BattleTech on the Water

Next week I'll be going on JoCoCruise Crazy II, which means a couple of things.  First, there will be no Ten Years on Terra updates during the next week.  Second, I've just learned that there will indeed be BattleTech aboard in the games room, so I'm packing up a lot of my materials to go and play.  It seems other people will be bringing most of the Total Warfare materials, so I'm going to focus on bringing a few other games -- BattleForce, Quick Strike, and of course, A Time of War.

I find that MegaMek covers most of my desires for simple tabletop BattleTech games, so it has been a long time since I actually rolled dice at the 'Mech level.  I find that if I'm on a table, I'd much rather play BattleForce, which is described in Strategic Operations.  I find the gameplay to be faster and easier than Total Warfare, and simply more fun in many circumstances.  The difference is that I need to cut out a flock of counters to have to play.

I'm also lacking a good A Time of War one-shot to bring with me.  I know I wrote up the ranch assault as a one-shot a while ago, but I need to  find a better way to run that -- it doesn't have a great climax the way a one-shot should.  I can think about it a bit, but I have precious little time to get this done.

Finally, I don't think I've ever actually played Quick Strike, although I own the PDF's for it.  Most of my actual miniatures are WarShips, not 'Mechs, so I rarely get to play miniatures.  The Quick Strike cards make great references for BattleForce, though.