Well, this year's MechCon has come and gone. Various bits of news has been mentioned on various different sites, but I promised some people here that I'd take some photos and do up a report, so here we go. I apologize for the graininess / light levels of some of the photos: the hall was rather gloomy in most spots, which played hell with your basic camera phones and so required some hasty filterwork.
Catalyst (and the con in general) had a lot more room this year. Attendance has gone up by 50% every year, so this year they made it two days instead of one and moved from various clubs to a proper convention hall. Sadly that did mean that the awesome catering for all attendees went away. But the CGL area was nicely spacious, and easy to spot, the entrance being highlighted by these two giant items as it was.
Banners like that in the background of the giant Awesome were all over the venue:
Inside the CGL area were a half-dozen tables that the demo agents were running intros to the tabletop game on. They were pretty busy most of the show, only tending to trail off in the later evenings.
You could see preview copies of the box set (we're going to get the Beginner Box first, then the A Game of Armoured Combat box is following one month later). Also available to handle were the minis in the set, which were being painted all weekend. There were some pleasant mini surprises hidden in the midst of these...
They'd also brought a copy of the proof cover of the upcoming BattleMech Manual reprint (the first printing has sold out).
When the Manual was being prepped, its cover was originally supposed to be the newly reimagined Rifleman, but that was unusable due to shenanigans; this Marauder image was put on ice for the same reason. I'm very happy to see that such a beautiful rendition of such an iconic mech will grace the errata-corrected second printing, due in the next few months. The art is by Marco Mazzoni, who attended the con and was selling a limited number of prints of his "lost" Rifleman piece, his new BattleMaster rendition (as seen on the upcoming A Game of Armoured Combat box) and this Marauder cover piece.
Also available for gaming on were samples of the new maps from the upcoming map set. The maps in the set are all-new, designed from scratch with an eye towards playability (e.g. making sure things like level and depth variation are very clear, that different tree types are clear, and so on). I think they look great. Apparently the buildings on these maps aren't just drawn--they've been fully modelled in 3D so that they have proper shadows and can be used in different ways in different formats and have consistency maintained across products (not that any such products were announced, mind you--just that it could be done).
During CGL's presentation, Randall and Brent talked about the new set:
In case you can't get enough of Randall's fabulous outerwear:
Catalyst had swag.
Sadly shirts were extremely limited and sold out in the first half-hour (apparently the show's main shirt order was delayed). They had some lance packs, plus a limited selection of novels and sourcebooks, such as AToW, TR 3050 Upgrade, TR Prototypes, Combat Manual Kurita, and a handful of the new TW reprint; they were all gone by early Sunday. Dice ran short as well for certain factions, as did pins. But you could get both the metal and traditional faction dice, and the pins were quite nice.
PGI had merch as well:
Their main news was of course info on their upcoming Mechwarrior 5 Mercenaries game, announced for a 10 Sept 2019 release.
We got to see some gameplay and, if you were willing to wait up to three hours in line due to high demand, you could play a limited version in pod form. I didn't have the patience (VIPs had priority access, but I didn't spring for that ticket).
There was also a gaming area for Solaris matches.
HBS was also there,
hyping their new Flashpoint expansion (they had their own area with a dozen comps set up where you could play it).
Jordan and Mitch had a throwdown sequel to the grudge match they had last year, and this year Mitch managed to come out on top.
They then hosted a Q&A which said that yes, they're looking at the Clans and the Unseen both. They confirmed their next expansion was Urban Warfare, but gave no details. I asked if they were doing any more special limited edition merch and they said no. They had a charity giveaway where you had the chance to get kickstarter merch; I won a heraldry set (Davion, to add to my Marik) and so was pretty damn happy.
I also had Jordan Weisman sign a big pile of my FASA-era books. I asked him and others to lavish some extra love on my ComStar book, which is my favourite ever BT sourcebook.
Lastly, there were the usual cool bits to be seen floating about the hall:
The writing on the inside of the HBS kickstarter jackets.
One of the MWO Championship announcers wandered the halls on his downtime, getting absolutely everyone to sign a Combat Manual he bought at the con.
After the first night I went out for drinks with some of the attendees and the bar was able to make me a Light PPC (1 shot Blue Curacao, 1 shot Citrus Vodka, 1 shot Clear Cuervo Tequila). It was surprisingly drinkable.
Lastly, I got to enjoy watching George "Duncan Fisher" Ledoux get in his first ever game of tabletop BT.
Cheers.
