Great to see discussion on the new rules. I'm very excited to see how they play out.

The Ammo explosion change is massive. The OG Btech rules with ammo explosions where, IMHO, trying to mimic what you would see in wargames with tanks where an ammo cookoff was basically a dead unit. The ammo gets hit, ignited, and it all starts going off inside the armor unit. In Btech rules we gave that sort of thing numbers, because scifi game and such, but in the vast majority of cases an ammo explosion in Btech meant a unit was dead. In Battleforce/Alpha Strike that crit result even straight up does that. That's why CASE was such a big deal and one of the major updates with units in 3050. Capping that damage to 20 points is going to be a big change to every mech that has ammo, period.

As someone who got into Battletech just as the fourth succession war was starting I welcome the changes. The game, as it was, made 3/4 of the mechs unplayable junk. Most new tech that came out post-Clan Invasion didn’t add to the game because of the “one step forward, two steps back” design.

I look forward to the rest.

At first I was weirded out by the new rules, even though I'm a pretty recent tabletop player. But the more I thought about them, and discussed them with more people, the more I liked them. I have already proposed to my local group that we'r running a campaign with, to try out these new rules the next time we meet.
But also, even if none of the new rules come forward, merely reorganizing and rewriting Total Warfare to have the same sort of ease of finding information as the Battlemech Manual makes a WORLD of difference and is already worth my money! I can never find anything on TW.

Played a game with the new proposed rules last night, and played as RAW as possible, and I gotta say, it really didn't change much. I purposefully forced more side shots, positioning my people badly on purpose and sacrificing units to go for side shots, and it really didn't change anything, the sides on my mechs were more damaged than they would've been sure, but the table still spreads damage enough to not warrant it being an issue unless you're in a lighter mech. My Icarus II tanked a point-blank shot from a Zorya (ATM), and it's left arm got its armor stripped, but nothing else connected with it past that. My only gripe from that match is my Axman successfully DFA'd an Archer in the final turn, and landed on its ammo, but because of the new rules it survived, but the mechs was basically dead if we did another turn. The pilot had five hits, the gyro was destroyed, and it had one functional weapon it couldn't even use cause it didn't have both arms to prop up. Besides being a bit mad about that, the change seems to be just fine, especially cause I could've potentially crit another ammo bin, but got unlucky and mossed with it.

Been using these rules for a couple weeks now I love them

I needed to hear a positive perspective of the new rules thank you for this video wish I could give it 5 stars

For the ammo ex changes, I would keep the changes related to CASE I and II but keep the old rules for non-CASEd ammo explosions. A BV uptune of atl CASE I will also probably be necessary to not upturn the balance and meta of CI-Jihad eras too radically.

I generally agree with everything you said here. Thank you for sharing 😊

As a Piranha enjoyer these rules practically change the game for me. Very interesting

Keep the content coming

I was absolutely primed to be a grognard about the rule changes before reading the proposed changes.

Similar to you, I am not sad to see the side hit locations go away. Like you said, added complexity and slowed things down for not a lot of value.

I also agree that the new rules will reward positioning and tactics, which is excellent.

The changes to ammo explosions, I like the direction they're going. I think though it's going to be a huge change to the meta. It's going to make practically all the IS 3050 refits that threw XL engines and CASE that were absolute crap before, now suddenly MUCH more viable. It may need tweaks but I like the direction overall

That reminds me, I need to download this PDF and read through it.

Both changes make playing the game quicker & easier but by making intro tech & IS XL engined mechs more durable, this will extend the length of games. Less spectacular, but the exploding player gets to play with that unit a little longer.

No strong feelings about the side hits, but the ammo cap is incredible. As a rule, I never, ever bring mechs with MG ammo. It's ruined me too many times to accept. But with that one change, suddenly a whole swath of mechs become usable. Fantastic

I've got a game with the new rules set for Monday. I really like the side hits rule change. Rewards good positioning and simplifies the table. I am mixed about the ammo rule. It makes things fairer and makes CASE and CASE II much more valuable. I play mostly intro-tech level games and in that environment I find the finality of an ammo crit so fun even when I'm on the receiving end of it.

Autocannon buffs, holl-e

I am actually quite fond of the ammo explosion rule. It makes CASE so much more useful and makes IS XL mechs far less useless, but IDK about the side torso firing arcs being removed. It allowed you to get more likely hits on the side you want to hit, and also allowed you to do torso twist shenanigans to protect your vulnerable side.

I read these and went over them on Wednesday. I wasn't really convinced on the side torso change. But yesterday, and without even trying to get cover, I had a mech take a hit from the right side and hit my left arm. Which would've been fine had that not been my left arm with a heat sink and SSRM2 which was needed. I still got my shots off, and it was best it hit my Battle Hawk's busted left arm instead of the right, but I really wanted it to get a few (literal) punches in before it died.

I really like the side change now.

Good to see case actually do its job for XL mechs. Keeping ammo from doing more than a locations worth of damage is great too.
It’s always abit of a hollow victory when ammo goes off. This way it’s an AC 20 worth of internal damage. It’s gonna hurt! But Im still in this!

Do you think there will be a revision in how BV is calculated if these go through?