We’re on to the fourth (and final) of the five playtest packets for next year’s Battletech core rulebook refresh with a packet focused around missions. As talked about in the introduction to the packet, this is something BT has badly needed for a long time - the lack of any sort of standard pickup games and most available missions being focused around future-historical games was a big stumbling block for new players. Especially when coming from other wargames, players were commonly struggling to figure out how to actually play a game. Force building, mission objectives, and even how to deploy units on the map were left entirely up to the player to figure out.

Packet 1: Survivability Rules ran from September 9th until October 13th. We talked about our final thoughts on it here. Packet 2: Mobility Rules, will go from September 29th to November 10th. Packet 3: Gear, will go from October 28th to December 8th. Packet 4: Missions runs from December 12th to January 5th. Packet 5: Rules for BSP Aerospace, will run from October 28th to Jan 5th.

This packet aims to resolve that, providing two standard sizes to play the game at, a dozen missions to play, and a variety of complications that can be added to change things up. It’s organized around how it will eventually be printed in the rulebook, which makes perfect sense there, but we’re going to look at it slightly out of order by what order you’re going to want to learn things.

There’s a lot to this packet, so we’re not going to be replicating the whole thing line-by-line here: go download the packet yourself to see what each specific mission is.

Davion Heavy Guard force for an event. Credit: Jack Hunter

Force Building

The first thing to look at is force construction. The packet is designed around the concept of scale, similar to Hinterlands, however it’s working with 2,000 BV per scale instead of 3,000. Eras are slightly touched on, with succession wars/introtech games being recommended to be played at scale 3 (6,000 BV) and ilClan games played at scale 4 (8,000 BV). Regardless of game size, all the missions are designed to be played on a standard double-mapsheet (or neoprene) map. C3 costs were tweaked slightly from the previous playtest to make smaller forces a little cheaper, and pilot skills (including the full skill multiplier chart) are included.

Jack: I really like cementing 8k as the standard game size. While I’m fine with playing smaller games (and think the choices they force are interesting), anything much above 8k changes the dynamic of force construction. Instead of having to make sacrifices in what your force can do, you start being able to build a force that can do anything and your choices are more around what you’re going to do extra well. I find this fundamentally less interesting, so I’m glad that game size isn’t too big. Having this published size is I think the most important thing in this book - the most common question I’ve gotten while onboarding new players is “what size force should I be building.” Being able to conclusively answer that is incredibly helpful.

I also find the section on pilot skills great, mainly because of how it calls out that clan mechs narratively have 3/4 pilots, but that it is not reflected in their BV and you are under no obligation to use those pilots. I hope that can clear up a few arguments about how 8k BV isn’t enough for an entire star of mechs.

Liberty: I am also incredibly in favor of standardizing game size! Though we usually play at 10K at our local 8 is still fine and, more importantly, there is an included path to scale games in either direction which is great. I think stating ‘do 8k for IlClan because things are more expensive’ isn’t exactly a real statement as there are plenty of good cheap things available in the IlClan that can make a full list and very much so will not break the bank.

This is great for all players, new, old, experienced and inexperienced. Leveling the playing field of expectation is critically important to allowing people who aren’t from the same local space to organize and grab a game at random which is great for the community!

Also, finally, something I can point to and say ‘no, it’s ok that this dude is a 4/5 pilot in this Clan ‘Mech. This is a second line/low deployment unit.’ For when people won’t stop chattering about 3/4 clan pilots and whatnot at tournaments, on forums, or anywhere else it may happen. It’s ok, Clanners can be ‘a normal and reasonably experienced ‘Mechwarrior’ too. They don’t all have to be the baddest mother-fucker to have ever walked the worlds of the sphere. Someone has to be holding the line.

Atlas II. Credit: Rockfish

Peri: 8K is a great BV limit for a standard format. As much as we locally play 10K, 8K is a bit better if you want games to wrap up slightly faster, or want to clamp down on the shenanigans that people can get up to with big assault mechs/super high end Clan stuff. Standardized game size is a very good thing, and will make getting pick up games much easier.

The section on pilot skills is interesting, with the note of “Please guys stop taking exclusively 3/4 Clan mechs” being very funny. There have been a lot of players I have bumped into over the years who think that the Clans are unduly punished by BV, and to a person they have been buying 3/4 pilots automatically without considering that they can just not do that. Having it in official text is great.

Lynn: I also love what I’m seeing here. It’s particularly nice to see the “two-step rule” (Gunnery and Piloting must be within two of each other) included here to help curtail extreme skill cheese, along with a sidebar patiently explaining why playing games with super-elite pilots is kind of boring, actually (in brief, less room for skill expression when you can hit your opponent regardless of what modifiers they try to throw at you).

The tweak-to-the-tweak of C3 BV is also welcome. My opinion of the Gear Playtest’s cost increase soured a bit after I realized that cutting out the rounding present in the pre-playtest system actually made full C3i-connected Level IIs more expensive than they previously had been, despite the 1.3x modifier initially seeming like the same math. While full-size C3 and C3i formations still get hit with that adjustment (an increase for Lances and Level IIs, a discount for the incredibly rare C3 Company), the price break for smaller networks opens up more space to experiment with just a little C3, as a treat.

Liberty’s right that the ilClan era still has plenty of BV-efficient mechs available, but the subtext of the “modern tech is more expensive” statement is pretty much “Clan guns and Superchargers are more expensive,” and I do think there’s value in letting people squeeze in a few expensive toys, within reason; 8k is a good number for that.

One thing that’s usually present in tournament packets that isn’t here is any kind of unit cap, and in fact the text leans into the possibility for running a horde of shitbuckets at your opponent’s elites. Given the purpose of this packet, particularly its intended context within the framework of a Mechs-and-Battlefield-Support core book (meaning that Infinite Savannah Masters or Conventional Infantry Shenanigans are off the table), I think that’s a good thing; the time constraints on casual pick-up games are much less strict than those present in a tournament setting, and I don’t think there’s any pressing need to try to prescribe how many bodies you should fit in your 8k or 6k BV.

Pictures taken moments before (objective truck) disaster. Credit: Lynn C.

Maps

Next up is setting up and deploying onto maps, where unfortunately Peri and Liberty have been proven right - the standard deployment here is on long edges. Interestingly, half-hexes are called out as being off limits including for deployment, which spreads mechs out a bit during deployment. The standard process described here for picking map sheets is that one player picks them and the other chooses a deployment side. Standard deployment is to move on from the edge, with your first MP being the first full hex on the map.

Jack: I don’t really love long edge deployment as I think it removes one weakness of short range mechs, but I’m not ultimately too broken up about it. It doesn’t change the dynamic of the game too significantly. The biggest thing I see in this section is the preview of two upcoming lava maps, both of which look absolutely miserable to play on. Please CGL, give me more maps like Grasslands A and C.

Liberty: THAT’S RIGHT, MOTHER FUCKERS. LONG EDGE IS THE STANDARD. THE MAPS ARE BUILT FOR IT, THE HEXES GO THAT WAY FOR A REASON. THE TEXT IS ORIENTED THAT WAY FOR A REASON. THE EFFICIENT AND WORKABLE ENTRANCE LANES ARE THAT WAY FOR A REASON. WE ALREADY HAVE AN ANSWER TO ‘BUT THE MAPS ARE TOO SMALL AND I DON’T WANNA GET BEATEN TO DEATH BY A BUZZSAW’, IT’S CALLED ‘GO GET A SECOND MAP’.

Sorry, I’m very happy as we’ve been having this annoying ass conversation in the Goonhammer discord for like a fucking year and I’m tired of it. Peri and I are right, Catalyst said so.

More importantly, those two new maps are… something. Long edge or short edge deployment they’re going to be hell if you don’t have the equipment for proper entry. That said I could see them being fun in the correct, pre determined, scenarios that you and your opponent have agreed upon.

As well, the standardization of how to move onto the map is great for the same reason as BV standardizations: Knowing what to expect from any given game of BT. Love that shit.

Peri: If you will excuse me (and Liberty) we are going to be unbearably fucking smug about this. The great deployment edge argument has been ongoing for over a year at this point and it has been driving us up the wall. Long edge is a better deployment system that is more intuitive and leads to better, quicker games. Getting official confirmation from the horses mouth that it is what the standard format is going to be designed around is so, so incredibly relieving after the insane length of this argument.

Move-On deployment is a lot of fun actually and seeing it as the standard here is great. Me and Liberty have personally been using this rule more or less ubiquitously ever since Richmond Open earlier in 2025, it helps speed up the start of games and keep things moving.

As for the lava map, holy shit that map looks unplayable. Will probably be fun for some weird combat drop/narrative game, fighting a Word of Blake Precentor at the end of a campaign type stuff, but for general games that is not going to be a particularly usable map. This whole section is great overall though, and not just because of the fact that we were right. Only mostly because we were right.

(Liberty: But we were, indeed, right.)

Lynn: Interestingly, Catalyst seems to have actually changed their minds about deployment edges between products; Hot Spots: Hinterlands’ missions largely (though not exclusively) used short edge deployment!

It’s definitely funny to see the volcano island maps being used as the deployment examples here, where “walk on from long edge” includes “step directly into the ocean” and “step directly into magma” options. I can feel in my bones that I will someday end up in a tournament game on one of the volcano map neoprenes and on that day I shall weep.

I read the text around partial hexes not existing differently than Jack did; my interpretation is that you can still walk on in those columns of hexes, you just don’t start counting movement until the first full hex. That’s how I’ve always seen deployment played with walk-on, and that’s what I feel the packet text indicates, though I could be wrong.

Archer. Credit: porble

Missions and Complications

There are a dozen missions here, with a simple method of selecting - one player rolls to pick which of two sets of 6 possibilities, and the other player rolls to pick which of those 6 missions is played. Obviously you can just select one, and I’d expect any events using these to do exactly that, but it’s nice that the default is random and encourages building a varied force, especially as mission selection is explicitly after force construction. Each mission has one of several kinds of complications, including weather, edge, fog of war, and random duration. There’s a pretty good variety of possible missions here, ranging from a simple stand-up fight to objective control (with progressive scoring!) to a recon mission where you scan your opponent.

Objectives come in a couple forms. The first is that they have variable control radius depending on the mission from 0 hexes (you must stand on the objective) to 2 hexes. As you can control an objective while prone, the 0 hex range can be a problem - at that point the only way to reliably contest the objective is a DFA, as they can’t be hit by a push/charge and Battletech isn’t a game where you can reliably kill a mech in a single turn. The other options available to objectives are for some of the objectives on the map to be fake, objectives that can be moved, objectives that can be destroyed, and objectives that you have to scan to reveal.

Weather has been completely rewritten, and no longer sucks. Only one possible condition imposes a hit penalty, and that can be avoided with a PSR, and nothing slows mechs down (though some can require a decent number of PSRs). Included in this section are new rules for smoke, the key takeaway being that it no longer stacks in the same hex with forests, so the max penalty is +2 from either heavy woods or heavy smoke. Active probes also get a bit of love, ignoring any smoke in range of the probe.

Edge has always been more of a campaign thing, so I was surprised to see it here, but it’s been rewritten here to be much less powerful: instead of rerolling hits it can add +1 to your roll, let you reroll (using the higher result) cluster amount or the determining critical hits table, or reroll a scan. It seems interesting and not too powerful. A variant of it uses designated commander mechs, though strangely you get a second commander at scale 4, which seems strange - you may only have a single lance at 8k BV, which would then have 2 commanders. Not a big deal, but I might’ve put the break point at scale 4 instead of scale 3.

Jack: Mostly I think the missions are good. One mission - Steel Rain - has one side all doing combat drops, which is a little risky with a force of 4/5 pilots - really bad rolling can have you scatter 18 hexes (often off the map). I probably wouldn’t want to use this one in an event, but the concept is cool. I know Xotl has already gotten feedback about that distance being too far. I’m also not a fan of the fake objectives. In my experience it leads to a game that’s decided more by random luck at the end of the game than on the table, though I think this is only a possibility in one mission. Other than those two issues I’m not immediately seeing any clear problems with the missions, at minimum I expect them all to play pretty easily without confusion. Objective Raid might have a few too many objectives, but the rest look good.

The complications are mostly interesting, and provide a bit of extra variety so games aren’t quite the same. I wish it was done on a 2d6 table instead of 1d6, as when combined with the 2d6 table for specific weather conditions I think some might not be seen much. I’d also like both tables to have a no complications/clear weather option - I find it weird that something is always happening. Random duration is my least favorite of the complications and I’d gladly sacrifice it to be nothing happens - I think it’s too random and doesn’t lead to good gameplay. After you hit turn 6 you can no longer do anything that requires planning multiple turns ahead, as there’s a chance the game just ends.

The new weather conditions seem great. Extreme heat doesn’t seem tremendously fun because having all mechs heat up just reduces the total damage dealt in the game, which isn’t great. I’m also not a big fan of either it or extreme cold being in the random table because I think they hurt the viability of TSM mechs. I don’t know anyone complaining that those mechs are too strong, and having a chance for the mission to completely mess up your heat curve is going to cut down on how frequently they’re fielded. Terrain modifiers like ice, snow, and mud are are also much more usable now - instead of slowing everything to a crawl, ice makes your PSRs slightly harder, snow cools your mech and has a chance at an avalanche, and mud makes turning risky (though not as much as skidding does, so it remains easy to use)

While I do wish the complications weren’t going to show up in every mission, I do think they’re interesting enough that I’m excited to use them.

Liberty: Weather conditions? Sick. Full fleshed out cool looking missions to make it so it’s not always ‘kill each other dead’? Sick. Weird and fucky complications to spice a game up? Sick. Rolling for a random one of those missions? Sick.

This is awesome. Peri and I had been talking about rehashing that old ‘Goonhammer format’ article from a long time ago and as we sat there and went through this packet we both realized that this is just about exactly what we would’ve ended up putting out. Perhaps not with the complications thing but these missions, deployment sets, BV breakouts and overall vibe?

Bang on and I am vibrating at the chance to play with this more in the coming weeks. We played one today and got the Focal Point mission with the EDGE complication which both worked great. Well, as great as they could with Peri’s Sunder running around gleefully dumping Heavy Smoke everywhere because this packet includes something else: Simplified smoke and fire rules which is awesome.

I love anything that gives better capacity for a force to have at it and change the field to their liking. Especially with what that means for these missions. Being able to pop smoke and withdraw with an objective or push up to capture something is astounding game design and I’m very happy it’s here in a far more functional manner than it had been before. Looking through them just about all these missions seem like a blast and I’m ecstatic to try them and see how they interact with everything!

This playtest packet, at my first look and reaction, fucks and I cannot put into words how happy that makes me.

Colonial Marshals Victor VTR-9Ka. Credit: porble

Peri: We playtested a game of this literally earlier today and this mission generation system, the complications, the smoke changes, it's all great. Like, incredibly, incredibly great. I second Jack that we really need a 40k “Chilling Rain” complication that just does literally nothing so that every single game doesn’t have something weird going on. The missions overall seem fairly fun, not a big fan of random/fake objectives or the pure combat drop mission (just for the lack of control/massive scatter distance you get from fucking up a PSR), but those are not terribly common and most of the missions seem fine to good.

The simplified Smoke, Weather, and Fire rules are all just pure gas, possibly the best part of this section. Smoke is now less of a headache, fire is easy to manage and can flush mechs out of problem wood hexes, and the new weather not just all saying “+18 to hit, fuck you” is a good change from the old weather system. Smoke being bypassed by Active Probes is fantastic because it means that Active Probes actually, like, do something and are things you might take a mech entirely for, particularly because good lord you can really choke a map up with Smoke. The new Smoke rules are also very nearly the death of TurretTech and the very immobile style of play in general. Most of the really unpleasant partial cover+woods hexes can now have all of their sightlines smoked, forcing the unit to either move, have a spotter, or randomly be one of a few snipers with random active probes. If you are worried about where you are going to be next turn, just smoke where you are going to, smoke where you might go, smoke where your friends might go, throw some fucking smoke around.

The “Meta” of these missions seems to incentivize movement, terrain creation/destruction with Smoke and Fire, and a generally more mobile, aggressive style of play. While you might complain that this, combined with long edge, makes short ranged mechs better, considering the decades now that people have spent complaining about Clan Range Advantages, this will heavily contribute to minimizing/mitigating that “problem”, if BV already hasn’t.

Also, Active Probes do things now! They help with scanning mission objectives, and with smoke! It even can let your more useful/well armed buddies see through the smoke! Holy shit I might take a Raven on purpose!

While I may have a few minor issues with this packet, they are very minor. Having a standard play format/style of play for BattleTech is huge, and something that has been extremely noticeable and frustrating the entire decade+ I have been playing this game. Just being able to be on the same page of “We are playing 8k, Ilclan, Standard Format Missions” with all sorts of random people without having to write sub packets or agree on some community mission set that always kinda sucks (including mine) is just so, so amazing to finally have in this game. I expect that this section of the new rulebook, more than any other, is going to have the largest impact on growing the games audience.

Lynn: I won’t have a chance to get any of these missions to table until Wednesday, but on a quick read-through I like most of what I’m seeing. I’m also a bit baffled that there aren’t “nothing happens” options for complications, particularly on the weather conditions table (7 is right there in the middle of the bell curve, asking for normal weather!), but I think the possibilities seem fun! I’m particularly eager to give this version of Fog of War deployment a go; it’s a nice little wrench in your plans without being too obtrusive.

I don’t love that progressive objective scoring is presented as a variant rule, with the default for objective control being end-of-game (especially with the threat of the Random Duration complication hanging overhead). I can admit that end-of-game control makes more Watsonian sense, but I prefer the feel of an ongoing tug-of-war over objectives. That said, out of the actual preconstructed sample missions with objectives, the only one that really raises an eyebrow for me is Objective Raid, given the confluence of having too many objectives for the average 8k BV force to hold at once even at full strength, end-game-only scoring, and the threat of the “False Objectives” complication.

I want to praise the Mobile Objective rules for providing a benefit to mechs with hands without actually requiring hands for victory; it’s nice to have some brute force objective control options as a fallback.

I will note that nothing in these objective control rules seems to require your mechs to be standing in order to count towards controlling objectives; that’s a break from basically every tournament packet I’ve read, and makes it harder to deny objective control without moving up onto the objective yourself, but I think it’s probably okay? In fact, it’s easier to plan your moves to seize objective control if you know no one is going to win or lose control based on a flubbed PSR alone.

As someone who’s had issues with Forced Withdrawal and the BMM definition of Crippling Damage in the past, I’m glad to see the clarifications and changes here, along with the explicit call-out that it’s still an optional rule, not a default aspect of the standard missions. This version of Forced Withdrawal actually clearly lays out what the expectations are for the movement of a mech in withdrawal, and, thankfully, mechs are allowed to endure more damage before becoming crippled. There does seem to be a potential conflict in the packet as it currently stands, however: the objective control rules and some of the standard missions explicitly reference crippled force members, but the Forced Withdrawal rules state that Crippling Damage is only in play if Forced Withdrawal is in use. I don’t think it’s entirely clear which statement takes precedence, though answering that question should probably be as simple as asking your opponent “Hey, do you want to disqualify ‘crippled’ mechs from controlling objectives even if we’re not using Forced Withdrawal?” before you start rolling dice.

On the whole this is great stuff, and the mud rules in particular have me expecting changes to pavement as well. In all honesty, I expected to see those in this packet after I started reading the environmental conditions, and was disappointed, but hopefully the municipal planners of the Inner Sphere will discover the concept of “traction” soon!

Mountain Wolves Merlin. Credit: Lynn C

We're excited to test and see how these missions rules end up working. First impressions are great, though there are definitely a handful of small changes we think are worth making. If you've been waiting for our final thoughts on packet 2, hold out a little longer - those changes ended up being small enough that we're combining them together with packet 3.

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Tags: Hot Take | Battletech | playtest