A chat with Catalyst Game Labs about BattleTech & Leviathans
August 18, 2010 by lloyd
Adam jumps into the world of Catalyst Game Labs for a chat about BattleTech and their new in the works game Leviathans.
BattleTech is of course a granddaddy of tabletop gaming having been around for over 25/26 years here’s a bit of the background story:
“It is the 31st century, a time of endless wars that rage across human-occupied space. As star empires clash, these epic wars are won and lost by BattleMechs®, 30-foot-tall humanoid metal titans bristling with lasers, autocannons and dozens of other lethal weapons; enough firepower to level entire city blocks. Your elite force of MechWarriors® drives these juggernauts into battle, proudly holding your faction’s flag high, intent on expanding the power and glory of your realm. At their beck and call are the support units of armored vehicles and power-armored infantry, wielded by a MechWarrior’s skillful command to aid him in ultimate victory. Will they become legends, or forgotten casualties? Only your skill and luck will determine their fate!”
So what then is Leviathans, well again here's a bit of the story to set the scene:
“In 1878 the Polish genius Rynchowski isolated an electrical fluid with remarkable lifting capabilities. A single, pivotal event that would change the world.
The smartest military minds of the coming generation—Zeppelin, Jellico, Fisher and others—diverted their attention to the glorious new technological revolution and sea-going battleships were abandoned around the world. In their place, armored giants took to the skies.
In 1906, Great Britain launched the HMS Leviathan, the first of the “super air ships”, sparking an arms race around the world. By 1910 the most powerful nations boasted large High Fleets, and the start of small skirmishes left the world uneasy…welcome to Leviathans!“
Leviathan looks like an awesome game with an interesting twist in their universe. I can not wait to get some play time with it. Hopefully BoW will have some more videos on this in the future.
Now that the Jihad is pretty much over, I’m curious as to where Catalyst will take the game. More focus on historical conflicts, like Klondike and 3039, or will it be the continuous march up to the horrible clickytech Dark Age?
Got to agree Leviathan could be something really nice. I know there are airship based games out there already but the style of the miniatures didn’t catch me quite as much. Being set in 1910 Leviathan is at that blurring point between Victorian Scifi and the more industrial Weird World War/Pulp style which I like a lot for battle settings. Battletech is something which I love but don’t know that much about, comming from Mechwarrior gams rather than the actual BTech wargame or fiction. The only thing that has put me off the game is the very varied levels of… Read more »
Battletech/Mechwarrior ruled back in the day, but Dark Ages, lousy minis, lack of PC-game and the dropping of quality on the novels left me looking for my mech action elsewhere.
The problem is there really is a huge gap in the market for non-anime style mech kits. Particularly in the 3-5″ tall size range so you get a nice balance of detail and affordability, as nice as 10-12″ tall resin walkers are they do tend to be a tad pricey. GW’s Epic Titans are mostly pretty nice but rediculously expensive now, Warmachine has some nice ideas but the ‘Jacks never seem quite right to me, always much too top heavy. Oh for Fantasy Flight to do a copy of Adeptus Titanicus similar to what they did for Space Hulk. A… Read more »
These seem like an interesting scale for a mech model. Hope Reaper makes some more of them, I could see it being good for stand-ins. The fellow in the middle reminds me of the Commando or Peregrine, cool little figures and a lot of personality.
http://www.reapermini.com/Miniatures/Chronoscope/latest/50164
I’m really looking forward to Leviathans. I played a demo at Gen Con before doing the interview with Randall, and I really hope they start producing it soon. The 3D print prototype of the ship looks awesome.
“The 3D print prototype of the ship looks awesome” Agreed 🙂 do you have any information on their size, i feel a cloud based diorama coming on.
The largest ships will probably be just under four inches, and then the other ships will get smaller from there.
Thanks Adam, and could you give yourself and the other boys a pat on the back for bringing us great reports over GenCon.
Much appreciated 🙂
Nice interview, thanks. How big were the minis going to be? Are they planning to make them metal, plastic, prepainted?
From what I was told during the demo I played in, the ships are going to be prepainted plastic. I’m hoping they won’t be random-pack (like booster packs) but in squadrons, with clear packaging, like the old Crimson Skies game from WizKids.
Battle Tech! Whoohoo!
I havent played that game since the late 90’s.
Its nice to now that what use to be my favoret table top game is not dead and gone.
I realy need to look into getting the new rules. And pulling out my 100+ mechs.
Did I mention that I use to love playing this game.
I played alot of mech warrior 3 & 4 back in the day on PC. id love to give this a go 🙂
God I forgot they did Shadowrun, that brings back memories! Also definitely gonna have to pickup a box-set of Batteltech and look into Leviathans, never got into BT because it always seemed so..weighed down with lore and unforgiving to new players, maybe it was because I was 10 back then, but these days it doesn’t seem like that so much, can’t wait to try it out.
Love Battletech, started playing when I was nineteen or twenty. I don’t collect a lot of the minis, lots of the mechs just look like garbage to me, but the new ones look good. That said my friends and I only play old tech, 3055 being the newest. Great game, very easy to pick up and play, hard to master the tactics. If your looking to buy minis Ral Partha Europe is the best, http://www.ralparthaeurope.co.uk/ better prices and good shipping rates than American online stores. Ebay is also great for minis.
Chris
A “Whats in the Box” of that new Battletech Intro Box would be great, very curious to see what is in there. I still have the first intro box I got of Btech on my shelf, one of the first things I ever tried playing. Oh, those were some paintjobs…
I’m liking how the old designs are getting updated, some of the minis in their slideshow looked cool.
Steampunk floating armoured battleships – I’m in. The blog is full of great info.
I really would like to see some more battletech coverage here at beasts of war.
I would love to see some more Battletech coverage, I played pre-wizkids so would be keen to find out about the new addition so a review or what’s in the box would be great to find out about
[…] A chat with Catalyst Game Labs about BattleTech & LeviathansAug 18, 2010 … Adam jumps into the world of Catalyst Game Labs for a chat about BattleTech and their new in the works game Leviathans. […]
has you tube nuked you guys again? I’m trying to watch this through the BOW site but I’m being told that the video associated with this account has been closed?