What is BattleTech? -

BattleTech is a game from the 1980s that started as a tabletop strategy game (games like Risk, Axis and Allies). It was basically a game that simulated futuristic combat, but plays as other strategy games that require careful thinking of each turn to determine the winner. Unlike some strategy games, BattleTech also incorporates luck by including dice. The gamepieces are sometimes plastic figures or paperboard cutouts, though there are better miniatures also available.

BattleTech was originally called BattleDroids, but lost this name because of a George Lucas copyright on the word "Droids" (for his Star Wars franchise). BattleTech renamed its robots 'Mechs, short for BattleMechs.

BattleTech's story is basically a space opera - a political and war story in which giant interstellar governments fight each other - and involves fights between huge robots. It is similar to several other stories, but it has a great number of political groups, making it much more complex and realistic than more pop-culture stories like Star Wars (good versus evil). BattleTech is similar to Dune in some ways, but the story is much more diversified with numerous political entities and cultures.

BattleTech is also somewhat unique in that it does not have any intelligent alien life. The technology in the story ranges from antique to futuristic.

BattleTech has many areas for people to be interested in. Some are interested in the novels that tell the main story of BattleTech. These stories include over 100 novels and flesh out many important characters and history for the universe. Others are interested in the actual game, and play it simply without knowing the details of the story. Still others are keen to paint the miniatures, which are produced by Iron Wind Metals and depict many of the Mechs, vehicles, and infantry from BattleTech. This alone is a major hobby and the hundreds of different metal miniatures are enough to keep even the most avid fans busy with the hobby. Some in this group like customizing the miniatures (I do a bit, but nothing too hard!). This hobby is called kitbashing and is used to make Mech designs that are new or unproduced by the official companies.

BattleTech has lots of other facets, including best-selling computer games, card games, and other forms of collectible miniatures which are plastic. No matter what sort of BattleTech fan you are, you probably have a love of giant robots like me!

Tabletop Game-
The Original
Novels-
Inspired by Game Texts
Miniatures-
Inspired by Tabletop Game
PC Games-
Put you IN the Mech
CCG-
Our Group's Start!
Dark Age-
New Generation

BattleTech's original board game was called BattleDroids, but it quickly revised the name as 'Mechs. The board game is played by Strider's Strikers and friends in order to create our story and to actually determine the details of several battles our team engages in. Some of these are actually important for influencing the story's path, but others are simply played to "act out" some of the important events that we already wrote in our story.

For all intents and purposes, the novels of the original BattleTech periods (Succession Wars and Clan Invasion) are one of the most important parts of our website's story. We follow the novel's stories and added our own characters to the story. However since BattleTech has so many different groups and factions, our team is just a minor group who has little influence on the BattleTech universe. We purposely make our story so that it doesn't conflict with the official BattleTech storyline, that way our team and its history can exist in the actual continuity of BattleTech. The only major character from the BattleTech novels who appears on our site is Redjack Ryan, a pirate kingdom leader. He crosses paths with both Xandar Harlow and Mike Strider and is important for both character's origins.

Several members of the Strider's Strikers players group have painted the miniatures that go along with the tabletop strategy game. We do it out of enjoyment for art and coming up with our own designs. Unlike many regular painters of miniatures, we do not normally stick to single color schemes for our teams because we feel this is boring and less artistic. We don't frown on others doing it, but it just doesn't maximize our interest in the craft nor would it help us express our artistic creativity as freely. We have many dozens of miniatures, but have not painted actively in the past 2 years due to time constraints on hobbies!

The PC games of BattleTech are great fun, whether playing Mechwarrior or MechCommander. Both series feature excellent videos that go with their gameplay, helping to further put players into the BattleTech universe and its atmosphere. The games are also an easy way to release some stress by fighting competitively against other armored foes (Mechs or tanks and other vehicles). The PC games are also a great way to 'sample' the BattleTech universe because they don't require buying many books or materials and players can play missions in under 20 minutes.

Like many CCG games, BattleTech the Collectible Card Game features rare and unique cards that are hard to collect and supposedly worth some money. They also make your decks very strong. The CCG version of BattleTech is customizable, so players can choose which cards to incorporate or leave out of their 60 card decks. You can represent many different factions or a single one if you like, depending on the house rules in your group. Generally its easiest to play as simple Clan or Inner Sphere for beginners so you don't have to have so many cards! However if you do have tons, its very fun designing lots of different decks; each has a specific purpose or tactic that gives it a unique feel and play method. We have many decks, and you can see some of them in the CCG section of this site.

Mechwarrior: Dark Age is the 'new' BattleTech. It is now several years old and has stopped being produced, but for many players it is their first introduction to BattleTech. It uses a different system for the game rules, which is somewhat simplified in that it requires little to no writing and keeps track of all the game's calculations on numbered bases. Though several of the miniatures are pretty cool, they are generally a bit off for most of our players. We do paint some of these miniatures and plan to play a campaign in this method in the future, but its still some time off and nothing definite yet.