Worst start to your Merc campaign. "Ok. So you and your lance of Urbies have just arrived at Solaris...."

The merc company is every fans dream, or should be, like firefly, before firefly.

I always liked to throw in the Mobile HQ, Engineering Vehicle from 3026 or Mech Recovery vehicle. Low BV but the fluff/background added to the unit was immense.

As someone whos just about to start getting into the game (a game of armored combat enroute through the mail) this is exactly the video i was hoping to find. 100% perfect timing

Love narrative, was all me and my friends would play. We never used BV either, always felt it was against narrative so as mercs we had to use our tactics and knowing when to just bug out if overwhelmed. Made it feel more realistic that way. Completing the object which didn't always mean take out all the enemies. I lost my commander in the first campaign we played in the first round, was a 2/3..rolled real lucky on the random table lol. First round gauss to his Battlemaster's head. Still managed to win, but was rather rough losing my best pilot and mech. We went all in though, managing funds, payroll, repairs, time to repair, we were running the company and it was fun. Miss those days.

mercs are the most fun. you get tom come up with your own backstory and heraldry. and for campaign purposes i wouldnt do without an oscout. theyre just too useful. something else important is bluff when dealing with negotiating with houses. get anything that can move with any pilot in a unit to make you seem more battle effective then you are. one of my favorite merc stories; starting a new campaign with new characters (mine was a member of my rhinehardt [erich] dynasty of ex steiner mech jocks) out on our 1st mission. my guys piloting a panther and were doing our 1st patrol near a small town. suddenly a commando jump up on top of a nearby building and takes a pot shot at me. i return fire with my ppc, right through his head! so my characters 1st shot fired "in anger" resulted in his (and the units) 1st kill. after that his nickname was "one shot" and/or "head shot".

This is so cool. As someone who just bought the Battletech begininner's box, I really enjoy this!

I honestly think Battletech is really built around a mini-RPG/campaign mechanic with you building your own merry band of 'Mechwarriors (and going on for adventures for big powers, especially with the sheer amount of material published for running your own unit. If any player is interested in the mercenary lore of Battletech, I highly recommend Field Manual:Mercenaries (Revised) that goes into the history of many of these units and the very basics of how to form one and generate mission contracts that you can use to spin off into an actual tabletop game/campaign. Do note that not all of mercenary units survives the ravages of time.... If you are interested in pirates and pirate empires, be sure to check out the older Periphery sourcebooks that cover pirate lords on fringe world warlords with some very colorful if outright evil histories. Remember, generic camo schemes work for almost everything. You don't have to paint up in parade colors all the time if you intend some common 'Mechs to be swappable between different forces you play.

That's why I enjoy playing my backwater Periphery planetary defense force turned mercenary. No 'Mechs, but combined arms all around otherwise.

MekHQ: Generate your own personal force (e.g. mercenary unit, line regiment, pirates, etc.) with a full TO&E, experience and skill upgrades for personnel, a repair system, and much more, all within the canon factions and worlds of the BattleTech Universe. It is free for everyone. You can use it to help you create, keep track of the book keeping, and even generate the OpFor. megamek.org/index.html

I love playing a merc company trying to provide for it's people and having the narrative quandaries of which contracts to take both from money and challenging the morals of the company. I.e do you take a contract that barely pays the bills or do you take the big payday to do something morally offensive to the members of the company.

I ran a merc lance long ago. Even the main characters were created with Mechwarrior RPG (second edition) but nowadays I still have to try mercs again (I have two wolf's dragons lances) but I mostly play the battletech videogame because is hard to me to have someno to play with.