Well this is probably not going to happen very often when i post two things in quick succession with each other.
Classic Battletech is the game I'm Talking about here this game is one of my personal favorites a tabletop game where shockingly enough the majority of play happens when you can actually see your opponent in the flesh, a type of idea that in every walk of life is working its way down...but that's for another time.I'm not trying to teach the game with this first and foremost i'm just giving what i think of it.
The Setting behind the venerable game (Early 80's the thing is older than I am!) is that humanity has reached into the stars and colonized them and in doing so founded several nations to keep the worlds together and yup you guessed it; fight with each other. The governments that run these factions termed Great Houses are primarily based on a feudal setup with one very powerful leader with pretty much unchecked power, factions of this nature form the largest part and make up a large portion of what is termed the Inner Sphere where most of the fiction and setting take place. On the other side of all this are the Clans a set of war-mongering psuedo nations built around warring with each other and earning honor in the most obtuse ways it seems like sometimes. The clan tech is much better than the I.S. (Inner Sphere, truncated from here on out cause i'm lazy). That's pretty much the base setting, for those who know more I am well aware there is more this is bare bones so :P
The game itself uses two dice for all outcomes shooting falling on ones face etc. I seem to do a lot of falling on my face... anyways not important. The game starts each turn by rolling for initiative winner gets to go last this might sound a tad backwards to some people but the fact is that the game itself is fought partly by positioning so knowing where your opponent has gone can let you get a better shot or just get out of the way for a turn and catch your breath. Battletech is played on a set of Hex map sheets for the most part, they do include Miniature rule formats (Think Free form or Warhammer 40k setups) a mech can be faster or slower depending on the one chosen but a general rule is the heavier the mech is the slower it is. Battletech is a game of trade-offs i usually use the saying you get Heat/Armor/firepower/ or speed pick two. Lets go ahead and run briefly down those.
Heat, oh heat this one is a fun one. Mechs are not perfect and as they move fire weapons get hit with lava etc. gain Heat this can cause problems ranging from annoying making it just a little tougher to hit the bad guy to well i just cooked my own pilot. disregarding heat entirely can lead to funny moments but largely its a good thing to pay attention to it.
Armor, well this is pretty straightforward as the mech gets pegged you check off the amount of boxes the weapon deals. Light mechs have very little and assault mechs have lots making them extremely tough to bring down in a straight fight with anything but another assault mech.
Firepower, well another straightforward one. Put simply Guns :D
Speed the light mechs only real defense, you see in this old game it gets harder to hit your enemy based on how fast he moved a lighter machine moving very fast relies on this fact and assault mechs kinda.....well don't.
Clan gear can break this a tad...but I'm just going to ignore that for this.
Classic Battletech or i guess now its just Battletech is a game to be played with friends, the games take a long time and you get the epic moments where a badly damaged Spider Jumps clean on his buddy's Atlas and kills it, (Reference 30 Tons Vs 100 Tons) using a common ruleset agreed upon by the players you can have hours of fun just on one singular game, to add to all that the guys over at Catalyst who own the property have done an excellent job with the rulebooks and the source material for all the different mechs available. in addition to that the game has built in customization rules so if you dont like any cannon mechs just make your own. Right now there are five core rulebooks
Total Warfare-this is the base book that you always will need to play the game it has things like tables and charts to just get the mechs on the field and slaughter each other.
The Techmanuel is a book specifically including all the fun build a mech rules.
Tactical Operations this is a book for ground level operations including optional rules to bring vehicles a little out of the dumpster and compete with mechs on a more equal scale as well as weather effects and some more toys for mayhem
Strategic Operations- This is largely a campaign book and expanded aerospace rules, I'll be honest I'm less familiar with this one.
A Time of War- The RPG or role playing game for when you want your mech jock to step out of the cockpit and have more adventures that dont involve his mech all the time.
Its a Universe and game where Lives are cheap but Battlemechs are not, Enjoy it all.
Some External Resources for checking it out.
http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Main_Page
http://classicbattletech.com/
Happy hunting!
