#battletech

[is-the-battlemech-cool-or-not]

Tonight! On Battletech:

Hidden royalty reveal! and... An absolute dork proposes to her girlfriend with the most expensive engagement ring ever made (and also an entire Assault 'Mech).

[roguesynapses]

Does Battletech has lore as unhinged as 40k or did you mean it as just tabletop wargame?

I am already looking for fandom migration and Battletech doesn't sound bad but what captivated me about 40k is eclecticism and everything being over the top so

Battletech is a story about feudalism and bands of knights riding their steeds to victory against impossible odds. It's a story about the decay of technology after constant warfare. It's a story about racism and how extremism twists even the most righteous ideals into something wicked. It's a story about the Bell Telephone Company becoming a religion in order to preserve communications technology, and the schism of that religion causing every star to bleed. You also get super cool robots. And it's way cheaper than 40k.

I wouldn't say it's as over the top, but if you want to get into the lore, try reading the Blood of Kerensky series and see if you like that.

[combined-arms-merc-groups]

So we saw how other MechWarriors have blogs here, and so I wanted to join in on the fun. Asked Cia if she thought it was a good idea and she decided to join in too. -Lancer

Personally, I wanted to give some representation for the tankers and infantry that everyone seems to forget about in lieu of the big, stompy, prohibitively expensive mechs that the pilots drive. -Cia

Well, guess we should probably go ahead and do personal introductions. Gonna keep these short, feel free to ask us any specifics if you’re curious.

Callsign’s Lancer (They/Them), leader of the comfortably not too well-known mercenary group Lancer’s Finest. From the Commonwealth, and the one who funded this operation.

Name’s Cia Trayer (She/Her), leader of Cia’s Army. From Canopus, and while Lancer may have been the one to fund our groups at the start, I’m the one who’s been funding it since. Infantry and tanks are a lot cheaper to replace than Mechs, after all.

[artofbattletech]

Dance of the Daishi by Chris Lewis (upscaled) #battletech #mechwarrior

[ace-disgrace-on-the-case]

There’s something I love about Battletech that I’ve only now figured out how to word, and it’s the way ‘Mechs are treated in the setting (capitalized that way because in universe it’s short for BattleMechs).

If you’re not familiar with this line of thinking, let me introduce it a moment. In short, one of the things that mecha as a genre does is use mechs because they’re human-looking. It lets you take mechanized warfare, something famously cruel and dehumanizing, and humanize it, making it once again about lone heroic actors that tower over the battlefield. That can do a lot of things in a piece: it can let you really understand the emotional impact, war-is-hell style; it can be vaguely propaganda-y/wish fulfillment, in the sense that it defies the idea that one person alone can’t make a difference; it can even be used to make combat a person-to-person backdrop for what’s really going on (you could do a rom-com with mechs pretty neatly I think…wonder if that exists?)

Battletech seems to have this line of thinking built into the setting. From a Doylist perspective, I can’t guarantee it was on purpose, but shut up we’re going off the Watsonian rails.

The setting goes straight into it with the view people have of MechWarriors, the class of soldier that pilots Battlemechs across the battlefields of the Inner Sphere. The setting (especially in older eras) treats these warriors as knights-errant, crusading about in massive suits of armor for whatever cause they believe right--even if that cause is a bit of coin. Chivalric orders at one point really did and occasionally still do within the Battletech universe, and (again, earlier on in the setting) mechs are often passed down through family lines, making these machines into a symbol. What that symbol exactly represents depends from MechWarrior to MechWarrior, but no matter what it means something to them. They have some form of relationship with what it means to be a MechWarrior. To be one of these glorious knights.

But then, as all things must, it all comes crashing down when faced with the horrors of real life and the real-life battlefield. 'Mechs aren't invincible, far from it; they certainly aren't disposable, but in addition to other 'Mechs (the "romantic" opponent all MechWarriors wish to fight) they are under threat from VTOL craft, planes, tanks, artillery, and even properly trained infantry. The glorious knight, striding across the battlefield...can very easily lose their lives to their own notions of splendor. Combat, both in lore and on the tabletop, is brutal, and 'Mechs even if they survive often come away with massive holes, missing limbs, and pilots bloodied and bruised even from the safety of the cockpit. To say nothing of those that don't make it home, their ammunition reserves sending them up in a fireball of death, their reactors purged in superheated steam that could leak into the cockpit and boil them alive, their cockpit itself blasted from off the 'Mech's shoulders and leaving them nothing but a fine red paste. BattleMechs are glorious, yes, but at the end of the day it's still war.

It's still war. And war is hell.

So despite having the appearance of being an empowering machine in-universe, we can actually look at the BattleMech as symbolic of the kind of thing that really happens to people thrown into the grinder of war--they die. And it's not pretty. No idealism can protect you from the barrel of a gun. And you are most certainly cheaper to replace than all your equipment.

The designs of the 'Mechs lean into this depersonalizing angle, too. Many of them are, in the barest sense, humanoid:

But even then, it's the vision of a human filtered through a much more realistic military-industrial complex than something like, say, Gundam. And on the other end of this spectrum:

...are 'Mechs that look nothing like the people they're supposed to represent.

Looking at this through the lens of 'Mechs as something used to tell a story about humans, we reach a conclusion:

You think this story is about you. It's not. War is hell. Meat is cheap.

And that's actually really cool of Battletech to be so thematically tied into itself like that.

[highlander-732b]

Guillotine in my custom color scheme (now with basing!)

Presumably a GLT-3N or a GLT-8D variant on account of the lasers.

[scorpians-sting]

"I Sometimes wonder why we where originally taught not to engage in melee combat. It is brutally effective, and allows for swift and effective takedown of a opponent. Surely Nicolas must have had a reason, but i can not find it from this perspective in time."

[agbpaints]

A while ago I was shooting the shit with some Battletech oldheads and I mentioned I kinda wanted one of the old, slim metal Mad Dogs. Lo and behold, one was produced and I was told it'd be more use to me than it was moldering in a pile of shame. Hopefully I did it's old owner proud.

This is an *old* miniature. It's at least 23 years old based on the Ral Partha stamp, but its possibly as old as 30. That's old enough that I'm not sure whether or not the pewter in this is lead free ':v

Size comparison with a modern Mad Dog. Children grow up so fast these days

[ross-hollander]

[wolf-among-mechs]

Islington Periphery Space Islington Station Logrunn's Bar & Grill. 3153 (or whenever this goes down I forgor) 17:22 Shipboard Time

Despite all the activity the recent flurry of activity the station was seeing from mercenaries and military forces gathering one bar was still fairly quiet. It was a place that seemed content with that as the decor was simple and spartan. The lights dampened and with sound barriers to make sure the noise was contained.

On a table in the walkway outside of it. Asuka sat by a table on her own. Eating from a plate of kebab and fries that was likely far too much salt and fat than a person should ingest. But it hit the spot today. While enjoying that she was looking at a datapad of a Solaris recording. Something that wasn't work. It made her feel happy. She looked up from the datapad for a moment to look around the station coming to life as the nightlife, as much of one you could have out here and on a space station, was coming to life.

[alphamecha-mkii]

Field Manual: Warden Clans Cover Art by Doug Chaffee

[is-the-battlemech-cool-or-not]

A new thing:

The idea would be to fill these out for OTHER accounts. (exact source unknown, saw it here on tumblr a while ago)

[karriethemechtech]

Eliza gave the MechTech a long, tiredly-sympathetic look as she stumbled into the LosMech and took a seat at the counter in something that loosely resembled either a headdesk or the fetal position.

Wordlessly, she broke a few ice cubes into an old-fashioned glass, then poured in a probably-too-generous helping of Cameron vintage whiskey--as high a proof as she had on-hand--and passed it to Karrie.

"Long day?"

Karrie's first response is something more like a dejected moan. Then, wordlessly, she lifts herself out of the fetal position and into a slightly more dignified slump.

"Something like that." She takes the glass carefully, then knocks about half of it back at once. "I swear if the WoBbies aren't gonna be the death of me it's gonna be my friends."

[starfleetskunkworks]

The first of Alaric's SLDF forces report for duty!

I'm very proud of the base on this one. Whipping up a bunch more of them for the rest of the star.

[porblegames]

this 6mm pod car also comes on treads

[mech-meathead]

Can I paint? Not really, have a very blue Madcat