Editing Starting Battletech (section)

===Combined Arms===
'Mechs may be the stars of the show, but BattleTech has more than just 'Mechs. Once you've got ''Total Warfare'' in your hands, BattleTech has rules for plenty of other unit types, including infantry, [[Power Armour#BattleTech Battle Armor|battle-armored infantry]], tanks (combat vehicles), hovercraft, VTOLs (helicopters), aerospace fighters, conventional fighters, [[BattleTech Spacecraft#DropShips|DropShips]] (trans-atmospheric spacecraft) and even aquatic naval vessels. As a general rule, aerospace fighters and naval vessels aren't worth the effort, but the others can be valuable additions to your games after you've gotten BattleMechs under your belt. The issue, of course, is getting models to represent them with.

*As of this writing (April '22), The new ''BattleTech: Mercenaries'' Kickstarter was recently announced, and it will be bringing plastic models of various vehicles to market. It's coming in March 2023.

*Iron Wind Metals produces models for most canon designs. In addition, plenty of vehicles have 3d prints or STLs available on Etsy and similar places, just like 'Mechs.

*The company GHQ Miniatures, which has been making wargame minis since 1967, has a huge line of models from the world wars through to today. They're the right scale for BattleTech (1/285th) and both cheap and high quality. GHQ actually supplies NATO's military wargamers. The only issue is that many designs, especially World War II and current ones, are immediately recognizable, and it might break immersion to put BattleMechs next to what's clearly a T-34, so try pulling obscure and lesser known models - the Cold War is a treasure trove of weird vehicles no one talks about today. That being said, kitbashing and molding with greenstuff works too if you have the time and imagination.

*DropShips take up a full seven hexes (a central hex and the six immediately surrounding it) and are ten levels tall (five times the height of a 'Mech), so they're really best represented with a paper cutout. IWM does sell resin ones, and printed ones are available, but game-scale DropShips are heavily out of scale with 'Mech miniatures, so having an actual model doesn't get you much.

[[Category:BattleTech]]