Ah, More Battletech First, then Comics

I started playing Battletech pretty young, but I was in my mid-twenties when I found a serious group. The traditional way that people played Battletech who were very good at it was to stick to the heavier side of the designs, and to work the game very slow and methodically. The trad guys called it "ground-pounding," and what they did made a whole lot of sense. You used less than your maximum movement rate in order to prevent flanking, and you conserved ammunition and watched your heat-scale, which was a trade-off type of problem, as the ammo weapons built next to no heat but mostly had very few shots for a sustained battle, and at long ranges your ammo weapons missed more than they hit. On the other side, the beam weapons you could use as much as you wanted at the risk of going for a core blow-out like Jay did in that double-kill game.

The other big part of playing the game correctly was called, "ranging." What you had to figure out was what range to keep your opponent or opponents in, so that you could do more damage to him than he did to you. In Battletech, you calculated your damage, but it didn't resolve until the end of the damage phase, and all of the damage resolved simultaneously. What that meant was that no one was assumed to have taken any new fire until the current damage phase was completed, and that meant that if you were going toe to toe with someone, you could get damaged pretty bad bringing him down.

The thing for me was that I liked to play a different game. The trad guys knew that light designs were not useless, but your heavy armor took a beating better, which for a guy like Kay meant just about everything, and it did more damage by far. Kay would play only designs with heavy defensive armor packages, even if the design was pretty horrible, as in the case of the Battlemaster, which tried to do everything at once, lasted for an eternity, but also had so many ammo bins that a bad shot meant the end. Further the design was a 95-tonner, the max tonnage being 100, and that meant that the Battlemaster was inevitably your command mech'. That really was normally a good-thing, as the Battlemaster was an endurance based design, but boy the Battlemaster was useless other than to endure on the battlefield while your other mech's knocked your enemies down.

The only 100-tonner in the Ancient Rules of the Game was the Atlas, and we called it the "BM 'Roid Boy," as it was nothing but a five-ton heavier Battlemaster. It would seem if you just wanted another five tons of defense - but no - the Atlas was the worst mech' design in the original game, and I would have been willing to try to beat it with the second worst design, a light mech towards the top of the light class called the Urbanmech. If things had gone well, I might have been able to succeed. At least the Urbanmech packed an Autocannon 10, which was the ammo weapon that self-destructed Jay's Marauder in that game I told you about. As I told you before, it was by far the best weapon in the game, other than you only got ten shots with it and you instantly lost a mech' if the ammo bin went. Also, the Urbanmech design was very not sexy. That did matter to me at least a little.

The two mainstays of my secondary lance were generally the Wasp design and the Stinger design. If you didn't look close, Why either design? The Wasp had a puny med laser, no range, minimal damage, and a backup Short Range Missile 2-pack, which had about the range of the med laser, a point more damage, and as I'm recalling, 24 or 18 shots. The Wasp didn't have much armor. What it did have - was jump jets, and a pretty good range for the jump jets. Any other design in the Ancient and Hallowed 'Tech that had better jet-range was so lightly armored that you had better think three times before fielding it, not just twice. Jump jets allowed a long move without regards to terrain, and you could land facing any direction you wanted, which made a jump-jet design nearly impossible to flank. Also, a design as light as the Wasp could nearly ignore heat concerns, even with the heat of jump jet use.

The Stinger was even more odd. It didn't have jump jets, had a puny med laser and two Anti-Infantry pop-guns that did no damage at all hardly to a mech', and no one fielded Infantry in the Battletech game, mainly because we wanted to field mech's and blast each other. That was the whole point of the game! However, for a light mech', the thing was a durned brick, and it took punishment that some medium mech's couldn't. That was the thing you would miss when looking at the Stinger's tech' sheet.

Generally I'd want two Wasps and two Stingers in my secondary lance, and the goal was to keep the lance close, even though the Stinger couldn't match the Wasp's movement without the jump jets when in rough terrain. I went through a lot of Wasp designs doing pulls too boy, because even with the maneuverability, the Wasp would go down in about two shots from any high-powered weaponry, sometimes in one shot.

With the command lance, it wasn't always an easy pick. I eventually developed a fondness for the Shadow Hawk and Wolverine designs. The Wolverine was a mid-range medium, and it packed a real nice punch, and had good defensive armor. The Shadow Hawk was towards the top of the medium class, and it was a real weird design. It was real slow, as slow as the Atlas, but it packed an Autocannon 20 backed up by a large laser. The large laser had a very long range and did only okay damage, and was better backed up by an ammo weapon like the AC/5 that had a similar range potential.

The combination of weaponry on the Shadow Hawk was bizarre, but the Shadow Hawk was a nice design. The AC/20 had a very short range, but did more damage than any other weapon in the game. You got five nails with it, and you had to get close. The Shadow Hawk also had nice armor, and pretty low heat as long as you watched that large laser, because it's movement rate was so durned slow. That could cause problems in keeping the Command Lance together, and with light designs you wanted to keep on the move to some degree, because that was your biggest advantage. I fielded the Shadow Hawk often - sort of late in my 'Tech career. Also the Shadow Hawk and Wolverine designs were not the sexiest of the designs, but the trad guys fielded them all the time, and I picked up on why they were fielding them so often.

The other two were the Griffin and the Panther. The Griffin packed a PPC backed up by a 5-stack long-range missile rack. What people didn't get is that in the old 'Tech, you played LRM units to get indirect-fire capability, because they weren't any good in comparison with other direct-fire ammunition weapons, and direct-fire ammo weapons were the strongest weapons in the game. The Panther took a different tack, and it was better. You had a PPC backed up by a 4-stack short-range missile rack, and that did 8 points of damage and had 12 shots, but sadly, at med laser range. Both the Griffin and the Panther were slow, and could take a bit of a beating. My own preferred option would have been to take the more lightly armored Griffin's LRM-5 off and stacked on an Autocannon 5, which was a whole lot better than people seemed to be aware.I think the tonnage would have been about equitable, and the payload would have been way better. However, the Ancient 'Tech did not allow customization, and the game played more balanced if you didn't customize, so our group didn't customize.

Another mech' I liked, was the Centurion, but I never fielded it unless I was experimenting because it was well into the heavy-tonnage range. The trad guys called it "the mule," and it was the best workhorse design. Tons of armor, a good stable and traditional weapons set, good heat-sink rack. Sort of an optimized, but rather boring design, and not sexy in terms of art. I'll tell you though, I was not very good with a design like the Centurion, which required very slow and methodical play, but I could have probably brought down the house with one lance of Centurions versus three lances of just about anything.

Kay and I used to laugh about that kind of stuff. The other thing about Kay was that he didn't just play Tech', trad, boring and methodical, he actually had that kind of personality. Kay could have leveled probably 5 mixed lances with one lance of Centurions, and I would have liked to have seen him try.

I never could quite settle on a Command Mech' for my primary lance, but I'd have to say that the Panther was probably the best of the bunch, except for the slow speed. Another one I just loved was the Assassin. The mech' looked good to me, but no one got the mech', except me. It was the lightest medium tonnage, had a bankload of armor, was slow but had a small jump-jet field, packed a med-pop laser, and an LRM-5 stack with two tons of ammo, which came to about 48 shots with the pack. Honestly, I would have rather fielded four Assassin's for indirect fire than four of the heaviest indirect-fire mech', which was called an Archer.

The Archer was a great indirect-fire design, one of only three such designs in the original game. Any other design that packed LRM's was a design that tried to do it all at once, like the Battlemaster. I considered the Assassin the real beaut' with indirect-fire, and four of those and a good scout lance made for some very unhappy fellows at the end of my 'Tech career. I only fielded that team one time, and that was about the time our group split up, and I walked out. I fielded four Wasps and four Assasins and tagged one of the Assassins as my command mech' with electrical tape.

I then proceeded to establish a forward observer with my Wasps and embarrass two mixed heavy lances with about triple the tonnage of my own lances, by laying LRM-5 indirect fire all over them before my Wasps gave out. I didn't even take any damage to my command lance until I was forced to take the Assassin's in close and finish the scenario. A very nice night for myself, but about a five-hour game, and tension that couldn't be cut with just a butter knife for about 4 of those hours. I did it on a dare, I was sure I'd win, and I did. ERIDANI LIGHT HORSE BABY! Should have gotten the tattoo to go with it. The Eridani insignia was pretty amazing.

By the way, I would love to get a tattoo, but I've decided not to do it at this point. I love the look of a good tattoo that fits the person who is wearing the tattoo, but I'm worried about hepatitis risks, which are more prevalent than you'd think, and I think I'm probably already counter-culture enough. Still, maybe one of these days. I'd like something metallic and science fiction looking, if they ever come up with something like that and it's legal. I'm a radical, but I don't want to have to be on good behavior to eat bug-free raisin bran. It is almost purely self-interest. I wish I could raise Caine more than I do.

Alright, next up, Tim has bitten the comics bug. I will be back shortly.