What feels like a million years ago, now, Loren and I hatched the “Year of Hardbacks!” concept (that still makes me laugh!) that would eventually lead to the publication of Total Warfare.

Unfortunately, the scale and what I was trying to accomplish meant that every subsequent book kept getting bigger, and more complex, and more difficult…and when you reach the penultimate “staging rules” book, well…

…some day, if you see me at a con, buy me a nice, big, tall glass of ice cold chocolate milk and I’ll regale you with stories of how Interstellar Operations killed half a dozen authors and developers…

But, if there’s one thing to be said for Catalyst is our sheer stubbornness. After an Atlas-sized pile of work (monster kudos to Herb Beas, Ray Arrastia and Joel Bancroft-Conners–just to name a few–for stepping way, way up to make this book a reality), it is finally available for print preorder (and you can grab the PDF as well, of course)!

I previously posted about page XXs and the crazy 28-page table where we decided we needed to spend the time to insert page references (a fantastic fan suggestion I can’t believe we didn’t do the first time through).

Here’s that same page, now with the page reference column added.

Now this is a massive book (almost clocking in at 400 pages). And over half of it is the Alternate Eras sections. There’s so much fun equipment and rules that almost any player is going to find items they’ll enjoy using. But some of my personal favorites as a developer for what we’ve brought together here.

In 1989 Technical Readout: 3050 published. In there was a single table that included some “improved” weapons; standard 3025-era Inner Sphere weapons with slightly better game stats. When the BattleTech Compendium published in 1990 those weapons were not included and subsequent reprints of the TRO saw them vanish. So for the first time in 15 years or so, we’ve folded these long-lost weapons back into a rulebook.

Land-Air BattleMechs…I wrote a whole other post about these oddballs. They’re beloved and hated in equal measure. Just hope we managed to strike a final balance that most people will enjoy (with such passion, never gonna make it work for everyone). Regardless, another great milestone to see them appropriately folded back into a modern rules set after so many years missing.

Back several years ago when I was in the depths of writing and developing Tactical Operations (which eventually lead to the creation of an entire other rulebook in Strategic Operations…over-writing by 300,000 words is a painful gift) we used to joke that “yeah, we’ve got a rule for that.” For example, want to fight a BattleMech against another BattleMech and swarms of infantry inside a sinking aircraft carrier, trying to reach the flight deck so you can take off on a small DropShip and escape before it all sends you into the depths? Yup, got a rule for that.

With the Alternate Eras section of Interstellar Operations the goals were the same. To really flesh out and give players the tools they need to run authentic rules in eras well beyond the norm.

Ever wanted to play out the first attempt of the Terran Alliance to enforce their rule over rapidly growing expansion as Colonial Marines arrive onto the world Denebola in 2236 (centuries before ‘modern’ equipment were available), perhaps hoping you might change that fateful outcome? With detailed Primitive rules (including JumpShips) you can!

And of course the last three “staging rules” allow you to stage all the way up to the largest scale of play and run an entire House!

Check out this long awaited book and see if there isn’t a good pile of fun waiting for your BattleTech table!

And please, feel free to splash this news around everywhere…it’s been a long wait and some may have given up hope of ever seeing this book…thanks!

Randall