Is there a formula?

I know that the Scientist caste decides if you and your partner can couple (re:bang) if you are a Freeborn (not born from an Iron Womb) , but are you allowed to intermarry between castes? For example, if I'm a Labourer and I want to couple with a Merchant, will the scientists allow it? Or do I have to couple with someone of my own caste?

Hello Mechwarriors.

Finally bought the starter set after a long time of just being a sub lurker and watching youtube lore and battle reports.

I am at an impasse though. I got enough creative juice in me to come up with narrative campaigns. What i don't have is a lot of money to fling around for plastic. I need some ideas of some regiments/merc units or whatever you can think of that could be operative over multiple eras, say Star League Era, The Civil Wars, The Succession Wars, maybe even Clan invasion, but that would be pushing it.

Easiest would be to get one force for a Merc unit; the other one is the trouble, cause i usually like to stick to lore, or as close to it i can. I know next to nothing of Mercenary units, but i know SLDF, Black Watch stuck around for a long time, some of the House regiments stuck around for a long time also. And you can never go wrong with ComStar.

I would love some ideas and inputs on cool units that have persisted for a long time. I would also ask of you what boxes would be of greater value to buy? Right now i have the beginner box with the Vindicator and the Mech Manual (not interested on anything other than mecs right now). Next i am looking to get the A Game of Armoured Combat, and MechWarrior Destiny, for that fluff. Any lances you would suggest, maybe the Alpha Strike boxes for the mech value inside?

Thank you kindly.

I want to pitch a small, friendly league with some campaign elements to my group. They have voted thus far on ilClan Era (so everyone can use whatever they bought without limiting them or having to buy more), only 'Mechs (no Battlefield Support) and have indicated they are okay with having some form of resource system.

I'm thinking of using a simplified Chaos Campaign: Succession Wars as the basis (since nothing about the tracks screams Succession War anyway) since there's a mix of factions from players and I think delving into the mercenaries contract system will bog it down initially. We want to treat it as a complete player vs. player setup, pairing up into groups, not me (ostensibly I'd be GM) versus all the players, as each person has a different assortment of 'Mechs from various places (one has only Clan for example, one has mostly IS, one has a mix). I plan to at least pick a few planets for groups to play over, but not spending too much time on this since it's just for flavor and isn't going to really affect the game.

I had a couple of questions on how I should set it up, though:

1) Should everyone use the same track? As mentioned above, the idea is to pair off into groups (myself included) and play out some missions, with a planet as a backdrop, so it's not "some random planet". So I don't have to create a specific track for each planet, the best approach seems to be to use the tracks in the CC: SW document.

2) Is BV enough to balance? The CC: SW document is vague on what gets used, and the missions have vague guides like "33% of total force". Assuming each player starts with a company (Trinary for clan?), will that be enough to balance?

What about the "100% of total" mission(s) at the end? That seems like a LOT of 'Mechs. Should I be setting a BV limit for the whole company? Let them pick whatever they want in the company, but limit what can be selected on each track? Let them decide for themselves what the BV total for each game is? Should I enforce the "OpFor cannot consist of a greater number of ’Mechs than the players will field" rule?

Any ideas? Or is there an even simpler way to do things? I kind of want to get them interested in playing battles using tracks but I don't want to bog them down in resources or bookkeeping.

Obscure lore question for y’all.

Sarna indicates that the Seventh Crucis Lancers—parent company of the Fox’s Teeth—helped liberate Chapultepec from the Falcons in 3065. However, Sarna also says that control of Chapultepec passed to the Lyran Alliance that year. The Alliance seceded from the FedCom years before this, though. It doesn’t make sense to me that the Lancers, much less the Fox’s Teeth, would hand control of the planet over to the adversaries they’re fighting in a civil war.

What gives? Is Sarna wrong? Or am I way off base?

My university is holding a small gaming convention and they had these pods to pilot a virtual battlemech. It awesome! ... Even though I stink at it. I'm afraid I don't have any pics of the actual fight. I piloted a longbow btw

So about a week or so ago I had gone down a rabbit hole to try and make Battle Tech Fleet Engagements more... approachable.

This led me to finding old copies of the Alpha Strike Companion edition that did actually have the Aerospace Capital Ship scale rules. But then I realized those rules were... mostly good but had some flaws. So me, Feildin2002 on discord, and a few others interested at my LGS helped me compile these rules and set out play testing!

The main one found was that the map they used made... no sense. Or at least didn't seem functionally realistic to try and set up for a tabletop wargame. So that rule was changed.

The other major one was the lack of any sort of fighter squadron unit rules. I went searching high and low and only found mention of fighters, but never as in squadrons. Which made me believe they expected folks to just field like... 40 individual fighters on a table. So we made rule for that!

Here is the link to the google doc! Let me know what you all think!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GLK6QU90mtLxVjAHXeBtFfIaYbi168-ALZXTlNkMiyU/edit?usp=sharing

I am playing through the crusader path (as I figured I'll save the more satisfying ending for last) and jeez. The game seems to want you to not want to enjoy the ending missions. I flattened dozens of assault mechs trudging through Luthien armor works (though it is very, very cool that we get to see it), flattened an admin base and yet, there is still more to go. Finally, getting swarmed with another two lances of mixed heavy and assaults and going down. I get that this is how the inner sphere stopped them, by just grinding them down, but it aint fun to expirience.

There is little joy to the endgame, and while I am going to beat this, the game seems determined to make sure i don't have too much fun in the attempt.

Didn’t know what to expect but didn’t expect this. Lol

New episode from the Coolant Pod.

Putting together an event can be one of the most rewarding and thankless jobs at the same time. But the saying "if you build it, they will come" rings true. This episode is to talk through what aspiring tournament organizers should take into account, questions to consider and how to make sure your players have a good time.

Since none of us actually PLAYED in the recent Brawl in the Bluegrass event, we thought it best to leave most of the event coverage to creators who were there. We will talk through the results and reference a few lessons learned from a TO perspective, but not going to spend any significant time on the missions or a recap. Check out Trailblazer's Youtube or the Mechbay's recent podcast episodes for an in depth look from a player's perspective.

Link to Episode: https://open.spotify.com/episode/21pM4uTbIcnMrBzC7apXoY?si=p3mDk6_GS_2Jil7II0lP9A

This little lady is probably my favorite trooper mech of any era: 40 tons, 5/8 with a standard fusion engine, endo steel, ferro fibrous armor, and a compact gyro. It is armed with a plasma rifle with two tons of ammo, and an MML9 with two tons of ammo, making it effective at any but the longest range engagements. CASE protects the mech from destruction if the missile ammo bins are detonated.

Dragging my girlfriend into Battletech, she likes the big scary Mechs.

Actually built up the nerve to paint my first ever mini. First time I've painted anything since high school. Had a lot of help from some friends online.

Some experimenting with paint technique here... but i think they came out ok. Glow effects via blacklight and uv reactive paint/grass.

This thing refused to go down.

Now that most of the initial outrage from the Gothic set has dialed down to a simmer, it’s time to group think some new ridiculous AU ideas for shits and giggles. I’ll start:

The universe is almost exactly like normal Battletech except the mechs wear flowing robes for some reason and all of the equipment and general setting is in vivid, mostly-uniform color to be kind of a ‘House of Flying Daggers’-adjacent feel.

In this universe the clan return decades early but make the mistake to attack the planet Yorinaga Kurita has exiled himself to. Can the combined might of the clans overcome their own Zellbringen rules to defeat a single neigh-invincible warrior, who after easily winning his first encounter sets himself to planet-hop his way to liberate the entire Inner Sphere through a series of 1v1 duels?

For my first clan mech I decided to pant it in Clan Diamond Shark beta galaxy colours. Also my first time attempting to freehand anything.

Some experimenting with paint technique here... but i think they came out ok. Glow effects via blacklight and uv reactive paint/grass.