Playing 28mm Battletech With Bellona

Another way to pit a platoon against a protomech.

As part of my exploration into ways to play in the Battletech universe at 28mm scale (specifically with a focus on infantry level skirmish combat) I worked out the conversions needed to use these units with the BELLONA Tabletop Battle System. If you’re looking for a quick, easy-to-learn, infantry-centric ruleset for running your own Battletech inspired skirmishes at 28mm, then arm yourself with these conversions, pick up a copy of the BELLONA Tabletop Battle System and get your minis on the table.

I also did a quick and dirty conversion compatible with Five Parsecs From Home: Tactics, which you can find here.

As a caveat, while these conversions are pretty great with the smaller, infantry-scale stuff in the Battletech universe, the methodology I used becomes increasingly unwieldy when dealing with anything heavier than protomechs and light mechs. The BELLONA Tabletop Battle System rule set really is built with infantry scale skirmishes in mind, and when you’re working at that scale, there really is only so much boom you can bring to a grid reference. The larger mechs (like the infamous Mad Cat) basically just become overkill constrained to a narrow focus.

As a guide, I’ve included not only statistics for every Battletech unit I’ve personally 3d printed in resin on my Mars 4 (so far) for 28mm scale skirmishes, but also the methodology behind these conversions, so that you can make your own. Most of these models are available from the sculptor called Wolk, so you can purchase and download your own, then blow them up to 467%, print them, paint them and get them on the table just like I did.

ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATIONS

For campaign play (or just if you want to add commanders or veterans to your force, etc.) you can easily take modifiers like Nimble, Rugged, Phasing, Raging and Zeal (or other quality of life modifiers that you like, which seem appropriate) as “earned skills” in a sense. You can award these modifiers to units after they survive a battle, or just sprinkle them in to make a one-shot battle more interesting.

Additionally, a lot of work has gone into making these conversions more infantry-centric, but if you still don’t feel that your Elementals, Protos or Light Mechs are tough enough or fast enough for battles at this scale, you can, of course, add additional instances of the Tough and Fast modifiers (with commensurate deploy cost increase) to make them stick in there for longer and dart around the board more.

METHODOLOGY

The biggest problem with converting BattleTech units over to Bellona is that Bellona is very abstract while BattleTech is very granular and crunchy. As such, coming up with flexible conversion guidelines for quickly statting out units was a bit of a challenge, and in the end, I mostly just felt like the best way to stat out each unit is individually, abstractly bringing out its strengths and weaknesses as best as possible.

I decided a reasonable "Tough Curve" would be 0 for civilians, +1 for infantry, +3 for battle armor, then an additional +1 per ton for protos up to 9 tons. This range means that Elementals can take 4 damage and a Minotaur Protomech can take 13 damage (Tough x12). For ultraheavy protos, ultralight mechs and light mechs, I decided to go with Tough x12 + 2 at 10 tons, and +2 for every five tons after that. This means that a Sprite Protomech could take 17 damage, an UrbanMech could take 21 damage, a Mad Cat could take 41 damage and a Dire Wolf could take 51 damage.

For speed, I figured that a reasonable "Fast Curve" would be 0 for infantry and battle armor, then +1 for every 5 hexes (50kmh) that a unit can travel at a run. This isn't a direct conversion, and it does fall a little short for units in the 7-8 and 12-13 hex movement range, but it does make it where infantry and battle armor move at the same speed as UrbanMechs while Panthers gain +1 Fast and Siren Protomechs gain +3 Fast.

For weapons, I basically winged it for each unit. Machine Guns are good against infantry, so I gave them Sweep modifiers, but I also gave Sweep modifiers to units that had a lot of guns, flame throwers, etc. Basically, if they can theoretically hit a lot of units, they got Sweep. The more units they could hit in a grid reference, the more instances of Sweep they got, but I also kept all units capped at 3 per the restrictions in the BELLONA core rules. Want to make things really wacky? Break that 3 cap and turn your mechs into unreasonable obliteration machines.

I also added Piercing for every 5 points of damage (in BT) that a mech can do, with half for things like missiles that don't always deliver their full potential.

For Ranged modifiers, I added +1 Ranged for anything that wasn't limited to strictly melee, then added another +1 Ranged for every 10 hexes (at long range) a unit could fire at. If you’re looking for a direct conversion, consider just assuming that any mech scale weapons can hit anything on a 3x3 map.

Plated, as a modifier, was pretty much a given to separate the machines from the men, as it were. Acrobatic was also a necessary modifier for machines, as they're not stopping to shoot. Flying was given to any units that had jump jets. I considered giving units Transport (to reflect Battle Armor hanging off of them) Crushing (to reflect their ability to stop flat terrain) and even Terrifying, but I decided on leaving them out of my own conversions. Your mileage may vary, of course.

In the end, I also decided that Clan units should gain +1 Advantage to reflect their technological superiority.

For ease of reference, here is a handy-dandy table for the “Tough Curve” that I made for myself when I was building the conversions above. May it serve you well.