In the process of preparing for the next update I ended up buying and trading for a few more things. Plus being lazy. And playing Mechwarrior Online and Bard's Tale quite a bit. But this project is gonna be more parts because I have too much stuff.
Here we have my current collection of Inner Sphere mech models. Note most of them are plastics because I am cheap. Most of them are unpainted or barely painted because I am lazy and don't much like painting.
And my Clan mechs. I had 4 more heavy metal Clan rides, but I lost them when getting out of the Navy or moving about.
And a tiny example of the evolution of the mech swiped from Crusher Joe, the Locust. On the left is the Plastech set Locust. Next to it is the unimaginably awful plastic used in the 3rd edition boxed set starter. Next is a metal Clan IIC variant, painted poorly by me. Next is the Project Phoenix metal from said Tech Readout. And finally is a prepainted Locust from the Mechwarrior Dark Age clicky game.
Some of the books I got in the last few weeks. Interestingly enough half were gotten dirt cheap at one of the local nerd stores, the other two from someone as part of a trade that he had gotten super cheap as part of a mega lot. I am trading out some of my GURPS stuff for it because I don't much like that system. Funny that 2 Gray Death Legion and 2 Fourth Succession Wars books were gotten, 1 of each from each purchase or trade.
From the trade I also got the original versions of the Battletech and Citytech rulesbooks.
While Tim Bradstreet had gotten some of his early work in Fasa stuff, quite a bit of the Fasa art looked like this....
Citytech was particularly sought after early on as it had the rules for vehicles, infantry, and urban combat. It also had 6 new mech designs and brought more guns to the game.
What folks sometimes forgot is two mechs that were not based off any anime art (that we know of) were in the original Battletech rulesbook besides the classic ones we all know and love. The Chameleon which was used in the tutorial section of the rules..
And the Merlin, used as an example of how to design a mech. Being early Battletech the rules for Heat Sinks were not what they are now with many of said sinks being internal to the engine. Back in 85 or so it was not so.
A good example of new BT rulesbook and old both covering the same thing, firing arcs. Also note the little boxouts which were the original fluff in the rulesbook as opposed to later on.
In Chicago when I was in the Navy in the early 90s there was something else amazing. THE BATTLETECH CENTER. Later called Virtual World, you would give em 6 bucks for 10 minutes of multiplayer 3d mech combat action in the North Pier Mall. (Among other places.) I would take the train down from the base and make a day of it. Buy some comics from the shop in the train station to pass the time down there and maybe get some lunch at the main train station in Chicago itself. Then off to the mall for Battletech, the arcade across from it, and those Virtuality game things that weren't as good as Battletech.
On the left is the manual's cockpit diagram of what it looked like when I played, and a more recent manual for a more current version of the system I bought online.
One thing I kept was all the record sheets they gave you after you played a match. I have tons of them.
My last battle a couple days before I left Illinois to go join the fleet in Virginia. It was a good battle. Shadowcat was also the name of my favorite comic character at the time, hence why I changed my callsign from my Bard's Tale 1 character.
My Battletech novel collection in general chronological order. I have a sheet listing the exact order but that's too much effort.
And more of them.
And the rest of the classic era Battletech novels I have.
But in the next installment there will be the sequel to Battletech's classic era. And more goodies.
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