Catalyst Game Labs BattleTech: Beginner Box, MCAT35020

Product Information

If you enjoy playing the BattleForce game included in the Interstellar Operations: BattleForce book, you may find these counters useful in your games. Basic Counters

Wolverine-6R– The same as the beginner box, the Wolverine functions in the same fashion but comes with the full game rules including heat and internal structure. Heavy Mechs The Griffin miniature in this edition uses a different number on the underside of the base than that appearing in the prior edition. Printing your own maps and minis isn’t free also. If you start factoring in energy, ink, paper, resin/filament it starts to add up. DYI is not always cheaper. It's always an excellent service with brilliant products at a very competitive price - will use again! Battletech is confusing to get into (that’s half the point of writing this article) and it’s coming at you with a lot of supplements and things tagged as rulebooks which are in fact optional/advanced rules.I use some acronyms in this article, so SRM – Short Range Missile (a shorter ranged missile with a bigger warhead), LRM – Long Ranged Missile (longer range, less punch), AC is Autocannon, and the number is the amount of damage they do and PPC is Particle Projector Cannons, which is like a more damaging, hotter laser. You’ll see these throughout the Battletech articles, because who wants to write out Short Range Missile 15 times in an article. Battlemaster-1G– 85 tons and carrying a profusion of different weapons. With it’s only long range firepower being a single PPC, the Battlemaster is all about close range engagements, with six Medium Lasers, two machine guns and an SRM-6. With potentially 32 heat from firing all weapons and only 18 heatsinks, you will very clearly have to manage heat on this mech, but you can mitigate this by planning ahead. Mech Variants Eight high-quality, fully assembled (unpainted) miniatures Awesome BattleMaster Catapult Commando Locust Shadow Hawk Thunderbolt Wolverine The main mistake players make is trying to make their games too big too early. Lance vs lance is fine, 2 lances vs a clan star is a big game size, and beginning players fielding light lances against each other is absolutely fine. You aren’t missing out using mechs under 60 tons, playing on a map with a decent amount of terrain, and playing a game of ambush and maneuver. In fact you’ll learn a lot playing with mechs where you have to actively manage heat, hug cover, and play tactically. Mechs aren’t Warlord titans (as evidenced by the fact that Battletech and Adeptus Titanicus is roughly the same model scale) so you don’t have to play them that way. Hit Location and Damage: Once all hits have been determined, you roll 2d6 for each hit to see where it lands on your target. For each hit, you mark off a number of circles on that location equal to the damage of a weapon. Once all the circles in a location are filled, that part of the mech is destroyed. If both legs, the torso, or the head are destroyed, the mech is turned to scrap. Combat is easy to jump in to in the Beginner Box. Game Experience:

I could talk for a long time about 80s wargame design, and to a large extent Battletech is unchanged from when I first played it (though the miniatures are much better). Modern audiences who didn’t grow up when tabletop wargaming was becoming popular don’t remember the growing pains when non-historical wargaming was working out whether it was an rpg combat system with miniatures or a wargame (see also Warhammer Fantasy Battle 1st edition, Rogue Trader, Laser Burn, Chainmail, Star Fleet Battles, etc). Needless to say a lot of these 80s games featured a character sheet mechanic, and Mech Record Sheets are a fixture of Battletech. In addition, most advertising networks offer you a way to opt out of targeted advertising. If you would like to find out more information, please visit http://www.aboutads.info/choices/or http://www.youronlinechoices.com. The 25th Anniversary Introductory Box Set, published in 2011 and reprinted in 2012, included the same 24 Inner Sphere 'Mechs as the Classic BattleTech Introductory Box Set, plus two higher quality plastic Clan 'Mechs: a Summoner (Thor) and a Hellbringer (Loki). These latter two 'Mechs are described in the section 'Separate Premium Quality Plastic Miniatures'. Wolverine-6R– More of a brawler with a Medium Laser, SRM-6 and AC/5, the Wolverine needs to get close to use all it’s weapon systems. This means it benefits from cover to prevent it taking a lot of damage on the way in.This means it is very common in Battletech (and seen in all of these products) to have a base model and a variant included for variety (so there is a Griffin N and a Griffin R in A Game of Armoured Combat, even though there is no Griffin miniature as they assume you’ll have one from the Beginner box). Variants, given they normally change the armament, can completely change the battlefield role. If a model goes from having all guns with a max range of 9 to being able to hit things 21 hexes away, then it makes a big difference to performance on the table. Certain reports suggest that the plastics used for basic 24 'Mechs in this set may differ from that used in the previous edition, that is the Classic BattleTech Introductory Box Set, but the sculpts appear unchanged. At present, there is not a way known to distinguish a miniature originating from the Classic BattleTech Introductory Box Set in 2007 and one originating from the 25th Anniversary Introductory Box Set in 2011 or 2012.