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Battletech Scenario Pack
Tales Of The Black Widow Company
This supplement is packed with descriptions of one of BattleTech's most elite fighting companies. The Black Widow Company of Wolf's Dragoons. Selling their services to the highest bidder, this mercenary unit is well-known throughout the Successor States. Included is a history of the Black Widow Company and her commander, Natasha Kerensky, details of the units that make up the company and the MechWarriors who do the fighting plus 15 scenarios of actual engagements fought by the Black Widow.
Some of the scenario's included are:
Lady Sings the Blues
Queen's Gambit
Spider Trap
The Lady and the Tiger
The Bounty Hunter
Ghost Unit
The Battle for Hoff (A 4 scenario campaign)
Some of the scenario's included are:
Lady Sings the Blues
Queen's Gambit
Spider Trap
The Lady and the Tiger
The Bounty Hunter
Ghost Unit
The Battle for Hoff (A 4 scenario campaign)
- GenresScience Fiction
48 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
27 people want to read
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 9, 2021
More of a 2.5
A friend and I have always been fans of BattleTech, but it is only recently that we've been diving in and playing the tabletop game. For this, I've tracked down all the original box sets and original game modules and after quite a few months of game play we have finally completed "Tales of the Black Widow Company" the first game module from FASA.
This module had quite a few problems laden throughout, which was, frankly, to be expected by us to some degree. Before BattleTech was called BattleTech, it was originally called BattleDroids, but Lucas Arts stepped in and put a stop to the use of the word "droid". Unfortunately, a round of box sets in 1985 were published, which was really the first edition of BattleTech. It's obvious some of the scenarios written in this module were written during that era as the word BattleDroid actually shows up in one of the scenarios. This is also, as expected, as FASA has a fairly long history of have poorly edited publications, whether it be games, novels, technical readouts, or these game modules. The editing problems are more to do with lack of staff, as far as I can tell, which I can totally overlook since the game is quite fun and the stories are wonderful.
What is difficult to overlook in the case of this module is the lack of completeness in the rules. I think some of this problem may have occurred from the first and second edition of the game itself. When the 2nd edition was released in 1986 titled BattleTech they did do some rules tweaking compared to the original BattleDroids publication. I do wonder if that has sort of wreaked a bit of havoc with the scenario descriptions in this book, because more than a few of these feel quite incomplete. My friend and I had to house rule a number of these things as best we could, but we're not sure if we made the best decisions sometimes. Sometimes victory conditions felt wholly incomplete or even some deployment instructions were vague, to the point where sometimes we had to figure out where an attacker or defender might deploy at the beginning of a scenario.
This omissions of detail made some games sort of cumbersome to play and was really the main downfall of the scenario. At the end of the book they try to bring you through a "campaign" where the last four scenarios are tied together for a given objective. The original introduction warns us to carry through damage etc. into the other scenarios to make the campaign more realistic. However, none of that happened. In each scenario we were given explicit instructions of new 'Mech parameters and nothing really carried over from one game to the next! It was really weird. I was looking forward to playing through a rather normal campaign feel, but never really got it in the end.
I do applaud BattleTech for trying to make these game scenarios more interesting with offering a format that gave us rules and some story background of each scenario. I think the game was rather heavily balanced in favor of the Black Widows in each scenario though. My friend and I tried to play the game as close to the 2nd edition rules as possible, which means for the team not playing as the Widows we rolled up Gunnery/Piloting skills based on the randomized chart that was given to us in the 1986 rule book. Doing that made a lot of the scenarios hard to compete with the Widows, even if they had less overall armor. I know they're supposed to be an amazing company, but give me a fighting chance at least! Ah well, maybe things will feel more balanced in the next scenario book FASA publishes.
In the end, if you're a collector of all things BattleTech, this is probably worth getting, but if you're getting it to play it... plan on needing a substantial amount of house rules. I think part of the problem was there's going to be a serious lack of variation within these modules because they can only work within the context of the two maps from the 1986 box set. So, it was hard to develop truly interesting scenarios, which is why I think most modern players would find this quite boring compared to what you can do with a more modern BattleTech setting.
A friend and I have always been fans of BattleTech, but it is only recently that we've been diving in and playing the tabletop game. For this, I've tracked down all the original box sets and original game modules and after quite a few months of game play we have finally completed "Tales of the Black Widow Company" the first game module from FASA.
This module had quite a few problems laden throughout, which was, frankly, to be expected by us to some degree. Before BattleTech was called BattleTech, it was originally called BattleDroids, but Lucas Arts stepped in and put a stop to the use of the word "droid". Unfortunately, a round of box sets in 1985 were published, which was really the first edition of BattleTech. It's obvious some of the scenarios written in this module were written during that era as the word BattleDroid actually shows up in one of the scenarios. This is also, as expected, as FASA has a fairly long history of have poorly edited publications, whether it be games, novels, technical readouts, or these game modules. The editing problems are more to do with lack of staff, as far as I can tell, which I can totally overlook since the game is quite fun and the stories are wonderful.
What is difficult to overlook in the case of this module is the lack of completeness in the rules. I think some of this problem may have occurred from the first and second edition of the game itself. When the 2nd edition was released in 1986 titled BattleTech they did do some rules tweaking compared to the original BattleDroids publication. I do wonder if that has sort of wreaked a bit of havoc with the scenario descriptions in this book, because more than a few of these feel quite incomplete. My friend and I had to house rule a number of these things as best we could, but we're not sure if we made the best decisions sometimes. Sometimes victory conditions felt wholly incomplete or even some deployment instructions were vague, to the point where sometimes we had to figure out where an attacker or defender might deploy at the beginning of a scenario.
This omissions of detail made some games sort of cumbersome to play and was really the main downfall of the scenario. At the end of the book they try to bring you through a "campaign" where the last four scenarios are tied together for a given objective. The original introduction warns us to carry through damage etc. into the other scenarios to make the campaign more realistic. However, none of that happened. In each scenario we were given explicit instructions of new 'Mech parameters and nothing really carried over from one game to the next! It was really weird. I was looking forward to playing through a rather normal campaign feel, but never really got it in the end.
I do applaud BattleTech for trying to make these game scenarios more interesting with offering a format that gave us rules and some story background of each scenario. I think the game was rather heavily balanced in favor of the Black Widows in each scenario though. My friend and I tried to play the game as close to the 2nd edition rules as possible, which means for the team not playing as the Widows we rolled up Gunnery/Piloting skills based on the randomized chart that was given to us in the 1986 rule book. Doing that made a lot of the scenarios hard to compete with the Widows, even if they had less overall armor. I know they're supposed to be an amazing company, but give me a fighting chance at least! Ah well, maybe things will feel more balanced in the next scenario book FASA publishes.
In the end, if you're a collector of all things BattleTech, this is probably worth getting, but if you're getting it to play it... plan on needing a substantial amount of house rules. I think part of the problem was there's going to be a serious lack of variation within these modules because they can only work within the context of the two maps from the 1986 box set. So, it was hard to develop truly interesting scenarios, which is why I think most modern players would find this quite boring compared to what you can do with a more modern BattleTech setting.
Displaying 1 of 1 review