Battletech Fiction That’s Like MFZ Battles

One thing about Mobile Frame Zero is that games are much more interesting and tactical with three or more players. Most war games that I know of, including Battletech, usually assume there are two forces fighting each other. My first game of Battletech was a three way game against two of my brothers, though, which made it a game of alliances and talking other people into destroying your enemies for you.

There are a few examples of three-way fights in Battletech fiction.

First, near the beginning of the novel Lethal Heritage by Michael Stackpole, Phelan Kell of the Kell Hounds is going after Kenny Ryan and his band of pirates. They are somewhat overmatched, a Wolfhound and Blackjack against a Locust, Panther, Griffin, and Rifleman. (The remaining two Mechs of the Kell Hound lance are away for this battle.) Then it turns out Ryan’s Mechs are being chased by three mysterious Mechs from an unknown source (spoiler: it’s Clan Wolf) who have already damaged their Mechs. Kell and Tang (his lance-mate) take a few shots at the pirates, but when a few of the pirate Mechs are destroyed the Hounds switch to a more dangerous target, the Wolves.

It’s been 20 years since I read it, but in Way of the Clans by Robert Thurston, would-be mechwarrior Aidan had a trial of position in which he and Marthe each had to fight three enemies. Aidan attacked one of Marthe’s three opponents to trigger a grand melee, in hope of getting more kills and winning a higher rank. However, before he could earn any kills, Marthe turned on him and took him out as her second kill, meaning she got a higher rank and he got nothing.

Similar to Aidan’s experience, in the novel Blood Legacy by Stackpole, Kai Allard Liao and Sun-Tzu Liao are basically going through the equivalent of a Trial of Position. Sun-Tzu sees Kai as a rival for the Capellan throne and wants him humiliated or dead. Each of them has a Daishi. While Kai starts by attacking out one of his opponents, a Blackjack, Sun-Tzu fires a volley of LRMs at one of Kai’s designated opponents, a Battlemaster. Then Sun-Tzu ejected, leaving all six enemy Mechs to take out Kai for him.

In the novel Bloodname by Thurston, mechwarrior Aidan has to fight in a grand melee, a free-for-all, to try to earn a place in the competition for the Pryde bloodname. He had to fight a mob of enemies at once, but all of them were fighting each other at the same time.

In the scenario The Final Showdown in the scenario pack The Fox’s Teeth, Davion mechwarriors Ernst Lang and Rollin Stafford are supposed to be patrolling the plains for Kurita Mechs, but since Lang seduced Stafford’s wife, the two ignore their orders and engage in a duel with each other instead. Seeing this as an opportunity, Gundarasa’s Kurita Mechs go charging into the fray in hope of getting past the two duelists.

There are other examples of complex multi-player strategy in media, such as the alliances between tributes in The Hunger Games series. In game terms, MFZ is like Diplomacy with varying maps, destructible terrain, dice, and LEGO robots. Seriously, how cool is that?

ETA: Just thought of another one in the novel Impetus of War. A regiment of the Northwind Highlanders, Stirling’s Fusiliers, is outmatched by Clan Smoke Jaguar’s Tau Galaxy. The Fusiliers lure a multi-cluster Nova Cat force to the planet to attack the Smoke Jaguars. In the climactic battle, the Smoke Jaguars and Nova Cats go head to head, and the Fusiliers alternate between attacking the Smoke Jaguars and Nova Cats depending on which force seems to be winning.

Still another is in Natural Selection by Stackpole. There is a group of Jade Falcon mechwarriors pretending to be pirate raiders, and Clan Wolf and the Federated Commonwealth are supposed to work together to stop them. The mercenary battalion Zimmer’s Zouaves fights to try to stop the pirates during a raid, and a Wolf force arrives. Instead of attacking the fake pirates, the Wolf forces get into a dispute about who will fight the enemy in a particular area. Eventually, the Wolf forces attack the area and wipe out the mercenaries, leaving the pirates to escape.