Over on the
BattleTech side of Catalyst Game Labs, work is afoot to turn the
Quick-Strike ruleset currently buried in
BT: Strategic Operations into its own supplemental rulebook:
Alpha Strike.
Alpha Strike: The TableTop Miniatures Rulebook
[Cover "in progress" by the brilliant Alex Iglesias.]
When we published Strategic Operations several years ago, a lot of people instantly fell in love with what is really a pretty small part of the book…the Quick-Strike Rules. And we immediately began getting questions of “when will you release a stand-alone rulebook of that?”
For those wondering what Quick-Strike is, the easiest answer is that it is the truest form yet published for being able to play BattleTech in a true “tabletop miniatures” style and speed, while still feeling like your playing BattleTech.
At the start of the year I had been thinking heavily about this, especially after years, at this point, of seeing plenty of people playing BattleTech in this manner at conventions. I then pitched the concept to Herb of a complete, stand-alone rulebook that would be the “table-top miniatures game” play of BattleTech. As it happened, great minds think alike and Herb had already been working an an epub release. I felt we shouldn’t only go half way on that and instead should embrace a full print book, full-color, hardback…the works (I know…shocking I wanted the kitchen sink in there…).
With that we got to work. The original outline, unfortunately, even for us, was way, way too much data as we wanted to cover every Era and even provide samples armies for all such Eras…the book might have been one of the biggest we’ve ever published…not to mention being crazy intimidating for other tabletop miniatures players that might want to give this a try.
So we immediately started trimming back, while still ensuring the book will provide a complete, full BattleTech experience that would have players coming back for more. This also allows for the creation of a series of great epubs to build upon the solid framework of Alpha Strike.
But wait…if they were called Quick-Srike why are we calling this Alpha Strike?! Well, to be honest, in hindsight the former is just too close to “Quick-Start” and we’ve gotten a fair bit of confusion along the way…hence a more unique name this time around.
We’re currently on track to have this at Gen Con with the book available to the public in September…or at least that’s the current plans…will see if it survives drop insertion….
In the meantime, this is the first of several blogs where I’ll discuss this great project…the drive flare of an incoming DropShip, announcing its coming…we’ll start getting into the bowels of what the ship carries in the coming weeks and months.
See ya there…
Randall
There's been talk about
AS in recent BattleChats; here's a list of details gleaned from there so far:
- It will be a full-colour supplemental rulebook, in a similar vein as A Time of War Companion (in terms of its relation to the Total Warfare through whatever Interstellar Operations will end up being axis) but as a stand-alone introduction to the Quick-Strike game engine.
- It will have support for both hex-based and hexless play.
- It will most likely be initially presented as a Clan Invasion product.
- The first batch of pdf expansions are in the works.
- Certain unit types, such as LAMs (and whatever "new" toys we may get in 3145), are not covered in the first book, but are options for later expansions.
- There is a somewhat limited WarShip presence in the core book, but they are more likely to show up in force in a later expansion.
- More in-depth support for other eras (such as the Dark Age) might also be fodder for later expansions.
- The core rules are done, and "crash" playtesting is afoot. Work on other written material for the project is in progress.
- It should be released (fingers crossed) before the end of the year.
- In the longer run, the existence of AS as "its own thing" may have an effect on future sourcebooks and TROs, in terms of how the unit cards for new toys might be presented.
Do any of those here who spare some game time for the Inner Sphere (when not immersed in the Sixth World, that is) find this idea to be of interest?
