Mechwarrior: the tabletop miniatures game

I used to play this game a lot. I was at the height of my time being a "gamer" when I played Mechwarrior: Dark Age competitively. Having played the now "classic" Battletech paper and pen board game in the early '90s, as well as the really old PC game Battletech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception back in '88, I got hooked really early.

There's really something about big robots shooting it out with everything else.

The MW:DA game featured the trademark clix system pioneered by WizKids games; this allowed the game to move at a much faster pace than its pen and paper counterpart. The clix - represented by a combat dial beneath each miniature figure's base did all the math for you, effectively integrating random dice play without sacrificing speed of resolution.

The game is played on a 3'x3' surface and since distance (effective firing range) is a factor, tape measure is a key tool for playing. Here is a sample of a game played in our garage:


Here you can see two battleforces (of combined arms units) duke it out with each other. Battletech/Mechwarrior has an extensive fictional universe (like Star Wars), so there is some attraction to playing characters I'm familiar with (having read some of the source material).

So in this game we can stage small battles between factions with bitter rivalries. We can engage in gentlemanly banter or out-and-out trash talking. We got to collect pretty plastic robots. We get to roll dice and scream. It was fun!


Unfortunately, the game was very unbalanced, and atrociously so. Our tight gaming community was lamenting the fact that the game rewarded players who fielded few to no battlemechs (the robots), to the effect that actually playing the robots was the biggest liability to winning.

The unfortunate result was that most of us discontinued playing. Some of us moved on to better-designed games like Dungeons and Dragons Miniatures, seen here featuring my buddies Mon and Nico:


What distinguished that game is that when the figures started attacking (usually hacking at each other), it never stopped until one side's units were wiped out. What's exciting about Mechwarrior this time around is that it promises nearly end-to-end shootouts featuring mechs blasting everything else to atoms.

I haven't started playing again, but my brothers and I have been talking about it. My kid brother Jonathan is the 2003 national champion here in the Philippines. If the gameplay changes prove to be true (I'm waiting for some of our friends to come over the garage for a few pick-ups), then I would love to get into the game again (though perhaps not as competitive as I used to be).

Some trivia: ghostlightning and my blog name "that's the game!" were all created during this fun gaming period in 2003. Mon (seen in the picture above) is one the people who contributed much to developing this persona. I sometimes think that ghostlightning is a representation of my id in its purest form, kind of like Tyler Durden in Fight Club, only more likely to grandstand and less inclined to act.