I don't really play too many mech games other than
Battletech. I really liked
Mech Commander and
Mech Commander 2 on the PC back when they were released. I dabbled a bit with
MechWarrior 3 but my PC wasn't up to snuff at the time. Same with an old Sierra/Dynamix game called
Earthsiege 2. I remember getting my meager paycheque and spending far too large a percentage of it on the just-released Earthsiege 2 only to have it run like a slideshow on my potato of a PC.
I did pick up the latest Battletech game from Paradox when it was first released and I played the hell out of it and enjoyed it...at first. I finished the campaign and put it away only to reinstall it once new DLC was released. For some reason though, I found that I no longer enjoyed it as much as I had initially and that it actually felt like a bit of a grind to play. Never did finish the career campaign. Still, I think I got my money's worth.
As for board games, I loved playing the original Battletech when it was released by FASA way back in olden times. I spent a lot of time making up my own ridiculous mechs and trying them out. I had one that was 55 tons or so and had nothing but MGs on it. Dozens of MGs... It was a cheeseball mech because it exploited the rules system. With so many MGs firing, it was a near certainty that it'd land at least one headshot per turn and damage the enemy mech pilot, regardless of how many tonnes it was.
Can't really recall playing any other Mech-focussed board or minis games aside from Battletech. I guess 40K has some mech type thingies in it but I've never been a fan of the 40K rules system or universe. I played a few games of Tripods and Triplanes which is a miniatures system using the WW1 era planes from
Wings of Glory vs. a bunch of Martian tripods ripped straight out of War of the Worlds.
Never clicked with me. I'd much rather do historical matchups.
I did buy into the newest iteration of the
Battletech board game from Catalyst Labs. It's good fun and looks quite nice. There's a very active community here in Vancouver (on hold now) and they have way more stuff than I do so I just end up using theirs. One guy even 3D printed out a bunch of 1 foot tall models and we played a game of that at a convention a few years back. It was rather amusing because a lot of the pot-bellied old wargamers were getting tired from the constant walking around the map and having to squat down to move their Mechs. By the end of the game, most Mechs decided to just stay in place and blaze away at one another.
Couple of photos (not mine) from that convention. The first is from a regular sized version of the game. The second is the one with the 1 foot mechs.
(As usual, I've already got a copy of this week's game so keep me out of the running.)
