MekTek: A BattleTech Fanzine 1

MekTek was a British BattleTech fanzine produced by me, which came out in 1988. The cover of the first issue was by Steve Kyte.

All the uncredited articles and artwork in issue one were done by me, while the Warnography article was written by Alex Stewart, aka Sandy Mitchell author of Ciaphus Cain.

Mechs at Large was my 'raison d'être' for producing the fanzine, bemoaning the direction FASA focusing on setting, rather than game mechanics (oh boy, did that change later with excessive rules bloat).

Japanima I looked at mecha in Japanese animation, describing the three series that were combined into what became Robotech.

Warnography Reviewed the William Keith's first two Gray Death books, and Ardath Mayhar's The Sword and the Dagger. Alex wasn't kind to the latter.

Thundering Guns described a number of new weapons (Gauss gun; disruptor; fusion cannon; grenade launcher; two sizes of auto-flechette shot guns; medium range missiles; heavy missiles), with a table defining their stats.

Heavier Metal added two variant mech types. The first was armless bipedal mechs, which added the internal arm structure to the torso. The second was the Tetra mech, which was a different way to record a quad mech structure (a record sheet was included). Tetra mech records sheets made it possible to construct quad mechs up to 200 tons (divided into weight classes).

Grunts'n Groan'n When Rock'n Roll'n expanded the infantry rules (mechanized; body armour; platoon organization), and added troop quality too (militia; conscripts; regulars; veterans; elite), and a mechanism for tracking combat experience. A table defined the stats.

Apocalypse Choppers was my way of adding helicopters to the game. At the time this was written, CityTech had just been released, and I had opinions.

So, I'm noodling whether or not to put MekTek up on DriveThruRPG as a PDF, but I'm not sure an old British fanzine from the late 1980s holds any interest for todays BattleTech fan.