A fan community for all things BattleTech, Mechwarrior, etc.
Yes, paint them how you like!
If nothing else, you can claim they are a local lance/regiment that was called into service or something along those lines if you care for in game accuracy.
Sweet! I thought I remembered hearing BattleTech was generally pretty cool about "your dudes".
So, while I've got you, I saw the rules for building your own Mech. Do you just generally find a model that's close enough/has the right weapons? I guess they're all the same size on the tabletop (as opposed to Knights in 40k or certain Titans in Adeptus Titanicus), right?
I guess I'm just trying to figure out how model-agnostic it is on a scale of GW to OPR lol
While I can't speak for any local players in your area, the game has historically been pretty good at promoting proxies for play and not worrying about being exactly right. Hell, most of the artwork is 'close enough' on a lot of models as weapon systems look wildly different from mech to mech.
In game they are all the same 'size' as they are approximately the same size and are treated the same for terrain heights and other rules. Basically the opposite of 40k except for that one 40k edition where they did size categories like BT which I liked but apparently the general 40k player base hated.
Cool! Thanks again.
Just to add: the official rules say you can play with coins or dice or scraps of paper instead of official miniatures. Proxying is EXTREMELY common because nobody in their right mind would say you can't field a unit you like just because you didn't buy the mini when it was last sold 20 years ago. About half of the games I've played have had a proxy or two. It's less common but still valid to use Lego Minifigs or something, the only key is that you be able to tell them apart and know which side is the front.
As for painting: I've never met anyone who cares in 25 years of playing/being in the fandom. Many people play with unpainted Mechs and very few field the same Mechs every time so it doesn't make that much sense to paint them cohesively. It's fun for display it to have a theme but it makes absolutely no difference.
Welcome to Battletech!
By the way I got some special dice to use as markers for the incoming and outgoing modifiers and movement tracking. The ones I bought look like this but there are other types that work well. It really speeds the GATOR calculations up!
Oh nice, I was thinking about movement/modifier dice. I've got a ton of d6s obviously but those could be handy.
Thanks, happy to be here :)