Battletech Trash List Format

My early Battletech days were all about the custom mechs and making them as optimized as I could. But that eventually got boring when you realize that there's really one one or two optimal builds for a given weight of mech. I think the charm and tactical challenge of Battletech comes in accepting the inherent limitations of the stock mechs and playing around them. I find that this makes the mechs actually feel unique and interesting to play, rather than just another bipedal (or quad) carrying case for a gauss rifle.

Another variant on this idea would be a coin flip method. Start the match with a coin flip with heads keeping you list and tails swapping it. It encourages hidden potential so that you can pull out something strong while not giving it away to someone looking at the list for the first time. I've also started playing with the pilot cards. Bring your binder of mech sheets, set a BV2 target, and drop out some pilots. All players get a clone pool to drive which ever mechs they want, no cost modification for exceptional pilots. To avoid any set being perfect for one player, I gave one pool veto to each player. To keep everyone from picking the best shooting, you may only seat pilots tied for lowest gunnery skill after everyone else has a seat. Tried it with 6k sets and 5 pilot pools and it's been working out really well so far

"Has to be post clan invasion"... " 4 mechs, 6000 BV2, 220t"... my "spends all their time in the late succession wars" brain got reminded that you can get near the BV of a succession wars Atlas out of a second line clan medium

This could also probably work with the Boarding Action rules for 40K. A really neat idea.

A super heavy with 8 gunnery and 0 piloting, and some random lights

For this list at least, I'd remove some piloting skill on the banshee and add it elsewhere to make the banshee as punishing to use as possible

Given that Mediums should make up most of a typical force I would lower the BV to maybe 5,000 min and the tonnage to 200 or greater. That way it would favor more mid ranged Mechs over a bunch of Heavies.

I like how your list is VERY ammo-dependent. Increases their risk of internal explosions, while hampering their ability to endure protracted engagements. Nice touch!

"Trash List Format" Proceeds to include my absolute favorite Thunderbolt variant. Me: 😳 Am I... Trash? 🤣

I wish I had a group that actually wanted to play some even remotely this technical

I love this idea!

This is a great idea, I'm going to try it out

Gotta have a charger

Looks good so far, only thing I would add to this format is allowing around two combat vehicles into the mix. Two scorpion tanks with light/medium lance would be interesting to see.

A way to make it a bit more flexible is instead of a tonnage minimum, you have to have one of each Mech class. Light medium heavy assault. Even most bad assault mechs would still be like the queen in chess.

So pretty much any slow heavy mech with an IS XL engine? Especially if it has explosive ammo.

The howler clan mech is basically just a fast LRM 10 if you wanted to go that road x)

I tried a similar thing with 40k on TTS. My friend and I each picked a faction the other had to play. Made for an interesting game.

Thanks for the video.

This sounds interesting. I would want to use intro-tech, personally.