The new big announcement

[Galatea]

Battletech has nothing to do with Epic.
Epic is Mass Combat, Battletech is Skirmish.
They were never competitors and they will never be.

 

[Ben2]

Batletech could be done as a mass combat game, and would be quite interesting. It would be an absolute pain to do it with the current rules, a couple of lances a side and perhaps a tank or aircraft is the most I'd want to play at the moment, but with a faster less details system you could do full scale battles.

Epic veers between 6-7mm, and 1/300 and 1/285 vehicles and infantry would mix with epic stuff well. There are already a couple of 6mm manufacturers, including one making what look awfully like Squats, that are taking up the GW slack.

However a mass combat system in 6 or 10 mm would be awfully nice to have (10mm would allow for bigger and more detailed models). SST lacks anything Titan esque, but big dropships and some of the larger Forth constructs might come close to fitting the bill, not forgetting Queen bugs.

GROPOS was 10mm. Any news on what is happening with the Mongoose version of that?

 

[Xorrandor]

Batletech could be done as a mass combat game, and would be quite interesting. It would be an absolute pain to do it with the current rules, a couple of lances a side and perhaps a tank or aircraft is the most I'd want to play at the moment, but with a faster less details system you could do full scale battles.

Actually, Mechwarrior is a credible attempt to do this. Combined arms, reasonably sized forces, the whole deal. I know, lots of people don't like clix rules, but I think they aren't so bad. They're a little simpler than what I prefer, but I had a lot of fun with this one before I finally burned out on it. (Or, more accurately, burned out on dealing with some of the regular players.)

SST lacks anything Titan esque, but big dropships and some of the larger Forth constructs might come close to fitting the bill, not forgetting Queen bugs.

I'm not sure 6mm honestly needs Titans: people play ancients through WWII in 6mm, and none of those involved multi-story war machines. (Well, maybe the Trojan War .) But yeah, I think Tankers and Plasmas that don't take up notable percentages of the table would be a good thing. Not to mention I don't like a lot of the strange breakdowns you seem to get in skirmish games. But obviously the market doesn't agree with me...

 

[Lorcan Nagle]

Batletech could be done as a mass combat game, and would be quite interesting. It would be an absolute pain to do it with the current rules, a couple of lances a side and perhaps a tank or aircraft is the most I'd want to play at the moment, but with a faster less details system you could do full scale battles.

Actually, Mechwarrior is a credible attempt to do this. Combined arms, reasonably sized forces, the whole deal. I know, lots of people don't like clix rules, but I think they aren't so bad. They're a little simpler than what I prefer, but I had a lot of fun with this one before I finally burned out on it. (Or, more accurately, burned out on dealing with some of the regular players.)

The BattleTech Miniatures rules book contained simplified rules for playing with massed forces as well. IIRC it's a free download from www.classicbattletech.com these days.

 

[tneva82]

Battletech claims to be 6mm, but they aren't. they re 8mm. i used to have Kurita jump infantry(not battle armour) and they were dead on 8mm tall. they towered over most Epic Space marine figures, as well as GHQ modern infantry(though not by as much as the epic stuff)

Well scale creeps aren't exactly uncommon now are they?-) Mongoose does that as well. And so do GW epic line...Those chaos marines for example have models that are more akin to 8mm as well ;-)

Scale creeps aren't uncommon. If that keeps up we'll soon have '28mm' models that are actually 40mm tall ;-)

 

[tneva82]

I'm not sure 6mm honestly needs Titans

Yep. There's lots of good things to say about 6mm models. You don't need titans to have 6mm game or even impressive looking 6mm game! It's quite a sight to see battalions of tanks rumbling forward!

Here's hoping Mongoose sometimes go for 6mm scale as well(or 10mm but if you are going for small go for the full length). War without end could be handy testbed for that(since they would have moulds from elsewhere) from which to expand on their own. Maybe even SST

Actually wasn't such mass combat in dream list they posted in S&P loooooong time ago? One can always hope they fulfil that dream one day

 

[daggers]

i used to play a lot of WW2 6mm and it was great fun.

a SST 6mm could be done and I wonder how easily it might be done.
would make a great campaign weekend, with commanders playing 6mm and then individual tables set up for special strategic games that could be played in normal scale....

now I start thinking about it ... :shock:

I have an idea