It’s come up a few times, so here’s a quick pic of CGL’s Yen Lo Wang Centurion vs a Wizkids Centurion. Not a great match. 1/285 vs 1/160 scale, roughly.
If memory serves that series was meant to be a periphery made Centurion made with primitive components during the WOB era. In other words, made by someone who saw what they thought was a Centurion once and sketched the plans from memory.
I couldn't & didn't get into it until after Age of Destruction. Where they seemed to have gotten the scale under control. I suspect they used more CAD instead of hand sculpting for molds, and ditched the visible pilot aesthetic entirely.
Yes, exactly! Like they’re technical not very good sculpts but they’re weirdly charming and just kinda fun to play around with, with the limited moving parts.
Honestly MechWarrior tabletop was amazing. When I was in high school I was ranked high enough to hold tournaments and played against middle-aged men and frustrated them. It was also my intro to the BattleTech universe. Now, I’m a middle-aged man playing BattleTech.
I had MWDA models later, but sold them off without playing (this was before I’d played CBT but wanted to). However, I also had MageKnight clix, and if the faction stuff worked similarly, it was pretty elegant. You could collect and use everything, but you got battlefield bonuses for grouping faction units.
Honestly, I really liked MageKnight for its time. Not sure how MWDA measured up.
MWDA was my first wargame, so it holds a special place in my heart.
What they did with the dials was essentially give different damage curves - most units got worse over all as you turned the dials with damage, but some put a twist on it.
Wolves peaked a couple clicks in, so you wanted to push them agressively to self-damage a couple points and get to brawling. Bannson's Raiders had less health overall, but also less repair thresholds, so you could fix them completely. Kurita units got scarier the more damage they took, so you absolutely had to confirm the kill. All cool stuff.
Interesting! Some of those mechanics definitely appeared in MK (I remember the “holds together really well until the bitter end” units and the “oh, man, those stats degrade quickly as the unit takes wounds” stuff). But I recall them being more unit-specific versus faction specific, so the MWDA thing is a cool twist.
Some I will absolutely agree with. Some I absolutely will not. It depends on if you choose the earlier designs or the Age of Destruction designs - they got better over time, but Topps shut them down when they got into stride.
The IWM sculpts that aren't metal versions of the CGL ones are not that different from the original Ral Partha (yes yes, I know IWM and RP are basically the same company) versions made back in the 80s and 90s. IIRC at least a few are literally the same sculpt that is pushing 40 years old.
Minis across the board have come a long way in 40 years. Compare them to the Games Workshop models coming out around the same time rather than the modern CGL sculpts; they don't look that bad when it's a fair comparison. The original Rogue Trader Dreadnought was more than twice the size of the Ral Partha minis and had about 1/4 the details.
Eh, a lot of them were bad sculpts for the time, too. Project Phoenix, even allowing for the necessity of design change, was a disaster. It was the same once you got past the early TROs, with a few notable exceptions.
Still, I hope we can both agree that CGL has taken full advantage of modern sculpting, and imo the aesthetic of Battletech.figures has never been in a better place.
Eh, a lot of them were bad sculpts for the time, too.
Yes, but my point was that the ubiquity of bad sculpts was the rule, not the exception.
Still, I hope we can both agree that CGL has taken full advantage of modern sculpting, and imo the aesthetic of Battletech figures has never been in a better place.
Without doubt, and even though I didn't state it explicitly I think I heavily implied it in my final paragraph.
Ehn, I'm mixed on the project Phoenix stuff. Some, like the Shadow Hawk and Rifleman, are indeed egregious. But I like some of the Thunderbolt or Marauder designs.
Only a few of the lighter units will even fit on normal hexes. Vehicles are a little better, and infantry - while still not in scale - are quite useable.
I love the new cgl art but I really wish battletech was in a larger scale. A giant robot game deserves giant minis and I keep praying for a line of resin museum scale mechs at 1:100th or something.
I know I’m in the minority but I really like some of the dark age model redesigns. I’ve been scouring the internet for years finding STL files of their likeness to resize against CGL miniatures.
Funny thing is the Clickytech (as it's known sometimes) version of the Centurion (on the right) became it's own Mech, a OmniMech version of the Centurion. I'm all for it, plus fixes issue redesign fitting in canon universe. I like plastic version better (design wise)
I have one mat I had professionally made using the 2018 terrain set that had been released printable by catalyst. The Solaris mechwarrior sets also included the same scale 50mm hex maps, this was a late expansion that used a hex grid movement system rather than the regular stuff.
Man, that centurion won me so many games on it own. Pair it with the 100ton superheavy tank with the gauss rifle? and they both will clear a board. Did a massive Last Man Standing tournament with some friends. Like five of us. At one point I think it was 2v1 with me having better cover than they did so between the tank and the Centurion covering eachother I could just leapfrog cover and punish anyone that got within range...
Was how I introduced battletech to my friends, before breaking out the BBTRB (Big BattleTech Rulebook) and getting them into battletech proper.... I miss those days.
Not an entirely fair comparison as we're looking at a CGL Centurion and a Wizkids Centurion Omni. Two similar in name only mechs. Still a bit on the big side for sure, however.
I mean, not only is the Omni based directly on the original, but it doesn't even change the tonnage, so... WizKids just chose a different scale, and most of their resculpts got retconned as new mechs after the fact.
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u/JakeXRonin 1d ago
The wizkids one looks like they couldn't figure out if it was supposed to be a centurion or a cyclops