The Second Circuit

Jesse, Jo, and Avalyn are talking the first major public play of Aces Legacy: A narrative organized play experience! We're talking what it was and how it worked, what went well, what we could refine, and how everyone did! We're hoping to refine this until it becomes a major event experience so come and tune in to find out how it all started! Huge thanks to the folks at Torchlight Games & Hobbi...

Jesse, Jo, and Avalyn are talking Jo's "home board" project, and working towards the ideal game setup. The Solitaire! Time travel. Bad tables. Jesse's luggage. Terrain history. Jo destroying pink foam. Where we're playing, we don't need roads. Urban board = lunar board? Comparison is the thief of joy. Tree templates. How to transport worlds. Form versus function. Jo's homeworld in the Alliance. Je...

Jesse is talking the Mechnificent 7 with three of its biggest stars and noted BattleTech luminaries: Paul Clarkson, Director of Focht's Network, Mr. Tex of the Black Pants Legion & firearms enthusiast, and Randall N Bills, Creative Director of Catalyst Game Labs and saKhan of all things BattleTech - who was somehow perfectly okay with what these maniacs did to his franchise! Haven't had a chan...

Jesse and Avalyn are talking self-propelled boom sticks. Jesse got spanked! C3 at WWAC; Aces doesn't recognize it. The MetroMech! It's Long Tom is scarier than we thought. ATMs - are they too crazy? Lasers go extinct. Fire Falcon E! Where are our alternate munitions? Hel C! Savage Wolf A. Build some of this onto something more accessible; a Javelin? What the hell were Listen-Kill Missiles? Let's m...

Jesse, Scott, and Jo are talking flying machines! New minis! The Wingmate Tournament: close game! BattleMech baseball sidebar. Star Wars. FFG's X-Wing and Heroes of the Arturi Cluster. Clan fighters. World War II trumpets. Is it still the Cold War? Society X variants. A brief history lesson. RACs in space. Snow Raven exclusivity. R-Teams and Triads. Hurting Paul Clarkson, semi intentionally.  Foch...

Jesse saw the launch trailer for Chaos Reign and lost his mind with enthusiasm over the animated series. Avalyn tries to keep things grounded.  "This is the Inner Sphere—thousands of planets colonized by humankind. Once it was united under the Star League, but for the last three hundred years it has been consumed by savage wars... until a new enemy appeared—mysterious invaders known as the Clans....

Jesse, Scott, and Jo are joined by Joshua "Kestrel" Franklin, "Metal" Ed Stephens, and Mike "Kirby" Bisaillon, the creative minds behind Hot Spots Draconis Reach! We're talking how it came about. Changes and improvements from Hinterlands and the grueling playtesting schedule. The massive Loneliness Island campaign. Working your way up to it or jumping straight in. The other contracts. How to prono...

Jesse, Avalyn, and Scott talk the next Battle of Luthien! Woo woo Wednesday wepwesent! Too bad the first one was a lot better in the games and the novels than the actual sourcebook. Let's come up with something more practical. Alpha Strike for sure, right? Recreating the tension from the book is not just objective focused, it's character focused. Dracs, tradition versus modernity. Rasalhague, join...

Jesse, Scott, and Jo are 'MechTechs today! Remember MechWarrior 2? Customizing works in the videogames but not on the table. How do we solve that? Scott's made some killer LAMs in MegaMek, but would never bring them to the table. Does BattleTech have to change to allow for customs? Compounding BV? RAT tables for equipment? Can tonnage, C-bills and BV work together in a way to make that work? Are w...

Jesse and Jo are getting in depth with a brush! How do I paint missile launchers?? Sometimes there are missiles and sometimes there are not. Jo says it's a question of scale. Some mistakes can be interpreted as battle damage. Art versus 'realistic'. Context specific is important for the art. Make different parts different colours. Yell-oh-no! This applies to bases as well - Jesse can't do basing b...

Jesse and Scott are exchanging memory cores about their homebrew gear!  - Loitering Missile Ammunition (It's a floating long-range minefield!) - Plasma Sword (Tsushima/Yotei fans get hyped!) - Magnetic Grapple (Lasso up a Fire Moth!) - Torvold Drone Targeting System (Behold the Hammer of Dawn!) - Rotary Micro Pulse Laser (Cutting down on attack rolls!) - Scott Pod (It's a BattleMech briefcase!) -...

Jesse, Scott, and Jo are talking Warships! Jesse likes sc-fi because of big machines that shoot lasers. BattleTech scales well, so let's see what happens at the biggest scale. The Hunters has a cool space battle! Naval assets - using a lot of ECM? Some of the secrets are buried in many old books. The wargaming table could be like a holotank! Please don't mess with electronics if you are untrained,...

Jesse, Jo, and Scott are talking the new Core Rule Changes! Don't take WolfNet's howl. Half ammo means less bombs. Moving into water - viable but still risky. We have invented ramps! Melee is now a thing again. Gird yourself for girders. Is there such thing as too much melee? Ammo is less dangerous, but is that less fun? Ammo explosions don't matter if you don't get shot. Autocannons - too strong?...

Jesse is talking with Paul Clarkson and Josh Derksen about Adepticon! The stuff that was announced and the stuff that is yet to come! Unreleased and barely released products. Paul making enemies - violence scheduled for GenCon! Meeting the team and the Network. A New Challenger Appears - Cru joins the team! Overall impressions and hopes. Some spoilers for the third Aces box, Wrath & Reprisal....

Jesse, Jo, and Avalyn are talking Map-scale versus Mech-scale! Caliburns edge. Small vs Big. Artillery. Turret the weapons? If it's close, are we overtuning it? Different decks can do different things and mixing and matching can have really cool results. Capellans live to die. The laser colours! The Fortress DropShip - "Just one more thing." 3D terrain, is it turning people off? New rules, huh, ye...

Jesse and Avalyn are talking With Sean of Sarna.net! The face of the ultimate Memory Core for all of BattleTech gives us the overview of his Blake-like duties and tying it into the greater community at large. And then we dive into the real interesting stuff - objectively correct BattleTech preferences. PPCs. IS XL Engines. Hunchback Orthodoxy. Adorable Dark Age designs. Lousy Dark Age designs. Kee...

Jesse, Jo, and Avalyn are talking character-level fiction. People care about their MechWarriors! How do we get them to do that in game? Avalyn's RPG games are maybe a great thing to reference here. Start with giving them a name. Reward a name, and maybe stack the reward. There need to be stakes. Lineages! Points to a lineage across the ages. But don't tie gameplay rewards to writing. Battle report...

Jesse, Jo, and Scott welcome special guest Big Red 40TECH to the show! The Mariks. It's so hard to be a Marik fan. In a way, they're the Empire. When they aren't just Arthurian Davions. Thomas Marik who is actually Halas - don't forgive him for what he did! Davions, no Omnis, more bullet. Phoenix Hawk IIC, great video, how did it come together?  What's making long form content like? Why not a fanc...

Jesse and Jo are talking Project Phoenix - it was a band-aid, but was it good? Jo's too new to remember the backlash. Would it be better if they were whole new units as opposed to 'replacements' for our childhood. Mirrored helmets? Come on! Guys in suits, versus tanks with legs, versus refrigerators. The quality of the art though, versus what it represents. When was the last time your cracked open...

Jesse, Avalyn, and Jo are talking BattleMech aerial combat! Hottest Drop! Ease off on jumping TMM? PSRs? Is counting elevation as distance a good mechanic? Cloud templates? Wind direction indicator - a wind vane! Drop the shooting penalty? DFAs - are they just stupid? Jump kicks! Should there be more Mortal Kombat and less WWE? Can DFA become second nature if we just do it more? The math becomes y...

Jesse, Avalyn, and Jo are talking weird new tech and weird old cards! TSEMP! Why does it suck? Does it suck less or more in Alpha Strike? Depending on the size of the game maybe it doesn't. If you ban one thing, do you start having to ban all kinds of other things. Is managing the game to balance things just playing the wrong game? 'Mechs in a vacuum! What was happening in real life when certain r...

Jesse and Avalyn are joined by special guests Bryan Young and Russel Zimmerman, accomplished sci-fi authors and major drivers of modern-day BattleTech fiction! We asked what it's like to write BattleTech for Catalyst where you have to coordinate with such a large and involved universe - and the answer is, predictably, "it's complicated!" Check out Bryan's stuff at https://www.swankmotron.com/ and...

Jesse and Avalyn hypothesize everything they would need for the ultimate BattleTech event. Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss would be required. Simplifying rules in exchange for fielding more units. Cool events run at places like Torchlight Hobbies and Games in Burlington Ontario. Hexes versus measuring tape? Putting the game in the narrative rather than the other way around. What to eat? 3D terra...

Jesse and Jo have a fireside chat about Aces Legacy, the new Aces-focused event coming to BattleTech convention spaces. Aces Legacy! How and what. Hobby stuff - new swords? Well, hatchets. Big Tukayyid battle coming to Monday Knights in Barrie! Recreating historical events and the dice fighting you. Playing with hero characters and making them fit in to the game. Is it weird when they can't die? C...

--EXPLICIT LANGUAGE WARNING ON THIS ONE, FOLKS-- Jesse and Scott are joined by Mr. Tex of Tex Talks BattleTech from the Black Pants Legion to talk Mech7 memories, BattleTech, community, and cautionary tales regarding kitchen appliances. What exactly is the BPL? What is making fan film like? Gambling on Star Heroes. Community and creators. What made Randolph P. Checkers the way he is? The Black Kni...