Below you’ll find some recent playtest photos for testing out VER9.4 which will be updating how pilots work, taking a lot of their Momentum driven abilities and turning them into passive abilities instead.
Now, when a mobile suit is the target of a shooting attack they can choose to Dodge (+1 Evade) or to Guard (+1 Block). When they are in Melee they can choose to Counter (+1 Hit) or Guard (+1 Block).
Anytime we’re testing out changes for a Gundam Wargame we do several run throughs of Zakus vs GMs, the staple grunts of Mobile Suit Gundam. In this series each side had a Skilled Pilot Commander, on one side a Dom with Gunnery expert and the other had a GM Sniper Custom.
Pictured above are two different games using two different iterations of the Dodge / Guard system, using the current system.
Another series of GM vs Zaku playtests. Some of these games used the current system but the values were +2 Evade or +2 Block for all units, but only for the first 2 rounds. Some other games tried using Reroll 1 die, instead of +1 Evade.
As you can see from the death toll in these photos, even with the additional defensive options for Dodge / Guard / Counter the units were still being destroyed rather quickly. This is thanks to adjusting the Critical Hits to be 1s and 2s on Shooting and 9s and 10s on Melee.
How about some Ace Pilots. We used the Blue Destiny Unit 2 & 3 here since mirror images make for perfect test units. For this series we tried out a few ideas, including the current version where Ace Pilots improve the bonus to 2. We also tried Reroll 2 dice on Dodge, Reroll 2 dice and +2 Evade, and an earlier idea where all units got the +2 bonus in Round 1 while Ace Pilots got it till Round 4.
One thing we really enjoyed about this series was all the melee combat and the fact that GMs and Zakus had a good chance of staying locked in melee combat instead of being a 50/50 instant kill chance. Small things like +1 Block in melee really go a long way towards ensuring survival.
As for our Aces, they were able to evade most attacks except for machine guns which would chip away their HP.
Here’s a quick set of games with the 08th MS Team vs Blue Destiny Unit 02 + a Dom. An Ace Pilot on one side and 2 Skilled Pilots and one Ace on the other side. You’d think it would be an easy match for the 08th MS Team but Nimbus proved to be a very dangerous opponent.
Since we swapped Karen to the Headhunter trait, Nimbus often went for her first and overwhelmed her in Melee while EXAM provided critical blocks while he was shot at. Though he is very deadly in melee, Shiro did manage to take him down in melee a couple of games. Sanders usually played support by capturing Control Points and blasting at the allied Dom.
The 08th MS Team once more, this time vs several Doms and many more Zaku IIs. This game series was to confirm whether we wanted to proceed with Skilled Pilots = +1 Hit while all units got +1 Evade/Block for all 5 Rounds. After many games of this and a few variations we opted to keep the proposed system since it feels most similar to how MechaStellar has played since VER8 while giving nice passive bonuses to all units.
One style of playtest we have been doing since VER2 is whether or not the Gundam is worth his weight in gold Zakus. This has always been a fun test to see if the Gundam is truly worth his points, in this case the 300pt version vs 10 Zaku IIs.
VER9 Amuro is one of the strongest variants of Amuro we’ve had in a long time. Not shown here are the him dying in Round 4 each game. The new rules in VER 9.4 have your Ace Pilots stronger overall, while the previous rules had Ace Pilots extremely powerful in Round 1 and 2 (as long as they stayed out of melee range) with their power tapering off at that point.
Since Amuro could no longer charge forward and auto-dodge all attacks in Round 1, he had to work a lot harder and make use of positioning to take out the large swarm of Zaku IIs.
We can’t forget the Super Robots Wars angle either. Pictured above are test games at 1000pts with an Ace Pilot Big O and Skilled Pilot Eva 01 against The Dark Army using Federation and Zeon forces infected by DG cells.
Initially we were pretty worried about giving an Ace 4 Blocks every time they are attacked but as we learned from this series, that still isn’t enough to make a unit invincible even against cannon fodder units.
The Berserk Eva on the other hand was a remarkably pain to bring down, the grunt player had to make use of the Outnumber version of Tactical Advantage to land some high PEN hits.
This was a fun game with the alternate deployment rules where we setup Big O and Eva 01 back to back in a city full of zombie Mobile Suits attacking from all angles. Big O landing a moby dick anchor into the GM Sniper Custom and dragging it into melee was a great way to start the match. The grunt player learned their lesson in the next match by not positioning themselves too close.
Let us know what you think the VER9.4 DRAFT rules in your home games. We hope you’re enjoying the new system as much as we are.
MechaStellar 