I, Dædalus; my poor boy, Icarus; Thy father, Minos, that denied our course; The sun, that sear’d the wings of my sweet boy, Thy brother Edward, and thyself the sea, Whose envious gulf did swallow up his life. Ah! kill me with thy weapon, not with words. – William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 3, Act […]
Read More →“For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of kings; How some have been deposed; some slain in war, Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed; Some poison’d by their wives: some sleeping kill’d; All murder’d: for within the hollow crown” – William Shakespeare, The Life […]
Read More →Last week my order of Technical Readout: 315 arrived from BattleCorps. I’ve since gotten a chance to read through the book twice, and there are several designs that tweak my interest. What are the early impressions from the book?
Read More →In this article, I continue my overall review of the units offered in the Technical Readout: 3145 series, specifically those units that have captured my eye, and stand above the rest. This entry, covering combat vehicles, continues from the previous article which addressed the ‘Mechs. One of the most enjoyable things about the post-Dark Age […]
Read More →3058 is a bit of an odd duck when it comes to Technical Readouts (TRO), and that always made it harder for me to suss out. It introduces Inner Sphere omni technology in BattleMech form in the TRO series. It also features a large number of older designs, such as the Chameleon, Mackie, and Merlin […]
Read More →When the Clans arrived, they brought some seriously dangerous heavy metal to the Inner Sphere. To this day, it’s arguably the most significant event in recent Inner Sphere history. They came to fight, with OmniMechs that had flexible designs the pod space to fix them to your taste, terrain, and mission profile. At first I thought it would be […]
Read More →After sometimes feeling like Vaporware, an update on Interstellar Operations was posted on BattleTech.com on Tuesday, November 18th. This long-awaited release has been highly anticipated by the community for years. The good news is that we have a Table of Contents ready to go, and so so much material that it will require two sourcebooks to […]
Read More →Over the course of writing my reviews on the Technical Readout : 3145 series, I feel the need to regain perspective and look at the series as a whole, with respect to the units offered. The ‘Mechs, combat vehicles, battle armor suits, AeroSpace fighters and other units covered in these technical readouts essentially represent a […]
Read More →I have a personal love affair with the 3055 Technical Readout. Sure, it may have been the 4th readout in my hands (3025, 3050 and 2750 beat it to my bookshelves) but it was always number one in my heart. Some of my favorite Inner Sphere BattleMech designs are inside these covers.
Read More →Having mainly missed PC gaming in the ’90s (with a few exceptions) I only recently discovered the 4X empire-building sub genre. According to the Wikipedia entry, 4X is described as: “a genre of strategy-based video and board games in which players control an empire and “eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate”. The term was first coined […]
Read More →In this edition of Product Reviews, we take a look at Technical Readout : 3145 Republic of the Sphere, the last of the faction TROs in the 3145 series covering the late “Dark Age” era. The Republic of the Sphere is somewhat unique in that there was no equivalent whatsoever in the “pre Jihad” era. […]
Read More →This week in product reviews, I examine Technical Readout: 3145 The Clans, the seventh in Catalyst Game Lab’s faction TROs covering the late Dark Age era. I’d like to open with another personal statement on my philosophy regarding ‘Mechs : I like tripped out units. There it is. I like BattleMech designs that take advantage […]
Read More →First, I want to extend my apologies to the staff and readers for being away for so long. A few months ago I took a new job in a new city. (A rather large city, in fact.) It has taken me this long to get settled and to reach a mindset where I felt I […]
Read More →Ah yes, Technical Readout: 3050. The Clans have arrived, and the Inner Sphere has upgraded it’s technology. It sets a tone and a standard that all of the other Technical Readouts since have tried to match. The Inner Sphere designs include both refits and upgrades of existing designs and the beginning of some new ones. […]
Read More →‘Succession Wars’ was a geopolitical based board game published by FASA in 1987. Players took on the roles of the house lords, and for the life of me, my first thought when I first saw it was for the fictional strategy game ‘Nuke Em!’ from the original Robocop film. (Coincidentally, both were released in 1987) On […]
Read More →I was at GenCon this last week enjoying the insanity (you should really try to go at least once if you’ve never been), and was able to take notes during Catalyst’s “What’s Up With BattleTech?” seminar put on by Herb Beas, the BattleTech line developer. The atmosphere for the session was rather casual. Instead of just […]
Read More →Did you play the old Succession Wars board game? Or perhaps you want to pick up a copy of the board game but you are scared away by the price. Maybe you’ve never played it at all and you want to give it a shot. Whatever your reason, weblog ScrapYard Armory is currently hosting online […]
Read More →I don’t know what it is, but there is something about gaming maps that I just love. I adore collecting maps from various games and having a huge store of maps to use from various locations. It’s a lot of fun to have a nice big collection of maps for a variety of occasions. So […]
Read More →This week in product reviews, we take a look at Technical Readout: 3145 Free Worlds League, the fifth in Catalyst Game Labs Technical Readout: 3145 faction series. First, though, a disclaimer: Everyone has had their own experiences playing BattleTech, and everyone develops different tastes, preferences and opinions regarding what kinds of ‘Mechs, weapons, equipment, etc. […]
Read More →Finally getting to my next review; we get the Davion entry for the TRO: 3145 series. I really wanted to like Technical Readout: 3145 Federated Suns. Like many long-time Classic BattleTech fans, I always regarded old House Davion as the “good guys” among the major factions in the early years. This, of course, was how […]
Read More →CGL’s Technical Readout: 3145 Draconis Combine, is the third in a series of faction-specific Technical Readouts of the 3145 Dark Age era. As in my last review, on TRO: 3145 Capellan Confederation, I was incredibly pleased by the selection of units offered. Simply put, most of them are the kinds of equipment you’ll want to […]
Read More →This week, I review CGL’s Technical Readout: 3145 Capellan Confederation, the second in a series of faction-specific TROs of the Dark Age era. The ‘Mechs and equipment of House Liao were quickly gaining in popularity with many BattleTech fans in the years leading up to (and encompassing) the Jihad, with a long series of strong […]
Read More →Do you want to play BattleTech but no one is around? Maybe you want to play today, but everyone is busy. Perhaps your play group slowly stopped playing or moved away, and you don’t have a regular group anymore. Luckily for us, there is a program that can be used to play BattleTech either online […]
Read More →In my second review for Sarna.net BattleTech News Blog, I report on CGL’s latest release of this writing, Technical Readout: 3145 Mercenaries. Describing the equipment here – a promising mix of ‘Mechs, battle armor, tanks, VTOLs and other units – as “mercenary” is something of a misnomer. One of the delightful peculiarities of this ‘Dark […]
Read More →So I open with a disclaimer: Battletech’s Dark Age era was never my cup of tea. This was not a reflection on the novels, mind you, but more a conscious decision not to get involved with the MechWarrior: Dark Age system. (I had had my fill of collectible RPGs with Magic: The Gathering, thank you […]
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