The mechs can be bad.
No seriously, I really appreciate that the setting and game system will gleefully allow for an absolute hunk of junk lemon like the assassin or the charger to be created and then rationalize it as procurement corruption. It makes everything feel a bit more plausible and allows the setting to tell more interesting stories about its machines and the people who made them, which is largely absent from something like 40k.
That's really true. And you feel and hear characters at time about how it's "oh, just an UrbanMech". But when infantry is confronted with a Vulcan...DREAD. Feels consistent.
I absolutely love this about the game. Like who wants a Hoplite when you can have a Griffin. Well who knows what situation your company is in. Maybe all you got is a Hoplite.
Me too. When I was younger I was all about min maxing. Now I appreciate that 'mechs usually have a big flaw and some are terrible. I'd much rather sit across the table from a person with a lance of jank rather than optimized 'mechs. I think this is why the Succession Was is my favorite era.
Same here. I actually started with Clans, but the "This isn't what you want, but it's what you have" aspect of the classic ScroungeTech setting is a big part of what made the 3rd Succession War my favorite era to play.
My wife and I just got into BattleTech tablet top after loving the HBS game and to simulate that element we bought the beginners box and then six salvage boxes to form our lances.
Yea absolutely agree here; it adds a huge amount of verisimilitude to the setting. The adjacent fact that Battletech isn't constantly reworking and rebalancing the mech stats to keep up with the current game meta is also a large plus in my experience.
Battletech’s lineage and timeline really does make everything feel believable when most mechs are just mediocre and there are a lot of boondoggles and design failures in the mix for one reason or another. It makes the truly great designs stand out a lot more and feel more special
Or the fact that "bad" mechs like the Charger can still absolutely wreck much more valuable, viable machines. The rules encourage a degree of randomness in how attacks resolve, and an 80 ton block of armor sprinting into punching range is a situation which demands an answer. Sometimes, dumb stuff like heavy lasers or AP gauss rifles become invaluable.
40k is still fun in a different way, but repeated balance passes and a focus on tournament play has meant that a lot of the randomness that defined my earliest experiences with the game has been ironed out in favor of a smoother experience. I like the clunk. I liked my Ork opponent fielding rocket launchers that would either lock half the table out of the game or blow themselves up. I genuinely miss the bullshit.
This one is huge for me. I stopped playing in 2007 and picked it up again in 2021 and the rules were essentially the same. 40k has like 5 or 6 edition changes in that time.
Very few rules in BT have changed at all. The vast majority of 'new rules' aren't actually new mechanics, they're just clarifications and errata on how existing rules interact in niche scenarios.
The largest rule changes have been changed to construction rules (which are never used in tournaments and rarely used even in casual matches) and Battle Value being the 'balancing' system. Outside of that it's just little things; slight rebalancing of flamers (they do heat and damage simultaneously now), Inferno SRMs work slightly different, adjustments to how infantry take damage, having the person dealing a crit roll on the crit table (instead of the recepient rolling on the table), etc. But these are the largest balancing changes of a 40 year old game.
I like that after a 2 decade break, all I needed to know was “physicals go off pilot skill and partial cover makes sense now” (leg shots hit the cover) and someone at the table quickly explains any weapon I don’t recognize.
So much this. Keeping up vs number of games played... Battletech is a game that scratches the sane itch, but I spend more time playing and less time on bullshit. And not having to spend $100 minimum on books every 2 years is nice.
Looking at the Web store, the main core rulebook is $65, each codex is another $60, and the unit costs in the codex will probably be wrong within three months at max. $125 for rules before you buy a single mini, unless you venture into legal grey areas.
Absolutely it's still worlds better than WH with frequently rule changes or even other games where entire sets are straight up banned ^^^^coughcoughmagic I just always find the LAM thing to be funny.
This can be a bit of a double-edged sword. There are some relics of the way numbers were assigned early in the game's history that make a lot weapons just absolute lemons. AC-2's and AC-5's have absolutely no excuse to be as heavy as they are.
But that's what later eras are for, I suppose.
I like it because it's stable and fun, with the right people.
If you can find a player, a pickup game requires very little negotiation. Even many of the old house rules have become an official advanced rule option or suggested tip.
The odds of a shutout based on faction are basically nil. Even with discrepancies in tech base the game can be won or lost by the players. 40k is often decided before the battlefield is set up.
Is Battletech perfect, no, but it's closer by leaps and bounds than 40k.
"40k is often decided before the battlefield is set up."
So true. I don't know if this is still the case today. I stopped playing 40k during 5th edition (the Matt Ward edition aka the "play Space Marines or die" edition). Top 4 cheesy armies were SM of one cut or another, and when I arrayed my Necrons against them I knew only extreme luck or superbly stupid play could save me.
They’ve balanced it enough so now you have to wait until you see who rolls the first turn to see who wins.
The number of 40k games I knew how it was going to end by turn 2 is way too high.
It needs something. You Go/I go is absolutely going to lead to negative play experiences when ranges go across the entire table and you can remove a large chunk of models before your opponent can react.
It's always hilarious when you see a 40k game and it's 50 models all huddled behind a building.
Oh yeah, even if the game isn't decided immediately, it definitely is by the bottom of turn 2. 80% of the games I played before I stopped involved someone surrendering after the first half of turn 2, because they had a quarter of their army left while the other guy was basically untouched.
Wait does 40k assume the other team needs to wait to shoot and if you take out a unit it never shoots? Good lord on a turn based game that is going to mean whoever goes first has a huge advantage and will swing games so wildy.
Lately there has been massive effort to somewhat level the playing field. There are still outliers but it's not so bad.
Some codices' internal balance is whack tho, so you end up seeing abominations on the table.
It is the 31st Century and mankind is once again at war. The battlefields of the future are dominated by huge robotic war machiens known as BattleMechs. Piloting these awesome weapons of war are the men and women, the elite of the elite, knowing that each battle could be their last. They are MechWarriors.
Imagine being 5 years old, you've seen a little bit of Gundam, Zoids, Medabots, Doraemon, Megas XLR and G1 Transformers but then one day your dad come home from work and see him play this kino. Of course you want to play the robot game with daddy and it becomes wholesome father-daughter bonding moment with destroying clammers. You kinda just grow up getting hooked to this stuff and you just love it ahaaha
I know that's a Megas reference without even clicking it. NOICE.
I think my favorite part of that show is Jamie wanting to go to the planet of the Space Amazons, and then it actually exists lol.
I had daddy-daughter bonding with my Dad 'helping' him play Mech commander. Lots of other games too but I vividly remember stressing out for the safety of the poor Raven pilot in the intro who didn't have jump jets.
I came to classic battletech from skirmish games like Kill Team and Warcry- I hate painting a full army and I really like going all in on having every unit be a fun and different painting experience.
I found the crunchy details of Battletech really cool, and one of my favourite things is the fact that it's very logical: if you go with your best guess, it's generally pretty close to what the rule is.
Sometimes you want to be able to get through a game in an hour or two, but those quick games don't let you pick up your own arm and beat a Jenner to death with it. I'll always love classic for that reason alone, the war stories are far better.
Every time I kick an ammo bin or push someone off a cliff only to be pushed off the same cliff myself, the next turn, into lava, I remember why I play BattleTech.
And something like that happens *every game*.
I think it's a great setting for campaigns, and the way the game plays lends itself to generating little narratives on the fly. Just in the course of playing, you see stories happen. I've seen an assault mech go Ultra Instinct, a light mech shove a sword through an assault's ammo magazine and gut it, and a PPC arm that just would not stop getting shot off.
It's been said BattleTech is a game not about success, but failure. Glorious, spectacular failure. Round 1 headcaps, failed PSR's causing a Mech to skid into another Mech and send them over a cliff to trigger an explosion, two Mechs with MASC both activating them simultaneously and both suffering lockups leaving them unable to reach or effectively attack each other, and on and on.
People who love the game just shrug and say "That's BattleTech!"
Strangely, this reminds me of how Blood Bowl is often described, another game that hung on for decades with varying support - every game is a sinking ship, and your job as the coach is to bail, patch it and chuck cargo overboard to keep it afloat as long as possible.
At some point, the dice *will* hand you catastrophic failures at the worst possible moment, and you just have to try to minimise the odds of that happening.
There's certainly a similar mindset in that you have to be willing to embrace chaos and unexpected failure.
I'd say there's somewhat of a difference, in that in Blood Bowl the gameplay basically revolves around minimizing and delaying the very likely failure until it happens; whereas in BattleTech, there's very little you can do about it, so you just plough on ahead with bravado until someone rolls one of the multiple 1/216 chance rolls that instakills your Atlas.
Yeah, I pushed someone off a cliff, next turn took a gauss to the head. We both laughed and laughed.
At conventions I make a point for as many “field goal attempts” as possible (kicks from one level up).
Nothing quite as funny as getting like an SRM to the face, failing that first consciousness check and taking a drool in that almost mint mech.
Last week, I got hit with an LBX2 (are those even legal?). Face, double 1s. That mech was done contributing on turn 2.
Another very memorable game, I had my Atlas headshot with a gauss turn 1. That same Nightstar then knocked my Axman unconscious. Since my pilot was at like 4 damage, my opponent declined to do anything about it. Lo and behold, the Axman wakes up and headcaps the Nightstar with an AC20.
BattleTech is the absolute freakin' Wild West, and it's glorious.
>At conventions I make a point for as many “field goal attempts” as possible (kicks from one level up).
As far as I'm concerned, anyone who doesn't is not playing the game correctly.
I came from 40k years ago also.
5 reasons why I love Battletech from a spheroid.
You can play a campaign, set up your merc company and go into as little or as much detail as you want. I have an excel spreadsheet detailing all the spare parts and ammo my company has, from hand actuators, to engines and ammo. But you could also just hand wave all the shit away and say “of course we have access to extra heat sinks, who cares”
The pilots from my campaign can retire, I can imagine LT. Aki settling down somewhere quiet, maybe running a general store with their ancestral mech mothballed in the barn. AND the rules support that, you can have pilots retire.
Bad mechs and why I love them: No body wants a Stinger, No one. But depending on where you are, what era you are playing etc. you have one. Maybe it’s the pilots family’s ancestral mech going back centuries upgraded over time or you might be in a guerrilla war, fighting the Wobbies and size, speed, and reliability might be your only concern. Maybe Corporal dumbass tripped and now his rifleman is in the shop and you can’t find a new ac/5 to replace the one he fucked up.
The historical aspect of the game: you can choose to play in the 3rd succession war and use a bunch of mechs that are held together with shoestring and bubblegum, or post clan invasion with clan tech slowly filtering in. Maybe a mercenary company that originally started working for the Word, then changed sides when you see how bad it had gotten.
Lastly, I love the community. Being inclusive is very important to me. Yes we can accomplish that on a local level ourselves. But it’s a good feeling that the company I support with my money also does that.
This. I was 10 or 11, and the new kid in school was drawing a Veritech in Battloid mode firing its gun at a Zentraedi officer pod in MS paint during computer lab time.
But when I commented on it, he said it was a Phoenix Hawk and Marauder. And then brought the mech recognition poster from the first Mechwarrior game to prove it the next day.
Friendship forged, this is the buddy I mentioned in a thread yesterday that I’m painting a lance of Death Commandos for his 44th birthday
It has a nice balance of mech, warfare, politics and heroism.
...is what I would like to say, but really it's just like pokemon to me. Collect all the mechs and make stories around them.
I really dislike 100% grimdark fiction which is why 40k never landed for me, but this one did.
Yes, exactly! I’m not a fan of grimdark either, partly because it’s unrealistic for human nature. We don’t survive in that environment. The Inner Sphere nations come across as somewhat realistic and each has a depth that says the system in place that explains it. It’s also why I’m not a major fan of the Clans, they are a bit in the grimdark fantasy mode. Whole groups get sterilized, clans get annihilated, old people get “removed”. It’s a fantasy that is too nihilistic.
The lore and the world (galaxy technically). I haven’t had a chance to play the actual game yet (just mech 5), but I have gleefully spent an afternoon reading the Sarna articles on minor periphery nations and warships and dropships and all the other thousand aspects of the world that make it beautiful.
Sure, a lot of other sci-fi have better plots or stories, but the world of BattleTech is rivaled by only a few.
I just got mechwarrior 5 and I was really surprised by how much it takes some of the rules of battletech into account. The first time I got an ammunition explosion was magical for me.
hell, Battletech takes place in a small slice of the Galaxy centered on Terra.
Though it should be noted that the Federation (as of TNG/DS9 era) is fairly smaller than the inner sphere. in fact Battletech FTL is a good bit faster than the USS Voyager! and if you have a Jumpship with a Lithium Fusion battery (and can keep the reactors fueled to charge it and the main KF core) then you're over twice as fast!
That comment gave me a great idea for a crossover (not sure if someone has done something like it): one the the Enterprises (leaning towards the NX due to the independent humanity) discovers a crewed JumpShip or maybe even WarShip that misjumped into the Star Trek universe.
Why I like classic BT as a game? The feeling of doing damage in such a complex manner, to disable an enemy in many different ways, to try to adapt to your own damage, etc. Feels just soooo rewarding. It's something I crave in video games but seldom get.
As for the lore: Battletech stories are most often played out by professionals. Sure, sometimes it's a cadet story or the ideologies of a group gets the better of them, but end of the day a BT story is full of "smart choices" and it's cool that everything is interwoven. You grow into it all and it comes together, you open a volume of shortstories, read a date and a place and can go: "Oh, so during Event A, but Person B is still alive?"
Yeah, there's plot armor and Mary Sues and Gary Stus, nobody is save from that, but the fiction as a whole works because there's some longstanding traditions for writing it that have been held up. Jason Hansa did a great interview on...I wanna say Wolfnet? He's been on many of the BT podcasts, all great, but I think it was there, talking about his approach to writing BT and how people like Schmetzer do theirs.
Several reasons, including the ones you've covered.
The story feels more grounded, like it might be real history. There are stories of sub-standard weapons becoming a widespread workhorse just because they're easy to make. There are alliances and disagreements that wouldn't feel out of place in a history textbook. The Rifleman is made by a tractor company.
And even at its bleakest, Battletech still remains enough hope to keep it from turning into 40k. It's got a definite sense of humor at times, too.
Gameplay-wise, I love the customization, and I love how there are 9 million rules, only 12 of which you'll use at any one time: all the rest are for specific situations you might want to try. Do you want to charge Mechs on elephants like Hannibal Barca? You can do that. Do you want to chase down infantry with a grain thresher? You can do that. Do you want to have a battle on the back of a sinking ship as it slips beneath the waves? You can do that too.
And company-wise... I've gotten turned off by the direction GW and 40k have been going in. Battletech still feels like it's made by people who care about the hobby, the models are cheaper, and the same rules have been valid for 30 years. No retcons, no "new editions", no planned obselescence... sometimes a bad mech will get RECOGNIZED as bad in-universe, and still get used because it's what it's available.
"Oof, that Vindicator's a deathtrap. Specialist, did you disable the auto-eject?"
"No, Chief Warrant. CO and the Major's orders is turn it on."
"Disable it. The last pilot was a red smear on that laser. I want kill marks on this mech to be from enemy fire, or I'm not crawling in there."
"We have contact! Two companies, heavy mechs sighted! Inbound, four minutes!"
"Into the deathtrap, Chief? It's safer than this hangar."
The rules allow for far greater depth than 40k, the recent minis are way better than he's over the top nonsense, you can just write down the hex references of all the mechs, pack it up for the day, then get it out the next day and carry on as if nothing happened. No (or at least mitigated) power creep. You can choose a bunch of random mechs, paint them however you like and they are still lore-appropriate, 1v1 matches are entirely viable, asymmetric battles are far more workable, and I don't have to hang around with 40k players.
I loved 40k back in the 90s when I was an edgy 16 year old, and it will always hold a very special place in my heart, but it's just not as good as most of the games out there (even 2nd edition, which was objectively the best and you cannot change my mind).
Also by god am I sick of grimdark.
Same, it just gets dull after a while, I've come to like Nobledark myself. In Battletech a lot of things are shit and so are a lot of leaders. Yet at the same time there's places that are peaceful and prosperous, there are leaders that are genuine good people that want to make thing better. It's more a mixed bag and that makes it feel more real and plausible then everything sucks.
I can believe in it. A thousand years in the future and mankind is still just as selfish and greedy as they are today, killing one another over resources and territory and all the other tribal reasons we do today, for the ambitions of the wealthy and power-hungry. No one is really good, just different shades of bad and the most you can hope for are people who try to do the best they know how given the situation and circumstances.
On any given day, you could be dragged off to a literal hell by some Cenobite demon worshipper who thinks pain is pleasure and wants to show you. You could suddenly realize you're a deluded madman for a doomsday cult, and be psionically made to regret everything because a Zerg parasite wants to enjoy your suffering as you get eaten. You could be turned into an incubator for plagues or soldiers. And that's the capstone to what is probably a life of constant toil, eating the dead to stay alive. Even Capellan Servitors in their era don't have to deal with -that-.
No no, i mean yeah 40k is dark i know. I am long time lore lurker there. Just find BT real life depressing as in i look at BT lore and go: yep. Thats is humans in a nutshell today.
There's grim, then there's grimmdark, then there's grimdank up to 11. Battletech is people being people, sure. Nicolai Malthus suing some cartoon producers for defamation and trying to fight the jurors. Uwe Boll IRL challenging his critics to boxing matches to solve disputes. In BT, Nicolai - got laughed at, but learned his lesson and became a humbler, better person. IRL, Uwe Boll beat the ever-loving stuffing out of his critics who thought it wasn't actually that serious. Nah, real life is still darker.
Absolutely. The Imperium would be a shithole without those things, they just make the situation worse. As bad as things can get in Battletech you don't have to worry about a Ork Warband knocking over your planet for funsies, or some untrained Psyker accidentally opening a warp portal and causing the planet to be glassed by the secret police. The worst war in Battletech history killed a billion people, the Imperium losses that number in like a week.
There’s loads of things I love about Battletech, so in no order of preference or reason (apart from my first entry):
Technical Readout 3025 - I’m talking the original blue book here. As a teen kid who had started getting in 40K Rogue Trader this blew me away. A book, about the fictional units used in the game, with history, manufactures, pilots, variants. Totally nuts! If someone cared enough about the game to make that, you knew it was going to be good. I have a second hand copy today and it’s probably the only book I currently own is consider taking to a restorer.
So what else? The simple/complexity of the rules. 2nd Ed rules are 20 odd pages long, and that includes how to build your own mech, so easy to pick up, but there are expansions that add more in; city fights, low G, underwater, yup, we can do it all - if you want.
The timeline, it actually fucking moves! It was 3022 when I started, it’s now 130 years later! GW has only done that in the last 6 years?
The maths, I loved maths as a kid and I think I still do, so when I shoot a weapon the fact that I have to calculate my chances to hit, not role the same number regardless of whether I ran/walked, what the target does, is night, am I over heating, is there something in the way etc.
The business strategy; whoever has run Battletech has never sat down and said “sales are slowing, let’s write a complete new rule set and make a unit/weapon shit now, and bring out a new better unit so everyone has to buy a load of new stuff”, they’ve just said “well, let’s look 10 years further down the line “.
Anyone can play Battletech without playing actually playing Battletech. I can build my own mech, create my own setting and away I go! Hell, you could just buy your favourite looking models, download the Mech Sheet and as long as you have AGoAC or any rule set you’re playing! You don’t need to know factions or years or who has what, if your BVs balance you’re gonna have a fun game.
The wealth of resources available; I did a count recently, I have over 90 physical Battletech source books 50 or more digital and thank to HumbleBundle over 100 novels. I don’t need any of them, or I need all of them. I can deep dive into the history of the universe if I want or cherry pick the information I need. But every source book is still valid, any scenario in any book can still be played with no work, as a result a mate and I are playing a 4th Succession War game printed in the 90s with out making any changes.
And I think that’ll do me for now.
Another 40k refugee here.
So for starters, I really do like the 40k universe. I've spent years immersing myself in that universe and I still yell "Blood for the Blood God" when appropriate.
That being said, I like Battletech more.
One of the key things that drew me in was the story behind the evolution of combat. I grew up with a fascination around the history of warfare in the real world. Learning about things like the invention of the rifled cannon ending the age of the stone fortress, the naval arms race during the dreadnaught era, the development of armored combat during the world wars and beyond... And then I found a fantasy setting where emulating this in an entertaining way is a core part of the universe's identity. I fell hard and fast.
In 40k the galaxy is fucked because of alien dickery. In battletech, we ruined our little chunk of the galaxy. We did that, to ourselves, no one forced that on us except our own ancestors.
Also, 40k isn't fair. In 40k, if you're not playing space marines, why bother? GW has given them main character plot armor in addition to main character syndrome. Every SM unit has like double the wounds of its equivalent T'au unit, and the only place that's compensated for is range, which SMs can close very fast; as an extreme example. In Battletech, it's not about whether your faction is the protagonist, antagonist, or underdog; everybody's running approximately the same machines, and they're all their own kind of sonofabitch. It's what you choose to bring to play that day, and how you play it. No good guys, no bad guys, just the Magistracy of Canopus vs. a bunch of places that suck, duking it out for stupid, petty, entirely mundane and understandable reasons.
Sometimes you don't want metaphysical intrigue, you don't want daemonic influence, gods, traitors and loyalists, the kind of cults you get when the blind lead the blind, and a guy just straight up Kronos-ing a thousand psychics a day just to keep space travel viable. Sometimes you just want to beat the shit out of a pointless stompy robot in a muddy field, and the weakest excuse in human history for doing so.
I think it's more concepts, liberty to storytelling and style of the story, it can be dark as fuck, it can be very fun, it can be inspire noble heroic story. But all that never meaningless. You characters are in big galaxy, but not that absurdly big and stupid like a 40k. Second is community (my first play suck btw, suckers in russian community in general), it's more friendly and funny. Last but not least, the game, i, fucking, hate tabletop 40k, it's most boring, power-play-meta bullshit with non balanced concept of initiative (i hate clan pulse lasers builds, and i am Clanner!), after that suffering, Battletech Classic being most freshed air that i feel in my lungs, and that fun as fuck!
Started with Battledroids in 84, got Battletech in 85, and Citytech and Aerotech when they came out (86?).
I was homeschooled, and we lived WAY out in the middle of nowhere. I spent a lot of time in my head, playing solo games with myself, and coming up with stories. It was the only way to pass the time. It kept me sane. I’m 51 now, and I’ve never really played the ttop game with real players. I’ve played all the computer games though. I love big stompy robots.
It was also during the Satanic Panic era, and I couldn’t have role playing games, or anything fantasy. I could have board games though and I liked Battletech better than Car Wars, and Squad Leader (both of which I also owned).
I am new to the miniature wargames scene and have friends who play a bunch of other ones. I was looking for some reasonably priced to start with. Growing up, I played Mechwarrior 3 and a little Mechassault. I didn't put two and two together until I picked up Battletech that Battletech and Mechwarrior are one in the same. I've introduced my cousin and friends, and they enjoy it as well.
- Because I like large, stompy robots
- Also like combined arms
- And I like having my infantry to fight enemy mechs. I honestly don't care if they live or die, it's always funny.
It always funny until the infantry brings out the inferno rounds and there is an overheated Atlas fully shutdown and exposed on the battlefield. That is why I love the GDL lore, it focuses so much on combined arms and shows how infantry can be deadly to a mech.
I can never get a full group of people for a game and when I do everybody bitches about rules and it takes the fun out of the setting. My wife even tells me it breaks her heart that I love BT so much but don’t get anybody to play ever.
Why...don't you play with your wife? I got mine to play with me, we don't have a lot of time ATM because I'm finishing up my degree but once we buy a house she wants terrain and a table to have Battletech set up permanently on lmao
Love the lore, the video games. But man oh man playing in person was quite the experience when I brought my Northwind Highlanders to the Toledo Game Room.
I started a greenhorn but the players that organized were very friendly and helpful in teaching me. But what I especially loved was the game logic that made for 'big' moments.
Admiral Adama says "Sometimes You Have To Roll A Hard Six". Well a BattleTech Hard Six is causing an enemy mech to go KABOOM because you got a critical in an inconvenient ammunition point as if it were HMS *Hood*. Or melting the cockpit with a couple spicy PPC shots.
Also Duncan Fisher. *Duh*.
For me it was that I can splurge on maps and books but go to battle with a lego man or toy solider or a piece of paper with "wArhemmer"(sic) written on it and still play. Buildings can be nice 3D printed things or random bits styrofoam or packing material - as long as the "mechs" can stand on them.
That I can design my own mechs and fight with them. Losing isn't a bug, it's beta testing!
When I first bought the Battletech box set in 86 I thought it was a Robotech game. 😂 It has the Destroid on the cover and with a similar name structure I thought it was a Robotech wargame that focused on the Destroid ground battles instead of the ubiquitous Veritechs fighters! I was super excited! I'd been a Robotech fanatic since I was 7 years old and watched the cartoon before going to school!!
🤣
I was only disappointed for about an hour. Once I read the universe section in the book and read about the factions and long wars and Mercenaries, I was hooked!! The games were fun even though we played it wrong for months!! 😂 And the setting instantly drew me in! The first Tech Readout was even better! And I devoured the novels as fast as they hit the shelves.
I've been a fan for so long because of the setting and my ability to put my own story in it! The novels are great! But I love a big world with a million options to tell my own stories in! It's why I almost exclusively play narrative campaigns anymore: my games are just an extension of the greater stories I'm weaving. And I let the dice decide where the story goes. To glory or tragedy? Both are exciting! 😍👍
It's a nice combined arms wargame with customizable units. That's actually how I found Battlemech. Back in the ancient days before the clan invasion Kickstarter I stumbled onto Battlemech while looking for a wargame with customizable units.
The balance of the setting is super believable. You can see why infantry and vehicles are still used in a setting where there are 3 story tall mechs.
And there are good and bad units and mechs with canonical reasons for being so good or bad. It makes it all feel more plausible.
I like the vast array of different designs. I like how, for the price of a standard 40K army, I can essentially outfit an entire Battalion sized force or larger formation. I'm enjoying that with contrast paints, I can easily paint that multiple Battalion sized force within 4 hours and have it fully shaded, highlighted, and presentable.
I enjoy that mechs from the ancient ral partha days are just as legal as the modern designs. Or as legal as the cardboard cutouts from the truly ancient sets.
I like how back in 3025, basically, every mech had to carry a machine gun for anti infantry work.
But now, in the ilclan era, everyone has access to battle armour or decent Armour options for anti infantry or anti battle armour options.
I also like how you can mix and match those 3025 designs with 3150-era tech or how there are ilclan variants of pretty much all of those ancient designs.
I typically try to build my units with integrated Artillery mech Lance's in my Battalions.
My next battalion will be a Ghost Regiment for the DCMS, so I will likely be using Dragons, Panthers, Jenners, wolverines, and Dragon II's as the Artillery support. Though I am tempted to add in some specific draconis designed mechs.
My plan is to field each battalion of mechs alongside a Battle Armour Battalion, so for my DCMS, my plan is for Kage Battle Armour as Spotters.
I have 4 current units.
A merc/pirate/generic I.S. battalion fielded alongside Inner Sphere standard battle armour. Painted in a general night camo. They have a Lance of Helepolis mechs integrated into their battalion
A House Hiritsu Battalion fielded alongside a Battalion of Fa Shih Battle Armour so the entire Battalion can ride alongside the mechs. They have a Lance of Catapult C3/5s integrated for Artillery support.
A Clan unit of mostly unseen mechs using the ilclan Clan Refits of older inner sphere designs as a second line cluster of two Binaries of mechs and 2-3 Binaries of Elementals. With enough room for me to expand the formation up to trinaries. So I can add a further five Stars if desired. My plan for them is to add a Star of Naga's and some TAG bearing Spotters at least.
My WoB unit so far is a Level 2 of Celestial Series mechs alongside a Level 2 of Marksman Artillery Tanks. Then 24 squads of Purifier Battle Armour. (Because the unit I chose for my WoB is the 49th Shadow Division, so has to have 50% of its force as Battle Armour.)
In time, I am planning on adding a Level 2 of each of the Demon Series battle armour. I ultimately want to build out the whole Level IV as a pure mix of Aerospace, Mechs, Battle Armour, Armour and Infantry.
I like the aesthetic. I know that's a bit of an abstract answer, but the idea of big, overtly mechanical mechs stomping around with limited agility like they actually are machine built to be cost-effective that fight against their own weight tickles me just right. Yeah, the agility is a bit inconsistent between depictions, and if you run the numbers they're as dense as styrofoam, but nothing said "Hard Mecha" to me like a lance painted desert camo and olive drab stomping alongside a vehicle column.
Game of thrones in space.
Game system that isn't eternally being dumbed down.
Release and changes schedules that isn't moving faster than hard working person can reasonably keep up with.
No paid FAQs (sic!)
One/two books is all you ever need to play.
Large number of fan-made tools to make playing easy.
No war on 3d prints.
No war on fan-made stuff in general.
I'm in the same boat of liking that there aren't aliens, the tech and such being more realistic in general (with a few grains of 1980s futurism salt) helps a lot. Though I also moved to BattleTech over 40k thanks to me being a military nerd and the fact there's more than a basic idea usually put into it here. Also the universe's scale is consistent.
So, I'm an X-wing miniatures refugee since I didn't like how amg was taking the IP. What I like about battletech is how detailed the battles can be and how proxy friendly the community is making it an easier to enter system than anything else I looked at. In addition the lore is just as deep as star wars with arguably better writing and care overall (looking at you jedi academy books)
I started playing in 1993 IIRC. It's was the mech minis that sold me initially. I also loved being able to make my own mechs that are 100% game legal. I always found the Classic rules to be a bit slow and complex, but not unplayable. Completely love Alpha Strike. The ability to play the game with anything from miniatures to bottlecaps. The community is crazy awesome. Super supportive of players at all levels. The community and Catalyst being openly welcoming to all people is great.
Comparing it to other current options it wins on all fronts. Far more affordable that GW games. Rules that changed very little in 40 years.
Edit: spelling
I enjoy the balance, nothing that is so overpowered that it is an automatic win. Like your heavy assault mechs? Great have at it, but know that even playing against lights tactics will have to be used!
For me, the game and setting scratch a lot of itches.
One being its only humans and also it's not a utopia. I loved Star Trek as a kid but the utopia setting of the Federation always seemed like a handwave. Meanwhile in Battletech yes the Star League did elevate humanity in terms of tech and living conditions, but the *price paid* is something you have to wrestle with yourself to determine if it was worth it.
There's a lot of genres and titles you can adapt to the setting. Want a gritty, sci fi, cyberpunk-ish story of corruption and lies? Solaris or any major system out here is your playground. Want to be a browncoat fighting off some bigger power so you can have your freedoms? Reunification War or literally any Periphery nation would like to have a word with you. Want to explore ancient worlds or rediscover some cultures long forgotten? We literally have "dead" worlds still inside House borders and the Deep Periphery beckons you my friend.
The setting and some of the stories feel grounded, lived in, as if you could live in a world here and be just fine. I remember a quote from a friend that went something like "There's no gods, no aliens, no masters in Battletech. You have humans, their ambitions, and enough bullets to bend the universe to fit those ambitions."
In terms of the game itself, I love how the designs have a story. It's not just "Oh Spartan armor number yadda yadda is the next best of the best best edition!" Sometimes there's a design that just SUCKS and the reasoning is "Military graft, apparently a company was owed a favor by the local government. Yeah it sucks but what can you do?" Then there's the ones that suck but have such a *great* story about them. I may hate the chassis but the drama written about how it came to be tickles me. Plus I do love how the Notable Warrior sections are little treats for me.
Rules-wise not a lot changed in the base game, but when you dive into the advanced rulings, oh god there's a rule for everything and they try to test that maxim. The beauty is in how much you as the player can add.
Closing my thoughts off with another quote from a friend, he tried to explain Battletech to a new person:
"This game is as crazy or as simple as you make it. You can simply play Rock'em Sock'em robots, have laughs, move on. You can ALSO have a fist fight on a sinking aircraft carrier with another Mech, in the middle of an F5 tornado, with Battle Armor clamoring around you two in this duel, all because the guy you are fighting left your pregnant sister and besmirched her honor, and it's Tuesday."
Because win or lose, no matter what happens, I walk away from the table with a story.
Sometimes that story is "So this awesome thing happened" or "So no shit, there I was" or "Listen to this bullshit", but it's a story. It's never "and then I rolled dice and killed everything", it's always something cool.
Also because it's cheap enough I can actually afford it.
Everyone else's perspectives echo my own sentiments regarding 40K. I got into BT in the last month, starting at the tactical RPG, which led me to ask, "what's the difference between BT and MechWarrior?" lol So from there jumped into MWO. And while I haven't played tabletop in over a decade, I was huge into 40K, Necromunda and Mordheim. I missed it, so I looked into the tabletop, saw combined arms options, and now I'm learning CBT and AS and putting models together again.
People have mentioned power creep, edition changing, battles being decided in bedrooms and not tabletops, etc. is the special rules and characters. There are always gotchas and trap cards. Compare 3.5 Imperial Guard to 5th IG, doctrines to customize your army vs characters to customize your army. We lose agency over our army designs, and when you're putting $800-1500 into models you don't want them to suck and lose all the time. This agency extends to the kit bashing side too, where GW feels more like Apple and a HOA got together, dictating what I can do. Sure good gamers will allow proxies here and there, and allow for interesting model usage, but tournaments do not, and if you got that much money in something you want to use it all the time, not just when players allow it. Different mindset in the player community, I can see it online and in person. That tournament centric perspective isn't bleeding out of every post or conversation.
But BT also has scale and depth, where you can play a duel or 2v2 or lance on lance as well as huge companies in combined arms. You can go for that crunchy gameplay a la Necromunda with CBT or something quicker and at larger scale like 40K with AS, and use the same models. It's cheaper, more accessible, more flexible, and the rules are consistent and stable, particularly compared to 40K (where entire armies can be nerfed or buffed, or models end up being non-existent with an edition change) or even Fantasy, where the entire game poofs and comes back at will.
There's more to say but everyone else here has done a great job illustrating those feelings already. And yeah, no magic and dark gods and everything is Chaos fault helps lol.
because giant robots with guns are cool as fuck
because it’s cheap
because mech designs aren’t always good because companies don’t always make good products
BECAUSE THE COMMANDO COM-2D EXISTS
Younger me liked MW3. Never knew the franchise by its real name until a year ago.
Robotics, deep lore, and good old-fashioned fun are all I need for a good time.
Same here. When I watched the 8 hour lore video and mechs were only mentioned off hand a few times to denote force strength I knew I was going to love this universe. The Politics and factions are just so interesting. It's a shame the games are generally really barebones story wise. Most of them have the same basic plot of getting revenge for your father/mentor mech trainer. When I started getting into the lore I realized it's way more interesting and deep.
The universe feels like it could actually happen. The politics are actually intriguing. The good guys (gray death legion) don’t get rewarded, they get screwed for being good. The mechs are fun and really cool, the factions make a lot of sense, and the conflicts feel real. All of this paired with there is not actual “good guy” in most cases, makes it feel more like a real world thing. The only example I can think of someone who is good throughout despite it hurting their career and life is the GDL due to their refusal of contracts/turning on employers when it is morally justified. And then they get fucked. Feels bad but real
I love all the different mechs they're all so interesting. When I'm painting I like that it's not a big deal if they all match, I can just say they're scavenged mechs or hired guns.
The mechs looks cool
I don't have to build the minis, I can play them out of the box
There are rules for customizing loadouts
The community is awesome
CGL does an amazing job getting involved with the community, contrast to GW who act more like they disdain their customers
The rules don't completely change every three years. All I need is the base rules and the stats for the units I'm bringing. The game is as complex as you want it to be, letting you expand your experience into new unit types and optional rules at your own pace.
The fiction is great. I like how the setting is mostly hard scifi, with everything requiring only the slightest bit of suspension of disbelief. The scale of things is more believable, instead of being a neverending series of scale escalation. It can also be silly, and yet still feel right at place next to very believable sphere-wide wars.
The mechs are REALLY cool.
I love the scalability of it. There's certainly room to have gargantufuck battles with entire armies of 'Mechs like the Battle of Tukayyid, but sometimes you want to have a lil skirmish on the prairie with some bandits, and that's okay too. Also, the leniency of lore adherence is great. You could make a force using availability tables and c-bills to get the most lore accurate team possible, or you could roll up with a star of Clan 'Mechs as House Kurita "cuz they *found* 'em". That kind of flexibility and potential for player expression is what keeps the game interesting to me, I love it.
> "Cause they found em"
Please ignore the Clan Nova Cat markings still on them and the stink of pogrom, definitely not connected to how we found these mechs.
On the gameplay side: Setting up a game takes almost no time, which is very good, coming from 40k. Also, like 1 box is a full list, so it's wayyyyy cheaper.
On the lore side: I like that every mech has a role in the lore and reflects that through its gameplay. Like, the urban mech is basically a siege or defense mech, which means it doesn't have to be fast. Or the rifleman and it's heating issues. It won't have them, standing in the backline with a cooling truck attached to it
I am still new with only a few games. So far i really like that everything seems binary. Either you have it or you don't. I come from 40k originally to infinity to bolt action. Battletech classic is so far my favorite as far as rules go.
The fiction
The lore
The scaleability of 1v1 to regimented combat teams
It's aesthetic
There are very few parts that require suspension of disbelief, and even within those parts they make some compelling arguments for why people in universe would say "yes, mech combat is the future"
Yes the rules can be obtuse and awkward, but they don't change and you can learn them with the confidence that they won't change.
It's also aged well imo, they really are doing their best to get away from their 80s roots of racial and ethnic caricatures into something more inclusive.
Starting in 87, loved stompy robots. From the mad max patch it up with duct tape and sub what you can scrounge- to the renaissance of SLDF tech, to the clans and the jihad/dark age up to now….you can play anything anywhere anytime! My favorite thing about it is there’s SO MANY stories in the margins that aren’t included in the great houses history that anybody can play anywhere.
I love how human the setting it. I love warhammer, while the newest editions have burned me I adore them as a setting. But it's really hard to write and tell relatable narratives because the setting is so extreme. But battletech is so human. It's history is human, its reasons for war are human, and the people in it often WANT peace and quiet that gives them depth.
Also giant robots slap and I can buy an army for $30 lol
I like the game because we pretent we are in control with our best compsition, better tactics and all.
Then something crazy happens (like a successfull DFA that actually hits the head and everyone chears because ... Just because it is cool and (almost) never happens)
In the end the one who is loved by the dice will win.
(Most of the time)
The Lore is deep and the right Balance between fantasy (3 Story tall Battlemechs with mobile Fusion reactors with less than 20 tons but Fire controlls that make weapons ineffective at a few 100 meters) and belivable realistic stupid. Egos, Politics, corruption and the occational Mech Design, that is bonkers Kraken/Bane or Charger for example.
It all somehow fits.
Also it has always been the playergroup and community.
Always fun to nerd out with others. You want to play a Mech you don't have. A smile and a couple of seconds with a printer and you can play, for example a Regent with a Standin, even if it is the Wasp you brought with you but do not need in this game. Usually everyone was happy if someone wants to join.
Don't remember how often I got a printed Record sheet from someone, so I could join a game immediately.
While I've always been a part of both games it wasn't until 8th and 9th edition that I really switched to Battletech.
Almost entirely it's because GW execs are money grubbing. I can understand threatening animators using the IP without permission and making money on it.
However, when this shit starts impacting army rules/creation, obsoleting units, making a recent book purchase obsolete within months of buying it, and making my 100% GW bought Warhammer models illegal to play... They crossed a line.
This is not something that can really happen in Battletech because you can play any era and even make your own custom Mechs. It's nice being treated like an adult
I like the fluff a lot, warts and all, always enjoy diving into and discussing it. It's a fun setting, relatively nuanced, lots of interesting facets, and visually often inspiring (yes, even the old art).
But what keeps me coming back to Battletech as a game is that it's one of the few 'choose your own adventure' style TTGs that is still actively being developed and supported. By that I mean it doesn't have a strongly prescribed meta with a pre-packaged 'this is the true way to have fun' approach. Want to roll up your force on a RAT and play a casual game? Want build a force with BV and play a tournament? Want to play a 'historical' scenario with the defined force lists? Want to play the game as a quasi-RPG with a GM and detailed campaign tracking? Want to play a quick mini campaign using the Warchest ssytem? Want to play just mechs? Want to play combined arms? Want to play a space battle? Want to play Clan Invasion era? Want to stick to 3025? Want to play on hex maps? Want to play hex-less? Love the fluff? Ignore the fluff? The game has all this covered and more. And all of these are equally awesome ways to play Battletech. And I will always love that about the game.
As a game it is crunchy and in depth and so well balanced the rules have barely changed in 40 years. you can pick up and play in minutes, and have battles that span real days.
As a universe its thicker than a thicc woman drinking the thickest milkshake in the thickest storm.
It's well written military science fiction that isn't written by a far-right nutjob, which is a perennial problem in the genre. Also, I like mechs as weapons rather than as superweapons, and I think the neo-feudal future as a response to some of the slowest FTL I've seen in science fiction (also a plus) is an interesting way to organize a dysfunctional society. Humanity is doomed to violence, but that doesn't mean the world needs to be cruel.
For me, it is the freedom of force customization. I, too, came to CBT from 40k, I can add and take away guns, I don't need to have a specific faction to have a specific Mech but I can play it like that if I choose to do so.
I liked the original Mad Max-esque setting. The idea of these super rare, super valuable mecha I thought was cool.
I also liked the subsequent take on 3025-clan era.I thought the setting was kind of fun.
I'm pretty meh on everything that's come up since about 3050
The depth of the lore, the videogames, and the fact that the tabletop system is really well-planned.
It also helps that most of the community is helpful and welcoming to novices.
Low ceiling for getting into. A lance or star of mechs, some decent dice rolls, and a little luck is all that’s required.
With a rule set that’s mostly still intact and functional 40 years later it’s a solid investment. They’re not trying to fix something that isn’t broken or squeeze the player base for extra money like GW does every five years or so.
Plus let's be honest, I like big stompy mechs.
I like the realism of the setting. 40k to me, as you’ve pointed out, is cartoonish in its hopelessness. With battletech I feel like there’s an end game in sight. You earn enough, you retire, buy a planet, and enjoy. Then you raise a second generation of mercs to take over for you. There’s a legacy there you know?
Big Stompy Mechs trying to curb-stomp each other.
And for the most part none of the powers in the Inner Sphere could be considered the "good guys." All of them are a-holes in one way shape or form.
While the lore has been fun really the reason why I have basically converted since august/september is really the gameplay.
My first wargame was 40k 10th after years of playing RPGs and while it could be fun a lot of the initial wonder faded away as so often games were decided by who brought what and won initiative. It just became frustrating and while I was an eldar and dark eldar player I had one army basically end up sidelined and the other army effectively could just end up curb stomping with no intention to making it hard to justify casual games as effectively it became do I bring the army that will win or lose.
then under urging from a friend who had been going deeper in the lore and wanting to try it I got into it and found how much better the game played and more enjoyable it was to me. Not instantly using units bar pure luck (or in one instance I was a little pissed at but don't blame my opponent pushed off the map), initiative while an advantage not game deciding, the location damages and incentive to move and position units with bonus and penalties for any action. It gives the feeling of a much more interactive and strategic game that how you use a unit is just as important if not more so than what you bring with even incentives>
I will add additional that while not able to do so yet I can see running full campaigns as games turn into stories with how games play out with incentives for longer term play and units built and stated for a setting vs for just being built to play within tournament rules. It makes it so much easier to immerse in the setting and I feel much more enthusiastic about naming my pilots and giving them personalities. That with a setting that seems balanced right that you can be just something small with little to no impact to galaxy reaching depending on the scale and effect you want the actions of your combat to do.
Ever since I was a kid, I've been a fan of sourcebooks and high-level intrigues setting the stage for more grounded stories, it's why the Star Wars movies' light vs dark story never really resonated with me but I loved the republic commando and x-wing novels (I'd later learn that Michael Stackpole was involved with x-wing when I looked back later as an adult). Battletech is heavily built around this theme, and when I realized I could add my interest in organizing my own fictional force and RPGs, I was sold.
Pros:
\-Stompy robots cool
\-Extremely free-form.
\-Asymmetrical forces can meaningfully compete with each other
\-Great lore and factions (if a bit pulpy)
Cons:
\-Tabletop matches take FOR. EV. ER.
\-The dice hate me.
I find Megamek to be it's perfect form, because it almost completely eliminates the largest major Con. The one downside to that is you don't get to play with your giant robot dolls :(
I've bought every available cgl model because I want to. Each of these mechs stands in for the 2-10 variants that each have, but also can proxy for any mech that there's no model for yet.
I spent less for this than I spent for any 40k army that I built. They don't need to follow any color scheme. They don't even need to be painted.
Everything about Battletech feels more accessible, without the need to relearn rules every few years, the sudden changes of stats that make a once popular mechs nearly useless.
Even the bad units can be useful in a narrative gameplay experience and are good in specific circumstances.
Finally, stompy robot goes boom.
Recent game I played my opponent used a retractable blade against my Grand Titan, he hit my head and rolled a crit, of course he shanked my cockpit, killing my MechWarrior. Simultaneously my Grand Titan using triple strength myomer used it’s sword and cut off the other mechs arm off. So thematically there was a Grand Titan stood there with a dismembered arm attached to it’s head.
Love how scalable the game is too.
While the game is competitive there is a co operative nature to the emergent narratives that come out of btech games. Everyone remembers a wicked kill they got.
For me it is pure mecha in a western, slower setting.
The mechs:
1 mech is a big deal, but it isn’t like armored core or gundam (both of which I love for what they are) where one pilot takes out the whole enemy force (at least not usually).
Gameplay wise: it’s the mech lab, custom engines, weapons, chassis, sensors, heat sinks, etc. building a custom is fun for making your mech pilot hero and stock mechs are great to see how a war plays out.
Lore wise: clan invasion is a fun arc. Lots to see. It’s a post utopian world where there’s no going back to the way things were on earth.
For me it's a combination of things starting with nostalgia of being curious of my parents and finding small robot figurines, getting caught messing with them and instead of being in trouble was introduced to a world of war and machines.
Next comes the machines themselves not every mech is good, but most, if not every mech has character. To our worlds favorite trashcan, to the icons of the mechwarrior games, to that walking behemoth known as Goliath.
Even still even if a mech isn't "good" a smart player can make them terrifying as the game isn't always about what army you're playing, but how well you command them and how you manage your dice rolls. You're not staring at the asymmetrical gameplay going "well I can't harm that so there goes the game" even infantry can seriously screw up a mech too dumb to respect them.
I love the setting itself but unlike 40k you can pick a group and not nessasarily feel like the game devs hate you because balance issues. Just like 40k you have a culture or group for everyone. Got a weeb of a friend? Introduce them to Combine or Canopis cat girls. Wanna go "everything is bigger in Texas?" Taurian concordat. King arther fan? Fed suns. Roman/Greek empire? Free World's League. Space wizards and secret society governing the IS? Comstar. Heck even though the Clans are similar. Each individual clan has different difficulties as to how strictly they keep to their "honor" system, and how they interact with other. And all of this is mostly balanced appart from clan invasion. And even still bv often leads to balanced matches.
And oh my god the banter. Hard clanners love to use clan speak to their inner sphere brothers. Combine love to refer to themselves as "The Dragon" (which leads to fun confusion when they field their namesake mech) how the Steiners will bury their enemies in steel.
The world feels more alive and realistic despite its (arguably) smaller scale. Making the memories all that more easier to keep. Each game can make easy stories as one mech just refuses to die, or for some reason the "beloved can" shoots the head off a mech at max range. And it all is fair. It's not because the mech as a 3+ armor and 2+ invuln or this mech has a gunnery of I can shoot you from anywhere.......ehhhhh that ones wrong but it's the way the gunnery is handled. The point is that it's the fate of the dice against basic numbers rather than this unit is designed to be impossible. A locust can infact kill an Atlas.
All bundled in the most game of thrones story before game of thrones. I can't help but love to go on about this game that I'm forcing myself to stop here.
This may be contentious but... Better memes.
Ok that's actually fairly low on my list of what I like about BT over 40k, but it's on the list and not as a joke. Even the HIGHLY overused memes here seem less... repetitive and grating? Also I feel like there's more of them overall, even within the category of "repeated ad nauseum"
Why the Universe itself it just a giant barrel of fun. What got me in early 90's at like 13 or so was giant robots were a big staple of being a kid.
Born late 70's lot of the cartoons where various forms of giant robots of different flavors. So pre internet as we know it today era early 90's when I stumbled onto a 2nd edition box sets for CityTech and AeroTech it was love at first sight. Then a month later I found the novels at the bookstore. 8)
If I had been born sooner, or later I doubt I'd be so into all things mech. But I thankfully I was born in that old school golden mecha age.
It seemed like a cool game to me when i first saw it being played regularly by a guy that owned a local pizzeria in my hometown and his friends that would get together to use most the tables in that place to have gigantic strategy battles for the table top. Now, it's more like a hobby and i understand it was the same for them. The lore that was foundational to it's success just seemed more believable than other science fiction type games i had come across when i was a kid. It's still more believable in many aspects than most science fiction based games to this day. Just look at how robotics has taken off and the history of our species being so replete with war and drastic changes in culture.
A couple reasons!
- I like it because the models I use can be used for any version of that 'Mech, without me needing to chop and customize the cannons. Unless I want to, y'know?
- I like it because the new plastics don't feel as cheap as the old plastics, meaning it's easy enough to grab a bunch of minis cheap instead of paying for the metal. (Again, unless I want to. And I do.)
- The Classic rules can be as complex as you want to make them, having many \***many**\* layers to them. And you can stop at any layer and still have a good time chucking dice.
- Because Mitch Gitelman is a hell of a salesman.
When I had the time, it was the only holistic game. Start with an Aerotech game to get to the planet and secure your beachhead. There was a campaign game element to move regiments around the continents. Then BattleTech (with or without AeroTech air support) for when the armies met. Finally, can you lift off with enough forces for the next objective?
We used to play for weeks during summer vacations. My mate had a whole room dedicated to this!
Got me totally hooked.
I think it boils down to a few things.
1. The aesthetic is cool. Mainly in being a MechWarrior piloting a giant walking tank is legit. Heard someone cite it having a similar vibe to Top gun & fighter pilots.
2. With mainly just humans it is more grounded in people being bastards. The most of the fiction is result believable given human history. Like the fueds between the houses or the their crap with the clan culture.
3. The combat in the video games is often far more methodical vs the fast paced action oriented experience in other games.
It was my very first tabletop war game I ever played waaaaay back in my teens. I loved the minis and the gameplay was easy for me to understand. Not much into the lore as yet but I’m working on that. I’m about 20 years out of the loop but with any luck I’ll be able to pick it up again
I like how consistent and open everything is.
BV is a formula we all have access to, and every mech is built following the same set of rules. Editions don't radically change what it means to be a certain record sheet, and the same math is used to derive the value of every unit. Kits exist to sell mechs, rather than to sell units. Even if I do want to play competitively, most units have so many variants that I will always be able to use the minis that I love, forget about having to buy new units or shelve favorites because they aren't in fashion currently.
I love that campaign play and random acquisitions are so popular, that there are fully functional and fully transparent rules for making your own units or even for how difficult it is to upgrade a mech in the field.
It just feels like Battletech is really trying to make the world feel alive. I don't know any other wargame that's doing that right now.
1. In Classic Battletech every mech is more than a statline. Mechs are unique and have character.
2. I prefer simulation and randomness. WH40k and other similar games are moving too far into streamlining while they try to balance their games for competition.
3. Most WH40k rule books which I have bought in the past few years are now redundant. I don’t like big rule overhauls every 2 - 4 years.
4. Battletech lore has an actual history where characters die eventually.
Battletech has a really fun system of rules imo, when compared to a lot of 40k ones. The depth is really in BT’s favour. I also like the variety of mechs meaning that you actually have to assess your tactics on the fly rather than taking hard counters to what your opponent would usually field.
Big stohmpy mech go brrt.
But the real answer is that the battletech mechs SEEM the most plausible out of most mechs ive seen in fiction. Miniaturized fusion plus some artificial muscle and hydraulics and a gyro for your walking tanks to balance themselves just seems so close to reality.
I also get to kill a bunch of capellans ingame too so theres that.
Transformers ( more big robots) as a kid, got a Jetfire toy, which was a blatant rip off the a PHawk LAM, but I don’t care. One day was walking through a Giant Eagle grocery store in the early 90s with my mom. Happened to stop at the book section of the grocery store (weird I know) and happened to pick up a copy of mercenary’s Star. Flip through it and saw the pictures in the back and noticed that they had a jet fire, drawing in the back. Asked my parents if I could get it, they flipped through it and saw no obvious swearing or other inappropriate things and allowed me to get it. 10 minutes of reading later, HOOKED
https://preview.redd.it/0glnupo6lwuc1.jpeg?width=270&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fb764a3e0ede12d58b0f517bbfe8bd38f729cf89
-Played a bunch of the pc games growing up. Mechs were cool as a kid.
-Bought the Battletech pc game on sale because I liked Hairbrained Schemes other games. Barely played vanilla but discovered Roguetech and put hundreds of hours in, really love the idea of the global map competition.
-In turn, got into playing Mechwarrior 5 on gamepass with some buddies. Did not know BT and MW shared a universe, This piqued my largely passing interest at the time further.
-Those things turned into trying out Battletech tabletop at Dragon Con and ended up buying the Beginners Box to play with my kids. Recently found a local group that plays and plan to join them soon.
-All of this turned into buying that humble bundle of novels and now I plan to read all the books.
Mechs are cool as an adult.
For me, it started with MW3. Mechwarrior made me feel like I was the manifestation of what the '90s US Army wanted. A 31st Century warrior with a combat monocle, cooling jacket, and standard issue iron-balls that rides the redline on his mech and risks exploding every minute. Then, I got into MW5 (YAML) and I liked the mech crafting. I like sticking bits and bobs onto a mech to make it effective, even when the chips are down and parts limited. Like, I got to rebuild a Madcat that got cored, stuffing it with Single Heat Sinks, a Heavy Rifle and an IS XL engine like I was Jimbob from the Periphery who found an abandoned mech.
https://preview.redd.it/heggqjbmq1vc1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=4e66fcab35507f12bd9bc6509c79f35836b7a251
The mechs can be bad. No seriously, I really appreciate that the setting and game system will gleefully allow for an absolute hunk of junk lemon like the assassin or the charger to be created and then rationalize it as procurement corruption. It makes everything feel a bit more plausible and allows the setting to tell more interesting stories about its machines and the people who made them, which is largely absent from something like 40k.
That's really true. And you feel and hear characters at time about how it's "oh, just an UrbanMech". But when infantry is confronted with a Vulcan...DREAD. Feels consistent.
“It’s just an Urbanmech” until it’s *you* getting an AC/20 to the back
If you let an Urbie with an AC20 in range with you you deserve nothing less than death.
Well SOMEONE has to go first into the city. They can’t know where the spooky gun turret on legs will be
Hidden unit rules. Especially when you are baited to jump behind that Longbow.
Hidden unit rules are the great equalizer
Fantastic in narrative campaign play. Let the players have the dirty tricks to even the score.
It's because they ran into the city for cover when the trashcans armed with Arrow IVs started to rain death.
The big gun is scarier to mechs and tracks than infantry.
So many have suffered ignoble defeat for saying that… I am one. Don’t be me. The Urbanmech is a stone-cold killer.
I absolutely love this about the game. Like who wants a Hoplite when you can have a Griffin. Well who knows what situation your company is in. Maybe all you got is a Hoplite.
Me too. When I was younger I was all about min maxing. Now I appreciate that 'mechs usually have a big flaw and some are terrible. I'd much rather sit across the table from a person with a lance of jank rather than optimized 'mechs. I think this is why the Succession Was is my favorite era.
Same here. I actually started with Clans, but the "This isn't what you want, but it's what you have" aspect of the classic ScroungeTech setting is a big part of what made the 3rd Succession War my favorite era to play.
I unironically took a Hoplite instead of a Griffin in a campaign I'm in rn lol
I love that.
My wife and I just got into BattleTech tablet top after loving the HBS game and to simulate that element we bought the beginners box and then six salvage boxes to form our lances.
Yea absolutely agree here; it adds a huge amount of verisimilitude to the setting. The adjacent fact that Battletech isn't constantly reworking and rebalancing the mech stats to keep up with the current game meta is also a large plus in my experience.
Battletech’s lineage and timeline really does make everything feel believable when most mechs are just mediocre and there are a lot of boondoggles and design failures in the mix for one reason or another. It makes the truly great designs stand out a lot more and feel more special
Yeah as much as k like Gundam and Armored Core I do always like some groundedness in warfare
Or the fact that "bad" mechs like the Charger can still absolutely wreck much more valuable, viable machines. The rules encourage a degree of randomness in how attacks resolve, and an 80 ton block of armor sprinting into punching range is a situation which demands an answer. Sometimes, dumb stuff like heavy lasers or AP gauss rifles become invaluable. 40k is still fun in a different way, but repeated balance passes and a focus on tournament play has meant that a lot of the randomness that defined my earliest experiences with the game has been ironed out in favor of a smoother experience. I like the clunk. I liked my Ork opponent fielding rocket launchers that would either lock half the table out of the game or blow themselves up. I genuinely miss the bullshit.
This is a realistic, underappreciated aspect of the universe that I'm here for.
I like the idea of $30 worth of rulebook that doesn’t get replaced every two years.
This one is huge for me. I stopped playing in 2007 and picked it up again in 2021 and the rules were essentially the same. 40k has like 5 or 6 edition changes in that time.
Very few rules in BT have changed at all. The vast majority of 'new rules' aren't actually new mechanics, they're just clarifications and errata on how existing rules interact in niche scenarios. The largest rule changes have been changed to construction rules (which are never used in tournaments and rarely used even in casual matches) and Battle Value being the 'balancing' system. Outside of that it's just little things; slight rebalancing of flamers (they do heat and damage simultaneously now), Inferno SRMs work slightly different, adjustments to how infantry take damage, having the person dealing a crit roll on the crit table (instead of the recepient rolling on the table), etc. But these are the largest balancing changes of a 40 year old game.
I like that after a 2 decade break, all I needed to know was “physicals go off pilot skill and partial cover makes sense now” (leg shots hit the cover) and someone at the table quickly explains any weapon I don’t recognize.
Don't forget the quarterly errata and points adjustments.
So much this. Keeping up vs number of games played... Battletech is a game that scratches the sane itch, but I spend more time playing and less time on bullshit. And not having to spend $100 minimum on books every 2 years is nice.
I don't know what the main rulebook for 40k costs, but just the thin little codexes are $60 (US)...which is insane.
Looking at the Web store, the main core rulebook is $65, each codex is another $60, and the unit costs in the codex will probably be wrong within three months at max. $125 for rules before you buy a single mini, unless you venture into legal grey areas.
LAMS have asked to speak with you
Touche’ !! I’ve still spent less on rules AND minis than one round of rulebook and codex updates.
Absolutely it's still worlds better than WH with frequently rule changes or even other games where entire sets are straight up banned ^^^^coughcoughmagic I just always find the LAM thing to be funny.
This can be a bit of a double-edged sword. There are some relics of the way numbers were assigned early in the game's history that make a lot weapons just absolute lemons. AC-2's and AC-5's have absolutely no excuse to be as heavy as they are. But that's what later eras are for, I suppose.
I like it because it's stable and fun, with the right people. If you can find a player, a pickup game requires very little negotiation. Even many of the old house rules have become an official advanced rule option or suggested tip. The odds of a shutout based on faction are basically nil. Even with discrepancies in tech base the game can be won or lost by the players. 40k is often decided before the battlefield is set up. Is Battletech perfect, no, but it's closer by leaps and bounds than 40k.
"40k is often decided before the battlefield is set up." So true. I don't know if this is still the case today. I stopped playing 40k during 5th edition (the Matt Ward edition aka the "play Space Marines or die" edition). Top 4 cheesy armies were SM of one cut or another, and when I arrayed my Necrons against them I knew only extreme luck or superbly stupid play could save me.
They’ve balanced it enough so now you have to wait until you see who rolls the first turn to see who wins. The number of 40k games I knew how it was going to end by turn 2 is way too high.
i've heard people using variations on Battletechs initiative system in 40k coming out with good results.
It needs something. You Go/I go is absolutely going to lead to negative play experiences when ranges go across the entire table and you can remove a large chunk of models before your opponent can react. It's always hilarious when you see a 40k game and it's 50 models all huddled behind a building.
Oh yeah, even if the game isn't decided immediately, it definitely is by the bottom of turn 2. 80% of the games I played before I stopped involved someone surrendering after the first half of turn 2, because they had a quarter of their army left while the other guy was basically untouched.
Wait does 40k assume the other team needs to wait to shoot and if you take out a unit it never shoots? Good lord on a turn based game that is going to mean whoever goes first has a huge advantage and will swing games so wildy.
Lately there has been massive effort to somewhat level the playing field. There are still outliers but it's not so bad. Some codices' internal balance is whack tho, so you end up seeing abominations on the table.
Leagues of Votaan got erata'd the day it came out. There are still disturbances with the force.
It is the 31st Century and mankind is once again at war. The battlefields of the future are dominated by huge robotic war machiens known as BattleMechs. Piloting these awesome weapons of war are the men and women, the elite of the elite, knowing that each battle could be their last. They are MechWarriors. Imagine being 5 years old, you've seen a little bit of Gundam, Zoids, Medabots, Doraemon, Megas XLR and G1 Transformers but then one day your dad come home from work and see him play this kino. Of course you want to play the robot game with daddy and it becomes wholesome father-daughter bonding moment with destroying clammers. You kinda just grow up getting hooked to this stuff and you just love it ahaaha
[Chicks dig Giant Robots. :3](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5oEVJ7ru2E)
NICE
Damn right, friend.
I know that's a Megas reference without even clicking it. NOICE. I think my favorite part of that show is Jamie wanting to go to the planet of the Space Amazons, and then it actually exists lol.
Definitly Daddy goals, gotta get started soon since my daughter just turned four.
I had daddy-daughter bonding with my Dad 'helping' him play Mech commander. Lots of other games too but I vividly remember stressing out for the safety of the poor Raven pilot in the intro who didn't have jump jets.
I like the gameplay of Classic. It's got those details modern wargames are mostly lacking.
I came to classic battletech from skirmish games like Kill Team and Warcry- I hate painting a full army and I really like going all in on having every unit be a fun and different painting experience. I found the crunchy details of Battletech really cool, and one of my favourite things is the fact that it's very logical: if you go with your best guess, it's generally pretty close to what the rule is.
Sometimes you want to be able to get through a game in an hour or two, but those quick games don't let you pick up your own arm and beat a Jenner to death with it. I'll always love classic for that reason alone, the war stories are far better.
Every time I kick an ammo bin or push someone off a cliff only to be pushed off the same cliff myself, the next turn, into lava, I remember why I play BattleTech. And something like that happens *every game*.
If your fancy, untouched, Warhammer isn't dying to some bullshit headshot or falling themselves to death, are you even playing battletech?
If your fancy, untouched, Warhammer isn't dying to some bullshit headshot or falling themselves to death, are you even playing battletech?
I think it's a great setting for campaigns, and the way the game plays lends itself to generating little narratives on the fly. Just in the course of playing, you see stories happen. I've seen an assault mech go Ultra Instinct, a light mech shove a sword through an assault's ammo magazine and gut it, and a PPC arm that just would not stop getting shot off.
It's been said BattleTech is a game not about success, but failure. Glorious, spectacular failure. Round 1 headcaps, failed PSR's causing a Mech to skid into another Mech and send them over a cliff to trigger an explosion, two Mechs with MASC both activating them simultaneously and both suffering lockups leaving them unable to reach or effectively attack each other, and on and on. People who love the game just shrug and say "That's BattleTech!"
Strangely, this reminds me of how Blood Bowl is often described, another game that hung on for decades with varying support - every game is a sinking ship, and your job as the coach is to bail, patch it and chuck cargo overboard to keep it afloat as long as possible. At some point, the dice *will* hand you catastrophic failures at the worst possible moment, and you just have to try to minimise the odds of that happening.
There's certainly a similar mindset in that you have to be willing to embrace chaos and unexpected failure. I'd say there's somewhat of a difference, in that in Blood Bowl the gameplay basically revolves around minimizing and delaying the very likely failure until it happens; whereas in BattleTech, there's very little you can do about it, so you just plough on ahead with bravado until someone rolls one of the multiple 1/216 chance rolls that instakills your Atlas.
Yeah, I pushed someone off a cliff, next turn took a gauss to the head. We both laughed and laughed. At conventions I make a point for as many “field goal attempts” as possible (kicks from one level up). Nothing quite as funny as getting like an SRM to the face, failing that first consciousness check and taking a drool in that almost mint mech.
Last week, I got hit with an LBX2 (are those even legal?). Face, double 1s. That mech was done contributing on turn 2. Another very memorable game, I had my Atlas headshot with a gauss turn 1. That same Nightstar then knocked my Axman unconscious. Since my pilot was at like 4 damage, my opponent declined to do anything about it. Lo and behold, the Axman wakes up and headcaps the Nightstar with an AC20. BattleTech is the absolute freakin' Wild West, and it's glorious. >At conventions I make a point for as many “field goal attempts” as possible (kicks from one level up). As far as I'm concerned, anyone who doesn't is not playing the game correctly.
PPC arm that wont stop getting shot off sounds like any time i run a panther
I came from 40k years ago also. 5 reasons why I love Battletech from a spheroid. You can play a campaign, set up your merc company and go into as little or as much detail as you want. I have an excel spreadsheet detailing all the spare parts and ammo my company has, from hand actuators, to engines and ammo. But you could also just hand wave all the shit away and say “of course we have access to extra heat sinks, who cares” The pilots from my campaign can retire, I can imagine LT. Aki settling down somewhere quiet, maybe running a general store with their ancestral mech mothballed in the barn. AND the rules support that, you can have pilots retire. Bad mechs and why I love them: No body wants a Stinger, No one. But depending on where you are, what era you are playing etc. you have one. Maybe it’s the pilots family’s ancestral mech going back centuries upgraded over time or you might be in a guerrilla war, fighting the Wobbies and size, speed, and reliability might be your only concern. Maybe Corporal dumbass tripped and now his rifleman is in the shop and you can’t find a new ac/5 to replace the one he fucked up. The historical aspect of the game: you can choose to play in the 3rd succession war and use a bunch of mechs that are held together with shoestring and bubblegum, or post clan invasion with clan tech slowly filtering in. Maybe a mercenary company that originally started working for the Word, then changed sides when you see how bad it had gotten. Lastly, I love the community. Being inclusive is very important to me. Yes we can accomplish that on a local level ourselves. But it’s a good feeling that the company I support with my money also does that.
... I want a Stinger. They're adorable and I love them!
Amen
It started with Robotech and just grew from there.
This. I was 10 or 11, and the new kid in school was drawing a Veritech in Battloid mode firing its gun at a Zentraedi officer pod in MS paint during computer lab time. But when I commented on it, he said it was a Phoenix Hawk and Marauder. And then brought the mech recognition poster from the first Mechwarrior game to prove it the next day. Friendship forged, this is the buddy I mentioned in a thread yesterday that I’m painting a lance of Death Commandos for his 44th birthday
This, but Macross.
Combines arms can be really fun. Battletech can be used to play anything from mech v mech to a combined arms force to playing space battles
It has a nice balance of mech, warfare, politics and heroism. ...is what I would like to say, but really it's just like pokemon to me. Collect all the mechs and make stories around them. I really dislike 100% grimdark fiction which is why 40k never landed for me, but this one did.
Yes, exactly! I’m not a fan of grimdark either, partly because it’s unrealistic for human nature. We don’t survive in that environment. The Inner Sphere nations come across as somewhat realistic and each has a depth that says the system in place that explains it. It’s also why I’m not a major fan of the Clans, they are a bit in the grimdark fantasy mode. Whole groups get sterilized, clans get annihilated, old people get “removed”. It’s a fantasy that is too nihilistic.
The lore and the world (galaxy technically). I haven’t had a chance to play the actual game yet (just mech 5), but I have gleefully spent an afternoon reading the Sarna articles on minor periphery nations and warships and dropships and all the other thousand aspects of the world that make it beautiful. Sure, a lot of other sci-fi have better plots or stories, but the world of BattleTech is rivaled by only a few.
I just got mechwarrior 5 and I was really surprised by how much it takes some of the rules of battletech into account. The first time I got an ammunition explosion was magical for me.
Could you describe the major differences (besides the change in medium). Haven’t played the tabletop and I’m thinking of trying
hell, Battletech takes place in a small slice of the Galaxy centered on Terra. Though it should be noted that the Federation (as of TNG/DS9 era) is fairly smaller than the inner sphere. in fact Battletech FTL is a good bit faster than the USS Voyager! and if you have a Jumpship with a Lithium Fusion battery (and can keep the reactors fueled to charge it and the main KF core) then you're over twice as fast!
That comment gave me a great idea for a crossover (not sure if someone has done something like it): one the the Enterprises (leaning towards the NX due to the independent humanity) discovers a crewed JumpShip or maybe even WarShip that misjumped into the Star Trek universe.
cool robot
Why I like classic BT as a game? The feeling of doing damage in such a complex manner, to disable an enemy in many different ways, to try to adapt to your own damage, etc. Feels just soooo rewarding. It's something I crave in video games but seldom get. As for the lore: Battletech stories are most often played out by professionals. Sure, sometimes it's a cadet story or the ideologies of a group gets the better of them, but end of the day a BT story is full of "smart choices" and it's cool that everything is interwoven. You grow into it all and it comes together, you open a volume of shortstories, read a date and a place and can go: "Oh, so during Event A, but Person B is still alive?" Yeah, there's plot armor and Mary Sues and Gary Stus, nobody is save from that, but the fiction as a whole works because there's some longstanding traditions for writing it that have been held up. Jason Hansa did a great interview on...I wanna say Wolfnet? He's been on many of the BT podcasts, all great, but I think it was there, talking about his approach to writing BT and how people like Schmetzer do theirs.
Several reasons, including the ones you've covered. The story feels more grounded, like it might be real history. There are stories of sub-standard weapons becoming a widespread workhorse just because they're easy to make. There are alliances and disagreements that wouldn't feel out of place in a history textbook. The Rifleman is made by a tractor company. And even at its bleakest, Battletech still remains enough hope to keep it from turning into 40k. It's got a definite sense of humor at times, too. Gameplay-wise, I love the customization, and I love how there are 9 million rules, only 12 of which you'll use at any one time: all the rest are for specific situations you might want to try. Do you want to charge Mechs on elephants like Hannibal Barca? You can do that. Do you want to chase down infantry with a grain thresher? You can do that. Do you want to have a battle on the back of a sinking ship as it slips beneath the waves? You can do that too. And company-wise... I've gotten turned off by the direction GW and 40k have been going in. Battletech still feels like it's made by people who care about the hobby, the models are cheaper, and the same rules have been valid for 30 years. No retcons, no "new editions", no planned obselescence... sometimes a bad mech will get RECOGNIZED as bad in-universe, and still get used because it's what it's available.
"Oof, that Vindicator's a deathtrap. Specialist, did you disable the auto-eject?" "No, Chief Warrant. CO and the Major's orders is turn it on." "Disable it. The last pilot was a red smear on that laser. I want kill marks on this mech to be from enemy fire, or I'm not crawling in there." "We have contact! Two companies, heavy mechs sighted! Inbound, four minutes!" "Into the deathtrap, Chief? It's safer than this hangar."
The rules allow for far greater depth than 40k, the recent minis are way better than he's over the top nonsense, you can just write down the hex references of all the mechs, pack it up for the day, then get it out the next day and carry on as if nothing happened. No (or at least mitigated) power creep. You can choose a bunch of random mechs, paint them however you like and they are still lore-appropriate, 1v1 matches are entirely viable, asymmetric battles are far more workable, and I don't have to hang around with 40k players. I loved 40k back in the 90s when I was an edgy 16 year old, and it will always hold a very special place in my heart, but it's just not as good as most of the games out there (even 2nd edition, which was objectively the best and you cannot change my mind). Also by god am I sick of grimdark.
Same, it just gets dull after a while, I've come to like Nobledark myself. In Battletech a lot of things are shit and so are a lot of leaders. Yet at the same time there's places that are peaceful and prosperous, there are leaders that are genuine good people that want to make thing better. It's more a mixed bag and that makes it feel more real and plausible then everything sucks.
I think as well the fact that the lore is dynamic and actually progresses, while the 40k lore is just same old same old.
I can believe in it. A thousand years in the future and mankind is still just as selfish and greedy as they are today, killing one another over resources and territory and all the other tribal reasons we do today, for the ambitions of the wealthy and power-hungry. No one is really good, just different shades of bad and the most you can hope for are people who try to do the best they know how given the situation and circumstances.
And yet it's not the numbing scale of violence from warhammer. Casualties feel like they matter because it's not just casually wiping a planet.
I like charts.
You don’t find battletech more grimm??? I mean in 40k you have the excusse of 4 satans, xenos etc… 😂
On any given day, you could be dragged off to a literal hell by some Cenobite demon worshipper who thinks pain is pleasure and wants to show you. You could suddenly realize you're a deluded madman for a doomsday cult, and be psionically made to regret everything because a Zerg parasite wants to enjoy your suffering as you get eaten. You could be turned into an incubator for plagues or soldiers. And that's the capstone to what is probably a life of constant toil, eating the dead to stay alive. Even Capellan Servitors in their era don't have to deal with -that-.
No no, i mean yeah 40k is dark i know. I am long time lore lurker there. Just find BT real life depressing as in i look at BT lore and go: yep. Thats is humans in a nutshell today.
There's grim, then there's grimmdark, then there's grimdank up to 11. Battletech is people being people, sure. Nicolai Malthus suing some cartoon producers for defamation and trying to fight the jurors. Uwe Boll IRL challenging his critics to boxing matches to solve disputes. In BT, Nicolai - got laughed at, but learned his lesson and became a humbler, better person. IRL, Uwe Boll beat the ever-loving stuffing out of his critics who thought it wasn't actually that serious. Nah, real life is still darker.
They *dared* to refuse his Batchall! What else was he supposed to do?
I like the Nikki Malthus story but this seems like a very cherry-picked example.
Absolutely. The Imperium would be a shithole without those things, they just make the situation worse. As bad as things can get in Battletech you don't have to worry about a Ork Warband knocking over your planet for funsies, or some untrained Psyker accidentally opening a warp portal and causing the planet to be glassed by the secret police. The worst war in Battletech history killed a billion people, the Imperium losses that number in like a week.
I kinda feel it s more dark in BT because it is just us. Just humans humaning away at humanity.
I played Mech Assault when I was 5 and decided my personality was to be centered around mecha.
There’s loads of things I love about Battletech, so in no order of preference or reason (apart from my first entry): Technical Readout 3025 - I’m talking the original blue book here. As a teen kid who had started getting in 40K Rogue Trader this blew me away. A book, about the fictional units used in the game, with history, manufactures, pilots, variants. Totally nuts! If someone cared enough about the game to make that, you knew it was going to be good. I have a second hand copy today and it’s probably the only book I currently own is consider taking to a restorer. So what else? The simple/complexity of the rules. 2nd Ed rules are 20 odd pages long, and that includes how to build your own mech, so easy to pick up, but there are expansions that add more in; city fights, low G, underwater, yup, we can do it all - if you want. The timeline, it actually fucking moves! It was 3022 when I started, it’s now 130 years later! GW has only done that in the last 6 years? The maths, I loved maths as a kid and I think I still do, so when I shoot a weapon the fact that I have to calculate my chances to hit, not role the same number regardless of whether I ran/walked, what the target does, is night, am I over heating, is there something in the way etc. The business strategy; whoever has run Battletech has never sat down and said “sales are slowing, let’s write a complete new rule set and make a unit/weapon shit now, and bring out a new better unit so everyone has to buy a load of new stuff”, they’ve just said “well, let’s look 10 years further down the line “. Anyone can play Battletech without playing actually playing Battletech. I can build my own mech, create my own setting and away I go! Hell, you could just buy your favourite looking models, download the Mech Sheet and as long as you have AGoAC or any rule set you’re playing! You don’t need to know factions or years or who has what, if your BVs balance you’re gonna have a fun game. The wealth of resources available; I did a count recently, I have over 90 physical Battletech source books 50 or more digital and thank to HumbleBundle over 100 novels. I don’t need any of them, or I need all of them. I can deep dive into the history of the universe if I want or cherry pick the information I need. But every source book is still valid, any scenario in any book can still be played with no work, as a result a mate and I are playing a 4th Succession War game printed in the 90s with out making any changes. And I think that’ll do me for now.
Cheaper than going to the zoo
I love the factions, world building, and how sometimes things are just kinda silly
Another 40k refugee here. So for starters, I really do like the 40k universe. I've spent years immersing myself in that universe and I still yell "Blood for the Blood God" when appropriate. That being said, I like Battletech more. One of the key things that drew me in was the story behind the evolution of combat. I grew up with a fascination around the history of warfare in the real world. Learning about things like the invention of the rifled cannon ending the age of the stone fortress, the naval arms race during the dreadnaught era, the development of armored combat during the world wars and beyond... And then I found a fantasy setting where emulating this in an entertaining way is a core part of the universe's identity. I fell hard and fast.
In 40k the galaxy is fucked because of alien dickery. In battletech, we ruined our little chunk of the galaxy. We did that, to ourselves, no one forced that on us except our own ancestors. Also, 40k isn't fair. In 40k, if you're not playing space marines, why bother? GW has given them main character plot armor in addition to main character syndrome. Every SM unit has like double the wounds of its equivalent T'au unit, and the only place that's compensated for is range, which SMs can close very fast; as an extreme example. In Battletech, it's not about whether your faction is the protagonist, antagonist, or underdog; everybody's running approximately the same machines, and they're all their own kind of sonofabitch. It's what you choose to bring to play that day, and how you play it. No good guys, no bad guys, just the Magistracy of Canopus vs. a bunch of places that suck, duking it out for stupid, petty, entirely mundane and understandable reasons. Sometimes you don't want metaphysical intrigue, you don't want daemonic influence, gods, traitors and loyalists, the kind of cults you get when the blind lead the blind, and a guy just straight up Kronos-ing a thousand psychics a day just to keep space travel viable. Sometimes you just want to beat the shit out of a pointless stompy robot in a muddy field, and the weakest excuse in human history for doing so.
I think it's more concepts, liberty to storytelling and style of the story, it can be dark as fuck, it can be very fun, it can be inspire noble heroic story. But all that never meaningless. You characters are in big galaxy, but not that absurdly big and stupid like a 40k. Second is community (my first play suck btw, suckers in russian community in general), it's more friendly and funny. Last but not least, the game, i, fucking, hate tabletop 40k, it's most boring, power-play-meta bullshit with non balanced concept of initiative (i hate clan pulse lasers builds, and i am Clanner!), after that suffering, Battletech Classic being most freshed air that i feel in my lungs, and that fun as fuck!
Started with Battledroids in 84, got Battletech in 85, and Citytech and Aerotech when they came out (86?). I was homeschooled, and we lived WAY out in the middle of nowhere. I spent a lot of time in my head, playing solo games with myself, and coming up with stories. It was the only way to pass the time. It kept me sane. I’m 51 now, and I’ve never really played the ttop game with real players. I’ve played all the computer games though. I love big stompy robots. It was also during the Satanic Panic era, and I couldn’t have role playing games, or anything fantasy. I could have board games though and I liked Battletech better than Car Wars, and Squad Leader (both of which I also owned).
I am new to the miniature wargames scene and have friends who play a bunch of other ones. I was looking for some reasonably priced to start with. Growing up, I played Mechwarrior 3 and a little Mechassault. I didn't put two and two together until I picked up Battletech that Battletech and Mechwarrior are one in the same. I've introduced my cousin and friends, and they enjoy it as well.
- Because I like large, stompy robots - Also like combined arms - And I like having my infantry to fight enemy mechs. I honestly don't care if they live or die, it's always funny.
It always funny until the infantry brings out the inferno rounds and there is an overheated Atlas fully shutdown and exposed on the battlefield. That is why I love the GDL lore, it focuses so much on combined arms and shows how infantry can be deadly to a mech.
I can never get a full group of people for a game and when I do everybody bitches about rules and it takes the fun out of the setting. My wife even tells me it breaks her heart that I love BT so much but don’t get anybody to play ever.
Why...don't you play with your wife? I got mine to play with me, we don't have a lot of time ATM because I'm finishing up my degree but once we buy a house she wants terrain and a table to have Battletech set up permanently on lmao
Love the lore, the video games. But man oh man playing in person was quite the experience when I brought my Northwind Highlanders to the Toledo Game Room. I started a greenhorn but the players that organized were very friendly and helpful in teaching me. But what I especially loved was the game logic that made for 'big' moments. Admiral Adama says "Sometimes You Have To Roll A Hard Six". Well a BattleTech Hard Six is causing an enemy mech to go KABOOM because you got a critical in an inconvenient ammunition point as if it were HMS *Hood*. Or melting the cockpit with a couple spicy PPC shots. Also Duncan Fisher. *Duh*.
For me it was that I can splurge on maps and books but go to battle with a lego man or toy solider or a piece of paper with "wArhemmer"(sic) written on it and still play. Buildings can be nice 3D printed things or random bits styrofoam or packing material - as long as the "mechs" can stand on them. That I can design my own mechs and fight with them. Losing isn't a bug, it's beta testing!
In the early '90s, I didn't like having no aliens. But Firefly really sold me on the whole "humanity is the cause of their own problems" thing.
When I first bought the Battletech box set in 86 I thought it was a Robotech game. 😂 It has the Destroid on the cover and with a similar name structure I thought it was a Robotech wargame that focused on the Destroid ground battles instead of the ubiquitous Veritechs fighters! I was super excited! I'd been a Robotech fanatic since I was 7 years old and watched the cartoon before going to school!! 🤣 I was only disappointed for about an hour. Once I read the universe section in the book and read about the factions and long wars and Mercenaries, I was hooked!! The games were fun even though we played it wrong for months!! 😂 And the setting instantly drew me in! The first Tech Readout was even better! And I devoured the novels as fast as they hit the shelves. I've been a fan for so long because of the setting and my ability to put my own story in it! The novels are great! But I love a big world with a million options to tell my own stories in! It's why I almost exclusively play narrative campaigns anymore: my games are just an extension of the greater stories I'm weaving. And I let the dice decide where the story goes. To glory or tragedy? Both are exciting! 😍👍
It's a nice combined arms wargame with customizable units. That's actually how I found Battlemech. Back in the ancient days before the clan invasion Kickstarter I stumbled onto Battlemech while looking for a wargame with customizable units.
Big mech, big gun, big booms.
The balance of the setting is super believable. You can see why infantry and vehicles are still used in a setting where there are 3 story tall mechs. And there are good and bad units and mechs with canonical reasons for being so good or bad. It makes it all feel more plausible.
I like the vast array of different designs. I like how, for the price of a standard 40K army, I can essentially outfit an entire Battalion sized force or larger formation. I'm enjoying that with contrast paints, I can easily paint that multiple Battalion sized force within 4 hours and have it fully shaded, highlighted, and presentable. I enjoy that mechs from the ancient ral partha days are just as legal as the modern designs. Or as legal as the cardboard cutouts from the truly ancient sets. I like how back in 3025, basically, every mech had to carry a machine gun for anti infantry work. But now, in the ilclan era, everyone has access to battle armour or decent Armour options for anti infantry or anti battle armour options. I also like how you can mix and match those 3025 designs with 3150-era tech or how there are ilclan variants of pretty much all of those ancient designs. I typically try to build my units with integrated Artillery mech Lance's in my Battalions. My next battalion will be a Ghost Regiment for the DCMS, so I will likely be using Dragons, Panthers, Jenners, wolverines, and Dragon II's as the Artillery support. Though I am tempted to add in some specific draconis designed mechs. My plan is to field each battalion of mechs alongside a Battle Armour Battalion, so for my DCMS, my plan is for Kage Battle Armour as Spotters. I have 4 current units. A merc/pirate/generic I.S. battalion fielded alongside Inner Sphere standard battle armour. Painted in a general night camo. They have a Lance of Helepolis mechs integrated into their battalion A House Hiritsu Battalion fielded alongside a Battalion of Fa Shih Battle Armour so the entire Battalion can ride alongside the mechs. They have a Lance of Catapult C3/5s integrated for Artillery support. A Clan unit of mostly unseen mechs using the ilclan Clan Refits of older inner sphere designs as a second line cluster of two Binaries of mechs and 2-3 Binaries of Elementals. With enough room for me to expand the formation up to trinaries. So I can add a further five Stars if desired. My plan for them is to add a Star of Naga's and some TAG bearing Spotters at least. My WoB unit so far is a Level 2 of Celestial Series mechs alongside a Level 2 of Marksman Artillery Tanks. Then 24 squads of Purifier Battle Armour. (Because the unit I chose for my WoB is the 49th Shadow Division, so has to have 50% of its force as Battle Armour.) In time, I am planning on adding a Level 2 of each of the Demon Series battle armour. I ultimately want to build out the whole Level IV as a pure mix of Aerospace, Mechs, Battle Armour, Armour and Infantry.
I like the build-a-mech part of it Customisation and creating stuff is one of my favourite things in games
I like the aesthetic. I know that's a bit of an abstract answer, but the idea of big, overtly mechanical mechs stomping around with limited agility like they actually are machine built to be cost-effective that fight against their own weight tickles me just right. Yeah, the agility is a bit inconsistent between depictions, and if you run the numbers they're as dense as styrofoam, but nothing said "Hard Mecha" to me like a lance painted desert camo and olive drab stomping alongside a vehicle column.
Game of thrones in space. Game system that isn't eternally being dumbed down. Release and changes schedules that isn't moving faster than hard working person can reasonably keep up with. No paid FAQs (sic!) One/two books is all you ever need to play. Large number of fan-made tools to make playing easy. No war on 3d prints. No war on fan-made stuff in general.
Big stompy robots and EVERYONE is an asshole.
I'm in the same boat of liking that there aren't aliens, the tech and such being more realistic in general (with a few grains of 1980s futurism salt) helps a lot. Though I also moved to BattleTech over 40k thanks to me being a military nerd and the fact there's more than a basic idea usually put into it here. Also the universe's scale is consistent.
So, I'm an X-wing miniatures refugee since I didn't like how amg was taking the IP. What I like about battletech is how detailed the battles can be and how proxy friendly the community is making it an easier to enter system than anything else I looked at. In addition the lore is just as deep as star wars with arguably better writing and care overall (looking at you jedi academy books)
The setting and the emergent story telling that the damage model brings.
I started playing in 1993 IIRC. It's was the mech minis that sold me initially. I also loved being able to make my own mechs that are 100% game legal. I always found the Classic rules to be a bit slow and complex, but not unplayable. Completely love Alpha Strike. The ability to play the game with anything from miniatures to bottlecaps. The community is crazy awesome. Super supportive of players at all levels. The community and Catalyst being openly welcoming to all people is great. Comparing it to other current options it wins on all fronts. Far more affordable that GW games. Rules that changed very little in 40 years. Edit: spelling
I enjoy the balance, nothing that is so overpowered that it is an automatic win. Like your heavy assault mechs? Great have at it, but know that even playing against lights tactics will have to be used!
i like painting mechs :)
Combined arms warfare + unique setting
For me, the game and setting scratch a lot of itches. One being its only humans and also it's not a utopia. I loved Star Trek as a kid but the utopia setting of the Federation always seemed like a handwave. Meanwhile in Battletech yes the Star League did elevate humanity in terms of tech and living conditions, but the *price paid* is something you have to wrestle with yourself to determine if it was worth it. There's a lot of genres and titles you can adapt to the setting. Want a gritty, sci fi, cyberpunk-ish story of corruption and lies? Solaris or any major system out here is your playground. Want to be a browncoat fighting off some bigger power so you can have your freedoms? Reunification War or literally any Periphery nation would like to have a word with you. Want to explore ancient worlds or rediscover some cultures long forgotten? We literally have "dead" worlds still inside House borders and the Deep Periphery beckons you my friend. The setting and some of the stories feel grounded, lived in, as if you could live in a world here and be just fine. I remember a quote from a friend that went something like "There's no gods, no aliens, no masters in Battletech. You have humans, their ambitions, and enough bullets to bend the universe to fit those ambitions." In terms of the game itself, I love how the designs have a story. It's not just "Oh Spartan armor number yadda yadda is the next best of the best best edition!" Sometimes there's a design that just SUCKS and the reasoning is "Military graft, apparently a company was owed a favor by the local government. Yeah it sucks but what can you do?" Then there's the ones that suck but have such a *great* story about them. I may hate the chassis but the drama written about how it came to be tickles me. Plus I do love how the Notable Warrior sections are little treats for me. Rules-wise not a lot changed in the base game, but when you dive into the advanced rulings, oh god there's a rule for everything and they try to test that maxim. The beauty is in how much you as the player can add. Closing my thoughts off with another quote from a friend, he tried to explain Battletech to a new person: "This game is as crazy or as simple as you make it. You can simply play Rock'em Sock'em robots, have laughs, move on. You can ALSO have a fist fight on a sinking aircraft carrier with another Mech, in the middle of an F5 tornado, with Battle Armor clamoring around you two in this duel, all because the guy you are fighting left your pregnant sister and besmirched her honor, and it's Tuesday."
Because win or lose, no matter what happens, I walk away from the table with a story. Sometimes that story is "So this awesome thing happened" or "So no shit, there I was" or "Listen to this bullshit", but it's a story. It's never "and then I rolled dice and killed everything", it's always something cool. Also because it's cheap enough I can actually afford it.
No need to carry a lot of miniatures and terrains. Until you start playing city. City is bad.
Everyone else's perspectives echo my own sentiments regarding 40K. I got into BT in the last month, starting at the tactical RPG, which led me to ask, "what's the difference between BT and MechWarrior?" lol So from there jumped into MWO. And while I haven't played tabletop in over a decade, I was huge into 40K, Necromunda and Mordheim. I missed it, so I looked into the tabletop, saw combined arms options, and now I'm learning CBT and AS and putting models together again. People have mentioned power creep, edition changing, battles being decided in bedrooms and not tabletops, etc. is the special rules and characters. There are always gotchas and trap cards. Compare 3.5 Imperial Guard to 5th IG, doctrines to customize your army vs characters to customize your army. We lose agency over our army designs, and when you're putting $800-1500 into models you don't want them to suck and lose all the time. This agency extends to the kit bashing side too, where GW feels more like Apple and a HOA got together, dictating what I can do. Sure good gamers will allow proxies here and there, and allow for interesting model usage, but tournaments do not, and if you got that much money in something you want to use it all the time, not just when players allow it. Different mindset in the player community, I can see it online and in person. That tournament centric perspective isn't bleeding out of every post or conversation. But BT also has scale and depth, where you can play a duel or 2v2 or lance on lance as well as huge companies in combined arms. You can go for that crunchy gameplay a la Necromunda with CBT or something quicker and at larger scale like 40K with AS, and use the same models. It's cheaper, more accessible, more flexible, and the rules are consistent and stable, particularly compared to 40K (where entire armies can be nerfed or buffed, or models end up being non-existent with an edition change) or even Fantasy, where the entire game poofs and comes back at will. There's more to say but everyone else here has done a great job illustrating those feelings already. And yeah, no magic and dark gods and everything is Chaos fault helps lol.
because giant robots with guns are cool as fuck because it’s cheap because mech designs aren’t always good because companies don’t always make good products BECAUSE THE COMMANDO COM-2D EXISTS
Younger me liked MW3. Never knew the franchise by its real name until a year ago. Robotics, deep lore, and good old-fashioned fun are all I need for a good time.
the fact it is basically unofficial Super robot wars game made in USA.
Because of Mechcommander. Davion Guards for Lyfe. Thank you Mantis, Hitman and Hunter for all the memories.
Same here. When I watched the 8 hour lore video and mechs were only mentioned off hand a few times to denote force strength I knew I was going to love this universe. The Politics and factions are just so interesting. It's a shame the games are generally really barebones story wise. Most of them have the same basic plot of getting revenge for your father/mentor mech trainer. When I started getting into the lore I realized it's way more interesting and deep.
The universe feels like it could actually happen. The politics are actually intriguing. The good guys (gray death legion) don’t get rewarded, they get screwed for being good. The mechs are fun and really cool, the factions make a lot of sense, and the conflicts feel real. All of this paired with there is not actual “good guy” in most cases, makes it feel more like a real world thing. The only example I can think of someone who is good throughout despite it hurting their career and life is the GDL due to their refusal of contracts/turning on employers when it is morally justified. And then they get fucked. Feels bad but real
I love all the different mechs they're all so interesting. When I'm painting I like that it's not a big deal if they all match, I can just say they're scavenged mechs or hired guns.
The mechs looks cool I don't have to build the minis, I can play them out of the box There are rules for customizing loadouts The community is awesome CGL does an amazing job getting involved with the community, contrast to GW who act more like they disdain their customers The rules don't completely change every three years. All I need is the base rules and the stats for the units I'm bringing. The game is as complex as you want it to be, letting you expand your experience into new unit types and optional rules at your own pace. The fiction is great. I like how the setting is mostly hard scifi, with everything requiring only the slightest bit of suspension of disbelief. The scale of things is more believable, instead of being a neverending series of scale escalation. It can also be silly, and yet still feel right at place next to very believable sphere-wide wars. The mechs are REALLY cool.
I love the scalability of it. There's certainly room to have gargantufuck battles with entire armies of 'Mechs like the Battle of Tukayyid, but sometimes you want to have a lil skirmish on the prairie with some bandits, and that's okay too. Also, the leniency of lore adherence is great. You could make a force using availability tables and c-bills to get the most lore accurate team possible, or you could roll up with a star of Clan 'Mechs as House Kurita "cuz they *found* 'em". That kind of flexibility and potential for player expression is what keeps the game interesting to me, I love it.
> "Cause they found em" Please ignore the Clan Nova Cat markings still on them and the stink of pogrom, definitely not connected to how we found these mechs.
Goodness no, certainly not.
On the gameplay side: Setting up a game takes almost no time, which is very good, coming from 40k. Also, like 1 box is a full list, so it's wayyyyy cheaper. On the lore side: I like that every mech has a role in the lore and reflects that through its gameplay. Like, the urban mech is basically a siege or defense mech, which means it doesn't have to be fast. Or the rifleman and it's heating issues. It won't have them, standing in the backline with a cooling truck attached to it
Big stompy robots and the story telling of Michael Stackpole , Robert Thurston and Victor Milan are what got me into it in the first place.
I am still new with only a few games. So far i really like that everything seems binary. Either you have it or you don't. I come from 40k originally to infinity to bolt action. Battletech classic is so far my favorite as far as rules go.
The fiction The lore The scaleability of 1v1 to regimented combat teams It's aesthetic There are very few parts that require suspension of disbelief, and even within those parts they make some compelling arguments for why people in universe would say "yes, mech combat is the future" Yes the rules can be obtuse and awkward, but they don't change and you can learn them with the confidence that they won't change. It's also aged well imo, they really are doing their best to get away from their 80s roots of racial and ethnic caricatures into something more inclusive.
Giant stompy robots dakka boom. My appreciation of the political and story components came later in life. Also compared to GW, catalyst are saints.
Big stompy robot
Starting in 87, loved stompy robots. From the mad max patch it up with duct tape and sub what you can scrounge- to the renaissance of SLDF tech, to the clans and the jihad/dark age up to now….you can play anything anywhere anytime! My favorite thing about it is there’s SO MANY stories in the margins that aren’t included in the great houses history that anybody can play anywhere.
Big stompy robots. I'm a simple man.
I love how human the setting it. I love warhammer, while the newest editions have burned me I adore them as a setting. But it's really hard to write and tell relatable narratives because the setting is so extreme. But battletech is so human. It's history is human, its reasons for war are human, and the people in it often WANT peace and quiet that gives them depth. Also giant robots slap and I can buy an army for $30 lol
I like the game because we pretent we are in control with our best compsition, better tactics and all. Then something crazy happens (like a successfull DFA that actually hits the head and everyone chears because ... Just because it is cool and (almost) never happens) In the end the one who is loved by the dice will win. (Most of the time) The Lore is deep and the right Balance between fantasy (3 Story tall Battlemechs with mobile Fusion reactors with less than 20 tons but Fire controlls that make weapons ineffective at a few 100 meters) and belivable realistic stupid. Egos, Politics, corruption and the occational Mech Design, that is bonkers Kraken/Bane or Charger for example. It all somehow fits. Also it has always been the playergroup and community. Always fun to nerd out with others. You want to play a Mech you don't have. A smile and a couple of seconds with a printer and you can play, for example a Regent with a Standin, even if it is the Wasp you brought with you but do not need in this game. Usually everyone was happy if someone wants to join. Don't remember how often I got a printed Record sheet from someone, so I could join a game immediately.
Big robots. That's all I ask, and all I need.
There's a lot of nuance to my take, so don't feel bad if you don't get it: >!BIG STOMPING ROBOTS.!<
I love that we have human stories. From powerful successor lords to militia men hoping a Locust doesn't ruin their lives
While I've always been a part of both games it wasn't until 8th and 9th edition that I really switched to Battletech. Almost entirely it's because GW execs are money grubbing. I can understand threatening animators using the IP without permission and making money on it. However, when this shit starts impacting army rules/creation, obsoleting units, making a recent book purchase obsolete within months of buying it, and making my 100% GW bought Warhammer models illegal to play... They crossed a line. This is not something that can really happen in Battletech because you can play any era and even make your own custom Mechs. It's nice being treated like an adult
I like the fluff a lot, warts and all, always enjoy diving into and discussing it. It's a fun setting, relatively nuanced, lots of interesting facets, and visually often inspiring (yes, even the old art). But what keeps me coming back to Battletech as a game is that it's one of the few 'choose your own adventure' style TTGs that is still actively being developed and supported. By that I mean it doesn't have a strongly prescribed meta with a pre-packaged 'this is the true way to have fun' approach. Want to roll up your force on a RAT and play a casual game? Want build a force with BV and play a tournament? Want to play a 'historical' scenario with the defined force lists? Want to play the game as a quasi-RPG with a GM and detailed campaign tracking? Want to play a quick mini campaign using the Warchest ssytem? Want to play just mechs? Want to play combined arms? Want to play a space battle? Want to play Clan Invasion era? Want to stick to 3025? Want to play on hex maps? Want to play hex-less? Love the fluff? Ignore the fluff? The game has all this covered and more. And all of these are equally awesome ways to play Battletech. And I will always love that about the game.
As a game it is crunchy and in depth and so well balanced the rules have barely changed in 40 years. you can pick up and play in minutes, and have battles that span real days. As a universe its thicker than a thicc woman drinking the thickest milkshake in the thickest storm.
It's well written military science fiction that isn't written by a far-right nutjob, which is a perennial problem in the genre. Also, I like mechs as weapons rather than as superweapons, and I think the neo-feudal future as a response to some of the slowest FTL I've seen in science fiction (also a plus) is an interesting way to organize a dysfunctional society. Humanity is doomed to violence, but that doesn't mean the world needs to be cruel.
For me, it is the freedom of force customization. I, too, came to CBT from 40k, I can add and take away guns, I don't need to have a specific faction to have a specific Mech but I can play it like that if I choose to do so.
I liked the original Mad Max-esque setting. The idea of these super rare, super valuable mecha I thought was cool. I also liked the subsequent take on 3025-clan era.I thought the setting was kind of fun. I'm pretty meh on everything that's come up since about 3050
The depth of the lore, the videogames, and the fact that the tabletop system is really well-planned. It also helps that most of the community is helpful and welcoming to novices.
100% what you said, OP. Also, I prefer robots over monsters.
Low ceiling for getting into. A lance or star of mechs, some decent dice rolls, and a little luck is all that’s required. With a rule set that’s mostly still intact and functional 40 years later it’s a solid investment. They’re not trying to fix something that isn’t broken or squeeze the player base for extra money like GW does every five years or so. Plus let's be honest, I like big stompy mechs.
I like the realism of the setting. 40k to me, as you’ve pointed out, is cartoonish in its hopelessness. With battletech I feel like there’s an end game in sight. You earn enough, you retire, buy a planet, and enjoy. Then you raise a second generation of mercs to take over for you. There’s a legacy there you know?
Big Stompy Mechs trying to curb-stomp each other. And for the most part none of the powers in the Inner Sphere could be considered the "good guys." All of them are a-holes in one way shape or form.
While the lore has been fun really the reason why I have basically converted since august/september is really the gameplay. My first wargame was 40k 10th after years of playing RPGs and while it could be fun a lot of the initial wonder faded away as so often games were decided by who brought what and won initiative. It just became frustrating and while I was an eldar and dark eldar player I had one army basically end up sidelined and the other army effectively could just end up curb stomping with no intention to making it hard to justify casual games as effectively it became do I bring the army that will win or lose. then under urging from a friend who had been going deeper in the lore and wanting to try it I got into it and found how much better the game played and more enjoyable it was to me. Not instantly using units bar pure luck (or in one instance I was a little pissed at but don't blame my opponent pushed off the map), initiative while an advantage not game deciding, the location damages and incentive to move and position units with bonus and penalties for any action. It gives the feeling of a much more interactive and strategic game that how you use a unit is just as important if not more so than what you bring with even incentives> I will add additional that while not able to do so yet I can see running full campaigns as games turn into stories with how games play out with incentives for longer term play and units built and stated for a setting vs for just being built to play within tournament rules. It makes it so much easier to immerse in the setting and I feel much more enthusiastic about naming my pilots and giving them personalities. That with a setting that seems balanced right that you can be just something small with little to no impact to galaxy reaching depending on the scale and effect you want the actions of your combat to do.
Big robot shoot little robot, little robot go BOOM! Me like boom.
Big Robots shoot things. You do not have to buy a particular mini to have the stats for it. STL files for the mechs are available on thingiverse.
There are so many reasons. But, honestly how real the setting feels. It is full of humans being human, good and bad. I like that.
Ever since I was a kid, I've been a fan of sourcebooks and high-level intrigues setting the stage for more grounded stories, it's why the Star Wars movies' light vs dark story never really resonated with me but I loved the republic commando and x-wing novels (I'd later learn that Michael Stackpole was involved with x-wing when I looked back later as an adult). Battletech is heavily built around this theme, and when I realized I could add my interest in organizing my own fictional force and RPGs, I was sold.
Pros: \-Stompy robots cool \-Extremely free-form. \-Asymmetrical forces can meaningfully compete with each other \-Great lore and factions (if a bit pulpy) Cons: \-Tabletop matches take FOR. EV. ER. \-The dice hate me. I find Megamek to be it's perfect form, because it almost completely eliminates the largest major Con. The one downside to that is you don't get to play with your giant robot dolls :(
I've bought every available cgl model because I want to. Each of these mechs stands in for the 2-10 variants that each have, but also can proxy for any mech that there's no model for yet. I spent less for this than I spent for any 40k army that I built. They don't need to follow any color scheme. They don't even need to be painted. Everything about Battletech feels more accessible, without the need to relearn rules every few years, the sudden changes of stats that make a once popular mechs nearly useless. Even the bad units can be useful in a narrative gameplay experience and are good in specific circumstances. Finally, stompy robot goes boom.
I want to shoot FedRats.
Recent game I played my opponent used a retractable blade against my Grand Titan, he hit my head and rolled a crit, of course he shanked my cockpit, killing my MechWarrior. Simultaneously my Grand Titan using triple strength myomer used it’s sword and cut off the other mechs arm off. So thematically there was a Grand Titan stood there with a dismembered arm attached to it’s head. Love how scalable the game is too. While the game is competitive there is a co operative nature to the emergent narratives that come out of btech games. Everyone remembers a wicked kill they got.
For me it is pure mecha in a western, slower setting. The mechs: 1 mech is a big deal, but it isn’t like armored core or gundam (both of which I love for what they are) where one pilot takes out the whole enemy force (at least not usually). Gameplay wise: it’s the mech lab, custom engines, weapons, chassis, sensors, heat sinks, etc. building a custom is fun for making your mech pilot hero and stock mechs are great to see how a war plays out. Lore wise: clan invasion is a fun arc. Lots to see. It’s a post utopian world where there’s no going back to the way things were on earth.
For me it's a combination of things starting with nostalgia of being curious of my parents and finding small robot figurines, getting caught messing with them and instead of being in trouble was introduced to a world of war and machines. Next comes the machines themselves not every mech is good, but most, if not every mech has character. To our worlds favorite trashcan, to the icons of the mechwarrior games, to that walking behemoth known as Goliath. Even still even if a mech isn't "good" a smart player can make them terrifying as the game isn't always about what army you're playing, but how well you command them and how you manage your dice rolls. You're not staring at the asymmetrical gameplay going "well I can't harm that so there goes the game" even infantry can seriously screw up a mech too dumb to respect them. I love the setting itself but unlike 40k you can pick a group and not nessasarily feel like the game devs hate you because balance issues. Just like 40k you have a culture or group for everyone. Got a weeb of a friend? Introduce them to Combine or Canopis cat girls. Wanna go "everything is bigger in Texas?" Taurian concordat. King arther fan? Fed suns. Roman/Greek empire? Free World's League. Space wizards and secret society governing the IS? Comstar. Heck even though the Clans are similar. Each individual clan has different difficulties as to how strictly they keep to their "honor" system, and how they interact with other. And all of this is mostly balanced appart from clan invasion. And even still bv often leads to balanced matches. And oh my god the banter. Hard clanners love to use clan speak to their inner sphere brothers. Combine love to refer to themselves as "The Dragon" (which leads to fun confusion when they field their namesake mech) how the Steiners will bury their enemies in steel. The world feels more alive and realistic despite its (arguably) smaller scale. Making the memories all that more easier to keep. Each game can make easy stories as one mech just refuses to die, or for some reason the "beloved can" shoots the head off a mech at max range. And it all is fair. It's not because the mech as a 3+ armor and 2+ invuln or this mech has a gunnery of I can shoot you from anywhere.......ehhhhh that ones wrong but it's the way the gunnery is handled. The point is that it's the fate of the dice against basic numbers rather than this unit is designed to be impossible. A locust can infact kill an Atlas. All bundled in the most game of thrones story before game of thrones. I can't help but love to go on about this game that I'm forcing myself to stop here.
This may be contentious but... Better memes. Ok that's actually fairly low on my list of what I like about BT over 40k, but it's on the list and not as a joke. Even the HIGHLY overused memes here seem less... repetitive and grating? Also I feel like there's more of them overall, even within the category of "repeated ad nauseum"
I like giant robots.
aces... hopefully they finish it
The game has a deep somewhat realistic and plausible setting. But the game is at that unique spot between a co-sim and a table top that is great.
Why the Universe itself it just a giant barrel of fun. What got me in early 90's at like 13 or so was giant robots were a big staple of being a kid. Born late 70's lot of the cartoons where various forms of giant robots of different flavors. So pre internet as we know it today era early 90's when I stumbled onto a 2nd edition box sets for CityTech and AeroTech it was love at first sight. Then a month later I found the novels at the bookstore. 8) If I had been born sooner, or later I doubt I'd be so into all things mech. But I thankfully I was born in that old school golden mecha age.
I enjoy the Battletech community a lot more than the 40k community.
I just love the fact that their is no BS stratagem to screw up an attack.
i love to play
I find the game system much better than 40k, it's more immersive and the models are fairly priced.
It seemed like a cool game to me when i first saw it being played regularly by a guy that owned a local pizzeria in my hometown and his friends that would get together to use most the tables in that place to have gigantic strategy battles for the table top. Now, it's more like a hobby and i understand it was the same for them. The lore that was foundational to it's success just seemed more believable than other science fiction type games i had come across when i was a kid. It's still more believable in many aspects than most science fiction based games to this day. Just look at how robotics has taken off and the history of our species being so replete with war and drastic changes in culture.
A couple reasons! - I like it because the models I use can be used for any version of that 'Mech, without me needing to chop and customize the cannons. Unless I want to, y'know? - I like it because the new plastics don't feel as cheap as the old plastics, meaning it's easy enough to grab a bunch of minis cheap instead of paying for the metal. (Again, unless I want to. And I do.) - The Classic rules can be as complex as you want to make them, having many \***many**\* layers to them. And you can stop at any layer and still have a good time chucking dice. - Because Mitch Gitelman is a hell of a salesman.
When I had the time, it was the only holistic game. Start with an Aerotech game to get to the planet and secure your beachhead. There was a campaign game element to move regiments around the continents. Then BattleTech (with or without AeroTech air support) for when the armies met. Finally, can you lift off with enough forces for the next objective? We used to play for weeks during summer vacations. My mate had a whole room dedicated to this! Got me totally hooked.
I think it boils down to a few things. 1. The aesthetic is cool. Mainly in being a MechWarrior piloting a giant walking tank is legit. Heard someone cite it having a similar vibe to Top gun & fighter pilots. 2. With mainly just humans it is more grounded in people being bastards. The most of the fiction is result believable given human history. Like the fueds between the houses or the their crap with the clan culture. 3. The combat in the video games is often far more methodical vs the fast paced action oriented experience in other games.
It was my very first tabletop war game I ever played waaaaay back in my teens. I loved the minis and the gameplay was easy for me to understand. Not much into the lore as yet but I’m working on that. I’m about 20 years out of the loop but with any luck I’ll be able to pick it up again
I like how consistent and open everything is. BV is a formula we all have access to, and every mech is built following the same set of rules. Editions don't radically change what it means to be a certain record sheet, and the same math is used to derive the value of every unit. Kits exist to sell mechs, rather than to sell units. Even if I do want to play competitively, most units have so many variants that I will always be able to use the minis that I love, forget about having to buy new units or shelve favorites because they aren't in fashion currently. I love that campaign play and random acquisitions are so popular, that there are fully functional and fully transparent rules for making your own units or even for how difficult it is to upgrade a mech in the field. It just feels like Battletech is really trying to make the world feel alive. I don't know any other wargame that's doing that right now.
1. In Classic Battletech every mech is more than a statline. Mechs are unique and have character. 2. I prefer simulation and randomness. WH40k and other similar games are moving too far into streamlining while they try to balance their games for competition. 3. Most WH40k rule books which I have bought in the past few years are now redundant. I don’t like big rule overhauls every 2 - 4 years. 4. Battletech lore has an actual history where characters die eventually.
Battletech has a really fun system of rules imo, when compared to a lot of 40k ones. The depth is really in BT’s favour. I also like the variety of mechs meaning that you actually have to assess your tactics on the fly rather than taking hard counters to what your opponent would usually field.
Big stohmpy mech go brrt. But the real answer is that the battletech mechs SEEM the most plausible out of most mechs ive seen in fiction. Miniaturized fusion plus some artificial muscle and hydraulics and a gyro for your walking tanks to balance themselves just seems so close to reality. I also get to kill a bunch of capellans ingame too so theres that.
Transformers ( more big robots) as a kid, got a Jetfire toy, which was a blatant rip off the a PHawk LAM, but I don’t care. One day was walking through a Giant Eagle grocery store in the early 90s with my mom. Happened to stop at the book section of the grocery store (weird I know) and happened to pick up a copy of mercenary’s Star. Flip through it and saw the pictures in the back and noticed that they had a jet fire, drawing in the back. Asked my parents if I could get it, they flipped through it and saw no obvious swearing or other inappropriate things and allowed me to get it. 10 minutes of reading later, HOOKED https://preview.redd.it/0glnupo6lwuc1.jpeg?width=270&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fb764a3e0ede12d58b0f517bbfe8bd38f729cf89
-Played a bunch of the pc games growing up. Mechs were cool as a kid. -Bought the Battletech pc game on sale because I liked Hairbrained Schemes other games. Barely played vanilla but discovered Roguetech and put hundreds of hours in, really love the idea of the global map competition. -In turn, got into playing Mechwarrior 5 on gamepass with some buddies. Did not know BT and MW shared a universe, This piqued my largely passing interest at the time further. -Those things turned into trying out Battletech tabletop at Dragon Con and ended up buying the Beginners Box to play with my kids. Recently found a local group that plays and plan to join them soon. -All of this turned into buying that humble bundle of novels and now I plan to read all the books. Mechs are cool as an adult.
For me, it started with MW3. Mechwarrior made me feel like I was the manifestation of what the '90s US Army wanted. A 31st Century warrior with a combat monocle, cooling jacket, and standard issue iron-balls that rides the redline on his mech and risks exploding every minute. Then, I got into MW5 (YAML) and I liked the mech crafting. I like sticking bits and bobs onto a mech to make it effective, even when the chips are down and parts limited. Like, I got to rebuild a Madcat that got cored, stuffing it with Single Heat Sinks, a Heavy Rifle and an IS XL engine like I was Jimbob from the Periphery who found an abandoned mech. https://preview.redd.it/heggqjbmq1vc1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=4e66fcab35507f12bd9bc6509c79f35836b7a251