The rules out now by Catalyst have cleaned it up some, but honestly, the game is as clunky as ever. I still play it in its newest form from time to time, but IMHO it needed an overhaul and never got one. He played 40k 2nd Ed and Epic, but somehow he kept it to himself and his brother I was introduced to Epic in 93 in college, but I didnt enjoy it, and I only realized that it WAS Epic a few years ago in one of those "Oh my Gosh" moments :)īattletech was my passion, but I got tired of the randomness of it. My main gaming partner now, who was also part of my Battletech group (it was how we met as early teens) had a different experience.
Weekly trips to my local hobby store introduced me to all sorts of games beyond feeding my BT needs, but I never heard of (or at least was aware of) Warhammer 40k in any of its variants until the late 90's.
I was addicted in all sorts of ways, owning nearly every model, novel, rulebook and computer game, plus fan-club extras like blueprints, etc, and I bought haevily into the CCG in the mid-90's (even going to GenCon's World Championships in Milwaukee). I played Battletech exclusively from 1986 until 93 when I moved off to college. Coincidentally, that was around the same time I started noticing Warhammer stuff as a big deal taking up a lot of space in the shops. I think BT had the rules changes combined with a loss of interest in the Mecha and anime type stuff, plus the loss of the famous "unseen" mechs which were the most popular. The idea that what killed BT was the change in the rules doesn't add up when one considers the evidence of other major games going through drastic changes and still surviving and growing (AD&D, Warhammer both are two big examples). It wasn't until 1991 that GW dropped everything and refocused itself on the core of Warhammers 40k and Fantasy. When BT was big, Rogue Trader was still a small game in GW's inventory of games. Not to mention that they didn't tie up their publishing in simply re-writing existing books. Nobody complained that there were too many books to get, unlike in the 90s with AD&D 2nd ed and their accessory books. BattleTech had so many books whether fiction or rules wise it was silly. game basis, I guess it is up to the beholder and it is difficult to compare two games without looking at the revenue stream generated as the great decider. No one mentions or compares themselves to Fasa/Wizkids/Catalyst. Everyone from any other game company/large-push miniatures game compares itself to the 40k success. Getting one book published is a major thing, whereas GW/Forgeworld/Black Library turn out collector level publishing as a matter of course.Ĥ0k wins the revenue and popularity game hands-down. Just keeping that haul organized is serious.įASA never came close to that despite the dedicated fans it had. You don't have whole stores, injection molding, heavy publishing and the rest all essentially under one roof without serious revenue generation. It might have been first, but let's be honest, Battletech is a copy of the Dougram Battle of Stanrey/Kalnock boardgame (which was first) Americanized and better supported.Ĭ'mon guys. I doubt Battletech was even on the radar – or if it was, it was on the same fringes of 40k's radar as Warzone may have been. Battletech at its highest point likely was comparable in revenue for maybe a year (91? 92?), but 40k just left that and went into a whole other plane of success. So I think at BT height GW knew it was there, but did not market Epic enough to deal with it. So GW just did Epic in spurts and focused on 40K
Close to the same scale but Epic never seemed to be as wide spread as BT already was. If anything BT was trashing GW Epic game. Plus the fact that the games were very different scales. GW didn't have the problem as FASA by then as GW had a marketing scheme that would force retailers to not stock their competition for discount prices. So many BT players took the loss of some of their favorite mechs pretty hard, and then in introduction of the Clans followed by some pretty serious competitor mech games, Heavy Gear, CAV, Mekton. Some how GW escaped this notice, I mean come on we all saw the Warhammer/Excaliber's legs in the Rogue Trader book. What hurt BT the most was the Harmony Gold lawsuit over some of the mech designs, there were some mechs people just loved to use because of their anime origins. But BT was around before 40K was in my area, so it did much better. Battletech's problem was it was heavy on record keeping and the larger the armies the worse it got.