Hexmap Alpha Strike is fantastic and everyone should try it - even BattleTech purists 

Doh. Definitely should’ve mentioned where the rules actually are lol

I need to try Override, it sounds like a well thought-out system!

For what it's worth, their campaign system is solid and enjoyable for a good 3-5 game campaign. I reccomend that one, as well. @@almostgoodvariant

@@almostgoodvariant It really is, you still get just enough of the Cronchyness of CBT to sate that "giant walking tank robot" feeling, but muuuuuuch faster without being oversimplified. 10/10 recommend

I think it hurts the Alpha Strike experience especially much because BT’s gameplay is very much centralized on the movement aspect and to me the RAW Alpha Strike loses that, becoming a totally different game with a wholly different feel. Other wargames will have different gameplay focuses and transferring them to hexes or the other way around might not have as major an effect.

I 100% agree. The greatness of BT as a game is mostly due to how little you have to fight the tiny things like that extra 1/16" or that tiny 5-10 degrees. Also, I do like how much variation and uniqueness each 'Mech has with the Classic BT rules, just like you said. The rules for units being played evenly across every little piece in the game is the main reason BT has held my interest for almost two decades while the constantly changing systems like Warhammer disgust me. @@almostgoodvariant

So you’re suggesting we should just get rid of of alpha strike and play classic BattleTech only.

@@deleonfrancis60 absolutely not, Alpha Strike still plays differently and most of all faster on hexmaps on hexmaps.

Appreciate it! I’m planning on uploading every two weeks or so from now on, a healthy mixture of product and miniature unboxings/reviews and more talky content like this.

For sure!

Miniature wargaming is definitely not without its charms - like I say in the video. I just personally feel like Alpha Strike is a better gameplay experience on hexmaps despite being designed not to use them. This has to do with the inherent nature of miniature wargaming and its lack of true exactness. Really my argument in this video is that MORE people should give Alpha Strike a try. I know plenty of people who refuse to play AS because they haven’t liked the gameplay experience or don’t think they will because it’s too unlike BattleTech.

It’s actually faster in alpha strike because the last game I played lasted for three rounds depends on the mission types. I’ve been playing a lot of war gaming‘s for the past almost over 10 years now on many different system from hex base to board games to miniature games. I see no difference.

Interesting idea. Would have to try that to see how it feels. However, facing doesn’t matter quite as much in Alpha Strike as it does in BattleTech, so I’m not sure it’d feel worth it keeping turning in the game in that regard.

If you’ve played BattleTech, it’s the exact same rules. If you’ve only played Alpha Strike, it’s still pretty simple. One level up or down = 1 extra hex of movement. One level hides half of a mech, giving it partial cover. Two levels block LOS. It gets a bit more complicated when you have mechs on different levels and hills of different sizes between them, but as a rule of thumb, if your unit is higher than other units, it’ll be able to see the other units.

@@almostgoodvariant Thank you for the feedback. AS is my first encounter with Battletech except of Video Games. One more question, I have a hex map pack with 4 double sided maps. How many would you recommend I use for a game? I played a round with only one map yesterday and it felt very cramped.

@@timokaiser7218 the quick and dirty way to determine the amount of hex maps in a BT game is ”lance of mechs = one hex map”. So a classic lance vs lance battle would take place on two hexmaps. That pretty much works in Alpha Strike too in my experience, with some room to stretch. Four hexmaps will easily accommodate 8-10ish mechs per side before starting to feel too crowded.

@@almostgoodvariant Hi, just played another round and came across the following problem, if we take the 6" of wood blocking LoS and convert it, it would mean 3 hexes of wood block LoS. Do the wood pieces need to be adjacent or can they be 2 hexes adjacent and 1 hex further away in the LoS to block? Second, if you are standing in a hex of wood and have 2 hexes of wood in front of you in the LoS to the target: can you target a mech ? I would say yes, but you can't be targeted because including the wood hex you are standing in 3 hexes of wood are in the LoS of the opponent. I would highly appreciate your feedback :)

@@timokaiser7218 Q1: Yeah, ANY intervening woods count! Q2: The terrain in the hex occupied by a unit does not count as intervening terrain. So the answer to your question is yes, you can target a mech, and yes, you can be targeted too.

One inch on the AS card equals half a hex, so a mech with a movement of 12” would be able to move 6 hexes on a hexmap. Of course, you could always just use the inches without converting them, but you’d need a bigger table/more hexmaps. Someone elsewhere pointed out that two hexmaps equal half of the suggested Alpha Strike 4’x6’ table, which I hadn’t realized!

I think it’d depend on whether they’re familiar with miniature wargaming or not. If they already know and enjoy miniature wargaming, by all means go for RAW Alpha Strike. If they’re only familiar with boardgames, I think hexmap AS would be the way to go. I’ve personally recently played hexmap Alpha Strike with children and they grasped the basic concepts fairly easily!

Well, in my opinion you should try both Alpha Strike and BattleTech! But yeah, Alpha Strike is definitely easier to get a handle on. If you’re already an experienced miniatures gamer, certainly give AS on miniature terrain a go since you’ll already have everything you need (just print out unit cards on Master Unit List or use Jeff’s BattleTech Tools and grab the free quickstart rules on the official BattleTech website). It’s still a good game, like I said. However, the game does have a more ”BattleTechy” feel on hexmaps. The maps are indeed official products sold by Catalyst Game Labs. A few come in starter sets but they also sell several different map packs. Old maps are also aplenty and might be pretty cheap on eBay or the like.

Thank you. I’m obviously going to have to get the AS starter set and dive into it. Even if it turns out that it’s still too granular for my liking, or some other issue impairs my enjoyment, at least I will be speaking from experience. The mechs I have, BTW, are a few Ironwind Metals ones, I think, though I have no idea what type, and don’t have the cards for them, a single Ral Parthian model that remains in its blister, and a couple of boxes of the pre-painted plastic ones, that come with the rules for the Heroclix-like game. (I think you said it’s called Mechwarrior or something of the kind but evidently it’s never ingrained itself in my mind). I’ve always felt somewhat intimidated by Battletech, in part because of the lore, but I’m aware many players love it. I doubt that this level of immersion is really necessary to enjoyment of the game, however, and in any case I can always create my own lore, heretical as this may be.

Do note that the Alpha Strike starter set does not come with a map of any kind, however it does include cardboard terrain. If you need the mechs identified, try posting a photo of them for example in one of the big Facebook BattleTech groups. People usually identify unknown mechs in mere minutes. And yeah, the Heroclix-type game was called MechWarrior: Dark Age and later Age of Destruction. BattleTech's popularity was waning at the time and the IP's ownership and license were changing hands. The history of BattleTech is full of that sort of thing. It seems to be in quite safe hands now, though. I have to say I'm not fully immersed in the lore myself even after over a year. It's pretty dense! Not knowing the lore in and out hasn't diminished my enjoyment of the game in any way as far as I can tell. I'm learning new stuff every time I play and pick new mech variants to play. And - people create their own lore all the time, be it making their own mercenary companies, characters, planets or whatever else. I'm sure the kinds of people who would get actually angry about someone coming up with their own stuff are the kinds of people you don't want to interact with anyway.

Thank you another informative reply. I was a little puzzled initially that you were presenting the use of hex maps as an alternative way to play given that the publisher produces maps for the game - and the models’s bases are hexagonal, which is something of a hint as to the format of the intended playing surface - but I imagine the idea is that these are not seen as compulsory, which would upset some, and obviously entail extra expense from the outset. I’ve now watched an unboxing so know what’s included. The maps - or, rather, mats - that I’ve seen online are double-sided neoprene, which obviously are not cheap but seem like the best way to go - obviously the size of the hexes matches the bases of the models, for one thing. I’m looking at placing an order for the base set with one of these. Is there anything else that I should consider as a useful initial purchase? I can stretch my budget a little.

@@liberalhyena9760 Alpha Strike is an alternative, faster-playing ruleset for BattleTech, which is really a board game that is by default played on hexmaps (although rules for playing with miniature terrain do exist). Alpha Strike on the other hand is designed as a miniature wargame, so by default it uses measuring tapes and physical wargaming terrain that can be set up on any playing surface as opposed to hexmaps. The hexmap rules I talk about in this video are an optional set of conversion rules for the default wargaming rules. The neoprene mats are very nice but indeed quite pricey. If you’re concerned about the price, look for the paper map packs, Grasslands and Deserts. They are cheaper and you get a huge amount of maps in them. Whatever you buy, do NOT get the neoprene mats labeled ”Alpha Strike”. They are simply the BattleTech mats without hexes printed on them and unfortunately a bit of a lazy product. As for an initial purchase, you’ll get just about everything you need with the starter set and a map pack. If you don’t have plenty of dice on hand already, consider grabbing four sets of dice in different colors (common colors are white, black, red and yellow). They’re used to mark activated units and to convey information about their movement to other players.

I have, yes. Would love to try it sometime but haven’t gotten around to it yet.

For sure! I think it might be just map scale vs mech scale and the maps being designed in a specific way. Could be wrong of course!

The latest Mechbay Podcast interviews the Joshua Franklin, the guy who wrote the rulebook, and apparently Alpha Strike was in fact a hex-based game at one point until it wasn’t anymore. I haven’t played Battleforce, unfortunately, although I would like to try it!

@@almostgoodvariant My own theory for why Alpha Strike wasn't made hex based is because then you can just proxy units in very easily. But by making it a miniatures game, you have to own the miniatures. And CGL is trying to shift from being mainly a book publishing to a miniatures company.

@@Taurevanime a fairly reasonable thought. There’s a stark difference between how using proxy models is talked about in Commander’s Edition vs Total Warfare.

I certainly don’t disagree re: people counting and recounting their movement in BattleTech, but have you tried hexmap Alpha Strike? In hexmap Alpha Strike you don’t pay MP for changing your facing. It’s as quick as looking at how many hexes your unit can move and putting it there facing any which way. At least in my experience people play hexmap AS extremely quickly and take slightly more time measuring stuff in miniature terrain play.

@almostgoodvariant I'm not a fan of the hexmaps (for AS or BT). I'm more of a miniatures and terrain person. What we do to speed up AS is to make a deck of unit cards. One for each unit from each side. We then shuffle everything together and deal out 1 card at a time. When a units' card is flipped, that mech is moved. What I have found that can really slow the game down is when players have unlimited choices as to which units to move and when.

Well, the conversion rules are in the rulebook, it’s just that it seems like few people know or care about them.

You can certainly do that! However, Alpha Strike’s ranges are designed for 4x6 tables, so you’ll need more table space and hex maps (2x3 mapsheets is roughly equal to 4x6 feet). I mean, you can always play on smaller battlefields, but converting to hexes by halving the inches will feel very close to BattleTech in terms of mech speed and weapon ranges.

@@almostgoodvariant true on that. I only have a 1m x 1m table. But i found i can play with no hex map and instead of inches i use cm just so i cam be able to play with no problems with limited space.