Did you click on this link with the same level of excitement we have as we’re contemplating this? I sure hope so…’cause I’m hopping at the idea we might do this….

However, first and foremost, before the rumor mills get going too over-the-top, this is NOT a done deal; hence why I’m talking about it in the BattleBlog and not an announcement. Instead, this is solidly still in the maybe column.

Next year is the 30th anniversary of BattleTech (man, can you believe it!). And doing a “30th Anniversary Box Set” seemed…well, been there, done that (and the box set is at the printer, so unless we’d wanted to change it at the last minute…). So we’ve been kicking around several ideas and one of those that rose the most to mind is a board game as a “first ever!” for BattleTech.

Now I know what you’re thinking…the original Succession Wars game was a boardgame. Sure, it was. But when I say boardgame, I mean it in the current market sense of the word. Lots of high-quality components, a high-quality board, a box that would set it on the shelf with other great boardgames…the works.

And it just so happens that we have a really solid game design that was submitted to us that we’re taking a hard look at. Actually, we’ve had several game designs submitted to us and we’re taking a look at all of them. Below you’ll see a photo of various components I’ve assembled to play test one of those games.

This was a game design I played at Pax Prime. Afterwards we requested several solid tweaks and the designer made them and hopefully this weekend I’ll dive in to see if it takes it from the “maybe” column and rolls it fully into the “yeah, we are doing this” column, for release next year.

The two sheets in the upper left hand corner still need to be mounted onto cardboard and cut out, but the rest is all assembled (I finished printing out the cards onto 5395 Avery labels and sticking them onto playing cards last night).

Note these are NOT the graphics of the final. This was all work done by the designer to make it easy to have components to assemble and play. If this ends up being the game we proceed with, we’ll unleash Ray and his usual awesome-sauce GraphicsFu power to create a brilliant looking game.

And finally, again, worth repeating…this is NOT a done deal. But I was excited enough I thought I’d let you see a little bit of what we’re working on to make next year something extra special for BattleTech. (I’ll provide some photos in the near future of game play.)

Randall