The final step, postage, has just been collected from my credit card. I have no idea how much longer this means.
I’m a little excited. I think mostly about the neoprene maps.
Category: BattleTech & MechWarrior
2023 – Well that went by fast!
About Bikes
A garage queen. That’s what she was this year. I didn’t even put enough on her to get her to a servicing. She suffered in a knock over at the start of the year. Then later the battery finally called it quits. 2024 should see a MotoGP trip again. I might camp more, I’ve lost some of the accommodation options I had last time and I will be much tighter on funds I think.
I think my pushbikes sat in the garage the entire year almost. I certainly didn’t take them anywhere to ride.
About Babes
Another year of high school. One has friends dramas, one doesn’t. But they are doing well, they’re just not sure what it is they want to do yet. The eldest has started learning to DRIVE!
About Bytes
Not really a lot here this year, tech wise. I didn’t pick up any new tech. The tech I had trundled along well. Not much spare cash this year to be honest. And mistakes were made in other areas.
It was a bigger year in my other hobbies. Running a D&D campaign with some other school teachers that gets along ok. Next year, I think I will be more flexible and so the game should be more consistent. Beyond that group, my other group finished off Strahd. That was a fun adventure and my character was integral in his final defeat! Then continued as player in the follow on campaign, Spelljammer, which is all new to me. This and the existing Dungeon of the Mad Mage, are moving a little slower and seem a little less dramatic. But I am enjoying the games.
Mistakes were made and I spent way too much on the Battletech Kickstarter, which I hope to see in the new year. That will give me way too many minis…
I also threw a little bit of money (I felt a bit burnt by my eyes being bigger than my credit card in the Battletech one) at the TMNT Kickstarter. I just bought the books (in the plain, original colours) and the dice tray.
Baldur’s Gate released and I’ve been enjoying it. It’s challenging, massive, and keeps me engaged. Well done to Larian Studios.
About Me
So my year on class wasn’t the greatest. My class (by all accounts) was a very tough bunch of kids, that all the other teachers on the same stage (and supported me throughout) all say that they would have struggled with. However, I also think I made some mistakes early on, which a more experienced teacher might have avoided, that were a factor in the struggle with my class. It was a very busy year and in the end I was very happy to see it end.
I will not be on class next year, and part of me worries that it means that the executives think that I have failed. I’ve not had any feedback from them on the topic, so I’m kind of in the dark about it. I did say in my “what do you want to do next year” that I would like a class, but was happy to not be on class and I know the teacher that they swapped me over with was super keen to have a class. I will be working across all stages next year and while it will be complicated, it should also be less stressful. And certainly less administration!
The two pay rises this year will certainly help in the coming year too. Now I just need to finalise my accreditation to get the next one.
BattleTech – Kickstarter: Mercenaries
I think some mistakes were made somewhere – I’ve just done some counting and I will soon be able field 16 lances of mechs for BattleTech, 64 mechs. I think the most I’ve played is 4 mechs (1 lance) a side.
Originally I had a collection of Ral Partha miniatures. This was purchased in a period around 1990. 17 in all. That’s a company, with a couple of extras, plus a lance of Clan mechs. I also purchased some vehicles: a pair of Demolishers and a pair of Condor hover tanks. There are some pictures here in my post when I picked up some of the new Catalyst miniatures.
About three decades later, in 2020, I picked up the Catalyst games BattleTech Starter Box and the standard box set. That brought in 10 new IS mechs. The running total is 24 IS mechs now. 6 lances, or two companies. Plus the Clan lance.
After that, the Clan Invasion boxset. 5 mechs, and 2 points of Elementals. 9 Clan, 24 IS, total is 33. I bought a separate “ForcePack”. The Clan Heavy Striker Star, total 38 (14 Clan).
But now the recent Kickstarter. The first one I’ve seen before it finished. Also my first Kickstarter as a backer. That comes with 8 new IS mechs (46). I picked up 3 “Salvage Boxes” (basically a random single mech), but I used 2 to get a pair of Aerospace fighters. And one random Clan (47, 15 Clan).
Then things went wrong. Originally, I thought I would just buy a few ForcePacks, you know, to pick up a few mech’s I’ve always wanted. Eventually that ended up as a total of 64 mechs. Then I thought, this is a silly amount.
So back to the Kickstarter, and instead I bought a bulk pack (no info cards, no boxes) and a couple of ForcePacks, and bought one online separately which got me most of mechs I wanted. And I’ve ended up back at 64 Mechs.
Um, when would I EVER field this? Suddenly my company is a massively reinforced combined arms battalion!
Actually, writing this I wonder what a IS vs Clan fight would look like. 40 IS vs 25 Clan. Could be a great fight. LOOOOONG in actual play time. So a battalion vs a trinary and binary.
I did also get some other stuff. Included was a few digital items (books, some wallpapers). They also let me pick a coin (I took Wolf’s Dragoons). And a 2 Battletech inscribed d6 dice. I added two more sets of dice (I can use these in D&D too) so I added Grey Death (as the insignia is similar to Bleeding Skulls) and a Wolf”s Dragoons. These look pretty cool.
The last item is something different – a battlemat, a double sided, double sized neoprene map. I can run a whole game on this one map. After some back and forth with this, I’ve ended up with 2 of these mats. Hmm, those two mats, plus all the mechs. If nothing else, it would be an epic photo! Standby in twelve months time.
So mistakes were made.
Battletech – Battle Report Part 2
With the IS lance holding the water feature, I was pretty sure the Clan pair were about to get smashed, but the better shooting had things pretty even for a round or so.
When the Executioner leapt across the water and behind the Battlemaster, I thought it might rapidly turn their way. But they had missed the initiative, and for the rest of the battle, the initiative had a significant effect. The initiative with the IS for the next few rounds, meant the Battlemaster could turn about to face the Executioner. Then the Atlas, deciding that the back of the Clan mech was too much of an inviting target, turned as well, showing its back to the Hellbringer. The Commando dashed across to line up the side of the Loki and the suddenly the IS had fair position.
Damage started to build up on both sides at this point. The Hellbringer had already lost a PPC, but now it started losing more internal structure on the left. At the same time, the Atlas had lost its AC20, taking away its biggest punch. But the Executioner was really suffering, and a few rounds later, after losing armour all across its left flank, it suffered too many engine hits and went down.
Here I was confident that the IS had the battle in hand. But the Clan doesn’t go down without a fight and the Clan also started winning the initiative again.
Breaking off, the Hellbringer put significant range between itself and the IS lance. Using the trees, the Hellbringer managed to keep the IS lance at a disadvantage. The Hellbringer weathered the Commando’s attacks to keep the larger mechs out of optimum position. All the while, the Hellbringer whittled away at the Atlas, taking out the LRM20 and some smaller weapons. The Atlas was also rocked by a laser hit to the head, though the pilot shook that one off.
The Hellbringer moved to the extreme edge of the field, to make it hard for the IS to get behind it. Without a fast scout or a jumper, the IS had no real answer except to keep hitting the Clan opponent. This didn’t go very well as the Hellbringer kept moving away, holding the range as long as it could. It was also trying to back into some cover where the IS mechs would have found it hard to attack. At this point, I decided that if the Clan mech made it back to the centre, it will have gotten away.
But its luck didn’t hold and losing the initiative meant that the Clanner couldn’t keep the distance as well as before. So even though the Awesome had found itself completely out of position for a few turns, and the Commando simply pulled away, the heavily damaged Atlas and the sturdy Battlemaster to finally break through the shattered Hellbringer’s defences.
The day belonged to the IS.
Look, it was a bit lopsided from the start. I had thought the Loki was heavier than it was, and I should have kept the Executioner at a longer range. At least until the Gauss ammo had been depleted. I had also thought the Commando was faster, or at least had jump jets.
Anyway I did enjoy it. And practiced and revised the rules.
BattleTech – Another Solo Game
This time I decided to run a slightly larger game. I thought to have some heavy hitters on both sides and slug it out to see what happens. And so…
Inner Sphere Lance of a Battlemaster, Atlas, Awesome and Commando vs two points of Clan, a Hellbringer and an Executioner. This is an all out, knock out the enemy brawl, last side standing mission.
I randomly selected two maps, ending up with both as desert, one basically flat and empty and the other with some hills and a small lake.
Rolling for initiative, the IS got to deploy first, taking the hilly side. Tactically they thought to send the Commando around the side (this is when I realised it has no jump jets and is kinda slow for a light, ah well), get the Awesome on the other flank and put the two others into the lake as soon as possible. This will give partial cover AND improve their heat management.
There were about 3 rounds there as the Clan charged all the way across the other map, no one able to hit either due to hills or too much forrest.
In this photo, the Clan are about halfway across the map, so must be turn 2. The IS are starting to implement their plan. So far there has not been any shots taken from either side due to range and the IS staying in cover.
After about two rounds of fighting, the Hellbringer has lost its entire left arm after taking an AC20 on that side. The rest of the mechs have a smattering of damage across their armour, with the Commando creeping around the outside, not really engaged so far.
The IS have got themselves where they wanted and currently hold the lake and have flanked the Clan. From their perspective, they have the Clan right where they wanted. However, the Clan are not yet spent and the IS may be about to get a rude shock at the manoeuvrability of the Executioner. We will see.
I’m using the dice again, but forgot to get out my d20s for the heat tracking. I might go pick up a half dozen loose d20s and chuck them in the BattleTech box I’m storing stuff in. As my second run using dice to track, it really does make adding up a lot of the shots so much simpler. Would have been nice way back in 1989 if my friends and I had known this system.
2021 – Another big year
Well 2021 turned out to be even more of a strange and significant year than 2020. Again, with my wife and I both in “essential services” we weathered the COVID lockdown storm better than a lot. We did have a couple of near misses, mostly me, with being close contacts and having to test or isolate. But so far we’ve dodged it. We are both fully vaxxed and so are our kids. Mrs and I both have had the booster too.
About Bikes
The Ninja didn’t see as much riding as expected. The lockdown had me at home about 3 days a week so it didn’t commute as often. Worse, the MotoGP, for which I had been planning and organising for most of the year, was cancelled at about 100 days out. Still, we did get in a ride to Canberra and to Newcastle, both of which went well. So it’s not all bad. It’s approaching 42,000km now with almost 40,000km of that being my own after 3 years of ownership. Possibly the lowest tally of any bike I’ve owned?
I am planning for the MotoGP this coming year. With Jack Miller and Remy Gardener both in the main game it will be exciting from an Australian perspective. Otherwise, the bike might see only a little riding as I don’t think I’ll be commuting as much on it.
As for the other two wheels, I’ve spent a little time in lockdown getting used to cycling again. I did plan a whole bunch of mountain bike rides as the lockdown finished and work wound down, but weather and life found a way to block it. I’m hoping January will be different.
About Babes
Mrs and the eldest both carry on fine. The younger one starts high school in 2022. Not much else happening there. One plays Genshin Impact whenever she gets the chance. The other swaps between Switch games and Roblox. Again, with enough devices and steady internet, they completed their own schooling from home without any drama during our lockdown.
About Bytes
Of course, the biggest news there is the final gasping death of the PC. My 1st gen i7 has finally gone dark (and I mean this literally, no post screen even). I suspect the actual culprit is the 9800GT. Sorry, Mrs, looks like I’ll have to buy a whole new PC, this one is dead….
So I did. I’ve ordered an 11th Gen i5. I did want to get a 12th gen, but my budget won’t stretch that far. It’s also going to be a mini-ITX case, so much smaller than the mid-tower it replaces. I’ll post a full description in a week or two when the parts have arrived and I’ve built it.
Not really a lot else in this category. I’ve saved up enough that even on top of the emergency PC purchase I am still intending to upgrade my 9.7 iPad Pro to a new one. I may hold off long enough to see if they do add the M2 chip or the mini-LED screen makes its way to the 11″ Pro before I do. The Surface has had much more use this year, so the iPad is less urgent.
Dungeons & Dragons continued well also. I’m running two groups at the moment and playing in two games. I think it will be a little much in 2021, so I plan to wind up one of the games I’m running (the Ghosts of Saltmarsh) and move the Wild beyond the Witchlight game to Friday (as a replacement). I also plan to leave one of the other games, probably the Sunday crawl. It’s more of a home-brew than a straight crawl, and a lot of fun, but I’m more interested in the story from CoS. Though perhaps if my character dies, I’ll pull the character from the home-brew as my Dwarven wild magic sorcerer is proving a bit of fun too. I also messed about a little with Battletech again, which I have enjoyed. I wonder what it would be like against a real person… (I imagine I will lose terribly).
About Me.
Well last, and by no means least is the decision to finally make the official career switch that has been building for about the last 5 years. Next year will see me as a full-time primary school teacher. While I won’t have my own class, I will have a set schedule so I will be able to work on finalising my proficiency, ready for my own class the following year (fingers crossed).
It is a big life change and certainly at the beginning when I am at the bottom of the salary pile, I think things will be a lot tighter at home than they have been for some time. Thankfully we have ourselves pretty nicely set up and things like upgrading the PC and the iPad are already budgeted.
Battletech – Battle Report 1
A long time since I’ve played this!
After watching a couple of games online I noticed a system where people were using different six sided dice to indicate if the mech had walked, run or jumped and how many hexes. Additionally, one group was using d20 to indicate heat. I was intrigued as this wasn’t something my friends had thought of back when we were playing (almost before the internet, in 1989). With my new Clan box set, time to try it out.
I picked a small match, and only a single map sheet. I had a Madcat, supported by a point of Elementals in an attack against a Battlemaster and a Thunderbolt. So a heavy clanner (with 5 armoured soldiers) against original specification Assault and Heavy. It would seem like a easy win for the Inner Sphere pair, but the Clan run better weapons, more armour per ton and have better shooting skills.
The Clan forces concentrated on the Battlemaster, hoping to knock it quickly out of the fight. But an assault mech can take a lot of damage before things start to go wrong. Both sides used terrain where they could and the IS were assisted by a long string of winning initiative.
Eventually, the damage started to add up. The Battlemaster lost an arm, then a that side’s torso, but the Madcat lost one of it’s LRM launchers, along with some armour. The Elementals harassed where they could, to good effect and remained hard to hit. The Thunderbolt joined in, but the Madcat could also soak up a sizeable amount of damage for its size.
The Battlemaster succombed first. After losing armour from its entire torso, it’s right arm and all of the right torso internals, it eventually lost its entire centre torso and was destroyed.
The Clanners turned their attention to the Thunderbolt. With the initiative now leaning towards the Clanners they were able to constantly bracket it between the Madcat and the Elementals. But the Madcat had not got out of the fight with the Battlemaster unscathed and was missing armour all down both side torsos and all the armour from its left leg.
The Thunderbolt fired away, uncaring about his heat levels. He knew he had to give it all for any chance to survive.
The mechs traded head shots. The Elementals continued to chip away at the rear armour of the Thunderbolt while the Madcat pounded the front. Even so, the Thunderbolt took out the right arm of the Madcat, stripping away one of its heaviest weapons.
And still they fought.
Battletech accounts for damage simultaneously. When the shots are resolved and damage taken, it doesn’t apply until everyone has had their turn. So if you lose a weapon or a leg, you still have it until the end of the round. This turned out to be important.
Having lost a significant amount of armour all over, the Thunderbolt suffered as the shots started to destroy its internals. Finally, a critical hit struck the ammunition. Without the more advanced CASE (Cellular Ammunition Storage Equipment) that the Clans use to protect from such events, the entire ton of ammunition exploded, taking the Thunderbolt with it.
But in that very same round, with nothing to lose, the Thunderbolt struck the Madcat’s head for the second time. This time, the large laser struck true, right through the remaining armour and destroyed the head. Both mechs were destroyed.
This left the single point of Elementals holding the field and so victory went to the Clan. Without them, it would have been a draw, or entirely possible that the IS could have won over the Madcat.
I enjoyed the little game. Using the dice made it much easier to calculate shots, not having to remember what each had done that turn. It was similar to my use of the tokens in the Roll20 experiment.
Clan mechs hit harder, but I think that their 12% (about) better chance at a hit (their pilot scores are by default better) helps the most. It’s only 2d6 (not a 1d20), so that single point difference can be telling.
Battletech – Clan Invasion
This has been a hard box to track down and the miniatures are even harder, mostly as I missed the Kickstarter.
Anyway, I finally picked it up. Again, similar to the other boxes, you get a few minis (5 mechs plus 2 points of Elementals). A short novel, rules, and a couple of map sheets. I have about 6 maps now across the 3 box sets, plus 2 from my original (1989) set.
To be honest, I mostly picked it up for the minis. I was so impressed with the work on the Inner Sphere mechs I was keen to see Clan mechs given the same treatment. I was not disappointed.
The mech on the left is a Ral Partha metal mini from about 1991. Aside from the blu-tac holding it together, it is clearly less imposing than the righthand mini. These are both Madcats (Timber Wolf), coming in at 75tons. The new plastic mini is excellent.
The rest are just as good. Well done. Perhaps one day I might even field them in an actual game…..
Battletech and Roll20
I use Roll20 to play my Dungeons & Dragons games and it works well for me, especially in this COVID world. Some of those I play with have shown some interest in Battletech and I thought Roll20 might work well for that too.
Doing some research, it looks like some people did a little bit of work to set it up about 4 years ago, but it didn’t go anywhere. Additionally, I discovered a set up called MegaMek. It’s had a LOT of work on it, as an online way to play Battletech. I didn’t really feel like getting into a total new virtual system, so I investigated a little further before deciding to see what I could create myself.
I thought to start with Character Sheets. Making custom ones requires Dev access to R20, an additional cost. So I paid that and looked into it. The Character Sheets are basically a webpage, built with some code and a style sheet. I started a basic one.
One of the early realisations was that I need to make a single sheet that was able to cope with the myriad of mech designs. This was going to be a lot of work.
I got as far as creating space for some basic details (Mech name, tonnage, class, MechWarrior name) and realised that this wasn’t really worth the effort, if you couldn’t really play the game in R20.
So I ceased work on that and started to look at the maps. R20 can do hex maps, so first tick. I know you can quite easily build maps with pictures, but BT relies on elevation and type of terrain in each hex. This affects line of sight as well as hit and damage calculations so is very important. But isn’t something that is part of R20 (as near as I can see). So I would have to mark each hex, just as the cardboard map sheets included in the box sets do. Annoying, but manageable.
I set about making a bunch of tiny individual hex tiles for the terrain. I could put all of these on the map layer and build my board. I looked up weapon ranges and made a map board that was three times the longest range. That way they wouldn’t be able to engage as soon as the game started, inciting some manoeuvring in the beginning of a game. This made a board that was about 80×30 hexes or so. And I started putting each little hex down. Water, forrest, hills etc. Took a while, but I had a map done up.
Next was tokens for the mechs. I found a bunch of random Mech pics, and used Token Stamp 2 to create hex shaped tokens. Pretty soon I had a bit more than a lance of Inner Sphere mechs ready to fight a star of Clan mechs.
Oh, this was going to need all the same paper recording that playing for real would need. Mech Record Sheets, tables for hits etc. Some more google work and I had some printed out for my test game.
So I set up a scenario with the IS attacking towards a Clan Dropship across my map. I realised very quickly that with all the terrain in between and the way that attacks are calculated, meant that engagements were only going to happen at close range. The heavier mechs could only travel 4-6 hexes a turn so there was going to be several turns of just movement (isn’t that what I wanted? Sure, but not so good from a testing perspective).
As they moved into firing range…. actually I’ll go back a step.
I played BT back in 1989/90. Before the Clans were brought into the story (they were simpler times when the great houses were just whacking each other). After that period, while I still bought the occasional reference book and bought my first minis, I never actually played BT. Sure, I played the computer games and recently have read a lot of the novels, but I never got down and rolled the dice.
The way Battletech works, it uses 2d6 for most things. A hit starts with the attackers gunnery skill (default is 4 for IS, 3 for Clans) then adds movement, terrain, weapon ranges. Using a 2d6, means that the little 1 difference between the two gunnery skills makes a significant difference (about 10-12% I think). Then add better weapon ranges and movement (another 1 or 2 points there as well) and suddenly the IS needs a 10 or better but the Clanner only needs a 6 or 7 to hit. Then add in the better heat management and more efficient weapons and suddenly the IS mechs are getting pounded.
But that’s the game. Later the IS improved their tech, and changed tactics and the playing field, at least in the stories, is levelled somewhat.
So I have a bunch of hex tokens on my map. I’m trying to track heat levels, facing, and movement, while also using the paper record sheets to track damage etc.
I found that I could track facing through using the twist ability of the tokens. Also, each token has three circles above it. In D&D I use these to quickly see a character’s hit points, armour class and passive perception. After some experimentation, I began to use these to track overheat level, the number of hexes moved and whether the token ran/walked/prone/stationary etc. This worked quite well actually, letting me run the fights and the info I needed was available easily.
I also experimented with using dynamic lighting. By limiting the arc, I could clearly see the front face of each mech. The hiccup is that a player in the game would only see out that arc, when actually a mech can monitor 360. Using dynamic lighting, this is all black outside of the lit arc. So a partial solution, but I can use the ruler tool and the directions already in the BT rules to do the same thing.
Overall, my hashed together Roll20 experiment worked okay. I still needed paper record sheets and my BT reference tables. Shots weren’t calculated automatically, and I didn’t really investigate a way to track torso facing. But then, those are all things you can’t do with a set of minis, a big table and a cardboard game board.
What it does mean is that I can get a couple of people together and we can play a game of battletech, without actually meeting up. Roll20 acts as the cardboard game map. And no more. At least at this stage.
Oh, and that size map is way too big. At least if you just want to get in and shoot stuff.
BT – New Minis, Old Minis.
So on the occasion of the arrival of my boxed set of BattleTech: A Game of Armored Combat, I noticed some small differences in the new plastic models, as opposed to my 30 year old Ral Partha metal miniatures.
I’ve got some pictures of the old vs new here. And some photos of my collection.
Comparing the Mechs
First up, a Shadow Hawk, a 55 Ton mech. During my playing of Mechwarrior (the original PC game) this was my go to Mech. With the long reach of the auto cannon, I could engage the enemy mechs well before they could approach my lance.
Then the Battlemaster. An 85T assault mech, and in the first set (and this new version), the largest mech included. Later, playing the Pirahna Games BattleTech game, I could never get a Battlemaster that really seemed to work for me. Either no hitting power or too much heat. It stayed in the Mechbay.
My Mechbay
Okay, here they are. My entire holdings of Mechs. Arranged by weight, from 100T Assaults on the left to 20T Lights on the right. As you look through the pictures, they are divided into 3 phases of purchase. Painted mechs are Ral Partha (except 1 plastic has been done). 2 are painted in a funny mix of colours, these were second hand and I have not yet repainted them. The grey plastic ones are the new ones.
Now, sorted roughly into lances, is the Bleeding Skulls Merc Company.
Assault / Command Lance
Leading the way, in the iconic Atlas painted as if it’s a Bleeding Skull, with the blood of his enemies on his hands is the leader of this band of Mercs. Backed up by (now) a trio of Battlemasters it’s a powerful assault lance.
Heavy Lance
Backing up the Assault, is the Heavy Lance with a lot of firepower. The Grasshopper provides a way to swiftly flank using its jump jets.
Medium Lance+
Swift with some solid firepower, the Medium Lance provides some flexibiliy for the company. All jump equipped for extra manoeuvrability.
Fire Support Lance
A trio of LRM carriers with a dedicated Anti-Air Rifleman provides fire support to the company
Scout Lance++
An enhanced scout lance provides the company with the ability to split into seperate teams, or to provide a couple of mechs as flankers, or extra security for the fire support lance if needed.
Clanners!
They also joined the Bleeding Skulls. The Dire Wolf would fit into the Assault Lance, the Warhawk and Timber Wolf augmenting the Heavy Lance, and the Stormcrow backs up the Medium Lance or provide the Scout Lance with some heavy firepower.
Final Thoughts
So there are my Mechs. Having spent my entire life until these, painting 1/72 or 1/48 aircraft it was a big challenge and this was before there was an internet to get tips, advice and painting ideas. So most are painted in sort of aircraft style camo, rather than the more colourful ones seen in the current books (and those who are used to painting Warhammer might have done). Some experiments worked (like the Atlas) and some did not (I’m not sure where I was going with the white Dire Wolf, now I’m thinking an ex-ComGuard). And if you check out the shiny Griffin you’ll see the difference between painting metal using matte enamels vs plastic using acrylics. The light also makes the woodland camo seem like some sort of crazy colour mix, when it’s actually quite similar to the Shadow Hawk next to it.
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