Heyhey, I recently had my very first game of Battletech proper (I played WITH Battlemechs before. ). Virago was kind enough to run an intro game for a whole group of wargamers.

 

Battletech ist everywhere, all the time. Rarely on the surface, rarely it’s the ‘flavour of the month’, be it in terms of novels, tabletop games or video games. But it’s always there, and everybody is fond of it for one reason or another. It’s never quite at the surface, but people who are in the know are in the know. And there’s a LOT of those people around. Which is just the sort of thing I like.

My own actual points of contact with Battletech are surprisingly few up to 2022. I remember occasionally leafing through old Battletech books at my then-local then-gaming store; I love the early 90s art style, the fact that the authors take the world, the technology and the backstory seriously. I’m incredibly willing to accept he silliest sci-fi giant robot concepts as long as they come with blueprints, development histories, trials, production runs, production companies. If logistics, replacement parts and petty in-fighting between beaurocrats are mentioned I’m fully on board.

 

In recent years I painted a good bunch of the latest Battletech figures for a gentleman in Germany.

These figures are rather nice; made from the annoying cheap-o plastic with the annoying mold lines, but apart fom that they’re OK quality. For our game we played with figures supplied by Virago.

Rules-wise, apparently Battletech hasn’t changed a whole lot in a long time. Hex-fields, lovely stat sheets for each type of ‘mech. I have to admit that I love a sheet with a little silhouette of a big machine with a bunch of boxes in the various sections you cross away as they get hit. I chose the mighty SHADOW HAWK battlemech.

It doesn’t only sport a lovely name and look, but also an arsenal of laser- and dakka guns as well as missile launchers, covering all sorts of ranges and whatnot. As far as I understand, the Shadow Hawk is an all-round mech. So much so that nobody really knows what it’s supposed to do and under-performs in every role. Which is fine by me. It even has slightly under-powered jumpy thrusters.

So we split up into two teams, one of three smaller mechs, one team of two big ones. My Shdow Hawk had the honour to start right next to an enemy Marauder. Here they are locked in close combat:

The Marauder has 20 tons on the Shadow Hawk and put those to good use to almost cave my guy’s chest in with a big kick. The Shadow Hawk retaliated by limply punching the Marauder in the toes, then the big red one walked away to help his pal.

I can see why this game is considered rather slow, because it is. But in no way too much so. It’s just a game which isn’t meant to depict 20 mechs battling it out. The rules aren’t too hard to get into either. Luckily we had Virago to introduce us. He also had the single most useful gaming aid with him I’d ever seen:

These dice help ye keep track of how fast a mech moved this turn and what modifiers this applies to defense and shooting. Even with just one mech per player this is extremely useful. Unfortunately only available from the US, so shipping/customs will cost at least as much as the dice themselves, but they’re really good. Haven’t seen any equal products from elsewhere yet, but do let me know if you know of any!

So yeah, it took a good while to play, all of us were new to the game, but everybody had a good time (not the least due to the host feeding us cake and beverages) and everybody went away pretty impressed with Battletech and eager to go buy boxes. Cool game, that Battletech; it sits in an interesting space where it certainly isn’t a skirmish miniature game, it’s more like a board wargame with chits. In the way that it works, but also in terms of time investment. However, it never felt long; time flew by.

There isn’t much in the way of ‘things can go wrong any time!’ and it certainly rewards experience and logic thinking, so it certainly isn’t a heroic role-playing game. It’s a Game of Armoured Combat on hex fields, a board wargame. Very impressive thing, that, and I just like a game that has heritage.