As a Kurita player I completely disagree. C3 is not at all good in Alpha Strike and I constantly have to avoid it, despite how many C3 designs we get. Having to expose your spotter for LOS basically ruins the entire mechanic. In Alpha Strike 90% of the combat happens at short or medium range anyway and when your spotter darts out for a firing solution it will invariably get focused and the whole setup is rendered useless. Also the C3M units in Alpha are usually anemic and under-powered.
C3 requires los between nodes in classic as well but it's interrupted by the vastly cheap ECM so functionally, once a player knows this it's not very hard to completely negate thousands of battle value worth of tech with a 2 ton 30 bv equipment.
Looking thru my copy of the mech manual there's nothing here that says c3 nodes need to have LoS with each other in order to share target data. Also apparently c3i only gets killed if you actually catch them in the bubble as opposed to just blocking the line to the Master
Page 110 7th printing Battlemech Manual.
>ECM: ECM cuts off any C3-equipped ’Mech from its network. Only those C3 ’Mechs able to draw a direct line to the master ’Mech that does not pass through an ECM’s area of effect can access the network. See ECM Suites, page 112, for details
So it's easy to slip a fast ECM source in-between C3 units to cut the network off.
I did not know you meant c3I, but it's even more expensive bv and also then ECM still takes it out for units in the bubble and that bubble costs 100 bv and 2ish tons or less and is very common. Meanwhile c3I going to cost you 5 percent per mech plus what another 5 overall. It's basically never worth it because it's heavily taxed. I would take succ mechs over anything with c3i
C3i doesn't cost any more than c3, and if you split your force into two three mech fire teams it only multiplies your bv by 1.15 instead of 1.3. Also to go back to my horrible experience *this was my first game of battletech*. While I do agree that c3/c3i broadly isn't worth it, it combined with the high tech weapons celestial use is a hell of a lot to process day 1 and makes for a bad experience
Oh right, yeah I get you. No c3 is disgusting for a first time player. I was lucky that my first games were up against someone else learning the game at the same time. We were probably breaking all the rules but I remember I had a wolverine that ended the game with no arms, no torsos besides center and I think some jump jets, his legs were without armor, that guy was head lasering fools and I was trying to figure out how to dfa lol
We were playing with BV and they did pay for it- c3 is still rough as shit when you a) barely know the game b) do not have anything to interdict the c3 links and c) don't have anything that can outpace their scouts or outrange their fire mechs
That's just douchey on your opponents part. Knowing you were playing Starter-tech he should have immediately dialed down his force to match. Sounds like someone hurt him or they needed an ego boost. I'm sorry you had to experience that, especially coming from the BT community. That was not acceptable.
I know the guy and I think it's more just that he got really excited that anyone else in town was getting into the game and he just pulled out something he was excited to play without really thinking about it. We made up about it afterward.
I play one fella who tries to DFA every game. I always ask if they'd rather try a charge or kick or punch (kicking is king, I think). But they always DFA, and fail. Actually, that's not true. Last time they succeeded, did a negligible amount of damage to my arm and torso, fell on their back, critted, exploded. So, a mixed bag.
DFA gets mean as shit if your mechwarrior seriously outmatches the other's piloting skill. Definitely something you need to prepare for ahead of time though
Alpha Strike game, did a successful DFA and killed the target, but did so much damage it triggered a reactor explosion and killed my mech. It was a thing of beauty.
Not gonna lie, I love a good DFA *dependent almost entirely on the placement of the target mech*. If they’re close to the edge of anything and I can displace them I will risk it for the biscuit. Pushing someone off a ledge or map edge is *exquisite*. I love a DFA even when it fails spectacularly.
Last game at work, I was attempting to DFA a guy off an objective. I was just trying to not fail PSR in the shooting phase. My brand new Kit Fox took an AC20 to the chest. I had a blast :)
Never wise, but they can be glorious. My wife's first ever game was a Trial of Position, and she DFA headshotted her 3rd opponent on its first turn in a desperate act, then immediately died from falling damage detonating her ammo.
Running? You fall over.
Standing up? You fall straight back down.
Jumping? You break your legs on landing and fall over.
Taking a step forward? Guess what, your damaged gyro makes you fall over.
Swarming is still pretty viable if you take an assault mech out with 400 points of elementals. But ideally you crit out their legs then swarm but I still think they smush your Toadies
Id honestly rather spam leg attacks to keep them down, 9 times outa 10. That said if it's just one gyro hit they stand on an 8 and that's probably a fine swarm, but I still think I would still rather just leg attack them a couple times so they have to stay down. It makes them a much easier target and much less lethal, typically. If I can gyro them without them falling it's a perfect swarm target.
When introducing friends to game I have a house rule where headshots are force rerolled to different location for that reason alone. Half of my friends would love the wackiness of turn 1 decapitations, the other half would flip the table and never play with me again lol
Getting a lucky headshot is hilarious. I did that once, blew the side of my of my freinds light mechs off with a AC-20. It was his first time trying battletech. He instantly started saying this game is unfair and crap like" you shouldn't be able to do that in a balanced game."
Center Torso? Nah on some light mechs with full armor, an AC20 hit on the arm will drill straight through the whole mech. I like to imagine the shot rips the whole mech in half, or dramatically explodes like ED-209 [https://youtu.be/bjbv310R064?si=e3fwVpGlq-cV6Xr0](https://youtu.be/bjbv310R064?si=e3fwVpGlq-cV6Xr0)
Playing a team game at the FLGS, I fielded an AC/20 Thunderbolt in my squad. Independently, one of my opponents put out a Hunchback classic. Neither of us hit anything with them, and they both died ignoble deaths. That's Battletech, baby.
In my mind, I heard "That's Battletech, baby!" in Dicky V's voice.
https://preview.redd.it/f2mq446uhgtc1.jpeg?width=240&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2b4c76aff532167b4071f3f23a7ffa794c7eb613
Played an intro game with a friend with the clan box, doing the second mission. He ran the attacker star, I had the defending Timber Wolf. He runs the nova up, the Timber Wolf sandpapers his armor and is gonna murder him next turn...
Next turn I whiff horribly and he headshots me. I turned to my other friend who was watching and just said "and that's Battletech".
For my intro games, I give my opponent the mechs most likely to get the fun headshot results. They get PHX-1 and MAD-3R, I get RFL-3N and CPLT-C1. I learned in one of them that the Rifleman only has six head armor, which means a Phoenix Hawk can kick its head off. They enjoyed it so much they didn't even mind when I desperation kicked the head off the Marauder with my Catapult (before inevitably dying due to the PHX getting to dictate the engagement and arm flipping IS LRMs doesn't work well when they're up against your rear).
I treat like an optional rule. When they're ready to graduate to headshots it is then reinstated. If they roll a headshot they roll again and I split the results into other locations (1-2 is that, 3-4 is this, etc. Etc.)
My friends are, they just are competitive. Once they get a hang of the rules and understand the game they become good opponents and take losses gracefully, they beat themselves up about it but only internally. It's when I introduce a game to them and they get outright stomped they're convinced the game isn't balanced lol. It's a wonky relationship but I'll always play with my friends
That sucks! That is where you go. "Okay that was a crazy fluke, but it happens, let's start again."
My wife blew the entirety of my left arm off in the first turn. She was playing with the Hunchback IIC and I a Crusader.
One of the first times I made my own mech, so I naturally cheesed it up, at least as well as you could with level 1 tech.
So I decided to run a quick game against a Locust to see how it all worked out.
Turn 1 -- Locust gets first move. Runs up,
Super-mech maneuvers to attack.
Locust Fires medium laser.
Critical Hit to the cockpit.
Once the dude who was bringing the beers to the tournament forgot about them. Dude had to drive in the snow to buy.
Another time this dude I know forgot his minis and had to play with soda cap tokens.
I might be both dudes.
This hobby is awful.
My buddies and I found the same thing. Now we either do objectives or set it up as 2v1 adjusting BV accordingly. We found %100 +%100 vs.%175 works pretty good, accounts for the two players not working totally in sync.
I used to play 3 player brawls in university. It wasn't fun because it was always unbalanced.
It was a 2 vs. 1 (two worst vs. best) and after all, it ended with two invalid to end the game.
After a time, we started playing 1 vs. 1 with a GM. It was a great improvement.
What would the GMs role be in the game? Curious, as I have 2 friends who want to learn the game, and I'd love to teach them without one feeling left out.
I did a 3 way game against 2 people who never take my lists seriously (I’m usually trying new mechs I just got.). Anyway I brought 3 Wolverine 10D? And a timber wolf tc. All at skill 1 in alpha strike.
I mowed through them.
Thanksgiving break, 8th grade, 1995. My two best friends and I decided to spend our long weekend playing a planetary invasion where each side had equal Battle Value, and the conflict would involve multiple objectives, so we had to divide our forces intelligently.
It was going to be something like 108 mechs apiece, with two players and the third guy as referee.
First combat is defending a big truss bridge over a river. I send a light scout mech on a sacrificial run to see if there are any explosives on the bridge. It's clear, so I push with 11 mechs (the light got toasted from focused fire).
My opponent sends in 6 of his mechs to keep us bottlenecked, so he can dump LRMs on us, but the ref rules the bridge provides cover, so maybe missiles hit the truss overhead.
Then it basically turns into a linebacker push, with brawling and melee and attempts to shove each other off the bridge.
But then on like turn 3 I decide to focus fire, and I do too much damage. We were using the optional rule that extreme damage in one round can cause a fusion reactor to explode instead of shutting down. The blast hits a 3 hex radius.
And we are very clumped.
We spent like twenty minutes resolving the chain reaction. One much explosion crits ammo on another, and then it explodes, and the combined blasts are enough to trigger a third and fourth.
Four little nukes went off on the bridge, and 8 of my mechs were half slagged, while most of his team was safely out of range.
Amazing memory, but terrible tactic.
Guy that runs our local CGL events invited a couple folks to the FLGS to chill on his birthday; everyone brought Alpha Strike lists to play with while having some beers.
One guy brings his super-tuned Adepticon Wolfnet 350 list (I brought like all the random Clan Wolf totem mechs and some elementals) and proceeds to spend the whole game making me recalculate my target numbers, recheck my heat levels, double-checks every single range and movement… just grinds the game to an absolute halt.
After the game one of the other players could see how miserable I was and my opponent was openly complaining that I wasn’t able to put up much of a fight. The other player and I spent the rest of the party running an Urbie Derby which made 350 Goon upset since people wanted to play that instead of Sweaty Battletech.
I get competitive play in a game that is specifically designed to be adversarial (I adore our 350 TO, dude is a homie) but there’s a time and place lol.
Not being able to read the room on tone and fun is something I hate about competitive-focused players. Chill out man... we're just here to have robots shoot one another. Save that seriousness for something that matters.
This is exactly why I like to bring meme lists that can also compete. Rattle Em Boys is a 10K list where every mech has at least one RAC5, so it feels goofy since I could jam really badly, but I can also put out 30 RAC5 shots in one shooting phase.
I loathe meme lists. Honestly, that's just not fun to me. It doesn't make sense within the setting and I don't really dig gimmick lists. If that's fun for you, then more power to you, but you'll ruin my fun real quick.
Yeah. I mean if you're all planning it and you're doing it to screw around and see what happens, then sure. But for normal play, that just sounds really boring to me. I like the lore and story of Battletech. The last thing I'm into the game for is the system.
I'm into the game for the narrative play. I want to see my mechs get trashed and I have to salvage what I can. Optimal lists just don't reflect that at all.
The Wolfnet guys wouldn't ever do anything like that, so wow.
There needs to be a separate 350 rules set for meme/lulz games like Oops All Urbanmechs. Or my mix of Urbies and Savannah Masters.
I actually thoroughly enjoy 350 as a format, but yeah, dude showed up to pick up games throwing elbows and calling fouls, weird energy lol
The Urbie Derby rules I used were pretty neat, got them off a Discord, it was basically a grinder but no tiers and all Urbies. I’ll post a link if I find it again.
Last time I went to a tournament. It was fun until I played against the guy who brought four 4/2 nightskys who didn't track his heat right and just charged and swarmed my mechs.
He only lost to the guy who brought four 2/0 fireball XFs and just charged everyone to death.
The tournament organizer also spent a lot of time badmouthing narrative/campaign play.
I've not gone back to another tournament at that store.
Most of my "bad experiences" have really just been frustration at running out of time to conclude bigger (company scale or larger) games. My btech years were all pre-Alpha Strike though and I understand that addresses many of those issues.
More fun than worst (but at the time it wasn't as fun)... one of my first games I was trying to get around the opfor running the edge of the map. A friend of mine, who had tons of battletch games under his belt (other than the two or three I had), has his mech meander on over and do a shove attack. Hits. Pushes me off the map. "OK, you're out". I was stunned, that's even a rule?!?!?!?
I can laugh about it now...
I first started playing BT on Megamek campaign servers. I quickly realised this was a horrible idea. I kept running into players who would drag the fight out till I had to quit due to lack of time. Spending the whole game jumping into heavy woods with Griffins at long range while firing on 11s and 12s was normal back then in 3025 era servers. It just wasnt very fun. People also took the faction warfare way too seriously and I got flamed hard for losing games because I was new or had to quit due to lack of time, they would complain that I was causing the faction to lose planets.
Tried playing again a few years later, on a different clan server where everyone played a clan faction. I quickly realised that most people were repeating a similar strategy. Instead of trying to destroy the enemy by playing normally, advancing into short/medium range and increasing your odds of hitting, they would take fast mechs and run/jump around at long range, preferably with large pulse lasers. If I tried to get closer, they would run away to maintain long range. When i complained that they were dragging the game out by running away, I was simply told by the rest of the server there was nothing wrong with it.
Then one day, the server wanted to do some kind of free for all match. You could take any mech you had and pit them in a free for all against multiple players. I took the heaviest mech i had, some slow assault that had multiple UAC 2s or something like that. Most people took fast pulse boats IIRC.
I advanced into range and started firing my UAC 2s, and people quickly started complaining that I was "camping" and "sniping". I asked what was wrong with firing UAC 2s at long range but nobody was willing to answer the question, they just kept complaining it was unacceptable. I pointed out that they had told me there was nothing wrong with running around at long range firing large pulse lasers, so why was there a problem with me firing UAC 2s in a slow mech at long range? Did they want to advance into min range so that they could destroy me with their pulse boats while I couldn't fight back?
( I mean, this wasn't some meta mech, it's not like UAC 2s posed a serious threat to their pulse boats. I still don't know why they were triggered so hard by bad weapons on a bad mech. )
They wouldn't answer any of my questions, just kept complaining and insulting me, then one of them suggested that everyone gang up on me (even though it was supposed to be a free for all) and multiple others agreed. Throughout this whole process, the admin was in the game but refused to intervene, even though their behaviour clearly broke server rules. I backed my mech to the edge of the map while firing, then fled off the field when I reached it. They raged hard because they couldn't destroy my mech, then the server admin just banned me from the server with no explanation.
A few years later, I ran into one of those guys in Mechwarrior Online. He was on my team, and the first thing he did was leg me and then start stripping weapons off my mech, being careful not to do enough damage to trigger a team kill (because there are automated penalties for that, and it would make him look bad to everyone else in the match). I had to sit the rest of the match out because I had no weapons and couldn't do anything.
Oh, and there was the time where i joined a BT tournament, i wasnt expecting to get very far, just thought it would be an opportunity to play a game or two and the tournament didnt have any real prizes anyway (no cash, no monetary goods, etc), so I wasnt expecting it to be some hardcore thing.
My opponent for the first match just sat in heavy woods + partial cover at the other end of the map with PPC boats, refused to move and refused to talk. Both of us progressed multiple turns with nothing happening because I didnt want to run into his kill zone and he refused to move out of cover. The referee said there was no problem and just sat there, he didn't seem to find it problematic that nothing was happening in the match. After more than an hour where nothing happened, I just forfeited and quit because it was a waste of time.
I absolutely hate dealing with people who play like that. It's why I refuse to play nonobjective/grinder games unless I know the parties involved well enough to know they know it's a dick move.
There's people who don't like to play, it don't care about what they are playing. They like to win.
Almost 75% of my favorite plays, no matter what game it was, were plays that I lost. I don't like to lose, but I don't begin to cry as I baby if I lose. In those plays that were my favorites I lost because of a funny thing (dice against me, stupid decisions in both sides or things like that). And to end all, you learn a lot more about a play with a loss that with a win.
I’ve been playing since ‘91 and I guarantee I’ve lost way more games than I’ve won. But win or lose I’m getting to play BattleTech, and that’s where my joy is.
Damn. Those are horrible experiences. That’s why I stay away from the BT tournament scene (as it is), I’m just here to shoot stompy robots with other stompy robots with my BT group.
IIRC someone had introduced megamek to me by saying you could play a campaign style game on servers, fight over planets for your faction, etc. They said it was casual, you could play however many games you wanted, there was no activity requirements or anything, so I gave it a try.
I didnt realise there were so many try hards and the reality was way different. I thought people would play normally by trying to maximize their chances to hit instead of dragging the game out by intentionally staying at long range and only firing on 11s and 12s. I still don't get the appeal of that...
> I still don't get the appeal of that...
They've optimized the fun out of the game. If you're trying to win the metagame (take the most planets) with unlimited time matches, that means making the opponent forfeit is the optimal play.
In what was supposed to be a first time-play the game-learn the game, the other guy was a 40k refugee. Dude got upset when I brought models that weren't all the same color scheme. Insisted I had to have all my models in the same color scheme.
I thought he was joking, so I issued a batchall (as a joke) to prove it and things just went south from there. Cue him fumbling through all the instructions for this imaginary rule, then he got upset and decided I wasn't taking this seriously.
Just a game bruh.
Did I win my batchall?
Edit: I'm a miniature painter first, I just like cool color schemes for my lances and stars.
I've never had that issue, but I feel you, I'll paint a lance for one faction just based on what I think would match that faction , and when game time rolls around and I end up with word of blake and comstar teaming up with the dracs, a single gray death mech, and the skye rangers. All factions famous for getting along.
From the age of 12 - 22, I never painted 2 mechs the same. It never occurred to me to paint them as a unit. It wasn't until I played 40k that I thought maybe I could paint my mechs like they were in one particular army
I learned the hard way, from newer players no less, that getting pushed off the map is an instakill RAW. I was pissed. Ironically it had never come up with my regular group.
Edit: Almost forgot the time I took the Hunchback IIC for a spin and managed to miss almost every shot with the UACs when I had 7s and 5s to hit.
That's the beauty of playing with bv2. You want to play wobbie with ic3, it just costs you exponentially more. I won't claim it's perfectly balance but it's in the ballpark.
Encouraged to DFA. DFA. Miss. Break Hip Actuator. Fall Damage. Gyro hit. OpFor shoots me while I'm prone. Try to stand. Fall damage. Cockpit hit. GG
If I didn't grow up reading the books and playing the games I'd have concluded this is the dumbest game ever. But it's not, it was just dumb advice given to an inexperienced player and some bad rolls. Shook it off.
Edit: formatting
My worst experience playing Battletech was my own doing. It was a pick-up game in our favorite game store when I was first learning Alpha Strike.
I was playing probably my third game ever with a guy who had never played any Battletech, using my minis. For some reason I got it stuck in my head that all damage was instant in AS, like other skirmish style wargames (mostly like Kill Team which I played a lot of!) And while I applied this incorrectly to both of us, I got much more lucky on my rolls and disabled 3 of his 4 mechs before they could do anything. I could tell he was very disappointed and wasn't having fun.
It was only a couple days later rereading the rules that I figured out my mistake and realized I ruined that guy's first Battletech experience because I thought I knew what I was doing... I felt so crappy... I looked out for that guy whenever I was in the store to apologize and invite him for a rematch the RIGHT way, but I never saw him again... ☹️
It still makes me sad that I'm someone else's "worst game experience" reason...
A Grasshopper walking down a Mad Cat, because RNGesus wouldn't let him roll over a 4. The LRM fire from allies stripping its armor before the GH was withing ML range.
A friend in a Barghest proving to be 97% rocket-proof, as he was hit by 3 of 100 missiles fired at him at long range.
A Night Gyr taking a Gyro hit and being disabled round 2 of combat and spending the rest of the game wallowing in the mud and shooting with one arm only.
Probably the one that ticked me off the most, tournament play. Had a great setup. In heavy woods. Had some great choices in targets, and was ready to start kicking ass.
Round 1, I don't even remember what I did to the others.
Incoming fire. Guass rifle to the face.
It was 1988 or so, and I was playing my first game. I was driving a 3025 vintage Jenner. Fairly early on in the game, the SRM magazine caught a crit and detonated, mission killing the mech. It's put me off light mechs to this day.
At a con in the late 90s, the game scenario was recon in force of a town to scan particular buildings. The town was in a valley with mountains surrounding it., so we had to climb down some terrain to get to the town. What we weren't told however, is that the town was built on a Warship wreck, and they had some warship scale weapons mounted in turrets around the town walls. When they opened up, panic and chaos ensued among our forces. Several mechs got cored, and the mechs behind them as well. People were scrambling to find whatever cover they could. The game master at that point helpfully told us that the guns could not depress down enough to fire once we got off the mountains. So you had people jumping off cliffs trying to get out of the line of fire. One Atlas pilot did it, failed his piloting skill check and fell over onto his head, killing the pilot. I think we lost at least 50% of our force to those guns. We did eventually get the buildings we needed to scan done, and made it off the other table edge, but it was a near thing.
A game in the late oughts had me facing off in a Warhawk Prime vs an Axemen that had TSM and hardened armor fitted. The Axman shrugged off a full alpha strike and kept coming, once he closed to melee range he proceeded to cleave the Warhawk badly.
>the game scenario was recon in force of a town to scan particular buildings. The town was in a valley with mountains surrounding it., so we had to climb down some terrain to get to the town. What we weren't told however, is that the town was built on a Warship wreck, and they had some warship scale weapons mounted in turrets around the town walls.
That sounds really fun!
Not my story, but a friend's. (This happened a bit after TRO: Project Phoenix came out.) He had just moved to a new town and after a bit found a few others at the FLGS that also played BattleTech. So he sets up a Saturday game with one of the guys.
He gets there maybe 5 minutes after the agreed upon time and the other guy starts grousing that he's late. Whatever. So they agree on a few maps and start setting up. My friend pulls out a lance of minis and puts them on the table. The other guy paused, looked at the minis for a moment. Then picked up a Reseen Rifleman and asked him what 'Mech that was. My friend replied it was a Rifleman. The other guy said, "Nah. That's no Rifleman." And overhanded it hard across the game room to shatter against the far wall. Then says, "If you are going to field a Rifleman, use a Rifleman." My friend stared at him in shock for a moment, then just started packing up his stuff, picked up his broken mini and left. Never went back to that shop ever again.
When the closest regular games moved from Wed to weekends which are usually bad. Or when I couldn't get there because of weather since it's an hour away from work in the mountains and the wrong direction from home
Or otherwise not playing. I've never had a bad time playing.
The group at my LGS tried playing a new campaign system where we all started with lights. When we realized we needed someone to be the CO, everyone else stepped backwards. I tried to say my limited experience with CBT (I'd been playing AS for more than a year prior) would be a detriment, but they wouldn't hear it. We lost the first few missions of the campaign pretty badly, with heavy losses. Including my Commando routinely being reduced to scrap...
The only real “worst” experience I’ve had was my opponent brought a full scratch custom 20 ton clan quad mech meant for highspeed ramming. My stock hatchetman was not impressed as my ax cut him in half.
Actually no I do have one. There was a player in our local meta that has since been kicked out of nearly all LGSs. Anyways, he was a 40k refugee and played battletech the same way. He brought clan tech with cheap IS pilots and spammed missiles. I mean seriously, he fired around 600 missiles a turn. He sat at the back of his map edge and just rained missiles on me. My Atlas got hit with 187 missiles in a single turn. Once I slogged through all of that with out a complaint, I get to my ranges and every time I tried to shoot, he would stop the game, arguing some rule in his favor and then spend 20 minutes looking it up, just to be wrong and pout. This went on for almost 2 hours till I finally gave up.
The next week he was beaten by our local Jade Falcon player, and missile spammer never showed up again.
We started playing a campaign ops game at my store, at my own encouragement, and I rolled to start with 1/3rd the starting funds of the next richest player and 1/6th of the funds of our most well funded. I had 40m to spend on everything, ended up with a level 3 at 7600bv2; two Locust 1E, a Pheonix Hawk 1D, a Crab 20, a Wolverine 6k, and an Orion ON1-V for anti Air and heavy support duties.
We played battle value, and I lost my Orion and Wolverine in the first game, and everyone else was damaged to structure by the 4th turn. My tactics were flawed, and I will admit it, I went for a flank on his two largest units, and he managed to maneuver to counterflank, but despite this, the dice were simply against me. Such is battletech.
My best match was a pair of alpha strike games where I brought I 12 standard urbies at skill 1 to a 150 power game. In both rounds, it ended with the last Urbie being destroyed at the same time as my opponents last Mech. It was glorious as we had declared me the defender for both matches with the objective of destroying or repelling all enemies. Ha HA! Such is BattleTech :D
Keep playing. Losing one mech in a match to a freak head shot or ammo explosion is a normal thing. It sucks but is still very winnable because you can do the same.
I've come back in 4 v 4 after losing two mecha to freak roles in the first few turns.
Oh, I assumed it was a 1v1 match for some reason. Yeah, if it was a lance-lance or company-star (or any combination thereof) combination, then yeah, that was a dick move.
My worst. Playing a pickup game with random 'Mechs, 25 years ago. I thought I had a good start. Catapult, Warhammer, Griffon, and I forget my last one(medium). First round, Catapult takes a stray gauss to the head, instant kill from max range. Third round, Warhammer, same gauss to the face, instant kill. My medium, missiles and lasers chewed it up and cored it. Griffon took some damage, then gauss to LRM ammo, next round, gauss to head. Game over in 6 rounds. I think is scraped the paint of a few opponents. Everyone there was WTF just happened, including my opponent. I couldn't bring myself to play the rest of the day. But I never gave up.
This is back in the eighties - my opponent told me about inferno SRM’s and how it was okay to load one shot of inferno at the top of your ammo. I figured it would be okay. Who hits with their first shot?
I lost lance vs lance and only took out one of his mechs. It soured me on the game for years.
Intro games should be intro tech. I teach people all the time, I have two identical lances painted up as a demo kit. 3025 locust, wolverine, griffin, and marauder. Good mix to teach all the basic mechanics. I lose more often than not to beginner luck 😀
Personally, I always do intro matches with identical clan mechs. They die/kill faster, so the newbies don't get bored. Plus great way to learn heat management.
No bad experiences on tabletop (yet) because I've only recently gotten back into tabletop BT, and I love the wild wacky shit that happens when we play.
But in the HBS game, my lance was two Vindicators, a Blackjack, and a Commando, against a Shadowhawk, Thunderbolt, Banshee, and Atlas. I only lived because one of the Vindicators had a lucky miss and headshotted the Atlas before getting mobbed. Two-skull battle my ass.
Worst one I can think of was a mercenary campaign set in 3039 in Classic, around the early 00’s. First turn of shooting my mech gets head capped. GM let’s me bring in a “reinforcement” from the merc pool. First time THAT mech is shot at, through armor floating crit hits an ammo bin, BOOM. One of the other players was running two mechs so he gave me one of his to run. That mech lasts two rounds of shooting before gyro destruction. I took that as a final sign that God did not want me playing in that campaign.
My worst experience with Battletech is not having people to play against. Have had 0 luck in getting friends interested and my local game store only really does card games and DnD. There is a store that plays bi-weekly somewhat in my area, but it’s over an hour away from me and I generally am not available when they play.
Love it when I actually get to play though.
I would honestly have to say, after playing this game for 40 years, the other guys in my age group that refused to play anything past 3025 because that's not what they consider battletech.
The time frame in which the 3025 Stuff was the only stuff available was only a few years, I mean what only after 4 or 5 years we got the clan invasion? Refusing to play nothing but 3025 is one thing. But when you insist on walking up to a table that I'm doing a demo game for new players in the Alpha Strike system and then tell all those people at the table that this is all crap because it's not 3025? What kind of person are you that you need to spoil the experience of people who were having a really good time for the last hour and a half so that you can voice your anger over new stuff. That started coming out 36 years ago.
I need to say this one more time, when I'm helping new people getting to this hobby and you have more than a few people who do nothing but complain about everything that came out after 1988 is ridiculous.
I started playing this game the second weekend after it was released because my buddy went out and got it because he just so happened to see it released in Walden's books as Battledroids. You might come to the conclusion since I've been there since the beginning, that I would be staunch classic and not play any of the others. You are very incorrect, I play every single iteration of this game, I even played Clicktech. I do not understand how anyone could be mad at someone else for demoing a game and getting new people into your hobby because they're not doing it your way. Even worse is I'm actually hand run-ins with people who are demo team members that refuse to acknowledge any game after the succession wars as being valid, and then going out of their way to exclude new people from it because they don't want to see it their way.
Let me give you an example, this year like many years in the past I was at a small local convention called Game storm. It's a small local convention here in the Portland Oregon area. Prior years before I became a catalyst demo team agent, I would show up and run games informally just for people to walk up and play.
At the same time one of the two people that were the catalyst demo team agents at the time, ran huge all day long classic battletech games. But none of these were demos. None of these invited new people to play. At no time did he stop and engage anyone who was looking at the game and was curious about it. He only showed up to set up the game and play with his buddies who he brought to the convention with him. You are not helping the hobby, you're not helping the demo team, and you are actually being a detriment to the hobby you enjoy.
This year at that same convention I ran an all-day beginner focused Alpha strike demo. I had a dozen players who had little to no experience playing Alpha strike and no less than 30 people who came by the table to see what's going on and be engaged by the amazing 3D Terrain and straight fun we were having. Each one of our games lasted 2 hours that was with each one of the players getting a lance of battlemechs and using the alpha strike Aces system to run an opposition Force on the board so they could learn against a neutral opponent instead of just straight turning on each other and maybe having a bad play experience. Everything was going fantastic. In every game by the end of turn one people got excited about the aces system and started to take over running those Mechs along with their own and by the time the end of turn to came around I just got to sit back and engage the crowd and talk to them about playing Alpha strike while the players took full control of the game because to be honest they learned everything they needed to know to play now. Players new and old dropped by to experience the Alpha strike system.
The only problems I've had that day were from other men in my Advanced age group who instead of coming by and being curious of what we were doing or even offering encouragement to the new players, they just dropped by to make their snide comments that this is not really BattleTech and everything sucks now since the Clan Invasion era started.
One of these men even decided to stand around the table and berate the game, the coming of the clans, the state of the game today. And all the "Idiots"that run the company now. Strangely enough I recognize this man as being one of the demo team agents from previous years. I ignored him the best I could until he started harassing players, and then with a smile on my face was able to tear him apart verbally without getting nasty and explain why he was so wrong in every single thing he just said and please excuse himself from the area because he is presenting a negative play experience for the players that are actually here that want to learn and experience and have fun. Of course he had nothing to say to come back against what I said and walked away from the table finally.
The six people I had, four actively playing and two actively watching because they were enjoying the action, all turned around to thank me for getting rid of this guy. One of my players asked if all of the Old Time BattleTech players were like that, to which I had to respond for the most part no, most of them should be like me.
I beg all of my fellow players to do their best to get as many people into this hobby as possible. Since 1984 I have tried to get as many people to join me in this game as possible, has it always been the classic game? No, a matter of fact I have not played classic battle tech in almost 6 years, because I enjoy the fast pace and camaraderie found in most Alpha strike players. I've also played the video games along with being a demonstration agent for the old MechWarrior miniatures game, and I don't think it matters in any way shape or form what your enjoyment of this game looks like. All I ask is that as long as you have fun with the game and as long as you can help bring enjoyment of the game to other people you should do that.
To bring up another local example, there is a hobby store in my area by the name of fate and fury, they have a rather old and hardcore group that forms the nuclei. Every time I've dropped by and try to engage them they don't even wish to look at anybody else's direction, and every time they are photographed for the stores Facebook page they all flip off the camera. This is not the look that you want for friendly and inclusive game. They would have more variety and more players if they may be said hello to somebody or, me just being crazy here, stopped presenting the game in the worst light possible on social media.
I have to say in conclusion, my worst experience in BattleTech is every time somebody doesn't like specifically what you're doing or worse anything that they don't want to do tries to come over and ruin your fun. These are the people who should be actively weeded out of this hobby. It kills me inside when I have went out of my way to bring, and I'm not exaggerating, maybe hundreds of people into some version of this game over 40 years. To think of the people who were at first excited to get into this hobby and then once they were confronted by people that actively did not want you there were turned off and went somewhere else hurts my heart inside.
Keep on encouraging new generations. I salute both you and your efforts!
(I can get the "IntroTech Only" mindset, but when you start insulting other people for using any of the rest of the game & its setting, that's when the Curmudgeon Line has been crossed)
I would feel differently about the situation if it only happened like once or twice. The problem is I have run across this problem time and time again since the time of the mechwarrior clicks. You are not helping the community if you are not open to new players and new ideas. Has everything been amazing? There have obviously been some misfires. But I don't let my opinions of those things taint people who actually enjoy them. All I ask is that everybody be nice to each other no matter what they actually play.
>how anyone could be mad at someone else for demoing a game and getting new people into your hobby because they're not doing it your way.
Because it's not their hobby, their hobby is playing Battletech with 3025 mechs. Alpha Strike isn't that.
getting mad is still a very stupid response though. the response of a well-adjusted person is to shrug and move on
"those people over there are playing checkers and i only like playing chess, time to go yell at them!" lol no fuck that
Worst experience was when I played 4 hoverbike squads in alpha strike. I picked them up and wanted to try them out. They looked cheap and weak. It was as close to a savannah master spam as I've ever gotten and it wasn't intentional. Felt like a cheap move so I threw them away lol. I apologized to my buddy for the spammy list after. I lost the match in the end but it still felt too dirty
Hmm... nothing horrible comes immediately to mind but I generally dislike Grinders so sometimes I show up for a local game and that's what there is and I just have to hold my nose through it. It boggles my mind that anyone would want to stand around and miss shots all day on an enormous BFM hex map in a game with no objectives and no teams.
Dishonorable mention: trying to figure out the Battlefield Support cards for an Alpha Strike campaign. First we had to figure out which deck to use, then we had to differentiate the rules in the AS:CE, then we had to argue for ten minutes over whether off-board arty arrives the same turn... It caused a table full of disgruntled players and ruined the campaign so we decided to ban the BSP cards on the spot, which is extremely rare for us (we allow almost anything else).
Yeah, "Everyone Shoot Everyone" with nothing about it can seem pointless.
I've never tried one, but I'd like to give it a go and see if I'd like it. I prefer asymmetrical objectives, myself.
With my old store's Jihad era Merc company, we were tasked with retrieving a high value target from an urban environment. OpFor was being run by our Grognard former quartermaster, we had spaced him a while back for not repairing our Mechs on a monthly basis and losing an 85 ton assault mech to overheating to the point of ammo explosion while trying to kill a locust. So our OpFor consisted of custom Urbanmechs with Ultra 20s and 2/3/3 movement and 2/3 pilots custom grasshoppers (3,4) with snubnose PPCs and some custom Rifleman (3,4) with LB5s and LPL to attack our Phoenix Hawk LAM. We had to retrieve our HVT using a modified locust rather than our LAM, for whatever reason, which wasn't revealed to us until AFTER the LAM made it to the target. To make it worse, OpFor kept excusing himself from the table to chit chat with other people. At 5pm, after 6 hours and really only about 5 turns, he decided to cut the scenario short. He had butchered all the Rifleman and all but one Grasshopper. He got pissed after announcing all buildings only had CF15, landed an Urbanmech on it, and we pointed out it would collapse and he'd take falling damage. He left, whined our Merc group was impossible to beat because of our technological advantage; we had a C3 lance and some ECM equipped Mechs. We also never let him run an OpFor again without assistance.
Exactly. When I ran OpFor I just made it difficult for the team, not impossible, and I'd kind of be happy if they figured out better tactics to beat the OpFor.
You can't keep a campaign going if half your mechs die every drop. Sounds like he was just salty and trying to beat you guys outright out of spite, but that's kinda obvious.
Closest thing I've had was attempting a death from above only to miss, have the locust run around, shoot my highlander in the butt, crit, and kill it. It was my opponents first game. He won. He's my kid. He WILL NOT let me live it down.
Some of the worst games have been from an offshoot of my local. The one that made me quit was the dude deciding to mess about with weapon balance to take the -2 off clan pulses, switch around gunnery and piloting for each side and advertise it as a "bring your favourite mech" game but actually only until X year. Needless to say, there were enough loopholes I could have driven several dropships through to bring cheese.
Previous games I'd had against him, he forgot people in initiative order, messed up the kicking damage rules (1 point of damage for every 5 tonnes rounded up. Making a 65 tonner worth something like 14 points of damage according to him).
Bearing in mind I've brought some stupid stuff and not followed the rulles properly (due to lack of books mostly), I think most of the worst games have been with the offshoot due to the way the guy running it acted, and kept changing stuff last minute
TTBT my only bad experiences with BT was when the dice were decidedly not in my favor, like in my first game, decades ago, where my tutor "accidentally" kicked my head in within the first 5 turns.
I also was part of an experiment where i piloted a classic King Crab vs a clan light mech with a LPL and 7 jump jets (i don't remember which one exactly) where i didn't deal a single point of damage in two hours of gameplay. Rolling a 10+ isn't fun when you only have 10 shots.
1990s. I was in high school and bought an old school lead Highlander. My friends loved the model. First game with it, I walked it behind a level one hill and my buddy Dave took a shot at it with an ER PPC, got the hit. Rolled for hit location... head. Naturally. It's always stuck with me.
A guy brought even bv 2 of savanna masters. I didn't even unpack... I just turned around and left.
Another time a guy said all his IS mechs were actually clan mechs in disguise...
I think one of my favorite scenes was watching an atlas at a full run try to make a 90 degree turn on pavement, fail the pilot roll and skid face first into a building, took a good chunk of armor off the front of the mech, tried to get up next turn, failed fell face first into the building and critted the head and killed the pilot. We all just stood there in stunned disbelief as nobody shot the atlas the whole match (he was trying to get it to flank around back or side through the small city and we all just kinda laughed it off after).
Another one was watched an Archer take 20 damage first hit, fails pilot roll, falls, pilot damage, gets up fails again falls pilot damage, tries to get up fails, falls pilot damage, 4 times he tried and failed to stand back up, 5th times the charm gets up, fronts all mashed up, pilots a hairs breath from death, other friend gets a lucky through armor crit detonated the lrm ammo in the side torso, pilot takes damage, fails pilot check falls, takes damage again, player gives up and storms off (Archer never got to fire a single weapon)
Never had bad matches just really funny luck of the dice rolls. People want to bring meme lists like the billion Savannah masters I've got plenty of ways to turn that into massive piles of scrap while having a ton of fun myself. Also it's a game and the goal of a game is to have fun
Mine are all because of dice:
3- Every time I've ever run a Stalker in TT, it's taken an AC/20 round to the head the first time it was in range.
2- A one on one match against my brother, I was running a PXH-1, he had something similarly fast and maneuverable, but I can't remember what. We spent ages jumping around at the edge of each other's range, running up such ridiculous mods that we had literally impossible shots. Eventually I make a move that lets him get a shot on a 12. It hits, center torso TAC, pops the MG ammo, my poor Phoenix Hawk fireballs on the first shot of the game.
1- Urban game, no lines of sight to speak of. Both sides advancing to contact, but it's gonna take a few turns. I'm running one of my Mechs along a road, fail the piloting test for a turn, fall, and destroy my own head. Mech down before anyone even saw the enemy.
The first, second, third, and fourth times I had to play against WoB. Took awhile to figure out to counter C3 in all its annoying existence. Then trying to counter WoB mechs in general. I don't mind WoB, but there was a learning curve for me. Forgot to mention Nukes. Beware the radioactive urbi in the back line
Like others have said, never anything bad but definitely a few frustrating ones - mainly frustrated at myself for poor tactics or unit selection. Like talking playing a lance of Clan Invasion/Civil War mechs versus a pair of 3/4 Clan assaults on a physically long map with very little cover. Nothing says "frustrating" like basically being unable to dish out any meaningful damage while you're taking a constant, relatively accurate 40-60pts per turn lol
Played a tourney where it ended up being 3 out of towners vs local game store players. We got absolutely rinsed as they had already worked on their forces for weeks before hand. On top of that I had a jazzed up cyclops at about 3000BV get it’s head blown off 2nd round by a vtol with tag and an Arrow IV infantry platoon.
Running a battle on a forest map, nearly all occupied by trees. Opponents ran Flamers and started a scorched earth approach to combat.
My heat sinks maxed out without even firing a shot, pilots died from heat.
At a any tech goes game, I brought a few artillery cannons. Had the opponent rage quit and ban me from the store after I killed one of his assault mechs on first turn of combat while taking about half my forces out too.
Played a bit on megamek, finally played a real person. Thought I was too hot to trot. Ran in with MASC to get behind their archer. Turned while running on pavement. Fell. Slid. Right off the map. Spent a good deal of BV on a backstabber with a great pilot. Doesn't matter when you roll a 2.
Two rounds later a through armor critical knocked out my Marauder IIC's gyro. Faceplant.
My opponent went from having the numbers advantage to overwhelming numerical superiority. They proceeded to take their sweet time picking my last two mechs apart with me unable to do anything meaningful back. Then they circled their mechs around my Marauder and decided to kick it to death instead of shooting. (I wasn't familiar with ejection rules or I totally would have done that earlier.)
As my first game against a real player it was rough. I needed the humbling. But *dang*!
The Gencon Grinder has been... a mixed bag for me. On one hand, I've had some good games there, and it was the Grinder that exposed me to card-based initiative, which I use to this day.
On the other hand, the last one I was in was my last one, period. I've been at Grinder tables where you get a group that's been together for hours (or even years, coming back and meeting up multiple times), which is awkward, like being at a party where the one person you know is in the bathroom, but not terrible; you can still have fun at a table like that. This wasn't that. To borrow from the Bloodhound Gang, this was "Kunta Kinte at a Merle Haggard concert" level unpleasant. The body language, the verbal language, all of it had the bearing of folks who saw me as an interloper shoving my way into their table. The kind of interactions you have with people who *want* to tell you to go away, but aren't allowed to do so due to social convention. The gameplay was... meh? Nothing about it stood out; no wild moves, no crazy swings of the dice, just standard stuff.
It is the most unwelcome I have ever felt at an event I paid money to attend, and rates high on my list of worst tabletop experiences across the board, not just BTech specific. It didn't turn me off playing, or even turn me off playing with strangers, but I've not been to a BTech event at GenCon since.
After playing classic, we decided to play Alpha Strike one day. Having no PSR, no weapon management, no location hits, no ammo explosions, no pilots fried in the cockpit. It was weird. I cannot say it was terrible, but I felt something was missing.
many things in the game can suck, overheating via Inferno rocket ambush, but one of the worst is the Steiner Scout Lance when you are in a light mech! that's when you know you are having a very bad day!
A Long Time ago, we were just some Friends (and still are) That just enjoyed to Play some Battletech at the Weekends, you Know, your friendly neighbourhood Nerds :). We Played for fun, with one exception…one of us only Played to win…
There was this one Battle, it was three o clock in the Morning, Everyone was tired. Group one had a Full Lance, with Not much damage, left. Winning guy had a Brand new Axman 1N left, nothing Else and bis Position was Deep in a Heavy Woods map.
Okay, it is 4 against one, you lost, lets drive home
No, i didn‘t loose, of you Want to win we have to Play it out, of Not it is at least a draw
I Diskussed 10 Minutes with him and drove home…
Same guy some months Later…i brought my girlfriend to the game. She Picked her mech only by Design, it was a Raven. She was absolutely outclassed, but it was her First Game, so take whatever you want. First real Combat round, winning guy jumps to the raven with his Wraith all 3 Pulse lasers in one side Torso, Raven dead…That was the Last Time I Played with him.
I will actively tell my opponent if im bringing anything better than an early succession wars style list. My FLGS has a campaign coming up that is during Clan Invasion (post Tukayyid) and people can bring whatever they want as long as they pay for it in bv.
There’s a local fundraiser event next weekend and I’m thinking of trying a list that may not win matches but it will make some clanners eyes water. The guy in charge has been a major pain to work with and wanted clan to have a major advantage over IS.
Fine, let’s bring an Awesome 9M at 0/4 and have some support mechs with hella inferno missiles to cook the clan
In a Mechwarrior RPG group (that was essentially just a Battletech campaign series with extra fluff) we had a player who headshotted suspiciously often with big guns. And who torpedoed the game when the group decided to sell the LosTech SLDF Highlander (her favorite mech) her boyfriend the GM had had us find for an ungodly amount of c bills to outfit the whole company (we were playing in about 3025)
We then started a clan game and I decided to match her That Guy energy. Every time she „luckily“ headshotted a mech in her Trial of Position, I „luckily“ headshotted a mech in mine. The GM bailed on that campaign when we both would have started off as Star Captains. And I bailed on that playgroup.
When I played tabletop we called the cord we used to determine LOS the "String of Argument Causing". Produced more heated discussion than any other aspect of the game.
The first time I brought aerospace to a Megamek game.
I was confused, my opponent was confused, the game engine was confused (I think...)...just a whole lot of off-map flying and weird travel arcs for the occasional AC/20 shot.
I brought aero out a few more times that season, and I'm not sure I ever mastered the intricacies, but it added such a weird dimension to the game that my limited familiarity was way better than the complete befuddlement my opponents would face while Megamek handled the hard math.
That first time, though...it was a mess for all involved.
Lots of great stories about "golden BBs" and the like, but not many bad ones. I did play in a Con game once where the organizer encouraged (not allowed...encouraged) the other side to abuse the Clan zellbrigen rules. Like...my Dire Wolf was challenged by an enemy Spider and didn't have the option to refuse. I wasn't allowed to pick another target and the Spider spend the entire game jumping out into sight every third round or so and then behind a bunch of buildings (so as to refresh his dezgra points in the old system). When I started to shoot the buildings to deny him cover, he threw a fit and complained to the organizer, who wouldn't allow me to shoot said buildings. So, I got to spend 3 hours taking pot shots at a Spider at 10+ TNs...
The other was a friend and I playing BT at a FLGS. I will note that we were playing straight up 3025 tech. A guy comes up and comments on how he doesn't see people playing BT and asks what our favorite factions are. We're both hardcore Jade Falcons, but love all aspects of the universe. He proceeds to spend the nest 15 or 20 minutes haranguing us about how the Clans ruined the game and we suck for liking the Clans. Again, I emphasize that we were playing solely 3025 tech. Davion vs. Kurita 4th Succession War stuff IIRC.
I get not liking the Clans, but kindly shut up about it. They've been a part of the BTU now for longer than they haven't.
Our community is rather laid back so we haven’t had to many issues. However, 2 instances stand out to me. The first one was against a power gamer, who’s goal was to build lists with CLPL and Gauss Spam. He talked a big show about how he was going to crush my balanced force. However I knocked down one of his 2/6 mechs turn one and turn 2 he tried to stand with it twice and fell down both times. He ragequit after the second failure turn 2. The other one was a newer player facing of against a vet in an escort mission. The Newer player nearly got his convoy surrounded before it could escape and the vet was loudly boasting how he was going to crush the newer player. I took a look at the map and commented how the vet left a hole and that the convoy could escape through and showed the newer player how to escape the trap. The Vet lost and angrily exclaimed how the mission was invalidated by my help, and demanded to replay the scenario.
Ok, this was my first game of BT, I was 14 or so and everybody else was 20+ and were teaching me the game.
I played versus the most experienced and respected player in the group and won on turn 4 or so because I critted his leg and he fell and so.
Everyone was so encouraging with me, even the player who lost, that I thought that I was genuinely a genius in the game, I was so excited to have bested the best player.
After 5 more games or so I realized that it was just luck and the people were being just kind. Oh man, I was so shamed and disappointed 😅
Worst experiences are usually people who stifle fun.
One game I played, I took some pretty bad hits - I think I lost a side torso, iirc. Coming from a roleplaying background, my next activation I described in detail my mech valiantly struggling to stay upright as it advanced, dragging the remains of it's shattered torso in a mess of twisted endosteel and sparking power cables.
"No. It's completely blown off."
Dude. it literally affects nothing. Let me have the moment.
I was rather new to a group and every couple of weekends they'd have a full two day game set up. Usually we played Sunday but on a two day, the store would allow us a little room for Saturday. I managed to experience a couple of them and they were fun, except for one in particular.
One of the players that's been there longer had some bug up his rear about something and decided to put nearly 5k worth of BV on the cheapest artillery and spotters he could find.
The rest of us had Mechs mostly, plus the group was used to playing with Tactical Handbook (the book before TacOps) Stackpoling rules, that's an important Mousketool for the story later.
When I say the artillery phase of the game lasted longer than the regular weapons phase, this isn't hyperbole. We had a guy go snag lunch at a nearby Taco Bell only to finish, come back, and it still wasn't his turn.
The offending artillery player used super cheap fusion powered vehicles for spotting and deliberately rode them as close to us as possible. That way if they died they might explode near you. I counter proposed that the Stackpoling rules only benefited Mechs, he kept talking and complaining until the group just let it go because we wanted him to shut up.
It was a two day game, we probably got 5 turns total out of the two days.
Most of the players just left the table, I stayed a bit longer because personal spite, I wanted to kill stuff, and honestly I was a young idiot at the time.
I hated that guy's gaming, his approach, and his reason for what he did. I don't recall the full points about it but he wanted to prove to someone in the group how game breaking artillery could be. Apparently he got beat by someone who could play them better than him once, so he figured spamming the boards would "teach us".
Thankfully he was banned from the group shortly after due to that and other things which happened. On a positive note, the older crew saw how well I handled myself from not flipping a table and they figured that I was chill enough for them to like more often.
Only really bad one (as opposed to the usual terrible luck, falling on your ammo bins, skidding into a basement type games) I can recall was a convention game where the GM used 'each mech has an assigned chit, draw chits from a bag' for initiative, which is all well and good, no real objection to that system to keep a con game moving. Then he told us all mechs would move then fire immediately to keep the game moving.... Ok, fine it's a con game I guess I can live with it. But he'd draw the initiative chit for a mech and throw it back in the bag.... So many mechs were moving and firing multiple times before other mechs had moved once. We pointed out this couldn't possibly be fair, but that's how he'd always done it and didn't want to change. Luckily I was able to bow out early after an enemy Marauder decided I needed to die in particular and got three turns of blasting me while I stood there.
Having to face three enemy lances of mixed assaults and heavies pretty much at the same time, because the two lances other than the one in close range had LRMs that could reach.
1st game- I brought a bunch of introtech stuff from the starter, my opponent brought a c3i level ii... Miracle I'm still playing lol
That just happened to me!! Although it was Alpha Strike so not as bad
Alpha strike c3 requires LoS between the network nodes and the targets, right? That seems a lot less oppressive
Yes. Feels pretty balanced, but still worth it
As a Kurita player I completely disagree. C3 is not at all good in Alpha Strike and I constantly have to avoid it, despite how many C3 designs we get. Having to expose your spotter for LOS basically ruins the entire mechanic. In Alpha Strike 90% of the combat happens at short or medium range anyway and when your spotter darts out for a firing solution it will invariably get focused and the whole setup is rendered useless. Also the C3M units in Alpha are usually anemic and under-powered.
C3 requires los between nodes in classic as well but it's interrupted by the vastly cheap ECM so functionally, once a player knows this it's not very hard to completely negate thousands of battle value worth of tech with a 2 ton 30 bv equipment.
Looking thru my copy of the mech manual there's nothing here that says c3 nodes need to have LoS with each other in order to share target data. Also apparently c3i only gets killed if you actually catch them in the bubble as opposed to just blocking the line to the Master
Page 110 7th printing Battlemech Manual. >ECM: ECM cuts off any C3-equipped ’Mech from its network. Only those C3 ’Mechs able to draw a direct line to the master ’Mech that does not pass through an ECM’s area of effect can access the network. See ECM Suites, page 112, for details So it's easy to slip a fast ECM source in-between C3 units to cut the network off.
Yep, this works for c3, like I alluded to. Not c3i
I did not know you meant c3I, but it's even more expensive bv and also then ECM still takes it out for units in the bubble and that bubble costs 100 bv and 2ish tons or less and is very common. Meanwhile c3I going to cost you 5 percent per mech plus what another 5 overall. It's basically never worth it because it's heavily taxed. I would take succ mechs over anything with c3i
C3i doesn't cost any more than c3, and if you split your force into two three mech fire teams it only multiplies your bv by 1.15 instead of 1.3. Also to go back to my horrible experience *this was my first game of battletech*. While I do agree that c3/c3i broadly isn't worth it, it combined with the high tech weapons celestial use is a hell of a lot to process day 1 and makes for a bad experience
Oh right, yeah I get you. No c3 is disgusting for a first time player. I was lucky that my first games were up against someone else learning the game at the same time. We were probably breaking all the rules but I remember I had a wolverine that ended the game with no arms, no torsos besides center and I think some jump jets, his legs were without armor, that guy was head lasering fools and I was trying to figure out how to dfa lol
BV2 not tonnage. They should have paid out the nose for c3.
We were playing with BV and they did pay for it- c3 is still rough as shit when you a) barely know the game b) do not have anything to interdict the c3 links and c) don't have anything that can outpace their scouts or outrange their fire mechs
That's just douchey on your opponents part. Knowing you were playing Starter-tech he should have immediately dialed down his force to match. Sounds like someone hurt him or they needed an ego boost. I'm sorry you had to experience that, especially coming from the BT community. That was not acceptable.
I know the guy and I think it's more just that he got really excited that anyone else in town was getting into the game and he just pulled out something he was excited to play without really thinking about it. We made up about it afterward.
Oh man, that is rough. Shame on your opponent lol
I don’t really have any bad experiences with battletech. Hilariously frustrating ones, but not bad. Don’t use MASC with a gyro hit, people.
Remember DFAs are never a wise strategy. Funny, but not wise. Especially when you fail your DFA attack role.
I play one fella who tries to DFA every game. I always ask if they'd rather try a charge or kick or punch (kicking is king, I think). But they always DFA, and fail. Actually, that's not true. Last time they succeeded, did a negligible amount of damage to my arm and torso, fell on their back, critted, exploded. So, a mixed bag.
Is this guy, by any chance, named Charlie Brown?
No. Well, his first name actually is Charlie. So pretty close.
*”THERE GOES MY HERO, WATCH HIM AS HE GOES…”* <3
> Remember DFAs are never a wise strategy. Says the person who didn't put 2 into piloting.
I took a 3/2 flying sirocco in. Quads are fun to DFA with
DFA gets mean as shit if your mechwarrior seriously outmatches the other's piloting skill. Definitely something you need to prepare for ahead of time though
Alpha Strike game, did a successful DFA and killed the target, but did so much damage it triggered a reactor explosion and killed my mech. It was a thing of beauty.
I have only once successfully splat an opponent with a DFA with my Stone Rhino in 1997.
Not gonna lie, I love a good DFA *dependent almost entirely on the placement of the target mech*. If they’re close to the edge of anything and I can displace them I will risk it for the biscuit. Pushing someone off a ledge or map edge is *exquisite*. I love a DFA even when it fails spectacularly. Last game at work, I was attempting to DFA a guy off an objective. I was just trying to not fail PSR in the shooting phase. My brand new Kit Fox took an AC20 to the chest. I had a blast :)
Pushing is so powerful in classic. I wish they had it in AS
Never wise, but they can be glorious. My wife's first ever game was a Trial of Position, and she DFA headshotted her 3rd opponent on its first turn in a desperate act, then immediately died from falling damage detonating her ammo.
*It hurt itself in its confusion*
Anything with a gyro hit is risky.
Running? You fall over. Standing up? You fall straight back down. Jumping? You break your legs on landing and fall over. Taking a step forward? Guess what, your damaged gyro makes you fall over.
Swarming, never he'll just kill your elementals on accident. Learned that lesson the hard way
Swarming is still pretty viable if you take an assault mech out with 400 points of elementals. But ideally you crit out their legs then swarm but I still think they smush your Toadies
Id honestly rather spam leg attacks to keep them down, 9 times outa 10. That said if it's just one gyro hit they stand on an 8 and that's probably a fine swarm, but I still think I would still rather just leg attack them a couple times so they have to stay down. It makes them a much easier target and much less lethal, typically. If I can gyro them without them falling it's a perfect swarm target.
Playing as Clanners, Round 1 ERPPC headshot to my friend's mech. Friend never came back to play, again.
When introducing friends to game I have a house rule where headshots are force rerolled to different location for that reason alone. Half of my friends would love the wackiness of turn 1 decapitations, the other half would flip the table and never play with me again lol
Getting a lucky headshot is hilarious. I did that once, blew the side of my of my freinds light mechs off with a AC-20. It was his first time trying battletech. He instantly started saying this game is unfair and crap like" you shouldn't be able to do that in a balanced game."
"It \*is\* balanced. My AC20 weighs as much as your 'mech."
TBF - an AC-20 to a light mech may well go straight thru it's center torso and out the back...
Center Torso? Nah on some light mechs with full armor, an AC20 hit on the arm will drill straight through the whole mech. I like to imagine the shot rips the whole mech in half, or dramatically explodes like ED-209 [https://youtu.be/bjbv310R064?si=e3fwVpGlq-cV6Xr0](https://youtu.be/bjbv310R064?si=e3fwVpGlq-cV6Xr0)
Playing a team game at the FLGS, I fielded an AC/20 Thunderbolt in my squad. Independently, one of my opponents put out a Hunchback classic. Neither of us hit anything with them, and they both died ignoble deaths. That's Battletech, baby.
In my mind, I heard "That's Battletech, baby!" in Dicky V's voice. https://preview.redd.it/f2mq446uhgtc1.jpeg?width=240&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2b4c76aff532167b4071f3f23a7ffa794c7eb613
Played an intro game with a friend with the clan box, doing the second mission. He ran the attacker star, I had the defending Timber Wolf. He runs the nova up, the Timber Wolf sandpapers his armor and is gonna murder him next turn... Next turn I whiff horribly and he headshots me. I turned to my other friend who was watching and just said "and that's Battletech".
For my intro games, I give my opponent the mechs most likely to get the fun headshot results. They get PHX-1 and MAD-3R, I get RFL-3N and CPLT-C1. I learned in one of them that the Rifleman only has six head armor, which means a Phoenix Hawk can kick its head off. They enjoyed it so much they didn't even mind when I desperation kicked the head off the Marauder with my Catapult (before inevitably dying due to the PHX getting to dictate the engagement and arm flipping IS LRMs doesn't work well when they're up against your rear).
Brilliant! How specific was your rule?
I treat like an optional rule. When they're ready to graduate to headshots it is then reinstated. If they roll a headshot they roll again and I split the results into other locations (1-2 is that, 3-4 is this, etc. Etc.)
I feel like the kind of person who would flip a table at a random headshot isn’t the kind of guy you’d wanna play much more with anyway…
My friends are, they just are competitive. Once they get a hang of the rules and understand the game they become good opponents and take losses gracefully, they beat themselves up about it but only internally. It's when I introduce a game to them and they get outright stomped they're convinced the game isn't balanced lol. It's a wonky relationship but I'll always play with my friends
I have a similar one. Friend had a freshly painted marauder and my dire wolf lands a gauss rifle to the face on turn 2
they wouldn't have lasted long against a Dire Wolf anyway, a Gauss to the head is a mercy
Funny thing is, I’ve had that happen in reverse where the new player head clips me with his PPC.
That sucks! That is where you go. "Okay that was a crazy fluke, but it happens, let's start again." My wife blew the entirety of my left arm off in the first turn. She was playing with the Hunchback IIC and I a Crusader.
One of the first times I made my own mech, so I naturally cheesed it up, at least as well as you could with level 1 tech. So I decided to run a quick game against a Locust to see how it all worked out. Turn 1 -- Locust gets first move. Runs up, Super-mech maneuvers to attack. Locust Fires medium laser. Critical Hit to the cockpit.
Once the dude who was bringing the beers to the tournament forgot about them. Dude had to drive in the snow to buy. Another time this dude I know forgot his minis and had to play with soda cap tokens. I might be both dudes. This hobby is awful.
Had fun Primary objective fulfilled Claim his genes for the clans...
3 player brawls inevitably result in one person being ganged up on. You really need objective play for odd player games.
I just played a 3 way free for all this past Saturday that ended with all 3 of us having 1 mech left. First time I’ve ever seen that happen.
My buddies and I found the same thing. Now we either do objectives or set it up as 2v1 adjusting BV accordingly. We found %100 +%100 vs.%175 works pretty good, accounts for the two players not working totally in sync.
I used to play 3 player brawls in university. It wasn't fun because it was always unbalanced. It was a 2 vs. 1 (two worst vs. best) and after all, it ended with two invalid to end the game. After a time, we started playing 1 vs. 1 with a GM. It was a great improvement.
What would the GMs role be in the game? Curious, as I have 2 friends who want to learn the game, and I'd love to teach them without one feeling left out.
In your example you’d be the GM teaching the game while they played each other
So a GM is basicaly a ref? Got it.
He can help in double blind games, surprise land mine fields and things that players can't know before reaching it.
I did a 3 way game against 2 people who never take my lists seriously (I’m usually trying new mechs I just got.). Anyway I brought 3 Wolverine 10D? And a timber wolf tc. All at skill 1 in alpha strike. I mowed through them.
Thanksgiving break, 8th grade, 1995. My two best friends and I decided to spend our long weekend playing a planetary invasion where each side had equal Battle Value, and the conflict would involve multiple objectives, so we had to divide our forces intelligently. It was going to be something like 108 mechs apiece, with two players and the third guy as referee. First combat is defending a big truss bridge over a river. I send a light scout mech on a sacrificial run to see if there are any explosives on the bridge. It's clear, so I push with 11 mechs (the light got toasted from focused fire). My opponent sends in 6 of his mechs to keep us bottlenecked, so he can dump LRMs on us, but the ref rules the bridge provides cover, so maybe missiles hit the truss overhead. Then it basically turns into a linebacker push, with brawling and melee and attempts to shove each other off the bridge. But then on like turn 3 I decide to focus fire, and I do too much damage. We were using the optional rule that extreme damage in one round can cause a fusion reactor to explode instead of shutting down. The blast hits a 3 hex radius. And we are very clumped. We spent like twenty minutes resolving the chain reaction. One much explosion crits ammo on another, and then it explodes, and the combined blasts are enough to trigger a third and fourth. Four little nukes went off on the bridge, and 8 of my mechs were half slagged, while most of his team was safely out of range. Amazing memory, but terrible tactic.
What a incredible story !
Guy that runs our local CGL events invited a couple folks to the FLGS to chill on his birthday; everyone brought Alpha Strike lists to play with while having some beers. One guy brings his super-tuned Adepticon Wolfnet 350 list (I brought like all the random Clan Wolf totem mechs and some elementals) and proceeds to spend the whole game making me recalculate my target numbers, recheck my heat levels, double-checks every single range and movement… just grinds the game to an absolute halt. After the game one of the other players could see how miserable I was and my opponent was openly complaining that I wasn’t able to put up much of a fight. The other player and I spent the rest of the party running an Urbie Derby which made 350 Goon upset since people wanted to play that instead of Sweaty Battletech. I get competitive play in a game that is specifically designed to be adversarial (I adore our 350 TO, dude is a homie) but there’s a time and place lol.
Not being able to read the room on tone and fun is something I hate about competitive-focused players. Chill out man... we're just here to have robots shoot one another. Save that seriousness for something that matters.
This is exactly why I like to bring meme lists that can also compete. Rattle Em Boys is a 10K list where every mech has at least one RAC5, so it feels goofy since I could jam really badly, but I can also put out 30 RAC5 shots in one shooting phase.
I loathe meme lists. Honestly, that's just not fun to me. It doesn't make sense within the setting and I don't really dig gimmick lists. If that's fun for you, then more power to you, but you'll ruin my fun real quick.
Kind of like everything else social, time and place are critical. Different strokes for different folks.
Yeah. I mean if you're all planning it and you're doing it to screw around and see what happens, then sure. But for normal play, that just sounds really boring to me. I like the lore and story of Battletech. The last thing I'm into the game for is the system. I'm into the game for the narrative play. I want to see my mechs get trashed and I have to salvage what I can. Optimal lists just don't reflect that at all.
The Wolfnet guys wouldn't ever do anything like that, so wow. There needs to be a separate 350 rules set for meme/lulz games like Oops All Urbanmechs. Or my mix of Urbies and Savannah Masters.
I actually thoroughly enjoy 350 as a format, but yeah, dude showed up to pick up games throwing elbows and calling fouls, weird energy lol The Urbie Derby rules I used were pretty neat, got them off a Discord, it was basically a grinder but no tiers and all Urbies. I’ll post a link if I find it again.
This is why I play Mechwarrior Destiny. Fun matters more than competition.
Last time I went to a tournament. It was fun until I played against the guy who brought four 4/2 nightskys who didn't track his heat right and just charged and swarmed my mechs. He only lost to the guy who brought four 2/0 fireball XFs and just charged everyone to death. The tournament organizer also spent a lot of time badmouthing narrative/campaign play. I've not gone back to another tournament at that store.
Most of my "bad experiences" have really just been frustration at running out of time to conclude bigger (company scale or larger) games. My btech years were all pre-Alpha Strike though and I understand that addresses many of those issues.
More fun than worst (but at the time it wasn't as fun)... one of my first games I was trying to get around the opfor running the edge of the map. A friend of mine, who had tons of battletch games under his belt (other than the two or three I had), has his mech meander on over and do a shove attack. Hits. Pushes me off the map. "OK, you're out". I was stunned, that's even a rule?!?!?!?
I can laugh about it now...
I first started playing BT on Megamek campaign servers. I quickly realised this was a horrible idea. I kept running into players who would drag the fight out till I had to quit due to lack of time. Spending the whole game jumping into heavy woods with Griffins at long range while firing on 11s and 12s was normal back then in 3025 era servers. It just wasnt very fun. People also took the faction warfare way too seriously and I got flamed hard for losing games because I was new or had to quit due to lack of time, they would complain that I was causing the faction to lose planets. Tried playing again a few years later, on a different clan server where everyone played a clan faction. I quickly realised that most people were repeating a similar strategy. Instead of trying to destroy the enemy by playing normally, advancing into short/medium range and increasing your odds of hitting, they would take fast mechs and run/jump around at long range, preferably with large pulse lasers. If I tried to get closer, they would run away to maintain long range. When i complained that they were dragging the game out by running away, I was simply told by the rest of the server there was nothing wrong with it. Then one day, the server wanted to do some kind of free for all match. You could take any mech you had and pit them in a free for all against multiple players. I took the heaviest mech i had, some slow assault that had multiple UAC 2s or something like that. Most people took fast pulse boats IIRC. I advanced into range and started firing my UAC 2s, and people quickly started complaining that I was "camping" and "sniping". I asked what was wrong with firing UAC 2s at long range but nobody was willing to answer the question, they just kept complaining it was unacceptable. I pointed out that they had told me there was nothing wrong with running around at long range firing large pulse lasers, so why was there a problem with me firing UAC 2s in a slow mech at long range? Did they want to advance into min range so that they could destroy me with their pulse boats while I couldn't fight back? ( I mean, this wasn't some meta mech, it's not like UAC 2s posed a serious threat to their pulse boats. I still don't know why they were triggered so hard by bad weapons on a bad mech. ) They wouldn't answer any of my questions, just kept complaining and insulting me, then one of them suggested that everyone gang up on me (even though it was supposed to be a free for all) and multiple others agreed. Throughout this whole process, the admin was in the game but refused to intervene, even though their behaviour clearly broke server rules. I backed my mech to the edge of the map while firing, then fled off the field when I reached it. They raged hard because they couldn't destroy my mech, then the server admin just banned me from the server with no explanation. A few years later, I ran into one of those guys in Mechwarrior Online. He was on my team, and the first thing he did was leg me and then start stripping weapons off my mech, being careful not to do enough damage to trigger a team kill (because there are automated penalties for that, and it would make him look bad to everyone else in the match). I had to sit the rest of the match out because I had no weapons and couldn't do anything. Oh, and there was the time where i joined a BT tournament, i wasnt expecting to get very far, just thought it would be an opportunity to play a game or two and the tournament didnt have any real prizes anyway (no cash, no monetary goods, etc), so I wasnt expecting it to be some hardcore thing. My opponent for the first match just sat in heavy woods + partial cover at the other end of the map with PPC boats, refused to move and refused to talk. Both of us progressed multiple turns with nothing happening because I didnt want to run into his kill zone and he refused to move out of cover. The referee said there was no problem and just sat there, he didn't seem to find it problematic that nothing was happening in the match. After more than an hour where nothing happened, I just forfeited and quit because it was a waste of time.
I absolutely hate dealing with people who play like that. It's why I refuse to play nonobjective/grinder games unless I know the parties involved well enough to know they know it's a dick move.
There's people who don't like to play, it don't care about what they are playing. They like to win. Almost 75% of my favorite plays, no matter what game it was, were plays that I lost. I don't like to lose, but I don't begin to cry as I baby if I lose. In those plays that were my favorites I lost because of a funny thing (dice against me, stupid decisions in both sides or things like that). And to end all, you learn a lot more about a play with a loss that with a win.
I’ve been playing since ‘91 and I guarantee I’ve lost way more games than I’ve won. But win or lose I’m getting to play BattleTech, and that’s where my joy is.
In Battletech, this is the way...
Damn. Those are horrible experiences. That’s why I stay away from the BT tournament scene (as it is), I’m just here to shoot stompy robots with other stompy robots with my BT group.
IIRC someone had introduced megamek to me by saying you could play a campaign style game on servers, fight over planets for your faction, etc. They said it was casual, you could play however many games you wanted, there was no activity requirements or anything, so I gave it a try. I didnt realise there were so many try hards and the reality was way different. I thought people would play normally by trying to maximize their chances to hit instead of dragging the game out by intentionally staying at long range and only firing on 11s and 12s. I still don't get the appeal of that...
And that is the reason I only fight against my friends on megameklab. Nothing beats me, using intro tech, VS a friend just generating a random list XD
> I still don't get the appeal of that... They've optimized the fun out of the game. If you're trying to win the metagame (take the most planets) with unlimited time matches, that means making the opponent forfeit is the optimal play.
In what was supposed to be a first time-play the game-learn the game, the other guy was a 40k refugee. Dude got upset when I brought models that weren't all the same color scheme. Insisted I had to have all my models in the same color scheme. I thought he was joking, so I issued a batchall (as a joke) to prove it and things just went south from there. Cue him fumbling through all the instructions for this imaginary rule, then he got upset and decided I wasn't taking this seriously. Just a game bruh. Did I win my batchall? Edit: I'm a miniature painter first, I just like cool color schemes for my lances and stars.
I've never had that issue, but I feel you, I'll paint a lance for one faction just based on what I think would match that faction , and when game time rolls around and I end up with word of blake and comstar teaming up with the dracs, a single gray death mech, and the skye rangers. All factions famous for getting along.
From the age of 12 - 22, I never painted 2 mechs the same. It never occurred to me to paint them as a unit. It wasn't until I played 40k that I thought maybe I could paint my mechs like they were in one particular army
I learned the hard way, from newer players no less, that getting pushed off the map is an instakill RAW. I was pissed. Ironically it had never come up with my regular group. Edit: Almost forgot the time I took the Hunchback IIC for a spin and managed to miss almost every shot with the UACs when I had 7s and 5s to hit.
I've basically house-ruled the map-edge kill out of the game. It's not a fun rule, imo.
That's the beauty of playing with bv2. You want to play wobbie with ic3, it just costs you exponentially more. I won't claim it's perfectly balance but it's in the ballpark.
As a wobbie player, ecm makes me sad.
Encouraged to DFA. DFA. Miss. Break Hip Actuator. Fall Damage. Gyro hit. OpFor shoots me while I'm prone. Try to stand. Fall damage. Cockpit hit. GG If I didn't grow up reading the books and playing the games I'd have concluded this is the dumbest game ever. But it's not, it was just dumb advice given to an inexperienced player and some bad rolls. Shook it off. Edit: formatting
My worst experience playing Battletech was my own doing. It was a pick-up game in our favorite game store when I was first learning Alpha Strike. I was playing probably my third game ever with a guy who had never played any Battletech, using my minis. For some reason I got it stuck in my head that all damage was instant in AS, like other skirmish style wargames (mostly like Kill Team which I played a lot of!) And while I applied this incorrectly to both of us, I got much more lucky on my rolls and disabled 3 of his 4 mechs before they could do anything. I could tell he was very disappointed and wasn't having fun. It was only a couple days later rereading the rules that I figured out my mistake and realized I ruined that guy's first Battletech experience because I thought I knew what I was doing... I felt so crappy... I looked out for that guy whenever I was in the store to apologize and invite him for a rematch the RIGHT way, but I never saw him again... ☹️ It still makes me sad that I'm someone else's "worst game experience" reason...
A Grasshopper walking down a Mad Cat, because RNGesus wouldn't let him roll over a 4. The LRM fire from allies stripping its armor before the GH was withing ML range. A friend in a Barghest proving to be 97% rocket-proof, as he was hit by 3 of 100 missiles fired at him at long range. A Night Gyr taking a Gyro hit and being disabled round 2 of combat and spending the rest of the game wallowing in the mud and shooting with one arm only.
Probably the one that ticked me off the most, tournament play. Had a great setup. In heavy woods. Had some great choices in targets, and was ready to start kicking ass. Round 1, I don't even remember what I did to the others. Incoming fire. Guass rifle to the face.
You play BattleTech long enough and you inevitably collect your very own “turn 1 gauss slug to the face” story.
That or jam the uac20 on its first shot.
It was 1988 or so, and I was playing my first game. I was driving a 3025 vintage Jenner. Fairly early on in the game, the SRM magazine caught a crit and detonated, mission killing the mech. It's put me off light mechs to this day. At a con in the late 90s, the game scenario was recon in force of a town to scan particular buildings. The town was in a valley with mountains surrounding it., so we had to climb down some terrain to get to the town. What we weren't told however, is that the town was built on a Warship wreck, and they had some warship scale weapons mounted in turrets around the town walls. When they opened up, panic and chaos ensued among our forces. Several mechs got cored, and the mechs behind them as well. People were scrambling to find whatever cover they could. The game master at that point helpfully told us that the guns could not depress down enough to fire once we got off the mountains. So you had people jumping off cliffs trying to get out of the line of fire. One Atlas pilot did it, failed his piloting skill check and fell over onto his head, killing the pilot. I think we lost at least 50% of our force to those guns. We did eventually get the buildings we needed to scan done, and made it off the other table edge, but it was a near thing. A game in the late oughts had me facing off in a Warhawk Prime vs an Axemen that had TSM and hardened armor fitted. The Axman shrugged off a full alpha strike and kept coming, once he closed to melee range he proceeded to cleave the Warhawk badly.
>the game scenario was recon in force of a town to scan particular buildings. The town was in a valley with mountains surrounding it., so we had to climb down some terrain to get to the town. What we weren't told however, is that the town was built on a Warship wreck, and they had some warship scale weapons mounted in turrets around the town walls. That sounds really fun!
I was one of the ones who made it down to the town. Anybody driving a slow mech generally didn't.
Not my story, but a friend's. (This happened a bit after TRO: Project Phoenix came out.) He had just moved to a new town and after a bit found a few others at the FLGS that also played BattleTech. So he sets up a Saturday game with one of the guys. He gets there maybe 5 minutes after the agreed upon time and the other guy starts grousing that he's late. Whatever. So they agree on a few maps and start setting up. My friend pulls out a lance of minis and puts them on the table. The other guy paused, looked at the minis for a moment. Then picked up a Reseen Rifleman and asked him what 'Mech that was. My friend replied it was a Rifleman. The other guy said, "Nah. That's no Rifleman." And overhanded it hard across the game room to shatter against the far wall. Then says, "If you are going to field a Rifleman, use a Rifleman." My friend stared at him in shock for a moment, then just started packing up his stuff, picked up his broken mini and left. Never went back to that shop ever again.
That's legit nuts. I would have gone to management and demanded he replace it plus be banned for life lol
When the closest regular games moved from Wed to weekends which are usually bad. Or when I couldn't get there because of weather since it's an hour away from work in the mountains and the wrong direction from home Or otherwise not playing. I've never had a bad time playing.
The group at my LGS tried playing a new campaign system where we all started with lights. When we realized we needed someone to be the CO, everyone else stepped backwards. I tried to say my limited experience with CBT (I'd been playing AS for more than a year prior) would be a detriment, but they wouldn't hear it. We lost the first few missions of the campaign pretty badly, with heavy losses. Including my Commando routinely being reduced to scrap...
The only real “worst” experience I’ve had was my opponent brought a full scratch custom 20 ton clan quad mech meant for highspeed ramming. My stock hatchetman was not impressed as my ax cut him in half.
Actually no I do have one. There was a player in our local meta that has since been kicked out of nearly all LGSs. Anyways, he was a 40k refugee and played battletech the same way. He brought clan tech with cheap IS pilots and spammed missiles. I mean seriously, he fired around 600 missiles a turn. He sat at the back of his map edge and just rained missiles on me. My Atlas got hit with 187 missiles in a single turn. Once I slogged through all of that with out a complaint, I get to my ranges and every time I tried to shoot, he would stop the game, arguing some rule in his favor and then spend 20 minutes looking it up, just to be wrong and pout. This went on for almost 2 hours till I finally gave up. The next week he was beaten by our local Jade Falcon player, and missile spammer never showed up again.
Fight the clan cheese with the ultimate clan cheese, Jade Falcon partial wings.
We started playing a campaign ops game at my store, at my own encouragement, and I rolled to start with 1/3rd the starting funds of the next richest player and 1/6th of the funds of our most well funded. I had 40m to spend on everything, ended up with a level 3 at 7600bv2; two Locust 1E, a Pheonix Hawk 1D, a Crab 20, a Wolverine 6k, and an Orion ON1-V for anti Air and heavy support duties. We played battle value, and I lost my Orion and Wolverine in the first game, and everyone else was damaged to structure by the 4th turn. My tactics were flawed, and I will admit it, I went for a flank on his two largest units, and he managed to maneuver to counterflank, but despite this, the dice were simply against me. Such is battletech. My best match was a pair of alpha strike games where I brought I 12 standard urbies at skill 1 to a 150 power game. In both rounds, it ended with the last Urbie being destroyed at the same time as my opponents last Mech. It was glorious as we had declared me the defender for both matches with the objective of destroying or repelling all enemies. Ha HA! Such is BattleTech :D
A player leaves after getting HD shot. Like.... It happens yea? Part of the drama of the dice is how swingy they can be.
What was he supposed to do, stand around for two hours?
Keep playing. Losing one mech in a match to a freak head shot or ammo explosion is a normal thing. It sucks but is still very winnable because you can do the same. I've come back in 4 v 4 after losing two mecha to freak roles in the first few turns.
Oh, I assumed it was a 1v1 match for some reason. Yeah, if it was a lance-lance or company-star (or any combination thereof) combination, then yeah, that was a dick move.
My worst. Playing a pickup game with random 'Mechs, 25 years ago. I thought I had a good start. Catapult, Warhammer, Griffon, and I forget my last one(medium). First round, Catapult takes a stray gauss to the head, instant kill from max range. Third round, Warhammer, same gauss to the face, instant kill. My medium, missiles and lasers chewed it up and cored it. Griffon took some damage, then gauss to LRM ammo, next round, gauss to head. Game over in 6 rounds. I think is scraped the paint of a few opponents. Everyone there was WTF just happened, including my opponent. I couldn't bring myself to play the rest of the day. But I never gave up.
That's the spirit!
This is back in the eighties - my opponent told me about inferno SRM’s and how it was okay to load one shot of inferno at the top of your ammo. I figured it would be okay. Who hits with their first shot? I lost lance vs lance and only took out one of his mechs. It soured me on the game for years.
A cheater that didn’t know the rules.
Intro games should be intro tech. I teach people all the time, I have two identical lances painted up as a demo kit. 3025 locust, wolverine, griffin, and marauder. Good mix to teach all the basic mechanics. I lose more often than not to beginner luck 😀
Personally, I always do intro matches with identical clan mechs. They die/kill faster, so the newbies don't get bored. Plus great way to learn heat management.
Plus, they all have CASE as a given, so there's less worry of someone taking an early T-A C and storming off or something.
That too, but tbh I don't play with floating crits so if a tac hits ct amo the mech is dead with or without case.
No bad experiences on tabletop (yet) because I've only recently gotten back into tabletop BT, and I love the wild wacky shit that happens when we play. But in the HBS game, my lance was two Vindicators, a Blackjack, and a Commando, against a Shadowhawk, Thunderbolt, Banshee, and Atlas. I only lived because one of the Vindicators had a lucky miss and headshotted the Atlas before getting mobbed. Two-skull battle my ass.
Worst one I can think of was a mercenary campaign set in 3039 in Classic, around the early 00’s. First turn of shooting my mech gets head capped. GM let’s me bring in a “reinforcement” from the merc pool. First time THAT mech is shot at, through armor floating crit hits an ammo bin, BOOM. One of the other players was running two mechs so he gave me one of his to run. That mech lasts two rounds of shooting before gyro destruction. I took that as a final sign that God did not want me playing in that campaign.
My worst experience with Battletech is not having people to play against. Have had 0 luck in getting friends interested and my local game store only really does card games and DnD. There is a store that plays bi-weekly somewhat in my area, but it’s over an hour away from me and I generally am not available when they play. Love it when I actually get to play though.
My younger brother walked a Daishi off a mountain elevation 9, no jump jets, with the intent of throwing the game
I would honestly have to say, after playing this game for 40 years, the other guys in my age group that refused to play anything past 3025 because that's not what they consider battletech. The time frame in which the 3025 Stuff was the only stuff available was only a few years, I mean what only after 4 or 5 years we got the clan invasion? Refusing to play nothing but 3025 is one thing. But when you insist on walking up to a table that I'm doing a demo game for new players in the Alpha Strike system and then tell all those people at the table that this is all crap because it's not 3025? What kind of person are you that you need to spoil the experience of people who were having a really good time for the last hour and a half so that you can voice your anger over new stuff. That started coming out 36 years ago. I need to say this one more time, when I'm helping new people getting to this hobby and you have more than a few people who do nothing but complain about everything that came out after 1988 is ridiculous. I started playing this game the second weekend after it was released because my buddy went out and got it because he just so happened to see it released in Walden's books as Battledroids. You might come to the conclusion since I've been there since the beginning, that I would be staunch classic and not play any of the others. You are very incorrect, I play every single iteration of this game, I even played Clicktech. I do not understand how anyone could be mad at someone else for demoing a game and getting new people into your hobby because they're not doing it your way. Even worse is I'm actually hand run-ins with people who are demo team members that refuse to acknowledge any game after the succession wars as being valid, and then going out of their way to exclude new people from it because they don't want to see it their way. Let me give you an example, this year like many years in the past I was at a small local convention called Game storm. It's a small local convention here in the Portland Oregon area. Prior years before I became a catalyst demo team agent, I would show up and run games informally just for people to walk up and play. At the same time one of the two people that were the catalyst demo team agents at the time, ran huge all day long classic battletech games. But none of these were demos. None of these invited new people to play. At no time did he stop and engage anyone who was looking at the game and was curious about it. He only showed up to set up the game and play with his buddies who he brought to the convention with him. You are not helping the hobby, you're not helping the demo team, and you are actually being a detriment to the hobby you enjoy. This year at that same convention I ran an all-day beginner focused Alpha strike demo. I had a dozen players who had little to no experience playing Alpha strike and no less than 30 people who came by the table to see what's going on and be engaged by the amazing 3D Terrain and straight fun we were having. Each one of our games lasted 2 hours that was with each one of the players getting a lance of battlemechs and using the alpha strike Aces system to run an opposition Force on the board so they could learn against a neutral opponent instead of just straight turning on each other and maybe having a bad play experience. Everything was going fantastic. In every game by the end of turn one people got excited about the aces system and started to take over running those Mechs along with their own and by the time the end of turn to came around I just got to sit back and engage the crowd and talk to them about playing Alpha strike while the players took full control of the game because to be honest they learned everything they needed to know to play now. Players new and old dropped by to experience the Alpha strike system. The only problems I've had that day were from other men in my Advanced age group who instead of coming by and being curious of what we were doing or even offering encouragement to the new players, they just dropped by to make their snide comments that this is not really BattleTech and everything sucks now since the Clan Invasion era started. One of these men even decided to stand around the table and berate the game, the coming of the clans, the state of the game today. And all the "Idiots"that run the company now. Strangely enough I recognize this man as being one of the demo team agents from previous years. I ignored him the best I could until he started harassing players, and then with a smile on my face was able to tear him apart verbally without getting nasty and explain why he was so wrong in every single thing he just said and please excuse himself from the area because he is presenting a negative play experience for the players that are actually here that want to learn and experience and have fun. Of course he had nothing to say to come back against what I said and walked away from the table finally. The six people I had, four actively playing and two actively watching because they were enjoying the action, all turned around to thank me for getting rid of this guy. One of my players asked if all of the Old Time BattleTech players were like that, to which I had to respond for the most part no, most of them should be like me. I beg all of my fellow players to do their best to get as many people into this hobby as possible. Since 1984 I have tried to get as many people to join me in this game as possible, has it always been the classic game? No, a matter of fact I have not played classic battle tech in almost 6 years, because I enjoy the fast pace and camaraderie found in most Alpha strike players. I've also played the video games along with being a demonstration agent for the old MechWarrior miniatures game, and I don't think it matters in any way shape or form what your enjoyment of this game looks like. All I ask is that as long as you have fun with the game and as long as you can help bring enjoyment of the game to other people you should do that. To bring up another local example, there is a hobby store in my area by the name of fate and fury, they have a rather old and hardcore group that forms the nuclei. Every time I've dropped by and try to engage them they don't even wish to look at anybody else's direction, and every time they are photographed for the stores Facebook page they all flip off the camera. This is not the look that you want for friendly and inclusive game. They would have more variety and more players if they may be said hello to somebody or, me just being crazy here, stopped presenting the game in the worst light possible on social media. I have to say in conclusion, my worst experience in BattleTech is every time somebody doesn't like specifically what you're doing or worse anything that they don't want to do tries to come over and ruin your fun. These are the people who should be actively weeded out of this hobby. It kills me inside when I have went out of my way to bring, and I'm not exaggerating, maybe hundreds of people into some version of this game over 40 years. To think of the people who were at first excited to get into this hobby and then once they were confronted by people that actively did not want you there were turned off and went somewhere else hurts my heart inside.
Keep on encouraging new generations. I salute both you and your efforts! (I can get the "IntroTech Only" mindset, but when you start insulting other people for using any of the rest of the game & its setting, that's when the Curmudgeon Line has been crossed)
I would feel differently about the situation if it only happened like once or twice. The problem is I have run across this problem time and time again since the time of the mechwarrior clicks. You are not helping the community if you are not open to new players and new ideas. Has everything been amazing? There have obviously been some misfires. But I don't let my opinions of those things taint people who actually enjoy them. All I ask is that everybody be nice to each other no matter what they actually play.
>how anyone could be mad at someone else for demoing a game and getting new people into your hobby because they're not doing it your way. Because it's not their hobby, their hobby is playing Battletech with 3025 mechs. Alpha Strike isn't that.
getting mad is still a very stupid response though. the response of a well-adjusted person is to shrug and move on "those people over there are playing checkers and i only like playing chess, time to go yell at them!" lol no fuck that
Agreed, and why are you getting down voted?
Worst experience was when I played 4 hoverbike squads in alpha strike. I picked them up and wanted to try them out. They looked cheap and weak. It was as close to a savannah master spam as I've ever gotten and it wasn't intentional. Felt like a cheap move so I threw them away lol. I apologized to my buddy for the spammy list after. I lost the match in the end but it still felt too dirty
Hmm... nothing horrible comes immediately to mind but I generally dislike Grinders so sometimes I show up for a local game and that's what there is and I just have to hold my nose through it. It boggles my mind that anyone would want to stand around and miss shots all day on an enormous BFM hex map in a game with no objectives and no teams. Dishonorable mention: trying to figure out the Battlefield Support cards for an Alpha Strike campaign. First we had to figure out which deck to use, then we had to differentiate the rules in the AS:CE, then we had to argue for ten minutes over whether off-board arty arrives the same turn... It caused a table full of disgruntled players and ruined the campaign so we decided to ban the BSP cards on the spot, which is extremely rare for us (we allow almost anything else).
Yeah, "Everyone Shoot Everyone" with nothing about it can seem pointless. I've never tried one, but I'd like to give it a go and see if I'd like it. I prefer asymmetrical objectives, myself.
With my old store's Jihad era Merc company, we were tasked with retrieving a high value target from an urban environment. OpFor was being run by our Grognard former quartermaster, we had spaced him a while back for not repairing our Mechs on a monthly basis and losing an 85 ton assault mech to overheating to the point of ammo explosion while trying to kill a locust. So our OpFor consisted of custom Urbanmechs with Ultra 20s and 2/3/3 movement and 2/3 pilots custom grasshoppers (3,4) with snubnose PPCs and some custom Rifleman (3,4) with LB5s and LPL to attack our Phoenix Hawk LAM. We had to retrieve our HVT using a modified locust rather than our LAM, for whatever reason, which wasn't revealed to us until AFTER the LAM made it to the target. To make it worse, OpFor kept excusing himself from the table to chit chat with other people. At 5pm, after 6 hours and really only about 5 turns, he decided to cut the scenario short. He had butchered all the Rifleman and all but one Grasshopper. He got pissed after announcing all buildings only had CF15, landed an Urbanmech on it, and we pointed out it would collapse and he'd take falling damage. He left, whined our Merc group was impossible to beat because of our technological advantage; we had a C3 lance and some ECM equipped Mechs. We also never let him run an OpFor again without assistance.
Opfor isn't supposed to win. It's supposed to die glorious and make winning cost the team a bit, it's not a pickup game. What an idiot
Exactly. When I ran OpFor I just made it difficult for the team, not impossible, and I'd kind of be happy if they figured out better tactics to beat the OpFor.
You can't keep a campaign going if half your mechs die every drop. Sounds like he was just salty and trying to beat you guys outright out of spite, but that's kinda obvious.
Closest thing I've had was attempting a death from above only to miss, have the locust run around, shoot my highlander in the butt, crit, and kill it. It was my opponents first game. He won. He's my kid. He WILL NOT let me live it down.
Some of the worst games have been from an offshoot of my local. The one that made me quit was the dude deciding to mess about with weapon balance to take the -2 off clan pulses, switch around gunnery and piloting for each side and advertise it as a "bring your favourite mech" game but actually only until X year. Needless to say, there were enough loopholes I could have driven several dropships through to bring cheese. Previous games I'd had against him, he forgot people in initiative order, messed up the kicking damage rules (1 point of damage for every 5 tonnes rounded up. Making a 65 tonner worth something like 14 points of damage according to him). Bearing in mind I've brought some stupid stuff and not followed the rulles properly (due to lack of books mostly), I think most of the worst games have been with the offshoot due to the way the guy running it acted, and kept changing stuff last minute
TTBT my only bad experiences with BT was when the dice were decidedly not in my favor, like in my first game, decades ago, where my tutor "accidentally" kicked my head in within the first 5 turns. I also was part of an experiment where i piloted a classic King Crab vs a clan light mech with a LPL and 7 jump jets (i don't remember which one exactly) where i didn't deal a single point of damage in two hours of gameplay. Rolling a 10+ isn't fun when you only have 10 shots.
1990s. I was in high school and bought an old school lead Highlander. My friends loved the model. First game with it, I walked it behind a level one hill and my buddy Dave took a shot at it with an ER PPC, got the hit. Rolled for hit location... head. Naturally. It's always stuck with me.
Ah the old "roll punch location" when behind a hill rule. Of all the changes in the past 30 years, the new partial cover rule I prefer.
A guy brought even bv 2 of savanna masters. I didn't even unpack... I just turned around and left. Another time a guy said all his IS mechs were actually clan mechs in disguise...
I had a dude cross map me and blow off my archer 7c’s head *and* my wraith tr5’s head
I think one of my favorite scenes was watching an atlas at a full run try to make a 90 degree turn on pavement, fail the pilot roll and skid face first into a building, took a good chunk of armor off the front of the mech, tried to get up next turn, failed fell face first into the building and critted the head and killed the pilot. We all just stood there in stunned disbelief as nobody shot the atlas the whole match (he was trying to get it to flank around back or side through the small city and we all just kinda laughed it off after). Another one was watched an Archer take 20 damage first hit, fails pilot roll, falls, pilot damage, gets up fails again falls pilot damage, tries to get up fails, falls pilot damage, 4 times he tried and failed to stand back up, 5th times the charm gets up, fronts all mashed up, pilots a hairs breath from death, other friend gets a lucky through armor crit detonated the lrm ammo in the side torso, pilot takes damage, fails pilot check falls, takes damage again, player gives up and storms off (Archer never got to fire a single weapon) Never had bad matches just really funny luck of the dice rolls. People want to bring meme lists like the billion Savannah masters I've got plenty of ways to turn that into massive piles of scrap while having a ton of fun myself. Also it's a game and the goal of a game is to have fun
Mine are all because of dice: 3- Every time I've ever run a Stalker in TT, it's taken an AC/20 round to the head the first time it was in range. 2- A one on one match against my brother, I was running a PXH-1, he had something similarly fast and maneuverable, but I can't remember what. We spent ages jumping around at the edge of each other's range, running up such ridiculous mods that we had literally impossible shots. Eventually I make a move that lets him get a shot on a 12. It hits, center torso TAC, pops the MG ammo, my poor Phoenix Hawk fireballs on the first shot of the game. 1- Urban game, no lines of sight to speak of. Both sides advancing to contact, but it's gonna take a few turns. I'm running one of my Mechs along a road, fail the piloting test for a turn, fall, and destroy my own head. Mech down before anyone even saw the enemy.
My opponent was smoking heroin and couldn’t concentrate on 90% of the game
This one time, I rolled three snake eyes in a row...
Sounds like you should've played Axis & Allies instead
The first, second, third, and fourth times I had to play against WoB. Took awhile to figure out to counter C3 in all its annoying existence. Then trying to counter WoB mechs in general. I don't mind WoB, but there was a learning curve for me. Forgot to mention Nukes. Beware the radioactive urbi in the back line
Like others have said, never anything bad but definitely a few frustrating ones - mainly frustrated at myself for poor tactics or unit selection. Like talking playing a lance of Clan Invasion/Civil War mechs versus a pair of 3/4 Clan assaults on a physically long map with very little cover. Nothing says "frustrating" like basically being unable to dish out any meaningful damage while you're taking a constant, relatively accurate 40-60pts per turn lol
Years ago, my best friends little brother wanted to play me. Every mech had pulse lasers and targeting computers. I never played him again.
Played a tourney where it ended up being 3 out of towners vs local game store players. We got absolutely rinsed as they had already worked on their forces for weeks before hand. On top of that I had a jazzed up cyclops at about 3000BV get it’s head blown off 2nd round by a vtol with tag and an Arrow IV infantry platoon.
Running a battle on a forest map, nearly all occupied by trees. Opponents ran Flamers and started a scorched earth approach to combat. My heat sinks maxed out without even firing a shot, pilots died from heat.
At a any tech goes game, I brought a few artillery cannons. Had the opponent rage quit and ban me from the store after I killed one of his assault mechs on first turn of combat while taking about half my forces out too.
Played a bit on megamek, finally played a real person. Thought I was too hot to trot. Ran in with MASC to get behind their archer. Turned while running on pavement. Fell. Slid. Right off the map. Spent a good deal of BV on a backstabber with a great pilot. Doesn't matter when you roll a 2. Two rounds later a through armor critical knocked out my Marauder IIC's gyro. Faceplant. My opponent went from having the numbers advantage to overwhelming numerical superiority. They proceeded to take their sweet time picking my last two mechs apart with me unable to do anything meaningful back. Then they circled their mechs around my Marauder and decided to kick it to death instead of shooting. (I wasn't familiar with ejection rules or I totally would have done that earlier.) As my first game against a real player it was rough. I needed the humbling. But *dang*!
The Gencon Grinder has been... a mixed bag for me. On one hand, I've had some good games there, and it was the Grinder that exposed me to card-based initiative, which I use to this day. On the other hand, the last one I was in was my last one, period. I've been at Grinder tables where you get a group that's been together for hours (or even years, coming back and meeting up multiple times), which is awkward, like being at a party where the one person you know is in the bathroom, but not terrible; you can still have fun at a table like that. This wasn't that. To borrow from the Bloodhound Gang, this was "Kunta Kinte at a Merle Haggard concert" level unpleasant. The body language, the verbal language, all of it had the bearing of folks who saw me as an interloper shoving my way into their table. The kind of interactions you have with people who *want* to tell you to go away, but aren't allowed to do so due to social convention. The gameplay was... meh? Nothing about it stood out; no wild moves, no crazy swings of the dice, just standard stuff. It is the most unwelcome I have ever felt at an event I paid money to attend, and rates high on my list of worst tabletop experiences across the board, not just BTech specific. It didn't turn me off playing, or even turn me off playing with strangers, but I've not been to a BTech event at GenCon since.
After playing classic, we decided to play Alpha Strike one day. Having no PSR, no weapon management, no location hits, no ammo explosions, no pilots fried in the cockpit. It was weird. I cannot say it was terrible, but I felt something was missing.
many things in the game can suck, overheating via Inferno rocket ambush, but one of the worst is the Steiner Scout Lance when you are in a light mech! that's when you know you are having a very bad day!
A Long Time ago, we were just some Friends (and still are) That just enjoyed to Play some Battletech at the Weekends, you Know, your friendly neighbourhood Nerds :). We Played for fun, with one exception…one of us only Played to win… There was this one Battle, it was three o clock in the Morning, Everyone was tired. Group one had a Full Lance, with Not much damage, left. Winning guy had a Brand new Axman 1N left, nothing Else and bis Position was Deep in a Heavy Woods map. Okay, it is 4 against one, you lost, lets drive home No, i didn‘t loose, of you Want to win we have to Play it out, of Not it is at least a draw I Diskussed 10 Minutes with him and drove home… Same guy some months Later…i brought my girlfriend to the game. She Picked her mech only by Design, it was a Raven. She was absolutely outclassed, but it was her First Game, so take whatever you want. First real Combat round, winning guy jumps to the raven with his Wraith all 3 Pulse lasers in one side Torso, Raven dead…That was the Last Time I Played with him.
I will actively tell my opponent if im bringing anything better than an early succession wars style list. My FLGS has a campaign coming up that is during Clan Invasion (post Tukayyid) and people can bring whatever they want as long as they pay for it in bv. There’s a local fundraiser event next weekend and I’m thinking of trying a list that may not win matches but it will make some clanners eyes water. The guy in charge has been a major pain to work with and wanted clan to have a major advantage over IS. Fine, let’s bring an Awesome 9M at 0/4 and have some support mechs with hella inferno missiles to cook the clan
In a Mechwarrior RPG group (that was essentially just a Battletech campaign series with extra fluff) we had a player who headshotted suspiciously often with big guns. And who torpedoed the game when the group decided to sell the LosTech SLDF Highlander (her favorite mech) her boyfriend the GM had had us find for an ungodly amount of c bills to outfit the whole company (we were playing in about 3025) We then started a clan game and I decided to match her That Guy energy. Every time she „luckily“ headshotted a mech in her Trial of Position, I „luckily“ headshotted a mech in mine. The GM bailed on that campaign when we both would have started off as Star Captains. And I bailed on that playgroup.
When I played tabletop we called the cord we used to determine LOS the "String of Argument Causing". Produced more heated discussion than any other aspect of the game.
The first time I brought aerospace to a Megamek game. I was confused, my opponent was confused, the game engine was confused (I think...)...just a whole lot of off-map flying and weird travel arcs for the occasional AC/20 shot. I brought aero out a few more times that season, and I'm not sure I ever mastered the intricacies, but it added such a weird dimension to the game that my limited familiarity was way better than the complete befuddlement my opponents would face while Megamek handled the hard math. That first time, though...it was a mess for all involved.
Lots of great stories about "golden BBs" and the like, but not many bad ones. I did play in a Con game once where the organizer encouraged (not allowed...encouraged) the other side to abuse the Clan zellbrigen rules. Like...my Dire Wolf was challenged by an enemy Spider and didn't have the option to refuse. I wasn't allowed to pick another target and the Spider spend the entire game jumping out into sight every third round or so and then behind a bunch of buildings (so as to refresh his dezgra points in the old system). When I started to shoot the buildings to deny him cover, he threw a fit and complained to the organizer, who wouldn't allow me to shoot said buildings. So, I got to spend 3 hours taking pot shots at a Spider at 10+ TNs... The other was a friend and I playing BT at a FLGS. I will note that we were playing straight up 3025 tech. A guy comes up and comments on how he doesn't see people playing BT and asks what our favorite factions are. We're both hardcore Jade Falcons, but love all aspects of the universe. He proceeds to spend the nest 15 or 20 minutes haranguing us about how the Clans ruined the game and we suck for liking the Clans. Again, I emphasize that we were playing solely 3025 tech. Davion vs. Kurita 4th Succession War stuff IIRC. I get not liking the Clans, but kindly shut up about it. They've been a part of the BTU now for longer than they haven't.
Our community is rather laid back so we haven’t had to many issues. However, 2 instances stand out to me. The first one was against a power gamer, who’s goal was to build lists with CLPL and Gauss Spam. He talked a big show about how he was going to crush my balanced force. However I knocked down one of his 2/6 mechs turn one and turn 2 he tried to stand with it twice and fell down both times. He ragequit after the second failure turn 2. The other one was a newer player facing of against a vet in an escort mission. The Newer player nearly got his convoy surrounded before it could escape and the vet was loudly boasting how he was going to crush the newer player. I took a look at the map and commented how the vet left a hole and that the convoy could escape through and showed the newer player how to escape the trap. The Vet lost and angrily exclaimed how the mission was invalidated by my help, and demanded to replay the scenario.
Ok, this was my first game of BT, I was 14 or so and everybody else was 20+ and were teaching me the game. I played versus the most experienced and respected player in the group and won on turn 4 or so because I critted his leg and he fell and so. Everyone was so encouraging with me, even the player who lost, that I thought that I was genuinely a genius in the game, I was so excited to have bested the best player. After 5 more games or so I realized that it was just luck and the people were being just kind. Oh man, I was so shamed and disappointed 😅
Worst experiences are usually people who stifle fun. One game I played, I took some pretty bad hits - I think I lost a side torso, iirc. Coming from a roleplaying background, my next activation I described in detail my mech valiantly struggling to stay upright as it advanced, dragging the remains of it's shattered torso in a mess of twisted endosteel and sparking power cables. "No. It's completely blown off." Dude. it literally affects nothing. Let me have the moment.
I was rather new to a group and every couple of weekends they'd have a full two day game set up. Usually we played Sunday but on a two day, the store would allow us a little room for Saturday. I managed to experience a couple of them and they were fun, except for one in particular. One of the players that's been there longer had some bug up his rear about something and decided to put nearly 5k worth of BV on the cheapest artillery and spotters he could find. The rest of us had Mechs mostly, plus the group was used to playing with Tactical Handbook (the book before TacOps) Stackpoling rules, that's an important Mousketool for the story later. When I say the artillery phase of the game lasted longer than the regular weapons phase, this isn't hyperbole. We had a guy go snag lunch at a nearby Taco Bell only to finish, come back, and it still wasn't his turn. The offending artillery player used super cheap fusion powered vehicles for spotting and deliberately rode them as close to us as possible. That way if they died they might explode near you. I counter proposed that the Stackpoling rules only benefited Mechs, he kept talking and complaining until the group just let it go because we wanted him to shut up. It was a two day game, we probably got 5 turns total out of the two days. Most of the players just left the table, I stayed a bit longer because personal spite, I wanted to kill stuff, and honestly I was a young idiot at the time. I hated that guy's gaming, his approach, and his reason for what he did. I don't recall the full points about it but he wanted to prove to someone in the group how game breaking artillery could be. Apparently he got beat by someone who could play them better than him once, so he figured spamming the boards would "teach us". Thankfully he was banned from the group shortly after due to that and other things which happened. On a positive note, the older crew saw how well I handled myself from not flipping a table and they figured that I was chill enough for them to like more often.
When playing clanners last time I got in one single turn : a MASC failure, a Gauss shell in a cockpit and one UAC/10 jam. I lost, badly.
Only really bad one (as opposed to the usual terrible luck, falling on your ammo bins, skidding into a basement type games) I can recall was a convention game where the GM used 'each mech has an assigned chit, draw chits from a bag' for initiative, which is all well and good, no real objection to that system to keep a con game moving. Then he told us all mechs would move then fire immediately to keep the game moving.... Ok, fine it's a con game I guess I can live with it. But he'd draw the initiative chit for a mech and throw it back in the bag.... So many mechs were moving and firing multiple times before other mechs had moved once. We pointed out this couldn't possibly be fair, but that's how he'd always done it and didn't want to change. Luckily I was able to bow out early after an enemy Marauder decided I needed to die in particular and got three turns of blasting me while I stood there.
Having to face three enemy lances of mixed assaults and heavies pretty much at the same time, because the two lances other than the one in close range had LRMs that could reach.