Solo Wargaming, with Giant Robots!

Battletech Solo Play – Scouring Sands Aces

I am always looking for new, quick-playing, solo wargames, and I have been playing Battletech for almost forty years – since the early days when it was almost entirely played with paper miniatures, and we had to photocopy mech record sheets – classic, if you will. Now I enjoy Battletech and kind of like the Battletech universe, but it is anything but quick-playing. The wait of forty years of revisions and expansions to cover everything from artillery to infantry, both unknown in the Mech-only days of the first boxed set. So, when I heard that Catalyst released a set of solo rules based on their fast play, “modern” rule set, Alpha Strike, I really wanted to try it out.

So, I acquired it, and I am going to try it out. I am impressed with the basic materials in the Battletech boxed sets. I do a lot of paper craft terrain, and in both Alpha Strike and the Scouring Sands (the Aces campaign released last fall), there is excellent card terrain. The fold-up buildings and paper trees in the Alpha Strike box look good and are easy to put together. In the Scouring Sands Box, there are some fold-up hills, which I was surprised at how much I liked, especially for straight-sided mesas that make sense with the Battletech set elevation rules; indeed, I expected to hate them. The Scouring Sands also has rivers and canyon pieces, things I have struggled to find at reasonable prices, and an excellent bridge.

Most importantly, the Scouring Sands box set has sufficient miniatures for all of the enemies that you will be facing in the solo campaign, a nice touch, meaning that an experienced Battletech player/collector can play with only what is in the box. Even a new player would need the Alpha Strike boxed set, and between the Alpha Strike and Scouring Sands, these boxes have all of the terrain that you need to play, sufficient mechs to make up both sides, and all you need in addition is a table to play on. The table requirements for Alpha Strike are 4” by 4”, or rather, the recommended table size is 4” by 4”, so a bit larger than a folding table, but a piece of plywood or plastic from the hardware store could be placed on a folding table, and you are good to go.

I would like to note here that the Aces rules (the solo rules in the Scouring Sands box) can also be played cooperatively – so if you do not have a table or space, you can still grab a friend and play at your local game store.

Luckily, I have a sufficiently sized table, but I do not have an appropriately sized mat, so I did acquire this Martian-style map from Wargamesvault.com and printed it out on my fancy printer – it was 15 ledger-sized pages.

I think I have everything necessary to get started. Next week, I will talk about force selection and do my final pieces of prep.