This week’s update is Pacific Rim which will give you more units to use with the new “Defend The City / Rampage” game type. If you’ve never seen Pacific Rim it’s a very fun and well directed movie by Guillermo del Toro starring giant robots called “Jaegers” and their two synchronized pilots who defend Earth from giant monsters called Kaiju that come through a breach between worlds under the Pacific Ocean. If you’re a fan of Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla then this movie should be right up your alley. Here’s an example scene from the movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLptjP1RKmQ
Jaegers
Gipsy Danger is our hero of the story, after suffering critical damage defending fisherman from Knifehead the salvaged MKIII Jaeger is moved to the Shatter Dome where it is rehabilitated and upgraded. After a deadly skirmish in the Hong Kong Harbor an EMP renders the surviving Jaeger inoperable and so Gipsy Danger is sent out to take out the rampaging Kaiju as seen in the clip above. The following Commands are recommended if you are trying to recreate this battle.
Gipsy Danger Commands
- All Out Attack or You’re not finished yet!
- Giant Slayer
Crimson Typhoon and Cherno Alpha are two of the last Jaegers left and are tasked with defending the city, while they initially fare well against Otachi things take a turn for the worse and both Jaegers are eventually defeated. Crimson Typhoon is one of the more agile Jaegers out there so we gave it abilities to match that, and while we don’t see it used it has a very powerful plasma caster with specialized targeting of kaiju. Cherno Alpha is the oldest Jaeger still in service, extremely tough but its pilots have no option to eject so we gave it the “Victory or Death” berserker style ability. When running these two units against Otachi and Leathback we recommend these commands:
Crimson Typhoon & Cherno Alpha Commands
- Unbeaten
- Mayhem or Moment of Clarity
On the Kaiju side we have Leatherback a category 3 Kaiju who viciously wounded Gipsy Danger after being badly wounded by the Plasma Caster. Then we have Otachi and Leatherback, the giant monster stars of the Hong Kong sequence. Leatherback is both tough and a melee powerhouse and has the EMP ability, meanwhile Otachi can be quite deadly lashing out with its tail even when being battered in melee. With its ability to transform and spread wings its exceptional movement can be very useful for rampaging through the city to rebuild your Momentum reserves. We recommend the following commands for these two units.
Leatherback & Otachi Commands
- Ambush
- Pyrrhic Victory
Next week’s update will have the rest of the Pacific Rim cast and a narrative mission pack for Pacific Rim. The following week will have the much needed Missiong 6-10 update for the Federation vs Zeon Gundam Coop Campaign.
Updates Summary
Unit Profile Sheets:
- New Units from Pacific Rim: 3 Jaegers and 3 Kaiju
- Neon Genesis Evangelion: Sheets updated due to weapon updates
- Cross Explosion increased to 10 Shots
- Increased range of Eva Sniper Rifle to 36″
- Updated verbiage on Close Combat & Gunnery Expert. Same net effect, but without the Focus action.
- Transform Mode: Melee penalty is now only on Defense. Units affected: Shamsel (NGE TV) & Otachi
- For uniformity, Thrusters / Agility / Jump Jets are all being renamed to “Speed”
Rules Updates
- After getting some feedback Titan class was preferred over Gigas class so our high HP heavy hitters will switch back to their old name
- On the Unit profile sheets Mech Class will be added to make it quick to identify if a unit is a MS or Titan Class. Paint Job, which was a legacy item from when MechaStellar was an RPG campaign, will be removed.
- Added a simple Table of Contents
- Updated rules for Facing based on feedback that it was too easy to ignore Blindside by turning around at the end of your turn.
- Updated rules text for Full Throttle. MS & Transforming units go over terrain, Massive / Colossal units go through it.
- Updated Battle Damage rules to allow you to disable a special ability like EMP
- Vs & Coop Mode: Changed “Area Objective” to “Control Point”. Changed “Controlling the Objective” to “Controlling the Point”
- Updated Defend the City / Rampage with the following tweaks. Alternate Deployments (deploy anywhere but outside enemy sensor range), max 10 Momentum, Monsters can only gain 3 Momentum per turn destroying buildings, Defenders gain +1 Momentum when using a Close Combat (CC) weapon such as Fists or Smash.
MechaStellar 