Gear Cards - Game Aids for New (and Forgetful) Players

[Sartris]

Ever been playing a game when you look at one of your record sheets and been like "what the hell is that?"

I've devised a series of reference cards for various pieces of equipment with special rules to have in front of you at the table. Each card contains (what I considered to be) the essential rules for each piece of gear, as well as interactions with other equipment that may not necessarily be listed under the relevant entry in the BMM (eg you have to look under the ECM suite to see that it negatively affects NARC pods and Artemis IV missiles).


Each card prints at 2.5"x3.5", which is the same size as the box set pilot cards and will fit into a card sleeve. 

Card Sets (WiP)
Helm Core & Early Clan Invasion Gear Cards (Pre-Final)
Late Clan Invasion and FC Civil War Gear Cards (Pre-Final)
Civil War and Early Jihad Gear Cards (Pre-Final)
Munitions - Autocannons (Pre-Final)
Munitions - Missiles (Pre-Final)
Munitions - Narc & iNarc (Pre-Final)

Note: If you don't see a particular item:
1) I forgot about it and you should let me know so I can add it
2) The item has no special characteristics and you can know everything you need to by looking at the stat block or
3) It's considered advanced or experimental on or before 3067
4) It's C3

[mbear]

Nice! I'm going to see if you have ECM suites, because I always forget those rules.

Will you expand them to include TacOps rules?

[Sartris]

the initial purpose of these is to be a stepoff for box set users to tackle the standard-level gear in TRO: Succession Wars (eg I don't mention thunderbolts on the AMS card when talking about intercepting single-missile flights). the next batch will concentrate on what's in TRO: Clan Invasion

I might consider doing a "flip side" for advanced rules. some stuff is easy like the BAP negating a +1 to-hit from woods or even rapid fire machine gun mode or autocannon walking targets. stuff like ECCM and Ghost Targets get a little more complicated and it might be a struggle to fit in the space. I haven't tackled C3 yet for the same reason.

[grimlock1]

watched

[Daryk]

The NARC is a much better example than you initially gave (Pulse Lasers).  The only problem I see is that citations are almost necessary since the full rules for a lot of equipment could never hope to fit on a single card.

[Sartris]

The pulse laser was the first one I did because it was uncomplicated. Doing narc on that original template would have been problematic in both formatting and that I hadn’t worked through a measure of internal consistency for format and terminology (it’s not like I can c/p out of BMM)

I’m not sure what won’t fit on one side for the baseline rules outside of a few pieces - C3 is the big one. Most of the serious rules complications require adding optional tacops rules like ghost targets and eccm. For the most part, being able to omit stat block stuff saves a lot of space

[Daryk]

Hopefully you'll have enough room for footnotes, or at least page references.

[cavingjan]

Page references would be great.

[Sartris]

I think the current plan is to put little text boxes in both corners at the top so i can reference both BMM and TW

[ActionButler]

These are absolutely brilliant.

[mbear]

These are absolutely brilliant.

Agreed. I also like the idea of having advanced rules on the back side of the card.

I wish Catalyst had something like this, and could add it to the record sheets somehow. In fact, the only thing I think would be better is to have the base rules on the record sheet, then use Gloom! style overlay cards. If you don't know, those are made of clear plastic and have modifiers printed on them. So if you're at a -1 to hit, the Gunnery score is modified by 1.

But anyway, I really like what I see so far Sartis.

[mbear]

Hey I just had another thought after reading a post in the Battletech Rules Modification Discussion thread: How about having cluster hit tables as a small reference card? That could be really useful too. (I know third party record sheet programs have them printed on them, but official sheets don't.)

[Sartris]

As long as the cluster hits table exists I want it to be in as many places as possible. Ideally I can get that on one side and all the hit location tables on the other

[Sartris]

I realized I had to reassess how I dealt with weapons that have a lot of ammo choices. iNarc shattered my dreams of not having to split launchers from their ammo

[Daryk]

LOL... ALL the text would be several cards at least...

[Sartris]

Nemesis and the homing pod have the most going on. The others are pretty straight forward... but the iNarc has five ammo types so there was no possible way t even two side it

[Daryk]

So you don't intend to do artillery?  :D

[Sartris]

If they’re doing artillery they probably don’t need the cards!

[Daryk]

Good point!  :)

[MoffMalthus]

Thank you for making there cards!! I love it!!  :thumbsup:

[Sartris]

I've added cards for all (I think) the gear introduced up through BMRr (which was some promoted equipment from MaxTech like the LGR and FM gear like the RAC). I've also added cards for all (again, I think) current tournament-legal munitions that have special rules. If I have time this week, I'll tackle the TW-introduced stuff like plasma rifles and machine gun arrays (let's not kid ourselves, I'll shirk almost any real-world responsibility if I can).

On the 'Game Aids' front:



Unfortunately, the full table doesn't fit on the card - but that really only affects conventional infantry so nbd. Also the insertable table rows can't be scrunched enough to cram in vertically so I had to do it the old fashioned way and set all the tabs manually, which is why there's so much dead space

[Daemion]

I'd recommend trying to broaden that table out, maybe with bigger letters for the Cluster hit table.

Reason being if it's printed at card size, that font might be unreadable to some people at the size I'm envisioning.

If you ever do get around to the Infantry Cluster Chart, you may have to just double-side it.

Finally, I haven't checked, but have you already laid these out in page formats for printing?

This was something I was hoping to see a long time ago.  Especially for all the new stuff that has been printed in other books, like the Dark Age weapons and Armor.

I definitely put my vote to packaging by eras. 

[Sartris]

Montserrat 5pt is roughly the same size as the pilot cards included in the new boxes (and the AS lance pack cards as well, iirc). You're right that it could do with a larger size, I was just too lazy to rework all the tabs before posting the prototype.

they should be printable as long as you do single-side printing. since the whole thing is still in beta I didn't spend much time positioning for two-sided printing. 

Edit: upped the size to 8pt, tried to make use of the extra space



edit 2: here's what it looks like next to a new pilot card. don't mind the weird table on the right with the common mods, publisher lost its damn mind and double-spaced plus added a big space after paragraphs. it's fixed on the master file



edit 3: for the back side of the cluster table card

[AdmiralObvious]

You need a medal mate. These are all pretty fantastic so far. :thumbsup:

[Sartris]

yo, dawg i heard you like modifiers

[Daryk]

You might be able to cram TMMs in there by using more than two columns.  It'd also be nice if you could add Extreme and LOS ranges.

[Matti]

yo, dawg i heard you like modifiers

Those come already with box sets on card board. Or did for me. Are also at end of the rule books and those can be printed from PDF files.

[Sartris]

yup. more options are good.

You might be able to cram TMMs in there by using more than two columns.  It'd also be nice if you could add Extreme and LOS ranges.

you're right, I could

[Daryk]

Nice, thanks!  :thumbsup:

[Sartris]

Now with requested page references

[Daryk]

Woo! Page references!  :thumbsup:

[rogueranger1993]

So awesome...  :drool: :drool: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

Honestly, these are great - I'm especially thrilled, because I'm running a game with a player who is new to the BattleTech universe.

My one gripe is that you didn't put a card for flak ammo in the autocannon set...  :(

[NeonKnight]

yup. more options are good.

you're right, I could

For GATOR...if you can;t go color then go with G.A.T.O.R.

[Sartris]

My one gripe is that you didn't put a card for flak ammo in the autocannon set...  :(

My original intent was to avoid tacops entirely but now that you point it out its something that should be in TW. Fortunately I know a guy who can get it added

tada.wav

[LegoMech]

These are amazing! Thank you for doing this!

[NeonKnight]

My original intent was to avoid tacops entirely but now that you point it out its something that should be in TW.

You are aware FLAK is in TOTAL WARFARE right? ;)

Page 114:

Page 136 under Hyper Assault Guass

And under CLUSTER MUNITION page 141

BATTLEMECH MANUAL

Page 80

page 97

Page 100 (Hyper Assault Guass)

Page 106 (Cluster Munitions)

[Sartris]

Flak specialty ammo for standard autocannon is not

[NeonKnight]

Flak specialty ammo for standard autocannon is not

Ahh...Hence my confusion.

[Ice_Trey]

Cool.

I did something similar for a con, once, printing out the abridged rules for special equipment on the back of the record sheets so that if they didn't know how to use the specialty gear their 'mechs came with, turning it over allowed them to find out.

I also did that with tanks with abbreviated tank differences, because the amount of players who actually bothered using tanks were surprisingly low.

[CVB]

Very impressive and useful.
One slight improvement proposal: for ammunition types, could you include the year of introduction with the tech base?
MUL tells me if I could field a certain 'mech variant in a given year, but determining if I can load it with ammo type x or y needs additional searching.

[Sartris]

Very impressive and useful.
One slight improvement proposal: for ammunition types, could you include the year of introduction with the tech base?
MUL tells me if I could field a certain 'mech variant in a given year, but determining if I can load it with ammo type x or y needs additional searching.

yes, that should be easy enough as the big ole chart in IO tells you exactly when that happens. I'll probably settle on the "common" date if available and fall back to "production" date when i have to in order to keep arguments about who has access to what when to a minimum. if you want to field something before its common date, you'll have to look that up yourself as i'm creating game aids, not free replacement products for cgl books

[garhkal]

These are sweet.  Thanks for taking the time to make them.. :thumbsup:

[Fear Factory]

Wow, these are nifty!  :thumbsup:

[CVB]

yes, that should be easy enough as the big ole chart in IO tells you exactly when that happens. I'll probably settle on the "common" date if available and fall back to "production" date when i have to in order to keep arguments about who has access to what when to a minimum. if you want to field something before its common date, you'll have to look that up yourself as i'm creating game aids, not free replacement products for cgl books

Perfect!

[rogueranger1993]

Nice, awesome game aids. And thanks for doing a flak ammo card, too. I know you said you wanted to stay away from TacOps, but once you get done with the other stuff you want to do first, some things in there might be nice to have. For example, I know that I'd definitely like to see Mech Mortars, Artillery, missile, and AC alt. Ammo types, and maybe a few other bits and bobs.

[Sartris]

i'm considering the first wave "done" - or at least in a pre-final good enough for government work state (i think the only minor tweak left is adding stealth armor). this will get new players through ca 3067.

Nice, awesome game aids. And thanks for doing a flak ammo card, too. I know you said you wanted to stay away from TacOps, but once you get done with the other stuff you want to do first, some things in there might be nice to have. For example, I know that I'd definitely like to see Mech Mortars, Artillery, missile, and AC alt. Ammo types, and maybe a few other bits and bobs.

every time i think about doing C3 and artillery i break out in hives. i'll see where the line gets drawn. things like mech mortars are doable but extraordinarily uncommon in the canon design portfolio. i'm guessing the next extension will cover the rest of BMM (3090/3145 shifts) and "backside" tacops advanced weapon rules.

[AdmiralObvious]

Artillery isn't THAT terrifying.

I do agree that trying to explain C3 on a card would be a bit of a nightmare though.

[Sartris]

Artillery isn't THAT terrifying.

I do agree that trying to explain C3 on a card would be a bit of a nightmare though.

It’s not but fitting all the rules on a card in a way that clearly explains it to someone with zero knowledge of the rules definitely is. If Narc homing beacons and ams take the better part of a card, artillery has a low chance of working out

[AdmiralObvious]

It’s not but fitting all the rules on a card in a way that clearly explains it to someone with zero knowledge of the rules definitely is. If Narc homing beacons and ams take the better part of a card, artillery has a low chance of working out

It might need to be a front/back card, or maybe even multiple cards...

Still, would be nice to figure out how to make it work, especially since artillery (in my opinion) fixes the "turret defense" issue that this game can have without it.

[grimlock1]

Thanks for giving back to the community!

[Sartris]

as a mere pleb who will never collect a check from cgl, it's what i can do

[Daemion]

Do you have these all compiled in a PDF file, somewhere? I'd love to be able to print them out when I have the chance.

[Black_Knyght]

Fantastic !!!

Are the initial links the most up-to-date? If they are, I'll grab them eagerly, if not then where might such a link be

[Sartris]

When I work on things is determined by my wildly inconsistent ADHD-fueled hyperfocus. As they stand, the cards are “ready enough” and will get you through most games that use TW equipment. Any future additions will either address formatting or add advanced rules

[Alsadius]

Allow me to say the same as everyone else - these are awesome, well done.

[plutonick]

This is awesome. There hasn't been an update in another topic, has there?

[Sartris]

no updates, no. i've pretty much accomplished the main goal of getting through the TW gear. the final step is to make some packaging and bundle everything together but i lack both time and motivation to do it currently.

[Charlie Tango]

I wish Catalyst had something like this, and could add it to the record sheets somehow. In fact, the only thing I think would be better is to have the base rules on the record sheet, then use Gloom! style overlay cards. If you don't know, those are made of clear plastic and have modifiers printed on them. So if you're at a -1 to hit, the Gunnery score

We do this for the Grinder record sheets that are used at the big conventions;  the back of the Record Sheet lists the special rules and page references for the equipment that is on the individual 'Mech.  It's helpful because Grinder is also used as a teaching tool.

[Sierra Invenio]

I know it's going outside your original project, but might I be able to get these for all of the munition types? Im using them in a class level to teach my players advanced equipment, but I have noticed some missing (probably tacops+).

These are genuinely fantastic and I thank you for them.