BattleTech going old school with Heavy Metal expansion
STOMP STOMP
The next expansion for BattleTech will bring new mechs and characters from its tabletop days as well as new weapons, Paradox announced today at their PDXCON fanfest. Heavy Metal is the expansion's name, and adding more dirty gert lumps of metal is its name. Our boy Nate, who is out at PDXCON in Berlin, tells me one of the new weapons coming in Heavy Metal "Reminded [him] of the tiny 'Noisy Cricket' gun in Men In Black." As well as new ways to murder robots, it'll have new story reasons to do it, with a new Flashpoint "mini-campaign" featuring ye olde folks from Wolf's Dragoons.
Onto the numbers. Seven old mechs and one new mech. Paradox say the vintage mechs come with "unique equipment that reflects the flavor and lore of the original board game." Eight new weapons, including a 'Mech Mortar which deals splash damage to multiple units and Inferno Missiles that light up targets. Two old characters, the Bounty Hunter and Black Widow of Wolf's Dragoons, on one new Flashpoint thread focused on a derelict cargo ship which has drifted in from deep space.
In total, that's 21. The new expansion contains 21. Write that down in your copybook.
Nate will tell us more about what he saw at PDXCON next week. For now, he explains to me the Noisy Cricket scenario: "There's a cool little mech called the Flea with a gun called the Coil Beam that gets stronger and stronger the further it runs in a turn, then blows the shit out of massive mechs." That sounds great.
No firm word yet on when Heavy Metal will launch. It will cost £15.49/€19.99/$19.99 separately or come as part of BattleTech's season pass. That there season pass has a 33% discount on Steam and GOG this weekend as part of the PDXCON sale. If you're new to all this, hey, the base game has a 66% discount too.
After a slow start to their relationship, our former Alec (RPS in peace) fell hard for BattleTech once the Flashpoint expansion hit. Rich McCormick told us BattleTech's been improved by updates too, though not changed massively. Let's see how far these robots can take us with another expansion.