How to bring new players into the game of Battletech.

Someone, definitely not Comstar, recently asked me How to bring new players into the game of Battletech and to submit a link to a document detailing how you bring new players into the game. My first thought was, what did they mean by bringing them into the game? Did they mean how to educate a new person, how to play the tabletop game of Battletech or how to recruit new players to play the game?

So I answered both…

1. How to educate new players on playing the game of Battletech.

• First, let the new player know it’s okay not to understand everything the first time you play Battletech. A new player is at his lowest level of knowledge about the rules and strategy of the game system and at his highest level of anxiety. Think about this! A new player may not even think that he will understand all the rules at first. And this causes anxiety.
• Secondly, give him the basic rules. It would be best to start him or her on a game set in the succession wars with no clan or advanced tech.

• Third, get him started with a friendly game. Don’t get him in a serious tournament his first time playing. Instead, a new players’ first experience should be at a friend’s house or a sympathetic game store with friendly players.
• Fourth, give the new player an extra 1000 BV, so that you can show him how you are trying to destroy him while still giving him a fighting chance.
• Last but not least, let the new player know of all the resources freely available online to learn the game.Show them the bg.battletech.com website with links like this: https://bg.battletech.com/new-to-the-board-game/

Watch YouTube with your friends.

Here area few videos to get you strated:

and

Play Battletech video games.

Gamivo has many of the PC Games like Battletech and Mechwarrior 5.

2. How to bring new players into the game of Battletech. Recruiting new players.

Now you could just make a post on Facebook. Post that you are looking for players who would like to play Battletech. And in your real circle of close friends, just ask them and see who would be interested. But if you are like Capellan and don’t have any friends, here are some other ways of recruiting new players.

• Wait till your friend asks you to help him move or take him to the airport. Just tell them I will only help them if they play Battletech with me once a week for three months.
• If you are like The Lyrian Common Wealth of House Seiner and you have a lot of extra $$$ aka C-bills sitting around, just hire a team of players to play Battletech with you every week.
• Sell illegal drugs. It appears drug addicted people will do almost anything to get more drugs. These players may be less fun to play with depending on what drugs they are addicted to. Stay away from the Meth addicted people because they may go into a meth fueled rage when you blow all their Mechs up using a Tag or a Narc Guided LRM20 missile boat.

• Tell Them you are involved in an amazing business opportunity and you are having a meeting at your house. If anyone shows up to join your pyramid scheme, it’s likely they are open to anything with their spare time and just say you were joking and that I invited you to play battletech.

• Show up to their home dressed in a Capellan combat uniform with a loaded TK assault rifle and usher them into your van with a Capellan symbol on the side of it. And encourage them to play the game or suffer the consequences.

22% of the time these tactics work every time!

Honestly, do not do any of those things! If you seriously thought of doing any of those things, you are a Capellan. You don’t want to sell me those death sticks you wand to go home and re-think your life…

Check out my other blog post about Battletech.