Battletech: Building A Mercenary Company
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 ก.ย. 2024
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The "keep what you kill" is a great idea for building a force with a narrative/lore at the same time. Even the Great Houses kept the mechs they acquired through battle, so this isn't strictly limited to mercenaries.
Building a mercenary company as my first collection of of mechs and I went with the premise that it's mostly made up of former Clanners who watched the curb stomping that happened on Tukayyid and basically just threw up their arms and said "well, I guess honor's a joke then" before painting their Mechs a bright pink with blue polka dots and calling themselves Jester Company.
A good way to start up a Merc Company is to have two lances of mechs, with one Command lance consisting of a heavy, two mediums, and a beefy light (Something like a Thunderbolt, Centurion, Vindicator, and Panther), and the second lance of faster units consisting of a medium and three lights (Something like a Phoenix Hawk or Griffin, a Wasp, and two Locusts). Have the total BV for the Command lance be 5000 and 3000 for the scout lance. Add about 1000 BV for some support vehicles and infantry and you've got a really decent start to a campaign! It's not too crazy to start out and there's plenty of room for additional units and replacements later.
The Panther is a great light mech and a PPC can really put the hurt on a light and give a medium mech some pause. We also had a Valkyrie in another lance; the LRM gives a light lance a bit of decent long range support and has the move/jump to keep up.
Interesting idea.
...although, I'll have to adjust that idea with what I have (since only a quarter of the mechs you mentioned are in my collection)...
don't forget to add a squad or two of plain infantry, being able to patrol the building your deployed on as well as having a transit security force would be invaluable
Your Marauder laser mod was very popular in the preClan Invasion days. Many would also replace the AC5 with another large laser, adding heat sinks to fill in the tonnage of PPCs and AC and ammo. You could run all 3 large lasers with almost no heat build up until you cranked in the mediums lasers too. A mech fondly remembered!
When LBX 10 becomes available, dropping down to large lasers and swapping in the lbx 10 instead of the ac5 is very doable as well.
Still come out net 1 ton in favor of the refit for an extra heat sink or some cluster ammo
Love the Marauder, and the catalyst plastic model is definitely worthy to continue it's legacy.
I recently played it against a clanner and I was happy to see just how reliable it was under fire.
There is a fantastic event run at the Gamestorm convention in Portland, Oregon each year (global health crisis permitting). The CBT: Kill It, Keep It tournament. Buy in as a new in blister mech, purchased at a discount from the tournament supporter (thanks, Guardian Games!). TO provides mechs for play, which are not the NIB ones. If you kill someone, you get their buy-in. TO provides an additional NIB mech, and the last person standing gets to choose whether they want that one, or the one from their last defeated opponent; the first person killed in the whole tournament gets the other. That means that it is possible (and definitely has happened) that everyone walks away with a prize.
If you're in the area when the con rolls around, it's totally worth playing. A good core group of gamers, plus randos like me who live a couple hours away. Shout out to Michelle for running it each year.
New players who get the game of armored combat box set should absolutely paint their first unit up as a mercenary force, feel out their playstyle and flavor then figure out what faction they want to go into. They can paint tgem up however they want any color and pattern is their color cammo, flamboyant, do your thing. Make that unit your own.
Good stuff! You can even start small with a Lance or less, perhaps your Mercenary group starts off as a pair of Mechwarriors who basically go rogue and take their Mechs with them and go from there.
Asked a buddy of mine who's big into Battletech about how to go about collecting Mechs, and his response was basically to read up on the Great Houses, and he'd use that as the base for his suggestions.
this is more of a vid on mini's collecting than info of ways to assemble a playable mercenary force.
while you cover bv as your primary force assembly tool, it is primarily used for one-shot games. when playing a campaign event (series of 5 or 10 or more battles) that you utilize the same forces throughout, the better tool is c-bills. this tool allows for the purchase of mechs/vehicles/aero/vtol and troops. it also gives the player the ability to earn c-bills for mission/objective completion and selling/trading salvage. then, the units upkeep, maint/repairs, salaries, new equipment and transit costs can be managed.
if you are only interested in collecting the mini's and playing one-shot battles, you are missing out on a majority of the game!
But the game is so large that one could feasibly do none of that and be satisfied for years.
Also you can use BV as a standin for money. I call it efficient market battletech. Things are valued based on value not cost to build :-).
Of course I play with a super simplified system that abstracts it all into rough tonnage but I run full rpgs with players without the books. They get paid in arbitrary resource points.
@@doomedwit1010 I am glad to hear that you figured out an appropriate reward/penalty system utilizing BV.
Battletech is specifically not wysiwyg, it says so on Page 8 of TW: "To play Battletech, players will need dice, maps, and counter or miniatures to represent [the mechs]". As long as you have the correct record sheet and a way to differentiate what thing is what, battletech does not care if you own the mini.
Yeah but a lot flgs do care unfortunately. They’ve all been tainted by 40k in my area.
Thank you for this video! As a 40k refugee, I decided to go for a mercenary company with ties to House Kurita ;)
Just a friendly FYI, but Kurita and Mercenaries have a very strained relationship after about 3030. The Wolf's Dragoons basically declared war on the Combine and as a result, Coordinator Takashi Kurita declared all mercenaries to be enemies of the state. This could add some really cool narrative flair for your guys!
@@brianhenry152 I heard a couple of things about that, great stuff. Thank you!
same, a 40k refugee. when GW began its antagonistic attitude towards its player base i began to look towards other table top games. i then come across Battletech and its Mechs but there was one Mech i fell in love with and that is the BattleMaster. i then decided to make a mercenary company with ties to Trellshire Heavy Industries due to them being one of the few companies that can repair and make the parts for my BattleMaster. since Trellshire Heavy Industries is a major weapons supplier of the Lyran Commonwealth my mercenary company would sometimes take contracts from House Steiner.
“Keep what you kill.” A Merc Battlelog. Creating a log of battles is great. I started one after my first game in turn three my Grand Dragon took a PPC headshot, destroyed. I was so stunned it threw off my tactics for a moment until I decided to drop behind a veteran player to provide cover fire to survive the rest of the game. Somehow, cough cough, someway my Grand Dragon pilot did survive although damaged he has a permanent scar reflected in the first slot in pilot chart. I’d say he looks like Michael Ironsides character from Starship Troopers, no hand and a bad leg. Ha!
In our Inner Sphere and Clan campaigns, we usually opted to run jump-capable mechs with an affinity for energy-based weapons, as it made supply/support much easier. Sure, we had mechs with LRMs, SRMs, ACs (although we favored 10s and 20s) but the guerrilla warfare slant with our campaigns had energy weapons as the primary armament.
The more current/modern support points/C-Bills makes the paperwork easier but we used to have a blast with the older style of having to keep track of stuff, like a gyro for a 65-ton mech or a 220 engine with a couple engine hits so needs to be rebuilt.
My Tech character with Natural Aptitude in Tech/Mech and a LRN of 7 would increase the difficulties because he had a bit of an ego (and why replace a damaged gyro when he can rebuild it). Part of his attitude/superiority complex was that he usually didn't repair armor because that was a waste of his talent; "Sir, your Tempest has a busted guass cannon and you want me to repair your armor? Tell you what, I'll have one of my Astechs do that while I do the real work and get that cannon back online. Oh, by the way, I realigned your jump jets, AGAIN, could you lay off stomping on tanks? Thanks."
A note to 7:40 into the video. I like to do up all my mechs with the specific attachments and weapons they each have, but an excellent way to get different ones is to re-paint or re-assemble your mechs. For example your mech's arm is blown off in campaign play and after the battle you salvage a new one from a fallen foe. You can replace the models arm with that enemie's arm and translate it directly over to the mech sheet.
a mercenary company is often defined by its logistics. especially its dropship. a leopard can support a lance, a union a company, an overlord a battalion. different dropships for combined forces. but you can also support aerospace units with those dropships, which very few units use. then theres support vehicles, having an ammo carrier is important if you rely on a lot of missiles or autocannons. coolant trucks matter in lore as well.
or jumpship as the case may ben.
Do not Sleep on the Valkyrie. That thing is fast as hell and packs a solid punch.
forming a bettletech, or even better mechwarrior merc unit is the original "keep what you kill". as long as you don kill it too hard lol.
the narrative i started with was for a young house steiner officer from a noble family (alexander ernst von rhinehardt) who got cashiered from the lcaf after being blamed for a fiasco caused by his incompetent commanding officer. he started out with a family mech (i forget what) and slowly gathered other mechwarriors eventually building an entire regiment and spawning an entire dynasty of rhinehardt characters in other campaigns and eras.
Regarding the WYSIWYG claim, BattleTech is actually much more flexible than that, unless you and your fellow players impose a more strict rule.
You can proxy any Mech with anything that will fit in a hex, and has an indication of facing. So long as everyone is clear on what is being fielded, and can tell the proxies apart.
Over time, most players will likely *want* to field the actual minis, but it is far from required.
12 to 15 locusts?? I know you like the mech, but ...
this was a pretty sweet video. i'm starting up in battletech right now and this is just what i needed to hear
Playing Keep what you Kill is very cool and something to keep in mind as I get into the game. I'm just starting.
Lots of ways to do this. My preferred method is to pick a theme and run with it.
1. All jumping mechs. Company specialty is rough terrain combat.
2. Minimum speed raiding company. Nothing slower than a 5/8 walk run.
3. City fighters. Decent amount of infantry and a hunchback backed up by whatever floats your boat.
4. Lrm boat centered. Each lance is 2 lrm focused mechs with a bodyguard and a spotter.
My personal recommendation to anyone trying to figure out where to start is get a catapult. Build up bv around it for whatever your local group is playing at. A stock base model catapult is by far one of the best mechs to slot into just about any lance. So starting there means that even if you change your mind later you got a good mech to run in whatever new theme you think of.
And just to give you a few more ideas. Ive played campaigns where someone was running all catapults. Ive run a grasshopper focused lance in a campaign(for that campaign it worked rather well). I had a buddy who was always running tanks, artillery, and infantry (he won a lot more than he lost). Whatever you decide to do make sure your tactics match the equipment you are running. Ideally have several tactics for the units you got, not one trick pony. Which is one reason why I would avoid an assault lance. Assault lances have a place, but in the grand scheme of things they are limited in tactics due to speed and bv. A single assault mech though can be a foundation for some units.
Places where Ive seen people get frustrated is when they build lances of slow short ranged mechs or lances with too many light mechs that cant take any hits. You need enough speed to keep your distance, enough long ranged weapons to be a viable threat at range, and something with enough armor to hold the line when the line in the sand is drawn.
Thanks Fritz for uploading this video,
Just getting into Battletech, have a extensive stockpile of miniatures from the Kickstarter that Catalyst did not long ago. I'm trying to figure some things out in a narrative standpoint. I want to make a merc outfit that I was toying with way back when I knew more about the setting... it's been awhile... The merc unit was formed just at the end of the Star League (version 1) and takes most of it's contracts from the Jerome Blake group, Comstar, and the Federated Suns. Most of their early history is squirreling away SLDF tech, and committed to border skirmishes. I plan on building in 4 main eras (Founding (post SLDF, first succession wars), Late Succession Wars (hardest for me to figure out), FedCom Civil war (the era that I'm most familiar), and the 3100s (mainly for the PA GD Infiltrators suits look fantastic).
Was thinking of a combined arms battalion, with Mechs, Armor, and Infantry (mechs are a mix of Heavy and Medium, maybe an assault/light here or there, vehicles support and artillery, with the infantry preforming recon, minelaying, spotting, security. They'd ride around in their own DS and an Invader class JS.
Thoughts and Feedback?
My plan for my Mercs is the 14 Plastech 3025 mechs, then adding things like the Marauder IIC for one housemate, a Shadowhawk for another house mate and a Vixen for the last player in the group. From there I will be adding things like the Hollander, Templar, Mad Cat II, and just expand out slowly.
Im still debating on what units to get for a Comstar unit.
I tend to build my merc units ad hoc, in the almost four companies that I have,there are few duplicates:- 2 Dervish; 3 Phoenix Hawks; 2 Shadow Hawks; 2 Marauders; 2 Crabs, the rest are just a mix with no common paint scheme. My reasoning was that most mechwarriors would have their own personally painted mech and that it was just the Battalion insignia that was common to them all.The one area where I'm really weak is,I only have 8 light mechs out of 47. I like the keep what you kill idea.
I created an Independent periphery world called Arinrath bordering Lyran space and the Jade Falcon invasion corridor with three main forces on it post Tukkayid. One is a mercenary company with a broken Dropship for a main base that I’ve named Henderson’s Harriers. I like to think the world has a similar character as Tex’s Van Zandt, but I’m still fleshing it out. I especially like the idea of Comstar mining the official Jump point because of some undefined event in the past that pissed them off.
Fritz have you covered the topic: Called shot?
Modifying my Stormcrow to the D variant was both fun and difficult.
3d printing makes for so many accurate looking mechs.
When did your "merc company" turn into a battalion if you kept what you killed? :-)
As someone that grew up playing battletech, I'm now getting into 40K and confused at the races, chapters, sub chapters, alliances, and so on. Wished that the game was simple so that I can play Space Marines with Eldars. Oh well, that what makes that game unique.
I like the pokemon method. Gotta catch em all, then as you use them they gain character and lore. So... bought a whole bunch, gonna theme them up, and then use a few as mains until they become the founding characters. From there add on as where appropriate. If I beat good opponents then I'll try to get a specific model and mark it as a sort of 'trophy' unit.
Given there's not yet a big group around me so if there was I might do the slow build up. Kinda playing to what available with people down here.
Considering your love for the locust. Has there been a chance to try running smoke rounds in it and running it with the Scorpion and Goliath. The utility of trash can be helpful when your running strange lances or when your able to salvage a Wasp. Many a merc player plays with the idea of taking from the field what they salvage. The idea of smoke has been over looked by many new plays that I have been playing. It is math of consideration. Scorpion prone at range +1, moved 5 hex or 5 inchs +3, light smoke from LRM-5 +1. A plus 5 to hit in the open on a medium mech. You have your heavy hitting mechs. Having a combined arms merc unit is going to focus on the cheep but flexible units. Smoke rounds where available in 3025. Its just not many bothered to use them. Normally my merc unit gets all the discarded mechs that I did not need in my main units. The mercs are where most of the learning with other unit types happens. The battery of thumpers ended up in my merc unit. I never considered the utility of thumpers until I dropped the rounds of thumper next to my infantry. I splashed my own unit with a miss. But did not do much damage. I could totally see anyone taking them for themselves and adding them to their forces. I not only take what is on the field. I also salvage what want from the field. I take what I learned when playing.
I have the naritve that my mercenaries can't use most ballistic weapons because the factory ship they fly around in has a flaw and can't make ballistic ammo under a certain size so they use missiles and energy weapons. that also simplifies supply lines for the siege warfare they specialize in.
I really like the game within a game
Mobile M*A*S*H*: are they any good in terms of gameplay, or just 'dead weight' that have no utility in-game (or post-battle)? I thought of getting one for cool factor, but I haven't found any rules concerning either healing infantry or anythig of the sorts....Y'know a mobile hospital guarded by some troops, maybe a Urbie or some little mech (more for deterrent), gets ambulances rushihng from the front to the MASH to save soldiers' lives..
im trying to get into battletech, and its so difficult coming from 40k to not have a dependable army building app or site. ive asked in several forums and servers what im allowed to run and they're super nice, saying "pretty much whatever you want", but then i ask if the mechs i have are ok with one another, and they go "well, these mechs are manufactured from different places and some are way older than other and-" like what?? im confused, if anyone can help, please do
100%
earn it.
Is it OK in BT world to create a merc team/ can that doesn't belong to any established BT lore? I'm very into lore building.
No reason not to. The galaxy is a very big place and there is the potential for mercs to rise from anywhere. If you like lore building you can start from nothing and then as they get some character and flair you can connect them as you see fit later on.
@@grogc6942 thank you for the advice 👍