Introductory Vs Standard Rules levels

[XanKortal]

Bit of a meta question across a lot of the rulebooks and products:
Total Warfare discusses Introductory, Standard, Advanced, and Experimental rules with regards to MUL (TW page 257). Ultimately, TW (page 10) says that all that matters for the rules is defining Standard/Tournament level and Advanced/Non-Tournament rules) which simplifies all the core rulebooks as being 'TW+Tech Manual' or 'everything else', and then individual sourcebooks will refer to whatever rules they need to. It's relatively simple and maps reasonably to the MUL Rules Levels.

However, with the introduction of the AGoAC and Clan Invasion boxes representing new introductory points: how does CGL define the Introductory (i.e., the non-tournament, but also non-advanced) rules?

Does it merely cover the Quick Start Rules, Beginner Box, and AGoAC? Are the rules covered in Clan Invasion also considered Introductory Rules (since they are simplified relative to even Total Warfare, such as Elementals being auto destroyed in Water)?

[Adrian Gideon]

It's all in the process of an overhaul. The old ('current') Introductory/Tournament/Advanced/Experimental system, just like the prior Level 1, 2, etc. system was too tied into the fluff and lore to really be a good breakdown of rules and gameplay level.

Informally, I'd classify it all as Introductory, Standard, and Optional. As it stands for the moment, Standard is anything in Total Warfare and the BattleMech Manual. The box sets are subsets of the Standard rules. The Beginner Box set contains the only real Introductory level rules. Everything beyond that, TechManual, Tactical Operations, and so on are Optional.