![]() What a ride! To all the RecGuide’s contributors and fans, I say a hearty THANK YOU! We were happy that the RecGuide’s elaborate format even allowed some of you to join canon as the heroic MechWarriors using these machines across all of BattleTech’s eras. Ultimately, this was a labor of love for all involved, whose willingness to plough on was fueled at all steps by the enthusiasm and appreciation of the fans who follwed the project along the way. The credits across the 32 issues contain a huge list of writers, artists, factcheckers, and production staff both old and new, who worked so hard to make this series a reality. We are proud to finally conclude the new releases at issue 32, more than three years after the project’s start.Īny such monumental project is collaborative from start to finish. The mission parameters stayed the same, but as for the scope, eh. Suddenly, there were classic vehicles involved. Ahem.) We went from 22 to 24 planned issues, by which time, a new crowdfunding project had started preparations. (Aaron is best prepared to say something about that. These incorporated some BattleMechs already conceived behind the scenes for the ilClan storyline as well as some new units that genuinely pushed the boundaries of what BattleTech has seen.Īll the while, the scope continued to balloon. As the project’s scope took on shape based on the definition of various groups of ‘Mechs (true Classics vs Clan Classics vs OmniMechs vs the rest), we were able to include new machines as well. I feel the success of the series was contingent on these first months of discussion, which gave us an expanded format for the true Classics-our new label for what was once the “Unseen.” From there, everything fell into place. Hence my usage of the foreign idiom above: some of the goals above seemed mutually exclusive, but needed to be met nevertheless. (One side note, which I can’t seem to fit in elsewhere: a lot of like-minded writers jumped into this feet first to such an extent that the entire project is filled with really, really deep cuts from BattleTech’s history, be it sourcebooks, novels, computer games from all eras and platforms, apocrypha, or even internet/fan history!) Create often back-dated lore conveying the 100-year old (or more) story of these machines in a believable way.Make these “Classics” as competitive as can be, employing cutting-edge construction rules but keeping them simple enough to use for pick-up games (by mostly sticking to BattleMech Manual rules).Follow the visuals of the miniatures exactly, but also preserve the historical “feel” of the game pieces vis-a-vis their peers. ![]() Make the miniatures produced for a 3050-set crowdfunding campaign-a hugely successful one that reinvigorated BattleTech like nothing before-relevant in the 3150 setting, the storyline’s current here and now.The RecGuides needed to be a swiss-army-knife TRO that accomplished the following: Looking back at the frenetic chats that followed through to at least Q2 of 2020, we worked hard to find that “eierlegende Wollmilchsau.” Pardon the German. The new classics… They need to be relevant. And what a run it was! It has been more than three years since Ray approached me with the statement “It’s the Unseen. So here we are at the end of the RecGuide run. To close out the series, here’s product developer Johannes Heidler with his reflections on this journey: Since the release of the first volume back in June 2020, the “RecGuides” have become a much-anticipated and best-selling addition to the BattleTech line, updating Classic ‘Mechs and launching all-new designs while providing a steady stream of new content for the line. Today marks a momentous day, MechWarriors, as we celebrate the successful conclusion of the BattleMech Recognition Guide: ilClan series.
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