It’s been a while since I last posted, and the reason is the subject of the last post. I wanted to get a 40k league going at my club and it didn’t take off, didn’t even start. I was trying to hard to get things going, but failed for a number of reasons. This failure has hit me hard, I have stopped 40k for the foreseeable future, so that I can work past these feelings. I didn’t want to stop with miniature wargames though, so I looked at what I had and narrowed things down to 2 choices: Heroclix and Battletech. Heroclix is a fun game, with that tcg feel that hit both my favorite genres at once, making my adhd brain happy, and Battletech, while not having the same style of release, is a very deep and crunchy game with awesome minis and 40 years of lore and mechs. I wanted to take some time to think if over, but I had decided everything by the time my 40k league was meant to start. While at a discount store on July 10th, I found something I had never expected to see, something I’d been wanting for over a decade! I found a neoprene map for Battletech. I’ve always wanted a mat like this, for any minis game I’ve played, and now here was one for Battletech, at a place I’d never seen BT stuff at, and for half price. I took this as a sign, and I haven’t looked back in almost 2 months.
I’ve been able to expand my collection during this time, and I’ve been having a great time exploring the universe, painting a few minis, and playing both versions of the game. One thing has gotten my interest more than any other aspect of this game though, and that is the recent redesigns of the campaign system called “chaos campaigns”. The current iteration was introduced in the Battletech Mercenaries box set. You start a small merc company, with 2 pilots and mechs, and start taking contracts. you have a number of game to play through each contract, with the main goal being to earn a fat stack of cash! You negotiate your payment and get to playing. After each game you can even claim fallen mechs and vehicles as salvage, and either get paid for the kill, or repair them and use them as your own, or even ransom then back to the original owner.
Overall, I’ve been totally sucked into playing this system, and with BT having a relatively small scale, I even have some space near my desk at home set up to play solo games. I’ve played a bunch, but not much against other people yet. I’d really like to get something going at club, but I don’t want to make the same mistakes as the 40k league. I plan on getting some stuff going with Leo and the kids by or during the next meetup, but I have one other thing I’d like to do as well.
I’ve been watching youtube videos or other people playing mercenary chaos campaigns, and with the recent Hot Spots books, they have a ton of premade contracts to do. While watching these, I realized I want to do the same thing, I like the idea of using this system to tell a story of a custom merc company, and use the progression to help me pick new mechs to paint and develop characters, and how they are shaped by the craziness of the current Illclan era of Battletech. So that’s what I’m going to do, just not in video, not at first at least.
I’m posting this to announce that I plan on posting a regular blog series covering my first full playthrough of a chaos campaign book. It’ll be more explanation and battle report-y than prose, but I will talk about characters and moments they have in game, just don’t expect me to be writing short stories or novels and such. I want to express my own ideas here, not cause I feel like anyone else did this wrong, but because I just want to add my own story to the world.
I’m working on the first two posts now, the first will layout the set up and the rules I’ll be using, as well as have a small bio on the first few main characters. The second will be the first part of their first contract! I’ll play both sides, and won’t cheat or anything, trust me! I also plan to post maybe once a week, so I have time to play and write it all out.
That’s all for now though, I’ll see you in episode one of “The Rise of The Azure Phoenix”
The Game Cave 