ScrapYard Armory

The Luthien Turning Point e-book is the first of hopefully many PDF only releases by Catalyst Game Labs.  I’ve been looking forward to this series since it was announced at GenCon.  At $5, this offering is very nicely priced.

Luthien begins with a brief but energetic fiction piece that illustrates the sadistic methods of the Word of Blake on Luthien.  I don’t see their tactics as much different than Condition Feral but the presentation is different.  It is obvious who the antagonist is and who the reader should be rooting against in this battle.

The Word of Blake are the New York Yankees of Classic Battletech.  They have all the best technology, the best warriors.  I have two favorite factions now.  The Free Worlds League and whoever is fighting the Word of Blake.

As well as providing a gorgeous planetary map, there are mapsheet tables which describe the appropriate CBT map to use in scenarios or tracks based on the terrain on Luthien.

The Combatants section gives a brief overview of all of the forces fighting on Luthien.  There are twenty two forces in all.  Included for each force is a color unit logo, experience levels, and force abilities to add additional depth to your games.  The force descriptions are geared specifically for generating units to be used in the included Chaos Campaign tracks.

There are six Chaos Campaign tracks, all dealing with specific battles between the feuding Draconis Combine factions with notable interjections by the Word of Blake and Clan forces.

While the tracks are entertaining, they are not as coherent as previous offerings from DotJ and JHS:3070.  The recommended forces are varied and it will take some noodling on the part of a game master to meld them all into a single campaign playable by a single faction.

The tracks also show the continued evolution of the Chaos Campaign system.  We saw one iteration in the Starter book series.  The Luthien tracks remove details of force composition (% deployed by player and % of opposing forces) instead leaving it up to the players to come to an agreement.

Optional track bonuses also introduce some different elements.  Prior examples of optional bonuses dealt more with environmental effects that would work against the player’s attempts to complete his objectives.  There are times when these additions work well and others where I am left confused.  I’ll explain.

Blitz! requires the player to exit one of his units off the opposing force’s home edge before the fourth turn.  Not only does this bonus encourage diverse force construction (Fast ‘Mechs anyone?) but also makes achieving the track objectives more difficult because the player will be removing a portion of his force early on in the battle.  Blitz is an innovative and effective optional bonus.

On the other hand there is Grudge Match, which requires the player to destroy the opposing force’s commander.  This to me is not an optional bonus but another objective all together.  It does not make sense NOT to take this bonus when one or more of the actual objectives involves destroying a significant portion of the opposing force.

While I have my qualms, I am a fan of the Chaos Campaign system and welcome any addition to the mix.

Moving on, we are treated to two unique ‘Mech variants and four warship record sheets using the updated style.  Both ‘Mechs look like beasts containing mixed technology.

Another notable cookie in the Luthien book is the prevalence of Strategic Operations material.  There are exact page references included which leads many to imagine, along with several tweets, that Strategic Ops is very close being out in PDF and soon after our hot little hands.  (Just in time for the Holidays!)

That’s not all.  There is a complete multi-page battleforce map of Luthien, all hexed out and ready for the revised planetary assault rules.  This map will be very useful not only to the Jihad era but also those interested in replaying the Clan assault on Luthien during the Invasion era.

The big question on my mind is whether or not the e-Books will be successful.  I’ve already bought mine, but are the rest of the CBT faithful going to follow suit?  I hope so.  I would love for the Classic Battletech community to send a clear message to the powers that be that this kind of product is a welcome addition.  If the Jihad era books do well, we can expect to recieve additional e-books from different eras.  And that is something to look forward to.