Press Release: BattleTech New Era

In a surprise announcement today a spokesperson from CGL said that the decision had been made to relaunch BattleTech, whose working title in house had been BattleTech  V2.0. Sources outlined the proposal development into the forthcoming BattleTech New Era relaunch. The first benefit to old, current and new players will be the revitalization of the franchise from the impending release of the completely rewritten rules that were in the first four volumes of CGLs core set. The plan involves sedgewaying the game rules by using the Universe book as the pivot point to link the transition from old to new. Herb Beas is reported to have a big hand in this project, which will allow him to write what he describes as "three really big books full of BattleTech goodness".

Using feedback from out of house game designers, and getting low key feedback from participants on the forum through the use of polls, and game balance discussions around medium lasers and autocannon game imbalance,BattleTech New Era will revise and expand the rules to be scalable and internally consistent across the game universe.

This will be achieved by the game rules being separated into three streams, that can be crossed without breaking any underlying in universe concept, which will cater for different players tastes. The first product to be released for Origins 2010 will be BattleTech Skirmish. This is a re-development of BattleTech Quick Play, with updated record sheets for all the current battlemechs that exist in universe. The game focus will be on Company level combined arms actions.

Following this release the fourth quarter release by CGL will be BattleTech Duel. This game will be instantly recognizable to the fan base, as it will set the action around small units of mechs, with vehicles and infantry as required. It will fold into its purview the Solaris rules, and in doing so will ratify scale and time inconsistencies that have existed between the original BattleTech and the Solaris rules.

Finally, the third book, scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2011, will be called BattleTech StrikeForce, and this will take the BattleForce Quick Strike rules to a whole new higher dimension of play, while bringing the concepts used by the MechWarrior click base game, to allow players to use their MechWarrior: Age of Darkness miniatures. Our reporter noted that Randal said that "while we cannot foresee the imminent re-release of the MechWarrior product line due to financial constraints and the conditions in the market, we wanted all our players to know that we support the franchise across the various formats and incarnations of the universe".

To support these three new core rule books CGL will dropping the living history story line in its entirety, and instead launch the new multiverse era specific campaign books.

The first campaign book will be called the Neverending War and it will cover the end of the third and the transition to the fourth Succession Wars; including the classic "Mad Max" feel of the original Battledroids game from FASA. The second campaign book, called Brothers Divided, will cover the Clans and the rise and fall of the FedCom alliance. The third book will cover the Word of Blake Jihad, being called simply The Jihad. The fourth book, to be called Renaissance, will reconcile the rupture between BattleTech and MechWarrior Dark Age & Age of Destruction universe, which will be eased by the introduction BattleTech StrikeForce rules. Finally the fifth book, to be called New Era, will take the BattleTech  universe forward into a future setting where the new challenges to the inhabitants of the Inner Sphere will generate conflict that can only be settled by the giant battlemechs so beloved by the fan base. A spokesperson said that the New Era setting will be driven by new artwork so that BattleTech will appeal to a new and younger generation of players. Feedback on artwork will become interactive by the use of forum polls and market research

Global release authorized for the 1st of April 2010.