Playing BattleTech – An Overview
I made this introductory overview of the steps in a BattleTech turn to give friends some idea of how it’s played. This isn’t the rulebook, just an idea of the game:
- Choose a Mech to move. Choose a movement mode: standing, walking, running, or jumping (if available). Make a note, you’ll need that when you attack.
- Walking or running will give you somewhere between 2 and 12 movement points. Moving forward one space costs 1 point. Turning left or right one hexside costs one point. Moving into trees or water or up a hill one space costs a little extra.
- Jumping costs 1 point per space, and you can ignore turns and terrain features.
- Make a note of how many actual spaces you moved. You’ll need that when someone attacks you.
- Taking turns, everyone moves their Mechs.
- Now if you wish, almost all Mechs can temporarily twist their upper body one hexside left or right. If you do this, make a note.
- Now we do ranged attacks. Pick one of your Mechs, and choose which weapons it will fire. Sometimes the target will be out of range. Sometimes it will be behind a hill or something. Sometimes it will be standing somewhere your weapons don’t point (thus the torso twist which might help). Otherwise, we shoot!
- We use a base target number of 2. If the target is at medium range for the weapon you picked, it becomes 4. If at long, it becomes 6.
- If you walked your Mech, add +1. Running gets +2. Jumping gets +3; expected since you flung yourself through the air while trying to shoot.
- If the target moved 3-4 spaces: +1. 5-6 spaces: +2; and so on. Hard to hit the speedy ones.
- There are more adjustments for standing in water, a target in the trees, and other miscellany. We’ll figure them out. It goes quicker than it sounds, trust me.
- Roll two six-sided dice. If you roll your target number or higher, you hit! Obviously lower target numbers are good for you, bad for the enemy.
- We roll some dice to see what part of the enemy you hit, and apply damage to that part based on the weapon you used. If you’ve peeled away all the armor on that part, we check to see if important parts (weapons, motors, pilots) get broken.
- The next Mech fires until everyone gets a turn. Damage doesn’t apply until everyone has fired, so blowing up your target doesn’t mean he can’t shoot one last time.
- If two Mechs are right next to each other, they may now get to punch or kick each other. Range is not an issue, but movement and possible damaged limbs are. If you hit, we do similar damage rolls to before.
- All Mech equipment is powered by a fusion reactor and gets very hot in use. If you walked, you generated a heat point. If you ran, you generated two. If you jumped, at least three depending on how far you moved.
- Lasers get very hot if you fire them. Missiles less so, and cannons relatively little. We add all that up. Luckily, your Mech comes with giant radiators called heat sinks to get rid of it.
- Subtract the number of heat sinks from your heat points. If the result is negative, you can reduce your heat scale by that many points (minimum result of zero). Otherwise, add that many points to your heat scale.
- You might have heat penalties to movement or shooting next turn. With bad enough luck, you might cook off some ammunition in your Mech – which is as bad as it sounds. You might need to consider shooting fewer guns next turn… but the extra shot might make the difference… decisions!
- Turn’s done! Crank up the A/C in your cockpit and plan your next move!
That’s an overview of a BattleTech turn. As I mentioned, it goes faster than it might sound. I love this game and I hope you are interested in trying it out!
