bits of the new tech were taken into account. So mechs that were old in 3067 could still hold there own against new technology. Meaning the same warhammer could be played from 3025 all the way to the fall of the republic.

No ammo jams. No counting amount of ammo.

Each mech combines all of its weapons into fixed combat factors for S/M/L range. Weapons originally with less than 10 ammo get a reduced factor in the final total — .75 of what it would have been with full ammo.

I hate being thick. How does one actually print a card out from the masterunit link – I saw a lot of wards, and a lot of options, and ran out of steam. Please help an old man…

Thanks

Marc (owner of lots of "proper" mechs from the days when they were not "unseen", that's how old I am…)

I've been pasting the card images into a Word file, sizing each image to the size I want, several laid out per page. Print out and trim to size.

It's a lot of time-consuming work. But when it's done, I have each lance on their own 5"x7" — ready for my home laminator!

Battalions of proper mechs =^,^=

Alpha Strike is just plain fun..have played half a dozen games of it already..and it just plays right..sure it's abstracted..who cares!

I'm also making a game that allows you to use minis from any system. I've converted stuff from Robotech and CAV and have been working on Battletech.

Think of it as Alpha Strike with a more anime flare where your pilots do indeed make a difference on what you can or cannot do while still keeping the game simple.

link