BattleTech Field Manual: Crusader Clans

For serious collectors/clan fans only. The Field Manuals are by and large an encyclopedia of the units under command of the Crusader clans at one particular time in the Battletech story arc. The book contains information about each formation, with varying amounts of history, plus random allocation tables, and special rules (some of which are for defunct games like Battleforce). Also in each field manual is a bit of new technology and units for the faction involved. FASA would later consolidate these new units and technologies into the Master Rules rulebook and TRO 3060. Which arguably was much more consumer friendly than the current Catalyst Games Lab practice of putting new units into a TRO and all the rules for them into Field Manual 3145.

Conspicuously absent from the two clan field manuals are also any information about Clan Burrock or Clan Smoke Jaguar, which were wiped out in the years preceding this book's date in history. That underlies a fundamental problem with these field manuals in that they are only a snapshot of one realm's collective strength at any one time, which makes them of limited value from a historical sense. Compare to a book which for example followed one clan or house throughout history, through ups and downs of varying units.

So overall this is a decent book for what it is. But if you don't need an in-depth look at the clan's formations, then you don't really need this book.

1706 - Checked First Edition