Product Review: Battletech Battlefield Support Battle and Fire Lances

 Hey Folks, we’re back with another product review. On today’s docket is another Battlefield support pack from Catalyst Game Labs.  Like the Lance packs featuring Plastic robots, the Battlefield Support Packs provide Combat Vehicles for the Battletech tabletop game. These are the Battle and Fire Lances, with a host of options for the budding commander,  Lets dig in and break it down.  

Contents

8 Plastic Vehicles!  (Note, that like all of CGL’s boxed releases, these come fully assembled and ready to play right out of the box).  These packs come with 2 copies of each vehicle, forming 2 full lances of combat vehicles.  The Battle Lance component pairs 2 Manticore Tanks,  and a Pair of Vedette Tanks.  The Fire Lance has a pair of LRM Carriers and a pair of SRM Carriers The vehicle minis are nicely detailed and have very little flashing to get them ready for painting.  The Missile Carriers have a a set of supplemental turrets allowing you to swap configurations.

8 Alpha Strike Cards (Dual sided) that feature 4 versions of each pair of vehicles in the pack. 

8 double sided Battlefield Support Cards that feature abbreviated rules for that rules set.  

(Npte: It appears that one of my cards is missing, at some point i'll update this with the ccorrected information)

Breakdown:  

The Battlefield Support Boxes are an exceptional way to add new units to your battletech collection.  Paired vehicles of similar weight classes and battlefield roles gives the player a lot of variety inside the box.  The Battle Lance pairs 2 solid medium and Heavy tanks together while the fire Lance provides direct fire support jn the form of the SRM Carriers and pong range bombardment from the LRM Carriers.  

The turrets on these tanks rotate, and the tanks have very little clean up needed,  detail is always a concern for miniatures at this size, but these  walk the fine line of enough detail without being a tremendous pain to paint.  

AS Point Cost (in the box) 266 for the most expensive cards in the box. 

You can always check the Master Unit List for other versions of these four designs and that can dramatically affect the point values.

Battle Value isn’t calculated for these boxes, and i would suggest you use the Master Unit List to identify what the BV of your force (and specific variations) is.  

Thoughts: If you’re going to use combined arms, the Battlefield support packs give you a lot of options for adding vehicles to your collection.  The miniatures are nice and have a great level of detail for the size of the miniatures.  They expand your options for playing the game and are a very solid value for the price.  

Overall Rating:

4 stars.  

These aren’t for everyone, because not everyone will lean into combined arms, but for the player that wants to dip their toes into the tank pool, Battlefield Support does a great job of giving you those options.  

Currently, it’s priced at $44.99, on the Catalyst Game Labs Store here or Amazon here for $39.52 (Note, that’s an affiliate link and i will make a little bit of money if you buy from Amazon, i don’t have an affiliate code from Catalyst YET)  and these have hit local retailers.  Buy locally when you can.