This month marks my first games of Battletech: Alpha Strike since the early Summer. Suffice it to say: it’s still a great game. So great, in fact, it’s inspired me to finally get a resin printer so I can print off some of the weirder mechs that appeal to me–or pursue force structures that feature more than one instance of a given mech.

Diving back into Battletech is almost overwhelming. It’s such a huge universe with so much going on. I’ve had to remember so much of what was second nature to me from earlier this year just to recall what my forces are and what intent I had behind them. Add to it that my gaming partner for Alpha Strike wants to try out the ilClan era, which I’ve never gotten into before. Now I’m scrambling to remember House Liao while further discovering what happens to House Liao in the intervening 100 years of history I haven’t covered!

Of course, it’s a testament to Battletech: Alpha Strike that while it remains nuanced and interesting as ever, I didn’t have to reread the rules at all. I was able to pick it up and get going. The only issues to settle revolved around what activation system we were using (there’s more than one option). Once we settled that, getting back into the groove was relatively easy. Remarkably so, even.

And what a good set of games we’ve had. My opponent is trying to make big elite mechs work for him but struggling against my more broad list. Meanwhile, I’m just rolling in ridiculous straight shooting tanks and having a ball blowing up half the board. Literally. Last game I found that I couldn’t shoot him because he was hiding behind buildings all the time. My solution? Shoot the buildings! Can’t hide behind open air after I’ve pummeled a major apartment building into scrap.

Suffice it to say this is very Battletech. I’ve had so much fun I decided that for our upcoming family vacation to Canada I’ll be bringing some terrain and mechs along to play with my son. I went and designed a nesting set of terrain such that I can fill up a board while using as little storage space as possible. Everything packs into one 4″ building. Two of these buildings readily fill a 4×4′ board to a reasonable extent. I’ll be releasing the basic buildings for free and then expanding the set with public parks, roads, parking garages, public squares, and whatever other features I can get to work in this simple format. The idea is: easily printed, painted, and stored terrain.

I’ve printed and tested the roads–might even have them ready before we go up. That’s the “easily painted” aspect at work. My son is excited. The plan is to build a small campaign where he fights his way through a city and captures it block by block. I’ll play the “enemy” composed of less skilled forces trying to slow him down while he has to deal with resupply and maintaining his mechs. He’ll win in the end, of course, but it lets me beat him down time to time without feeling too bad since he’ll still win the overall campaign.

Of course this is probably wishful thinking and my wife should definitely stop me from wasting valuable luggage space. But the terrain brick is so small! Maybe I’ll just sneak it in between a jacket or two…