So the box sets are the main entry point to Battletech these days as you get rules, maps, and mini's all in one go. But what about after you have that? You picked up a box, played a few games, decided that you want to do more ... what now? There are options.
One fairly easy option is the Battlemech Manual which is one of the newer books in the line. It contains all of the rules you need to play fights with mechs. It's about 150 pages long and is ridiculously comprehensive. This one has all of the relevant rules - the sequence of play, movement & terrain, ranged and physical combat, plus environmental and battlefield types and effects - which take up about half of the book. The other half is all of the equipment for mechs in the game and covers all eras, including some stuff I do not recognize which I assume is from the later "Eras" of the game that have come out since I let it go years back. A short final section covers "common misconceptions" and discusses specific situations that come up in play that people seem to get wrong. These kinds of reviews and example are great and I have enjoyed seeing them in 40K "Rules Commentary" sections so it is a good feeling to see them here.
This book will let you run any kind of mech fight and isn't that what most of us are looking for in a Battletech game? This is the most recent wording of the rules out there and should be the easiest to use. It's a great product. If you have a boxed set and want to do more this is probably the way to go next. That said, it is priced about the same as the next book which has ... more.
Bonus Points: This book contains a section on "Quirks". Quirks are a section that covers all of those minor things about a mech that aren't really part of a particular rule or piece of equipment but that give it flavor. One example: the Warhammer's should mounted searchlight. It's a holdover from the Robotech/Macross model but it's been there from day one and some earlier versions of the rules covered it but it was always kind of a weird outlier. Now it's a quirk - "Searchlight" that has a few rules tied to it. There are positive quirks like "Ubiquitous", "Easy to Maintain", and "Rugged". There are also negative quirks like "Bad Reputation", "Cramped Cockpit", and "Weak Head Armor".
Now in a typical one-off fight these may not matter a whole lot but in an ongoing campaign - particularly an RPG campaign like I am running right now - these are just great. More flavor without a complicated system to drive it is exactly how this kind of thing should be handled and I applaud it being included here.
Well here it is, the big daddy of the BT rulebooks. This one is 300 pages long and covers everything the Batllemech Manual does and then adds a bunch more. Besides what I listed above you now have section on vehicles (that's non-mech vehicles like tanks and artillery), infantry (foot, mounted, and battle armor), protomechs, and aerospace combat - this has an entirely separate chunk in the movement chapter covering space movement and then a later chapter covering the units and how they fight and take damage. This mainly covers fighters and dropships - not the big boys - but those are the parts most likely to show up in a mech-focused game. There is also a chapter on scenario design which is something game has needed for a long time which gives examples of selecting maps, units, and victory conditions. This is a solid section and gives more options than the typical basic approach of just blowing up each others' mechs for a few hours.
Now there are additional books out there to add more rules for things like extended campaigns and space operations but those are more like add-on systems for doing particular things. This book is generally the one-stop shop for all things Battletech when it comes to getting out some map sheets and rolling some dice.
Bonus Points: There is a short section near the back that covers "Mechanized Battle Armor" This is guys in powered armor suits (like Clan Elementals) grabbing some handholds and riding along on the outside of a mech. This section in particular covers all of the bad things that can happen if, say, you get shot while they are clinging to your mech ... or if you fall down while carrying them ... or drop prone on purpose ... or run into something. In my experience this is a fairly uncommon situation but this shows you the level of things included in this book.
One note - neither of these books contains the construction rules, they are strictly about using what is already built. For full building things rules you need the Tech Manual.
This is 350 pages of mech construction, vehicle construction, aerospace unit construction, battle armor, etc. Years ago much of this kind of information was spread out among different boxes and books but this covers it all now. There is a lot of lore on various pieces of gear such as how it was developed and when it came into service which is great for an RPG campaign but the vast majority of it is design sequences for the various elements of the BT universe. I love this stuff but it's definitely more relevant after you have been playing for a while.
So there are the two big main rulebooks for Battletech plus the big construction book.. There are other books which I will cover in some additional posts - TRO's, the Advanced Operations books, and of course the RPG options. For now though if trying to decide between these it really comes down to what ou expect to play for the immediate future: Are you good focusing on mech to mech combat or do you want to go full-spectrum and pull in tanks and infantry and air support and the rest? If you are new or just getting back into the game I think the 'mech manual is a great escalation point and I would go there after the main boxed game. The tech manual is a serious piece of work but I would look at it after picking up one of the major rulebooks for sure.
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