I set my players up in a Leopard and they have 4 pilots. They can bring whatever they can fit in the cargo bay of the dropship. At the end of each battle, they can bring savage back (if they won). They have to make 4 good mechs for the next mission. Based on what they are fielding, I pick opposition based on their power to make it an even fight. After about 3 games, they have used all of their supplies and they have to hit local depots and supermarkets. This process creates experienced pilots and some VERY interesting lances. The GM can do some very cool things to make the game interesting.
our campaign has been running since 1991. we play every other weekend. we use the c-bills method for our units. new people are able to join. you start with the following: 1 union class dropship 50 million c-bills we use the fasa Mechwarrior 2nd ed rules to create our main characters/pilots. then we set up objective missions which can last several sessions. we track everything! ammo used, repairs, salvage, transit costs... everything! when I say we play every other weekend, I mean, we set up Friday evening, battle all day Saturday and do assessments on Sunday. our battles are usually battalion strength or greater. only on one occasion did we set up a full regiment v regiment engagement. it took a full week to battle it out. (using individual units - not the Battleforce rules)
Campaigns make the world interesting. Do bring in some interesting challenges. After running one you start to understand better how valuable that Awesome is but how much armor and time your going to be spending fixing armor and the engine. It becomes more than about mechs. Arty and Aerospace fighters could turn a fight. Vehicles could protect your dropships as your mech go out to stomp. Recon mechs become valuable and hunting down and killing them becomes part of a little mini-game. Infantry to take a command center and capture the local command for prisoner exchange. Would be bad if losing all the infantry in the start. There is a noticeable move to picking mechs that share parts or weapons. Logistics nightmares happen until you get the hang of it. The leg that is on the ground becomes useful if you pick it up wack a mech then run home for repairs. The Archers got my Warhammers leg. A campaign could come from a simple raid. Landing take out the radar and drone AA, smash and grab from the garrison or recon objective, get off the rock as you run away with your loot and info. Then hands on a mech like the simple Stinger double as a loader mech bringing ammo out to your Longbows. Might become a good option over the industrial mechs stuck at the star port. Get off the rock sell the info and parts collected. Love simple to large campaigns. Running a campaign with more then one player is fun. So there is a chance that the beginners may still play as a lance commander in a light skirmish.
Hmmm... I've been talking about starting a campaign with a friend. Your post here gives me the idea of using 'capture group of industrialmechs' as an objective. So the attacker would have to deliver extra pilots - either escort an APC in, or bring them in mechs with jumpseats in the cockpit - secure the motor pool long enough to get them saddled up, and reach an extraction point. Defender has to prevent as much of that as possible. It would also scale up very well to a three-way fight, with two different groups trying to steal the loadermechs!
Most of my games are "semi one-off." They're one-off games, but I run "training companies" where one or two of my mechs are veterans from the last fight. This is how I add to my mechwarrior story collection. I'll never forget my first campaign though. Long story short: Player A (an IS player) wanted to play some "Operation Bulldog" against (Smoke Jag) player B...but my clanner ass wanted in too, and my GM knew player A was a weaker player. So he called an audible; I'd play a small Nova Cat force with a grievance against the local Jags (in theory my job was to advise player-A, while dropping with my small clan force.) Of course, the scenario dice gods screwed us and the plan falls apart, the IS player-A mis-dropping about where the GM had told me the Smoke Jags should have been, but early. I send my best scout (a Shadowcat Prime) to see what's up and instead of opening comm channels, player A mistook me for a Smoke Jag and shot at me instead. My GM simply told me "survive the next six turns"...in a lone Shadow Cat vs 2 IS heavies. The SCat survived. Player A blew my gauss, but I blew one of his XLEs before the GM finally told us that the comm channels were now clear, reinfocements had arrived and were screaming orders to stop shooting; we'd just fought a blue-on-blue scenario. Player B didn't even get to play until game 2, but spent game 1 laughing his ass off anyway. Moral of the story: sometimes issuing a batchall first is a good idea. Your GM might be just as sadistic as your dice. Also, ShadowCats make kick ass guerillas on a forest map.
Know when to hold em and when to fold em. Anything long term in battletech and running away becomes a part of life. That's how these mechs get to be over a hundred years old.
Most of our battles eventually run into "The Fourth Battle of Black Ridge" or something because we didn't want to lose out on all our stuff or hard-fought gains. In the older system, the "random" encounters were always more tonnage than us and the "hold the field" roll was usually at a 8+ or 9+, even if we held the field. The C-bill/support point system seemed a lot less severe. Damaged gyro? Blown out sensor? No problem; my tech with natural aptitude in mech repair, outstanding attribute (LRN 6 or whatever what the max was) and since he didn't have a mech, snuck all his build points in to stats and special abilities. IIRC his target to repair armor was 1+ and since he was a genius (and a bit of an arrogant ass) he'd pawn that off on one of the junior tech. I fixed engine and gryo hits on a regular basis.
I only ever played two BattleTech campaigns. One was a four player, narrative style campaign I ran where the four players landed on a planet with nothing but Stingers, and had to loot and salvage better mechs from the occupying Kurita forces. Didn't work so well, mainly because one of the players sabotaged another player's cockpit. The second one was where I landed a whole regiment worked out on BattleForce templates onto a planet, alongside other players, on a planet scale strategic map. We'd move lances and elements of that regiment out to maneuver on the strategic map, and if two opposed units ended up in the same space, we'd fight the battle on hex maps. That campaign was slow, and very unfun, since it favored asymmetric gankfests.
It was two different groups, but I get it. The thing about BattleTech is that it begs you to operate on that macro level. I mean, you have all these detailed writeups about these armies (20+ regiments of Dieron Regulars? 5 regiments of Wolf's Dragoons? How many regiments of the Fusiliers of Oriente?), and you want to see how they'd operate in a theatre of battle as a whole contingent of combined arms. On the other hand, BattleTech is a very micro-detailed wargame, with skill levels, detailed damage, customization, and a sort of economy. You want to roleplay with it, even without MechWarrior, or even to establish some sort of history regarding these machines and these pilots. Striking the balance between the two is a real challenge. You want to make these operations epic, but at the same time you want to make the conflicts personal.
I love all of the content of your videos. I find them very informative, and they allow me to have a few questions that I could pose to my players to see how they want to play the game. The only criticism I have for you is maybe speaking to the right of the mic because I'm hearing a lot of pops from your mic and pop filters don't work. You might also consider getting a different mic or lowering your gain. Love the content, dislike your mic. Have a great one. o7
I set my players up in a Leopard and they have 4 pilots. They can bring whatever they can fit in the cargo bay of the dropship. At the end of each battle, they can bring savage back (if they won). They have to make 4 good mechs for the next mission. Based on what they are fielding, I pick opposition based on their power to make it an even fight. After about 3 games, they have used all of their supplies and they have to hit local depots and supermarkets. This process creates experienced pilots and some VERY interesting lances. The GM can do some very cool things to make the game interesting.
our campaign has been running since 1991. we play every other weekend. we use the c-bills method for our units. new people are able to join. you start with the following:
1 union class dropship
50 million c-bills
we use the fasa Mechwarrior 2nd ed rules to create our main characters/pilots.
then we set up objective missions which can last several sessions. we track everything! ammo used, repairs, salvage, transit costs... everything!
when I say we play every other weekend, I mean, we set up Friday evening, battle all day Saturday and do assessments on Sunday. our battles are usually battalion strength or greater.
only on one occasion did we set up a full regiment v regiment engagement. it took a full week to battle it out. (using individual units - not the Battleforce rules)
Campaigns make the world interesting. Do bring in some interesting challenges. After running one you start to understand better how valuable that Awesome is but how much armor and time your going to be spending fixing armor and the engine. It becomes more than about mechs. Arty and Aerospace fighters could turn a fight. Vehicles could protect your dropships as your mech go out to stomp. Recon mechs become valuable and hunting down and killing them becomes part of a little mini-game. Infantry to take a command center and capture the local command for prisoner exchange. Would be bad if losing all the infantry in the start. There is a noticeable move to picking mechs that share parts or weapons. Logistics nightmares happen until you get the hang of it. The leg that is on the ground becomes useful if you pick it up wack a mech then run home for repairs. The Archers got my Warhammers leg.
A campaign could come from a simple raid. Landing take out the radar and drone AA, smash and grab from the garrison or recon objective, get off the rock as you run away with your loot and info. Then hands on a mech like the simple Stinger double as a loader mech bringing ammo out to your Longbows. Might become a good option over the industrial mechs stuck at the star port. Get off the rock sell the info and parts collected. Love simple to large campaigns. Running a campaign with more then one player is fun. So there is a chance that the beginners may still play as a lance commander in a light skirmish.
Hmmm... I've been talking about starting a campaign with a friend. Your post here gives me the idea of using 'capture group of industrialmechs' as an objective.
So the attacker would have to deliver extra pilots - either escort an APC in, or bring them in mechs with jumpseats in the cockpit - secure the motor pool long enough to get them saddled up, and reach an extraction point. Defender has to prevent as much of that as possible. It would also scale up very well to a three-way fight, with two different groups trying to steal the loadermechs!
@@AnimeSunglasses Hover bikes sounds like something I would do. That gives me ideas. Thx
Ooooh man, i see a sweet marauder in the background there... top 5 mechs for sure!
Most of my games are "semi one-off." They're one-off games, but I run "training companies" where one or two of my mechs are veterans from the last fight. This is how I add to my mechwarrior story collection.
I'll never forget my first campaign though. Long story short: Player A (an IS player) wanted to play some "Operation Bulldog" against (Smoke Jag) player B...but my clanner ass wanted in too, and my GM knew player A was a weaker player. So he called an audible; I'd play a small Nova Cat force with a grievance against the local Jags (in theory my job was to advise player-A, while dropping with my small clan force.) Of course, the scenario dice gods screwed us and the plan falls apart, the IS player-A mis-dropping about where the GM had told me the Smoke Jags should have been, but early. I send my best scout (a Shadowcat Prime) to see what's up and instead of opening comm channels, player A mistook me for a Smoke Jag and shot at me instead. My GM simply told me "survive the next six turns"...in a lone Shadow Cat vs 2 IS heavies. The SCat survived. Player A blew my gauss, but I blew one of his XLEs before the GM finally told us that the comm channels were now clear, reinfocements had arrived and were screaming orders to stop shooting; we'd just fought a blue-on-blue scenario. Player B didn't even get to play until game 2, but spent game 1 laughing his ass off anyway.
Moral of the story: sometimes issuing a batchall first is a good idea. Your GM might be just as sadistic as your dice. Also, ShadowCats make kick ass guerillas on a forest map.
Know when to hold em and when to fold em. Anything long term in battletech and running away becomes a part of life. That's how these mechs get to be over a hundred years old.
Most of our battles eventually run into "The Fourth Battle of Black Ridge" or something because we didn't want to lose out on all our stuff or hard-fought gains. In the older system, the "random" encounters were always more tonnage than us and the "hold the field" roll was usually at a 8+ or 9+, even if we held the field.
The C-bill/support point system seemed a lot less severe.
Damaged gyro? Blown out sensor? No problem; my tech with natural aptitude in mech repair, outstanding attribute (LRN 6 or whatever what the max was) and since he didn't have a mech, snuck all his build points in to stats and special abilities. IIRC his target to repair armor was 1+ and since he was a genius (and a bit of an arrogant ass) he'd pawn that off on one of the junior tech. I fixed engine and gryo hits on a regular basis.
I only ever played two BattleTech campaigns. One was a four player, narrative style campaign I ran where the four players landed on a planet with nothing but Stingers, and had to loot and salvage better mechs from the occupying Kurita forces. Didn't work so well, mainly because one of the players sabotaged another player's cockpit.
The second one was where I landed a whole regiment worked out on BattleForce templates onto a planet, alongside other players, on a planet scale strategic map. We'd move lances and elements of that regiment out to maneuver on the strategic map, and if two opposed units ended up in the same space, we'd fight the battle on hex maps. That campaign was slow, and very unfun, since it favored asymmetric gankfests.
Sounds like your group has a "no middle ground" problem...
It was two different groups, but I get it.
The thing about BattleTech is that it begs you to operate on that macro level. I mean, you have all these detailed writeups about these armies (20+ regiments of Dieron Regulars? 5 regiments of Wolf's Dragoons? How many regiments of the Fusiliers of Oriente?), and you want to see how they'd operate in a theatre of battle as a whole contingent of combined arms.
On the other hand, BattleTech is a very micro-detailed wargame, with skill levels, detailed damage, customization, and a sort of economy. You want to roleplay with it, even without MechWarrior, or even to establish some sort of history regarding these machines and these pilots.
Striking the balance between the two is a real challenge. You want to make these operations epic, but at the same time you want to make the conflicts personal.
I love all of the content of your videos. I find them very informative, and they allow me to have a few questions that I could pose to my players to see how they want to play the game. The only criticism I have for you is maybe speaking to the right of the mic because I'm hearing a lot of pops from your mic and pop filters don't work. You might also consider getting a different mic or lowering your gain. Love the content, dislike your mic. Have a great one. o7