That is until this year, with the announcement of the upcoming Adeptus Titanicus reboot from GW. Aedeptus Titanicus was WH40K at the same scale as BattleTech (6mm), featuring the giant robots ("knights") of that universe. It directly led into Epic, essentially 40K's equivalent of Warmaster. As I've been impressed by a lot of the self-contained games released by GW in the last few years since the company's revitalization under a new CEO, I was at first excited for A.T. Part of that, admittedly, was the hope that a new Epic might follow in turn. But as details began to emerge, that excitement waned. Warhammer isn't a cheap hobby at the best of times. But the boxed sets tend to be good deals, relatively speaking. A few dozen minis, usually some exclusives.
For example, here's the Soul Wars starter set for Age of Sigmar 2nd edition:
Aedeptus Titanicus, on the other hand, comes with a whopping 8 miniatures, some cardboard buildings, gun turret tokens, dice, and a short softcover rulebook.
Long story short, I fell back into the pool headfirst.
My timing was impeccable. The minute I started looking into this I found that at Gencon Catalyst Labs (the current home of the BattleTech tabletop game) had just unveiled a new starter set for the game. 8 new plastic BattleTech minis (coincidence?) - which unlike most GW starters is exactly the right amount for a two player game- along with 2 double sided playmatts, rulebook, record sheets, a universe primer, dice, reference sheets, and even cardboard standees of additional mechs for those who don't want to bother with the miniatures, for retail price $59.99!
In the meantime, I've been amassing older materials from my youth, starting with the classic Technical Readout 3025