Michael Moorcock is one of my favorite writers of all time. I have a huge library of most of his work. I don’t think he ever wrote anything in the military science fiction genre, but he certainly appreciated it. I recently picked up a anthology he edited of short stories and novellas written prior to […]
Read More →Recently I had decided to pick up and read David Drake’s collection of military science fiction short stories called “Hammer’s Slammers.” I was a bit surprised by just how evocative it was of many of the central concepts of BattleTech universe writ large. We aren’t any better in the future than we are now. We […]
Read More →Well I felt it was time. See, one of my passions in life is to read the books and works that helps to make something exist. Take Dungeons and Dragons as a good example. In his famous Appendix N at the end of the first Dungeon Master’s Guide, Gary Gygax listed a bunch of writers […]
Read More →You wouldn’t think it by looking at me. I love BattleMechs and smashing with the big guys. I’m not a power armor or tank or anything else enthusiast. I adore the big heavy sluggers of the battlefield. That’s why I’m playing BattleTech and not something like Warhammer. So why? Why is my favorite Technical Readout […]
Read More →Well that was fast! After Interstellar Operations was being written for years before release, the next Operations books came quickly after. Welcome, to Campaign Operations. I’ve always wondered if other players play Campaigns as much as I tend to. My playgroups, interests, games, and more are invariably part of an ongoing campaign. It’s important for […]
Read More →The Civil War between siblings is over. Much of the Inner Sphere rests in a very tentative, damaged, and brutally won peace. And it stands on the threshold of oblivion. War-torn and battle-weary. Hey look, we all care about tanks and aircraft, infantry both powered and conventional, and more. But at the end of the […]
Read More →Last week, Techwars Online, a Steam Greenlight success story, that made it through all of the hurdles, was released on Steam for ten dollars. Well that certainly seems like a price worth trying out. So I grabbed a copy of the game, and invested some time into figuring out this turn based tactical game featuring […]
Read More →Sometimes you are just looking for a little ‘Mech on ‘Mech action. Whatever the Intellectual Property, and whatever the style, a quick little online PC action happening can solve that desire. Load up the game, log on, and blast some folks. That’s why a lot of us are playing games like Mechwarrior: Online. This week, […]
Read More →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 →I have never been much of a fan of vehicles in BattleTech. I grew up in an era when a combat vehicle was considered way too fragile for serious battle. Maybe they had valuable tactical usages, keeping battles in certain places or whatnot, but they were not really something that made the cut anywhere.
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 →The Technical Readout: 3060 shipped and like always I headed to my local gaming store to purchase my copy very soon after. I still remember looking over those units for the first time, and finding some that really stuck with me. Today I want to look at my four favorite BattleMechs from 3060, and then […]
Read More →Ah yes, the combat vehicle. It’s downright prolific in the Inner Sphere (and the Periphery even more so)! We have lots of things telling us that your basic combat vehicle has a lot of value on the battlefield. But let’s set aside the fluff for a moment and talk about what your experience has really […]
Read More →Are there BattleMechs out there that are ugly as sin but you still get real joy from playing them? Is there a go-to ‘Mech for you that your friends taunt you about, but you just know how to get it to work? What BattleMechs out there play better than they look for you? Jenner – I […]
Read More →Ever since I looked at my first Technical Readout, I realized that BattleTech was a game about aesthetics, just as much as it was about blowing stuff up. There were always a variety of BattleMechs that just has a really effective design. Before I played my first game, before I even knew the rules, a […]
Read More →Have you ever run into BattleMechs that you just don’t get? Have you heard lots of accolades from other players, but then they never work for you? They are highly acclaimed in forums and have lots of defenders online, but you’ve always been disappointed from them. I just don’t understand them. I’ve tried them, I’ve […]
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 →Scenario Packs and their ilk have been with us for almost as long as we’ve had the game. From the first campaigns to the latest Turning Point, we have seen a ton of scenario packs released down through the ages. Sure, a handful of scenarios like Unbound, Living Legends and Necromo Nightmare might strike some […]
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 →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 →I reviewed Ep0ch last year during my mobile game round up series. First released in 2011, Ep0ch is set in a post-apocalyptic city besieged by warring robots used as soldiers by rival corporate AI. You are Ep0ch, a kind of bodyguard robot called a guardian in search of Princess Amelia; your charge. Built in Unreal […]
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 →It wasn’t long after the last expansion pack for MechWarrior 2 hit disc drives across the US when gamers-our teeth newly cut on 3D graphics, craved more. Even though I had no PC of my own yet at this time, I’d had dozens of hours of time running ‘Mechs. Then I ran into something called […]
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