If you missed the first one of this series, click here!
Well, it is finally time to get started!
First, you need to choose which era do you want to play. I'll not write an era breakdown here, since you can find better ones elsewhere. What is important to know is that the 'original' starting point of the BT universe is the Succession Wars era (the Star Leacgue happens before that, but was just fleshed out recently). Because of it, it is the most known era by the BT fans and casual players, but have some aspects that can complicate things... in this era, the technology development came to a halt, with people trying to maintain rests of Star League equipment. Som, no new mechs are produced, availability is limited, and everything needs to be salvaged form the battlefield, Mad Max-style, cause the are not produced anymore. While it is an exciting era for role playing and original BT games and campaigns, it can be very limiting for AS, due the low variety of mechs, no army 'exclusives' and the mech is something rare on the battlefield, at the there is a limited infantry variety (no battle armor options). it can be nice in a boardgame with 4 mechs per side, but when you have 4 or more LANCES of 4 (or more) mechs each, it doens't seem very suitable anymore.
Then after the Succession Wars, the Clan Invasion era begins. Here (and at the end of the Succession Wars) things get way more interesting, with new mechs available, more infantry options (elementals!) and the arrival of the Clans, that bring lots of new tech, weapons, mechs, and exclusive designs by faction - when in the Succession Wars the difference was just the paintjob, here you can start having unique armies on the table. Seeing that it become obvious why Catalyst Game Labs chose the Clan Invasion era as the suggested starting point for AS instead of sticking to the Succession Wars, that was the choice for all intro boxes released since the game came to existance. Of course, you can play AS in ANY era, but having somewhere to start make things easier ;)
And don't mind it so much - most of the miniatures represent mechs that can be found in any era, especially the ones that come in the intro box set and in the Lance Packs. Your choice of era will have little impact on that. What changes are the VARIANTS - the same mech chassis, while still used by the armed forces over the years (and centuries), get improvements and specializations, and of course those variants are not available at all the eras, and that's what you should pay attention to. As a rule of thumb, you mini represent the CHASSIS, so you can use that mini to represent any variant you want during a game, considering you have the stats card for that variant. Some specific variants got their own models, but unless the variant is way different that the main chassis, nobody will make a fuss about it.
For this series of articles, I'm assuming that you have some miniatures, by buying the box set, Lance Packs, single miniatures on eBay, etc. If that's not your case, you will have the extra job of going through the MUL site and handpicking the mechs you want. With your minis at hand (or a list of them), access the MUL site, an go to the Units option. There, enter the name of the mech, WITHOUT the model name (ex: "ZEUS", instead of "ZEU-6S"). Then choose the Availability Era and press Filter - don't choose a faction filter! (I'll explain later):
You'll see that are several variants for the Zeus, in this example. So, let me tell you that the Clan Invasion era starts at the year 3050, so you'll quickly see that some of them are from the Succession Wars, others are new models from the end of the Succession Wars, and one was created just after the Clan Invasions began. You can also see that some are 'Introductory' that means mechs that are convered in one or more intro boxes released over the years, and some are 'standard' - both are ok to use. Just avoid 'experimental' ones - these are oddballs used on specific games and are not something you can just put on the table and your opponent have to swallow. Avoid the ones with proper names, these are unique to a certain BT character and have special characteristics - unless you are doing and specific force from BT literature AND you opponent is ok playing against it, keep clear of those as well.
Now, enter the mech profile. Which one? The PV value on the list tells you how much it will cost at your force, and can serve for some guidance here. Otherwise, enter one by one, and save a copy of the Alpha Strike card of that mech. On a peice of paper (or a text file) write down the variant name, with the Faction Availability of that mech - if you are focused on an specific force, like Draconis Combine for example, just take a quick look and confirm if that mech is available to that army an/or is marked as Inner Sphere General.
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| Alpha Strike Card |
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| Faction Availability |
Now, remember that I've told you to NOT filter by faction? That's why - MUL is not very practical when filtering factions. All Great Houses - Draconis Combine/Kurita, Lyran Commonwealth/Steiner, Free Worlds League/Marik, Federated Sunbs/Davion and Capellan Confederation/Liao are part of "Inner Sphere General". ComStar and Word of Blake are as well, BUT NOT AT ALL ERAS. In this example, Zeus, at the Clan Invasion era, is Inner Sphere General, and is available to all Houses, ComStar and WoB. At the Succession Wars era, ComStar is NOT part of Inner Sphere General, since they had access to some mechs that the Houses only got later. And the Word of Blake didn't even existed. The same happens to Clans, that are divided in Home World Clans (HW Clan) or Inner Sphere Clans (IS Clan), that changes over the eras as well - and mercenaries - usually, all mercenaries can have mechs from the Mercenary Faction, but the Merc forces of the Wolf's Dragoons and Kell's Hounds are so different from their usual merc counterparts, that they have their own faction availability. The Dragoons and Hounds can only have mechs listed to them, not mechs that are only available to the Mercenary Faction. Don't forget to check the Factions entry at the top of the page carefully.
So, for the sake of this example, if you want to build a Draconis Combine force, any mech that appear listed as Draconis Combine OR Inner Sphere General is OK.
Once you have that info on all you mechs, we can move to the next step, that is build the force and assign the mechs to their lances. You may notice that some miniatures that you have are form mechs that are simply not available to the force you want to build. It sucks, but there is an small caveat: if the mech is not available to the faction you want, BUT is available at that era, you can call "the salvage rule".
In fact it is not a rule, it is more likely a house rule - but a rule used by BattletTech players practically since se game exists. it works like this - war at the BT universe never ends, but that's not true for the supplies. All forces try to salvage what they can from the battlefield, spare parts to whole mechs - some mechs are rare, and there is no replacements being made anymore. That way, is not uncommon for a force to have one or another mechs salvaged, that belonged to the enemy - even if you nation don't manufacture that particular model, commanders will try to use it to its fullest before giving up on those machines. With that bit of BT lore in mind, you can have one or two mechs not normally available to your force, and it allows for very interesting forces, full of character ;)
Force Organization
Before we start defining the actual Lances that we will use at our force and assign mechs to them, there is one important aspect to understand - not everybody use "Lances". Some forces uses Level IIs, Stars and Novas instead.
Only Inner Sphere armies use the default 4-mech lance formations, including mercenary forces of any kind and the Periphery States. The only exception are the ComStar and the Word of Blake, that use Level IIs (see below) - it doesn't have anything to do with the "Inner Sphere General" category we discussed before - regardless the era, IS forces use 4-mech lances and ComStar/WoB uses Level IIs. 3-4 Lances for a Company, 3-4 Companies form a Battalion and so on.
ComStar and Word of Blake uses an unique type of formation called Level II, called that way because it is formed by six Level I units (1 mech = 1 Level I unit). All their formations follow that rule: 6 Level Is form a Level II; 6 Level IIs for a Level III, and so on.
Stars are the name of the lances used by the Clans, that are formed by FIVE elements each. Two Stars form a Binary, 3 Stars form a Trinary (duh), 3-5 Binaries or Trinaries form a Cluster and finally 3-5 Clusters form a Galaxy.
Nova is another take on the Clans' Star, formed by 5 mechs PLUS 5 points of Infantry (1 point = 5 battle-armored or 20-25 conventional troopers). I've listed it here just for completion, since I'll not cover anything different than mechs here.
In my turn trying to create my armies, I was focused on creating small, varied forces for demo play - I was not concerned in creating complete Companies or Battallions or anything - especially considering that we are only talking about mechs here - full regimental count would include aerospace support, infantry, tanks and other types of units, that are being our scope here.
Well, that is it for today. In the next (and probably the last) article, I'll cover the Lance building rules, and maybe some other details - if the article turns to be too big (or I find that we have too many details to cover), I'll do an extra one :D
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