Something that I don't normally do is just lay out mental musings over the game, other than when I have an audience of players that can't go anywhere & thus are forced to sit there and listen to me.
One of my favorite things about BattleTech is that, if it came down to it, you could strip all of the background information entirely from the game, grab handfuls of miniatures, and rebuild the setting to your liking or just dump any semblance of it entirely. This was a bathroom thought I had, where you just use the basic rules, grab some intro box plastics, and paint them in five separate colors to represent five nations on a single planet or something. -I- wouldn't, personally, but that's only because I'm very invested into the fiction of BattleTech.
Speaking of that, the two newest novellas, "The Anvil" and "A Splinter of Hope," were awesome. Pardoe is my favorite BTech writer by far, and following up with "Shattered Fortress" after reading the two stories was fairly immersive in the late Dark Ages period. I don't care much for most of the current crop of characters (I miss Katana Tormark, so basically Alaric and Anastasia are all I have left) but post-"Bonfire of Worlds," I'm really getting into things. I do have to go back and complete my Dark Ages novel collection though. One used book at a time, if need be. Seeing all of the devastation and how clustereffed the map is in 3150 sure did bring a smile to my face.
I like luring in new players (which I'm switching solely to Alpha Strike to teach, I think) by getting their favorite color schemes and/or preferred nationalities, and then either assigning them units/factions that sync up or building new units. This has become way too costly for me to maintain right now, as my financial situation isn't where I would like it to be in regards to my gaming desires, but it has been a successful-ish strategy in the past. You show them some shiny purple 'Mechs or describe a faction as "Klingons with space Viking flavor," gets the nerds every time.
Of course, I also have a hard time just generalizing by current national identities. Saying the Lyran Alliance is like Germany works, but tends to omit how much Scottish or Irish other sections of the LA have. Same with Japanese Draconis Combine not mentioning Arabic Azami worlds. The Free Worlds League is too much of a cluster to generalize. Calling the FedSuns the Brits and the CapCon the Chinese/Russians works though. Especially if you want to see which of your friends is a dirty Commie by how quickly they play Capellan. I kid. The CapCon is cool in my book.
When naming characters, I use a random name generator, anime, or historical figures. The Draconis Combine gets the brunt of this, thanks to so much mecha anime and so many awesome samurai. Sorry not sorry.
Like with my Chronicles/World of Darkness projects though, sometimes named MechWarriors are inspired by people I know. Or, in at least one case, were characters that friends have used in the past, along with their backstories, progressed forward. An example of this is Shinigami, my old roommate's main pilot character. Things happened to him and he'll eventually be showcased in a unit profile later on.
I've been playing for well over half my life, and have seen numerous line developers & writers work on the setting, as well as multiple companies own it. In all that time, with all of the loose plot threads that never went anywhere or the bankruptcies and embezzlements and whatnot, I've never lost faith in the game as a whole and still try to buy all of the products as they come out. I haven't, unfortunately, as there are at least ten sourcebooks I can think of off of the top of my head that I don't own, but I've always made the attempt. Mostly for Ironwind Metals.
Who, by the way, sometimes makes minis with waaaaaay too many pieces and I get intimidated. I have something in the neighborhood of 600 painted hex bases worth of 'Mechs, infantry, and vees, which is a metric fuckload when you consider we usually play 4 v 4 games, and nothing has made me shudder at assembly quite like the Sarath, except maybe the Omega (mostly the cost of the mini) or the Word of Blake Spectral LAMs (of which, I've only assembled one, despite owning three). I know its for custom posing and stuff, just gets daunting when it takes an hour of assembly before I can even prime and shit.
I'd like to play more campaigns. My interest in a 5th Succession War/Jihad campaign has waxed and waned a lot over the years, currently sitting in a waning period despite my rules work, but having lost (only temporarily, I hope), my two biggest group core members, and that we're all adults with limited gaming time due to family & work obligations, it's tough getting anything set up for a regular basis. Getting together for one-offs and pick up games doesn't take any real planning but doing Operation: Nachtfalke would require coordinating up to 7 different schedules (not counting spouses and whatnot) and that's just daunting. I loved the Outreach campaign Rachel and I did, which could still use a mop up mission or two to really call it good, since it gave the Word control over most of the Chaos March. More mini-campaigns with specific players on specific planets or regions of space would be great. Operation: Annwyn Rising though.
Eventually, I want to get back into fiction writing, polishing up my older "Fen Files" and "Further Adventures of the Kuroi Kaze" stories, as well as writing more background fluff on current non-canon units. I was thinking about the Operation: Ice Storm novellas, and really would love to do something similar with the Annwyn campaign. Because, bringing it back around to the point I made at the start, whilst you can entirely divorce the game from the setting, actively incorporating a fiction-driven narrative in this rich and fantastic universe really kind of ups the stakes of each game. I've written other posts about building non-canon units or characters in the game to make players more attached to them on the tabletop and I really feel like fiction is the superglue that makes BattleTech more special than video games or even something like Magic that has fiction but whose fiction doesn't usually impact deck building.
Mentioning IWM, the Ryoken-III/"Skinwalker" was part of their Wolf Empire lance pack for GenCon exclusives, meaning it will be out in general distribution 1st quarter 2019, if my supplier is correct. I've been waiting for that to be released since 2016, and it's the last two minis I need to finish my Clan Wolf Golden Keshik Binary. Vlad Ward's "Suffer Unto the Locust" command star has been ready to eviscerate the Inner Sphere for a while now, and I have two of the five 'Mechs of the second star done, so once these little guys are good to go, ooooh yeah. They also have a variant sculpt for the Warwolf H, which is my preferred config, so I might look at adding another star to either my DA Beta Galaxy unit or my Omegas. Or, I mean, down the road sometime, I maaaay do another Galaxy of Wolves. Sure, I currently have 4 forces represented, totaling at least a full Cluster, but there's always room for more. Delta Galaxy's DA Howl Keshik mayhaps, if a color scheme comes out for them, or the Blue Keshik if not? Since Delta becomes the Steel Wolves in the post-Republic era, I'd go with that scheme but "Steel Wolves use an overall silvery steel color with swatches of hide
brown with or without 'fur' patterns over portions of the upper surfaces" sounds too similar to Omega Galaxy for me.
Of course, I have to complete current units before I think that far ahead. I have so much painting to get done, and Song's Sentinels, for instance, needs another lance to be functionally complete, whilst I only have a single star for Clan Diamond Shark's Beta Galaxy, despite having a Cluster sketched out. I just like 'Mechs and this is my main hobby so...
Going on hiatus from other games is going to help all of my time and money issues, at least towards gaming, I think. An average pack of Magic cards is only $4-5 depending, but I can get one new 'Mech for every 2 to 4 packs I buy, and since I'm only going to get one good card per pack if I'm lucky (and I am VERY lucky with my Mythic pulls), I'm probably better off just buying singles if I need more cards & focusing much more on my table top front. The downside is that too many of my friends are dedicated Magic players & it's hard to get them to spend several hours on BattleTech, but meh. Maybe I just need new friends!
I'm kidding. I love my friends.
Except when I loan them sourcebooks and three years later, still haven't seen them, but what can you do?
I may edit this more down the road with other thoughts I have, but for the moment, this has been some nice therapy where I don't need to speak & no one is forced to listen to my gaming pontificating.
9/26/18 edit - I think I'm more interested in expanding my Omega Galaxy Wolves than in building a new force. Also, Skinwalker B configs are out already, so now I just have to finish painting my Golden Keshik. Diamond Sharks are sitting at about two Trinaries instead of a Star now. Sketching out other forces that may or may not see building before 2020, but I also want to get a house soon, so I may just clear out my backlog (which is still massive) and then hold off on all gaming purchases until after that. But speaking of...
Picking up "used" miniatures is a great way to bulk out forces and build new ones. Downside is that you're limited in what you can find/buy, but upside is Blood Asp A for $8 beats $16.95, especially if their "used" status is just that they aren't in the original blister pack, not that they've been assembled or painted. A Star of Jade of Falcons made up of 2 Pinions and 3 Spirits for $30? That's an insanely good deal.
No comments:
Post a Comment