Strategic Operations Shipping out August 11

For those waiting a long time for this book, it was just announced by Catalyst that the new big hardcover will be finally shipping on August 11th. This is another in a line of option heavy books, but the neatest thing is the supposed inclusion of alternate play rules for simplifying Btech to be able to play much large scale battles.

Interesting...on the alternate play rules that is. They had something like that in the old miniatures rules book. What they had before was not bad but it wasn't great. Hopefully they modified it a bit.

They mentioned the older rules, this is supposed to be a new version of a similar concept this being now called Battleforce.

The book has been out for a while actually though in PDF format as they ran into trouble with printing so the book was delayed almost 6 months. Anyways for those who can't wait you can get the cheaper pdf version here: http://www.battlecorps.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=2164

OoH....battleforce.
I have the Battleforce2 rulebook and im not crazy about it. Basically one mech figure would represent a lance of mechs. They treat Lances/stars like battle armor points in that system. I'm not crazy about it. It has potential if they fix it up a bit though and just make it a variation to the regular rules.

Well it's not supposed to be the same exact thing as the old version so we will have to see.

I also down loaded Battleforce, yaw...

Not interested.

Now if they can come up with a system that is more rapid in the fight phase, then that would be an improvement.

I think you can already speed things up by playing a level one rule set.

JerryB

Well, in the quickER play rules I have they gave 4 optional rules to speed up game play.

3 simple ones. One was to do like the quickstart rules and ignore the internal armor. Once the external armor was destroyed that section was destroyed. Another was to limit mechs to only be able to fire what they can handle heat wise each turn and the last one was to move in lances instead of individual units. Meaning we would each move about 3-4 units at a time.

The final optional rule altered the whole system of play a bit. It did away with phases. It left just 2 phases. Initiative roll and then all other actions where done at once. Basically, each time you activate a unit it moves, fires, declares physical attacks and resolves heat or has the option to hold and be activated at any time. with some modifier penalties for that and then either give up moving or shootings. This of course eliminates everything being simultaneous. So if you kill a mech before it had the chance to act that turn to bad for that guy...I actually really like this system but I prefer to play it the classic way for now for all the new players around right now.

I actually just read over the the quick start rules to refresh my memory on the battleforce rules (I haven't read them in about 3 years ) And with one slight modification to the rules you can make it better. Instead of having one figure represent several just break it up. Each figure represents itself. The sheets give you individual stats for each figure anyway. Maybe if I go by Joels later tonight we can give it a whirl.

Has anyone read the new Battleforce system yet or is this still the old one?

As for a single lance being a counter/fig in battleforce, from what I understand it is an optional rule to play like that or separate the mechs into individuals.

Kyle, I started to read the rules for Battle force and quickly lost interest. But what I read, it is as Frantic stated, one mech represent the whole team in a star formation, at that point I put down and later threw it away (although I still have the PDF I believe).

JerryB

I got my old battleforce book from my moms house yesterday. I was looking through it and I think its a viable system with some simple house rules. Im going to give it a test run tonight

Well, Joel got the strategic operations book (which I think jerry bought) I was looking through it and they have something called quick strike rules. Its pretty cool. Its the Battleforce rules but slightly altered and mixed in with the regular rules and made for 3d terrain. I want to get the book just for that

Yes, I did purchase the book and when I get the chance I will review the BattleForce rules, which take a major portion of the book content.

JerryB