I think all of us dream of being able to make our own official BattleTech products. Mine would be a box of exclusively bad ‘Mechs, but then the Mercenaries Kickstarter already had the Inner Sphere Security Lance, so I’m relatively satisfied.
One person who wasn’t satisfied was Jerry Holkins, also known as Penny Arcade’s Tycho Brahe (not to be confused with the Danish astronomer). Starting from an actual BattleTech Let’s Play broadcast, Jerry leveraged his successful brand of international gaming conventions into a collaboration with Catalyst that resulted in the Black Remnant Command Lance ForcePack, showing the rest of us the path we must all follow to make our dreams come true.
To better refine this method, I reached out to Jerry to get his BattleTech story, what’s exactly in the new Black Remnant collaboration, and what we might expect from him in the future. Enjoy.
Sean (Sarna): First of all, thank you for agreeing to talk to me. I wanted to talk to you mostly about your collaboration with CGL and the new Black Remnant ForcePack box, but also learn more about the Black Remnant. I’ve seen a few episodes of your actual-play web show, and I’ve got questions!
Jerry “Tycho” Holkins (Black Remnant): I hope that I can be of service to you in the answering of said questions. But before we start, I should say that I have spent a lot of time on Sarna trying to bone up and make sure that the things that I think I understand about the Inner Sphere are actually true. I think that a lot of people are utilizing it for that purpose, but as we’ve been trying to sort of tell a story inside the Inner Sphere in the relatively undefined ilClan era—which we chose precisely because there’s room to tell a story there. We can reach back into weird eras and bring them back and reinterpret them and try to tell new stories that echo and add to the established fiction.
Like, that’s the thing that excites us the most, and we chose ilClan so that we wouldn’t be stepping on as many toes as we possibly could. Because there’s a lot of toes in that region.
Sean: That’s why there’s an entire wiki about all those toes.
Jerry: Oh, exactly. Whole toes section for the enthusiast.
But yeah, I’d be happy to answer any questions that you might have. But I will say that I was talking to someone just via email after the game that we did at PAX Unplugged, and they said that now that Black Remnant has a page on Sarna, it’s canon. And I was like, okay, I’m gonna communicate that to him because that’s gonna make him feel like a special guy.
Sean: Well, we do have apocryphal sections, but I’m pretty sure that what we have right now doesn’t have that tag, so I think you’re good.
Jerry: All right. And certainly when it comes to the Command Lance pack for Black Remnant, that’s all real stuff for sure.
Sean: I’m going to ask you about that stuff. But first, we’re going to start off with getting some of your BattleTech Bonafides and also just introducing yourself in case a reader is not from the era of the internet which I kind of grew up in. Penny Arcade was my daily home page for a little while there.
Jerry: I didn’t grow up in it. Well, I mean, it depends. For us, that sort of started in ‘98. I was working and my friend Mike was over doing retail sales and stocking and things like that, but also sort of like tech adjacent—I think Circuit City was a Canadian chain.
Sean: I think it was Radio Shack before it became Circuit City. Or maybe it was bought by Circuit City? I forget.
Jerry: Yeah, but it projected down into Spokane where we lived and that’s where he was working for a while. Yeah, we had been friends back in the day and he had played BattleTech with me. We had a lunch group in high school. He and I met in news production, which was like the class that made the school paper. The room right behind there was like a work area, so it had a couple of computers, but it also—because this was that era—had a dark room.
It was all the mechanical realities that you needed to produce something like that at that time. We had some Macs capable of playing Myst, which for us in Spokane, was from a local developer, so a point of pride for us. He and I played that essentially in that room. We would eat lunch there. There’s no cafeteria-type situation—we just bring lunch back into there, make ‘Mechs, fill out sheets, and the models that I had.
I didn’t have very many because they were expensive, but there was a thieving ring of some prominence, and I had contacts within this thieving ring. You could get anything for half price, so it was a big savings for me. An ethical quandary to be sure, but I really wanted a Phoenix Hawk, so that’s what’s up.
Sean: I understand fully.
Jerry: Yeah. Those ancient soft metal sculpts weren’t cheap.
Sean: Some of those are still classic. I have the ancient Centurion model, the stupid tall, thin thing.
Jerry: Sort of like an Iron Giant-type silhouette.
Sean: Yeah, exactly. Oh, we forgot an important question. Who are you?
Jerry: Sorry, my name is Jerry Holkins, but I’ve lived on the internet in enough weird contexts to have a bunch of names, like Aragorn. I’ve existed in various times and places, and each of those has a distinct name associated with it. So, Jerry Holkins, but of course the pen name that I write Penny Arcade under is Tycho Brahe.
On top of that, I have also played in a bunch of different live-play role-playing games, like Acquisitions Incorporated, which started back in 2008 on a podcast. Since then I’ve also played vampire Jameson Keen in Seattle by Night, and I play Stavrenn Otho in the Black Remnant. So I have a ton of different names in these different arenas.
Sean: Well, we’re gonna stick to the BattleTech stuff. You have given us your tabletop history but have you played any of the video games or any of the newer tabletop products?
Jerry: My first introduction to the whole thing was called Crescent Hawks’ Inception on my Commodore 64. That was the first encounter I ever had with BattleTech. I mean, I played that when I was a little kid. God, what the fuck year was that here? 1988. Good lord. Okay, so I was 12 years old.
Sean: That’s about the same time I got into MechWarrior 2.
Jerry: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah! I was just gonna say because Penny Arcade is largely correlated with gaming. But the truth is, the farther we’ve gone, and especially now that Mike’s boys are into wargaming as well, wargaming is at least the equal of the digital gaming habit that we have.
But yeah, there’s no question that the Activision series, the MechWarrior series, like MechWarrior, MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries; I can remember that like it’s real life. Like, I was completely obsessed with that. Eventually, they came up with a variant that could be played on networks.
Watch this video on YouTube.
Sean: I remember this. After the initial release, they came out with a bunch of different versions with new features like better graphics and LAN play.
Jerry: Yeah, it was almost like a mod, as I recall. At that time, you really had to be on a LAN. We weren’t doing client-side prediction or anything like that. All the modern treats that John Carmack put together in what is functionally speaking his own Quake mod—all those creature comforts didn’t exist back then, so you could just play it. And it was a bad experience.
It’s entirely possible when I was older to have gone to a BattleTech Center and seen the actual pods, which I’ve always coveted, but never had a chance to play. They were in Wizards of the Coast when they used to run retail locations. They had one up here, and I saw the pods in the basement, but by the time I had a chance to go back, they had actually stopped doing that part of the business, unfortunately.
Sean: Virtual World Entertainment is still around. They do conventions all the time. Just invite them to PAX.
Jerry: That’s what we should do. We do have our Steel Battalion room where we track a campaign over the course of a weekend. That’s Steel Battalion: Line of Contact, I think is the multiplayer variant of that.
Sean: Well, I can put you in touch with Nick at Virtual World. He’ll be sure to bring those pods to your next convention.
Jerry: I think people would lose their minds. And again, it would be the culmination of a lifelong dream. I’ve always fantasized about it. I hope it’s cool. I might have built it up a little bit.
Sean: If it’s what I recall when I was in a Dave & Buster’s in high school, it’s still cool.
Jerry: As long as a robot is stomping, I think it’s probably going to be. I was messing around a bit with MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries. I sort of wanted the multiplayer to work a little bit differently. I play a lot of multiplayer games in the more traditional realm of digital entertainment, and so I sort of want the campaign mode to be more direct and functional.
It sounds like some of that stuff made it into Clans, but I haven’t had a chance to play it yet. The last part of the year for us is, like, three conventions in basically three months, so since the beginning of September, it’s been pretty crazy.
Watch this video on YouTube.
Sean: Fair. Well, you’ll have some downtime. I do recommend getting into Clans if you want more story-driven stuff. If you want something that feels a little bit more like MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries, in the sense that you can just travel the Inner Sphere and get whatever ‘Mechs you want, then MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries is also a really good game at this point, and there’s a ton of DLC for it too.
Jerry: Tex was showing me mods for the Harebrained Schemes game. There are some hardcore mods. Like, I didn’t really know where that was. I haven’t had a chance to dig into that super far, but that’s a more traditional BattleTech-type experience where we’re moving on maps and we have the full meal deal in terms of elevation. We’re doing calculations for range and stuff like that.
I never had a chance to check that out too much outside the demo, but he was showing me mods that make sure that all the BattleMechs are attached to the right era. It’s basically like a fan remix of the content. There’s also a roguelite mod that sounds like hot shit.
Sean: Yeah, there’s a lot of mods for that game. I didn’t get too deep into the mods, but if you want that tabletop kind of experience but having a computer roll the dice for you, it’s one of the best BattleTech games ever made.
Let’s get into the all-important question though. What is your favorite ‘Mech?
Jerry: I pushed super hard for it, but I was trying to get a Black Knight into the box. Also, I wanted pervert sword variants, you know what I mean? I wanted to go weird with it. But no, I think that’s probably my favorite just from a vibes perspective.
But they let me have the Cyclops in the box, and I just like everything about it. I like the weirdly chunky command platform, I love the sort of awesome NASA-punk look it has because it’s ‘80s as hell. There’s a lot of those aesthetics in the game broadly, and I really like that. Like I said, we were able to get it in there with the cool antenna coming off and the cool mask.
Sean: That’s going to be something else we talk about. These certainly don’t look like the standard models.
Jerry: Well, no, I just mean if you take a look at the sort of cockpit element type zone, it looks really cool because of the official paint scheme that we were able to get from Catalyst as part of the collab. It just has this really nice extra lacquer on the lasers, on the glass, and on the cockpits. The rest of it’s pretty matte, and then it has this extra little shine wherever it should have a little bit of glass.
If you want to see them actually painted in the livery of the Black Remnant, let me just go get a link for you. We set them all up on this HexTech con tower that we printed out. We do a lot of 3D printing; the HexTech series of terrain is so good.
Sean: Oh, yeah. I’ve reviewed a lot of it. It’s all very good.
Jerry: Gale Force 9 does have their own line essentially pre-printed and painted HexTech stuff.
Sean: Yep. But you can also go to their site to get the files, print them off, and paint them yourself.
Jerry: And that’s what we’ve done. You’ll see a bunch of that terrain in this video.
Sean: This is great, ‘cause now I get to plug them again.
Jerry: They’re doing the Lord’s work. Just incredible stuff.
Sean: All right, let’s talk a little bit of background for Black Remnant since there’s going to be a lot of Sarna readers who haven’t seen Black Remnant episodes. I believe they got started just last year?
Jerry: Yeah, I think that’s when it started to pop out. We’ve done it for a minute, and it’s just been a blast. It’s such a neat thing. Between the MechWarrior: Destiny RPG, and because this tends to be a streamed game for us, Alpha Strike works great. But if I go out to a con or something like that, generally speaking, I’m not seeing Alpha Strike on the table.
Sean: Which is a shame. I really like Alpha Strike.
Jerry: Oh, for sure. One of the things that I think sort of is incumbent, where I have the knowledge of the old ways, I’m always trying to push it on the young.
You know, when I was out at PAX Aus and I saw a table where people were teaching people to play Classic, that does my heart good. But if I’m running a game of Dungeons & Dragons, like, I’m definitely pushing the old stuff on them. I’m pushing Spelljammer, Dark Sun, and Planescape, you know what I mean?
Sean: They have two versions of that, too.
Jerry: They do, they do, but it’s not the same. I mean, they have a Planescape book, but I have every box set, you know what I mean? I have a lot more granularity that I can offer the youth. And also, when I was pushing that stuff pretty hard the new supplements hadn’t come out yet
Sean: Let’s answer the important question: who is the Black Remnant?
Jerry: So the Black Remnant, in terms of historicity, is sort of like a successor spin-off of the Northwind Highlanders. But the specific group that broke off is called Otho’s 88. Obviously, there aren’t 88 of them, but it’s very intimidating if you think that there’s 88 of something.
It’s essentially like a family drama on the role-playing side, and on the table, it’s essentially the story of someone who will one day be the inheritor of his father’s mercenary company but is too young and too untested to be trusted with it. And so his Uncle Logan operates Othos 88 to great success and has essentially given my character a DropShip and a lance, and it’s basically like, “You need to make your own way. Before you graduate to the big leagues and before you can take on the mantle of this legacy, I’m doing my brother’s—your father’s—work for him. He’s not here to make sure of this, but I need to verify in absolute terms that you are worthy of this legacy.”
That’s essentially the story. Now, it turns out there’s additional drama because my character thought that he had been orphaned. But it turns out that his mother had actually left the company before and went into hiding for reasons we did not understand at the time. A lot of the family drama comes from the fact that these two essentially rival family members, his mother, and his uncle, have different versions of the company and the story of how his father died, and that’s basically the core question.
But alongside all that, we’re trying to make our way into the Inner Sphere. We’re taking jobs in different places, making alliances, making enemies. It’s just classic adventure stuff, but situated in the ilClan era.
Sean: And it’s a pretty involved production. You’ve got an entire studio and lots of custom playmats.
Jerry: Oh, yeah. We have that studio because we have done a lot of different streaming stuff. When I was talking about Spelljammer and things like that, I used to run a weekly D&D stream connected to Acquisitions Incorporated called The C Team.
We try to cook up some cool battle maps to really emphasize the MechWarrior inside the cockpit. Try to communicate both layers of the adventure and the story at the same time.
Sean: How did this all get started? What made you want to start a BattleTech Let’s Play broadcast like this?
Watch this video on YouTube.
Jerry: What’s fun is that we all have various kinds of history with it. Our design director, Kiko, there are a lot of classic BattleMechs that are more or less borrowed directly from the shows that he watched as a kid. You know the anime?
Sean: Like Macross?
Jerry: The Macross series, of course, and so he has a lot of affection for these classic designs. Our VP of business development, but also my friend, Eric, really wanted to give Kiko a fun experience. Kiko had experience role-playing with me a few times on different streams, and he wanted to make a fun BattleTech adventure for Kiko to play in. And so I was like, let’s collaborate on something like this. Let’s go back to our BattleTech roots and try to make a campaign somewhere between a traditional live play and a war game and see if there isn’t interesting storytelling that can happen between these two things.
Harebrained had done some streams way back in the day. In fact, they had done some of those streams in the same studio because they’re local too. At that time I was running my own show so I didn’t have a chance to jump in there, but I know that people really enjoyed that. I think it was Death From Above?
Sean: Yeah, I think it was called Death From Above back in the day.
Jerry: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, like I said, Eric wanted to make a special present for Kiko, and I wanted to help wrap it. That essentially resulted in us wanting to play and learn and discover as much as we could about the Inner Sphere and try to tell a cool story.
Sean: Very cool. Now this is a question I’ve gotten from a lot of Sarna readers. What is a good onboarding point for Black Remnant? Should they start at the beginning, or is there a montage episode they could watch?
Jerry: We don’t really have that, but our episodes aren’t very long. Our episodes are like two hours max. Some episodes in this genre are quite long but we try to be reasonable. And also, as much as I played up the drama, the show is actually quite silly. My character’s uncle is correct, he is not ready to run Otho’s 88. I’m not gonna say there’s never any hijinks, but we have hijinks and we also have serious gut-punch moments as well that we earned because we were goofing around and vice versa.
The whole arc is only 52 episodes in total. You’ll watch it, and if you like the vibe, then you’ll hang out there, and hopefully it will be of value and of use to you. We have a lot of fun making the show, and so the fantasy is that some measure of that is going to be communicated to the viewer.
Sean: I saw your PAX Unplugged episode with Randall, and that was very entertaining. I thought it was really cool.
Jerry: I’m so glad you think so. If you like that energy, that’s what we do. There’s levity in there, but we also get down into it from time to time as well. It’s very much an intense family when the drama falls in and every character sort of has their own storyline in it. It’s pretty solid.
And this is the other thing about the MechWarrior: Destiny system—if you’re used to a very hierarchical top-down game like Dungeons & Dragons, where there’s a person whose job it is to sort of simulate the universe and you’re essentially typing questions into a parser for that person and then getting responses about the world state, that can happen in Destiny, but players have a resource that they can use to introduce characters, concepts, make things happen. So, at any point, and this happens frequently, we can expend this currency to make the story go the way that we think is going to be the coolest.
Or Stavrenn Otho, my character—I often spend chips to make things worse just because I think it’s more interesting.
Sean: So what would be an example of making things worse?
Watch this video on YouTube.
Jerry: Making things worse would be essentially retreating into drink the moment he’s going into the biggest negotiation of his life with his uncle and basically saying, “I don’t 100 percent remember the deal,” right?
Kiko killed a major character using a chip. Like, they had been injured after a serious conflict and he played a chip to basically have them die on the table.
Sean: Oooh…
Jerry: The ramifications of that gave us like a month and a half of storylines. We’re always throwing in chips to make things worse. And then as you might’ve seen in that last game, anytime players play chips, the game master/storyteller person gets those chips, and so then he basically played five chips at the live game and essentially instigated a conflict with the Bounty Hunter. And then, of course, Randall emerges from offstage.
But those are the sorts of things that you can get away with in that game. Like I say, it’s not as hierarchical as some of these other games; it’s meant to be a collaborative space. I want it to be like a lived-in space, a stone soup situation where everybody’s throwing something good in there, and then we all get to eat it.
Optimally, that flavor gets projected through the show as well, but it’s just been a blast seeing new names in the chat. It’s been really, really fun to see people come into this. Especially because a lot of our audience is gamers. We have used Penny Arcade and PAX for years to try to do our best to convince video gamers that they’re actually war gamers or board gamers in disguise—they just don’t know it yet. They’re just not aware. It’s like, well, if you like these systems and you like to have fun, well, I’ve got great news for you.
Sean: When arthritis sets in, you’ve got Alpha Strike.
Jerry: Exactly! Now that you’re 24 and you’ve aged out of esports, let me show you these robots.
Sean: Amazing. Let’s get on to the big Catalyst collab. Who reached out to who? How did this collaboration coalesce into this amazing ForcePack?
Jerry: So, Eric is the person who started all this. But also, CGL isn’t far from us, you know what I mean? And Eric just knows everybody, and that includes people over in that mix.
So as we continued to investigate the Inner Sphere and continued to have fun with it, they suggested the lance pack collab, and then that’s when the true work began. That’s when I started to plumb the depths of every talk page, every forum, official forums, smaller scale forums, just trying to figure out what people like—they’re fantasy picks. That’s how I was able to ultimately come up with the list.
I had favorites for specific reasons, especially in terms of Alpha Strike. There are a couple of keywords I’m really interested in for the Cyclops, especially the Mobile HQ stuff just to get a little bit of an edge there. Depending on the variant, it’s got some C3 stuff as well. But we’re really interested in trying to make a pack where it’s like every BattleMech you see in there is like, wow, you know? We wanted to make a pack where every BattleMech is the one you would buy a pack for. We tried to stack it as much as we could.
Most of the time I’m just a writer, so for me, I had a great time with those lance pack cards. The pilotI cards give a bunch of information on characters from the campaign, our personal characters, and their special pilot abilities.
Sean: So you wrote each of those pilot cards as well?
Jerry: Oh, yeah, all the text in there I wrote.
Sean: Incredible.
Jerry: Oh, I love it. I was so happy. I tried to make each little card that’s in there—and there’s probably scans of them somewhere—sort of like a short story that would make you curious.
Our whole thing is we want to make sure that we’re telling this two-level story where it’s like, you have these mechanical gods, and then human frailty, and then somewhere between those two things, you’ve got BattleTech. My fantasy is that if I put enough information on those cards and try to get you curious about it, it’ll bring these machines to life.
Sean: I think so. So for those who don’t know, the ForcePack includes a Cyclops, a Blood Asp, a Flashman, and a Dragon Fire, which I think are all great choices.
Jerry: I’m so glad. I worked my best to get it dialed in.
Sean: I personally would be drawn most towards the Flashman, but I think the Cyclops is also great. Was it you that chose the ‘Mechs, or was it a collaborative thing between you and CGL?
Jerry: So basically, they wanted to know what we wanted in there and so I had a couple wiggly bits in there in terms of, “What else might go in there?”
Like I said, my fantasy was to get a Black Knight in there, but I’m overjoyed with what we were able to get. I really did go and do research and just try to figure out what the song of the community’s heart was on stuff they wanted in new sculpts or new configs. From what I’ve seen, it seems like people sort of like the picks, but the truth is that they were completely on board.
Of course, I wanted the sculpt for the Black Knight would have been the most difficult to do. I don’t know absolutely everything. It may be that they have their own fantasies about what ends up in a pack and because they’re thinking years ahead, right? I think that it’s the same vendor in terms of the actual injection mold like the process.
But I think that when people open up their pack, they’ll be really impressed with how the process is. You’ll see the details are so sharp, whatever the new process they have is a leap ahead. I think people are gonna be really pleased.
Sean: I was very pleased with my Mercenaries Kickstarter and every other plastic mini I’ve ever seen has been top-notch.
Jerry: Yeah, but it’s like the mold lines on the newer stuff—and definitely on the collab—they’re just clean. They’re just perfect. Like, I’m used to metal models, paint them up and construct them. I mean, I don’t mind, I think part of wargaming is perfecting that process. But if I don’t have to do that, that’s much better.
Sean: So these are not standard-variant ‘Mechs. That’s a new sculpt for the Cyclops, Dragon Fire, and Blood Asp. What variants are they? And again, were these picked on your end or in collaboration with CGL?
Jerry: Yeah, yeah, here, let me see if I have the ForcePack here.
The way that we typically put it together, there’s like an extra piece in there for the Dragon Fire, because there are multiple configs. As is typical in Alpha Strike, each of the cards has a variant on each side. And so between the two Dragon Fires, there’s an extra modification piece.
But in terms of my own fantasy, I really wanted to get my mitts on the 11-C variant of the Cyclops. Just because my character is essentially sort of like the leadership. Historically, he’s been sort of like the field commander-type character, even though he’s dumb. I mean, he’s not making 100 percent great choices.
But like I say, I was really excited about some of the keywords in there, and that C variant has got the C3 master system, it has the mobile HQ5, and it has TAG as well. Because we have—at various times with multiple configurations—different ways that we can field our force, I really wanted to be a resource.
Essentially, my fantasy for any time I’m playing a game is to be a support. I’m not going to be the one who’s getting the kills, but I’m going to be the one that enables a higher level of lethality for my allies. That’s true in World of Warcraft, it’s true in Overwatch, it’s true in Marvel Rivals, Dark Age of Camelot. Anytime I can be the person that increases success, for me, that’s a more interesting role. So, yeah, it’s a big boy and it’s heavily laden with equipment for being a battle buddy for the field.
In terms of Eric and Kiko, the Blood Asp is essentially Kiko’s beast. And it’s a nightmare; he’s doing Alt Config I. The Flashman was sort of like an NPC character, but Eric often plays that character. His fantasy I think was this 9C here ‘cause it’s got a little bit of extra leadership stuff—the C3i. So, that’s what he wanted.
And then in terms of the secondary ones, we let CGL handle those. Because each side of the card has different goodies.
Sean: And I believe we just had the new Dragon Fire variants announced in the most recent Shrapnel. I don’t know which Dragon Fire that is, but I’m sure it’s probably one of them.
Jerry: I was gonna say, the ones that we have on the card, god, that can fuck such a—I mean, if you configured this and then you went all the way down to the pilot level and gave them mastery over long-range shots, this is a demon from hell. This 9D is monstrous.
The two variants that we have on here are of course the 9D, which I think is the base one that we were using. That’s our mechanic, who also takes the field from time to time.
Sean: As they do.
Jerry: Right, and then the 3F is the one that’s on the other side. And then like I say, the Flashman is the 10E and the 9C. And then there’s the Blood Asp I and the Blood Asp C are the two configs that are on that card.
Sean: Those are some spicy boys.
Jerry: That’s one of the places where the collab comes in. We had chosen ones that we thought were going to be good for our character and good for the campaign, that had interesting interplays and things like that. And of course, there’s a character card associated with the BattleMechs as well that has those little short story-type things I was talking about.
But then we would push the other side of the card over to CGL, and then of course, they wanna tantalize the community as well. So they can throw something cool or tasty in on the other side.
Sean: So there’s definitely a reason to get the Black Remnant box even if you don’t necessarily watch the Black Remnant show.
Jerry: Like I say, I made those picks so that it would be irresistible. The sculpts are nice, but it is just a mean-looking thing. I’m a sucker for lance packs anyway. It’s like a little present. It’s wrapped, it has a little box, and it has all the goodies I want in there. They’re hard to resist.
There’s a scenario where I go and buy my own pack, which I think is probably the best. I’ll definitely do it. I would love to have that stat somewhere over at my game shop. See how many I have to buy to make a dent.
Sean: We’ll see when they release. Do we have a release date on the pack?
Jerry: Well, it’s next year [note: this was recorded in December], so what I heard from Randall is that the rest of them were on a boat. Obviously, we had some available at the Catalyst booth, but the rest of them are on their way and it’s supposed to be early this next year.
Sean: Okay. Well, I will certainly grab a pack as soon as they arrive in Canada.
Jerry: I understand that you had some kind of a postal strike up there.
Sean: Yeah, I’m in a lot of trouble for that because I ordered a couple of things from Iron Wind and from Catalyst, and I have no idea where they are now because that was just before the strike. [Update: mail service has resumed, and I actually got everything as of January 20.]
Jerry: Do you play any board games either?
Sean: I play D&D online, and I play Alpha Strike when I can. I have friends who get me to play board games, but I’m usually a PC gamer.
Jerry: Yeah. Have you ever played Clank?
Sean: Clank? This sounds familiar. Is this the game where it’s kind of like a demolition derby of bots?
Jerry: No, no, that’s Robo Rally. Robo Rally is different. That game’s awesome, by the way. You should definitely play that. No, no, Clank is essentially like a dungeon crawler mixed with a deck builder. It is amazing. If you play games mostly on PC, Clank Digital is very, very good.
But the reason I knew about the strike was because we had done a collaboration with Acquisitions Incorporated and Clank. And that Kickstarter was shipping, but when it ships to Canada, you don’t know what’s going to happen next.
Sean: According to my sources (which is the CBC), they should be back to work with binding arbitration soon. But I don’t know what’s gonna happen with the backlog and I’m going to give them a week before I try and find out.
Jerry: Yeah. God bless you. Just let it wash over you. It is what it is. There’s not much we can do.
Sean: It’s true. But back to Black Remnant. We know what’s in the pack. Besides the Black Knight, what ‘Mechs didn’t make the cut?
Jerry: Honestly, we basically got our picks. I mean, it was a delight. The only extra one was the Black Knight. Like I say, our collaboration was very, very fast. I think they were also looking to get that thing ready to go so that it would be available at the show and early in the year. So I think it was sort of weapons-free.
Sean: How has collaborating with CGL been different from other collaborations you’ve done with your other projects? Any big differences, besides being quick and easy?
Jerry: We have done quite a few. Like I say, we have just done this Clank collab that had multiple pieces. That’s the second game we’ve done with them, alongside a few individual packs as well. We’ve done some model packs and character packs for the same game. We’ve worked with the Dungeons & Dragons, like, Neverwinter Online, and that was pretty clean. We worked with Blue Manchu on Wild Bastards and we did an expansion for the game Card Hunter, which I really liked.
Most of the time, when it comes to something like this, the most important thing to do is just to make sure that everybody is sort of on the same page and everybody wants the same thing. And optimally, you figure that out first.
Most of the things that are going to help you determine success are just making sure that everyone wants the same thing out of the collaboration. And in this case, we found them quite a receptive partner, but it might be that we were both sort of figuring this out together because collaborations of that kind are sort of rare.
It might be that we essentially had access to the full channel because they were mega-responsive and just a delight. Such a delight that we ended up with Randall on stage just because we’ve had so much fun. And he has such a heart for the community. He was talking about it at the end of the game, he traveled like 130,000 miles last year just because he has a heart for it. And I think that’s the main thing: we want to work with people who care too much about this thing that they’re into, right? We want to work with people who are weird about it, like us. As long as you can match the weirdness between the two groups to create something that didn’t exist previously, that’s usually the best thing.
We’re lucky because most of the people that we work with are nerds. They are people of profound enthusiasms; life-altering, life-consuming enthusiasms. When you can work with someone who literally wants to create being from non-being, tell big stories, play fun cool games with their friends, or make cool games—that’s the space I’ve been in for coming up on 26 years. That’s the space I want to be in.
Sean: Seems like a good space.
Jerry: It’s nice work if you can get it.
Sean: You hinted at this a little bit, but just how was CGL’s response to Black Remnant in general? Was there stuff that they absolutely loved about it? Or did they raise any concerns about the series from a canon perspective?
Jerry: They did not. They did not raise canon perspectives. Well, maybe they did, they just did it in a gentle way. Maybe they just extended themselves for access to information. “Any questions you might have? The Hyperpulse Generator Network? Feel free to communicate with us if you want to talk about Gray Monday at all.”
We had Sarna, so we had another parallel resource. Yes, they extended themselves, but also, we had tried to choose an era that was open, where there was still some maneuvering room.
It’s set in the Inner Sphere, which has a lot of information in it already. But I specifically made Stavrenn essentially live mostly in a DropShip. There’s a lot about the finer details that he has a sense of, but doesn’t fully know. So the optimal scenario for us is that we can learn those things, teach them to a new audience, and hopefully bring people on board and show them that this is a cool place to tell stories.
I mostly played the game and read a couple of novels when I was younger. I’ve read some since, and I’m writing a Black Remnant story now. We’ll see how that goes. The main thing for me is that I try to be as close as I can, but also the community will let you know. This community loves BattleTech, and they have been a great resource for us as well. Just, you know, letting us know that that variant doesn’t have missiles so if you’re describing something, let’s talk about lasers instead.
Sean: Yeah. Doing this job, I’ve quickly that Sarna’s readers know a lot more than I do and they’ll always correct me when I’m wrong.
Jerry: For sure. To me, I see my error and will work to correct it. I want to know as much as I can so that when I have the opportunity to do so, I can try to add something cool and collaborate with the established fiction and canon. So I don’t mind it at all. And like I say, it’s great to have a resource like Sarna. It’s great to have a resource like the community.
The first opportunity we’ve had to try to honor that pact is to try to make the best picks for the box, but I want to be a member of that community in good standing. I understand coming into it from other types of war games and having been away from it for a while, that’s something that you have to earn, and that excites me. Like, I get cranked up at the idea of learning it and becoming part of it and establishing something of our own inside there. God willing.
Sean: So you’re writing a book too? How much further does this collaboration go? Are you going to be writing stories?
Jerry: I hope so. Hopefully, it’s something that they enjoy. And luckily with a book, it’s like, if you’re doing everything in real-time, it’s a different world, right? You’re not gonna be able to do it perfectly every time, but with a book, it can be dialed in. And I have access to Tex and his squad, so I know that they can speak frankly with me about something if it’s not correct, and they can read through it.
I’ve read a few of the novels, and I think that the version of what we did would be distinct from the existing style. I mean, I like analog, hard sci-fi, and I want to work inside that to make something that is not silly, but human and funny against the rest of this backdrop. And I have experience, with the strip and the other—like, I just wrote another novella for Acquisitions Incorporated. I think I’ve built some of the psychological tools that I need to go in there and hopefully make something that is probably more humorous broadly than the canon typically is, but uses that in the service of the gut-punch drama that is at the heart of it.
It’s only there to distract you. It’s like you take your child to the photographer and they shake a monkey by the camera; the humor is only there to trick you into a false sense of security so that we can harm you with father-son drama.
Sean: That actually answers another question I was going to ask about your thoughts on BattleTech and humor. And I think that answers it pretty well, actually.
Jerry: Human beings are always going to be engaging in something a little silly, but I think that I might be able to put together something that has a foot in each of these contexts. I don’t know. We’ll see. I mean, it may not work. I’ll do my best.
Sean: Well, I’m looking forward to seeing what you come up with. BattleTech has always been known for its hard sci-fi, but I’m also more than a bit jaded with the state of the world and could use a laugh or twelve.
Jerry: Yeah, just try to leaven it a little bit. Most of the writing that I do is dialogue, just because we’ve been doing this comic strip for so long, so I have a certain cadence and tenor that I think I can situate in there.
This is all very theoretical stuff, and I’m certainly not saying that Catalyst is like, “Oh man, you gotta do this.” No, I’m not sure they know I’m doing it. But the main thing for me is that just by putting that together, it’s gonna make our game and our characters and the model of the Inner Sphere that we project in the game truer and more authentic. So I think it’s a very, very worthwhile endeavor for the game, but also just as a fun project.
Sean: That’s going to wrap it for the Black Remnant questions. Now we’re going to be moving on to some of the fun questions that I always like to spring on people at the end of every interview.
First question, what are you most looking forward to in terms of announced products from CGL?
Jerry: Ha! It’s not so much in terms of announced projects. For me, I’m really excited to finally be able to go whole hog on—especially with the stuff from the new KS—real combined-arms conflicts. There’s a lot of vehicles and goodies in there. I like it when ‘Mechs are fighting each other, don’t get me wrong! They should definitely do that, but I also really like the disparities. Basically, it makes ‘Mechs more ‘Mech-y.
Traditional armor has its advantages and disadvantages, and then you see these titans of war, you know what I mean? It emphasizes what they do and what they are. So for me, it’s nice to have that gradient in there. Because it’s not like every conflict that happens everywhere is full of ‘Mechs, right?
Watch this video on YouTube.
Sean: ‘Mechs are special, and that’s important. I think vehicles are fine so long as you keep that hierarchy: ‘Mechs are at the top, vehicles are in the middle, and hero grunts are at the bottom. Once you have vehicles at the top, like in MechWarrior: Dark Age, things kind of went off the rails.
Jerry: That was some wild stuff!
Sean: That was wild. I look back at it with some fondness now, but I do understand the key problem with it was vehicles got too good.
Jerry: Oh yeah. But the blind box stuff? Yeah, dude, that was a wild ride with the clicks.
Sean: Yep, and I also appreciated that system, too. One reason why I prefer Alpha Strike is because it’s just a simpler, faster game.
Jerry: On purpose, yeah.
Sean: Yeah, and the click system does the same sort of thing. Everything is managed with a little clicky wheel.
Jerry: And all the information can change! Like, there can be really significant stat disparities between damage levels. But there were some pretty hardcore vehicles out there.
Sean: There were, and ‘Mechs always had the same problem: ‘Mechs had heat, and vehicles didn’t. So there was a downside to ‘Mechs that made them inherently worse than everything else. Which was a shame, since I really liked a lot of the crazy ‘Mechs that they came up with.
Jerry: I did like the sculpts. Especially as a wargamer, I already have a few wargames that give me gray plastic. When I can get a fully-painted game and start playing, I love that. And the second step up from that is the Catalyst stuff, which is not pre-painted, but it is preassembled.
Sean: And they’re making some pre-painted ones now too.
Jerry: Oh, yeah? Is that so?
Sean: Yeah, they’ve done the Kerensky Orion and Victor Steiner-Davion’s Dire Wolf is pre-painted as well in the Second Star League ForcePack. They’re not painting entire packs of them, but you get one in certain Star League packs.
Jerry: Oh, see, I like that. But the truth is, you can get a ‘Mech on the table super fast. Once you prime it, some of these new speed paints or contrast paints can get you so far, and then you can spend all of your time doing your detailing or going crazy on the base and stuff.
Sean: I’m going to be looking into those. I currently have a brother who does them for me, but he’s just one person, and he’s doing his own stuff too, so if I waited for him to do every step for the 50-odd gray ‘Mechs and tanks I have, they won’t be painted anytime soon. I’m gonna have to start doing the work myself.
Jerry: You’re saying there’s a limitation in the pipeline.
Sean: Yes, there’s a bottleneck, and it is him. I need two of him.
Jerry: Well here, listen, if he needs a stern talking to from a third-party arbiter, “You should stop playing Diablo! You should paint ‘Mechs now!” You know what I mean?
Keep away from Path of Exile 2 if you’re trying to get models painted. Just put the hands together in the international sign for do not, no do, off limits.
Sean: Okay, next fun question. What would be your favorite ‘Mech to fight a kaiju with?
Jerry: Ooh. I mean the classic Atlas with the skull face. Like, if we’re talking about what we want on the movie poster, you want to have the Atlas because it’s so humanoid. Obviously, it represents the vigor of the human spirit. We get that Pacific Rim-type angle; the poster has the fist drawn back and ready—
Sean: —And its autocannon is firing at basically nothing.
Jerry: There’s just some bursts of flame. That’s what we need on this poster. We don’t have to worry about the linear nature of the projectile.
Sean: You’ve mentioned Tex a few times and I did see you appear at the end of Tex’s latest video. What is your role in Tex’s next video? Because I can’t imagine you were just there to tee up the Black Knight.
Jerry: No, I literally was just there to tee up the Black Knight. But if he wants me to pop in for something, I would be happy to.
But the truth is, he’s the one with the awesome voice and the awesome team. Like, if you come in there with my voice, first of all, it’s going to make him sound cooler and me worse. But no, Tex is a friend of mine. Last time he was in town, we hung out for a bit. He’s a super, super cool dude, and he never gets in my face when I ask him questions about this kind of stuff.
When I was talking about what kinds of cool stuff might be fun in a pack? He and I had our own side conversation. He has some knowledge of BattleTech, I’ll say that. He is not unfamiliar with BattleTech.
Sean: That’s very true. And last question I have for you: when are you going to be bringing a PAX Unplugged to Canada?
Jerry: Are you craving one?
Sean: Me and my friends are craving one, yes.
Jerry: Whereabouts are you?
Sean: I’m in Southern Ontario, Toronto.
Jerry: Oh, okay. So, I mean, it would not be impossible if you had to get to Philly.
Sean: This is true. We just don’t want to.
Watch this video on YouTube.
Jerry: And that’s fair. But listen, the truth is that I have many conversations with people all the time saying, “Why don’t you put a PAX where I live already?” And that would be too many PAXs, unfortunately. That said, I hope that you can come down and, and see the show. This last one was easily the craziest one yet. I mean, it sold completely out.
PAX Unplugged was always the baby. Only a few years before quarantine was PAX Unplugged founded. Obviously, when you can’t do shows anymore, that sort of gets in the way. But then it was so gratifying to see that people really want—even in an increasingly digital world, or maybe because of an increasingly digital world—they really took us up on our offer to be in the same place doing the same thing with other like-minded individuals. To the extent that there were no tickets left!
We’re excited about trying to up it for next year. Luckily, we have the fractal version of the show in our minds and we’re always ready to expand it.
Sean: Well, if you’ve sold out of tickets, maybe it is time to expand it.
Jerry: Maybe, maybe, you know, Southern Ontario, I don’t know. I would like to hear this Toronto accent I’ve been hearing so much about.
Sean: Well I’ve got basically a Toronto accent, but it’s more like a Greater Toronto Area accent. The downtown Toronto patois is incomprehensible, even to locals.
Jerry: Exactly! As an enthusiast of language broadly, I’d love to investigate that for myself.
Sean: Well, good luck there. And that’s everything I had. Was there anything else you wanted to talk about? Or anything else you want to plug?
Jerry: No, no, it’s my great pleasure. Glad to be of use. Now that we follow each other on Discord, let me know what you think of the pack.
Sean: Absolutely. Thank you so much for talking to me, and I look forward to seeing your work and also the pack.
Once again, huge thanks to Jerry Holkins for taking the time to speak to me about Black Remnant and his official collab with CGL. If you want to catch a Black Remnant broadcast live, head to Penny Arcade’s Twitch or YouTube channels, and be on the lookout for the Black Remnant Command Lance ForcePack over on Catalyst’s web store.
And as always, MechWarriors: Stay Syrupy.
