BattleTech Tournament Report: Ostmann Industries Goes to Brawl in the Bluegrass 2026

Prelude: hOSTile intentions

My road to the “Brawl in the Bluegrass” Classic BattleTech tournament, hosted at a hotel in Lexington, Kentucky on March 7th, 2026, started with the announcement of the Illician Lancers Command Lance. “Huh,” said I, “once that releases, there will be six unique sculpts of ‘Ost’ mechs, an Ostscout, an Ostwar, and two sculpts each of the Ostsol and Ostroc. You could fill a whole tournament list with them!”

Once that idea got its hooks into my brain, it would not let go.

I started messing around with lists to fit in Brawl in the Bluegrass’s generous points cap (10,000 BV!) and… less generous pulse (29 points of damage) and jump (13 jump MP across the whole list, excluding battle armor) caps. The Ostwar is almost entirely exclusive to the Free Worlds League in the ilClan era, but that hardly bothered me; y’all know I love my Purple Birbs. Pretty quickly I stumbled into a combination which came out to 10k BV exactly, and I couldn’t bear to change the list after that point; it felt like a sign.

I was disheartened when I learned the actual release date of the Illician Lancers box (next month!), but by that point I really couldn’t talk myself out of this silly gimmick list. I ordered a metal Ostwar and poked my Loose Mech Guy for a spare plastic Ostroc and Ostsol to modify, and I soldiered ahead with what I had started calling “The Ostlist.” They were…

An Ostscout OTT-12R with 4/5 skills (1,209 BV):

Marik Militia Ostscout. Credit: Lynn B.

The Ostscout was the element of my list which I spent the most time agonizing over. The problem is, the ilClan-era FWL only gets two Ostscouts to choose from: the 12R, which is expensive due to the BV cost of the Clan ER Large Laser which is its only weapon, and which packs stealth armor it only has the heat capacity to use if it’s either not jumping or not shooting; or the 9S, which has the base allotment of ten single heat sinks to go with its two Spheroid ERMLs, and which also throws a ton of its payload at useless A-Pods. Basically I had to choose between a cheap(ish) Ostscout which would only be useful for objectives and an expensive Ostscout which could get one decent shot in on occasion. I ultimately went with the pricier ‘scout, and while I wasn’t sure I’d made the right choice in my practice games, it did do a modest degree of work in Lexington.

An Ostsol OTL-7M with 4/5 skills (1,581 BV):

Marik Militia Ostsol. Credit: Lynn B.

I was grumpy about this inclusion because I resented the pulse cap denying me the dirt-cheap Ostsol 5M I’m fond of, but the 7M gradually won me over. It can do very good work playing the “I am at eight hexes, and you will despair” game against popular 7-hex-short-range weapons like ER PPCs and regular gauss with its twin light gauss at short and its four ERMLs (or 3, if you need to avoid building heat) at medium range. It’s also deceptively well-armored for an Ostsol, with much beefier arms than the Ostmech norm, which is helpful.

An Ostwar OWR-3M with 4/5 skills (1,557 BV):

Marik Militia Ostwar. Credit: Lynn B.

I had no choice but to take this Ostwar, the only Ostwar anyone has in the ilClan era and one of only three Ostwar variants ever produced(!), but fortunately it’s also probably the best Ostwar for this list. It gave me a dumb brick of a mech (Standard Fusion Engine, good armor, CASE on all its ammo, heat neutral firing everything) I could just park somewhere and not worry about. An LRM-20 with Art IV, two ERMLs, and two Streak-4s (all Spheroid-grade) aren’t exactly lighting the world on fire, but it could chip in a bit of useful damage across all ranges while simply refusing to die, and I like that in a ~1500 BV mech.

An Ostroc OSR-6R at 4/5 skills (2,095 BV):

Marik Militia Ostroc. Credit: Lynn B.

The fanciest piece of tech in my list, the 6R mounts a pair each of Clan-grade ERLLs and ERMLs alongside a Spheroid SSRM-4, protected by Reflective Armor and CASE II and propelled to 6/9 speed. I took the risk of tapping this as the commander of my force (something we were asked to name at list submission), wagering that it boasted my best combination of lethality and survivability despite its thinnish armor and crippling weakness to getting kicked. If I had this list to write over again I might’ve boosted Piloting on this girl to help her avoid faceplanting, but she drew much less hate during the actual tournament than I expected her to.

I wanted my second Ostsol and second Ostroc to be easily distinguishable from the first pair. In addition to re-posing them and modifying them to represent the variants I was planning to use, I also decided to paint them differently, using my 4th Regulan Hussars scheme rather than my Marik Militia scheme. To put some narrative into this choice, I decided to inflict “battle damage” on the Regulan mechs and fluff them as the survivors of a Regulan lance being relieved by Marik Militia reinforcements. This duo were…

An Ostroc OSR-2Cb at 4/5 skills (1,478 BV):

Battle-damaged 4th Regulan Hussars Ostroc. Credit: Lynn B.

The Royal Ostroc was a moderately fancy piece of tech in 2729, but by 3152 it’s very much Just A Guy. It was pretty much the designated punching bag of my list, pushed up to take hits I didn’t want the OSR-6R and OTL-7M taking. Its Ost-typical flimsy arms pretty much doom it to a death spiral of hit locations marching in from arm to side torso to CT, but with a standard engine it takes a lot of killing to get past the “crippled” stage to “actually dead” (unless its CT-mounted Streak-2 ammo blows, anyway), and it’s pretty much the most disposable unit in this list, so I was happy to bait people into shooting it.

An Ostsol OTL-8M at 4/3 skills (2,080 BV):

Battle-damaged 4th Regulan Hussars Ostsol. Credit: Lynn B.

The threat of “Muhammad Ost-Li” is well known in my local meta, but it wasn’t until prepping for this event that I actually got an 8M to the table myself. It’s… interesting. It can be an existential threat to any mech in the game, or it can just kinda crumple and die. Minor spoilers, but I didn’t scoop a single head with its fists all day long at this tournament. Opening up backs is itself useful, and I was certainly able to do that, but it’s kind of disappointing to play the best odds you can play on the headcap lottery and still come up short.

Pose as a team, 'cause shit's about to get real. Credit: Lynn B.

Bridge: Go wOST, young woman

(Look, Ost jokes are hard.)

Lexington is Pretty Far from Atlanta, but with the Greyhound bus set to arrive at 1:45 AM and flight costs out of Atlanta rising quickly whenever there’s not a direct flight, I ended up sucking it up and driving. Fortunately, I found out that online science fiction magazine Lightspeed has an audio story podcast that’s been running for over a decade with a huge backlog and minimal advertising, so I just shotgunned short stories through the entire trip and it went smoothly enough. My trajectory from Georgia through Tennessee was also less inimical to cars than the Virginia delegation’s path through West Virginia, and I once again arrived first out of our group. This time I was armed with the door code for the Airbnb, and was able to settle in quite comfortably. It was honestly one of the nicest (and least arid) homes we’ve had a chance to stay in during one of these tournament trips, though we had enough going on that we didn’t spend much time there.

The field trip to see Iron Wind Metals was fun. It’s simultaneously very cool to see their process and how tightly connected with their history they are, and also a stark reminder of how small-scale the businesses behind BattleTech really are (Liya excepted, I assume). I’m fairly happy with my haul, though almost as soon as I got it home I re-workshopped a list I bought some stuff for and promptly dropped three of the mechs I bought and wishlisted another 2-3 metal minis I didn’t get. Whoops. The hazards of being a butterfly wandering unpredictably from pretty mech chassis to pretty mech chassis.

My time in the Trial of Bloodright for the McKenna Bloodname was rather brief and uneventful: I was able to select my mech 13th out of the field of 32 and got the Gargoyle E, a chassis I quite like, but then I got paired into a Timber Wolf TC, and my opponent got to choose the weather conditions and chose a “heavy gale” or somesuch which nerfed missile to-hit numbers, and he was basically able to bounce around at a 4-6 hex range the entire game and gradually pick me apart since I couldn’t really hit shit. RIP.

Fortunately, I had some good conversations with folks while waiting for Liberty to finish winning his new name, and then we all got a chance to find out that Nepalese food is awesome.

After that, one sleep, one Waffle House trip, and it was time for the main event!

Chapter One: inflicting the mOST violence

The rules for mission one, "Half a League Onward (Hold the Line)." Credit: Tweezer

As with all the missions at Brawl in the Bluegrass, the rules and objectives for “Half a League Onward (Hold the Line)” pretty much filled a whole page of paper, but were handed out right before the clock for the round started, without the Q&A period I’m used to from other tournaments. This wasn’t too bad for the first round, since we had a leisurely 3 hours for play, but the tournament timeline got tighter the deeper we got into the day, and even on this first round stuff got missed. For my part, my opponent and I completely forgot the “free Heavy Air Strike” and “bonus to crit checks against units on their home side of the map” special rules, though the bonus to melee attacks on your opponent’s side of the board stuck firmly enough in my head to be a major thorn in my opponent’s side.

My list was (correctly, if I’m honest) deemed the most casual out of the Goonhammer squad’s lists, so I was paired into somewhat softer opposition than my compatriots were. Chris had brought decent chassis, but skilled them up enough that he only had a single lance, and the numbers very much worked against him here.

I was facing a Phoenix Hawk IIC 4 at 3/4 skills (which took it over 3000 BV!), a King Crab 001 (the gauss Crab) at 3/4, an Archer 4M at 3/3(!), and a Spector 5S at 4/4, and we were on the Sand Drift BattleMat (with 3D-printed pieces on top). He concentrated his forces in the “east” (from my perspective), while I spread out more, moving the Royal Ostroc and the Ostol 8M up on the same side as his mechs while my Commander ran up the opposite side (further away from all the missiles and gauss which could easily kill her straight through her reflective armor) and the rest of my mechs pushed up the middle. My speed really helped me here: By round two I had half my force at or across the centerline, and I got everyone across round three. By contrast, he was only ever able to get his jumpers across… I swarmed the King Crab at a map chokepoint just shy of center, and the Archer backpedaled away as I pushed up to try to keep its LRMs in play.

Hold the line, Osts! Credit: Lynn B.

There’s no way to dance around it: I’ve never pummeled anyone as hard in a game of BattleTech as I did in this game. Overwhelming violence applied to the King Crab’s rear arc destroyed it, while a lucky double-crit on the Phoenix Hawk IIC took out two of its ATM-9s fairly early on, literally halving its firepower. The Archer unthinkingly strayed next to the map edge while doing its walk-backwards-firing-missiles routine, and I was able to jump my Ostscout next to it. With Piloting 5 on the jumping Ostscout, I needed an 8 to push the Archer off the map, even with the mission’s special bonus to melee in the opponent’s half of the board, less than a 50% chance… but I rolled an 8 exactly, and removed a pristine mech from the board with very little commitment. It was just a massacre. I locked up primary scoring at a point when my opponent only had… I think 15 on the board, two turns of the Spector being in my half of the board and one of the PHX IIC. My Royal Ostroc was crippled, but the Ostsol 8M just avoided falling under that definition: While its armor was mangled and it had suffered upper leg and foot crits, damage only ever went internal on two of its limbs. While his Spector was fine, I believe the Phoenix Hawk IIC was crippled, and I know the other two were dead as doornails.

Moments before Chris's Archer left the board. Credit: Lynn B.

It was a massacre, and earned me the highest Round One score out of the Goonhammer Writer Trio at 214 points.

I felt good about the hobby work I’d done on my force, I was elated to hear I’d had a better round one than Liberty, the Friendship Vibes were good with old and new tourney acquaintances; throughout lunch my BattleTech morale was pretty near an all-time high!

Chapter Two: paradise lOST

The rules for mission two, "Karnov Down (Capture the Flag / Domination)." Credit: Tweezer

"Karnov Down" is an MRC-favorite mission, but it's more commonly run in Alpha Strike, and while I'd heard the name, I'd never actually encountered the mission before. I felt very left-out-of-the-in-joke when it was pretty much introduced with a "You all know what this means!" Between the tacit assumption that we were familiar with the mission already and the continued lack of any Q&A time, I felt particularly ill-prepared for this game.

This round was bittersweet: One of my favorite single games out of all my BattleTech tournaments in terms of the turn-to-turn gameplay, but… not the result I wanted.

My opponent, Andrew, had brought a very mean Clan Wolf Star: The E (ATM) variants of the Timber Wolf and Stormcrow, a Hammerhead, an Incubus 2, and a Shadow Hawk IIC 10, all at base 4/5 skills. To my horror, we were on the MRC’s custom “Fire and Ice” map, dotted with water, ice, and magma. Making matters worse, while Clamps always provided a handout with ice and magma rules whenever he ran that neoprene in Atlanta, no rules reference was given at Brawl, and the rules for magma aren't in either the BattleMech Manual or Total Warfare. Andrew and I pretty much immediately agreed to just treat the magma as impassible terrain and play around it rather than hunt down rules.

I kind of lost this mission in deployment. I noticed that the side of the map I initially sat down next to was almost completely walled off from the rest of the map by a Depth 1 river (though my opponent astutely pointed out that there were lanes past it on the extreme flanks of the map), and it panicked me. I asked for us to do the roll off to pick sides of the map, won the roll, and put myself on the opposite side of the map without actually examining it particularly closely… as it happened, it ALSO featured constrained movement lanes (though I shouldn’t have been all that scared of the ice; I don't think we stopped to look up the ice rules until round three of movement, and I assumed them to be worse than they are, so I was impeded more than I needed to be). My opponent then proceeded to drop both of his E-variant OmniMechs… which I have an enormous respect for / fear of… on the same flank, while the rest of the Star headed towards the other crash site. I was intimidated away from pushing hard on the ATM-mech side of the board, only really sending my Ostsol 7M over to harass from range, while I tried to bully my way onto the other objective.

ATM OmniMechs, uncontested on the western point. Credit: Lynn B.

The thing my opponent and I missed in the mission this time was that you weren’t supposed to be able to enter the same hex as the VTOL. And when the Stormcrow E was standing in the VTOL hex at the end of turn two and my opponent declared he was picking up both VIPs, the question I ran over to ask the TO wasn’t “Hey, is he supposed to be standing there?”, it was “Hey, can you really pick up two VIPs at the same time?” and he said “Yeah, as long as you’re adjacent to both.” Soooooo the Stormcrow one-turn grabbed both of the west-flank VIPs and promptly buggered off with them.

Meanwhile, I’d slammed into the other set of objectives with my Ostscout and Ostsol 8M at the same time my opponent reached them with the Vixen and SH IIC. What ensued was an awkward battle of attrition.

My Ostscout suffered a Series of Unfortunate Events before it was finally put out of its misery: It fell at the end of Round 2 shooting and fell on its head, knocking the pilot unconscious on snake eyes. She woke up at the end of the next round and tried to get back into the fight, but got knocked over again and destroyed its own right torso (not dying immediately, thanks to its Light Engine, but suffering). Then it got tagged in the head by the Vixen’s mighty three-damage punch and poor Sgt. Lena Dantalion, bless her heart, went unconscious again on the 5+ pilot damage check. She would never wake again.

The Royal Ostroc camped on the objectives and dared Andrew to kill it, only for me to awkwardly realize after its left torso fell off that it was crippled and wasn’t actually contesting the objective anymore.

I’m not as scared of the Hammerhead as many are since I’ve learned its weakness: Its rear torso armor is only about as heavy as a normal medium mech’s, and provides a shortcut into its internals. Unfortunately, I realized right before punching off one of its already-damaged side torsos that I’d flubbed my TSM heat control the turn before… I’d walked, but then fired my “neutral at a run” set of lasers instead of my “neutral at a walk” set of lasers, so my TSM was actually off and my punches were only doing six damage… so I scored engine crits and crippled it, but I didn’t actually bisect it, and it went on to survive the rest of the game (barely).

I finished off the Shadow Hawk IIC, but it was an inefficient Monty-Python’s-Black-Knight-esque delimbing, leaving me only enough time left to cripple the Vixen, not kill it. I did at least do enough damage to enough enemy mechs for my Ostroc 6R to finally pick up a VIP, scoring me the bonus points for picking up with my highest BV unit… just in time for my opponent to cap primary by getting both of the Stormcrow’s VIPs to his deployment edge.

Everybody just having a normal one on the eastern point. Credit: Lynn B.

I did, at least, score a moral victory on the other flank: While my Ostsol 7M found a Heavy Woods overlooking the E-Omnis’ VTOL and set up camp there to try to make it less hospitable to hold, the Timber Wolf E kept ambivalently scrambling around, not rushing the 7M, not committing hard to holding the VTOL, and not running off to properly join the other fight. That meant that the Ostsol 7M, by itself, was gradually winning the damage race against a fucking Timber Wolf, and then suddenly its victory accelerated: damage went internal on one of the Timby’s side torsos, scored two crits, and they both hit ammo slots. That meant four damage to the pilot from feedback, and the pilot had already taken one hit earlier in the fight from a stray ERML to the head. The Timber Wolf pilot went unconscious on the 11+ check, couldn’t stop his mech from falling over from the 20+ damage it had taken, and couldn’t attempt a seatbelt check to resist taking one more point of damage… the Timbie pilot was dead, and I had soloed a friggin Mad Cat E with an Ostsol 7M.

Purple Bird Strong.

Also I had a die break the laws of physics. Credit: Lynn B.

I won the shooting war overall in this round, but thoroughly lost the objective, and walked away with only 90 points. I knew that winning the whole enchilada was out of the question after that, but I hoped for a strong last round…

Chapter Three: almOST

The rules for mission three, "They Call Him Baba Yaga (Cut off the Head)." Credit: Tweezer

The tournament packet for Brawl in the Bluegrass gave no indication that Active Probes would be useful (the missions were completely blind and the optional rule to let probes ignore one point of woods penalty in shooting wasn’t on, so if a mission didn’t give them a purpose they wouldn’t have one at all), so for my table, as for many others, there was no reliable way for either of us to identify our opponent’s commander other than simply killing everyone.

My opponent, Matt, had brought a beefy FedSuns list with a frightening density of headchoppers: Iron Cheetah Prime, Templar III OD, Argus 8DX, Nightsky 5T, and Coyotl B. I recalled them all being at 4/5, and perhaps they were, but that would be 336 BV below the 10k limit, enough to buy piloting on someone. I know at least one player ran significantly below the BV cap, though, so… maybe Matt did, too?

We were on one of the blank “FieldTech” maps with some fairly sparse 3D terrain placed atop it. There wasn’t anything on the bottom of the FDM pieces to increase their traction against the neoprene, and no markings on the underlying map to indicate where terrain was supposed to be, so I fear a couple of the plateaus may have migrated a bit over the course of this game.

This game was frustrating. I made a hubristic tactical error early on and knowingly gave the Nightsky the Ostsol 8M’s back: It ended up triple-critting a side torso and putting two crits in the engine and one through a pulse laser, crippling the 8M for scoring purposes and cutting the LPL (or PPC) out of its firing patterns. Aside from that I felt I played well… gaming the 7-hex short ranges of the Cheetah and Templar to hold my Ostscout, Ostsol 7M, and Ostroc 6R at an 8-hex distance, baiting Matt into mostly shooting the sacrificial Royal Ostroc, mauling the Coyotl early because he kept moving it at a walk instead of running… except for that one slip, I was playing a decent game against a scary OpFor.

Live by the melee mech, die by the melee mech. Credit: Lynn B.

Thing is, my opponent was… not the fastest. Every weapon, every hit location was rolled with a single pair of dice. He did no target math in advance, and when I tried to give him his to-hit numbers to speed us up a bit, he walked back through the calculation anyway. Slowly. And, as I mentioned earlier, while this event started off with a three-hour round, the schedule kept slipping due to a slow score-entry and pairings process, and the rounds kept getting shorter.

We wrapped up four rounds with about twelve minutes to go and Matt declined my suggestion to try to push for a quick fifth.

I found out after the game ended that I’d come agonizingly close to accidentally killing his commander: His commander was not, in fact, the Iron Cheetah I’d assumed it to be, but the Templar III he kept leaving on 0 TMM, and the Ostsol 8M landed two TSM punches on the Templar in the last turn we played… but, as always throughout this tournament, I couldn’t hit the head (and while I believe I went internal on the torso with LB/X ammo, I didn’t confirm the crit [and the Templar III would’ve survived that explosion anyway, though at least it could’ve been crippled]). He could’ve revealed his commander to make me reroll the location or crit confirmation, but that would itself have triggered a point swing.

Pictured: My Ostsol 8M NOT killing my opponent's commander. Credit: Lynn B.

As it stood, though, neither of us had scored any kills, neither of us had revealed our commander, and I’d crippled just a Coyotl in exchange for my Ostsol 8M and Ostroc 2Cb. An incredibly low-scoring loss, with only a measly 47 points to my name. (I’d frankly forgotten a couple of the secondary objectives and didn’t push for all of them.)

Results: pOST mortem, part one

I suspect that the sloppy freehand on my Marik Militia unit emblems (which I really should’ve touched up and didn’t take the time to), my poor attempt at a “reflective armor” effect on the Ostroc 6R which came off as just fucking up the varnish, the rushed paint judging process, and perhaps my lack of a display board worked against me, and while the TO complimented me on the narrative of my pieces, I’ve seen no indication that I did particularly well in the paint judging. (And there was, of course, very stiff competition across a colossal 60-person field featuring a ton of notable players).

Reigning champ Vapor repeated the honor of 1st overall, with Brad / DevianID in second, and CanvasKnight in third.

I placed 33rd overall, in the bottom half of the field, and that’s with a small shot in the arm from finding a code-phrase in the packet to use at list submission, which only six other people noticed. While there was robust enough prize support for everyone to get something (with a few prizes left over!), the table was pretty picked over by the time I got to choose. As someone who missed the Kickstarters, however, I was very glad to pick up the rare Blood Asp Prime sculpt as my prize.

I also received acknowledgement in the “just for fun” part of the proceedings for being an Ostmann “Corporate Shill,” and that is a trophy I will display with pride!

Top hobby honors went to Steve’s Raven Alliance Alpha Galaxy…

Steve / Sol Roth's Raven Alliance Alpha Galaxy. Photo taken by Lynn B.

Second place in hobby/paint went to, I don’t know, some guy.

Defenders of the Fronc Arby's. Photo taken by Lynn B.

While I’m joking about second place, I genuinely don’t know who got third: While I have photos of everyone’s forces, I didn’t get names in the frame for all the pics, and I don’t see “Les B.” in any of my pictures.

In lieu of the actual third-place painter, I’ll share my own personal “Holy Shit!” trophy winner: the friggin ‘Mech-scale dropship which dropped off Mike Q.’s Sword of Light lance!

Mike Q. shows how big a display board can get. Photo taken by Lynn B.

Final Thoughts: pOST mortem, part two

I had a blast running the Ostlist, even in defeat. I’ve got at least one more gimmick list planned for another upcoming tournament (with cosplay included?), but the big learning I’m taking away from the Ostlist run is that a list doesn’t actually NEED an anchor assault to play (most) tournament missions, especially from short edge, and going wide with mobile threats is a viable play. I’m currently investigating upping the damage and lowering the effective range of my mobile threats and seeing how a more fast-striker oriented list can do: watch this space for future developments.

TSM mechs remain feast-or-famine pieces, but the Ostsol 8M is a solid inclusion. Its pulse-heavy arsenal lets its shooting do some actual work while the heat is on, its speed is excellent, and TSM-boosted 60-tonner punches are one of the most efficient paths to removing heads with melee weapons, which has value as an intimidation tactic even if you never manage to cash in on that potential. Shame about that Ost-typical arm armor, though; that’s really its Achilles heel. Maybe try shooting it in side arcs if you’re playing against one to up the chances of taking an arm.

I’ve been a hater of the Clan ER Large Laser in the past, but I’m a big girl and I can admit when I’m wrong: it’s a very good weapon as long as you can sink the heat from it. The Light Gauss also has more utility than most people grant it when they first see its stats. Just ignore the name and pretend it’s an ER Autocannon or something, I swear it’s a decent gun.

Brawl in the Bluegrass was a ton of fun, but the best part was the experience of being there. Chatting with new and old friends (shout out to my new friend Erin; I wish your Blood Asp better luck next time), taking part in the IWM tour, meeting Shrapnel editor Philip Lee and renewing my acquaintance with author Jason Hansa, checking out everybody’s sweet paint jobs, even making heart eyes at all the prizes I didn’t win… the whole environment around the tournament was a blast.

Massive respect to TO Tweezer for organizing an event on this grand a scale and having it run as smoothly as it did, but I do hope incoming TO (and reigning champ) Vapor continues to iterate on this foundation. The TOs handled all the BV math for killed/crippled combat points in this tournament, which I understand as a safeguard against players doing the math badly and for speeding things up on the player-score-submission end, but something about either that step or the formulae underlying the pairing process made every round’s pairings after the first get posted late, and made the final rankings run a bit late as well, which contributed to the “time crunch” feel of the tournament. Also, like at Southern Assault V, the TOs really seemed to bite off more than they could chew when it came to paint judging timelines. If you need to make the lunch break longer, just make the lunch break longer, or maybe divide the labor differently (something like the system Atlantic City Open will be using, perhaps, where a quicker-to-judge basic rubric winnows the field so the judges can focus most of their time and attention on the top cut).

Sportsmanship scores were a bit of a miss here, since they were written on a shared scoresheet in view of your opponent and thus almost everyone scored perfect 10s because no one wanted to be an asshole, but that’s definitely a known and acknowledged issue. I don’t want to bang my speed-of-play drum too loudly and monotonously in these articles, but I do think BattleTech would benefit from… I’ll say an evolving understanding of sportsmanship. I think we’re pretty good as a community at the baseline “don’t be a dick, approach the game in good faith, accept correction when you make mistakes” kind of stuff, but I think people are less conscious of what they can do in their own prep and their own gameplay to make things easier on their opponent. Reviewing the rules for equipment you’re bringing in advance. Making sure you have the necessary supplies. (My first round opponent had neither a pencil to mark his sheets nor any cluster tables aside from the ones in the back of Total Warfare, which he hadn’t opened in advance despite having ATM-9s and LRM-20s as the primary armaments on two of his mechs.) Making sure player-facing information is complete. (Neither my first round nor third round opponent had written their Gunnery and Piloting skills into the blanks on their sheets.) Putting clear markings to indicate facing on ambiguously-posed mechs’ bases. (My first round opponent had a King Crab in a full torso twist with no base markings to reinforce the fact that its feet, not its torso, were pointing forward.) Promoting clarity in the use of TMM dice. (I overheard discourse at a neighboring table over whether or not a Battle Armor unit’s TMM die included the +1 for being a smol target, for example, and I’m sure all of us have played against that guy who has a completely different color-coding system than the default CGL’s onboarding material promotes.) Streamlining play where possible. (For example, there’s no functional reason why my third round opponent couldn’t have at least rolled the Iron Cheetah’s Gauss and ERPPCs together against any target from 3-14 hexes away, other than the Reflective Armor Ostroc, since they’d be doing the same exact damage on the same exact numbers.)

“Don’t call your opponent a slur” is basic human decency, and “be genial” is an elementary social skill, but the concept of “sportsmanship” is bigger, broader, and more detailed than baseline politeness, and I think we should start aiming for those higher goals as a community. I’ll see what I can do to start with improving myself!

Next on the docket for me is the Eastern Assault Classic tournament at the Richmond Open in early May, where I’m currently looking at returning to a Clan list for the first time since WarZone Atlanta in February 2025. I look forward to seeing you after the dust settles on that event!

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Tags: tournament report | Battletech