Checking In For Early 2026!

It is now mid-May, and we continue to make progress on Update:3068.

The art is progressing, two or three pieces a month.  By the end of the month, we will have completed 32 of the 43 pieces.  That means the art will probably be done around September.  

During the rest of spring and summer, I will be going over every entry and associated Mission Profile with an editor's eye.  I will also be working with Geoff on the stories we plan for the separator between the TRO proper and the Mission Profile section.

Teucer Mech Mortar Carrier - Free Worlds League

There are other things: layout checks, building the index, the glossary and Table of Contents.  I will begin assembling everything into the PDF layout creator (probably Indesign3 again, as that is what I have and I know its quirks).  Then there will be a final pass to make sure the designs are legit and agree with the text entries and the art depictions.

All of this is interesting stuff, to be sure.  But things can get abstract as you swim about, adjusting words and stats.  I have not played the game in many years, probably not since 2018.  I decided I needed something that only playing the game itself, even on an intermittent basis, could give me.  I don't know why I feel this way, but somewhere in the middle of all that quiet, abstract work, I realized I needed to put my hands back on the game itself for a while.

So I played a grinder the other day.  You start at a table with four other players, working with four mapsheets, and begin with a light 'Mech.  Could be Clan, could be IS.  Once you're taken out, you respawn at a random location, piloting a 'Mech of the next higher weight class.  All the way up to Assault, if there's time.  

I didn't know if they counted kills, time in the mech, how many 'spawns' you had left, or whether you were the last man standing, but we played for about 5 hours.  I started with a Koshi, a 7/11/6 with an LRM-10, an SSRM-4, two machine guns and an active probe.  And Paper Mache' for armor.  I mean, 5 points in each leg.  

Yikes.

Castor and Pollux Infantry Assault VTOLs - Comstar

At the end of three hours, I was the last light 'Mech left on either table (there were two tables with about 10 players).  At the end of five hours, I was finally taken down - not by some alpha strike or even someone gunning for me, but just a random opportunistic shot.  It was 1945 hours, and I had to pack up and leave... but I had two kills to my name.  

So yeah, there was a lot of smack talk and speculation about tactics, along with a lot of dice rolling and laughter.  I ran the wheels off that Koshi, and it looks like I am still pretty good at playing to a given machine's strengths.  I will be playing in the next grinder sometime in June and hope to do as well there.

See you all next month.  Thanks for stopping by.

Steve Satak