At Adepticon, CGL announced a whole ton of rules changes for BattleTech and the vast majority of them excite me and have my full support. It looks like the game is going in a great direction. But it’s not for me anymore.
The thing that drew me to BattleTech was the asymmetrical nature of the Clan Invasion, and how that meant I would need to field more ‘Mechs than an opponent for a fair fight. The new initiative rules treat my lists like NPCs. If I had a local play group to GM games for, I would just do that with these changes.
But I don’t have a local play group, and I don’t want to build a BattleTech group from scratch just so every game I can play the derpy OpFor that’s forced to walk into bad positions and get shot by the heroes who field fewer ‘Mechs than me. That’s not what I play wargames for.
The new front-loading approach to initiative hurts the things I love about BattleTech and rewards you for playing the things I hate about it. So I’m not going to argue or debate people about it. But I’m not going to commit my time and energy to it, either.
THINGS I LIKE | THINGS I DISLIKE | THINGS FRONT-LOADING NERFED | THINGS FRONT-LOADING BUFFED |
|---|---|---|---|
Light/Med. ‘Mechs | Assault ‘Mechs | Light/Med. ‘Mechs | Assault ‘Mechs |
Inner Sphere Tech | Clan Tech | Inner Sphere Tech | Clan Tech |
Fielding 4-6 ‘Mechs | Fielding <4 ‘Mechs | Fielding 4-6 ‘Mechs | Fielding <4 ‘Mechs |
Primitive/RetroTech | Primitive/RetroTech |
On the brighter side of things, between the new initiative order and the changes to actuators and PSR penalties, Clan tech equipped Chargers and other Assault weight melee ‘Mechs just got a huge buff. So if you’ve ever wanted to play an all melee lance, this is a great time to do it. Just make sure you’re fielding one fewer ‘Mech than your opponent. That way you can’t ever really “lose” initiative. At worst, you’ll tie (you move one, they commit HALF their force, you get to decide who to charge).
Concluding Thoughts
BattleTech is a difficult game to sell people on in the best of times, and I’m in a situation here where I have to be a sales person first to build my own gaming group from scratch. I’m not selling a product I don’t want to play, and it’s a hell of a lot easier to sell games that can be completed in 2 hours instead of 6.
I’ll be stepping away from BattleTech and covering topics in Steel Rift and possibly also the relaunch of Firestorm: Armada since that is an old love of mine.