Creating an Alpha Strike Force - Part 1

BattleTech Alpha Strike is nice, quicker and simpler than BattleTech, but not in all aspects. In BattleTech you can simply get any minis (or even paper standups) put on the grid and have fun. Well, Alpha Strike is basically the same, but to to a better experience, you need more than just that.

Alpha Strike (or AS, for short) is a step in the direction of the modern wargaming experience. While in BattleTech (BT), having several mech squads (called 'lances') can slow the game almost to a halt, in AS they are a common place - if you play AS with just a couple of miniatures, the game will last less than half an hour. And when you play with several miniatures, painting them and force organization are important - as in 40K, where you simply can't get any miniature you have and put on the table - they need to be of a certain type, belong to a certain army and be organized in squads and such.

While AS is more 'structured' and allegedly balanced for tournament play, it sends curious mixed signals:

• Wargames that use measuring usually have strict rules for basing, and AS have nothing of that. Even the AS Lance Packs have irregular hex bases, the same you see in the minis of the Introductory Box Set (in the Box Set they were made that way so you can read the hex info without lifting the mini, what is useless in AS) - nice to keep consistency, but if you buy the also official metal minis from Iron Wind Metals, they are supposed to be based on 32mm regular hex bases. And older miniatures used to have 30mm bases...
• The AS rulebook doesn't have any rules on force organization, only some lance examples and say to you to balance the forces using PVs (point values, the same as unit point cost on 40K). Even the Lance Packs, that you can buy and use the minis on any setup you want, are also suggested to be used 'as is', as a single 'ready to play' lance, even it having mechs that are exclusive for certain forces. Well, unlike other wargames, the original BattleTech was never strict on that, so it is a bit of heritage and an effort in not alienating the actual game fanbase.
• The rules for Force Organization only appear more than half way through the Alpha Strike Companion sourcebook, sounding that way almost optional - the same is true about the rules for mechs with pilots of different degrees of skill - a VERY important aspect that come all the way from the original BT.
• The Lance Packs come with proper AS cards, that have the PV and the stats of the minis that came in the pack. The cards are double-sided, with info on 2 variations of the mech, for the Clan Invasion era, and other pre-invasion (Succession Wars era). But that's not the case of the box set  (it is an intro for the original BT, not AS, remember?) so you need to get these cards from the Master Unit List (MUL) site, that can be quite a chore.

So, how I am supposed to play this? Get the Lance Packs, agree on PV totals and done? Or should I use Force Organization rules, select a Era, see valid mechs for my army, select proper skill values for my pilots and such?

Well, the answer is, of couse, BOTH.

If you are a casual player, just get what you have, read the rulebook and go ahead. If you came for the original BattleTech game, are used to proxies, loose lance rules and don't care much about the way that modern wargames work, just read the rulebook, pick the minis that I'm sure you already have, choose any optional rules from the Companion book and go.

But I'm a former 40K player, and I've played Warhammer Fantasy, Necromunda, Warmachine, Hordes... I have former BT experience, but I'm also interested in collecting VALID universe forces. When I've played 40K, even if the rules allowed me, I avoided creating units and setups that would be against the fluff. THAT is my point with this post - on how to create valid forces, using your miniatures (that you already have, or that you just got buying the box set and/or the Lance Packs), in 'historically' correct context.

The 'historical'  part is VERY important - just like in Flames of War, depending with moment of WWII you are playing, the choices available to you changes drastically - technology advances, units got obsolete and such. BattleTech is the same - some mechs only appear after a certain time, some eras they are rare, and some times they just got extinct - a good example of this is the Clan Invasion Era - after centuries of stagnated technology, the Clans return bringing TONS of new tech, together with way more powerful mechs.

So you might ask "Why being so anal? Just get your minis and play!". Well, I surely can :D but when you are collecting and you are interested in PAINTING your miniatures, you want them to have an history, to be something that you relate with. I've seen tons of 40K players that just build their models in an hurry just to play, but I've also seen several others that build armies that they like the history, the designs, the characters. For example, I'm a big ComStar fan, the "communication provider with guns" a company/order dedicated in keeping the communications going all over the Inner Sphere, despite all the wars, having a twisted religious focus while doing that - and the Word of Blake, the separatist and way more violent splinter faction born inside ComStar.

So, before we start, there it is a quick summary of what we will cover on this series of posts:

1. Choosing an era;
2. Getting the data of the mechs you have;
3. Checking availability;
4. Checking Formation rules;
5. Building Lances.

I'll only cover mechs, no infrantry, aerospace fighters, tanks, etc. Only mechs. By the time you get familiar with your mech force to start venturing on getting other types of units, you will not need my help anymore ;) I'm also assuming that you have some miniatures, or at least know roughly which ones do you want to buy. In my case, I've build my forces focusing on the minis I get buying 1 Introductory Box Set + 1 of each Lance Pack, that gives me a total of 58 mechs. I'm not a BattleTech expert, or an AS expert neither - but I'll try to share in the next posts my experience trying to build my forces for AS play.