Catalyst Game Labs BattleTech Hot Spots Hinterlands - Role Playing Game Book - For 1+ Players and Ages 14+

CGL's latest BattleTech sourcebook is a lot of fun and useful information, with loads of hooks for mercenary campaigns and tools for running them not just in the Hinterlands setting, but in ways that could (with some work) fit at any point in the BattleTech timeline. Plus there's a mention of giant glowing duck-dinosaurs, which is awesome. The only thing approaching criticism I had is that the opening fiction (special shout out to its author, Bryan Young) was too good and left me hoping that, like larger CGL books, the fiction might continue as an interstitial in between sections of the book. All in all this was a fantastic new sourcebook with a great new layout style and left me full of excitement for the eventual release of ilKhan's Eyes Only!

I can forgive typos (like Massasauga instead of Mississauga), phrases that are incorrect like when it confuses WP with VP or WP with SP. Not the best, but they become evident to the reader.But this book has incorrect numbers, and the whole section of Battlefield Support Points wrong. Not only the table is wrong, but also the Alpha Strike cards have the wrong values too. So if you are going to play, watch out and look for the official errata. The BSP costs are wrong for all BSP units.This book also takes the Pursuit track of the chaos campaign and switches attacker and defender and puts the wrong objectives to each one.I am disappointed of having a half baked book. I wanted to support that Ilclan era, but ended up with a defective book in my hands. I do not like to carry a book with pages with an errata.The errata is 5 pages long and this book is 152 pages long. That makes a 3% of defects. The problem is not the percentage but where the defects are. Bring the wrong BSP costs and that breaks the balance of the game. That becomes a critical error that will alter the balance on the table. And worst of all is that many BSP units are affected. I found about the errata after buying the book.People say things about the lore of Ilclan era. I do not have an opinion on that. If it is good or bad, I am not judging that. Other reviewers could deliver a more expert opinion. So lore did not affect my appreciation of this book. I am not a lore purist or lore expert to judge the lore of Ilclan era. I care about the tabletop experience, not the fluff. And wrong values for tables and Alpha Strike cards are critical failures to me.The book has a system to generate mercenary contracts for Chaos Campaigns.1 star lost due to incorrect BSP tables and cards.1 star removed due to lack of clarity in contract generator tables.Half baked book. These errors will affect you when attempting to field units on a tabletop game.

The campaign and rules are amazing. However, the amount of errata required is insane. 11 full pages of it. Like fundamental stuff is just completely replaced because it is outright wrong and broken. There is no way that anyone with any knowledge of battletech proofread this. Also, the official errata page has a broken link, so if you do buy this make sure to grab the errata off of their forums.Probably just grab the digital version instead, but make sure it's updated with the fixes. Otherwise, be prepared to do what I did which is to make a bazillion notes on the pages of this book, or to tape over large sections that are replaced in the errata.

In theory, this book is a good idea. A system for endlessly generating contracts and missions, to have a campaign (using the Chaos Campaign system) that can go on as long or as short as the players desire.However, it seems like this book was rushed to market far, far too quickly.There's already errata for it, and the errata is 5 pages long. And I've found a lot more big errors. I'm not counting typos and minor mistakes; I'm talking about text references to modifiers or charts that don't exist, mislabeled charts, missing entries, extraneous entries, and more. It's really amazing how this book even got sent to the printers.This book might be usable by the third or fourth printing, but right now it is a waste of money.