# BattleTech *Created:* 2023-08-02, *Modified:* 2026-10-09 **BattleTech** is the 31st-century wargame that made "walking tank full of guns and grudges" a genre of its own — FASA's 1984 giant-robot slugfest, now steered by Catalyst Game Labs, and the rare property that's stubbornly, gloriously a *board game* at heart even after forty years of novels, video games, and plastic. It's the war-gamer's mecha: no power of friendship, only record sheets, hex grids, heat spikes, and the slow, satisfying crunch of a 100-ton 'Mech's ammo cooking off mid-battle. ## Setting The year is the 31st century, and a few hundred light-years of the galaxy around Earth — the **Inner Sphere** — are carved up among the five Successor States of the Great Houses (Davion, Steiner, Liao, Marik, and Kurita). After the Star League collapsed, the Succession Wars ground on for generations, and society slid into slow-burn decline, hoarding scraps of **lostech** — technology it could no longer manufacture. Above it all squats ComStar, the order that runs the interstellar com network and quietly pulls every string it can. Then, in 3050, the **Clans** arrive: the descendants of Kerensky's exiled Star League forces, back with genetically-bred warriors and superior machines to conquer the homeworlds they were left behind on. On every battlefield, the kings are the **BattleMechs** — giant piloted war machines whose pilots (MechWarriors) and machines are worth more than whole armies of conventional armor. ## Mechanics BattleTech is played on **hex mapsheets**, and the core is a **2d6** roll against a target number derived from a pilot's Gunnery (or Piloting) skill plus modifiers — range, movement, terrain, heat. Each turn runs a sequence of phases: initiative, movement, weapon attacks, physical attacks, heat, and end. A 'Mech lives on its **record sheet**: a diagram of armor then internal structure per location (head, arms, side and center torsos, legs), with critical-hit tables for what's underneath and a **heat scale** you have to watch constantly — overheat and your 'Mech runs slower, stops shooting, or shuts down entirely. Rules scale modularly (Introductory, Standard, Advanced), and full **custom 'Mech design rules** let you field anything from a 20-ton scout to a 100-ton assault monster you drew yourself. The faster **Alpha Strike** variant runs the same universe on simplified stat cards, and the companion **MechWarrior** RPG handles everything the cockpit doesn't. ## Editions - **BattleTech** (1984) — FASA's original, launched as *Battledroids* and renamed (its war machines becoming **BattleMechs**) after Lucasfilm objected to "droid." *Not in the core library* (a BattleTech Primer and a "No Quarter" conversion are held). - **BattleTech: Total Warfare** — the modern core rulebook under Catalyst Game Labs, the current baseline. - **MechWarrior** (1986 onward) — the companion RPG; **Alpha Strike** (2013) — the streamlined mass-combat variant. ## References - [BattleTech — official site](https://battletech.com/) - [BattleTech — Catalyst Game Labs](https://www.catalystgamelabs.com/brands/battletech) - [BattleTech — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BattleTech)