Review: Battletech: Tales of the Black Widow Company

While I'm looking at my old Battledroids/Battletech stuff I'm writing reviews of the two Battletech supplements I have - Tales of the Black Widow Company and The Fox's Teeth: Exploits of McKinnon's Raiders.

Here is the first of those two reviews. For more reviews, please see my Reviews Page.





Tales of the Black Widow Company
Produced by Jordan K. Weisman
Written by L. Ross Babcock III, Patrick L. Larkin, Richard Meyer, J. Andrew Keith, and William H. Keith, Jr.
48 pages
MSRP ??
FASA 1605

Tales of the Black Widow Company is a scenario book for Battletech, centered around a specific mercenary regiment's elite company. It includes 15 scenarios, including a 4-scenario campaign - The Battle for Hoff - pitting Wolf's Dragoons against the Eridani Light Horse.

It start with a history of Wolf's Dragoons, the unit that Captain Natasha Kerensky's Independent Company aka The Black Widows belongs to. This book expands on the mention in the rulebook that Wolf's Dragoons fought for and against all of the major houses, and has some kind of supply base outside in the Periphery. It's implicit but strongly implied by their actions that they're scouting out the Inner Sphere for some purpose, and are supplied externally to do so. For what? Well, we know a ruler named "Kerensky" went into exile and that not all of the Star League Army followed him. I always assumed that Wolf's Dragoons were part of that force that followed Kerensky, and they had access to supplies, replacements, techs, and mechs stashed outside the Inner Sphere by the ruling Kerensky, setting them up as a spearhead for a return of the Star League Army. The game went a different way, eventually, but the clues are there for that kind of campaign.

It then goes on with a one-page summary of the origins of the Black Widows and several of their major actions.

The unit is a full company, with four lances - Command Lance, Fire Lance (with two Archers, ouch!), and Recon Lance. The personnel range from professional soldiers of high quality to Dirty Dozen cast-offs from other units. The recklessly brave pilot and her trashed Crusader, the war criminal under a sentence of death who just won't get himself killed, the thrill-seeker, the clueless guy who someone is trying to get killed, the thief . . . all good stuff. Many of the mechs are in good condition, but many others have specific, idiosyncratic issues that haven't been, or can't be, fixed - and the writeup explains where and when that happened. These do give the unit some color, and make it more interesting. It's a tabletop wargame, of course, and you can have the reckless one hang back, the careful one charge berserkly, etc., but it's a lot of fun to try and play them as described.

The opposition is rarely given much personality besides a "main" enemy, if then, but mechs are often equally damaged, not-quite-100% working, or have oddities about them to make the fights interesting. The scenarios have victory conditions that usually are more than just "destroy the enemy" although that's generally not a bad thing if you manage it. They have extra rules, too, to cover the special conditions. One I especially liked are rules for morale and recovery/repair of units in the 3rd Battle for Hoff, a short-ranged high-density slog of a fight between two battled mech companies over a dry riverbed.

It does have some oddness - a pair of special mechs with engines too small, by the rules, to give them the MP they have. It's clearly not a typo as a later rule makes it clear they have their listed, too-high MP. But that's all that I can find.

The art is good, although Kerensky's portrayal is a bit mixed. On the cover she looks like Betty Boop striding through a war zone. Inside, she generally looks like an attractive but serious Russian woman a gun and an attitude. It's kind of amusing to think of crew sidearms when you're fighting with mechs, but I guess when you have to bail you'll want a handy long arm. In any case, the art includes Jim Holloway, whose work I always enjoyed.

In actual play: I played most of these scenarios out. Not all of them - you have a scenario with mechwarrior trainees with very high (in other words, poor) Piloting and Gunnery skills lead by a vet with excellent skills, but I couldn't figure out how to use the Gunner skill because the rulebook lacks an explanation.
I remember specifically playing out the four Hoff scenarios, especially the 3rd scenario and its 21 mechs fighting at short range. It was a lot of fun, although Kerensky herself got waxed from a critical hit to the head from an opposing Phoenix Hawk early on. Oops. The Widows won, barely, as far as I recall but it was amusing that the major character died. Hey, it's combat. The morale rules were good, too, in actual play. They made the fight more than a slog to total destruction.

Overall: I really enjoyed reading this book and playing out the scenarios. I'd play them again if I had time and table space. Highly recommended if you can find a copy.