5 Tips to Speed Up Classic BattleTech

Battletech, real Battletech, also known as Classic Battletech, is one of longest-running wargames around. It is also one of the crunchiest, no question. That sweet, delicious crunch is partly makes Battletech so endearing. But even though it is nominally a skirmish game, it has garnered a reputation as a game that takes a long time to get through. How long? If you are lucky, you can slog through a small scuffle by lunchtime on the day of your funeral. With effort, a company-sized engagement will wrap up before our sun goes out. Hyperbole, yes, but only just if you aren’t running your games with an eye toward efficiency.

Battletech can eat up the hours compared to most other games of this scale, but it does not have to. I’ve played a ton of Battletech, in just about every way it can be played, and I’ve noticed the same recurring issues bog down the game. Below, I will share my 5 remedies for these issues that will have you sailing through your games with time to spare.

Learn the Relevant Rules, Front to Back

This is as elementary as it gets, but I am continually surprised by how many players neglect this essential task. Every time a situation comes up in game- be it a question on firing arcs, movement penalties, equipment function, shooting modifiers, skidding or anything else- and a player has to go diving into the voluminous rulebooks in quest of an answer, the game grinds to a halt. If this is happening with every player, in every turn or, Heaven help us, in every phase of every turn the game is going to be an exercise in long-suffering endurance.

It can instead be a pleasant exercise in perforating your friends with hypervelocity lead if only all players will take the time to really learn the relevant rules. I say relevant rules because BT has tons and tons of them. Many books’ worth! But only a fraction of them are needed or even used in an average game. For instance, if you aren’t using vehicles or infantry, you don’t need to waste time learning those rules until the time comes. If you aren’t playing in built-up areas with concrete or asphalt, or ice, you won’t need skidding rules. 

But you should be reading and re-reading (and practicing with) all of the rules and charts that will come up in your games until they are second nature. It isn’t difficult, and most of Battletech’s rules are logical and easy to memorize. And before you say it: of course, beginners get plenty of slack. We all started somewhere. But if you and your friends have been through a half-dozen games and everyone is still fumbling their way through a turn, there is a player-knowledge problem.

Keep Players Focused on the Game at Hand

This issue neatly dovetails with the previous one, and handily leads to the next one. This issue is also not unique to Battletech, but because BT tends to proceed slowly I see it pop up more around our tables than at others. If players are swapping memes, looking up anime clips on YouTube, digging for their favorite podcast or just watching dustmotes float on sunbeams, they aren’t getting set for their next activation or the next phase, i.e. they aren’t “looking for work.”

This is not good, and greatly contributes to slowdown. When this butterfly-chasing player’s activation comes up they resurface in the present and are totally flat-footed, unsure of what has happened and what they should be doing. Instead of analyzing and planning their next tasks in real time, they are doing it on everyone else’s time. Regrettable, avoidable and rude. 

All players should be able to have fun and cut up with their buddies around the table. Beer, pretzels, jokes, merriment, all that. But it should not come at the cost of the proceedings which all players are ostensibly there to enjoy collaboratively. If you are a plank owner, GM or other “driver” at your table, give these distracted players a friendly nudge, verbally, when you see them drifting. If they don’t self-correct, tell them privately that they need to do better to keep the game moving briskly. 

Use a Timer in the Movement Phase

Another constant issue, one fed by the former and hardly unique to Battletech. Some players simply take way, way too much time to plot and make moves. They are the risk-managers, the min-maxers, the atom-splitters and the slowpokes. These players so fear making a bad move, or not making a good one, they spend many minutes calculating the outcomes of every possible move they could make with all of their units, and all of the possible countermoves foes could make. The inevitable result is that the movement phase gobbles up 95 percent of the game clock. 

I get it: everyone wants to do good and demonstrate tactical proficiency and game mastery. No one wants to make a critical mistake. These things take time. Battletech players especially don’t want anything bad to happen to their pet mech and favorite pilot. Spoiler: it absolutely will. But they just take too long! This is why staying on task and focused is so important. Players who are paying attention (see previous) can “pre-game” all available moves and reactions; if my opponent does this, I’ll do this, or I could do this, this or this. That’s all it takes to make a move in seconds on an activation.

But some folks who are particularly prone to analysis paralysis and just cannot, or will not, pick up the pace should be subjected to a timer in the movement phase, commensurate with their game fluency. I like 60 seconds, max, and 30 seconds is fine for seasoned players. To clarify: the timer should be used for every player’s activation in the movement phase in such a case. This will demonstrate to the time vampire that careful moves can be made under time constraints and actual gameplay at the table.

If the timer runs out, the activation is lost and will not be recovered. This means a unit does not get a move. Call it combat shock, or that their pilot is just so dumbfounded at witnessing my valiant Hornet smoke-check a Turkina with a single LRM that they just forgot where they were. The message is clear: make a move, or lose a move. I promise, this will cure them of their issue and they will probably start to enjoy the game more.

Play with Objectives

One of my favorite methods for speeding up the game. It is fun and easy to play a “deathmatch” in Battletech: a standup fight, meeting engagement, showdown, whatever you want to call it. Two sides fight until only one remains. Hard to go wrong with it, but the problem is that this game type, surprisingly, often takes a long time. Players routinely spend too much time hiding in cover and swapping low-percentage shots at range, and if the game doesn’t end until every mech on one side is hard-bent wrecked it is going to be a long day.

That’s fine, if all players are there for it and have the time. But a great way to speed things up and keep things sporty is to use objectives. Be they the pre-baked scenarios in any of the rule- or sourcebooks, or some other kind of objective one of the players cooked up, having some other metrics to determine winning and losing will greatly streamline the game.

If you have pre-set victory and loss conditions, everyone will know when the game is truly over- or when it can no longer be won, meaning capitulation is in order. Sometimes that is just as important! Plus, objective games can be a ton of fun in Battletech, beyond just slamming two forces into each other until they are all slag. I’ll be making a future post about some of my favorite scenarios and objectives in the near future, stay tuned for that. 

Use Forced Withdrawal

Speaking of slamming forces of mechs into each other, mechs are tough in Battletech. Like, supremely tough. For those who are uninitiated, a battlemech, in game, that has two-thirds of its torso blown off, a badly damaged engine, a half-busted gyro, one leg, no arms and a pilot so battered they lost 30 IQ points is still, technically, in the fight. It isn’t combat effective, but it can still try and fight if the player commands it.

That is, unless Forced Withdrawal rules are in effect. Forced Withdrawal is an entirely logical, but optional, rule found in Total Warfare and the BattleMech Manual. Essentially, it simulates that a person piloting a mech actually wants to live to fight another day and, more importantly for their commander or employer, not lose their mech in a fight. Accordingly, when a unit takes Crippling Damage, or when a pilot sustains enough wounds, the unit must start withdrawing. 

This is not only more simulationist, which is rad, but it makes it much easier to take a unit out of the fight and determine victory points. You can also do fun variations on it like making commanders or player characters immune to Forced Withdrawal while their underlings are still subject to it. Stuff like that. A highly recommended rule, and it is the rare game me and mine play these days without it. 

You’ll Be Cruising Through Games in a Flash

Using these tips together, it is entirely possible to motor through a sizeable game of Classic Battletech in a reasonable amount of time. We routinely get through lance-on-lance fights in just a couple of hours, and much larger games can be done in one afternoon. You can do the same: If your games feel like eternity in purgatory or a trip to the DMV (but I repeat myself) take stock and implement some of my favorite fixes.