25 August 2026
Revisiting BattleTech
Way back in the dawn of time, in the year of our lord: 2002 I was a PFC in the US Army. I had fit in immediately with my squad, and was fortunate enough to have a click of platoon-mates that shared my love of tabletop games.
Look at a more youthful and skinny me! This was CA 2006, as SGT June, instead of PFC June!
There were late nights in the barracks playing video games like Super Smash Brothers, but also late night role-playing sessions with Harris, Hicks, and a few other “outcasts”. Many of them were belittled by the more “manly” members of our platoon because they didn’t like sports, or they didn’t hunt. I had always been a bit of a social chameleon, and blended with nearly everyone. I don’t hunt, but I love basketball and football. I’m not a car guy, but love rally racing. My undiagnosed ADHD had given me such a shotgun blast of interests that I could talk to anyone about almost anything.
But what I strongly remember was dabbling in BattleTech. There was a small group that played, perhaps 3-4 of us, and we had a blast. We even dabbled in the MechWarrior RPG companion that FASA made to go with it (Yes, I’m really that old). It is honestly one of the first times I found myself falling in love with a setting.
I’m not normally one for giant robot space battles. They just don’t do it for me, and to be fair, it wasn’t the mechs that drew me in. Don’t get me wrong, I knew about BattleTech before this time, and was introduced to the universe playing MechWarrior 2 with my older brother on PC, and I enjoyed the video game. I even saw the cartoon that was put out. It had promise, but the CGI sequences were so jarring and off-putting, even 1994. In an era with movies like Johnny Mnemonic and cartoons like ReBoot, BattleTech’s CGI just felt sluggish and poorly executed, but I digress.
I had already been familiar with the setting before digging into the tabletop game. I had played the MechWarrior roleplaying game prior to the tabletop “wargame”, also. I loved everything about the BattleTech setting, and for someone that isn’t typically a “lore guy”, I found myself reading BattleTech novels and absorbing as much as I could. I loved it. But what made me fall in love wasn’t the Atlas, with its anime-inspired aesthetics and massive humanoid shape. It was the 90’s era Industrial punk look of mechs like the Mad Cat and Mad Dog (Timber Wolf and Vulture respectively). There’s a whole history behind the aesthetic change, but that’s not for today.
But it was also the Elementals. Really it was always the Elementals. Genetic modification through selective breeding created the Clans super soldiers that don BattleTech’s version of Mjolnir armor (For any of the younger readers out there). It wasn’t sleek and sexy the way Spartan armor is. It is more akin to how small mechs look in games like Konflikt ‘47, and how Power Armor is described in Starship Troopers. I loved it since the first time I set eyes on it, and it drew me into the world of BattleTech. Imagine being harder than Superman’s Kneecap, and willing to don powered armor barely up to a mech’s ankle, then work in coordinated teams to take down these behemoth’s of war!
Upon leaving Active Duty I left my entire BattleTech collection with one of my long-time friends. Every mech, every sheet, and even a collection of WizKids Dark Ages miniatures. I wasn’t sure where life was going to take me, but I was sure BattleTech wasn’t likely to be a part of it. We fast forward almost 20 years, two ex-wives, and two children later, and I’ve seen a lot shift in the wargaming landscape. The GW dominance still exists, but their iron-grip seems to slowly be slipping. Years of unstable games shady business practices, and treating their consumers like dolts might finally be starting to catch up to them. And it is here that I have found my BattleTech renaissance.
Tilted by losing even more of my beloved Ork datasheets to the dreaded “Legends” tag, I decided I was packing it in. I won’t do the firesale I did in 10th, I’ll keep one of my two armies out for pick-up games and playing some local leagues, but I want to spend my time playing games that are made by companies that aren’t continuously treating me as a walking profit margin. One of the locals had cheerfully asked me if I played BattleTech. My eyes list up as I remembered late barracks nights and long MechWarrior rpg sessions. I told him the truth. I know what it is, I played it a long time ago, but I have friends that still play, and that my understanding is that Catalyst has done a very good job of keeping the Fasa game alive, and even introduced a “watered down” version called Alpha Strike.
I have been on a tear ever since. We have scheduled a “how-to” event at Galactic Greg’s, a local game and comic store. I’ve been crushing through novels, and even started watching both the BattleTech cartoon and the BattleTech adjacent ExoSquad cartoon. I’ve brushed up on my rules to prepare for the event, but I have also discovered that some of my friends have been sitting on piles of mechs just waiting for someone to play with. Since stepping away from 40k in 10th I’ve felt a feeling of loss. 40k honestly gave me a lot of purpose and direction that I’ve not been able to replicate without it. But now that I think I’m ready to step away again, I feel like BattleTech could be that replacement, that void-filler. So to all of you MechWarriors out there looking for a commander to heed the call and helm a community, I will rise up. I will be that commander.