Scott's Game RoomMRC, MegaMek, and the Magic of Digital Play
The MechCommander Review Circuit, or MRC, is a fan community that is dedicated to match play of BattleTech and Alpha Strike. They have a system for submitting game results in order to allow players to accumulate combat scores and build faction ranks by playing games against other MRC members.
One of the major things that the MRC has become known for is online tournaments. With a worldwide organization, online games using MegaMek allow members to play together without the need for travel or even having every player in the tournament playing on the same day.
With MegaMek, you miss out on in-person interactions and being able to roll physical dice, but it also allows MRC tournaments to do things that would be much more difficult to pull off on the tabletop. MegaMek supports custom map files, so the MRC can use maps that are custom built for their scenarios rather than being limited to printed map sheets and battle mats. During play, MegaMek can also handle a lot of BattleTech’s rules complexity for the players. It ensures that things like design quirks and penalties from critical damage are never forgotten. It also makes it possible to use rules like double blind play that would be a huge challenge in an in-person tournament setting. The automation makes these less common options easy for players and lets the event organizers be confident that everyone is playing the rules correctly.
From a player point-of-view, in addition to the scheduling benefits, MegaMek means that there is no need to buy or paint miniatures for the forces you want to play. The only limitations on units used is what a TO decides to allow and the few limits imposed by MegaMek.
That also enables a neat idea that is going to be used in an upcoming MRC event: list bidding. For the Cameron Heat tournament happening in January, players will submit a list for the tournament, but they won’t actually play the list they build. Instead, all of the players will be able to review the submitted lists and bid on which list they want to play in the tournament. Where most players would be worried about loaning a stranger their miniatures to use for a whole tournament, that isn’t an issue at all with MegaMek because it is just a digital copy of a list being shared and played by someone else.
If that sounds like a fun idea to you, you can listen to this Coolant Pod episode for more information about the Cameron Heat event (Episode 30 – Sameron Heat) and read the packet in the MRC Hub Discord server. The list submission deadline is still a few weeks away, so there is still plenty of time to decide to participate. And even if that event won’t work out for you, it is worth joining the MRC Hub if you want to stay up-to-date on future MRC events.
