Not my most original paint scheme, but I, like many others, were immediately reminded of Master Chief when we saw the new CGL sculpt of the Charger. And I don't miss an opportunity to make a referential painting scheme for a character or IP I enjoy.
I love the color of the metallic green I was able to achieve with liquitex artist inks! I didn't realize that MC doesn't have a hard canon shade of green. All reference images have different shades and hues of green.
I didn't do any recess shading on it as of this posting. I am a touch hesitant because I'm unsure of how much my acrylic ink washes may dull down the metallic shine. But I may go back and do an oil panel line to get the best of both worlds.
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Tournament #4 Batchall By the Bay: A Hero's Journey
This is the tournament that just happened this past weekend, 3/8-3/9. almost exactly 13 months since my first one. After November, I was feeling washed. like that first tournament was a fluke and I was already a has-been. I wasn't ready for this kind of a run.
This is one was in Santa Cruz. a short ~1 hour car ride form my place. I took my wonderful girlfriend with me. This was the first time I ever took a partner with me to a tournament, and it was honestly the best decision I ever had. Being able to connect with her throughout the day kept me sane and grounded. I believe her presence played a big part in my performance that weekend.
Speaking of my performance, going into this tournament, I felt much like i did going into my first. I was cool, nervous, but very confident in my list. i played it a bunch, understood what it exceled in, what it was bad at, and what i needed to do during terrain placement. Games are won and lost on terrain placement, and deployment, IMO.
Anyway, those of you may have noticed that this list looks a bit different. This is not in fact a Draconis Combine list. No, this is Hell's Horses. The only clan faction that caught my interest because they, like myself, LOVE vehicles.
I started on this list as a meme list where i would try to run the maximum of 8 vehicles allowed in Wolfnet 350 since this tournament was back to using the base rules. After realizing that running 8 vehicles means i'm extremely vulnerable to some bad motive hits, i took a more balanced approach. i ran only 7 in my list but fielded 4-5 in any given match.
At the end of the day, i didn't try building around a single unit like i did with my June and November lists. While i didn't ignore any gimmicks, i held on loosely to them. They didn't take over my whole list.
The One MVP
What I learned is that you should never operate in absolutes. The Annihilator is one of the units that were on the very bottom of my mental list of mechs i ever plan on using. However, while playtesting and building out my full 250, i saw that i had a hole of 37PV that i needed to fill. Assessing what i had at the time, i saw that i had PLENTY of fast units with average to low damage. And if i were ever gonna stand a chance on missions like King of the hill, i needed to being in an ANCHOR. Thankfully, the flex spot i carved out in my list was also 37PV: a skill 3 Hellfire 3. So, i had my work cut out for me. That's how i met your mother found the Annihilator 1A.
What started as a substitute for my Hellfire in only some missions ended up being the MVP and i took her in every mission during the tournament!
The Run
Game 1 - Domination
From the very first match, i saw her value. Though my opponent was newer and didn't admit it, having a skill 3 5/5/0 unit covering the center point in Domination and both points closest to my side of the map really forced them to turtle up. The only reason the Annihilator saw no action was because i won on turn 2. It was due to my opponent losing sight of the objective, getting too concerned with me getting backshots on their units. So, they left too few units on one point, which meant i was able to shoot the one infantry they left on one of the objective points in their territory. i already claimed my two objectives and the middle objective, so after my opponent's skill 4 units couldn't kill all of my TMM3 and TMM4 units sitting on their point, i was able to steal the win: 4-1
Game 2 - Bye
My second match was a bye, so nothing to report there. I had a nice lunch break with my partner, though 💜 Score 1-0 for both love and the bye.
Game 3 - Overrun
My third match, and final match of day 1 was against the other Hell's horses list. This was a newer player to the scene. I played one practice game with him before and his list has improved massively. However, his build was more "all in" with a Skill 2 Fire Moth H. I also used a Fire Moth H, but i tend to keep my 18"+ movers at skill 4+ because i assume they'll be engaging at short most of the time so no need to make them so accurate. Finding little "cheats" to sneak in effective skill improvements is probably the part i find the most fun about list building in Alpha Strike.
Anyway, we traded Fire Moths early in our Overrun match. And since we built a map (sorry for the lack of pictures) where the right side of the map was a bit of a valley of death, my opponent was scared, of me running my dashers around the valley to shoot him in the back, so he placed his Nova H on the barren side of the map to cover it. Little did he know, i has ZERO plans of using that side of the map. so when he stranded his biggest gun in no man's land, i was ecstatic! All i had to do was send a single shamash over to shoot it in the back once, to make him play "hide the pickle Nova" for the rest of the game while i absolutely overran him over on the other side of the map (pun intended). I won 4-0
Game 4 - Capture the Flag
Day 2 was when i would face the killers of the tournament. Both has massive IF fire on them via LRM carriers. One was a WOB list with C3i while the other was a Fed Suns list with skill 2 carriers, a legionnaire, and a lot of NARC. My first "match" was against the event organizer who was running the WOB list.
Here's the thing, there's a reason i put "match" in scare quotes. We find out at the end of Day 1 that the event organizer, despite being the one to teach me about c3, was accidentally cheating 😲! He mixed up the c3 rules for Classic Battletech which don't require LOS from the attacker and was using it with his IF attacks. After learning this, he recused himself from the standings. We still played our match, but this meant that i could relax a bit before i had to play the real killer of the match and my worst matchup in the tournament: the Fed Suns.
A quick note about the WoB game: since it was CTF, it was one of my best missions aside from KotH and Bunkers. Despite dome less than stellar terrain placement on my part, my annihilator prevented my opponent from ever scoring a point and scared him from ever trying to stop my guys from scoring by contesting my capture point Protip: if you pick up mechanized infantry with the flag on an omni transport, drive the transport to your capture point that same turn. even though you can't pick up and drop off units in the same turn, if your opponent shoots your transport and kills it it'll just drop the flag and you'll score a turn earlier than normal. If they don't then your transport can make free attacks that turn (assuming you picked one with guns on it). I won this 2-0
Game 5 - Stand-Up Fight
My
Worst
Matchup
&
Mission
This was not going to bode well for me. This is the opponent i played the most practice game with. All of his good missions are my bad ones and vise-versa. I had to play methodically to keep from getting tabled. I was accused of playing slowly, but that game actually took no more turns than my other games. In fact, it was tied for the most number of turns at 4. It was a rough game. becasue i couldn't hide form his IF as well as i could due to bad terrian placement on my part. i knew what i had to do, and i had a chance to fuck with his hyper-defensive list with terrain, but i didn't and that's on me. He's the type of player to exploit the hell out of any mistake you made, and it was true in that matchup. It's why i has to play more methodically against him. I was able to take out his LRM carriers, but it was a but too late. the damage was done. And to add insult to injury, he headshot my Annihilator on the final turn of the game while she has 7 structure left 😿This was my only loss 1-2.
Conclusion
This little "tournament arc" of mine really helped to solidify my approach to the game. I start with a concept, and maybe explore a gimmick. At the end of the day, though, it's about finding out what the list needs, does well, and doesn't do well, and solid fundamentals. Being willing to keep an open mind, not cut yourself off from units arbitrarily and you may find a new favorite. If i ever run an annihilator again, it's going to be an homage to one of the unexpected and unironic greats.
Riding off of the high that was Tournament #1 and my recently concluded League, i attended two more tournaments. One more free tournament in June and a paid one in November.
Both of these tournaments felt different. Going into each, I was not feeling like myself. I couldn't ever get into a good headspace, and the Lists I submitted i was never happy with. Both of them felt half baked at best, so i wasn't playing to the best of my ability.
June's list was an iteration on my Tournament Winning C3 list from February of that year. I tried to lean into it more, and applying the lessons I learned. I think this is what happens in child development where a kid learns the rules for speaking and then seems to regress as they try to apply them. This was my regression. That and there were more players at that tournament, so competition was stiffer and I was on tilt after my less than stellar performance after the first game. I got a lot of compliments on my Surfing No-dachi which was featured as the album cover image in an official Catalyst Game Labs Hobby Hangout post!
For my November list, I was looking for an excuse to run my baby atlas Akuma mech dressed as Akuma [from Street Fighter].
Like before, both of these tournaments are open era and open faction, but we were using a community modified version of the Wolfnet 350 ruleset named after the event organizer: Jacobstrike 350. It was meant to address some the the complaints we have about the format like rolling for deployment initiative separately, and it being rear-loaded for no apparent reason. Also, we swapped out some of the missions for ones that devolved less into stand-up fights with extra steps.
This post is already really long, so i'll keep this short and just say that my "off" feelings translated to a third and a "fourth" placement. The latter one is in quotes because the person ahead of me was the Event organizer, and I strongly believe that TOs/Event Organizers shouldn't be allowed to podium in their own events, but no harm, no foul. i got a panther for my troubles. and my painting skills are noticeably better!
Alt. title: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Play an Annihilator (army lists are provided!)
TL;DR: 13 months after winning my first ever Alpha Strike tournament, I finally won another. and all it took was playing a unit i never thought I'd play unironically: the Annihilator
My Alpha Strike Lists for you to steal try yourself:
[1st place] Feb 2024
[3rd place] June 2024 (All lists in that event)
["4th" place] November 2024 (All lists in that event) - click "keep reading" below to find out why the "scare quotes")
[1st place] March 2025 list (All lists in that event) - as a bonus, here's my sub-lists for each mission
This month (3/8/2025-3/9/2025) I attended my first ever Batchall By the Bay. A local Infinity tournament ran by Mythic Games in Santa Cruz, CA. This is the first year that they ran anything BattleTech, including Alpha Strike. I was initially the one tapped to run a multi-day event for Alpha Strike because I know the organizer of the event, but I convinced him to ask another community member who has runs tournaments more regularly.
It was a small tournament. The smallest I've attended, but the competition was good. There were 6 players, but one person had to drop, so we ended up having 5 people, and playing a round robin tournament where everyone got a bye in one of the rounds.
As the title spoiled I won this one! That being said, it wasn't my first. So I thought what better time to talk about my short (so far) history with Alpha Strike Tournaments in my local scene.
I initially wrote this as a single blog post, but it ended up being way too damn long, so I broke it up and will be releasing it weekly over the next few weeks. Each post will focus on what I think is an less talked about part of attending tournaments: Mentality. While it's easy to sell people on a list or a specific unit, the car doesn't make the person. You can have the fastest card in the race, but if you can't drive it, you'll just crash and burn faster than everyone else.
Anyway, without further ado:
Tournament #1 : Alpha Strike Newbie Tournament
This one took place on Feb 10th, 2025. It was a free tournament meant for new players. Being that I joined the hobby officially barely two months prior, I felt qualified to play in it!
This was the first and last significant local event I used my original collection in, so I'm glad to have some surviving pictures of it. Even in this partially painted state, I miss these guys. Fuck that guy who broke into my car and stole them all. I hope you got NOTHING for them.
But I digress. This was a fun tournament and I had an interesting run-up to it. I was playing with my then regular BT buddy. They had MUCH more experience not only in wargames, but in strategy games than I did/do. I was never great nor interested in getting good at chess, while they were very studied in it. While I understood good Magic/TCG strategies (some of which roughly translate, I found out!), they understood good tactics and wargame strategies.
We played weekly and sometimes bi-weekly, practice games for at least a month, maybe a month and a half, before the tournament. I lost every single one of those games. The only game I could maybe call a win was only because we had to stop early due to the store closing at the time. Whoever won that one is forever debatable.
I say all of this to say that the losses weren't an issue to me. Aside from playing some fighting games like DNF Duel (RIP in peace), I have never had so much FUN losing! And it was because I wasn't focused on the results of the games. They were for practice. Instead, I focused on the lessons and takeaways both during and after each game. Thankfully, I had an opponent who was articulate enough and honest enough to tell me what's going on. Nothing frustrates me more than someone who beats your ass then can't help you get better or at least talk about what you can improve on.
And I learned a lot. But I also learned that some of my instincts are better tuned than I expected. The biggest takeaway was that my love for trading material in Magic: The Gathering translates almost 1:1 to wargames. I think it's called Missile theory, but the principles are exactly the same. Losing units isn't bad as long as your opponent lost more in the exchange. Applying that thought process really unlocked my brain from the new payer trap of babying all of your units. I adopted the phrase: I paid for all of this armor, so I'm going to use it!
Whenever I feel bad about a round, I compare the PV totals of units lost. If it's about even or if I'm ahead, idgaf about losing said units. If I am behind, then I now have a goal to even things out.
Fast Forward to the day of the tournament. I was feeling okay! I went in with the mindset I try to always have, and has served me well in tournaments:
You can't control the results, but you can control the lessons you learn. Any win is a happy accident.
Turns out, I had a lot of happy accidents that day. In fact, I had 3 in a 3 round tournament, which was enough to put me in first! Like I said, I joined the hobby barely 3 months prior. So, to attend my very first tournament and WIN is one of the most validating "you belong here" signs I've ever had.
Here's the Tournament Winning list. Coming from Magic, it was wild to me that there's not equivalent MTG top8 or MTG goldfish-type website to get lists from for folks who just want something to play. So, to be the change I want to see in the world, I want to impart a culture of list sharing in my local scene that I'll continue on this blog.
For context, this was an AS350 tournament with no faction or era restrictions. This is an aggressive Draconis Combine Ilclan era list with a C3 trinity as the core of the list I built around. The goal is to hit fast, and hard and take objectives earlier than the opponent using your fast units, especially the spider. Then, once you get ahead on objectives, do your best to prevent the opponent form catching up at any cost, even if that means bleeding MOV. The other core of the list is the Jenner IIC 5, Shadow Cat F and the Raiden BA, but that'll be expanded upon in the next section.
The Three MVPs
In that tournament, these three buggers (read: an arachnid, a dark feline, and Jennifer) were the MVPs of the tournament. Especially the Spider. I was running the Spider 8xr and it was NO JOKE when it came to objective control. TMM 5 on a jumping mech that can also get partial cover means very few people could land hits on her. People either ignored her, letting her flank and get objectives, or they wasted shots on her while the other MVPs brought the hammer down.
The Shadow Cat F and the Jenner IIC 5 were the aforementioned hammer. I was advised to build my lists with each unit paired with at least one other unit. I called this dynamic duo the "giant slayers". The Shadow Cat was skill 3 with a TSEMP taser which had a chance to shut down units, and the jenner was a 4-5 damage punch (up to 6 if in the rear arc) to follow up any shutdowns. Not in the picture, but equally important, was the Raiden Battle Armor (flamer) unit that would ride with The Shadow Cat, giving her more protection and firepower once the distance was closed. Overall, a VERY effective team. Plus, it allowed me to use the second coolest mod I ever made to a mini, literally magnetized Battle Armor:
So that's the story of how I won my first ever Alpha Strike, let alone wargaming, tournament. It was an extremely vindicating experience, and i've become somewhat of a menace in my community, in a good way. However that all changed when the fire nation attacked in the next two tournaments. Next week is a double feature showing what happens when you have a less than stellar mentality when going to a tournament. See you then!
Every time I saw the original sculpt for the dragon, I always called it the "School Picture Day" dragon. She just looks like a kid that was forced to dress for picture day and absolutely hates every moment of it (girl, same).
The second thing I was always reminded of is one of my favorite magic cards: Solemn "Sad Robot" Simulacrum. This was an experiment in glows, wet blending, painting dull metallics, and a bit of secondary lighting. Overall, I like how they came out, and I think this is a good reference/homage without being an on-the-nose 1:1 copy.
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Inspired by the art on the CGL Alpha Strike card for it, i dedicated my unexpected favorite of a tank, the Sturmfeur, to my GF. Finding her was just as unexpected, and I am so happy to have found her 💜
Also, i'm really proud of my freehand lettering. i think the quality of them sells the effect that this was painted on by one of the tank crew.
A quick one today. The more I play Alpha Strike, the more I learn to love many of the Kurita exclusive mechs. When played to their strengths, these little buggers are a real threat. The panther is basically a pseudo medium mech, especially when you run them in multiples. It's slow, but it's a great fire support units for your backline.
The Jenner, or Jennifer as i like to call them, are probably my favorite Inner Sphere fast cavalry units. They do respectable damgage, with similar defenses as a panther, but with 2-3X the TMM. This design was so great that the clans made a IIC version of it that's great, and the Davions created the Rattlesnake for Project Trapdoor based on it.
To complete the trinity, i'm working on one more lance to make a full company of iconic Kurita mechs. Stay tuned!
Magawa, a rat trained to detect landmines, retired in 2021 after five years of service. During his career, he helped clear more than 20 football fields’ worth of land in Cambodia, significantly contributing to the safety of local communities.
His work earned him several accolades, including a prestigious award from the UK veterinary charity PDSA.
to those of you who are moving here from tiktok, from someone whos used both tiktok and tumbr for years...
1. DO NOT censor your posts
dont censor sex, abuse, suicide, dont censor it. we dont have censors like tiktok does, you wont be banned for talking about these things and tagging them properly helps people avoid them (also, we dont have shadowbanning here)
2. we dont really have an algorithm
you follow who you follow, and you see posts from who you follow or what you search. the 'for you page' is basically useless here. this also brings me to my next two points
3. dont crosstag
we get it, on tiktok you have to crosstag for reach, but thats not really a thing here. just tag your posts properly (also posters often leave more info about the post in the tags!! and when you reblog stuff you can leave your own notes in the tags, kind of like the old "repost comments" on tiktok)
4. dont expect to go viral/be famous
"viral" isnt really a thing on here (at least not for the average blogger). your posts will probably get 2-10 likes and you wont get nearly as many followers than on tiktok. thats just how tumblr is
5. blocking is your best friend
tiktok is VERY discussion based, and while tumblr is much more discussion based than other social medias, its still not a good place for ragebait/discourse. dont interact, itll make your experience worse in the end, just block and move on
6. you cant go into someone elses house and start rearranging their furniture
this is tumblr, not tiktok. dont diss old tumblr users for how they use the site or try to change them, thats like going into someone elses house and trying to rearrange their furniture. we've been here longer and we're familiar with the site and its culture, either find your niche, adapt, or find a different app
You need to actually reblog posts for this site to work as it should.
Liking posts only saves them in a spot that no one checks except for the user who liked them. Most people have their liked posts hidden.
Also, this site has a spam bot problem. One way we weed those out is to check the blog to see if it's actually being used to post legitimate content. If there is absolutely nothing on your blog you're getting blocked and some users may just straight up report you as spam as a precaution.
Not to mention that the posts you reblog will only be seen by you and whoever follows you. Tagging it "fyp" does absolutely nothing.
When I (re)started my painting journey a little over a year ago at this point, I focused a lot on painting each and every model to meticulous detail. I am playing Battletech: Alpha Strike, as opposed to a game like 40k, so I thought that i can spend more time on each model since i only ever need to field around 5-10 of them at a time. Sure, it'd take me a while to get through them but i finished the 8 inner sphere mechs in the Alpha Strike Starter box within my first three months! Even with me slowly amassing a collection of gray minis calling my name, i was patient.
Everything changed when the fire nation attacked my entire collection was stolen out of the back of my car (more on that in a future post). After experiencing the generosity shown of my local community, I had to start repainting my newly rebuilt collection.
At first, I stuck to my old ways of painting just a few models to meticulous detail. I learned and refined techniques that enjoyed, and figured out how to quickly get through ones I enjoy less. Then, as I played more, ran more events, and developed the draft cube, I realized that it would really elevate my events and loaner models if they were all painted. And there's no way i'll get that completed in my lifetime at my current rate.
In only a couple weeks, i completed the equivalent of about 1 model a day. I know for some people, that seems really slow, but for me that's lightning quick. Especially considering i'm still learning how to airbrush, and using color theory and layering to try to achieve the blue that made me fall in love with this scheme.
You can see my first attempt on the panther was a bit too light of a purple, and the wolfhound is closer to the book example, but still a bit blue. While the latter is technically wrong, I really like how it looks. What else really matters? Plus it means I get to use purple primer and a purple wash, which is fun for me!
So, that's when I started to develop a method that is a balance of speed and quality. I realized I needed to learn how to become an army painter. Striking that balance of efficiency and quality and fun was the newest puzzle to tackle. I have physical hard evidence that i can paint to a high degree of quality. I don't need to prove that to anyone, let alone myself, anymore.
And here, with this scheme for a Free Rasalhauge Kavalleri Regiment from the Force Manual: Kurita book, I found a simple color scheme that uses some of my favorite colors and i can knock out quickly and to a high degree of quality on models that call for it.
Now, I think I've mostly transitioned into army painter mode for BattleTech. The most satisfying thing is completing chunks of models and making a dent into my goal of having enough painted minis that players in the events I host don't have to play with gray minis, if they're from my collection.
That being said, I am always trying to stay one step ahead of burnout. So mixing things up like Uncle Atom suggested in a recent Tabletop Minions video has been very helpful. Terrain, and large models like the Aurora Borealis DropShip from my previous post are great examples. I still get that itch to go deep on a project sometimes, and those are great outlets when there isn't a Battletech model I want to go deep on.
I do have an upcoming project in that vein that I'm pretty excited and nervous about. Stay tuned!
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An Aurora Borealis is Localized Entirely Within my Hobby Desk!
Shortly after getting my first 3D printer this past November (a Bambu Lab P1S), I knew that I wanted to print a mech scale DropShip. Considering that I love the HBS Battletech PC game, I wanted it to be a Leopard dropship, but I couldn't find one that was in proper mech scale that was simple to print and based on that version of the Leopard.
Then I found the Borealis print from Thunderhead Studios. This is based on the Aurora dropship, and i LOVE this thing. it prints in FDM BEAUTIFULLY and the fact that the drop pods can hold units in them tends to delight and surprise everyone who takes notice (and who wouldn't in that beautiful Sword of Light red!)
Painting this beauty took me about a month because I wanted to take my time with her. Also, she is my first concerted effort to really weather a model using the techniques I learned from a 1:1 tutoring session from local artist Devin Bush who's weathering game is absolutely top freaking notch.
I am most proud of the corrosion on the central pipes along the spine of the borealis and the battle damaged fin (the final image in the gallery). The latter was a build/print error I didn't notice until well into painting the model. I decided to play it off as a significant piece of battle damage that the crew hasn't had a chance to fix yet. Thank Blake that we always have that convenient excuse to cover up build/print errors!
Overall, I am over the moon with how she came out. Now to make up some excuses to put her into a game...
Jeff's Battletech tool's legacy continues! Some great volunteers have posthumously forked the site of the late great Jeffery D. Gordon. They're already making welcome improvements and big fixes! I am very excited to see work on this very helpful tool for list building and management, especially for casual games.
https://jeffs-bt-tools.net/
If you want a builder meant more for competitive play like for Wolf Net's AS350 format, check out the AS-builder at:
A minimal search interface and List Builder backed by MasterUnitList.info
TL;DR: If you like drafting cards and playing Alpha Strike, this is the format for you! Click here for the full rules of the format.
---
Inspiration
For my first non-introductory post on this blog, i want to share something i've been working on for a couple months. A marriage between my last hobby, Magic: the Gathering, and my current one, Battletech: Alpha Strike. Introducing the Alpha Strike Cube! Also known by its even clunkier name: Alpha Strike Booster Draft Cube. I really need a sexier name for this format...
When i played Magic more regularly, drafting, then cube, became my #1 favorite way to play. I now have an affinity toward deckbuilders, and card games with limited/draft play. So, when I got interested in Alpha Strike and noticed that their units are on cards, the very first thing I expected to see was a draft format using them. To my surprise, the only format I could find that was similar is Wolf Net's Drafted for War format which uses the salvage boxes or other boxed products as "boosters" in a draft-like format.
This is not the experience i was looking for. So, in the spirit of being a California Bay Area native, i decided to make a startup up my own format!
Overview
The defining feature of my format is the drafting portion of it. At a high level, players draft 2 packs of 10 unit cards, plus a pack 3 pilot cards. Afterwards they use those cards to create a 250PV list (12 units max), and play an objective focused game with the others at the table who did the same.
Taking inspiration from Wolf Net's AS350 format, the (currently in beta) matched play rules, and the Battletech video games, objectives are randomized and each table (which i set up ahead of time) has Terrain Rules which affect gameplay and list building.
Design Principles and Intent
Which brings me to the guiding principles of this format and the skills I think this format is designed to test: flexible list building and drafting. Everything about this format should point back to these principles. If a feature or optional rule doesn't connect back to these principles, it's not meant for this format. Keeping these in mind is how i settled on some of the unique features of the format.
Unique Features
This format has a few unique features that set it apart from other formats i've played so far:
Constrained Unit Cards
Pilot Cards
[optional] Terrain Rules
Below I'll describe each of these, and explain how I arrived at their inclusion.
Constrained Unit Cards
Normally in list building, players pick units then adjust pilot skills anywhere from 0-7 in order to help players dial in their point totals to be as close to a certain PV limit (250 in this case) as possible. However, this was slowing down list building, and it meant players could run really silly one-trick lists using only exactly the units they wanted. Part of my definition of being a flexible list builder, is going outside of your comfort zone and trying units you don't normally try. This exact kind of restraint is how I found some new favorite units!
A suggestion I got a few times was to constrain how much you can adjust a unit's skill. While I think this is correct, I didn't want to have players referencing the PV adjustment charts all the time, slowing down list building. Then, someone suggested writing the PVs on the cards. I almost dismissed this out of hand because it would make cards unreadable, but then I remembered that Jeff's Battletech Tools (RIP, Jeff) lists both the unit's current PV and the base PV of the unit (I hope you're listening MUL 2.0 developers!). This is a perfect solution because it gives me, the cube designer, the ability to balance the cube and a binary choice for players is easy to understand. You can take a unit as-printed or reset them to the default skill of 4.
Pilot Cards
I wanted to integrate some components that I think are cool but underutilized. So I looked at the Faction/Combat Command cards you get in the official CGL card packs for Succession Wars and Clan Invasion and the pilot cards you get in every force pack and boxed set.
In my testing, I found that using both of these was a bit too much for players to handle in a timely manner. So, I knew that one had to be cut (honestly one of my favorite parts of game design). In the end, pilot cards won because the nature of them ties more directly into your list since they can affect the PV of the unit they're assigned to. This extra "knob" lets players dial in their PV better so that they can hit on or close to 250PV much easier.
So, how do you use a pilot card? Well, I leaned on the information in the card and the AS PV system. In short, you may assign a pilot card to any unit that is exactly the same size as the pilot's listed unit. That unit must be set to the skill level (the large number in the top left or right corner of the card) of the pilot, paying for any PV adjustments. Then, you may turn on their Special Pilot Abilities (SPA) by adding the cost to the assigned unit's PV.
The above is an example of one of the pilot cards that I modify for use in the draft. This pilot card for Katherine is a Skill 2 pilot for Size 3 unit (the pictured Mad Cat is a Size 3 unit) with the Cluster Hitter SPA which costs 2 PV to activate.
It was this last bit that really made these pilot cards stand out. SPAs are cool features of AS and folks tend to not use them for balance concerns. In this format, I can curate which SPAs are allowed in a very invisible and organic way. No need to ban abilities when I can just not include them!
This relates to a fun fact about this format I discovered in playtesting and development: there's no reason to have a banlist of things like SPAs or Special Abilities. If I don't want people to, say, use artillery, I can just not include any artillery cards (I did include them because I want them in the format, but they're often banned in other formats). As a corollary, I can safely enable all abilities that are present on cards. This means we can get real weird with the card choice. But my method for building the card pool is for another post...
[optional] Terrain Rules
One thing I love about the Mechwarrior and Battletech PC games is the map variety. Part of that variety are terrain/weather conditions that affect play. These seem to be rarely used outside of campaign play, but when I have used them they greatly affected my unit choices. Sounds perfect for this format's guiding principles, no?
So, when planning for this format, I will print displays for special terrain rules for each table. What makes good terrain rules for this format is the same as everything else: the rules must have the potential to influence unit choice in a meaningful way without mandating it.
Good examples are the Snow Terrain rules shown earlier in this post and the Night Ops posted above. The former encourages the use of units with Overheat and units with Jump to get around the ice. The the latter encourages having one scary unit as an ambushing unit, drafting vehicles with SRCH and mechs to combat the night time modifier, and drafting scouts to help light up targets (literally!).
Conclusion
That's the overview of this fun and unique format. If you are interested in running it yourself, the rules are available at the top of this post. Additionally, I plan on doing some follow-up posts that detail what you need as an event host/T.O. in order to run this yourself. Plus, there will be advice on how to build an interesting cube pool for players to draft from.
Until then, If you're in the California Bay area and interested in trying this format out, keep an eye out at our many local gaming cons. I might just be running this there, or, at the very least, I'll have my cube on me if you want to play a pickup game with it. It's great for that!
It's been a while since I've been on tumblr. To those that don't know me, I'm Jordan M. A. Johnson (He/Him). The last time I was here, it was because i wanted to run a design blog for project-shadowmancer, a mod I was working on before i got started in the games industry back in May of 2015 (Wow, almost a decade ago!).
A lot has happened in that time (shocker!). I bought a condo, got a dog (which this blog is named after; her name is Pocket), had a handful of long term relationships, and I am now looking to move into a place with my ever-impressive partner who is one of the silliest, most ambitious, initimidating (in a big sister kind of way), kindest, generous and inspiring creatures I've ever met. I don't need to mention how adorable she is; you can see that for yourself:
I am back now partly because I think I should get back into blogging my thoughts again, but in a more general sense. The other reason is that, as of December of 2023, i started a new hobby, wargaming. Currently, that consists of 99% Battletech: Alpha Strike but i plan on branching out more and exploring this Russian nesting doll of of a hobby consisting of gaming, painting, 3D printing, mission designing and event running.
The latter two will be what i expect to write about the most. Like the tabletop RPGs that spawned from them, wargaming is an interesting intersection between both game design and play, with a dash of player expression. This has unexpectedly inspired me to want to collect my thoughts and share them in an easily accessible way. I like to think that I can provide some useful advice, insights, and novel ideas to this hobby, which is rare for me to have the hubris of thinking.
I remembered that tumblr is a good place to quickly throw a blog together, so i'm starting here. Who knows, if this sticks for good, i may move to a more official website. I already have a couple URLs parked for just such an occasion.
Thanks again for reading! I have a few posts lined up which i expect to post soon, but no promises. I don't expect there to be some regular schedule anytime soon as I figure this blogging business out.
