Battletech is classic wargame about fighting 30-foot-tall robots. Back when I was still in high school, I played a game or two, but never had enough players who were interested in playing again.
This was really too bad; this game excites the imagination like you wouldn’t believe. Tonight, for example, I was down to three damaged mechs, two of them *very* badly damaged. My brother was down to one, less damaged mech. My mechs had him cornered. Each of them pumped their various lasers and missiles into it. Finally, one of my mechs managed an incredibly difficult head shot that blew the head clean off. But at the same time, he shot lasers into both of my badly damaged mechs, destroying one outright and eliminating the other by exploding what was left of his missile ammo.
Every time I’ve played this game, I’ve had some awesome event like that happen. Once, I was playing with a bunch of other people, and as the least experienced player I was saddled with a couple squads of infantry as opposed to a full-sized mech or even another vehicle. But, one of my infantry squads managed to disable their last remaining long range missile truck near the end of the game, guaranteeing a win for my team.
So, now that my own little brother is old enough to enjoy this game fully, I’ve bought the Battletech Introductory Boxed Set. It contains the rules for the basic game, some twenty-odd plastic figurines, a couple of maps, and a lot of neat background information into the Battletech universe.
Although the games tend to be ridiculously long (especially when you have to look up every other rule) it’s still a ton of fun. Can’t recommend it highly enough.
