Well, my acquisition of BattleTech stuff continues apace. Arriving today…
Notice anything about it?
You probably don’t. It’s subtle. Here’s the previous one in the series:
Do you see it now? Yes, it’s no longer “Classic” BattleTech; it’s just BattleTech again. 
BattleTech Strategic Operations offers the following options to BattleTech games:
- A new abstract air-to-air combat system (and air-to-ground), which means a much easier integration of AeroTech units in the regular BattleTech game.
- Rules on linked scenarios
- Advanced Aerospace Movement & Combat
- Maintenance, Salvage, Repair and Customisation
- Battleforce – Standard and Advanced Rules (that’s representing lances of Mechs with single figures).
- Oh, and more miniature rules and record sheets.
Missing from the picture is the Interstellar Operations book, which will have all the force generation and resolution rules, but that should be out next year, I’d guess.
Also getting closer is A Time of War, the BattleTech RPG (4th ed), which has recently been released as a beta PDF for US$10. What’s really nice about this pdf is that you’ll get it upgraded for free to the full pdf version when that’s released. It’s pretty complete as is, and it’s just been released cheaply early so the BattleTech community can look at it early and find errors. If you don’t want to spend the money on the print version (and that’s likely to be about aus$80 when it comes out) and you’re interested in playing in the game I eventually get running of it, now is your chance to get it cheaply.
The other two BattleTech books that arrived today were Interstellar Players, which details a lot of shadowy forces in the BattleTech universe (including the Bounty Hunter!), which is mostly interesting from the RPG/storytelling sense of things, and Jihad Hot Spots 3076, the latest in the Jihad storyline plotbooks. Apart from covering 4 years of the war, it also has a BattleTech campaign included in it (about 10 scenarios or so) which one of these days I’ll run – of course, we have to get through the Sword and Dragon campaign first!
Non-BattleTech acquisitions: three more old D&D modules: B4, the Lost City, L2 The Assassin’s Knot and X5 Temple of Death. My collection of old stuff is looking pretty good by now.
