Of late, I've been getting back into the BattleTech groove. It's a game a bunch of my friends played when I was back at Uni, but I never really had the chance to play it much myself.
Well, a couple of years ago, Catalyst Games released the BattleTech Introductory Boxed Set, and I bought it, hoping to get into the game. Then I got the
Sword and Dragon Starterbook, which gives a campaign to use with the Intro set. I got a couple of friends interested and we started the campaign, and were having a great time... and then life intervened.
Fast forward to a little more than a year later (and about a month ago), and I dusted off the box and the book, and - with some regular gaming sessions cancelled - I interested a couple more people in BattleTech. So, for the last three weekends, we've played a scenario each weekend. And, I'm glad to say, my friends are loving it. This Friday, with a RPG session cancelled, I'm hoping to get in the region of 4-6 players together for a BattleTech session.
Meanwhile, I'm peering in interest at what is happening with the "full" game. The timeline has advanced to about 3075, with the "Jihad" plotline being the current story. (Original BattleTech was 3025, the Clans were 3049, followed by the Civil War storyline in 3062). In addition to that, there's a bunch of major rulebooks...
Total Warfare - the big book (literally - over 300 pages) of BattleTech rules.
TechManual - which contains the construction rules.
Tactical Operations - advanced battlefield rules; weather, minefields, new terrain, etc.
Strategic Operations - aerospace rules, but also the BattleForce rules where 1 mini is for an entire lance, star, or perhaps even more
Those last two are really expensive books.
I'm really not sure at this point how far I'm going to go into BattleTech, but I'm certainly having some fun at the moment. The boxed set was really nice - it also had 24 plastic minis in it.
Cheers!
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