Minikari. A Flash of genius.

Kevin Schreur, a professional architect and all around crafty friend of mine, started creating Battletech miniatures out of the non-sculpted table scraps from other miniature kits. Eventually his work began to include house hold items like buttons, zippers, and X-acto blades along with ready-made arms and legs from other miniatures. Some of his pieces, like the Minikari and the Saltine are reminiscent if not directly inspired by existing designs (The Masakari and perhaps the Catapult). Others like the Parrot-mech come from a more playful, if not twisted, place.

Kitbashing – using scavenged parts for the creation or detailing of existing models – has a long history among both hobbyist and professionals, particularly in the film industry. This process can transform the mundane into the exotic and (depending on the end goal/topic material) allows for the the quick prototyping of look and feel.

Xevoz Sledge Trooper. (Hasbro) The game component of Xevoz was built around the toy line’s swappable-parts.

Battletech has two qualities that are relevant here. While the game doesn’t require miniatures, part of its appeal is the age-old play of moving toy soldiers around a battlefield. Another is its meta-play supporting customization mechanics. These rules allow players to modify existing units in game-legal terms or create completely new designs. In a universe spanning countless worlds the amount of variation in military technology would be staggering. These machines were – at least at one point in the narrative – dwindling resources, the ones left existing had survived for generations. Small changes to their initial designs would be far from unexpected. Allowing for players to “fill in the gaps” is a great way (intentionally or no) of accommodating the narrative component in mechanic terms.

Unfortunately this dovetailing of narrative and mechanics isn’t accommodated aesthetically. Ironwind Metals (responsible for the miniature side of Battletech’s production) does include additional parts in a number of blisters for building specific variants, but aside from a little player ingenuity in the figure building process – like magnetic pinning – there’s no real “designed” method of supporting this kind of player-created content. Here you have two essential but separate game qualities. Trying to unify them – perhaps by taking a page from Stikfas and their configurable army men or better yet their sister toy/game Xevoz – would make a great exercise.

On the fringe edge of the Battletech’s meta-game context Kevin has created works not only are pleasing in of themselves, his non-kit materials compare delightfully to the clunck of Battletech’s western style mecha. Battletech games – at least in their original incarnation –  are crunchy grinds between jury-rigged machines passed down through generations. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of these machines didn’t have zippers, coins, and other mementos hand crafted into them.

Megamek

I’ve played with Megamek a little from time to time and I have to give props to the group for the exceptional depth of features their digital multi-player version of Battletech supports. Not only do they cover all standard pre-Total Warfare rules for ‘mechs, vehicles, and infantry from all eras it also supports a host of advanced rules.

Unfortunately, actually using the program is a little less than pleasant. Battletech has a lot of ins and outs and organizing it all on a screen let alone making it Usable is no small task. As a designer/developer I’m obliged to actually contribute in place of complaining. However, the feature set is so expansive that I’ve been just as tempted to explore interface/interaction ideas in Flash with my own super-duper stripped down prototype. Imagine my surprise when I came across the in-development, Flash based, Battletech-Live.

To my dismay I found the feature set the lone developer is undertaking to actually outstretch Megamek. Beyond that, his development priorities seem to focus on meta-game content, which in my experience is just as time consuming as actual game-play development. The Megamek campaign project MegamekNet already supports a lot of campaign content that doesn’t exist inside of Megamek proper. An advantage of a Flash Battletech would be on focusing on the game play proper, or at least a specific feature set. Seeing as how this is the developer’s attempt number two to get this project going, Battletech-Live seems to have a “second-system effect” fragrance.

Despite my cynicism I am really excited to see two of my favorite two worlds (Flash and Battletech) collide. I’m looking forward to seeing some really interesting things come from Battletech-Live even while I have doubts about the project’s scope. On top of that I’ve also been inspired to get back to work on my own pet projects.

Battletech-Live Development Blog

Selection Screen

Sheets is an online “new style” record sheet viewer.

Its intent is to provide quick access to “new-style” record sheets when your collection isn’t on hand or for units that haven’t been published in this format yet.

UPDATE

Fixed sheets link.

Viewing an Archer ARC-2K