This is why I'm a big proponent of campaign play. The problem with deathmatch games in particular is that they create this unnatural willingness to simply sacrifice your units and fight to the last man, which is generally not what people do. Campaigns make you think about force preservation, at what time it's best to cut your losses and admit you're not going to get things done without running the butcher's bill too high. And you can get very narrative with a campaign. One of my all-time favorite battles GMing a game was a 3025-era scenario. The player force is an attached mercenary unit affiliated with Marik forces suppressing a rebellious world. They're out on the flank of a general advance when they bump up against a company of Marian mechs cosplaying as mercenaries associated with the rebellious planetary government. This is a shock in the first place because prior intelligence had given that the planetary government only had a lance of mechs on planet, and here our heroes are bumping into an entire enemy company. On the Marian side, they're just here to poke the player force a bit, they're on a withdrawal timetable because the rebels in this area are executing a seaborne withdrawal. So they just want to jab the player force a bit, maybe knock out a unit or two, then retreat under the cover of some fairly heavy artillery. The game goes for about six rounds, a lot of cautious maneuvering because in 3025 mechs are precious heirlooms and nobody wants to risk losing one unless there's a solid objective worth taking the risk over. Scattered fire is exchanged, the Marians begin falling back and call some arty in to cover their withdrawal. And the players actually fell back to consolidate as well, not realizing the Marians were getting ready to run, so the artillery craters the field between them, at which point the players are entirely happy to let the Marians retreat rather than try to push ahead under the guns of at least four tubes of arty. The Marian commander gives the merc commander a friendly wave, and off they go. It was very tense, the players were confused but excited and had fun, and we got in some of that old school "Men are cheap, mechs aren't" in the game. Now at the very end of the game, there was a full bloody company on company throwdown because the players were assaulting the rebel capital, and that was fought to a decision. Five Marian mechs were destroyed before the other seven were persuaded to surrender.
For sure, and it doesn’t even need to be a full-on Campaign Ops thing with all the obsessive spreadsheets etc., even stringing 2-3 games together in a logical way where actions have consequences will give more meaning to everything. Thanks for your fun campaign story! I think BattleTech in all its crunch and detail is really made for campaign play. The issue is more that when it’s not possible or it’s difficult to organize even rudimentary campaign play - ie. a BattleTech night at the FLGS where your playing partner might change every time. I want to see people at my local place play any kind of objective game instead of just a straight deathmatch every time, because a deathmatch is simply not the best way to play this wonderful game. I’m currently involved in a full Campaign Ops campaign and planning to rope a friend or two into a Chaos Campaign. Basically I just want to play more BattleTech!
Forced Withdrawal is an optional rule when playing that is in the BMM pg. 81 or TW pg. 258. It is a good way to make games go quicker as it introduces the idea of BattleMechs having to retreat from the battlefield when they receive Crippling Damage. Helps speed the game up as well.
My group plays almost exclusively operational missions. Civilian rescue, asset retrieval, assassinate target, etc. My group loves my scenarios. I fully agree with your statement.
Oh fab! Glad to see development is continuing on an already neat app :) I’ve been thinking about a possible more in-depth video on Skirmish Engine at some point, but that would veer into more of a battle report-style video and I don’t know if I could make that interesting. Love the idea that the battles are intended to be small scale and easy to jump into.
@@almostgoodvariant I'm looking at now including scenarios with things like turrets and providing the cards so it's easy for people to use them. There's a bunch of stuff I am thinking about that could make for really fun stuff to play.
Great video! I 100% agree that having actual missions and objectives is a great way to make Battletech more interesting. It prevents a lot of problems that can arise from a static meta built solely around killing. For instance, some of the Instant Action missions involve needing to scan targets, which is much easier if you have active probes, and can make 'mechs with the Scout role worth bringing for once! When I hear people complaining about playing against the clans, it's usually because they're outranging and outshooting you, but if they have to close to score points on an objective, that is gonna make them need to change their game plan. And all of that is only improved by the added narrative weight. The last game I played was 25k BV of Wobblies defending an HPG station against vs 10k of IS mercs and 15k of clan wolf who needed to send out a message by moving a unit adjacent to the HPG station. The way it would work is each turn you were adjacent, you'd roll a d6, and if you got a 6, the message was successfully sent. If you failed, you got a +1 for any future rolls, so after 5 turns adjacent it would be guaranteed. While the Wobblies were busy giving a Highlander burial to my Fire Moth that failed a skid check right behind one of his level IIs, and the IS mercs were blasting through his vehicles, I moved an Adder in contact with the HPG on turn 3, and on turn 4, I rolled a 5, +1 for turn 3 meant we won. It was a great match, super memorable, and without the objectives it would've been a kind of bland urban combat mission. It also took what could have been 4-5 hours of rolling dice before everyone died, and turned it into a 1.5 hour game, just long enough that we all left wanting more.
Oh we've been playing with Objectives at my table lately; capturing a prison by getting two units into the prison yard, Multi Hill King Of The Hill fighting over a Long Tom (with two shots in the next mission as a reward to the winner), and an evac scenario where we had to hold a city for 10 rounds to let the last of the civilians safely flee.
I run campaign style that last 6 to 12 months. combined with Mechwarrior 2nd ed rpg, the players have incentives to capture or damage for salvage. not just blowing up stuff 'cause you can. prior to the mission being played, the players have the characters interact with Mechwarrior rpg. they build the story and decide mission. depending on the mission outcome, will effect the story. then the characters have another opportunity to interact with the story. etc, etc, etc... as a side note; having a dedicated GM is a must. I also don't run PvP. yes, the opposition is run by someone, but it's not player characters v player characters. that tends to end badly for the participants.
We never play death matches. We either play a campaign with narrative missions or a non-campaign game with a stripped down mission list from the campaign rules we made. :)
I dont think I've played a straight deathmatch in a year now... My group meets every saturday and enough of us are happy to be dm's we cycle through about 3 campaigns at any given time just depending on who's got a scenario done. Currently doing a 3015 merc campaign, a war of reaving clan campaign, and a dark age pirate campaign.
This is why I'm a big proponent of campaign play. The problem with deathmatch games in particular is that they create this unnatural willingness to simply sacrifice your units and fight to the last man, which is generally not what people do. Campaigns make you think about force preservation, at what time it's best to cut your losses and admit you're not going to get things done without running the butcher's bill too high.
And you can get very narrative with a campaign. One of my all-time favorite battles GMing a game was a 3025-era scenario. The player force is an attached mercenary unit affiliated with Marik forces suppressing a rebellious world. They're out on the flank of a general advance when they bump up against a company of Marian mechs cosplaying as mercenaries associated with the rebellious planetary government. This is a shock in the first place because prior intelligence had given that the planetary government only had a lance of mechs on planet, and here our heroes are bumping into an entire enemy company.
On the Marian side, they're just here to poke the player force a bit, they're on a withdrawal timetable because the rebels in this area are executing a seaborne withdrawal. So they just want to jab the player force a bit, maybe knock out a unit or two, then retreat under the cover of some fairly heavy artillery.
The game goes for about six rounds, a lot of cautious maneuvering because in 3025 mechs are precious heirlooms and nobody wants to risk losing one unless there's a solid objective worth taking the risk over. Scattered fire is exchanged, the Marians begin falling back and call some arty in to cover their withdrawal. And the players actually fell back to consolidate as well, not realizing the Marians were getting ready to run, so the artillery craters the field between them, at which point the players are entirely happy to let the Marians retreat rather than try to push ahead under the guns of at least four tubes of arty. The Marian commander gives the merc commander a friendly wave, and off they go.
It was very tense, the players were confused but excited and had fun, and we got in some of that old school "Men are cheap, mechs aren't" in the game.
Now at the very end of the game, there was a full bloody company on company throwdown because the players were assaulting the rebel capital, and that was fought to a decision. Five Marian mechs were destroyed before the other seven were persuaded to surrender.
For sure, and it doesn’t even need to be a full-on Campaign Ops thing with all the obsessive spreadsheets etc., even stringing 2-3 games together in a logical way where actions have consequences will give more meaning to everything. Thanks for your fun campaign story!
I think BattleTech in all its crunch and detail is really made for campaign play. The issue is more that when it’s not possible or it’s difficult to organize even rudimentary campaign play - ie. a BattleTech night at the FLGS where your playing partner might change every time. I want to see people at my local place play any kind of objective game instead of just a straight deathmatch every time, because a deathmatch is simply not the best way to play this wonderful game.
I’m currently involved in a full Campaign Ops campaign and planning to rope a friend or two into a Chaos Campaign. Basically I just want to play more BattleTech!
Forced Withdrawal is an optional rule when playing that is in the BMM pg. 81 or TW pg. 258. It is a good way to make games go quicker as it introduces the idea of BattleMechs having to retreat from the battlefield when they receive Crippling Damage. Helps speed the game up as well.
My group plays almost exclusively operational missions. Civilian rescue, asset retrieval, assassinate target, etc. My group loves my scenarios.
I fully agree with your statement.
Thanks for the Skirmish Engine mention! I have some updates coming in the next few weeks that will add some interesting scenario options.
Oh fab! Glad to see development is continuing on an already neat app :) I’ve been thinking about a possible more in-depth video on Skirmish Engine at some point, but that would veer into more of a battle report-style video and I don’t know if I could make that interesting. Love the idea that the battles are intended to be small scale and easy to jump into.
@@almostgoodvariant I'm looking at now including scenarios with things like turrets and providing the cards so it's easy for people to use them. There's a bunch of stuff I am thinking about that could make for really fun stuff to play.
Great video! I 100% agree that having actual missions and objectives is a great way to make Battletech more interesting. It prevents a lot of problems that can arise from a static meta built solely around killing. For instance, some of the Instant Action missions involve needing to scan targets, which is much easier if you have active probes, and can make 'mechs with the Scout role worth bringing for once! When I hear people complaining about playing against the clans, it's usually because they're outranging and outshooting you, but if they have to close to score points on an objective, that is gonna make them need to change their game plan. And all of that is only improved by the added narrative weight. The last game I played was 25k BV of Wobblies defending an HPG station against vs 10k of IS mercs and 15k of clan wolf who needed to send out a message by moving a unit adjacent to the HPG station. The way it would work is each turn you were adjacent, you'd roll a d6, and if you got a 6, the message was successfully sent. If you failed, you got a +1 for any future rolls, so after 5 turns adjacent it would be guaranteed. While the Wobblies were busy giving a Highlander burial to my Fire Moth that failed a skid check right behind one of his level IIs, and the IS mercs were blasting through his vehicles, I moved an Adder in contact with the HPG on turn 3, and on turn 4, I rolled a 5, +1 for turn 3 meant we won. It was a great match, super memorable, and without the objectives it would've been a kind of bland urban combat mission. It also took what could have been 4-5 hours of rolling dice before everyone died, and turned it into a 1.5 hour game, just long enough that we all left wanting more.
Haha, didn't expect to see our match in pictures here, nice! Love the pic from the turn where you headcapped both the Atlas and the Orion.
It was a fun game - especially for me ;) Sorry to bring up those memories for ya, friend!
The death match scenario is a bunch of soldiers who were told to go somewhere and kill the enemy without ever being told who or why.
Oh we've been playing with Objectives at my table lately; capturing a prison by getting two units into the prison yard, Multi Hill King Of The Hill fighting over a Long Tom (with two shots in the next mission as a reward to the winner), and an evac scenario where we had to hold a city for 10 rounds to let the last of the civilians safely flee.
God, guns, and Battletech. We started playing with scenarios today, and the group loves it. Thanks.
Awesome! What kind of missions did you play?
@almostgoodvariant king of the hill but with a building. This week, we are going to do Urbiemech shootout
I run campaign style that last 6 to 12 months. combined with Mechwarrior 2nd ed rpg, the players have incentives to capture or damage for salvage. not just blowing up stuff 'cause you can.
prior to the mission being played, the players have the characters interact with Mechwarrior rpg. they build the story and decide mission. depending on the mission outcome, will effect the story. then the characters have another opportunity to interact with the story. etc, etc, etc...
as a side note; having a dedicated GM is a must. I also don't run PvP. yes, the opposition is run by someone, but it's not player characters v player characters. that tends to end badly for the participants.
Much thanks, good resources!
I dont really have anyone to play a game with so alot of times i have to play both sides of the game. Ive been playing missions forever and a day.
Missions and objectives are the best.
Great video!
We never play death matches. We either play a campaign with narrative missions or a non-campaign game with a stripped down mission list from the campaign rules we made. :)
Yeah! Any particular resource you used to make that mission list?
I dont think I've played a straight deathmatch in a year now...
My group meets every saturday and enough of us are happy to be dm's we cycle through about 3 campaigns at any given time just depending on who's got a scenario done.
Currently doing a 3015 merc campaign, a war of reaving clan campaign, and a dark age pirate campaign.
Instant Action sucks, he did not playtest his scenarios
There is no testing in WAR!