BATTLETECH & cigars

For the first game of 2026, I was honored to introduce longtime AGS member and friend Dan, a beginner Battletech player, to my favorite miniature game.

A while ago Dan got the newest A Game of Armored Combat box and painted his 8 Mechs in an intriguing dark purple color scheme. They’re standing on realistically looking water/swamp bases.

Let’s see how Dan’s Mechs fare against my Davion Mechs.

Getting started

Beforehand, we agreed on playing a 160 tons lance using at least 2 light, 1 medium and 1 heavy Mechs. I went for 2 light and 2 medium Mechs instead.

To increase the chances of hits, we promoted all Mechwarriors to Gunnery skill 3 and Piloting skill 4. In total we capped at around 4550 adjusted Battle Value.

Dan’s Mechs	Weight (tons)	BV	Eric’s Mechs	Weight (tons)	BV
Locust LCT-1V	20	570	Commando COM-2D	25	714
Commando COM-2D	25	714	Jenner JR7-D	35	1155
Shadowhawk SHD-2H	55	1404	Vindicator VND-1R	45	1352
Catapult CPLT-C1	65	1847	Enforcer ENF-4R	50	1362
	165 t	4535		155 t	4583

The 3D board was set up with some hills, small lakes and a reasonable amount of light and heavy woods to learn line of sight.

In order to add some narrative to the game, we came up with a “retrieving intel” scenario, in which one of Dan’s Mechs would need to get to the building on the center of the board, stop there, take out the data, and run off the board via his home edge. The Davion forces, of course would want to stop that from happening.

We decided to play a maximum of 4 rounds.

Let’s see how it went.

Round 1

As usual, the opening round had us mainly moving our units into position, to either open fire on our opponent, or, to reach the objective in the middle. Dan played well in that regard. He moved his locust quickly towards the mission target, using its running MP. Unfortunately for me, I deployed my faster, light Mechs too far off the center and I kept them there for too long. Hence, I was lagging behind and could only react to Dan’s moves, once it was already too late, even though I won the initiative roll.

Nonetheless, this first round was perfect to teach the basics of movement and line of sight.

Round 2

The second round we focused our actions around getting the precious intel and shooting at each other.

Dan sent his fastest Mech, the Locust to the secret facility at the center of the board to steal the data. The Catapult and the Shadowhawk were taking care of my approaching Enforcer and Vindicator.

During the second round, Dan got to experience the fun of critical hits and even losing parts of a Mech. My Vindicator blew the Commando’s arm right off! Which wasn’t too much of a problem for the Commando, except lacking one weapon.

And, as usual, I managed to overheat my Jenner, by jumping and alpha-striking (shooting all weapons) Dan’s locust, making it even slower. I always do that with that Mech …

Round 3

Dan’s fleeing Locust carrying the “intel disk” was running a maximum of hexes to add target movement modifiers for my intercepting Commando and Jenner. I didn’t expect that move. My Mechs needed to run and jump to Dan’s Locust to only be in long range. This increased my Mechs’ modified to-hit numbers to above 12, thus making it impossible to fire on the Locust.

Hence Dan’s Locust was able to flee its home edge and secure the intel and victory for Dan!

Dan, who never played Battletech before, quickly grasped the strategic concepts and depth of the game and won the game!

Verdict

At the end of round three, no physical attacks have been made. At one point Dan wanted to, but refrained from it for tactical reasons. And rightly so.

We didn’t make use of water to cool down or to hide. Even though my Jenner was running way too hot again.

Very few piloting skill rolls were made, and no Mech fell.

Also, no consciousness rolls were needed. Our MechWarriors were left unharmed.

But, the game ran very smoothly and we had loads of fun!

Tips on how to introduce a friend to Battletech

My advice here would be to not worry about the more complex rules, like Death from Above, displacement, etc.. Tell your opponent these rules exist, but try to avoid situations requiring them.

Furthermore, I would limit the game to the basic rules from the starter boxes and not introduce other unit types, city terrain, non-basic weapons and Clan Tech. The Introductory Rules are more than enough to play many games in the beginning.

What’s important, is to know these basic rules. Don’t worry about advanced rules at this point. As a host, I read the introductory rulebook prior to play. Not only to ensure a solid gameplay without too much flipping through the rulebook, but also to be able to answer any questions and reference to the right pages, should the need arise. In that regard, Battletech’s rules reference sheets are extremely useful.

Special movement dice and different tokens help to speed up the calculations.

Don’t bother too much to introduce your friend to the vast fictional world of BATTLETECH. Tell them it’s there, and it’s a deep rabbit hole to go down. Just mention there are different factions of humans colonizing the vast space around Earth in a not so distant future. And of course, as our species tends to do: it wages wars.

Also make sure you read our How to get started with BATTLETECH guide, if you’re interested.

And, last but not least, enjoying great company and nice cigars during a game of Battletech really ups an intro game and turns it into a fantastic evening.

Thanks Dan!