After my earlier post about choosing faction-specific Clan force compositions, I did that and made custom configurations for each Omni (available in 3050) for each Clan.
It’s attached here as a PDF (click below to download), and contains some background notes and about 60 new Omni configurations as deployed by the four invading Clans in early 3050.
Let me know what you think!
I’ve returned to one of my earlier (much earlier!) gaming loves, getting back into Battletech. There’s a ton of new content from Catalyst Game Labs, including their fantastic new miniatures kickstarters (if you’re into that kind of thing – the minis are spectacular).
I am not into that kind of thing anymore, but I love access to all the rules and technical readouts in PDF form, and the modern BT community it’s introduced me to.
I also like thinking about parts of the setting and how you’d make them more distinct. Like, it makes sense in terms of letting gamers have access to whatever units that there’s always a justification for every force having every ‘mech – but I think it’s more fun if they don’t. Back when I played a lot of Mechwarrior in grad school, we ran faction-pure forces even though the rules didn’t require it. It was fun!
So I’ve been thinking that it would make a lot more sense if Invasion-era Clan forces (so 3050-era) were more focused, with each Clan deploying units it was actively building or had a lot of in reserve. I based the actual choices on what’s discussed in the fluff and notes in the TROs, and I like how it gives each faction more flavor (and, most fun to me, each faction ends up having an entirely distinct Heavy ‘mech component, which I tend to think of as the MBTs of the BT universe).
Here are the four early Invasion-era Clans and the units they start with in this model. Units marked with an asterisk are not actively produced by the Clan, but are present in large reserves (e.g. the Nova, which everyone has but no one makes anymore).
Some observations from this setup:
Everyone has leftover Novas and Mist Lynxes, and most Clans have leftover Hellbringers.
Everyone is actively producing Adders (the Clan Cloud Cobra opfor ‘mech) and Stormcrows.
The Ghost Bears favor the lighter, faster units, suggesting they’re fans of a more maneuver-warfare oriented style of fighting. They are also the only Clan with a dedicated battle armor APC ‘mech (the Fire Moth).
I was a little mystified by the Falcon’s heavy choices until Darthhorse on Riley’s BT Discord pointed out that they’re great Zellbrigen ‘mechs, and the traditionalist Falcons are the biggest Zell proponents. Otherwise, why would you still be producing the “all guns, no armor” Hellbringer as one of your key heavies?
The Smoke Jaguars make some of the objectively toughest, fightiest units. Their forces clearly lean heavier and slower.
The Wolves bring the heaviest MBT to the table in the Timber Wolf, and also lean heavier generally with the Ice Ferret as their main scout and the Dire Wolf in their ranks as well.
One edit – I pulled the Fire Falcon from the JF list. It wasn’t present for the initial invasion wave.