Stompy Boys

I know I already said this: but I’ll finish painting the models on my desk soon. However I played a game of Battletech Alpha Strike!

This Catapult never moved, just hugged his building.

Funny part is I didn’t even think about a blog post when we played, but my buddy took some pics. So here we are! 

Full disclosure: we decided yesterday morning that we should play a game. We decided that game should be Stargrave as we’ve wanted to try it since the first preview. Then my buddy showed up and said “Ok I just need to write-up a crew for theses models.”

We went full oldschool and cut out paper terrain.

It was already late and we’d never get to the game if he took the next hour to figure out points, powers, and such. So I said let’s just play Battletech. My two lances from the starter sets are already painted up as balanced forces. Turned out to be a good idea! 

Key to fun: ignore 90% of the rule book.

To start, we decided to ignore the 300 page rule book (for now) and just play using the free quick start rules from the web. That came with paper terrain that he cut out and assembled while I pulled together the board. As we continued playing we continued to ignore more rules and get down to just the base of what we needed. 

Here’s our 30 second review: we liked that Alpha Strike has all the essence of Battletech. It’s a much quicker play version that lets us field more units and still play in a reasonable amount of time. That said, they really could have simplified it more. We ignored a lot of rules and still had fun. The main book really is overkill… though it’s nice as optional rules for advanced players. 

The light mechs enjoyed shooting people in the back, including each other. 

We had a grand time blowing each other to bits. In the end his catapult found itself the last man standing and retreated off the board. So (my) red rock ‘em sock ‘em robots won the day. Can’t wait for the next game. Until then we may document a simplified version of the rules. It’ll make it easier to introduce the game to friends.