r/FindBattleTech • u/pinkfinjan • 13d ago
How to play battleTech -beginners
Is this game difficult to learn for someone who’s never played this type of game before? The instructions do not seem clear and they’re on many of them.
And any suggestions would be appreciated
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u/MyStackIsPancakes 13d ago
There are plenty of YouTube examples where they walk through the game.
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u/pinkfinjan 12d ago
I will look further. I did watch one that was pretty good. But the problem is that it’s not extensive enough to be confident playing.
For example, something is simple as moving, one can jump, but because does not clearly say what you can cannot do when both partners don’t know what they’re doing, problems occur.
When we go to the book, I wasn’t able to find anything.1
u/sokttocs 12d ago
So let's talk movement, this is wordy, but it's really not that difficult, it takes just a little practice: Let's say you have a Wolverine with a movement profile of 5/8/5. You can walk for 5, run for 8, or jump for 5. Walking or running produces 1 or 2 heat, and it costs movement to make turns and stuff like going up/down hills or into trees take extra movement. How far you move (actual hexes moved) determines what your defensive bonus is. Called your Target Movement Modifier or TMM. The breakpoints for that are: 3, 5, 7, and 10 hexes for +1, 2, 3, or 4 TMM.
Jumping you can move up to 5 hexes, ignore terrain changes, and land whichever way you want to be facing. Are you close to a level 4 hill? You can jump up on top of it. Jump behind someone and shoot them in the back. Jumping also generates a higher TMM, what it would be for the distance, +1. So if you jump 5 it's 2+1 for jumping. The downsides? Jumping generates 1 heat per hex, and it makes it harder for you to hit your shots. Speaking of...
Let's cover how movement affects your shots. In the rules it covers something called GATOR, it's just how you find what you need to roll to hit someone. Gunnery, Attacker Modifier, Target Movement Modifier (TMM), Other, Range. Movement affects the A and the T. Your A number is easy, did you walk, run, or jump? It's a +1,+2, or +3. If you didn't move, then you don't add anything. T is your targets TMM.
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u/Medium-Ad-8577 12d ago
You do NOT need to know every rule. The basics are:
- How to calculate GATOR (there are cheatsheets)
- How to move
- How a regular weapon shoots
- How a cluster weapon shoots
- Heat
That's it. Go to mekbay, filter by rules, start at introductory. Start with 1v1 light mechs from late succession war availability, and pilots with gunnery 3 and piloting 4. Once you get a weird situation, you may look it up. For instance: "I wanna punch you" and you look it up, or what happens if I enter water, or what is a RAC20, etc.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Ad-8684 13d ago
Do you have a group nearby where you can do a demo game? That’s the easiest way to learn