You can play MechaStellar with figures and model kits big and small. For players who prefer to use larger scale figures and models for Gundam and various other Mecha series you will also want to use larger terrain. In this post we’ll look at N Scale buildings and a few different scales of Gundam figures.
Continue reading “Terrain for Gundam and other Mecha – N Scale Buildings”
While doing some test games for some adjustments to Snipers and long range skills we put together a pair of games taking some extreme army lists. For this game we had a match between two Federation forces with one heavily skewed towards Snipers and while heavily skewed towards Firepower units.
You can find the game rules and the mecha unit profiles on the MechaStellar downloads page. The miniatures used for this matchup came from the Gundam Standart and Ultimate Operation collection. You can read more about them here.
The Firepower forces decided to build a castle in the far corner to protect their units with lower Melee. The Commanders were the GP04 Gerbera and Full Armor Gundam Type B who both used the Unyielding trait.
You can find the game rules and the mecha unit profiles on the MechaStellar downloads page. The miniatures used for this matchup came from the Gundam Standart and Ultimate Operation collection. You can read more about them here.
Continue reading “MechaStellar Battle Report – Snipers vs Firepower Mecha”
This is the 2nd in-depth post looking at the changes made in VER 8.8, you can read the full VER 8.8 summary here and the design goals post on the weapon rebalance here.
With the update to VER 8.7 we upgraded several of the Pilot Traits to have 2 effects, a good number of these ended up giving a +1 Evade bonus. While this was a nice bonus, especially for several units who were middle of the road for Evasion, I personally got a lot of great feedback on these our players and other members of the team regarding that. Mainly that with VER 8.7’s goal of reducing mental math, adding a slew a +1 Evade bonuses runs counterproductive to that goal.
And that’s a great point! So in VER 8.8 we went about trying to scrub as much mental math as we could from the game. No longer will your gameplay halt every time a Skilled or Ace pilot comes up and you have to add in several steps of bonus accuracy and bonus evade, and “what was the target number again??”
Lesson learned! Let’s see what we can do instead.
Continue reading “MechaStellar VER 8.8 Design Goals – Mental Math & Focus”
This update kicked off with the complete reworking of the thrown weapons from last month. Our first new series added in 2023 is G Gundam, we began prototyping units in April and started playtesting in July of 2022, with G Gundam being the next release all forthcoming units receive heavy playtesting the two months leading up to release.
During the playtests for G Gundam models, one unit in particular stood out. Gundam Maxter almost exclusively uses short range weapons, with a pair of magnums and several different punches including a cyclonic, burning jet of fire, and semi-visible bursting machine gun punch. We were able to utilize existing weapon profiles to at least give each punch a different special effect but something was lacking. What we observed was that many of punches (and even the twin magnums) felt rather samey, and it didn’t feel like there was a good time to use one over the other.
Continue reading “MechaStellar VER 8.8 Design Goals – Short Range Weapons Update”
For this February’s update we are updating the Core Rules to VER 8.8 with a renewed focus on trimming down Mental Math we’ve updated several Pilot Traits and the Focus action. We’ve also updated the short range weapons (16″) including beam boomerangs, heat rods and the infamous Rocket Punch as well as Machine Guns and Gatling Guns. Lastly, “Finishing Blow” has been added to add some more variety to Melee combats when it comes to assigning ATK and DEF dice.
We’ll have two in-depth posts exploring the weapons update and the focus/pilot traits update, here’s the first one focusing on short range weapons and machineguns. We’ve also updated the VER 8 Example of Play to match the rules update. Below the break you’ll see the summary list of updates for MechaStellar VER 8.8
Continue reading “MechaStellar FEB23 Update – VER 8.8 Released”
Closing out the VER 8.7 update here’s an indepth look at some of the design decisions that went into the Weapons update. For your convenience I have included the relevant summary line item list for each of those categories from the previous post as well.
Continue reading “MechaStellar VER 8.7 Design Goals – Weapons Update”
Here’s an indepth look at some of the design decisions that went into the Balance Patch, Unit Profile adjustments and Weapon adjustments. For your convenience I have included the relevant summary line item list for each of those categories from the previous post as well.
Continue reading “MechaStellar VER 8.7 Design Goals – Balance Patch”
Here’s an indepth look at some of the design decisions that went into the MechaStellar VER 8.7 Stellar Warefare Update. For your convenience I have included the relevant summary line item list for each of those categories from the previous post as well.
Continue reading “MechaStellar VER 8.7 Design Goals – Stellar Warfare”
Here’s an indepth look at some of the design decisions that went into the VER 8.7 Core Rules Update for MechaStellar.. For your convenience I have included the relevant summary line item list for each of those categories from the previous post as well.
Continue reading “MechaStellar VER 8.7 Design Goals – Core Rules Updates”
For this months update we have a major update to the Core Combat Rules along with a balance patch and overall UI improvement to the Mecha Profile Sheets. We’ve also added new units to the roster based on player requests. Below the break is the summary of updates, you can read a more indepth breakdown on a few updates in a follow up posts.
Continue reading “MechaStellar JAN 2023 Update – VER 8.7 Released”
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