MiniatureMarket has the intro box on their Black Friday sale for $35; it's a pretty great deal if anyone is looking at getting into or getting back into tabletop. The old intro box was crap but this one is much better: http://www.miniaturemarket.com/cat3500b.html FYI. This can be deleted in 2 days when it's no longer relevant.
will leave this up so others can be aware it is a thing that exists. i bet you can probably still find them for sale with online retailers.
I'm going to go ahead and say that battletech is an overcomplicated mess, and I would rather have a LAN party with megamek than slog through playing the actual tabletop. HOWEVER, for those who want to learn the real mechanics of how the game works, this was a good deal, if just for the rulebooks.
Finally broke this bad boy open today and played it a bit with my lovely lady last night, this is by far the most useful book in the box: Actually tells you how to progress from the alpha strike/quick start rules, to the intro rules, to Total Warfare/Tech Manuals (tournament rules), to the tac ops, strategic ops, interstellar ops, and how to scale the game properly with the advanced rules.
