MechaStellar Battle Report – Big O & Baxingar vs Aqua Zeon in the Drowned City

In this MechaStellar battle report we are keeping the fabulous teamup between the suit wearing Roger Smith (Big O) and the king/queen aesthetics of the J9-II team (Baxingar) face off against Zeon Remnants. Since we’re using a lot of amphibious units, we reasoned it was an abandoned and half submerged city which fits well with some of Big O’s environments.

This game series we were heavily testing our the “Reinforcements” mechanic which would take the Ambusher traits (and event) and turn it into an easy to use core rule. Thanks to this series we managed to avoid a lot of missteps with reinforcements out the gate, but our playtesters found several more loopholes we had to patch within 2 months of release.

While Big O and Baxingar both were able to Ambush, you do need to put at least one unit on the field so in this case Baxingar (in their Cosmo Bike form and thus hard to target) was first.

On Zeon’s side we also had some Musai’s taking part, because we really wanted to laydown the fire support. This was hot off the heels of a QoL update for Warships and they were a lot more fun to use and lot more worthwhile on the battlefield.

In universe, we reasoned that since Big O’s world is very….well, to avoid spoilers, full of mysteries, having space ships appear in the city wouldn’t be out of the ordinary. Who knows, maybe the movie was set in a colony all along.

A Hy-Gogg captures a CP, then Baxingar takes it’s turn firing an Antiship missile to obliterate a Musai and then laser’ing the Hy-Gogg off the field. A powerful turn (and due to this and other games we later realized that Valor should be a Round 2+ only skill.)

The other Musai gets LOS to support it’s allies and begin blasting. Baxingar is an absolutely glass cannon of a unit, but fortunately with the updated Momentum system it had enough Momentum to use Flash several times and dodge some painful hits.

The Black Tri-Stars are the Aces on this side and they start blasting. (We were also briefly tested a squad system in this game, to see how valuable it would be for Ace units; normally it was only for nameless grunts. It was fairly successful, but we found that individually the Black Tri-Stars were more formidable. More to come on the squad system!)

BIG O!! IT’S SHOWTIME!!!

Big O reinforces, in this series we realize that reinforcing units should have either limited movement, limited actions, or both. So we test out this idea several times and come to a reasonable solution that doesn’t allow for Reinforcing units to show up, blindside nuke a unit, then capture a CP all in one go.

Speaking of Blindside. Some Goggs reinforced on the enemy side last Round, as a limiting factor we let them attack if they used Zeal. Which they were happy to launch megaparticles supported by torpedos pods into Baxingars backside.

Round 2 Big O pulverizes that Z’Gok and captures the point.

Baxingar clears out the home CP by destroying both Goggs. We were testing out the “Tear through the Ranks” as a melee option instead of an event here, which we really enjoyed so it made it back into the Core Rules.

A Hy-Gogg on the Hy-Ground with an antiship missile. Who should send that into? The agile but glass cannon Baxingar, or the slow moving heavily armored Big O?? Hmmm

Big O withstands the blast then we proceed to beat down the Hy-Gogg. It’s at this moment we realize we should add something in the core rules to mention that very tall units can melee units on the high ground because…well look at this picture lmao

Two of the Black Tri-Stars move into position to Blindside Big O later.

The third Tri-Star gets a lucky critical and blows Baxingar off the board. While we made several of the aquatic units Elite to punch above their weightclass, the Black Tri-Stars ended up carrying the game.

Time to Chrome Buster and blow up the terrain and the Tri-Stars

Big O managed to take down 2 of them, but alas the third one got a blinside attack and then won initiative in the final round for another blindside attack. The ground shakes as the giant crashes down into the earth.

After Action Report

We ended up tweaking several of the aquatic units after this, since they didn’t feel as durable (or as cheap) as they could have been. Big O went through several revisions and one of our outspoken players, really loves this unit so we wanted to get it right. Eventually Big O went up a size tier (to reflect it’s weight, rather than it’s official height) which gave it a considerable HP boost and more slots.

This game we also tested out the squad systems for regular units as well as for elite units. We had tested it out a little before but this version felt a lot more stable and less likely to be all or nothing.

We also had a lot of fun with the Zeon team and ended up using them again versus a remarkably different force. Space Battleship Yamato complete with Cosmo Tiger squadrons. Stay tuned for more!

MechaStellar Battle Report – Freedom & Justice vs Sandrock, Heavyarms & Deathscythe Hell EW Versions

In this MechaStellar battle report we have Freedom and Justice from Gundam SEED facing off against Gundam Deathscythe Hell, Sandrock Kai and Heavy Arms Kai from Endless Waltz. It’s a highly mobile Gundam on Gundam battle with both sides rocking some heavy assault units.

This game was used to test out the updated Starting Momentum mechanics (both players starting closer to 10 Momentum, instead of ~4 for Ace games) as well as the Battle Damage mechanic which allows Elite Units to lose weapons, shields, arms and legs to stay in the fight. Both these rules have made it into the current rules for MechaStellar VER10.

Keep reading for the battle report.

Forces

Gundam SEED

Justice Gundam (1000pts+150) – Commander
- +50pts Boost+1
- +50pts Melee Expert
- +50pts Guard Expert
Freedom Gundam (1000pts+100)
- +50pts Boost+1
- +50pts Additional Pilot Trait – Renowned Pilot Hit on a 3+

Gundam Wing Endless Waltz (EW)

Sandrock Custom EW (750pts) – Commander
Heavy Arms Custom EW (750pts)
Deathscythe Hell EW (750pts)

Round 1

Freedom is up first, takes a shot at Sandrock then uses Boost to hide behind a building. Sandrock moves center stage and ducks behind LOS cover. Justice moves up and blocks access to Freedom and once again shoots at Sandrock, but neither Freedom nor Justice are able to scratch it at this range.

Heavy Arms moves up and and thanks to Quattre’s strategist trait get’s Support ATK from it’s allies before releasing a micromissiles barrage at Justice and causes minor damage, Deathscythe moves up and the buster shield manages to inflict significant damage.

The Round ends with no damage to the Endless Waltz Team and significant damage to Justice. Both teams start Round 2 with 8+ Momentum.

Round 2

Freedom is up first, dives in front of Justice and unloads it’s Balena plasma cannons into both Deathscythe and Heavy Arms burning through Mometum at the EW team. Quattre also used Strategist to pump up Support DEF on both units. Freedom then uses Hi-MATS and unloads with the Railguns and Beam Rifle on Deathscythe inflicting decent damage.

Freedom then retreats behind Justice.

Heavy Arms activates next, moves up once again and uses Zeal to attack with it’s Quad Gatling Guns and Micromissiles on Justice, unfortunately scoring no Finishing blows but dealing minor damage.

Justice is up next, uses Hi-Mats to attack with it’s beam boomerang, Beam Cannons with the Fatum Backpack Blindside, Beam Rifle, Vulcans and lastly a beam saber, nearly destroying Deathscythe and disabling his Buster Shield in the process.

Athrun went with Swift Strikes in Melee to disengage and retreat back to the Control Point.

Deathscythe slices into Justice but thanks to Flash manages to avoid all but a single hit, and fails the Armor Save. The total damage however forces Athrun into SEED mode, which is crucial right before Sandrock’s melee assault.

Both Quatre and Athrun get extremely lucky on their attack and defense rolls and Justice survives.

Round 3

Both sides are hovering just above empty on Momentum. Freedom decides to take a big risk, let’s see if it plays off.

Freedom uses Boost to fly up to the center point. With Hi-Mats he uses the Beam Rifle + Plasma Cannon on Heavy Arms and the Railguns on Deathscythe. Thanks to Trowa’s daredevil trait, they have just enough Momentum for 1 Flash, and so he avoids a crit-filled beam rifle shot, while Deathscythe gets pummeled with the railguns.

The Plasma cannons from the High Ground would have destroyed Heavy Arms but instead disabled all weapon systems save for the Gatling Guns.

Freedom tries for Vulcans to finish him off but HeavyArms holds out. Freedom really wanted to retain the high ground (the Control Point can only be captured on top the building) but doesn’t want to leave Heavy Arms to retaliate, and so with a beam saber he rushes in and strikes him down.

Both sides are out of Momentum.

Deathscythe rushes in, thanks to Momentum Shift he’s got enough to use Focus on his Melee Attack, the decisive blow has several failed Armor Saves + Finishing Blow, crippling and destroying Freedom.

It’s now 2-on-1, Athrun has only one chance to seize victory.

He starts with melee against sandrock, using swift strikes and disengages afterwards. He uses the beam boomerang now outside of melee to finish off Sandrock (remember both sides are out of Momentum). He uses his 2nd Hi-MATs activation to fire his guns into Deathscythe finishing him off.

Winner Team SEED!

After Action Report

SEED Player

I really like the changes to starting Momentum, in the older rules one of us would start at M=6 for Skilled pilots and M=4 for Ace pilots, here we started at M=10 and M=8, it made Round 1 a lot less vicious and I think opens up some more options since we’re less worried about getting Alpha strikes by bringing extra Aces.

Although we’re not always used to this playstyle yet, so in Round 1 we got into the hold habit of trying to avoid using any Momentum and so we finished Round 1 fully topped off haha.

Freedom and Justice keep performing well, although I was pretty sad I lost Freedom here and never got to activate Kira’s SEED mode. I was also pretty jealous of Strategist on the Wing side, it really saved them when I unloaded with Zeal. Still it was a good game and I got pretty lucky at the end for this game playing agressive. In other games, I spent a lot more time playing keep away, but sometimes I’d lose too many control points and I couldn’t catch up.

Gundam Wing EW Player

I also like the changes we’re using here, especially bringing back Battle Damage to the Core Rules. Battle Damage is a bit more streamlined, borrowing some lessons learned we had from the older Stellar Warships module, and now having the option to sacrifice weapons can give these units more longevity when the pressure is on. In other games, this means units live to Round 5 (or don’t die at all) but we wanted to feature this battle in the test series because it had a really dramatic turn of events with a lot of casualties in Round 3.

Overall, I’m really enjoying the tuned up Gundam Wing Endless Waltz units, they are a lot more durable than before. I really need to try them out against masses units of Leos, Aries, Taurus, & Virgos in the future.

MechaStellar Battle Report – Freedom & Justice vs Calamity, Raider & Forbidden

In this MechaStellar battle report we have a classic Gundam SEED battle with Freedom and Justice vs the drug enhanced biological computers for Calamity, Raider and Forbidden Gundam. As a bonus, there’s a short one on one fight between Freedom and Providence at the end. This test series was done when we were prototyping all the SEED units, whenever possible we like to demo out specific battles or moments from the show to see how well it plays out on the tabletop as well.

In this case though, the evil trio from SEED ended up being harder to kill than expected.

Points were still being adjusted at the time for both sides, but the dark trio were short on points and so brought a squad of Strike Daggers with them to capture Control Points (CPs). The Strikes are proxies for Strike Daggers shown above.

With Justice having a strong defense most games wound up with Justice boosting to capture the central CP, and Calamity going for a rapid fire barrage and forbidden doing the same.

To play up the teamwork / best-friends angle we see in the show, anytime Justice or Freedom was badly damaged, we would have the other Gundam stand in front of LOS to take all future attacks. This game series was before we applied the global “-1 Hit” to all units, and so Justice was taking a lot of hits early on, Freedom intervened and fires it’s AOE Plasma Cannons.

The Strike Daggers continue their mission of accelerating towards the CP. The D.Trio player was hesitant to start them too far up the board since he was worried either Freedom or Justice would Zeal and wipe them out too early. So Round 1 & 2 was spent moving towards a center line CP. (In this game series, 3 Control points were on the center line in no-man’s land).

Raider goes for the flank and captures a CP for some so both sides own 2 CPs. It’s hyper machine guns were effective at draining Momentum. (In an old prototype of the rules, the N-Jammer Cancellers for Freedom and Justice provided unlimited phase shift, but excessive hits would stun the pilots unless they burned Momentum. It ended up being a cumbersome system and so we opted for the current version of Phase Shift, that while not show accurate, still provides a hefty defense vs [K] weapons.

A battle shot of Forbidden trying to swoop in and scythe through Freedom, but Kira + SEED mode held the line. This was back in the time where SEED (and the related Berserker / Killer instinct abilities) were overtuned and providing too large of a critical range bonus, with consistently good rolls of 7+ Freedom and Justice would be invincible as we found in some other ace matches vs Gundam Wing pilots and also Physalis / The O.

Speaking of wiping out daggers, Freedom disengaged capped that control panel and blew up most of that squad. (We briefly tested squad mechanics in this battle in July 2025, but 6 months later it’s still not quite ready yet).

Calamity unloads on Freedom with Zeal, using it’s shield beams, bazooka, and beam cannons and Kira’s lucky dice eventually failed him.

Justice goes into melee with Calamity but fails to destroy it, and the CP is contested while Raider captures the enemy CP. It’s Round 2 and the Freedom / Justice team now have 0 CPs, while the D.Trio have 4…

Round 3 and Athrun captures a control point, and Calamity can’t move fast enough to contest it. However, Raider is able to swoop from behind. The enemy team is generating too much Momentum and Athrun isn’t able to defeat them by himself.

After Action Report

We ran this game series for 10 play tests, and the SEED Trio of Calamity, Raider and Forbidden won every time. We weren’t expecting that since Freedom / Justice had been on a roll in every other game. I think this is one of the first series we did where one team focused heavily on defense and it worked out really well, we rarely have a game series where all three protagonist (or antagonist) units survive through 5 rounds.

We learned a lot from this series and it helped us decide on which way we wanted to move forward with on Phase Shift, lowering lethality across the board, and on certain weapons. We also continued to run Freedom and Justice in other series just to verify they weren’t weak (they aren’t) they just happen to have an achilles heel facing Calamity, Raider and Forbidden.

Bonus Report

While we are reenacting battles, we decided to do Freedom vs Providence a couple times to see if 1-vs-1 games were more fun compared to VER9.

While MechaStellar is primarily a wargame, a number of our players really love doing 2v2 Ace battles. 1v1 leaves a bit to be desired, since positioning (especially for blindside) doesn’t matter as much.

Unless of course you go 2nd in one Round, position yourself for Blindside, and then go first in the next Round. This was a fun test game and helped us adjust Dragoons a bit, we had also started experimenting with “Free attack” weapons like Vulcans, and Shield beams (and also warship beams) all the way back in June / July 2025 but not all of that made it into public release immediately. We knew it was a big change so we wanted to iron that one before releasing, especially since Funnels were ultra broken in playtesting when we first did them in VER6 (and our playtesters will likely say they stayed broken all through VER8 hahaha)

Overall a fun test for the game, it was around 60/40 with Freedom vs Providence win rates. It was also good to test out the various climactic events and tweak them as needed.

This report was written long after the fact when we discovered the test photos, so it’s not as in-depth as other battle reports so instead we decided to focus on what was changing and what was being tested. Hope you enjoyed reading

MechaStellar Battle Report – Gundam Seed vs Shin Mazinger & Getter

In this battle report we have a 2000pt game using the MechaStellar VER10 rules, one side we have the SEED Duo of Kira and Athrun piloting the Freedom and Justice Gundams. On the other side we the iconic Koji Kabuto in the Mazinger Z with the God Scrander as well as the OG Getter Team of Ryoma, Hyato and Musashi in Getter Robo. (We’re using the Armageddon Black version since we’ve customized this 300pt unit into a 1010 point unit.)

In this cross universe game, the SEED Duo are facing off against two of the most iconic Super Robots. Read on below the break to see the results of the battle report.

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MechaStellar Design Goals – SEP25 Update – QoL Adjustments

The latest update has quite a bit of changes both to the Core Rules, Wargaming supplement and the Unit Profile sheets. In this post we’ll cover a brief overview. Which we’ve broken into three segments. Some of these we will cover more in depth in follow-up posts. For the first segment let’s cover Quality of Life QoL updates.

HexaStellar Update

The forthcoming Gundam Assemble will introduce Gundam wargaming on a hex scale to the world. We’re really excited for it! We also wanted to make MechaStellar compatible with Hexes (and also square grids) for people who don’t like using tape measures. We’ve made all ranges divisible by 4 for Sensors, Movement, and Weapon ranges. In general, around half of all units ended up receiving a movement boost, so you should have some more mobility in your games. We’ve also updated facing rules to be easier to use with hexes where turning 90 degrees is not as easy.

Challenge Update

We got some feedback from a regular player that Challenge had a big loophole where if you are down to a 1-on-1 game, the player going second wouldn’t be able to challenge and thus it would invalidate a lot of the challenge focused pilot traits if they lost initiative. We’ve fixed this and now allow for Challenge to be declared before any unit activates.

Pilot Traits

Recently we’ve got some playtest feedback that some of the Pilot Traits were getting a little too lethal. Previously Reaper (+2 Hits, +2 Crits vs Challenge) and Ruthless (+4 Hits on Counter / IDF / AOE) were so powerful on a turn by turn basis, that even relatively nimble mobile suits were still getting one shot even when maxing out defense bonuses. We haven’t done an overhaul on pilot traits for a while, so we took our old notes along with the new feedback. Overall, we ended up consolidating a lot of pilot traits to having a shared Level 1 origin, that branches out to a stronger or more varied Level II effect. A lot of the insta-picks like the level 1 version of Reaper, are now Level 2 only for that reason. Overall, we’re happy with pilot traits becoming a little simpler and easier to remember while taking away some of the lethality there.

Oh and as a bonus you can now take a 2nd Level II trait in the upgrade rules. Look forward to this on the Captain Harlock sheets. (Do note, Warship rebalances are taking a long time, so they likely won’t be ready for another couple weeks).

MechaStellar Design Goals – SEP25 Update – Starting Momentum

In the previous post we talked about several items in the MechaStellar SEP 2025 roster update. In this post we’ll cover Starting Momentum in-depth.

Momentum is one MechaStellar’s defining features, and has been for quite a few years now. It’s a game system we’re really proud of, momentum represents the collective skill, luck, morale of your forces will ebb and flow during battle. In the switch to VER10 Momentum could start at a flat 10, which was greatly in the early drafts, but with some major overhauls to the pilot system, starting Momentum was also much lower. We’ve been experimenting with several options and finally came up with a winner we’re happy with and play testers are happy with, some are even overjoyed.

We went through a lot of different experiments of starting Momentum, perhaps too many haha. One we tried to stick with was to quantify, Battle-Tested / Skilled / Ace units, and how much Momentum they would drain. We eventually settled on -1/2 (round up), -1 and -2 starting Momentum. This was fine, but we still ran into problems where, let’s say you wanted to run a Gundam SEED Le Creuset team, and you’re starting off with M-6 still (4 Skilled and 1 Ace).

While it was relatively fair, when comparing teams, we still wound up with very low starting Momentum overall. This was also in a time period where playtesters discovered some good turn 1 Alpha Strikes, and the need for higher starting Momentum become very apparent.

We eventually solved this by retaining the current comparison method, but now there’s a chance both players will start with M=10 or M=8, where historically it was often M=6 vs M=4. This comparison method has both players count up their “Elite Units”. The person with less Elite points, starts with M=10, the other players starts with the difference.

For example let’s say we have Kira and Mwu (2x Ace = 4) vs the Le Creuset Team (4x Skill + Ace = 6), a difference of 2. Kira and Mwu start with 10, while the Le Creuset team start with the difference (10-2=8). This gave A LOT more flexibility for people who like running thematic forces with lots of Elite units on both sides. You can also still field a grunt force vs an elite force and have a huge gap in Momentum.

Overall, we kept the same feel of the current Momentum system while overall massively improving the amount of starting Momentum. This is both good for balance and QoL in our opinion. Hope you all enjoy!

MechaStellar Monthly Roster Update – SEP 2025 – METEOR + Balance Patch

Hello everyone, for this month’s update we are adding in the METEOR units from Gundam SEED. We also have a huge balance patch affecting various units, pilot traits, and the entire weapons arsenal. There are also various revisions to the core rules to to clarify various questions that have come up, as well streamlining movement and allowing for stronger versions of Flash and Iron Wall to allow for more survivability of units.

Unfortunately the balance patch is quite large so as of today only the rules and unit profiles for Gundam are complete. The roster update for Super Robots and Warships is planned for next week. Keep reading for a quick summary of changes. We’ll do in-depth posts next week as well to go over changes.

Summary

Core Rules Revision
- REV102 – Updated Facing rules. Updated IDF in space. Updated Iron Wall again. Updated Critical Strike. Clarified various items based on playtester feedback.
- REV101 – Updated gameplay tools for Hexastellar / MechaGrid gameplay. Updated wording on Challenge again. Updated IDF in Space. Allowed for Super Flash / Super Iron Wall at M-6. Updated AOE and Push/Pull.
- REV101 – Removed from Barrage and Target Lock the clause for getting +1 Hit instead of +1 Shot. Rebalanced machine guns to be base 10d10 attack, so barrage and target lock still becomes +1 Hit for those weapons per pg2. Updated Battle Damage to correspond with removing Shield profile bloat. Solo unit Support ATK /DEF is now limited to the traits range. Armor Saves are limited to 3 dice.
- REV100 – Closed loophole on challenge where challenge traits had no use if you went 2^nd and player 1 only had a single unit. Clarified disengage. Updated and renamed Melee Elite bonuses, free Disengage is only one on melee elite option now. Updated Finisher formula. Valor is now Round 2+
- REV99 – Converted Battle Damage from VER9 to VER10
- REV98 – Big update to Starting Momentum & Shifts (M+2 to move closer)
- REV97 – removed type restrictions (MS/Super Robot) on Flash & Iron Wall. Improved Iron Wall and reset it to [M-3]. Finisher is now rolled by the Defender, it activates on a 1 instead of a 10. Added a clause about going over the 10 dice Finisher limit. Updated Accelerate to coincide with the Hexastellar Movement update. Updated Push/Pull weapons which no longer deal DMG on failed Armor Saves unless you hit another object.
Wargaming Rules
- Updated all Pilot Traits and consolidated
Unit Profiles
- Added Meteor (Freedom) and Meteor (Justice)
- Major improvement to G Gundam Units, improves to Wing units
- Rebalanced all weapons and thus all units

MechaStellar Battle Report – Freedom & Justice vs GP02 Physalis & The O

In this battle report we have a 2000pt game using the MechaStellar VER10 rules, one side we have the SEED Duo of Kira and Athrun piloting the Freedom and Justice Gundams. On the other side we have Anavel Gato, The Nightmare of Solomon, piloting the stolen GP02 using the MLRS (Multi-Launch Rocket System) configuration as well as Paptimus Scirocco in The O. In this cross universe game, the SEED Duo are facing off against two of Universal Century Gundam’s biggest villains. Read on below the break to see the results of the battle report.

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MechaStellar Monthly Roster Update – JUL2025 – Gundam SEED Stargazer

Hello everyone, for this month’s MechaStellar update we have another batch of SEED units to debut. This time we have suits from Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Stargazer including the eponymous Stargazer, the fan favorite Strike Noir as well as the overtuned Blu Duel and Verde Buster who unfortunately were the first on-screen phase shift Gundams to be destroyed by ordinary grunts. Speaking of, we also have the Kerberos Bucue to add as well.

In addition to Stargazer we have also added in the Providence, another ~~Funnel~~ DRAGOON using Mobile Suit as well as his arch Nemesis Mwu La Flaga piloting the Perfect Strike. The Providence has proven to be a very powerful unit on the tabletop in testing, and we really enjoy the Challenge focused traits to have him face down with either Mwu or Kira. The Perfect Strike comes in at 900 points to give you flexibility to add in more pilot upgrades on either Mwu, or perhaps Kira and Athrun if you’re running them as a team.

Last but not least, a lot of the AU units have received some preliminary updates in preparation for next month’s update. The goal is to eventually have all units have their Sensors and Movement values in multiples of 4, we’ll talk more about this in a follow-up Design Goals post. We’re targeting to complete this in next month’s update.

Thanks for reading and hope you enjoy the treasure trove of SEED units we’ve put out the last couple months. If you’d like to request a specific SEED variant please let us know in the comments below.

MechaStellar Battle Report – Turn A Gundam Rematch

In this post we have a MechaStellar Battle Report using the draft VER10 rules. We have a lunar battlefield with a good amount of terrain and some high end machines battling it out. In this cross-universe SRW style game, Haman Karn heard a rumor that the golden mobile suit was still fighting and she went to investigate thinking that Char was still alive. Instead her forces encountered the infamous White Doll

Keep reading for the battle report.

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