"Battletech Campaign help...." Topic

Greetings, I'm just getting started in Battletech for the first time. I'm interested in building forces for a campaign and the two obvious sources of fluff seem to be the 4x Succession Wars and the Clan Wars.

Based on what is out there in the way of rules & fluff do any of you experienced players have one campaign that you prefer over any others?

It seems like a really interesting background, I'm just a bit overwhelmed by the amount of source material that's out there.

Thanks!

I prefer the 3025 era. The introduction of the Clans just left me cold.

Here's a resource you may not know about: link
Pick your era, then pick your faction, and it gives a list of available mechs and their unit cards for Alpha Strike. Not sure where to find the classic data sheets.

That's a great resource Stryderg! Most helpful.

Thanks.

Stryderg hit you with one of the best sources. I will also throw this out there- which is a link to the free official primer.

link

As someone who has played since the original BattleDroids, Battletech can be a lot to absorb for newbies. Still after all these years, the two most popular periods are 'Classic' which is the 3025 era, and 'Clan' which is the 3050 era.

You can go far and wide from there, but I still love gaming a good classic 3025. It's the period of the noble houses and mechs as Knights to them. You can pick your hero house and their enemy and go nuts.

These houses still exist in the other eras, but the other eras have a myriad of different factions and groups.

Many thanks Tgerritsen!

I'm not sure if it's the type of campaign you're interested in, but the Chaos Campaign for the Succession Wars is free.

link

They also made record sheets for everything in the Clan Invasion Kickstarter free, and that includes most of the mechs from the succession wars era. They're seperated into two Force Packs PDFs.

bg.battletech.com/downloads

Awesome GOKIBURI, I will definitely download that package.

One off-hand question for anyone who can answer it. Why does the "Game of Armored Combat" starter box currently gor for $150 USD-200 on Ebay. Other than it comes with 7 (I think) plastic minis, what's so special about it?

Nothing really, it's the just current starter, and because of various factors it's out of stock most places, hence the scalper pricing.

Don't worry though, catalyst has said they'll be restocks soon (I think it's as soon as they're done with KS fullfillment). It should be back to normal in a month or two.

There's actually eight minis in aGoAC, not that that makes it worth 150-200.

Edit: I found this in the message they last sent to backers:

" A GAME OF ARMORED COMBAT

Once again, from when this was first released in early 2018, we have published 33,500 copies. The fifth reprint, of 10,000 copies (for a total of 43,500), is on a ship and scheduled to arrive into the Savannah port by September 14th. If that stays on track, it means the base game will be available again to stores and our website by early October. Based upon sales projections, we are already looking to start the sixth reprint of this box by the end of the year."

40k sales for ANYTHIING in Wargaming is hella-good! Glad for them. Thanks for the heads up too. I'll wait out the re-stock and pick up the Clan Invasion starter box just to get familiar with the game.

Word of warning if you consider the metal mechs. Those that started the hobby in late 80s, can run to hundreds for just a couple to 3 of them. they are called unseen because of legal issues. but the plastic paint and play well.

You can pick up the quick start rules for free. They are very basic, but you get to see how movement and firing work before digging into 200+ pages of rules.
See Tgerritsen's link above and poke around a bit.

Roger that. Yeah I'm liking the newer plastic stuff. I just have to do some research on the sets.

A few things for your consideration:

Sarna.net is a great battletech wiki for lore and other info.

Camospecs online is a good resource for unit paint schemes. They have also done some good YouTube videos on some painting techniques.

Tex talks Battletech on YouTube has some good lore videos and history of several popular Mechwarrior. I found them pretty entertaining.

If you can find the 4th Succession War Atlases (1 and 2), it give a moderate detail of the whole conflict. Lots of ideas for campaigns. The are out of print though.

The Warrior Trilogy by Michael Stackpole is 3 books set in the 4th Sucession War if you are interested.

In terms of factional guides, I recommend the Combat Manuals which are focused towards Alpha Strike. They only did the first 2 (Mercenary and Kurita) but they are beautiful IMHO. There are unfinished PDFs of most of the others out there without artwork.

Just a few thoughts.

James

James

Thank you James!

If you play hex-based, you may spend more on maps than anything else!

The selection of maps is Squad Leader in its scale. You can use the handful of basic maps, but if you use some of the pretty nice campaign booklets, you're guaranteed to want the maps that match the specific terrain.

So I'm planning on doing hex-map based games until I get the basics down then I'm eventually planning to pick up some terrain for the game. I already have a copy of Alpha Strike I'm looking forward to trying once I've played the basic game.

As a note the 4th succession war atlas are avaliable in PDF.

link

it is a great source for scenario ideas.

4th War atlases should be read with tongue firmly in cheek. They are seriously weak sauce and began the "War is over in a week" that is repeated everywhere that is Battletech.

The conclusions in the book are a joke and it is pretty obvious the intent was to push things along rather than get into the reality.

Case in point, Vincent's Commandos are annihilated by the Blue Star Irregulars' 1894th Light Horse in less than a paragraph. Completely ignored the house book readouts or even realistic behavior.

1. Yep – like many histories of fictional universes, some suspension of disbelief is warranted.

2. War is over in a week. Yep. August 3028 to August January 3030. So 16 months. I'll give you the hyperbole.
Still very short for an interstellar war.

3. Yep. Push things forward. Battletech is like that. Even if we don't always like the direction, the time-line moves forward. I much prefer that to a static unchanging universe.

4. Reality. Don't look under the hood of most sci-fi games. You will not find much reality. Battletech economies will break your brain let alone thinking a regiment (~108) of mechs can capture a planet.

5. Yep. A regiment of ELITE mercenaries 'quickly defeated'(not annihilate) 2 battalions of regular troops in a unnoteworthy battle in a larger campaign. It is known to happen.

While it does have its flaws and in the timframe there were certain obvious chosen favorites, I still think it is a reasonable game supplement.

YMMY.

James

Honestly if you're new to the BattleTech universe and you want to get stuck in then I strongly recommend this book:

link

Sword and Dragon.

In the universe it is 3049 which is on the eve of the Clan Invasion. Houses Davion and Kurita are nervous about what the other is up too so they send elite raiding companies to rampage each other's border worlds.

In this book you get a complete campaign that you can play from either side: Davion's Fox's Teeth and Kurita's Sorenson's Sabres. You get complete rosters for each company, appropriate mech sheets, and tons of fluff to explore.

This book very gently immerses you into the BattleTech 'verse and lore and gives you a pretty balanced series of scenarios that can be played as a campaign to cut your teeth on.

Better still, it links very nicely into the BattleTech starter set (well, not really mech wise, but rules wise yes) and you can use the maps you have to play. It was really meant for the older starter set, but it can easily accommodate the newest one which uses the old unseens from the '80's.

You can get it for $15 USD as a PDF. There are hard copies out there, but expect to pay a premium for it (I wouldn't personally). There is also a pair of Iron Wind Metals lance sets that have the more iconic mechs from the book like McKinnon's Black Knight and Sorenson's Hatamato-Chi. At about $50 USD a set it's a bit pricey, but not horrible.

Give a look see.

I agree with Lowmoonman and tgunner – the first two Stackpole trilogies are the place to start for understanding the background.

The Chaos Campaigns are fantastic if you have a dedicated opponent and a decent collection of mechs. Really fun!

Step 1 Read either the warrior trilogy or the clan trilogy.
Step 2. Find a Chaos Campaign with factions you like
Step 3. Purchase mechs that fit the forces in the campaign.

The biggest difference between Succession Wars and Clans is combat symmetry. If you prefer games where both forces function similarly go with Succesion Wars (3025). If you prefer asymmetrical games where one side is is radically different go Clan Invasions (3050). The Clans are better than Inner Sphere in ever way.

If you really want detail, here's a source for correct unit colors for your mechs.
unitcolorcompendium.com

I'll play all eras myself, but then you have to use the correct mechs and weapons for that era. Keep in mind some houses didn't have certain mechs, vehicles and weapons until after the Clan invasion.

I played Battletech as a kid since just after it was renamed from Battledroids. Quit playing it on the tabletop in the 90s but still dabbled in video games. Got back into it big time the last couple of years because of the Clan Kickstarter and recent video game. Currently working my way through collecting and painting many mechs. Because I didn't buy enough mechs LOL in the kickstarter I'm 3D printing even more to fill out 2 large forces.

I tend to like the 3025 period best too. Not so many special items and rules but still a lot of variety. Have to agree with what many others have said about not looking at the details too closely. So many things that make no logical sense in the fluff but still a fun game.

I totally understand the sense of being overwhelmed because I'm just starting to recover from it a bit myself. I told my kids, who are my main opponents, that there's books and rules for everything from how to pick the toilet paper your mechwarrior used this morning up to controlling an entire House. I've been working on and off to come up with a relatively simple campaign system based on the Chaos Campaigns, like Gokiburi mentioned.

Another great resource is solarisskunkwerks.com It allows you to print out sheets for a huge amount of mechs and vehicles as well as design your own.

Also recently learned about and became addicted to Megamek/MechHQ. megamek.org/play.html A free program to play Battletech on your computer. Quite a learning curve to understand all of it but fun. After a month of playing several hours a day most days I think I've got all the basics down. I have a campaign going and play one off battles against my oldest kid who moved away this fall.