I first discovered Battletech from the Harebrained Schemes game (loved the Shadorun games) then i found Tex from the black pants legion YT channel and fell in love with the universe, played a little of mech warrior (stopped because it keep crashing my computer) and now i considering reading the books.
Funny enough, it was when r/grimdank turned into a BattleTech meme subreddit for a short while that I discovered BattleTech. Since then I've been hooked in entirely.
@ZombieComputer@Vcio hey, that's great! BT is a lot of fun, and the community is generally pretty inviting in my experience. It's nice that the rules are very explicit about allowing proxies, so pretty low barrier to entry for your first games.
Are there any factions or mechs that you've been interested in so far?
It's pretty difficult to pick a favorite or most interested mech since there are so many to choose from. But I would start with the Shadowhawk is probably my favorite aesthetically. I try to field it whenever I can but it tends to under perform. But that's ok for me cause I'm just happy to see it on a table. Mechanically, I had great success in having a Thug on my roster.
Faction wise, I would put my 2 cents in for the Capellan's. Partly so I can have people to play against and partly they're bit of an underdog in my understanding of the lore. If I were to pick a favorite clan it would be a toss up between Goliath Scorpion or Ghost Bear.
@ZombieComputer The Shadowhawk is a classic, but it definitely shows its age. If you end up getting into any of the computer games, it's often pretty solid early on. Just looked up the Thug in sarna, seems pretty great actually. I might put my players against one of those in Destiny in the next few sessions.
I've got a Lance that I'm planning on painting in Lu Sann colors. They're a weird group under the Capellan banner. Not in love with their lore, but the color scheme is super cool.