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MechaStellar VER11 – QoL Updates

In the most recent MechaStellar Core rules update we added a number of Quality of Life updates so we thought it would be helpful to explain some of the thought processes behind them.

Long Range and Close Range Attacks

The biggest change was adjusting nomenclature, while we have been using Shooting vs Evade and Melee vs Melee DEF for some time, it does get confusing from time to time when players ask “why can’t I evade in Melee”, and most recently since we’ve expanded melee weapons to include close range weapons like vulcans as well, players could often get confused why they are not using the “shooting” stat with vulcans.

To solve this we formalized Shooting vs Evade into Long Range ATK vs Long Range DEF, with [LR] as the abbreviation, likewise with Melee vs Melee DEF becoming Close Range ATK vs Close Range DEF with [CR] being the abbreviation. This also pairs well with the already existing Long Range Sensors and Close Range Sensors. While we’re going to miss tried and true classics like Shooting vs Evade, this overall a more effective naming system and we hope you enjoy it.

It also come with the bonus that close range types can use a rifle in close range and benefit form their close range sensors, something that wasn’t possible in how the rules were worded previously.

Gameplay Changes

Update Battle Cry, clarified range and made it free if Challenge / Revenge target is closest enemy model.

We thought this would be a fun and thematic if you could battle cry for free after declaring revenge. Classic Kamille!

Updated Lock On so you can also bypass targeting the closest enemy model

A question came up while playing is there anyway to target that unit if I don’t have a bullseye weapon?

A great question! Since we made targeting more restricting in VER11 it makes sense we should have a lever to allow someone to make a special targeting action. So it made sense to allow lock on to also let you target that unit.

Added [Crash] attack to Core rules

We’ve had [Crash] attacks for a while but this time around we finally formalized them into the core rules. Now using a crash attack lets your unit move and smash their way into melee all at once. Very valuable for our upcoming Kaiju update, often slower creatures a crash attack can allow them to plow forward and threaten even further away.

BR Saves = 1000 if target has no shield

Just an observation from some players that Break Saves were effectively weaker than AP saves if target never had a shield to begin with.

Identified a problem with cheap HP squads which often die before the penalty can even get applied.  Updated Mobility / Stun saves to apply the action penalty when target is HP<5000 instead of HP<50% which makes things a lot simpler on the tabletop and more useful against cheap HP grunts

This was identified in our Hashmal playtest, where it became rather annoying trying to apply MB or ST saves to low HP units. The fix was to make it HP<5000s instead of HP<50%

Focus twice per turn can now be done by [Elites] instead of [Ace]

This was an early change to let Elite have better odds at landing a hit vs evasive units, and was essential when testing out Kaiju with their (at the time) lower attack dice.

Alert can be used any unit and provides a blanket +1 DEF to all allied forces The old Alert CIWS bonus will be turned into a Captain’s trait in the future.

Likewise, we wanted a default defense skill that non elite can use and one that benefits Kaiju and Warships with their often lower defense dice.

Added Kaiju to the +1 Rally Save category

Clarified that large units can easily get on top of high ground

You can’t contest a Control Point if the enemy is 2 sizes larger.  Good for letting you run a big kaiju or warship and play king of the hill

Noted for targeting you can ignore units that are 2pts smaller than yours (i.e. Warship or Kaiju)

Can you tell we’ve been testing a lot of Kaiju lately?

https://mechastellar.com/2026/10/09/mechastellar-ver11-preview-pacific-rim-kaiju/

https://mechastellar.com/2026/10/11/mechastellar-ver11-preview-godzilla/

https://mechastellar.com/2026/10/05/mechastellar-ver11-preview-getter-robo-2/

https://mechastellar.com/2026/10/04/mechastellar-ver11-preview-mazinger-mechanical-beasts-2/

MechaStellar VER11 – Design Goals – Improving Triggers

In making MechaStellar VER11 we had a lot of new and interesting design challenges to improve the game.  Our overall goal to take VER10 and make it faster, more fun and easier to teach.  Weapon Triggers definitely fulfill the more fun part and so far its been fun to teach new playtesters that “yes you do get to roll another bucket of dice” on barrage.

That said while the Trigger system was fun, and the original Siege was blowing up cover left and right, there were some areas where it wasn’t perfect. We identified two areas for improvement and we’ve resolved both of those in the bonus October update. You can find the latest and greatest MechaStellar core rules here.

#1 Expected Attack Rolls

One of the biggest weaknesses of the previous Trigger system was that some weapons had a hard time landing a large number of hits. Critical, Bullseye and Barrage weapons would hit often, but Siege, Pierce and Counter weapons often struggle to hit. For those who were involved in the playtests you’ll know that the reason Focus gained an “OR” ability was to fix this problem late in the game for VER11 development.

Focus was a really elegant mechanic of transform any die into a 10, thus activating the weapon trigger.

Awesome for a lot of weapons, especially Crit weapons which gave them +2 hits. but for some like Siege and Pierce, if the attack couldn’t hit, an extra 10 wouldn’t change much. Thus we added in the “OR” option of +2 Hits. This way if you’re siege weapon was ready to unload a bucket of saving throws, you could also use Focus to guarnatee you’re hit made it through.

In short, it was a band-aid.

The new system was created thanks to a really great comment from a player. They recommended that all weapons act like Crit weapons (which is how the last 10 VER of MechaStellar operated) so that’s an easy sell. Then he recommended that all the trigger abilities just become bonuses on top of that.

To be honest, this is already how barrage works, where the barrage effect (roll lots of dice) and the same for bullseyes primary ability (target anyone) or Siege’s primary (blow up cover) was all independent of the dice roll. It was a big eureka moment for the Dev team and we jumped on it immediately. It’s been a big hit among the dev team and play testers and we hope you enjoy it too.

And as always, please share your feedback!! It’s super valuable too us.

#2 Remembering Rules

The other weakness of the previous Trigger system was that you had to remember what each trigger did when you were rolling the dice. Sometimes you remembered the effect after you rolled and realized perhaps another weapon would have been a better choice.

Now that all weapons default to Crit, and many have a bonus effect every weapon is effective by default, and some have a powerful add on effect (Bullseye – Target anyone | Barrage – Roll more dice | Siege – Blow up Cover) and you no longer need to worry about what you roll to use the effect.

While it may seem like a relatively minor change on paper, it did require us to readjust the points weighting for all weapons and do a full on rebalance. But fortunately we simplified a lot of design math moving to VER11 so it was less arduous than in the past. We hope you enjoy the new Trigger system!

MechaStellar Design Goals – Support Weapons

Support Weapons were a big update at the very start of VER10, they were one of the last big design changes before VER10 moved from closed playtest to open playtest.  Support Weapons replaced the previous “Overwatch” trait on weapons like Machine Guns and Beam Pistols with Machine Guns gaining Support Attack to represent firing on the enemy while Pistols got Support DEF to represent them being a last ditch sidearm when the enemy closes in.

Time has certainly flown since then, and with many revisions as well, we are currently at REV 121 of the Core Rules.  This last update had some major changes to Support Weapons and also added in a related Squad system which we’ll tackle in the next Design Goals post.

Support Weapons were a fun mechanic and allowed for your grunts units like Zakus and Leos to support one another, allowing for your cheapest and most common units to get a few bonus hits for themselves and allies.  Occasionally we would get feedback that it’s not the same as the Support ATK/DEF system present in Super Robot Wars, but that system if implemented in MechaStellar would be remarkably too powerful, essentially allowing for two units to completely unload on an enemy (or allow two units to defend against one). 

Recently, and by recent I mean in the last year, we have gotten feedback pretty consistently that Support ATK / DEF while fun and helpful, is also slowing the game down pretty dramatically.  The reason for this comes down to measuring.  For those who do virtual tabletops it might be no problem since you can instantly measure with an electronic tool, but on physical tabletops having to measure (and often pre-measure) to make sure your units are within each other Support ATK / DEF range was causing turns to take very long times.

This was a very big impact on large model count games (10-30 modes).  Since large model count games was what MechaStellar was originally built for, we are very sympathetic to the woes of those players.  So we decided to revise Support ATK / DEF.

The new model is more closer to Armored Core style gameplay, where you utilize your various weapons against a single target.  Firing off a shoulder missile pod to corner your target before firing your Kurosawa rifle, using a pulse gun to keep the enemy at bay while strafing around.  Of course we also see this in Gundam, especially for units with lots of weapons like a Full Armor Gundam.  So the updated Support ATK / DEF system is meant to evoke that feel.

The new Support ATK / DEF system lets you set your Support Weapons into Support Mode and give yourself that support bonus.  This also coincides with changes to Zeal, which limits the number of attacks on a single target to two attacks (any combination of Shooting or Melee).  This limit actually harkens back to VER3, the simplest system which gave every unit one shooting and one melee attack (a big departure from the action point system of the previous VER2).  VER10 building off this simplicity but gives you more flexibility so you can do two shooting attacks, or two melee attacks, or Zeal to make 2 Attacks against several targets. 

That said, we removed Support ATK/DEF from many weapons and upgraded them.  Instead we wanted Support ATK/DEF to be more rare, like a shoulder mounted minigun, or to be reserved for missiles.

While Support ATK / DEF is in a different niche, we needed a new mechanic to let your grunts function great on the tabletop.  The Tactician trait was updated to let you give a Support Bonus to another unit.  And next we have the Squad system we’ll cover in the next post.

October Roster Update – 1 Week Delay

Hello faithful readers!

I hate to say it but we’re going to break our long streak of monthly updates and have one delayed. Most of the past month has been rules tweaks based on feedback, some rebalancing of Unit Roles, and rebalancing some units in the current roster, plus the eternal purgatory of layout editing. (My favorite 🙂

We’d prefer to push this release back one week, and focus on converting some more units from VER9 into VER10, that way our Zeta Gundam fans and Super Robot fans have some more units to play with.

So we’ll see you one week from now.

New VER9 Drafts – Braves / Yuusha

Two more of the Braves series have been added to the VER9 drafts page: https://mechastellar.com/ver9-drafts/

We have the 2nd series Fighbird and the 3rd series Da Garn. You can read a quick synopsis of either show here: https://mechastellar.com/2023/05/29/where-to-start-the-braves-yuusha-series/

Additionally, profiles for Gundam and a few other series had a quick revision uploaded. There was an error on Sniper types which had their accuracy 2pts higher than it should have been which has now been corrected.

MechaStellar Battle Report – Amuro and Casval’s Gundam vs Classic Super Robots

Happy New Year! This battle was our favorite of the year.

Here’s a 1500pt battle report using the MechaStellar VER9.3 Core Rules featuring Amuro and Casval piloting the RX-78-2 Gundam’s with Kai and Hayato in Guncannons for support on one side and Mazinger, Getter Robo (Musashi solo) and Combattler V on the other side.

Continue reading “MechaStellar Battle Report – Amuro and Casval’s Gundam vs Classic Super Robots” →

VER9 November Drafts Updated

Just a quick update since I’m on travel. The draft profiles for UC Gundam have been updated on the VER9 Drafts page. I noticed a few units had too large of an HP gain like GP02 and the Full Armor Gundams, the revised HP formula will still greatly improve grunt HP while keeping the heavy hitters closer to their previous HP totals.

Additionally there have been some tweaks to Beam Rifles, Beam Cannons, and melee weapons including the Beam Saber and Heat Hawk to better work with the new Shields paradigm and make the standard GM shield more useful against these weapons.

Also here’s a quick draft for updated Secondary objectives:

Destruction

Top Gun:  +2 VP anytime your Skilled or Ace Pilot destroys an enemy Skilled or Ace Pilot or if they destroy the enemy Commander.

Strongest Prototype: +5 VP anytime your Frame 4+ unit destroys a Frame 4+ Unit.

Rout the Enemy: +1 VP for every unit destroyed (Max 5 per Round).

Surprise Assault: +1 VP when you destroy a unit in the first Round of battle. 
                              +3 VP when you destroy a unit with Tactical Advantage.

Undefeated: +2 VP every time your Commander destroys a unit.  Gain a bonus +2 VP every time your Commander destroys a unit with a Melee Counterattack.  

Survival

Bonds on the Battlefield: +X VP equal to the total Pilot Level of 3 surviving units.

Last Bastion: +3 VP if your Commander survives. Gain a bonus +3 VP if 50%+ of your units (round up) were destroyed as well.

Minimize Losses: +5 VP if 50%+ of your units (round up) survive the battle.  Gain a bonus +1 VP each time you spend at least 1 Momentum to save a unit.

Flawless Insertion: +10 VP but lose 1 VP for each of your units destroyed in Round 1

Invincible: +1 VP each time your unit take 0 DMG from a Shooting or Melee attack.

Control the Battlespace

Repel the Enemy: +1 VP anytime an enemy model leaves your half of the battlefield or is destroyed on your half of the battlefield.

Dominate the battlefield: At the end of each round gain +3 VP if you have units in 3 quadrants, +4 VP for 4 quadrants.  Do not count units within 8” of the center.

Behind Enemy Lines: At the end of each round gain +2 VP if you have 1 unit within 16” of the enemy table edge and +3 VP for 2+ units.

Scorched Earth: +5 VP when you use a melee action on a Control Point destroying it.

Swelling Momentum: +2 VP at the end of each round if you have more Momentum.