I consider myself a pretty well rounded geek. I'm into Star Trek, but I also play PC games like World of Warcraft (WoW), and collectible card games (CCGs) like Magic the Gathering. I don't LARP, but I know what it is. I have cosplayed. I've been doing online role-playing since the AOL 2.0 days. One thing I had never gotten into, however, was the whole miniatures and wargaming bit. I blame this geeky deficient on having all sisters and no brothers. Fortunately, my significant other happens to be a hard core fan of the BattleTech universe, and is quite an adept BattleTech miniatures player.

For the past few years, he's been trying to coerce me into this BattleTech's universe by any means possible. He started with the role-playing game (RPG), but never was able to get enough people to commit to a play schedule. That and we were doing some hard core Ulduar 25-man raiding in WoW, which didn't help. However, this past weekend he had a chance to play some BattleTech, which re-ignited the spark.

It all started with an innocent trip to find new paints, so he could finish painting some of his unfinished miniatures. We ended up discovering a relatively new gaming store called 7th Dimension Games (which is an awesome place by the way). As luck would have it, they not only had paints, but they had an upcoming BattleTech demo scheduled for later in the week. And damned if the significant other's enthusiasm didn't rub off on me. I agreed to go.

So last night we arrived at 7th Dimension Games to partake in an official BattleTech demo. I still can't tell what the difference is between an Inner Sphere mech or a Clan mech, but I think I have the whole dice rolling bit down. Fortunately, the new relaunch of the game comes with some starter sheets and rules, so as not to completely overwhelm a new player. Once we played a starter game, we moved into more of a medium level match. You see, the starter game doesn't discuss jumping, heat, or internal armor damage. They don't bother with that until the more mid-grade games. This gradual introduction was much appreciated.