ScrapYard Armory

We have a new book in the core series. It seems as though Tactical Operations was too large a beast to contain within one hardback. From the announcement:

After many, many discussions, the decision was made to insert a brand new rulebook into the previously announced line-up of products (basically splitting TO into two volumes) and to re-orient the focus of the advanced rulebooks, so that each would logical “stage up” from the last.

The good news however, is that while Tactical Operations is widely expected at GenCon, Strategic Operations, the home for linked scenarios, planetary campaigns, and warships will make it’s appearance in the fourth quarter of this year. I’m excited to have two hardback rule books in one year, but still a little bummed out that I have to wait for the revised grand strategic game rules.

My insatiable lust for a well designed and tested grand strategic game will have to wait until at least next year. My only hope is that with the breakup of Strategic Operations into two hardbacks, they will give Interstellar Operations the attention it deserves. Suffice to say, Combat Operations was not the best piece of writing that came out of FanPro. Hopefully Catalyst can raise the bar and deliver a great product to fans that are seemingly screaming for a GSG.

For the time being, it is wait and see. Another hardback core rulebook is also another $40 – $50 out of fans pockets. However, Strategic Operations is going to debut in the fourth quarter right? Can anyone say stocking stuffer?

I am pleased to report that I will be running two Classic Battletech events at NJCon 2008. The Con will take place from Friday June 6th to Saturday June 7th in Kenilworth NJ. Full details including directions and registration are available at NJCon.org.

Here are the events I will be running,

Classic Battletech Grinder :: Friday 6PM-10PM

Leap into the action with the Grinder, a fast paced game designed to teach players the ins and outs of Classic Battletech. Players will pilot their BattleMechs against all comers in a wild free for all.
All materials provided. Rules taught.

Twilight of the Clans: The Great Refusal :: Saturday 2PM-6PM

The brave warriors of Task Force Serpent secretly made the thousand-light-year journey to the Smoke Jaguar home world of Huntress to eliminate the last of the Clan’s holdings. What they find there will test the limits of their skills, their endurance and their loyalty. Come and relive a pinnacle moment in Battletech history as the combined forces of the Inner Sphere, under the banner of the Star League, seek to end the threat of the Clan invasion once and for all.
All materials provided. Some experience recommended.

I promise a great set of games.  Hope to see you there!

I found this article while browsing the news. YES! Weekly out of Greensboro North Carolina must of had a slow news day and wrote up a story on StellarCon, a Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Gaming convention in North Carolina. The article is mostly Star Wars musings, but way down in the bottom, there are a few paragraphs on a Classic Battletech game. Here is the quote;

In a room off the main hallway a phalanx of Awesomes maneuver to outflank the Turkina B of Greg Resnik, of Greenville, SC, on a green felt game board as big as a ping-pong table, strewn with plateaus and foliage, and divided into hexagonal spaces.

The Turkina, Resnik assures, “is a much more advanced mechanism than the Awesomes facing it.” He pulls the battle robot back three spaces, out of range, so that only one Awesome has him in his sightline, and then, after the Awesome misses its shot, Resnik proceeds to fire.

He shakes two pair of dice in his hand, looses them onto the green felt playing field. He needs sevens or better. They face up: three and four, six and one. Two hits. To fire his other weapon he needs nines. One pair comes up 11 for a single hit. The next round of rolls determine where on the Awesome his shots hit – left torso, center torso, left leg, marked off as damage on a laminated sheet with the Awesome’s armor and inner machinery diagrammed on it. Resnick’s working the midsection pretty good.

The game they’re playing, BattleTech, is an old-school RPG that came about in the ’80s, and some of the figures on the scale battlefield are more than 20 years old. They represent battle robots piloted by humans, balanced by gyroscopes and powered by fusion engines in the year 3062.

“They average ten to twelve meters in height,” says Chuck Bryant, owner of the trio of Awesomes, from Colombia, SC. “The smallest unit on the field is thirty tons; the largest is ninety tons. And somehow, in the digital future, the range of attack for a weapon is about the length of a football field.”

The Turkina-B is from one of the clans, Resnik says, disciples of the soldiers who left the Inner Circle…something about a civil war and lost colonies… it’s all very confusing.

At his side Resnik has a seven-inch-thick binder filled with diagrams and maps for the game.

“That’s only parts of it,” he says, gesturing to a pile in the corner: rubber tubs, tackle boxes and luggage filled with BattleTech paraphernalia, more than could fit in the trunk of a car.

Good to see Classic Battletech getting some press, even if its buried inside an article so cleverly named The “other” N-word.

Highlights from the Battle Chat held today. There certainly were a few choice bits of information revealed. We have a lot to look forward to!

I missed the first 20 minutes or so. As such, I’ll update this post after the transcript gets out if anything else earth shattering was revealed while I was absent.

GenCon 2008 and other conventions:

GhostBear: a two-day canon game, a major AT2 space battle, several tournaments and the standard boot camps and grinders

Tara_Bills: You should really try hard to make it to your local Cons. We are sending prize support to a lot as well as trying to show up to more than just GenCon and Origins.

[There will be a shiny new hardback at GenCon this year.]

Technical Readout 3039 and the Unseen:

Precenter Martial Emeritus: But after the fan ‘outcry’ we had some very quick and thorough meetings discussing the pros and cons and decided that it actually was better to include them. Worked with the printer to make sure we could include it without pumping the price off the introductory 29.99 price and then raced forward to make it happen.

Strategic Operations:

[The Inner Sphere in Flames rule set] will be overhauled and meshed with the planetary assault rules from Battle Force 2, so it can plug into the Battle Force advanced rules going in Strategic Operations and the Battle Force standard rules in Tactical Operations.

Technical Readout 3075:

Precenter Martial Emeritus: So many products… really… a pile of products are being worked on, many of them that you guys won’t expect at all but I think you’ll go crazy over… fingers crossed… ;-) course, Probably one of the biggest… you guys keep demanding a ‘all new’ TRO… so we thought we’d give you one… look for it a lot quicker than you might think…

We are getting a brand new Technical Readout! I’m excited. Many thanks to the powers that be for putting on this chat. Perhaps, a bit more notice can be given next time though. One hour does not seem like enough if you want to give more fans the opportunity to participate.

Have a seat. Take a look around. There may not be much to see yet, but I’m working on it. In time, I expect to fill these pages with articles, reviews, after action reports and much more.

Stay tuned in the near future for updates.