Another quick month has gone by, hope everyone is enjoying their summer. For this month we are adding another Braves series to the roster, The Brave Express Might Gaine. This is the 4th show in the Braves (Yuusha) series and this one set the blueprint for the ever popular GaoGaiGar. You can read more about Might Gaine and the remaining Braves Series in our “Where to start” post here.
Might Gaine has a very broad and often wacky Rogues Gallery, while you can find kits for Might Gaine, Hiryuu and Gouryuu for some of the other models you’ll have to be creative and use a Samurai for Shogun Mifune, or a Penguin for Louise Vuitton’s Snooby. We’ve also included the Black Noir army from the end of the series, the X model shares a similar silhouette to the humble Zaku II when it comes to using a proxy.
We’re also continuing to do updates to the Gundam Roster. This month adds another 16 units to the Zeta / ZZ / Gundam Sentinel roster. Next month we’ll have the Ex-S Gundam as well as the New Desides, splinter faction of the Titans.
Summary of Updates
14 New units added to the Braves (Yuusha) roster
16 Units added to the Zeta / ZZ / Gundam Sentinel roster
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.
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.
This was a busy month leading up to a busy summer so here’s a short update summary. Updated Mecha Profiles for the Braves series and Gundam can be found on the MechaStellar game downloads page: https://mechastellar.com/game-downloads/
This month we’ll be fulfilling one of our previous polls by adding in more units from the Braves series. Going in production order we have The Brave of the Sun Figh Bird as the 2nd series and The Brave of Legend Da Garn as the 3rd series representative along with their respective villains.
Da Garn also has Seven Changer a rival who is getting an impressive release by moderoid. Next month we’ll have additional units from Might Gaine, one of the more well known Brave series 2nd only to GaoGaiGar.
In addition to that we’ve also been been slowly but surely adding more units from Zeta Gundam and ZZ Gundam to the roster which you can find on the downloads page. We’re hoping to get to Gundam Sentinel by July.
Next month’s big release will be Turn A Gundam as well as drafts for Gundam SEED.
Update Summary
Added 8 units for the Braves series Figh Bird and Da Garn
Added 18 units for Zeta and ZZ Gundam
Fixed Evade errors on GM Quel
Upgraded Zeta Biosensor, Downgraded The O Biosensor
Fixed Cost Error on Newtype Pressure (Qubeley and The O)
For this month’s update we are delivering the 2nd half of the Zeta Gundam update by including all the mobile suits in seen in the second half of the show for both the Titans and New Zeon factions. We’ve also added in a decent chunk of the Zeta Mobile Suit Variations (Z-MSV) and will continue to add in those and other side stories in the future.
For this month’s MechaStellar update we are adding the classic Space Pirate Captain Harlock and the stellar warships for the Arcadia, the Queen Emeraldas as well as Harlock’s original ship the Death Shadow which was then salvaged and turned against him by his nemesis Zone.
Captain Harlock was created by the late Leiji Matsumoto the creator of several foundational anime and manga titles including Space Battleship Yamato, Galaxy Express 999. He has a very distinctive style and many of his works share common themes and even common characters which lead to some fans calling his works the ‘Leijiverse’.
Here are the updated unit rosters early this month. All Frame 2+ unit received an HP boost. Some units were adjusted to keep their old HP and instead improve Sensors, Move or their weapons. The Dom series, a staple grunt for Zeon has had its cost reduced. Lastly, rebalanced GP02 Physalis.
We are ahead of schedule and so for this month in addition to Combattler V and Voltes V we’re adding another fan favorite series to the roster, Great Mazinger (1974) the sequel to Toei’s Mazinger Z (1972). We’re also including a Core Rules revision which streamlines some of the Stellar Warfare rules in preparation for the upcoming Captain Harlock release.
For this month’s MechaStellar update we are adding the classic combining super robots Combattler V and Voltes V, a well known staple for the SRW games. We have also updated the Core Rules to VER 9.3 with a changes that allow Close Combat [CC] weapons to prevent a counterattack and a streamlining of the SRW module. The Wargame Rules to VER 9.2 to account for some VP updates as well as the inclusion of the “Highly Skilled Pilot” upgrades which allow you to use a Skill like Accelerate or Bullseye for free once per turn. A summary of all changes can be found at the bottom of this post. You can find the updated rules and mecha profiles on the game downloads page: https://mechastellar.com/game-downloads/
Here’s an early Christmas present for all of our Gundam fans. We’ve updated the Federation vs Zeon sandbox mission packs for Solo or Co-op play and added in Missions 11-15. We’ve also made a few tweaks to the core rules and wargames rules as well as a few additions to the unit roster based on player requests. You can find the update summary below.
NOTE – This is only for Federation and Zeon unit profiles. AU Gundam and Super Robots will update later this month.
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