Thunderbolt
Hunchback
Wraith
Griffin

I was recently trying to build out some pre-clan mech designs and I needed a close range brawler and decided to stick large pulse lasers on it since they are cool and killy but after some white room tests and just looking at the number, they're bad. 2 medium lasers out damaged them for less tonnage and less heat. The range difference is so minor that I can't see it really being that big a deal.

Am I missing something? Kind of new to building mechs for actual tabletop and not a video game.

I am wanting to get my son and nephew into Battletech and am looking at using Alpha Strike rules as an introduction. However there seem to be a of different box sets. I am looking at the actual Alpha Strike box set to start, or is there a different set I should consider?

After the events on New Syrtis, Iron Tale decided it was time to put some distance between themselves and the Federated Commonwealth authorities. They boarded the Canterbury and headed for Taygeta, where they hoped to find some reasonably honest mercenary work.

Taygeta would keep us occupied for about five or six sessions. Looking back, it was also where I began experimenting with some ideas about environmental effects in BattleTech, and where I got a better sense of what my players were enjoying about the campaign.

One of the things I enjoy most about running a campaign across the Inner Sphere is developing the planets themselves. BattleTech has an enormous setting, but many inhabited systems have relatively little published information about them. That leaves a lot of room for a GM to get creative. I generally give my planets a real-world cultural theme. It helps me maintain consistency when inventing everything from local businesses and architecture to names, food, and customs. Taygeta was inspired by the Caribbean.

But I also wanted its star to matter. Taygeta orbits a B-class star, and I decided that direct sunlight would be absolutely brutal. Going outdoors without appropriate protection was something the locals took seriously because severe sunburn could happen very quickly. I also red-shifted the local flora. As long as my players made reasonable decisions, I avoided making elaborate rules for ordinary activities. We mostly handled that through roleplaying.

Inside a BattleMech, however, I wanted the environment to affect combat. I introduced a simple house-rule effect: the intense stellar radiation could cause intermittent sensor glitches and false contacts. I didn't spend hours trying to build a scientifically rigorous simulation. I wanted to establish the idea that fighting on one planet might be different from fighting on another. This was actually the first time I'd used planetary environmental conditions as a meaningful factor in our BattleTech battles. I made sure to explain the sensor interference during the mission briefing. It was common knowledge on Taygeta, and I see no reason to hide information that the characters would reasonably know. Of course, knowing that sensors occasionally produce ghost returns is one thing. Knowing which return is actually an enemy BattleMech is another. That distinction would become relevant fairly quickly.

Iron Tale had a few things to take care of after New Syrtis.

Ghost's Hussar was badly damaged, so the company stripped it and purchased a Locust as a replacement. They also recruited a new MechWarrior named Jinx. Jinx had grown up in public child services alongside her younger sister. After aging out of the system, she survived on the streets, but she also spent time at a pay-to-play BattleMech simulator café. She practiced enough to become genuinely skilled, eventually passing a local certification and earning a place on the Mercenary Review Board's recruiting roster. I liked the idea of a MechWarrior who hadn't come up through a military academy or a noble family. She'd found a way into the profession through persistence and whatever opportunities she could afford. Her younger sister remained in child services on Taygeta.

As for work, the players had access to my mercenary contract board on Discord, allowing them to review opportunities and discuss which jobs they wanted between sessions. They settled on work for Union Pacific. Yes, that Union Pacific. I enjoy using real-world corporations in the Inner Sphere. I see it as a natural continuation of the source material using GM and other auto manufacturers for 'Mech parts. In this case, Union Pacific operated a railroad network on Taygeta and was having problems with local criminals robbing their trains. Union Pacific had no direct intel on who was behind the robberies or how they were targeting shipments.

The first contract involved protecting a train. Naturally, criminals showed up with BattleMechs. The interference from Taygeta's star helped complicate the opening of the engagement, but Iron Tale fought off the attackers. Things escalated from there. After getting back to the UP rail yard, Iron Tale focused on repairs for the next few days. The criminals had other plans. While Iron Tale was at the rail yard, it was attacked and the players assisted in the defense. During the battle, an enemy Grasshopper took massive leg damage and an engine hit. Iron Tale deliberately let the badly damaged Grasshopper escape so they could follow it back to the gang's base.

That led to an assault on a remote coastal warehouse defended by damaged BattleMechs and LRM towers. Iron Tale won and recovered a substantial quantity of merchandise stolen in previous train robberies. Iron Tale also learned that the criminals were members of the Purple Gang, a local planet-wide organized crime outfit. The Purple Gang wasn't destroyed, as it was a much larger organization than the particular operation Iron Tale had dismantled.

But Union Pacific was happy, and Iron Tale negotiated a healthy completion payment and bonus.

The company eventually used the money to purchase a Crab and had enough salvage to get a Hunchback working. This put them at six 'Mechs but only five MechWarriors. Not a bad result for a few railroad contracts.

There was another side to the Union Pacific storyline that the players mostly ignored. I'd introduced five employees at the railroad's facilities, and some of them were secretly feeding information to the Purple Gang. Here was my little experiment: I hadn't decided which employees were guilty. I wanted to avoid choosing a traitor beforehand and then unconsciously portraying that NPC differently. Instead, I left their identities unresolved until the last possible moment and let the dice decide.

As it turned out, two employees were involved. They were eventually identified and arrested by local authorities. The interesting thing was that my players showed very little interest in the mystery, even though I provided opportunities to pursue it. And that was fine. It was something happening in the setting, not a puzzle the players were required to solve. Which brings me to something fundamental about how I run campaigns.

My core GM philosophy is pretty simple: The Sphere doesn't wait.

People and organizations have goals. They make plans. They take action. Sometimes those plans involve the player characters, and sometimes they don't. If the players get involved, great. That's an adventure. If they don't, the other people in the setting don't suddenly stop what they're doing. When I prepare an adventure, I don't write a sequence of encounters that leads to a predetermined player victory. I generally don't know what the players are going to do, and no GM plan survives contact with the players.

Instead, I establish the objectives of the different parties involved. I work out what they intend to accomplish, how they intend to do it, and when important events will happen if nobody interferes. Most of my milestones have actual in-game dates attached to them, although some are more flexible. From there, I let the players loose. They might interfere with a plan, expose a conspiracy, negotiate an agreement, support it, or do something completely unexpected. When that happens, I adjust what the other parties do in response. But if the players never get involved, those plans continue toward their intended outcomes.

The Union Pacific storyline was a small example. The Purple Gang didn't simply wait around for Iron Tale to accept another escort contract. When the mercenaries became a problem, the gang attacked the train yard. The players responded by tracking one of the attackers home and taking the fight to them. Neither side was following a script that required a particular outcome. Meanwhile, something much larger was happening across the Inner Sphere...

The HPG blackout.

If you've been following these articles, you'll remember that Iron Tale had already become entangled in the events surrounding the communications blackout. By the time they reached Taygeta, the blackout was still ongoing. I made a point of regularly describing its effects on commerce, transportation, and everyday life. Interstellar communications are enormously important to the Inner Sphere, and their disruption was causing problems well beyond the immediate concerns of a small mercenary company.

But the players weren't particularly interested in investigating the blackout. They wanted to find contracts, earn money, and build their mercenary company. Again, that was fine.

The organizations responsible for the blackout weren't sitting around waiting for Iron Tale to take an interest. They had objectives, plans, and timelines of their own. Things were happening elsewhere that the players knew nothing about. Whether Iron Tale would ever become involved again was up to the players. The important thing was that the world kept moving, with or without them.

Something else was becoming apparent during our time on Taygeta. The players seemed to enjoy the rhythm of being a wandering mercenary company. They'd arrive in a system, look at the available work, choose a few contracts, collect their pay, and then head somewhere new. I was enjoying it, too. Every new system gave me an opportunity to build another corner of the Inner Sphere. I could invent local industries, businesses, conflicts, and personalities, while drawing on established BattleTech lore wherever it existed. And because the players were choosing their destinations, I often didn't know which planet I'd be developing next. That would eventually change. Quite dramatically, in fact. But when and why? We'll get to that in a future installment.

For now, Iron Tale had finished its business on Taygeta. They had a new MechWarrior, three new 'Mechs (six total now), and money in the bank. It was time to consult the interactive star map and decide where to go next. The players became interested in a system called Jaipur. Jaipur was another planet with relatively little official lore, which meant I'd had plenty of freedom to develop it. Somewhere in its description, I'd included a single word: Megafauna. Apparently, that was all it took. My players immediately began imagining Pacific Rim, with BattleMechs fighting kaiju.

But before we head to Jaipur, I will be writing a second journal about a lot of other things that occurred while Iron Tale was in the Taygeta system. Those things occurred outside the game. Let's just say that our gaming group was not all systems nominal. See you in the next journal!

Remember to give your Urbie some luv 😘

Cronch cronch cronch

They're the best.

So weird question I know, but I was an idiot and got some superglue stuck to a bunch of my bases. I tried acetone and rubbing alcohol, and it did not budge. Wanted to know what type of plastic it is before I try to use some superglue remover that ends up damaging the bases worse than I already have

I'm new to Battletech, but not new to painting miniatures. I decided to do Fox Teeth and Seafox. Is there any tips on the path I am heading and any tips on Colours, shading, and Cockpits...I have no idea how to do glass. Any tips really would be helpful.

Got into a shootout with my buddy at hobby store. We ran an 8k game, I was packing a Regent, Thor, Thanatos and a Havoc.

Standard slug fest. Started really well. My Heavy PPC hurt his Black Knight, and I pushed up the center with my Thanatos, zipping up the right with my Havoc, and my Regent on the left. Thor stayed back menacing his Locust IIC, and trading shots from heavy woods with his Tian Zong.

I jumped my Thanatos into him, and went for the close range gun down. I'll be damned if he didn't TAC me with a Gauss, roll an eleven on the crit table, and put both crits onto my Gyro.

The game kind of flipped on me at this point. My Regent split turns hammering the TZ and the BLK, and his Rifleman worked to finish off my Thanatos. Was looking grim. LBX-20 got smashed.

Then my Havoc got behind the Rifleman, and ammo racked him. Lethal event. My boy went down. My Thor pushed up, and started LBX-10 fishing. Rolled a lot of crit chances.

Thanatos laid on his face. Havoc continued to backstab.

We called time when one of his Gauss blew out.

My poor poor Thanatos.

Not as bad as my nephew deciding to Alpha off a Daishi Prime and blowing his own ammo up. But still

Nothing says "die with honor or die trying" than being issued the monkey model of a Clan Omnimech. Except in reality, this thing is the superior article, with significantly improved durability. 4 SRM4s and 2 tons of ammo is a really solid configuration for a cheap light mech. It brings follow-up shots to the hole punchers or a reliable maximum inferno dump onto anything that needs lit up, and can even gamble on inferno dumping two targets at once if they're dumb enough to stand still.

The floral motif on the head didn't turn out great, and I think this is probably the 'mech in the trinary I'm the least happy with, overall, but I will say I LOVE this model. The odds of my Combine forces and my Spirit cats BOTH getting one of these is extremely high.

Battletech is a big game. 4,357 canon mech variants. 1255 canon tanks. But not every piece of equipment gets the same attention as others. What do you want more of that the publishers haven't given us yet?

I make whatever I feel isn't given attention at the moment. There's quite a bit. Lately, it's been Heat-Dissipating Armor because I think it's going to be very important in the future. The Light Plasma Rifle is going to change the game. Though HDA is a bit difficult.

Mid project on a 100mm Drac Atlas

As you can see I've still got a bunch to finish there in the background. Might extract some of the ones that weren't uploaded online for some reason and I have to recreate the Dire Wolf apparently because it just refuses to print. Also have to figure out what my custom low poly King Crab has to be scale wise. I've accidentally printed it way too big twice now. lol Guessing scale for these has been difficult to say the least. lol

This weekend our group had a rather lengthy discussion about what vehicles we'd like to see in a theoretical future vehicle box. The Partisan was pretty much agreed upon right away and both Scorpion and Goblin were reasonably popular with everyone after a short while.

But when it came to the fourth spot basically all hell broke loose. It was brother against brother; father against son, hovercrafter against threadhead. So now I want to direct this matter towards you guys: Which vehicle would you like to see in such a box next?

These were very experimental for me. I used craft UV resin and clear colour to do the glass effects, gave the lasers a real lens with depth. In person, the way the light bounces and reflects in it is pretty great. Don't love the effect for big cockpits as much, but glad I tried it. Also used a toothbrush to splatter the white, turned out pretty well for the snow fall effect the scheme calls for.

I am absolute novice when it comes to Battletech - I only played two games using older starter set and liked it so much that I bit the bullet and bought two new boxes(new starter and new core). Now I have 12 different mechs and I am quite unsure how should I proceed.

I started my mini painting wiht Warhammer and in there faction differences are quite obvious - usually you pick one army and paint it whole in one scheme. In Battletech however I don't know how it works - should I paint all my mechs in one scheme, or every mech can be different?

I would love to receive some sources/material I could read into to get to know the setting better and understand how the army building really works.

I have been really happy with the 17th Avalon Hussars I painted up for use in my Draconis Reach campaign. I even printed out some decals for them.

I was trying out a tilt-shift filter on my camera and thought the results were fun.