Like the Zeta Battalion in a combat drop, Catalyst Game Labs is piling down with serious BattleMech action at this year’s Gen Con!!

BOOTH: 1703 (Gen Con Exhibitor Floor Map)

EVENTS: Check out all the BattleTech Gen Con 2012 Events.


BattleTech: Field Manual: SLDF, Setting Sourcebook [$39.99; soft cover, B&W + 16 pages color]

It was the middle of the twenty-eighth century. Two hundred years after the Age of War, all of mankind now lived, united, under one flag: the Star League. Defending and policing this vast realm nearly 3,000 worlds strong was the largest army ever known to humanity: the Star League Defense Force. Harnessing the largest fleet of WarShips ever assembled, the most advanced technologies in BattleMech and aerospace design, and the finest, most disciplined training regimens in known space, the SLDF was the invincible might that kept the feuding Houses of the Inner Sphere in line.

Field Manual: SLDF describes the single greatest military force the Inner Sphere has ever seen: the Star League Defense Force. Including a brief history and overview of the SLDF, its formation, organization, and training programs, this book provides the most detailed look ever at the army that protected the Inner Sphere before the treachery of Stefan Amaris and the Succession Wars that soon followed. Special rules are also included, enabling players to create Star League forces for use in campaigns set in one of BattleTech’s most storied eras.


BattleTech: Total Chaos, Campaign Sourcebook [$29.99; soft cover, B&W]

In late 3067, the Word of Blake unleashed its Jihad, fanning the flames of violence and spreading it across the Inner Sphere. Three mercenary commands struggled to find their footing and profit from the all-encompassing warfare. As they navigated their way through the conflicts erupting on hundreds of worlds, these mercenaries grew in power, prestige, and character. Facing adversity, victory, defeat, and enemies within and without, they were typical of many commands touched—for ill or for good—by the Jihad.

As the Jihad unfolded through the Jihad Hot Spots plotbooks, players were introduced to the Chaos Campaign, a new game play system that gave players the opportunity to craft their own games around specific battles and events of the Jihad. Now that campaign, spanning fourteen years of conflict, has been collected and updated. Presented here are all of the Chaos Campaign tracks from the Hot Spots plotbooks and interwoven with select tracks from the Jihad Turning Points e-publication series and several all-new tracks and mini-campaigns.

This volume also includes detailed reports on nearly forty planetary campaigns, providing context and details previously clouded by interstellar media, local reports, and personal journals. With an updated and streamlined core ruleset for the Chaos Campaign and new Jihad era Random Availability Tables for the Word of Blake, Mercenaries, and Militias, this book has everything players and gamemasters need to recreate the pivotal campaigns of the Jihad and lead their forces to victory.


BattleTech: Weapon’s Free: BattleCorps Anthology 3, Fiction Anthology [$14.95; digest size, soft cover, B&W]

A man scrabbles to find the BattleMech that will make his fortune. A deadly tank gunner ponders the cost of his calling. An iconic battalion fights its last battle. And in the Deep Periphery, desperate stirrings of horrible weapons breed rumor and betrayal.

Sixteen stories of combat, honor, betrayal and death fill the pages of Weapons Free: BattleCorps Anthology Volume 3. This diverse collection, drawn from the fiction published on BattleCorps.com in 2006, presents the edgy and violent fiction BattleCorps readers are used to, including a never-before-seen tale of Zeta Battalion.

Savvy readers will recognize now-familiar names in BattleTech lore among the authors: Steven Mohan, Jr., Kevin Killiany, Phaedra Weldon, Jason Schmetzer, Ben Rome and Herbert Beas. These writers have shaped the direction of the BattleTech universe; in 2006, with these stories, they were exploring the freedom they’d earned to do just that.

MechWarrior Tactics Closed Beta Keys at Catalyst Gen Con booth!

We’ve got a free poster with MechWarrior Online on one side and MechWarrior Tactics on the other…and it includes the hotly coveted Closed Beta Keys for MechWarrior Tactics! First come, first serve, while supplies last!

Read the full announcement here.

MULTI-MEDIA

We’ll have a large-screen TV in the booth showcasing a variety of promotional videos from Leviathans to MechWarior Online, Shadowrun Online to MechWarrior Tactics, and more. Stop on by for a visual feast!

PARAPHERNALIA

Catalyst will also have the usual additional items for sale of patches, faction/corp custom dice, t-shirts, stachel bags and so on!

AND OTHER COOL STUFF!

For a full list of all books & games premiering at Gen Con, as well as other cool experiences, read the full article.

See ya there!