What’s changed
This version of the Master Unit List is built and maintained by Catalyst Game Labs, so the MUL now sits alongside the BattleTech products it describes and supports, and is updated as new material is published. The Master Unit List’s new home is at masterunitlist.battletech.com, and the old address will bring you here.
What you’ll find now: era-by-era availability for the setting’s major factions · Alpha Strike cards you can download or build yourself · printable record sheets · a force builder that does all the major calculations for you · Random Assignment Tables generated by the availability matrix or composite where the sources exist and we’ve curated · and buy-now links to the books and miniatures a unit appears in.
What hasn’t changed: it’s free, and it doesn’t need an account. Search it, build with it, print from it.
The new Master Unit List is a full rebuild rather than a facelift. Every unit came across, along with every faction availability record and every introduction date — but the site around that data is new, and a few things work differently enough that they’re worth explaining before you go looking for them.
One thing to say up front, because you’ll notice it missing: Rules Levels and Technology Levels are not on the new site. Both had turned into more of a hindrance than a help, particularly for new players and for anyone coming back after time away. Technology Level moved as the storyline advanced, so the same unit could read differently depending on when you looked it up — and with the new Core Rulebook, the additional rules are optional. Neither category was telling you something you needed to know when searching for a unit.
Search asks you for an era now
This is the biggest change, and it’s the one most likely to trip you up on your first visit.
The old list showed you everything and let you filter down, often without conditionals. The new one asks for an era before it shows you results.
That sounds like an extra step, and it is. Here’s why we did it anyway: almost every question people actually bring to the Master Unit List has a date in it. Could the Draconis Combine field this in 3025? What was available to the Federated Suns during the Clan Invasion? The old approach made you find the unit first and then work out whether it was legal or right for your game. This one starts from the game you’re playing and shows you what fits.
You can still just look something up. The search box at the top is always there, it does type-ahead, and if you know the unit’s name you’ll be on its page in two keystrokes. The guided flow is for the other kind of question.
Faction and era pages
Every faction now has its own page, with the availability matrix on it — era tabs across the top, unit types down the side, and the list of what that faction could field in that era. If you built forces off the old faction lists, this is the same idea with the whole thing visible at once.
Both types of Random Assignment Tables live on the faction pages too — keyed to their era and unit type.
Eras have their own pages on the same pattern, so you can start from ilClan or Late Succession Wars and work outward instead of starting from a unit.
Random Assignment Tables
Generated Random Assignment Tables. Every faction and every era now fields a generated random assignment table by unit type. The generated RAT is a weighted 2d6 roll table so you can add units directly to your force build.
Composite Random Assignment Tables. A limited selection of composite random assignment tables, compiled from RATs published in BattleTech books for certain factions, eras, and unit types are now available. While non-canon — they’re composites — these RATs offer another method of force building for players who enjoy using published source material.
Cards
Alpha Strike cards are here in three forms.
Official cards are on the unit pages, ready to download and print.
The custom card generator lets you build a card yourself — your own stats, your own text — and it runs in the browser with a live preview, so you can see what you’re getting before you commit to a download. Large Craft cards come as a two-face spread, front and back, because a DropShip doesn’t fit on one side of a card and never has.
Blank cards are there for anyone who’d rather fill them in by hand.
None of the three needs an account.
Record sheets
Record sheets are free to download, no account, and you can put your pilot’s name and skills on the sheet before you print it.
The force builder
This is the piece that has no real equivalent on the old site.
Add units, set skills, and it does the arithmetic — Point Values and Battle Values, updated as you go. Beyond that:
- Custom names. Name your pilots, commanders, ship names and the names come through onto the printed record sheets.
- C³ networks. Build the network, and the builder works out the bonus and tells you when the network isn’t legal.
- Era check. Point your force at an era and it tells you which units don’t belong there. This is the feature that saves the argument at the table.
- Export. Print the whole force, cards and record sheets together, in one PDF.
Your force lives in your browser, so you can close the tab and come back to it. Or, export your force and import it later.
What’s coming
Six things we’re working on that are worth knowing about now:
First Produced search. Availability answers who could field this, and when. First Produced answers a different question — where did this unit actually come from and when? — by tying units to the factories that built them and the faction that held that world at the time. It’s the search we get asked for most.
New official record sheets. A rebuilt printer built for the Core rulebook and upcoming BattleTech products, with better output. We’re going to roll these out unit type by unit type starting with ‘Mechs and vehicles.
More Alpha Strike cards. We’re working through the unit types that don’t have a card template yet. Those units are all on the site, they just don’t have a printable card yet — but they will.
New Factions. The ilClan era brought new factions into the setting, including the Third Star League Defense Force. Expect new factions as the team creates their unit availability lists.
Unit Library Backlog. There’s a backlog of new and old units to add to the MUL, with stats and record sheets coming.
New Composite RATs. The current selection of composite random assignment tables is only the start. The team will continue to produce new ones for factions, eras, and unit types that are lacking.
No hard dates on any of these yet. When they’re ready, they’ll be there.
One more thing
The Master Unit List was built by BattleTech volunteers, on their own time, long before it was anything official. That work is the foundation this version sits on, and we’ve said so properly on the About page.
If you find something wrong — and with a record this size, you will — tell us in the Master Unit List Errata board on the forums, the same place corrections have always gone. Link the unit, say what’s wrong, and give us a page number or a quote if you have one.
Thanks for reading this far, and we hope you like it.
Joshua “Knightmare” Perian