For this month’s MechaStellar update we are finally adding in Turn A Gundam. Turn A Gundam was released in 1999, 25 years after the original Mobile Suit Gundam and it’s one of Yoshiyuki Tomino’s finest works. You can read more about Turn A Gundam here.
Unit Discussion
Turn A Gundam itself is a radical redesign of a Gundam by legendary concept artist Syd Mead. The Turn A is an unusual design that completely breaks from the mold, it is often known as the “Mustache Gundam” by those with a passing familiarity usually from various Gundam crossover media such as the Gundam Vs or Dynasty Warriors series. While I myself did not like the design when I originally encountered it, I really grew to warm to it after I watched the series and read the background material on Turn A Gundam. It’s a phenomenally unique design, and given how the Turn A (and Turn X) are meant to represent mobile suit technology from an astonishingly distant future it makes sense they look so foreign compared to what we’re used to.
As for that astonishing futuristic technology both the Turn A and the Turn X will be our first Performance 10 Tier 3 units released in MechaStellar. They boast impressive stats, powerful weapons and an array of traits that provide good utility and exceptional destructive potential. The two are also 1000pt units meaning they are meant to be strong enough to take on two 500pt units. Time will tell if we locked in the balance on that.
The rest of Turn A Gundam includes references to various Gundam media that came before it, with names suitably altered to keep the user guessing as to their origin. You have the iconic Zaku II named Borjanon here, and the Capule renamed to Kapool. The Muttowooo is a stylized and rebuilt Baund Doc while the Zssan is still recognizable as a modified Zssa. These were interesting to design trying to keep the chassis from their original units while upgrading them to Tier 3 (Performance 8+) and tweaking them slightly.
Turn A Gundam incorporated concepts from many other Gundam shows (there’s even a quick schematic of the one and only Windmill Gundam), the Mahiroo have the mobile trace system from G Gundam, the Bandit and Zssan have the Flash system from Gundam X, and the Turn X itself is equipped with a version of the psycommu at mentioned in the closing episodes. The Almyra Turtle ships, which make frequent appearances as tough battleships in the Super Robot Wars series, have a ship-wide I-Field first seen in Victory Gundam.
All in all we had a fun time working on these, and we hope to get out a battle report featuring The Turn A Gundam using a Mobile Suit in Action MSIA) figure in the near future. Right after we get the AEUG battle report and a few others finished.
You can find the updated unit profiles on the game downloads page: https://mechastellar.com/game-downloads/
Summary of Updates
- Added 18 Units from Turn A Gundam
- Added 7 Units to the OYW, Zeta Gundam and ZZ Gundam including aquatic units
- Added 16 Units from Gundam SEED to the VER9 drafts page
- Added a Table of generic weapons to the end of Federation and Zeon profiles
- Rebalanced Dom Barrage, Messala, The O, Titania, Gaza series,
- Based on feedback fixed errors on Dendrobium, Heavy Arms, Shenlong, The O, Zanzibar II, Camera Gun, and various [G]round / [S]pace tags.
- Fixed an EQ Slot error on various Performance 5+ units including Neue Ziel, GP03 Dendrobium and various Neo Zeon units. Each unit got a minor upgrade in response.
- Changed some under the hood math for Frame 5 Units, most were adjusted to have the same final stats. Some have -1 Shooting / Melee but were rebalanced elsewhere.
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