I signed up back in 96 based purely on the fact the Bears were not the overexposed Wolves or Falcons. There is some irony there given the way the Bears have gone from a sleeper faction to one some consider to be blessed.
The main attraction of the Bears is that they play the industrial game. It gets mentioned surprisingly rarely compared to the naval, merchant, or tank Clans. Perhaps not that surprising given production is driven by plot, but it is pretty clear that even in the Homeworlds the Bears were rolling in resources. One of my favourite notes from the early sourcebooks is one of the Bears most notable developments was that they introduced a superior breed of wheat at a time when everyone else was spitting out Clantech weapons.
Really that tells you everything you need to know. The Bears are a camper faction you need to wipe out early or else they are going to out resource you and drop it all on your head. Somewhat hilariously it has worked out for them in the fiction. As a faction they got ignored in the 3060s while some innocent remarks set some snowballs in motion. In the confusion no one stopped the snowballs and suddenly the balanced contender of FM:Warden Clans is the behemoth of FM:3085.
That is sort of a source of frustration to me. When I signed up the Bears were not the munchkin Clan. They became one by accident (like all the good empires). So by signing up with the Bears now you are going to cop flak. Some fair, some not.
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Anyway, that's just bragging rights. Playing as a Bear is the business end of things.
Historically Ghost Bear 'Mechs were weird. They lacked the straight out balanced trooper like a Storm Crow or Timber Wolf, and when they did use them they used odd variants like the Storm Crow C. So learning to play as a Ghost Bear was a challenge in itself as standard tactics as typified by the 4/6 heavies and 5/8 mediums of the Inner Sphere don't work.
It has actually been interesting over the last decade to see attitudes change. 15 years ago you would never see a Viper rate well in a poll of medium OmniMechs. Now you do. Perhaps it is BV2 and the extra playing space and time allowed by MegaMek, or even the improving Inner Sphere 'Mechs, but the mobility (read ability to get out of trouble) of Bear 'Mechs has come to be appreciated more. BV fighting in Clan 'Mechs against the Inner Sphere is basically Ghost Bear tactics. Snipe at long range till you have done enough damage that you won't be buried at short range. These days a Dire Wolf is a death trap.
Now some people will talk to you about battle armour. Basically you can ignore it because no one plays with it. Did I say that aloud? Okay this game is about big stompy robots. A lot of us play with battle armour and as a Clan player in general it is probably a good idea to know something about it. But in pick up games it generally slows things down too much. So unless you have sympathetic opponents it won't get used. That said we have a lot of good suits. Once suits diversify in the 70s we seem to settle down on missile boats for our preference with stealth as an interesting though poorly exploited sideline. Talk to Hellbie about the bad things out light armour can do at a Watch level. I would also say that in 3130 we have the best artillery spotter in the game.
Same about aerospace. Which is a shame because Ghost Bear aerospace just keeps getting better and better. It suffers from the general narrative downgrade all Clans copped, but you are still running a Binary or Trinary of Clantech fighters per Cluster which mean you outnumber and out tech most Regiments. As usual our industry is probably better than our pilots. Never forget 3 out of 5 heavy Omnifighters are Ghost Bear designs, as are 1 third of Clan JumpShip designs. WarShips is messier but you get the picture.
Tanks start of fairly traditional and get better over time. Probably the most interesting thing to say here is I can name a Ghost Bear Galaxy Commander that drove a tank. I can't do that for the Horses.
To round things up, the Bears start fairly standard with normal SLDF equipment. By 3050 they have got quirky and require some thought to play. By 3080 they have diversified and you are starting to see things like vehicle transports like Tyrs or actual fire support. By 3130 there are lots of options for tactics. The front line Clusters are traditional, the secondline Clusters pick and choose Spheroid tactics as they see best, while the Kungsarme invests in all sorts of insanity (some not yet supported by existing designs).
If you want more I have a couple of old Jihad era reviews that I can post (and should probably update for 3145).
