Interesting tidbit: As a thought experiment, I built a force of Beginner+AGoAC mechs vs the Clan Box. For the IS, I used 3050 variants when practical(kept the -C1 Catapult for practicality reasons), and since many of the 'main' variants described in the original TRO 3050 were -Ms, I used Marik variants when possible. For the Clan force, I stuck with Prime configs, and lasers for the Elemental Points. Here's the results:
Inner Sphere:
Battlemaster-3M
Awesome-9M
Thunderbolt-7M
Catapult-C1
Shadow Hawk-5M
Wolverine-7M (x2)
Griffin-3M
Commando-5S
Locust-3M
Clan:
Gladiator Prime
Mad Cat Prime
Black Hawk Prime
Grendel Prime
Puma Prime
Elemental (Laser) (x2)
Inner Sphere total: 13761 BV
Clan total: 13416 BV
Seems like a pretty even fight to me. And if you throw in a second Beginner Box to make it an even company, you'd probably have enough BV to improve the skills of several Clan units. :)