“On the battlefield of trading card games, how do you want to be armed?”

Start digging deep enough into the BattleTech trading card game (find at Amazon.com*) and you’re sure to start seeking out magazine articles from when the game was new. Fortunately, many of the tabletop game magazines from 1996 and 1997 either aren’t too expensive or they are already sitting in my collection, meaning that I can quickly accumulate all sorts of info with just a bit of digging.

One of the earliest BattleTech trading card game articles I’ve found so far comes from Wizards of the Coast’s Duelist magazine*, specifically the December 1996 issue of the publication. Titled ‘Meching It Happen, the article by Michael G. Ryan offers up a brief history of the game’s creation and development, giving all of us some idea of how Richard Garfield and the team took the BattleTech universe and turned the characters, weapons, situations, and machines into a collectible card game.