The color coding is really cool idea. We with friends used two dices - face is being shot modifier, back of mech - shooting with this mech.

@@BeTReZeN1 It's not a new idea,the coloring is used since forever o.O

That's very helpful, thanks

What a legend. Explained in 5 minutes what it took me a week to understand.

Niiiiice, I was wondering what that was all about. Very intuitive system, imo. I like it.

Good news, in IntroTech, an ammo hit is a dead mech any. Really, the best spot for ammo is the head, since you will still have most of a mech, even if a ton of MG ammo goes off.

I do pretty much the same but rather than laminating I put my Mech records in sheet protectors and use dry erase pens. When not in use I can store them in a 3-ring binder.

damn fine idea...

A friend got me a neat little laminator machine that works great

Was checking to see if anyone mentioned that. Haven't played Btech in well over 10 years, but definitely remembered that.

Mech jumping: Can start with ANY facing, and move to it's maximum jump distance, and land facing ANY hex facing desired.

Which means that catapult could have gone an extra space if he wanted. Wondering if the heat was counted correctly. If he jumped only three and added the base 3 for jumping, we are good. But, there would be 4 heat at the full jump distance.

A friend of mine got me a neat little laminator machine for record sheets. I would imagine magazine covers are better since they can be removed for easier copying but I just print out new ones when I need to

You can usually go to a staples, Office Depot, UPS store etc and get sheets laminated to be able to use dry erase on them as well. It doesn’t cost too much to get a few sheets laminated but it’s a good option from what I have seen.

I enjoy been playing since it's first inception as Battledroids. the fun thing in the original version includes the effect of target adding heat due to being hit by energy weapons. there was also a different method to determine effectiveness of armor.

(Compared to the beginner set) should be the subtext lol

Rules notes: 13:20. When jumping you don't need to pay for turns, so the Catapult could have been one hex further over Around 18:00. For line of sight, a woods hex on elevation doesn't block line of sight, it just counts towards the three light/one light and two heavy/two heavy woods for blocking line of sight. Also, if you're occupying a woods hex it doesn't count for _you_ determining line of sight and hit numbers, but it does count for your enemy. It's a very common tactic to try and find spots for your fire support and sniper mechs where you can occupy a wood with a 1-level elevation change between you and the enemy, so you can stand still, get a +2 or +3 modifier for enemies to hit you and you get nothing. 25:00 Mechs always have heat sinks in their engines that aren't on the record sheet. The total heat sinks are listed on the bottom right of the sheet in between the heat modifiers table and the heat scale. At 26:21 you can see the Commando has 10 heat sinks in total and at 26:26 you can see the Catapult has 14 heat sinks. These are marked as Single because at more advanced tech levels there are heat sinks that take up the same weight but more space and dissipate 2 heat each instead of 1. 28:40: there's no movement point penalty for leaving a woods hex, the Locust would have had 1 more MP to spend 31:00 or so, depending on the Shadow Hawk's facing, the Locust is either in the left arc (If the Shadow Hawk's front hex side is facing hex 2210, or rear if the Shadow Hawk's front hex side is facing hex 2310) . Assuming the Shadow Hawk is facing hex 2210, then the Locust would need to get to hex 2513. If it was in hex 2412, because it straddles the rear and left arcs the defender gets to decide which facing takes the damage. Usually people paint either the front or rear hex side of a model to differentiate it and allow for people to quickly show facing. (I do the rear hex in white) 42:00 after rolling a double 1 for location or if you hit internal structure, you roll 2d6 to see how many critical hits land - 2-7 is no crit, 8-9 is one, 10-11 is 2, and 12 is 3 or if the roll is on a limb or the head the location is blown off. 42:47 The number of shots in a missile bay is the number of salvoes, so that full SRM bay is 100 missiles. If you hit a bay that has only fired one round, it explodes for 196 damage. Which is academic because the Shadow Hawk couldn't take the 96 damage should it have had 48 missiles in it when it went up anyway. A common house rule is allowing players to short-load weapons like SRM 2s, LRM 5s and machine guns so they're not essentially bombs waiting to go off. 43:30 or so: Ammo explosions only transfer inwards towards the centre torso rather than outwards. However, the effect of the explosion is pretty much as you described - a mech killed by centre torso destruction via an ammo explosion or artillery hit is totally unsalvageable for campaign play.

@@GuerrillaMiniatureGames I know what you mean. Like you said in the video BattleTech's core rules aren't that complex, but when you start to layer on additional units, special case rules, weird weapons and so on, you end up toting a bunch of heavy hardback rulebooks (or a tablet with large PDFs these days). I love that with TacOps you can play a game where a pair of battleships are firing at each other while mech forces jump between them trying to engage in a boarding action. _During a rain of frogs_. I would never play that game because it'd take an hour to do a turn, but I like that the option is there... I think the most outlandish ones my group have played included fighting in the crater of a recent nuclear explosion (I made a custom map), and using a Warship to provide orbital fire support in the same campaign (it was a 3x2 map with 4 of the heavily built up city maps at the bottom. The WarShip fired one shot from each of its side weapons as it passed overhead, and with those few shots I levelled the city and destroyed many friendly and enemy units. Too bad I was nominally defending the city...

@@lorcannagle I think Ash's Let's Play video for BattleTech is a good one. I've been playing BT for 25 years now and I still get some less frequent rules wrong. Most of the basic rules will become second nature the more one plays. For the rest, one can always look them up after gameplay. :)

@@samlam4598 Absolutely, I only discovered recently that every attempt to stand up generates 1 heat, and I've been playing BattleTech since 1992! My notes here are less attacking Ash for getting stuff wrong and more advice on stuff to double-check for next time.

Battletech Manual is alternate presentation of the rules not slimmed down but focused on Mech vs Mech combat and little else. On page 5 it states "The BattleMech Manual has been designed from the ground up to cater to the BattleTech player wishing to participate in an all-’Mech engagement. Using the most up-to-date rules text, the BattleMech Manual focuses on presenting the complete standard rules for BattleMechs in as clean and concise a manner as possible"

The videos are great, just don't use them for teaching the rules.

@@rburt3 nah, just for 'the feels'

I’m good to go when lockdown ends. Two mechs, full BatChal

I just got the new/current rules...I'm in!

Umm. You realise there is a big box in the bottom right that tells you how much heat you sink? Its in the upper right of the heat area.

@@Gadgets2059 I couldn't remember where the box that just gives the number was.

@@tacklew It was so cringe watching him figure heat and the number he was looking for was right in the camra lol. But it is a game with so many moving parts. His vids are still the best.

@@Gadgets2059 I mean Ashe has 37737280199 games rolling around in his brain. Mistakes will be made and most of us are probably pretty understanding. Normally I don't even say anything, but that felt like a rule that would actually make the game way less fun and way too long. More pew pew is way more fun than one small laser.

I haven't read the latest edition of the rules, but the fact that someone so experienced in so many games didn't pick up on that from the reading through the rules would indicate to me that maybe they need to make it clearer. I know the layout and organisation of earlier editions isn't the best. I'm sure it's mentioned in the construction rules, but it's unlikely anyone's going to reference those when starting out playing the game.

Battletech allows me to play guilt free from spells, demons and monsters. Humans are the most realistic monsters out of all the games. BT is stronger than ever and the best time to fill any holes in your collection.

I love old school DnD, always have back to the 80s (although I went to Pathfinder years back, I still consider it 'DnD'... Besides screw Hasbro).... But funny how you mention it this way. I got into BT in the 80s. Many have tried to get me into 40K.... Never took. And the REASON is BattleTech. I enjoy this game too much. Time learning or playing 40K is time I could spent on BT instead. BattelTech honestly ruined me for 40k. I don't hate 40k, or begrudge those that love it. It's cool, just not my wargame. BattleTech is. Shrug.

Don't suppose any of you live in Texas? You sound like my kind of Battletech enjoyers.

I smell Dangerous Heresy 😂 Bring me the Flamer. The HEAVY Flamer 🔥 Jokes aside, I'm more into the Lore of both. Barely anyone Up here is up for Dn'D, Battletech or 40K.

40k stands for $40k to play it💩

Floating Crit is an optional rule, the standard rules just have the TAC always go to the center. I play with floating TACs because mechs die so much faster that way and I hate it.

@@DarthP00P00 oh damn, I knew floating crit was an optionak rule, but have been using it for so long I was thinking it was a case of if you're not using the rule then the double 1 result became a hit to the listed location instead of a crit to that spot. Definitely can end fights a lot faster if it is just a potential crit to that specific location

Not quite. Most mechs have at least 10 heat sinks, but you don't ever dissipate anything for "free". You can only dissipate the amount of heat handled by your available heat sinks (1 heat per undamaged single heat sink, 2 heat per undamaged double heat sink).

@@rburt3 Been a few decades since I last played. I seem to remember a spot on the sheet that said how many total sinks you have when undamaged so you didn't have to add them up like he was doing. Heat only became a problem late game except in the odd circumstance.

@@ameboaboy You are correct about the sheet showing you explicitly the heat you can sink. Ashe just missed it on this playthrough.

To be fair he did forget a step. He rolled 2 on a 2D6, which is a "Through Armor Critical Hit". It basically is a free CHANCE to crit before usually having to blow the armor off for a chance to crit. He was supposed to make another roll to see if the hit causes a critical, most of the time it doesn't. So in reality they happen way less frequent then you think.

Battletech is actually stable in how it performs statistically. 2d6 Yield a pretty nice bell curve. Through armor criticals like the one in the video are incredibly rare, need another step to that shaves a lot of the probability off and it needs to hit ammo, which is again incredibly lucky. Could just as easily have hit the engine or a gyro and resulted in something far less spectacular.

Owen and I are just talking about this!

@@GuerrillaMiniatureGames Awesome!

They were On the Paint Table a couple weeks ago and I did just that!

But IMO completely strips away anything that makes BT unique.

I like to play to both. It’s the only way to realistically play the game in a reasonable time if you are larger than lance on lance. The rules can be modded very easy for individual house rules, too. To each their own, of course! But I feel AS makes reasonable abstractions to streamline play. I’d much rather play a company on company game in 3 hours rather than a lance on lance game that could take the same amount of time or longer. I do agree there are aspects that BT does better, but at the cost of longer play time. For those with 12+ hours to kill, you could maybe get a company v company done. I’ve been a Bt fan for 28 years and never played one to conclusion. In AS, I have.

I still have 30ish maps from various of the map packs (as well as 2 double sized ones from Renegade Legion which are reasonably compatible)

Yup super hard to buy into the game right now. I see what Ash means about all the record keeping btw!

I plan on just using the basic rules. I prefer to keep it quick an simple, but that's just me.

I would grab the Game of Armoured combat box. You literally get enough Mechs to play forever (8) in the box and everything you need to get going. If you’re going to expand get the Manual and then any other Mechs you like. :$

The AGoAC comes with two double sided maps both with a grasslands and desert side (2 variants of each type). The scenarios in the rules use both maps in different combinations.

Specifically 2 different double sided maps.

Yup!

They come in the box!

@@GuerrillaMiniatureGames Which box? My game of armored combat cox didn't come with nearly that many punch outs (????)

Catalyst sells them!

nope. it's still on the datasheets