Author Topic: Gear Cards - Game Aids for New (and Forgetful) Players  (Read 12526 times)

Sartris

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Gear Cards - Game Aids for New (and Forgetful) Players
« on: 07 February 2019, 15:58:22 »
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
« Last Edit: 28 February 2019, 00:18:22 by Sartris »

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mbear

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Re: Gear Cards - Game Aids for New (and Forgetful) Players
« Reply #1 on: 08 February 2019, 07:25:57 »
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?
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Sartris

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Re: Gear Cards - Game Aids for New (and Forgetful) Players
« Reply #2 on: 08 February 2019, 09:20:16 »
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.

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grimlock1

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Re: Gear Cards - Game Aids for New (and Forgetful) Players
« Reply #3 on: 08 February 2019, 12:37:49 »
watched
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Re: Gear Cards - Game Aids for New (and Forgetful) Players
« Reply #4 on: 08 February 2019, 18:06:08 »
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

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Re: Gear Cards - Game Aids for New (and Forgetful) Players
« Reply #5 on: 08 February 2019, 19:17:01 »
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

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Daryk

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Re: Gear Cards - Game Aids for New (and Forgetful) Players
« Reply #6 on: 08 February 2019, 19:21:40 »
Hopefully you'll have enough room for footnotes, or at least page references.

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Re: Gear Cards - Game Aids for New (and Forgetful) Players
« Reply #7 on: 10 February 2019, 07:36:20 »
Page references would be great.

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Re: Gear Cards - Game Aids for New (and Forgetful) Players
« Reply #8 on: 10 February 2019, 12:10:01 »
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

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ActionButler

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Re: Gear Cards - Game Aids for New (and Forgetful) Players
« Reply #9 on: 10 February 2019, 13:14:01 »
These are absolutely brilliant.
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mbear

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Re: Gear Cards - Game Aids for New (and Forgetful) Players
« Reply #10 on: 11 February 2019, 07:24:31 »
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.

Be the Loremaster:

Battletech transport rules take a very feline approach to moving troops in a combat zone: If they fits, they ships.

You bought the box set and are ready to expand your BT experience. Now what? (Thanks Sartis!)

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Re: Gear Cards - Game Aids for New (and Forgetful) Players
« Reply #11 on: 11 February 2019, 07:48:12 »
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.)
Be the Loremaster:

Battletech transport rules take a very feline approach to moving troops in a combat zone: If they fits, they ships.

You bought the box set and are ready to expand your BT experience. Now what? (Thanks Sartis!)

Sartris

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Re: Gear Cards - Game Aids for New (and Forgetful) Players
« Reply #12 on: 11 February 2019, 09:15:11 »
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

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Re: Gear Cards - Game Aids for New (and Forgetful) Players
« Reply #13 on: 11 February 2019, 13:30:30 »
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



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Daryk

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Re: Gear Cards - Game Aids for New (and Forgetful) Players
« Reply #14 on: 11 February 2019, 18:14:29 »
LOL... ALL the text would be several cards at least...

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Re: Gear Cards - Game Aids for New (and Forgetful) Players
« Reply #15 on: 11 February 2019, 18:16:18 »
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

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Re: Gear Cards - Game Aids for New (and Forgetful) Players
« Reply #16 on: 11 February 2019, 18:40:12 »
So you don't intend to do artillery?  :D

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Re: Gear Cards - Game Aids for New (and Forgetful) Players
« Reply #17 on: 11 February 2019, 18:52:27 »
If they’re doing artillery they probably don’t need the cards!

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Re: Gear Cards - Game Aids for New (and Forgetful) Players
« Reply #18 on: 11 February 2019, 19:31:29 »
Good point!  :)

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Re: Gear Cards - Game Aids for New (and Forgetful) Players
« Reply #19 on: 12 February 2019, 07:47:35 »
Thank you for making there cards!! I love it!!  :thumbsup:
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Re: Gear Cards - Game Aids for New (and Forgetful) Players
« Reply #20 on: 13 February 2019, 12:00:19 »
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

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Re: Gear Cards - Game Aids for New (and Forgetful) Players
« Reply #21 on: 13 February 2019, 12:40:07 »
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. 

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Re: Gear Cards - Game Aids for New (and Forgetful) Players
« Reply #22 on: 13 February 2019, 12:45:09 »
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
« Last Edit: 13 February 2019, 17:43:54 by Sartris »

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AdmiralObvious

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Re: Gear Cards - Game Aids for New (and Forgetful) Players
« Reply #23 on: 14 February 2019, 01:06:35 »
You need a medal mate. These are all pretty fantastic so far. :thumbsup:

Sartris

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Re: Gear Cards - Game Aids for New (and Forgetful) Players
« Reply #24 on: 14 February 2019, 22:29:04 »
yo, dawg i heard you like modifiers


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Daryk

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Re: Gear Cards - Game Aids for New (and Forgetful) Players
« Reply #25 on: 15 February 2019, 04:18:57 »
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.

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Re: Gear Cards - Game Aids for New (and Forgetful) Players
« Reply #26 on: 15 February 2019, 10:06:43 »
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.
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Sartris

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Re: Gear Cards - Game Aids for New (and Forgetful) Players
« Reply #27 on: 15 February 2019, 10:28:08 »
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

« Last Edit: 15 February 2019, 11:20:25 by Sartris »

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Paul Chan Breathers: Oh, I’m a breather. I’m a respirateur. Isn’t that enough?

Daryk

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Re: Gear Cards - Game Aids for New (and Forgetful) Players
« Reply #28 on: 15 February 2019, 16:50:03 »
Nice, thanks!  :thumbsup:

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Re: Gear Cards - Game Aids for New (and Forgetful) Players
« Reply #29 on: 20 February 2019, 12:39:39 »
Now with requested page references


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