We had a discussion on Wednesday about why we stopped playing the game back about 10 years back. Strangely enough it wasn’t the game itself, but some of the idiots(one who appears as the villain more than once) who played it in the group.

Pete got one of the early copies when it had just changed its name in 1983 from Battledroids.

We played a few test games where my inability to win initiative tended to end up with me getting bounced from behind and losing even though I’d generally played a better positioning game and got the better of damage infliction up to that point. This was with practice mechs. We would play it odd times over about 12 months. The we played a game with mainstream designs, I had two Assaults (go still remember a Battlemaster and a Stalker) vs 2 Heavy’s and Mediums. My opponent tried a ‘Death from Above manoeuvre , which he’d got away with twice before with another group. He found out why it is risky , particulalry against a Battlemaster. Helped by he got Gerry’s dice curse for most lets plays, I got his luck when he plays Spartans. This led to a shattered Wolverine lying sprawled at its feet.

I got the bug at this point and was surprised to find that my local model shop actually had some models…….ok a Cicada and an Urban mech but what the hell. This was the days of Virgin stores, and the one in Brum had a copies of the base game’s , So for xmas I had the 3 base games, the original box of plastic mechs (apart from a few they were pretty naff) to start me off.

What really got it to take off, was Pete decided to run a mini campaign, he would umpire and run all the ‘Baddie’ mechs and initially two of us, but later more, would play the ‘heroes’. We played a semi roll playing series of battles starting with and add hoc reinforced lance of 6 mechs , growing as the campaign went until the final battle where we had grown to full company ( to some extent helped by the fact group of players had grown to about 6) of mercenaries.

This format became the norm for most of the next two years, we did play other games, but as soon as the word BT campaign was mentioned volunteers would appear out of the woodwork with either Pete or myself running the campaigns initially, and as the group grew, both of us would be acting as BM (Battletech master) to manage the no of baddie forces that needed to be controlled. A couple of students ran a 2750 Star League era campaign. I had by now got around 50 mechs, not brilliantly painted ( they have all be re-done to a pretty high standard). I had read most of the available background and bewtween Pete and myself we had fleshed out the history of our merc regiment and its Star League origins. Most of the group had Joined Mech Force Uk , and this is probably the point of it highlight within out group. (@warzan incidentally this when the infamous Kevin 1st appeared). We even attended the mech tournament at the 1st attempt to do a UK Gen con in a holiday camp.

Think from then it was the victim of its own success, at times the group, we were running the game on and off at two clubs, often with the same group members, as some started cross clubbing based on the fact we were playing it. Unfortunately we picked up some ‘experts’ on BT who eventually brought a break to it, with on being winged at for running the campaign to his liking I ended up saying ‘If you don’t like it , don’t bloody play it! Plus the game had got so many players that we had a team of ‘baddies’ who strangely enough never got into any arguments and played according to their brief, unfortunately the player group had got into a series of major arguments which were getting more and more heated…..

Then about a year later ,two members of the club decided they would run a campaign……. all went well till they decided to play a game using all the maps ……. which covered a table about the length of OTT’s big tables at Coleraine….. and run a running battle, that went on for weeks with about 12 players, so on average we would get through 3 moves, Pete and myself as Lance commanders would turn up, plan our 3 moves, and natter whilst everyone else did their bits (by now Kevin had got so good at running the gunnery calcs that he used to run round like a headless chicken) . Some say BT is slow, as we found on replaying it Friday it isn’t once you have the basics, but no game could cope with above.

There  was then about a 4 year break, when at one of club booze nights it was mentioned again. We had up to now religiously avoided the Clan’s sticking with the original 3025 or Star League settings. Kevin foolishly got himself volunteered to run a Clan game ( I was in the loo and couldn’t warn him). So it picked up again, and Pete myself and Kevin got talked into running another campaign. Not as much work as it sounds , as we used to travel up to the club in question in the same car, and most of the planning was done on route.

Unfortunately this time the campaign ran at the time one of our group started his fall into bad health and was on some interesting meds for pain. In what ended up being the final scenario , as umpires we had underestimated how easy it was to destroy light and med buildings and as ‘baddies’ we won, helped by some fairly awful playing from some of the players.

The upshot was above stormed off in a major huff, so the game wasn’t mentioned again for years

When the minatures version came out , we though give it a try, so we tried it out at my home as we’d given up on the Alumwell club as it was being constantly cancelled by the school it was based in as not matter what the function they had to have our room for coats and the fact the community centre side was closed for the whole  summer school holidays (yeah when all the kid are of and struggling to find things to do). It worked well, so then we decided to move it to the other club.

It was probably not my best idea, as soon as it was mentioned the numbers wanting to play went through the roof.

Plus I thought it would be nice to play for once. Now when I had played before, we had randomly rolled for mechs and guess what I always got a Wasp or a Locust the lightest mechs in a game. Now as I painted , based , etc all the units being used this was getting a bit annoying, plus the lards of the club , it that they turn up (generally late) and thats it for all games  were getting the good mechs.

So I did a Jihad era game, with one side Fedcom the other Word of Blake, we were trying out better pilots and both sides were allocated +1 and +2 pilots to distribute as seen fit amongst the sides. Our side decided (unanimously that the pilot of the Demolisher …..me got the +2) . The game ran without problem till the above mentioned lards  turned up nearly an hour an half late, one had being doing something else, planned weeks before but he hadn’t told anyone including his brother who as picking him up and the only way we knew he was is he had told the only member of the club who hadn’t got a phone. By the time they turned up all they got was the light mechs nobody wanted, so their was winge-ing.  We were going to carry it on the next week so everyone was supposed to log their location (we were using the clubs hexon terrain so although not using hexes for movement we used them for mapping).

Now I’ll mention that to get everything ready for the game, I literally got home , and for hours ran around getting boxes of terrain etc ready for transport to club, then we go there early to set up , when I got after the game with travel would not get home till around 11.30 and then would have to spend an hour putting stuff away so no family accidents in morning so above’s late arrival was already annoying. It had been a long standing problem with them, in that the rest of the group would generally have to sit around for half to full hour to start playing, and members had even brought quick @dignity type games to pass the time. They also were not happy we were not playing the board game version in the earlier 3025 period as that was all they had bothered to buy or learn…….

So when we came to set up on the following week (after another two hours of getting ready) guess which two had not recorded where their units were……! though they had this time turned up at their normal hour late.

I’d spotted this on the weekend before so reset the game ( the two above thought they had won it!) but had reversed it with the Fedcom (us) attacking…….. Problem was our side had read the rules, the other side had turned up and the results was similar to the Invasion France in 1944 , my mech raked up 3 kills as they threw various light mechs adhoc at it, which promptly died.

I then got a lot of winging about how unfair the game was (I’m running around like headless chicken at this point putting stuff away ) and could we do it again with the sides reversed!

So lets turn up late, …. let you run around like headless chicken for a week etc…….. I blew my top!!!!! Shall we say  a frank and meaningful exchange of views took place.

Even so I felt embarrassed, plus the whole thing was supposed to be fun and had become anything but.

I stopped going to that club but apart from a couple of visits years later to find above had not changed ( in fact hello can you put some games of for us?) have not been since

I nearly gave up gaming altogether.

Strange thing is if we had reversed, the three players on our side reckoned it would be have been even more onesided, we had a plan!

The Word of Blake side was LRM heavy and we know the rules for Thunder missiles (mine droppers) which our opponents could not be bothered to read about(alt ammunition was freely available for mechs but they never asked).

Crazy thing is after all that I still love the game………but over the last 10 years apart from a couple of games of Alpha Strike not played it……till the clan kickstarter appeared and ……..

Playing last Wednesday even as umpire reminded me why I do, even if we still had winge-ing at end of game.

(this time it was Kevin that wanted to murder someone………then again I didn’t have to put up with half an hour in the car  of winge-ing that it was impossible to win……..the person in question never lose’s because he was outmanoeuvred or lousy dice , but its always the games unbalanced the forces etc!)

So @warzan hink a nice quiet bootcamp/hobbyweekend where @laughing boy beats me with good banter, lucky dice etc sound wonderful!