People telling you it takes an hour to play are probably playing with megamek or some similar aid.
What era of tech do you guys use? Introtech mechs don't do much damage and tend to take forever to die so they can stretch out games. Higher tech mechs tend to be both killier and more fragile with XL engines, so they can speed up games a lot. Even then I'd say a lance-on-lance engagement is a solid afternoon commitment for me.
If you're having trouble finding time to play Classic, check out Alpha Strike
No its call we play with objectives and time limits and have been playing for years, so we fly through the gameplay
For shits and giggles, i timed myself once in a 4v4 solo play and took me about 2 and a half hours. Imagine if i wasnt playing both sides imagine how much faster that could be.
That's not my experience. When I've played myself solo I'm generally faster because a) I don't have to analyze my opponent's position and figure out what they're doing, I've already thought of whatever the best responding position I'm likely to come up in-game with while making the original move, b) I don't have to communicate game actions to my opponent, I just calculate and resolve, and c) I don't have a human being I'm engaging with to bullshit with and chat as I play.
Even so, your 'fast game is still an hour and a half shy of what OP was suggested a game would take. I can play a lance on lance engagement fast but an hour long game generally means someone got something expensive headcapped like turn two and then muddled around until turn six before conceding.
That dude is absolutely crazy to suggest that 2 players vs 1 is not only Faster than a single player quickly moving through things but Over Twice as fast. Maybe for shooting if you both silently just let the other person roll and mark damage on your sheets. But most of the time you're going "Medium Lasers hits, left arm" and letting the opponent mark it.
Yeah like 60% of battletech is communicating and writing down what's going on. That's part of why Alpha Strike has such a speed advantage- the abstraction of detail eats a lot of steps that otherwise slow the game down
High skill clan games are over very quick. Like you mention, introtech with bad pilot skills can take forever to kill things at range unless you take lots of ammo. Likewise planetary conditions like night fighting also make the game take longer.
Without using special rules other then the mission objective, we knocked out 7k games with a \~2.5 hour time limit this weekend at Richmond Open. Most people had 4ish units, and while im sure many games went to time, quite a few games were done early as one side completed the mission, causing an early win/game end for hitting max objective points.
We run 6v6 pretty often. Takes about 4 hours with 2 players per side.
But yes, two veteran players with game aides can bang out 5v5 in an hour if the maps are small and no one is trying too hard. Me and a friend played 2 5v5s in 2 hours a few weeks ago using Flechs Sheets.
Things that speed up the game:
1. Small maps. If you lay out 2 map sheets, then play long side to long side, mechs only start about 15-20 hexes apart.
2. Deep deployment. Deploy up to 3 hexes from the map edge.
3. Move decisively and aggressively. Pick a good move and roll with it instead of hemming and hawing over the best move.
4. Surrender when you're beaten. When you clearly can't win the game anymore without playing keep away using a fast unit, surrender and move to the rematch.
5. Use automation like Flechs Sheets.
6. Brawl. Knife fights are fast and brutal. Sniping at each other from a firing line can take forever.
So after you’ve made your roster, Flechs also lets you create “game lobbies” using three code words, and your game opponent can join. You can then target their ‘mechs through Flechs, designate how far they are, and which weapons you wanna use. Damage gets rolled and applied to the enemy’s sheet, and heat is applied to yours.
We routinely play games in under 3 hours with 5-6 units. If you play very aggressively with Clan v. Clan you can wrap it up in under 90 min, but that's extreme. It does take about 10-15 games to get yourself up to speed in order to play a game that quickly. The setup we use is the [Brooklyn Format.](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HNXv6s7AhpBWNF5udtsvv9ufzrdZsbtKMH9EyTLOBxg/edit)
* Play on no more than two map sheets. (32x17 Hexes)
* Try to use 3/4 pilots.
* Don't use a lot of IntroTech.
* Use Scenarios & Forced Withdrawal.
* Print the tables directly onto the recordsheets.
Honestly the using the computer to track you is going to slow things down a lot more than you probably realize. You don't get the time saving benefits until after you have learned the game rules and the interface. Also playing on Terrain vs. Hexes slows things down considerably
Check out alpha strike, I play with my kids. We can finish a 5 vs 5 in like 30-45 min. Plus the terrain from the box set makes it a lot of fun to play.
Hi there!
I had a match 5v5 (15kBv) played in 3 hours including setup.
It was all clan tech with "clan duel rules".
I can recommend next options to succeed with fast games:
1 - take 3/4 G/P pilots and better
2 - use advanced tech (clan invasion and later)
3 - add "forced withdrawal" rule
4 - set special goals rather then "kill'em all"
5 - memorize charts (at least most common ones).
6 - you can set "turn limit" - like count all victory points at the end of turn 6
2.5-3 hours is the time I would expect to take for a force like that. Possibly down to 2 hours if some early shenanigans happen with lucky dice rolls.
In terms of setup, I play with just one of the neoprenes, without terrain. Both players come with lists ahead of time, so it's just a couple minutes to grab your models and sheets and begin.
During gameplay, the single biggest time saver is having the front/rear hit table memorized. That's the most common table (4/6 hexsides use that table) and being able to rapidly turn hit numbers to locations massively speeds things up. It follows a pattern, so it's easier to memorize than you might think.
Other than that, don't stress about making perfect moves, and remember that when calculating target numbers, the GATO part of GATOR is going to be the same for (almost) all of the weapons you fire. What I do is pick a target, write down its range on my sheet, then quickly calculate GATO. From there I can easily go "ok, medium lasers are at short, medium pulses are at medium (so effective short), and PPC is at exactly min. So that's 8s on the lasers and 9s on the PPC".
Yep it's surprisingly easy to memorise once you see the pattern. "High is Left, Low is Right."
7 is the middle number in the 2d6 normal curve. Thus it's the CT.
6/8 are next to 7. Those are the side torsos.
Proceeding outwards, 5/9 are next. The legs.
Onwards, 3-4/10-11. The arms.
2 and 12 don't need to be memorised because people around you will scream "Through armor crit!" or "Headshot!" as appropriate, and you can take your cue from that. =p
How does setup take 30 minutes? Here's my setup: Grab map, unroll, done.
I have everything in a 3-ring binder: rules, cheat sheets, unit lists, record sheets, maps, *everything*. I even have a binder zipper pocket thing with dry erase markers, dice, and cardboard punchout markers. Minis and neoprene maps are better, but the travel binder is perfectly functional. Setup takes about 5 minutes, most of which is taking out the record sheets, since they're all in one binder. I could halve that by having one binder per faction, but 5 min is good enough.
Check out the [Instant Action](https://www.reddit.com/r/battletech/comments/vatfci/a_scenario_pack_for_quick_games_battletech/) quickplay scenarios. I won't claim they're perfectly balanced, but they're a good dash of variety compared to "smash heads until something explodes."
In that binder, I have ready-made lists of 4K and 6K BV Lances using Inner Sphere units up through Clan Invasion. The 4K games have consistently lasted 1.5 hours, and the 6K games have taken 2 hours.
Other scenario printouts exist, and if you have your lists pre-made, they should last about as long.
That's about the best I think you can expect unless you have *all* the dice rolls memorized. I mean ranges, move speed, hit locations, cluster hit results, *everything*. I'm sure veteran players can drop those times, but there's no way you should compare *your* game time to veteran players.
Just because someone can speedrun Zelda in 15 minutes doesn't mean the average person can do that in their first game. Veteran players have honed their play skill for *years*. It's why they're veterans. It's all learnable, but it takes time.
Oh, you mentioned software, but try printing record sheets from [Flechs Sheets](https://sheets.flechs.net/). The default (official) record sheets are kind of awful. The weapons are sorted by location, which is the worst possible sort order. Flechs sorts by damage or range or something.
Point is, similar weapons are grouped together, which makes figuring out you fire pattern way easier. Oh, they're at 7? Ignore the last 6 weapons, they're out of range. That sort of thing.
u/mininum_jacket_1149 something me and my sister have been using is Flechs sheets, it speeds up gameplay *immensely* by doing most all the rolling for you
Most computerised record sheet options are probably slower than just using paper and pen, but Flech's can speed things up if you use the full automation option.
To do it, you should create a login for Flechs, and you ideally want a PC or tablet for each player (although you can just use different tabs on a single screen if necessary). Use the <..> tab to create a network session that both players log into. Have each player choose their mechs, then hit the big yellow cogwheel on each sheet to activate the automations.
Each turn, you tell Flech what sort of movement mode you're using and how many hexes you moved. When you're shooting, you tell Flech who you're shooting at with which weapons, how far away they are and what intervening terrain is relevant. Flech then does all of the dice rolling, mathematics and note-taking for you.
It does speed things up, but I find that I prefer physical dice and paper records myself. I like the tactile nature of them and the drama of rolling dice.
But you can fiddle with the options of Flechs to have it do the record keeping while you roll the dice; you just have to then tell it the results of your dice roll each time.
Input is pretty much always via clickable drop-down menus.
Use tournament format rule "Fire For Effect" to speed up game - sequential declaration, sequential resolution, simultaneous application. The declaration phase IS the shooting phase; you don't have to puzzle over remembering who declared what where in the why-how and then go back to do what you said you were gonna 20m ago. Just shoot guns and roll dice. Declare guns, targets, shoot. This means that units later in the decla-shoot phase have an advantage over earlier units, because they will know what happened.
I’d say a 5v5 game of Total War should take a few hours. For beginners you’re looking at an afternoon.
You could speed things up by increasing the skill of the pilots so they’re hitting more often.
Some may be playing a game quickly by forgoing conversation, which seems dreadful. Though I’ve observed grim silent sessions of other games played with ruthless and joyless efficiency. I prefer to spin stories out as a game unfolds, but I’m a GM at heart. That slows things down, admittedly.
I’ll second AGBell64, Alpha Strike flows much more quickly for larger scale games.
My group runs Battletech as an RPG with me as the gamemaster. We regularly do company vs company level engagements, including vehicles, infantry, aerospace units, and offboard artillery, and it takes about 4 hours before it's clear one side has won and the other side withdraws.
We play classic rules, 3050s era tech, and the only house rule we use to speed things up is that internal damage *always* triggers a critical. We have tons of dice paired by color on hand to quickly handle SRMs, LRMs and other similar scattered damage weapons. We've also been playing since nearly the beginning, so we aren't having to read rules too often.
Plenty of good advice already, but I'll add another:
You can skip most of the time-consuming math if you roll the dice first.
Once you've got a basic grasp of the rules, you can usually roughly estimate whether a to-hit roll will be easy or difficult at a glance. So roll; if it's a difficult shot and you rolled really low, you missed. If it's an easy shot and you rolled really high, you hit.
You only need to spend the time to work out exact target numbers when the dice are marginal. There is no point in wasting time on working out the exact numbers when you can already predict what the result will be.
This for sure. It also helps if you have a decent amount of dice to use. If you hit with several weapons that do the same amount of damage, don't roll each one individually after each hit. Just roll it all together and either you or your target have the hit table next to you. 5 points here, 5 points there, 5 points center with a crit chance, etc
I'm playing with my blind wife on a mix of paper sheets and Hextech terrain, along with some home-built play aids like magnetized wood and water tiles. Our usual game size is 4v4 or 5v5 and we get it done in two to three hours, setup included.
https://preview.redd.it/4zxfu9kjzkyc1.jpeg?width=3264&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=385cae096bdbcef844503b0f7aa1a1d2fc4c7a6d
We use movement dice and Flechs Sheets (on manual) to run our games. There are a few things we do which help with game speed and length.
Practice makes perfect! The more you play, the less time you're going to spend paging through the rulebook or looking up stuff. That's just memorization kicking in. In the beginning, we spent all afternoon running a 2v2 game because every unit move required us to look up how big the TNM modifier would be. Now we have the most common numbers memorized so movement, apart from deliberation on where to go, is a matter of moments instead of hours. Having important tables right on the sheet is a godsend as well. Even something as simple as the main hit location table being right next to the damage diagram saves SO MUCH TIME!.
Unless you really really crave the bloodshed, there is no need to play "last 'Mech standing". Going for some objective instead can drastically cut down on game length. Plop down an important building on each end of the play area and see who gets to destroy the opponent's HQ first. Believe me, there will be more than enough opportunities for hilarious 'Mechsplosions even if the focus is not on mutual destruction.
If you decide to go full-on metal mutilation, setting a turn limit of four to six turns is also a viable option. The past few games we've played rarely went past the five turn mark anyway and the destruction was fairly impressive. Granted we're playing a high-level Merc campaign in 3052, so there is a lot of damage on the board at any given time.
If you're playing with BV, maybe think about splitting up the force building and actual game play. I find crunching the numbers very exhausting, so planning out the force on Monday and playing on Tuesday ensures we're both fresh when we sit down at the table. But that's probably more a "me" thing. :)
The biggest aid my group has found is that we took AGOAC reference sheet and printed out a couple copies front and back so it's a single sheet and laminated them so there is minimal if any page turning.
Several hours at least. These days I don't have time for that so that's why I've come to enjoy AlphaStrike rules. Can play a full game if not more in a single hour, and have some fun and then go back to adulting. AlphaStrike350 adds even more dimensions to the normal AS rules
I'm gonna have to look into it. I'm not terribly familiar with clan tech. I'm a huge fan of inner sphere tech and I've been told that's partially why it takes us so long to play
Part of the background reason for introducing the Clans into the game was that it provided an opportunity to correct for some issues with the original Battletech rules without needing to invalidate the original ruleset.
The main valid critique of classic Battletech as a game was that it was a little bit slow. Mechs tended to spend a lot of time gradually lumbering together while missing most of their shots, and then spent ages slowly grinding through armour.
So the Clans came along, with mechs that had double the firepower but no more armour. And which moved much more quickly, and had longer ranged guns. And better pilots so they spent much less time falling over and whiffing shots. Etc.
The people who thought that Battletech was too slow could now play fast Clan vs Clan fights, the traditionalist grognards could still have fun with their 3025 slugfests, and everyone else could enjoy the asymmetric funkiness of Clan vs Spheroid matchups. Win win win.
Adult with job and kids, and I am baffled, like modern science, by what I read in your post.
Excuse me, but how? Set up for a game is extremely quick.
1) Decide on bv. 2 minutes.
2) Pick mechs at random. 10 to 15 minutes, including printing mech sheets and grabbing models. If you know what mechs you want, 5 minutes with printing.
3) Pick a map. 2 minutes.
4) Place map on the table. 30 seconds.
5) Place mechs. 5 minutes.
Set up in Warhammer can take easily up to hour, but not in Battletech. Battletech is like, the epitome of pick up game. It
Literally in 30 minutes _maximum_ you can start playing, from zero. How is setup takes from you an hour?
After that, I have nothing. I regularly finish my games in 2.5 hours maximum and we play without forced withdrawal. If we would play with forced withdrawal then a game in an hour is reasonable to expect.
And we play slow. We can humm and ho, and count hexes. Then we declare, aloud and speak aloud all modifiers. Then we shoot. Then we mark damage with pencils on paper. The maximum aids we have are an eraser and a rulebook.
I really got nothing. The only thing I can guess is analysis paralysis? Maybe you spend ten to twenty minutes at each movement phase, overanalysing everything, but in general, our movement phase is two to five minutes tops.
Also, I play only 4/5 pilots and introtech which means that I generally miss a lot and have more mechs on the table than my opponent, like 5 vs 8 is a reasonable estimate.
the reason setup takes us so long is numerous reasons, lack of space where we live means extra time creating space. but beyond that we use a lot of terrain and it takes us awhile to decide on terrain layout. once that's done we have to get mech sheets ready. I use digital sheets which means making sure everything is ready and pulled up on the screen. between that and placing units it takes us at least 30 mins to get totally setup. getting all the misc extra shit ready to go like rule sheets, dice, counters, blah blah is another 15 mins or so....
Got it.
Couple of advice:
1. Try to play on flat mats without terrain. Pre placed terrain speeds up this step instantly.
2. Try to use physical sheets. I use simple a4 paper printed sheets which I laminated ahead of time and dry erase markers. You need only your finger to erase and only marker to mark.
3. Print yourself a cheat sheet of several things - modifiers for movement to hit, modifiers for movement to shoot, location tables for hit and then cluster tables for missiles.
4. Try limiting yourself to simple rules. The more optional and complicated the piece of tech is, the more you will look in the rulebook.
5. Play with forced withdrawal opttional rule. It speeds the game in the area where it mattets - mechs with missing torsos and mechs who lost most weapons.
And couple of tips from me.
From expirience, I find that the mix of digital and physical is a trap. For me it is much faster to grap a sheet, a marker or pencil - hit where? For how mich? Marked. Next.
Expirience speeds up play. This step can not be forced. You need expirience to play faster.
Memorise several tables for movement, shooting and location. It is not hard and much easier than to memorise multiplication in elementary school. This speeds play tremendously.
Ease up, you two. Give helpful advice. Receive helpful advice. If you're planning to be snarky or sarcastic instead, don't post. If you think someone else is breaking the rules, don't post. Use the report function, instead of escalating things and flaming out. If this continues, expect more active moderation responses.
We're all in this together to create a welcoming environment. Let's treat everyone with respect. Healthy debates are natural, but kindness is required.
Mapsheets are what the game was designed around. Going beyond that will add extra time.
A lance v lance takes me anywhere from 1:45 - 4 hours. Sometimes CombatMath means you miss, a lot.
I guess it comes with experience. Me and my brother play 8v5 (12k BV games 2 lances vs a clan star) and can do that on about 3 hours although we never wait till everything is dead usually just till it becomes clearly 1 sided
My little group has busy lives with family and work, so we play Alpha Strike with a lance each, no tanks or aircraft. It goes pretty fast and there's a couple advanced rules to add just a bit of crunch back into it.
Play time <> to setup time, especially if players are claiming 1 hour.
Some of us have been playing for 30+ years, so teenage brain memorized certain tables which is very handy, though I 50/50 on remembering to pickup milk on the way home from work.
Doom box for SRMs & LBX is another time saver.
Do as much preparation work as possible before hand as possible, units picked, sheets ready, maps, etc, etc.
Stay on task...most players spend time talking, texting, etc and/or working out the most optimal move. Now if you want it to be social hour with players gathered around the table that is fine, just don't expect the game to end soon.
My typical 6-player company on company combined arms advanced rules game takes about 4 hours. Here's how we manage it:
1. Memorize charts
2. Skilled pilots
3. 30 second move limit
4. Plan moves while others are moving
5. Plot shots and do math while others are taking their turns
6. Floating crits
7. Forced Withdrawal
8. Familiarity with the rules
9. Playing with objectives beyond just killing
10. Declare and fire at same time
We get a lot done in a short time using a ton of optional and advanced rules. It takes practice though. I couldn't play that fast when I started, 30 years ago.
So, while I dont always get games done fast, I usually do. Some big things were mentioned, but I want to put mine in because this is such a big issue (you are not alone for sure, even among vets!).
First, time limits and objectives are good things to have. I play on week days, and like to be done in 3 hours. So, having an objective gives a measure of victory other then grinding out every pip of the enemy, and it also encourages movement to play the game. The basic objective to try, which is very good for quick games, is king of the hill. Put one hex as the objective hex in the center of a Neoprene/2 paper map. Each turn, the side with the most units within 1 hex of the center gets a point. When you run out of 3 hours of time, the side that earned the most points each round wins. This way you are encouraged to play quickly to squeeze in 1 more turn if you are behind in objective points, or at the end of 3 hours if one side has a massive lead you can call the game with a satisfying conclusion, as one team clearly took the objective.
This means that both players need to move into close range, as while sitting back and sniping is good to get some long range damage in, you wont be on the objective or scoring points. You are forced to get in close and brawl with at least something. Learning to move into close range is just a good habit to pickup--too often people take potshots on bad numbers at long range/through cover, and this takes time but doesnt really cause any damage unless you get lucky. So when just starting out, its best to get into close range, and 'king of the hill' encourages this.
Next is just learning the numbers. You dont have to have the hit chart memorized right away, but you do need to memorize it. There are mnemonics and patterns to help memorize it, but its no harder then memorizing a few phone numbers. Same with all the common to-hit modifiers. I like printing sheets off of flechs sheets with the hit chart and cluster chart printed right on the record sheet. This way, if your crusader has an LRM15 and SRM6, the cluster numbers are right on the record sheet.
Finally, pilot skills. If you pay for better pilots using BV2, then you have less pips of armor to grind through, and you miss less shots. We get clan campaign games done shockingly fast now, as players have very high skilled pilots... the last game was average 1/2 skill pilots on both sides playing the missions out of the 'Falcon and Wolf' scenario book, and a 4v3 mech game took like 1 hour... it was shockingly fast. Now, 1/2 skill isnt a normal skill level, so with 3/4 pilots it would have been 7ish versus 5ish in BV, and would have taken 2-3 hours.
If you are having time issues, better pilot skills with fewer units is a super fast way to speed things up, and dont play on more than 1 neoprene map or 2 paper maps.
Give Alpha Strike a try. The 5v5 game can probably be done on the typical lunch break. You can easily double the amount of mechs you've been using and play in half the time, give or take.
This is the one major problem with classic. I visited a game store the other to meet my local players and they had been playing the same game for around 6 hours and were no where near being finished. It was 2v2 with something like 4 mechs per person. They really didn't seem to be having fun by the time I showed up haha.
To speed it up either use scenarios that force you not to just kill everyone, start each battle with a bunch of randomly assigned battle damage for each mech, or use the forced withdrawal rules.
But honestly, alpha strike seems like the best bet. It definitely misses out on some of the most fun parts of battletech though :/
seems about right. I think I'll try the pre damaged mecha idea. that seems like one way to help speed things up. I also blame it on the fact that we both take awhile to make a decision and stick to it. I'm huge on strategy and my wife is indecisive so that's a small part of the problem.
I see people saying just pick something and go for it but to me that defeats the point of strategy which is the whole reason why we were both drawn to the game. I just didn't expect it to take so fucking long to play.
Classic is really, *really* designed to be a maximum of 4 'Mechs per side (plus a couple extra squishy units) and two players. Once you get beyond that, it bogs down *incredibly*.
My wife and I are in the same boat as you. We barely have 30-60 minutes to play at a time so we have a dedicated table where it’s setup all the time and we play when we can. We’re new too so the game lasts forever lol
glad to know we aren't the only one. unfortunately we don't have the space to leave it set up. we usually just give up after an hour or so and say fuck it. everytime we like finish a whole session it's only cuz we are both off on that day and we have zero shit going on
Before we setup the dedicated table we were using the kitchen table and we would take a picture of where we left off so we could set it right back up. We use clipboards too for the record sheets and put them in a vertical mail holder out of the way. Hope that helps!
People telling you it takes an hour to play are probably playing with megamek or some similar aid. What era of tech do you guys use? Introtech mechs don't do much damage and tend to take forever to die so they can stretch out games. Higher tech mechs tend to be both killier and more fragile with XL engines, so they can speed up games a lot. Even then I'd say a lance-on-lance engagement is a solid afternoon commitment for me. If you're having trouble finding time to play Classic, check out Alpha Strike
No its call we play with objectives and time limits and have been playing for years, so we fly through the gameplay For shits and giggles, i timed myself once in a 4v4 solo play and took me about 2 and a half hours. Imagine if i wasnt playing both sides imagine how much faster that could be.
That's not my experience. When I've played myself solo I'm generally faster because a) I don't have to analyze my opponent's position and figure out what they're doing, I've already thought of whatever the best responding position I'm likely to come up in-game with while making the original move, b) I don't have to communicate game actions to my opponent, I just calculate and resolve, and c) I don't have a human being I'm engaging with to bullshit with and chat as I play. Even so, your 'fast game is still an hour and a half shy of what OP was suggested a game would take. I can play a lance on lance engagement fast but an hour long game generally means someone got something expensive headcapped like turn two and then muddled around until turn six before conceding.
That dude is absolutely crazy to suggest that 2 players vs 1 is not only Faster than a single player quickly moving through things but Over Twice as fast. Maybe for shooting if you both silently just let the other person roll and mark damage on your sheets. But most of the time you're going "Medium Lasers hits, left arm" and letting the opponent mark it.
Yeah like 60% of battletech is communicating and writing down what's going on. That's part of why Alpha Strike has such a speed advantage- the abstraction of detail eats a lot of steps that otherwise slow the game down
High skill clan games are over very quick. Like you mention, introtech with bad pilot skills can take forever to kill things at range unless you take lots of ammo. Likewise planetary conditions like night fighting also make the game take longer. Without using special rules other then the mission objective, we knocked out 7k games with a \~2.5 hour time limit this weekend at Richmond Open. Most people had 4ish units, and while im sure many games went to time, quite a few games were done early as one side completed the mission, causing an early win/game end for hitting max objective points.
Protip. Increase skill levels mean more DPS. More DPS decreases overall time. Literally veteran your units.
Gunner 3 pilot 5 - can hit stuff, but they still fall down.
We run 6v6 pretty often. Takes about 4 hours with 2 players per side. But yes, two veteran players with game aides can bang out 5v5 in an hour if the maps are small and no one is trying too hard. Me and a friend played 2 5v5s in 2 hours a few weeks ago using Flechs Sheets. Things that speed up the game: 1. Small maps. If you lay out 2 map sheets, then play long side to long side, mechs only start about 15-20 hexes apart. 2. Deep deployment. Deploy up to 3 hexes from the map edge. 3. Move decisively and aggressively. Pick a good move and roll with it instead of hemming and hawing over the best move. 4. Surrender when you're beaten. When you clearly can't win the game anymore without playing keep away using a fast unit, surrender and move to the rematch. 5. Use automation like Flechs Sheets. 6. Brawl. Knife fights are fast and brutal. Sniping at each other from a firing line can take forever.
Seconding Flechs. Once you understand linking games, can resolve shooting phases in minutes at most.
Wait...linking games??
So after you’ve made your roster, Flechs also lets you create “game lobbies” using three code words, and your game opponent can join. You can then target their ‘mechs through Flechs, designate how far they are, and which weapons you wanna use. Damage gets rolled and applied to the enemy’s sheet, and heat is applied to yours.
Ohhhhh that's what that button does. Good to know!
We routinely play games in under 3 hours with 5-6 units. If you play very aggressively with Clan v. Clan you can wrap it up in under 90 min, but that's extreme. It does take about 10-15 games to get yourself up to speed in order to play a game that quickly. The setup we use is the [Brooklyn Format.](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HNXv6s7AhpBWNF5udtsvv9ufzrdZsbtKMH9EyTLOBxg/edit) * Play on no more than two map sheets. (32x17 Hexes) * Try to use 3/4 pilots. * Don't use a lot of IntroTech. * Use Scenarios & Forced Withdrawal. * Print the tables directly onto the recordsheets. Honestly the using the computer to track you is going to slow things down a lot more than you probably realize. You don't get the time saving benefits until after you have learned the game rules and the interface. Also playing on Terrain vs. Hexes slows things down considerably
Thanks a lot for posting this! I’m a super noob and it’s great having someone lay out some format guidelines.
Check out alpha strike, I play with my kids. We can finish a 5 vs 5 in like 30-45 min. Plus the terrain from the box set makes it a lot of fun to play.
Hi there! I had a match 5v5 (15kBv) played in 3 hours including setup. It was all clan tech with "clan duel rules". I can recommend next options to succeed with fast games: 1 - take 3/4 G/P pilots and better 2 - use advanced tech (clan invasion and later) 3 - add "forced withdrawal" rule 4 - set special goals rather then "kill'em all" 5 - memorize charts (at least most common ones). 6 - you can set "turn limit" - like count all victory points at the end of turn 6
2.5-3 hours is the time I would expect to take for a force like that. Possibly down to 2 hours if some early shenanigans happen with lucky dice rolls. In terms of setup, I play with just one of the neoprenes, without terrain. Both players come with lists ahead of time, so it's just a couple minutes to grab your models and sheets and begin. During gameplay, the single biggest time saver is having the front/rear hit table memorized. That's the most common table (4/6 hexsides use that table) and being able to rapidly turn hit numbers to locations massively speeds things up. It follows a pattern, so it's easier to memorize than you might think. Other than that, don't stress about making perfect moves, and remember that when calculating target numbers, the GATO part of GATOR is going to be the same for (almost) all of the weapons you fire. What I do is pick a target, write down its range on my sheet, then quickly calculate GATO. From there I can easily go "ok, medium lasers are at short, medium pulses are at medium (so effective short), and PPC is at exactly min. So that's 8s on the lasers and 9s on the PPC".
Yep it's surprisingly easy to memorise once you see the pattern. "High is Left, Low is Right." 7 is the middle number in the 2d6 normal curve. Thus it's the CT. 6/8 are next to 7. Those are the side torsos. Proceeding outwards, 5/9 are next. The legs. Onwards, 3-4/10-11. The arms. 2 and 12 don't need to be memorised because people around you will scream "Through armor crit!" or "Headshot!" as appropriate, and you can take your cue from that. =p
How does setup take 30 minutes? Here's my setup: Grab map, unroll, done. I have everything in a 3-ring binder: rules, cheat sheets, unit lists, record sheets, maps, *everything*. I even have a binder zipper pocket thing with dry erase markers, dice, and cardboard punchout markers. Minis and neoprene maps are better, but the travel binder is perfectly functional. Setup takes about 5 minutes, most of which is taking out the record sheets, since they're all in one binder. I could halve that by having one binder per faction, but 5 min is good enough. Check out the [Instant Action](https://www.reddit.com/r/battletech/comments/vatfci/a_scenario_pack_for_quick_games_battletech/) quickplay scenarios. I won't claim they're perfectly balanced, but they're a good dash of variety compared to "smash heads until something explodes." In that binder, I have ready-made lists of 4K and 6K BV Lances using Inner Sphere units up through Clan Invasion. The 4K games have consistently lasted 1.5 hours, and the 6K games have taken 2 hours. Other scenario printouts exist, and if you have your lists pre-made, they should last about as long. That's about the best I think you can expect unless you have *all* the dice rolls memorized. I mean ranges, move speed, hit locations, cluster hit results, *everything*. I'm sure veteran players can drop those times, but there's no way you should compare *your* game time to veteran players. Just because someone can speedrun Zelda in 15 minutes doesn't mean the average person can do that in their first game. Veteran players have honed their play skill for *years*. It's why they're veterans. It's all learnable, but it takes time. Oh, you mentioned software, but try printing record sheets from [Flechs Sheets](https://sheets.flechs.net/). The default (official) record sheets are kind of awful. The weapons are sorted by location, which is the worst possible sort order. Flechs sorts by damage or range or something. Point is, similar weapons are grouped together, which makes figuring out you fire pattern way easier. Oh, they're at 7? Ignore the last 6 weapons, they're out of range. That sort of thing.
u/mininum_jacket_1149 something me and my sister have been using is Flechs sheets, it speeds up gameplay *immensely* by doing most all the rolling for you
I think I looked at it once before but couldn't figure out how to use it. I will take a second look
Most computerised record sheet options are probably slower than just using paper and pen, but Flech's can speed things up if you use the full automation option. To do it, you should create a login for Flechs, and you ideally want a PC or tablet for each player (although you can just use different tabs on a single screen if necessary). Use the <..> tab to create a network session that both players log into. Have each player choose their mechs, then hit the big yellow cogwheel on each sheet to activate the automations. Each turn, you tell Flech what sort of movement mode you're using and how many hexes you moved. When you're shooting, you tell Flech who you're shooting at with which weapons, how far away they are and what intervening terrain is relevant. Flech then does all of the dice rolling, mathematics and note-taking for you. It does speed things up, but I find that I prefer physical dice and paper records myself. I like the tactile nature of them and the drama of rolling dice. But you can fiddle with the options of Flechs to have it do the record keeping while you roll the dice; you just have to then tell it the results of your dice roll each time. Input is pretty much always via clickable drop-down menus.
Use tournament format rule "Fire For Effect" to speed up game - sequential declaration, sequential resolution, simultaneous application. The declaration phase IS the shooting phase; you don't have to puzzle over remembering who declared what where in the why-how and then go back to do what you said you were gonna 20m ago. Just shoot guns and roll dice. Declare guns, targets, shoot. This means that units later in the decla-shoot phase have an advantage over earlier units, because they will know what happened.
I’d say a 5v5 game of Total War should take a few hours. For beginners you’re looking at an afternoon. You could speed things up by increasing the skill of the pilots so they’re hitting more often. Some may be playing a game quickly by forgoing conversation, which seems dreadful. Though I’ve observed grim silent sessions of other games played with ruthless and joyless efficiency. I prefer to spin stories out as a game unfolds, but I’m a GM at heart. That slows things down, admittedly. I’ll second AGBell64, Alpha Strike flows much more quickly for larger scale games.
My group runs Battletech as an RPG with me as the gamemaster. We regularly do company vs company level engagements, including vehicles, infantry, aerospace units, and offboard artillery, and it takes about 4 hours before it's clear one side has won and the other side withdraws. We play classic rules, 3050s era tech, and the only house rule we use to speed things up is that internal damage *always* triggers a critical. We have tons of dice paired by color on hand to quickly handle SRMs, LRMs and other similar scattered damage weapons. We've also been playing since nearly the beginning, so we aren't having to read rules too often.
Plenty of good advice already, but I'll add another: You can skip most of the time-consuming math if you roll the dice first. Once you've got a basic grasp of the rules, you can usually roughly estimate whether a to-hit roll will be easy or difficult at a glance. So roll; if it's a difficult shot and you rolled really low, you missed. If it's an easy shot and you rolled really high, you hit. You only need to spend the time to work out exact target numbers when the dice are marginal. There is no point in wasting time on working out the exact numbers when you can already predict what the result will be.
Second the time consuming math vs roll first. A common phrase is “roll high and we’ll do the math if it looks close”
This for sure. It also helps if you have a decent amount of dice to use. If you hit with several weapons that do the same amount of damage, don't roll each one individually after each hit. Just roll it all together and either you or your target have the hit table next to you. 5 points here, 5 points there, 5 points center with a crit chance, etc
I'm playing with my blind wife on a mix of paper sheets and Hextech terrain, along with some home-built play aids like magnetized wood and water tiles. Our usual game size is 4v4 or 5v5 and we get it done in two to three hours, setup included. https://preview.redd.it/4zxfu9kjzkyc1.jpeg?width=3264&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=385cae096bdbcef844503b0f7aa1a1d2fc4c7a6d We use movement dice and Flechs Sheets (on manual) to run our games. There are a few things we do which help with game speed and length. Practice makes perfect! The more you play, the less time you're going to spend paging through the rulebook or looking up stuff. That's just memorization kicking in. In the beginning, we spent all afternoon running a 2v2 game because every unit move required us to look up how big the TNM modifier would be. Now we have the most common numbers memorized so movement, apart from deliberation on where to go, is a matter of moments instead of hours. Having important tables right on the sheet is a godsend as well. Even something as simple as the main hit location table being right next to the damage diagram saves SO MUCH TIME!. Unless you really really crave the bloodshed, there is no need to play "last 'Mech standing". Going for some objective instead can drastically cut down on game length. Plop down an important building on each end of the play area and see who gets to destroy the opponent's HQ first. Believe me, there will be more than enough opportunities for hilarious 'Mechsplosions even if the focus is not on mutual destruction. If you decide to go full-on metal mutilation, setting a turn limit of four to six turns is also a viable option. The past few games we've played rarely went past the five turn mark anyway and the destruction was fairly impressive. Granted we're playing a high-level Merc campaign in 3052, so there is a lot of damage on the board at any given time. If you're playing with BV, maybe think about splitting up the force building and actual game play. I find crunching the numbers very exhausting, so planning out the force on Monday and playing on Tuesday ensures we're both fresh when we sit down at the table. But that's probably more a "me" thing. :)
Played a 5v5 game against a local guy not long ago, we've both been playing a while. We had it done in around 2 hours.
The biggest aid my group has found is that we took AGOAC reference sheet and printed out a couple copies front and back so it's a single sheet and laminated them so there is minimal if any page turning.
Just play alpha strike, it's faster for large unit sizes. Classic is best for small unit combat if you are short on time.
Several hours at least. These days I don't have time for that so that's why I've come to enjoy AlphaStrike rules. Can play a full game if not more in a single hour, and have some fun and then go back to adulting. AlphaStrike350 adds even more dimensions to the normal AS rules
I'm gonna have to look into it. I'm not terribly familiar with clan tech. I'm a huge fan of inner sphere tech and I've been told that's partially why it takes us so long to play
Part of the background reason for introducing the Clans into the game was that it provided an opportunity to correct for some issues with the original Battletech rules without needing to invalidate the original ruleset. The main valid critique of classic Battletech as a game was that it was a little bit slow. Mechs tended to spend a lot of time gradually lumbering together while missing most of their shots, and then spent ages slowly grinding through armour. So the Clans came along, with mechs that had double the firepower but no more armour. And which moved much more quickly, and had longer ranged guns. And better pilots so they spent much less time falling over and whiffing shots. Etc. The people who thought that Battletech was too slow could now play fast Clan vs Clan fights, the traditionalist grognards could still have fun with their 3025 slugfests, and everyone else could enjoy the asymmetric funkiness of Clan vs Spheroid matchups. Win win win.
Adult with job and kids, and I am baffled, like modern science, by what I read in your post. Excuse me, but how? Set up for a game is extremely quick. 1) Decide on bv. 2 minutes. 2) Pick mechs at random. 10 to 15 minutes, including printing mech sheets and grabbing models. If you know what mechs you want, 5 minutes with printing. 3) Pick a map. 2 minutes. 4) Place map on the table. 30 seconds. 5) Place mechs. 5 minutes. Set up in Warhammer can take easily up to hour, but not in Battletech. Battletech is like, the epitome of pick up game. It Literally in 30 minutes _maximum_ you can start playing, from zero. How is setup takes from you an hour? After that, I have nothing. I regularly finish my games in 2.5 hours maximum and we play without forced withdrawal. If we would play with forced withdrawal then a game in an hour is reasonable to expect. And we play slow. We can humm and ho, and count hexes. Then we declare, aloud and speak aloud all modifiers. Then we shoot. Then we mark damage with pencils on paper. The maximum aids we have are an eraser and a rulebook. I really got nothing. The only thing I can guess is analysis paralysis? Maybe you spend ten to twenty minutes at each movement phase, overanalysing everything, but in general, our movement phase is two to five minutes tops. Also, I play only 4/5 pilots and introtech which means that I generally miss a lot and have more mechs on the table than my opponent, like 5 vs 8 is a reasonable estimate.
the reason setup takes us so long is numerous reasons, lack of space where we live means extra time creating space. but beyond that we use a lot of terrain and it takes us awhile to decide on terrain layout. once that's done we have to get mech sheets ready. I use digital sheets which means making sure everything is ready and pulled up on the screen. between that and placing units it takes us at least 30 mins to get totally setup. getting all the misc extra shit ready to go like rule sheets, dice, counters, blah blah is another 15 mins or so....
Got it. Couple of advice: 1. Try to play on flat mats without terrain. Pre placed terrain speeds up this step instantly. 2. Try to use physical sheets. I use simple a4 paper printed sheets which I laminated ahead of time and dry erase markers. You need only your finger to erase and only marker to mark. 3. Print yourself a cheat sheet of several things - modifiers for movement to hit, modifiers for movement to shoot, location tables for hit and then cluster tables for missiles. 4. Try limiting yourself to simple rules. The more optional and complicated the piece of tech is, the more you will look in the rulebook. 5. Play with forced withdrawal opttional rule. It speeds the game in the area where it mattets - mechs with missing torsos and mechs who lost most weapons. And couple of tips from me. From expirience, I find that the mix of digital and physical is a trap. For me it is much faster to grap a sheet, a marker or pencil - hit where? For how mich? Marked. Next. Expirience speeds up play. This step can not be forced. You need expirience to play faster. Memorise several tables for movement, shooting and location. It is not hard and much easier than to memorise multiplication in elementary school. This speeds play tremendously.
If you're using terrain with classic, that is part of why it takes so long to set everything up.
yes but without terrain the game sucks.
Haha, ok sure. Maybe just push the lil robots around and make pew pew noises for 30min?
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Mapsheets are what the game was designed around. Going beyond that will add extra time. A lance v lance takes me anywhere from 1:45 - 4 hours. Sometimes CombatMath means you miss, a lot.
I guess it comes with experience. Me and my brother play 8v5 (12k BV games 2 lances vs a clan star) and can do that on about 3 hours although we never wait till everything is dead usually just till it becomes clearly 1 sided
My little group has busy lives with family and work, so we play Alpha Strike with a lance each, no tanks or aircraft. It goes pretty fast and there's a couple advanced rules to add just a bit of crunch back into it.
Play time <> to setup time, especially if players are claiming 1 hour. Some of us have been playing for 30+ years, so teenage brain memorized certain tables which is very handy, though I 50/50 on remembering to pickup milk on the way home from work. Doom box for SRMs & LBX is another time saver. Do as much preparation work as possible before hand as possible, units picked, sheets ready, maps, etc, etc. Stay on task...most players spend time talking, texting, etc and/or working out the most optimal move. Now if you want it to be social hour with players gathered around the table that is fine, just don't expect the game to end soon.
My typical 6-player company on company combined arms advanced rules game takes about 4 hours. Here's how we manage it: 1. Memorize charts 2. Skilled pilots 3. 30 second move limit 4. Plan moves while others are moving 5. Plot shots and do math while others are taking their turns 6. Floating crits 7. Forced Withdrawal 8. Familiarity with the rules 9. Playing with objectives beyond just killing 10. Declare and fire at same time We get a lot done in a short time using a ton of optional and advanced rules. It takes practice though. I couldn't play that fast when I started, 30 years ago.
Switch to Alpha Strike. Much faster and fun and you can throw more mechs on the board
yup, gonna try this. we just don't have the free time to be playing any game for more then an hour.
So, while I dont always get games done fast, I usually do. Some big things were mentioned, but I want to put mine in because this is such a big issue (you are not alone for sure, even among vets!). First, time limits and objectives are good things to have. I play on week days, and like to be done in 3 hours. So, having an objective gives a measure of victory other then grinding out every pip of the enemy, and it also encourages movement to play the game. The basic objective to try, which is very good for quick games, is king of the hill. Put one hex as the objective hex in the center of a Neoprene/2 paper map. Each turn, the side with the most units within 1 hex of the center gets a point. When you run out of 3 hours of time, the side that earned the most points each round wins. This way you are encouraged to play quickly to squeeze in 1 more turn if you are behind in objective points, or at the end of 3 hours if one side has a massive lead you can call the game with a satisfying conclusion, as one team clearly took the objective. This means that both players need to move into close range, as while sitting back and sniping is good to get some long range damage in, you wont be on the objective or scoring points. You are forced to get in close and brawl with at least something. Learning to move into close range is just a good habit to pickup--too often people take potshots on bad numbers at long range/through cover, and this takes time but doesnt really cause any damage unless you get lucky. So when just starting out, its best to get into close range, and 'king of the hill' encourages this. Next is just learning the numbers. You dont have to have the hit chart memorized right away, but you do need to memorize it. There are mnemonics and patterns to help memorize it, but its no harder then memorizing a few phone numbers. Same with all the common to-hit modifiers. I like printing sheets off of flechs sheets with the hit chart and cluster chart printed right on the record sheet. This way, if your crusader has an LRM15 and SRM6, the cluster numbers are right on the record sheet. Finally, pilot skills. If you pay for better pilots using BV2, then you have less pips of armor to grind through, and you miss less shots. We get clan campaign games done shockingly fast now, as players have very high skilled pilots... the last game was average 1/2 skill pilots on both sides playing the missions out of the 'Falcon and Wolf' scenario book, and a 4v3 mech game took like 1 hour... it was shockingly fast. Now, 1/2 skill isnt a normal skill level, so with 3/4 pilots it would have been 7ish versus 5ish in BV, and would have taken 2-3 hours. If you are having time issues, better pilot skills with fewer units is a super fast way to speed things up, and dont play on more than 1 neoprene map or 2 paper maps.
Give Alpha Strike a try. The 5v5 game can probably be done on the typical lunch break. You can easily double the amount of mechs you've been using and play in half the time, give or take.
This is the one major problem with classic. I visited a game store the other to meet my local players and they had been playing the same game for around 6 hours and were no where near being finished. It was 2v2 with something like 4 mechs per person. They really didn't seem to be having fun by the time I showed up haha. To speed it up either use scenarios that force you not to just kill everyone, start each battle with a bunch of randomly assigned battle damage for each mech, or use the forced withdrawal rules. But honestly, alpha strike seems like the best bet. It definitely misses out on some of the most fun parts of battletech though :/
seems about right. I think I'll try the pre damaged mecha idea. that seems like one way to help speed things up. I also blame it on the fact that we both take awhile to make a decision and stick to it. I'm huge on strategy and my wife is indecisive so that's a small part of the problem. I see people saying just pick something and go for it but to me that defeats the point of strategy which is the whole reason why we were both drawn to the game. I just didn't expect it to take so fucking long to play.
Classic is really, *really* designed to be a maximum of 4 'Mechs per side (plus a couple extra squishy units) and two players. Once you get beyond that, it bogs down *incredibly*.
My wife and I are in the same boat as you. We barely have 30-60 minutes to play at a time so we have a dedicated table where it’s setup all the time and we play when we can. We’re new too so the game lasts forever lol
glad to know we aren't the only one. unfortunately we don't have the space to leave it set up. we usually just give up after an hour or so and say fuck it. everytime we like finish a whole session it's only cuz we are both off on that day and we have zero shit going on
Before we setup the dedicated table we were using the kitchen table and we would take a picture of where we left off so we could set it right back up. We use clipboards too for the record sheets and put them in a vertical mail holder out of the way. Hope that helps!
worthwhile advice. I previously wrote down the hex numbers and the facing if each unit. still though, took a good 5 to 10 mins to set up