Thursday, September 8, 2016

Unseen Battletech Miniatures II





The RFL-3N "Rifleman" exemplifies everything that I love and hate about the game of Battletech. It's a great looking Mech, and it boasts four deadly guns. The problem? If you fire all four guns at the same time, the Rifleman will overheat, causing its reactor to shut down and perhaps detonating its own highly explosive ammunition. A better name for the Rifleman would be the Murder/Suicide.

The idea that super-powered death machines are constantly fighting their own thermal output is a big part of the fun of Battletech. Heat management adds a whole new dimension to the "maneuver-and-fire" that's at the heart of most wargames. And it's not so far from reality. From the earliest siege cannons to modern machine guns, the buildup of heat bedevils all gunners; a red hot weapon loses accuracy, becomes too hot to hold and ultimately will melt or explode.


RFL-3N Rifleman Painted Unseen Miniature


Battletech is by no means a perfect game. It is slow, requires a lot of book-keeping and has an infuriating approach to weapon ranges (in the game, even "long range" missiles can only fire a few hundred meters. In real life, such missiles would fire for 10, 100 or 1000 kilometers). 

Nevertheless, I stand in awe of Battletech as a game. That's because -- like a shark or the recipe for KFC --  it is remarkable for how little it has changed since it's inception.

A basic game of Battletech is fought today with essentially the same rules as a game from 1986. The most important alteration of nuts-and-bolts rules that I can detect is a tweak in calculating how to determine hit location when only the top half of a mech is visible to the attacker. In other words, small beer. Contrast this with Warhammer Fantasy Battle, which has rebooted its rules system 9 times in the same period of time, with each revision changing core elements in the game.

Of course, that's not to say that Battletech hasn't changed. But FASA (and its heirs) found a way of adding to the richness of the game without replacing what had come before. They created a need for new Battletech products by developing the history of the Battletech universe as time passed in the real world. And as events progressed in the Battletech universe, the level of technology changed. So, although you can still play with the humble RFL-3N Rifleman, there are now rules for technologically superior upgrades, including the Clan's Mad Dog or Rifleman IIC. It's a smart approach, that can please both nostalgia fiends (like myself) and normal people.

What do you think? Does Battletech still hold up? While you mull over that question, here are some more from my collection of Unseen Battletech miniatures.

The TDR-5D "Thunderbolt":


TDR-5D Thunderbolt Painted Unseen Miniature


The SHD-2H "Shadowhawk":


SHD-2H Shadowhawk Painted Unseen Miniature


The GRF-1N "Griffin":


GRF-1N Griffin Painted Unseen Miniature


And my favourite, the SCP-1N "Scorpion". I've painted this one to look like a WWII Panzer. House Kurita Uber Alles!


SCP-1N Scorpion Painted Unseen Miniature

Thanks for stopping by!

26 comments:

  1. Rifleman IIC is also a Clan design.

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  2. Once again fantastic work. What a great armour variery of colours!

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    1. Thanks MK. I tried to keep it varied, but still with somewhat "military" looking colours.

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  3. Does battletech still hold up? It does for me! I played my first game in 1993 and I'm still playing in 2016 :)

    It's good to see nicely painted unseen mechs too!

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    1. Glad to hear that it still works for you. I still enjoy it a lot too, although I don't get a game together too often now.

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  4. Awww... the classic rifleman is my favourite mech design.

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  5. Well done again! BT is truly a timeless game and you have definitely inspired me to go dig out some of my old lead. And my vote has to be the Marauder. It just looks menacing.

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  6. I have to say, it's a pretty clunky system. My friend loves BT, and it's why I ended up learning to play recently. But even he notes that people just don't have the time to play out the larger battles anymore (that can take a weekend). There's lots that is compelling, but the number of modifiers you count each time you shoot, and the number of times shooting results in no effect, is definitely a detriment to timely play. Alpha strike went a bit too lean in an attempt to address these issues. Oh for the goldylocks solution.....

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    1. One of my favourite ways to send myself to sleep at night is to close my eyes and begin contemplating ways to simplify Battletech by eliminating surplus modifiers and non-essential mechanics. I fall asleep almost instantly. True story.

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  7. Currently running a campaign of Battletech over Tabletop Simulator. (I wrote about the base ideas here.

    Heavy on the Unseen, of course. :)

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    1. That is an EXTREMELY COOL idea. I love it! Space Bavaria!
      It would require a real investment of time and some serious/committed players, but if you can make it work, it would be superb. Too bad you don't like in Toronto, Allandraros!

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  8. Wow, sweet colour choces here, they truly stand out!
    Never played the game, so I cannot have an informed opinion, but I'm glad to read and learn about it.

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  9. Totally agree with your thoughts here - the original version (and the only one I even played) is very detailed and requires lots of book keeping. I never cared about that at the time because the games I played never had more than 4 mechs a side. I can see it would have been very slow with anything more than 10 a side. Maybe even 5...

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    1. In all my years of playing, I don't think I've ever done more than 4 mechs a side. The only exception was an amazing game at a Convention, where the Game Master had created a magnificent re-creation of the Citadel of Quebec City in Battletech-friendly hexes. There were about 40 mechs on the table then. What a game!

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  10. I am celebrating 20 years of Battletech playing this year, I can say the game still holds up. The rules have changed a little bit, i.e. partial cover, but it has remained a remarkably consistent gaming experience over the years. I hope I'm still playing it in another 20 years ;-)

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  11. Beautiful pieces and a great selection. My favorites are still the Warhammer, Marauder and Battlemaster. The game itself is an awesome beer and pretzels wargame. I usually sum it up as "two blindfolded robots fighting with shotguns" The MechWarrior "clicky-tech" was an interesting take on the system. It always seemed to me that the granularity of BT made it better for 10mm, while the abstract approach of MechWarrior made it better for 6mm...

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    1. That is exactly it: two blindfolded robots fighting with shotguns. That's all the virtues and vices of BT in one phrase.

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  12. I remember my old man bringing me that book home for me when I was a youngling. I never read it...too young to grasp it, but I dreamt over the artwork quite a lot.

    One nerdy (and slightly embarrassing) memory I have as a 7 or 8 year old, was redrawing the dash (from the font cover of the book) onto two A4 pieces of paper. I then stuck both of them to the underside of one of our dining room chairs. I built myself a "cockpit" out of the chair & our sofa and put on my dads motorbike helmet. I laid down and pretended to be flying a spaceship (thinking that the cover illo was of a fighter plane), blasting Mechs to bits. I used my Atari 2600 joystick and a hole punch for the controls.

    Needless to say, not many members of my family were home. Oh, and I think I filled my dad's helmet with a shit tonne of saliva too...from all the sound effects you see.

    I used this book so much that it fell apart, but a few years ago I patched it back up and actually read it! The background story is really ace isn't it!

    Thanks for the post Matthew :)

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    1. This is one of my favourite comments ever. I have memories very much like this -- I had a large wooden board on which I taped pieces of lined paper that I'd covered with pictures of buttons, levers, screens, dials and gun-sights. I destroyed many perfidious aliens using that wooden board.

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    2. Cheers Matthew :)

      Looks like I wasn't the only one acting out make believe battles with furniture......or was it just the two of us? :D

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  13. I love the fiction, but sadly the game just takes too long. I last played a classic game in 2014 or 2015. I was on a business trip. I skipped dinner, played solo 8 on 8, stayed up half the night, and still didn't finish. Sigh. Alpha Strike is an improvement in speeding up and simplifying the game, but it does lose some of the detail and charm. I can spend hours researching units and campaigns on the wiki, and I still enjoy painting the minis, even though they are kind of pricey. I, too, love the Rifleman!

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