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!
In our previous post we talked about changes to Support ATK / DEF, and how in this update we needed a new mechanic to represent the old gameplay of letting your grunts support each other and become more deadly. With this we created a Squad system with the goal of making it as simple and easy to use as possible. We took some inspiration from the Official Gundam 1/400 Tactical Battles rules which also features a Squad System (complete with base-to-base mechanics) and tried to streamline that idea as much as we could into MechaStellar.
For Squads we wanted a very simple way to boost their effectiveness. The old Support ATK system was perhaps too generous, since it allowed you to gain bonus hits on any attack. Thus you would often see a pair of machine guns supporting a bazooka unit (I know, I’ve certainly done it a lot myself), allowing for the weapon machine guns to get +2 hits on the very high damage bazooka. It was a very effective combo. Unfortunately it didn’t just apply to grunts, but also your overpowered units like a Gundam or Mazinger.
The Squad system wanted to provide a simple attack bonus to your grunts, without providing a massive attack bonus to your already powerful units. Afterall, the intent is to improve you grunts, and let them fight against tougher opponents and help break through their defenses.
So for squads we allow you to pair up similar units, and you get bonus attack dice from your squad members when using the same weapon. I.e. +2 machine guns from your squad mates gives your Squad Leader +2d10 attack dice, 1 bazooka and 2 machine guns does not give you bonus dice.
This ended up being a simple and easy to follow system, but we had to build in some limits so you weren’t pairing up Leos with Wing Gundam or Heavy Arms to immediately give them a huge attack bonus for a relatively cheap cost of +2 Leo units. So to pair up similar units they would have to have the same Role and the same performance. This lets you pair up various kinds of Zaku variants, it also lets you pair up Mass produced units, for example in the future you might have a Nu Gundam + MP Nu’s in a squad.
Lastly, we needed a way to make this worthwhile for Ace units. We had a lot of success using the squad system with Battle-Tested pilots like the Cosmo Falcons / Tigers from Space Battleship Yamato, but overall, the system was not great for Ace Pilots like the Black Tri Stars. The simplest fix to that, was to let Elite units gain a Defense bonus, so your Black Tri-Stars were getting +2d10 on Attack dice, but also on Defense dice, massively improving their survivability.
We also updated the Coordinated Attack event for the Black Tri-Stars, and we updated Tandem Fighter to be support focused, while also making it powerful if you lose one of your three Aces. So the Black-Tri Stars with Tandem Fighter still fight very effectively when they are down to only 2 members.
We really enjoy the new squad system but there are likely still some wording loopholes we missed. If you notice any, or just break the game in general, please let us know. You can shoot us an email or contact us on social media.
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.
Finishing Blow has gotten several important reworks in VER10. The most recent revision allowed for it to be more commonly activated while preserving the potential massive damage it had in its original incarnation. This version gave you automatic +1000 DMG for every die above 10d10 when you strike a Finishing Blow. It was working really well for Super Robots, like GaoGaiGar and Gurren Lagann, but…we were having issues on the Real Robot side.
The problem though, was that High Rate of Fire weapons became exceedingly good at striking a Finishing Blow. While this can be a really cool moment and something you’d see in Getter Robo Armageddon, Macross, Votoms and the more grounded Gundam series, the problem is how often should this be happening. And furthermore, how deadly should this be.
To reference a recent battle report from one of our all-star players. They were using the “Build Fighters” rules to make a custom unit reflecting the VOTOMs franchise, and his opponent brought the fan favorite 08th MS Team. While in this battle they had a lot of fun with a highly agile unit vs a slow and steady team. Finishing Blow was a friction point for the game, with the lighter Votoms unit racking up Finisher after Finisher for thousands of damage. While fun, it didn’t feel very accurate for a unit to get obliterated from a common machine gun. And what’s worse is that the machine gun was significantly better at dealing Finishing Blows than say a Giga Drill Breaker or Shining Finger.
There were a couple ways to approach this and solve the issue. Some earlier attempts worked decently but were a little complicated or math heavy. Then we had a curve ball with a weapons rebalance that was ongoing with changes to the Support ATK / DEF system. We needed a way to give machine guns a bonus to compensate for losing Support ATK (we’ll discuss this more in the next post). The solution was to remove the cap on Attack of 10d10, since the core rules turns those bonus dice into bonus Hits (or DEF). We were also testing out Size-1 units like Dunbine and some other fan requested prototypes, and the very small machine guns needed to be over 10d10 at DMG 100 in order to be balanced against their 10d10 DMG 200 counterparts.
So with all that in mind we had to rework Finishing Blow many time. What we settled on was to keep some of the benefit of rolling above 10d10, so if you get 11+ d10 on Finisher Saves, it increases the target number by 1 (and this also stacks with the level 2 Pilot Trait – Burning Passion). This keeps a strong desire to get above 10d10 while not being overbearing with a machine gun dishing out 7000 DMG.
We also needed provide another avenue for those bonus dice above 10d10, that way it matters whether you have 11d10 Finisher saves or 21d10 Finisher Saves. One Dev had a very unique idea of turning those bonus dice into Victory Points. There was already a mechanic in place for gaining VP if you scored 10,000 DMG, so we thought it would be fun to allow for Finishing Blow to score Victory Points as well. So those bonus dice give +10VP each, and gives you a chance to win the game with an ultimate attack, instead of by sheer attrition.
While it seems like a simple change, we went through a couple months of playtesting various kinds of Finishing Blows, and honestly we were pretty relieved to find one that’s still powerful but not too powerful. Hope you enjoy!
Happy New Year everyone! For this year we’re switching from end of month updates to beginning of the month updates. So from now look forward to updates on the first of each month! For this month’s update we have the long awaited Char’s Counterattack! Although, Char won’t be seen until next month. Instead debuting we have the Geara Doga and the Jegan as well as two related machines!
In addition to these four new units we also have a huge balance update affecting Hit Points, Victory Points, and all weapons with the biggest effects are high rate of fire weapons like vulcans and machine guns. Additionally, we have some major updates to the Core Rules and Wargame rules.
These updates include a Squad system, to allow your grunts to punch above their weight class, and also a nice bonus for elite squads like the Black Tri-Stars. Several other systems were revised to accomodate this mechanic, like Tear through the Ranks, AOE, the “Tandem Fighter” upgrade. The Support ATK / DEF system was entirely retooled, based on a lot of player feedback that the measuring and pre-measuring was getting cumbersome and slowed the game down. The new Support mechanic instead gives your own unit a Support bonus to enable Armored Core style gameplay where you use missiles to apply pressure before firing your primary weapon. Support weapons can still be used to improve your allies while in a squad.
On the downside, this is a huge rebalance update and we have not finished Warships yet. We were also hoping to include a Combiner in the Super Robots update for GoLion / Voltron but we need some more time to finalize it. We’ll add a bonus Super Robot series as penance for being delayed.
Below you’ll find a summary of rules updates.
Core Rules Updates
QoL updates for Warships. Fixed loopholes on Reinforce and other mechanics.
Added a Squad System
Retooled the Support weapon system
Updated the Iron Wall pilot skill
Made it so Boost lasts the whole Turn instead of a single attack
Returned Counter to be an Elite option only
Armor Saves back to 5 dice
Finisher Saves at more than 10 dice reworked to no longer give easy access to 1000s of DMG
Updated targeting, only Skilled and Ace ignore targeting rules, Battle-Tested still have to target closest / return fire
Added in Elite levels to represent units that are heavily upgraded which now affects your starting Momentum
Added a Barrier system
War Game Rules Updates
Rearranged upgrades, many upgrades no longer increase VP.
Elite Upgrades (i.e. Improved Barrage / Dodge etc.) that increase VP also increase Elite Level which affects starting Momentum
Raised cap on Elite Upgrades
Updated Events and Hazards
Updated VP earned on game modes and secondary objectives
Updated several pilots traits, i.e. Killer Instinct,
Added Speed upgrade
Added a weapon upgrade
Mecha Balance Patch
Renamed MS Bonus to Mech P. (Performance)
Remove the global -1 Hit on all units
Massive rebalance to VP. Elite units and higher Frame units are worth significantly more VP.
Massive rebalance to HP. Most units received a significant HP boost.
Fixed errors and rebalanced Gurren Lagann and GaoGaiGar
Made SEED Zaku and Gouf’s cheaper. Made Hizacks cheaper.
Upgraded all Frame 5 units with +2 EQ slots
Updated Luna Titanium, Gundanium, Phase Shift
Made Hizacks cheaper for the forthcoming Geara Doga / Jegan update.
Removed Support ATK / DEF from most non-E[X]plosives. Kept Support ATK / DEF for non-handheld weapons (i..e shoulder mounted minigun)
Rebalanced Missile Pod / Salvo / Fire Support
Allow for high rate of fire weapons like machine guns and vulcans to be above 10d10 ATK on the design side, the excess dice are converted into Hits ref. core rules.
Rebalanced Shotguns to be DMG 100 high damage weapons
Sniper weapons ability changed to Target any Unit | Ignore Cover / Support DEF
Nerfed all weapons with a RF penalty (Snipers, Railguns, etc.)
Updated Blinding Flash to be a weapon rather than a trait to make it more fair
In MechaStellar we like to keep a favorite Mecha poll open so you know generally which series to work on next. For 2025 we had a long running poll on which series to add next while we worked through the previous poll winners of Gundam SEED, Space Battleship Yamato and Aura Battler Dunbine.
Generally with polls we take the #1 “Real Robot” show and the #1 “Super Robot Show” and then the third choice will either be a warship focused series or DEV choice. The definition of real and super of course are not super strict, Sunrise itself classifies Dunbine as a Real Robot show even though Aura Battlers function more like Super Robots, and many might even point out that Gundam 00 and GN particles pushes into Super Robot territory. But for us we’re sticking with Gundam as a Real entry.
The above image was taken in January 2025, unsurprisingly with Gundam in the lead, followed by Nadesico and Ideon.
Here are the results when we closed the poll in September. CCA takes the top spot as the Real Robot winner, but for Super Robots we have a tie between Tekkaman Blade and Nadesico.
So for this poll’s winners we will go with Gundam CCA, Tekkaman Blade and Nadesico.
As a bonus DEVs are also going to push out Dancouga and Dangaioh this year. Look forward to it!
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.
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
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone! For this month’s MechaStellar update we are rounding out the Aura Battler Dunbine roster with a complete set of the Aura Battlers from the TV show as well as the Zelana, Wing Calibur Fou, and the 4 legendary Aura Battleships.
You can find the updated units under “Warships” on the gamedownloads page which currently holds Harlock, Yamato, Dunbine as well as Warships from Gundam (and support units like Saberfish and Magella Tanks). https://mechastellar.com/game-downloads/
Aura Battler Dunbine is an outstanding show with some outstanding insectoid mecha designs. It has recently seen a major merchandise revamp with a huge portion of its roster both heroes and grunts getting figures for the Robot Spirits (Robot Damashii) line. The figures are incredible, please check them out. There are also older gashapon available for those who prefer small size minis.
Summary
Added 20 units from Aura Battle Dunbine to the MechaStellar roster
Significantly rebalanced how size affects all units, especially small units like Aura Battlers, Jets and Tanks
Rebalanced all small units. Yamato’s Cosmo Falcon / Tiger received an upgrade
Rebalanced all Warships
Look forward to Char’s Counter Attack next month! Happy New Year!!
In this battle report we have a 3500pt game using the MechaStellar VER10 rules. When the Space Revolutionary army descends on Earth there’s only one man handsome enough to stop them!
One side we have the Space Revolutionaries including Captain Harlock onboard the Arcadia, and two members of Operation Meter, Duo Maxwell in Gundam Deathscythe Hell and Trowa Barton in Gundam Heavyarms Custom. As for this Super Robot Wars (SRW) story we reasoned that Harlock and his unflinching principles of Freedom clashed with the government of the Earth Sphere alliance, and he enlisted the aid of Operation Meteor.
On the other side we have the Fabulous 7, Treize Kushrenada in the Tallgeese II and Roger Smith in the Big O, two very handsome leads. Then upon realizing how expensive the Arcadia is, we went in search of another fabulous team of pilots to complement them and we wound up with the Baxingar team wearing opulent furs and sporting a playing card aesthetic. In their world they represent the famous Shinsengumi on a backdrop of space, we thought it would be fitting that this group of idealists would be at odds with Harlock.
Forces
Note: The rules may have changed since this post was written so don’t be surprised if some abilities have changed in points or in rules.
Space Revolutionaries (3500pts)
Captain Harlock on board the Arcadia (2000pts) – Commander
Traits – Legendary Captain & Dreaded Captain
Gundam Deathscythe Hell EW (750pts)
Gundam Heavyarms Custom EW (750pts)
The Fabulous and Magnificent 7 (3500pts)
Tallgeese II with Treize Kushrenada – Commander (650+450pts)
+300pts +30VP – 3 Free Skills, 2x Flash and 1x Valor
+100pts +10VP – Grand Strategist
+50pts +20VP – Performance Upgrade (6)
Big O (500+550pts)
+100pts O Thunder
+200pts +20VP – 2 Free Skills, Valor + Iron Wall
+100pts +40VP – 2x Performance Upgrade (7)
+100pts +10VP – Guard Mastery (+3d10)
+50pts +5VP – Additional pilot trait – Hit on a 3+
Baxingar (1000 + 350pts)
+100pts +10VP Morale 3++
+100pts +10VP – Free Valor Skill
+50pts +5 VP – Merciless Melee
+50pts +5 VP – Feint Bonus is +2 Crit Range
+50pts +5 VP – Army of One
Round 1
Treize Kushrenada in the Tallgeese II is up first. He uses Grand Strategist for Support DEF +12″ x2 on the Dobergun giving it Support DEF 24″, since he’s only the unit on the field for his team, Support DEF applies to himself.
He moves up and uses boost to capture a CP and hit Heavy Arms in Rapid Fire range with the Dobergun. Valor is cancelled out by Flash, and Heavy Arms takes minor damage. But in return Tallgeese gets hit with a Quad Gatling Counter for 1400 DMG.
On Heavy Arms Turns he unleashes the Chest Gatilng for 1800 thanks to a Finisher save and then a Micromissile burst for further damage. At the end of this Turn, Treize uses Trust and gets lucky recovering a big chunk of HP. Heavy Arms does the same.
Tallgeese player: I’m reminded of VER7 when Tallgeese was killed by Overwatch by Heavy Arms at our FLGS. At least this time Tallgeese survived!
Harlock in the Arcadia fires off a barrage at Tallgeese but even with Support ATK, Tallgeese emerges unscathed thanks to Boost + Flash. Fortunately, the Dreaded Captain Trait shaves off more Momentum from the Tallgeese. Harlock then moves towards the side Control Point.
Tallgeese player: I was really worried because I thought I was going to be shot off the board Round 1, but I got super lucky on dice rolls. Well, maybe only this Round.
Meanwhile Deathscythe uses his actions + Boost to get on top the central CP.
But Tallgeese isn’t alone, Baxingar is formed by combining 5 Cosmo Bikes of the Space-Shinsengumi members. It arrives on the table edge ready to blindside the Arcadia. The Baxingar members and Harlock had a falling out recently over provincial space government.
On the other side, Roger Smith, hired by Treize arrives. BIG O – SHOWTIME
End of Round Momentum
Space Revolutionaries = 6
Team Fabulous = 7
Round 2
Tallgeese is luckily up first! He challenges Heavy Arms, moves into melee and also captures the enemy deployment CP. Valor is cancelled out by Flash, but the Tallgeese manages to strike a minor blow to Heavy Arms. At the end of this Turn, Treize uses Trust recovering a huge chunk of HP, lucky!
Heavy Arms turns around, uses a move action to get onto the CP while staying in melee and triggers a Momentum shift. He then unleashes the Chest Gatling on Tallgeese, he opts for Valor to try and pull off a Finishing Blow but Tallgeese with Flash manages to avoid taking significant damage. What’s worse is that Tallgeese uses Counter and dishes out 1200 damage thanks to a failed Armor Save.
Heavy Arms uses Close Combat [CC] and manages to kick Tallgeese out of melee, but not far enough to hit the building behind it (or be kicked off the CP).
Big O is up, and boy does he have one heck of a turn. Treize activates Grand Strategist to give him Support ATK and boost Big O. Big O uses Cannon Party for 1800 DMG and Missile Party of 2200 DMG thanks to Finisher. It’s Laser vision causes a failed Armor Save and lastly it uses the Moby Dick Anchors to pull Heavy Arms into melee (and off of the Control Point).
He uses his fists with Sudden Impact but Heavy Arms luckily dodges it. End of Turn Harlock uses Trust to restore Heavy Arms HP.
Harlock is up next, he moves first and then drops two Antiship Depth Charges on the pursuing Baxingar team who burns through their free Flash skills. The space buster does minimal damage to the Baxingar team. Harlock then puts the Arcadia on the Control Point capturing it.
Baxingar is up, Treize uses Support ATK boost again thanks to Grand Strategist, and now at range 24″ is also able to support Baxingar. Baxingar fires off it’s Antiship Missile with Valor and scores only 3000 DMG after Harlock pulls off one heck of an Evade roll. Baxingar closes out with it’s shoulder mounted hyper beam cannons to cause minor damage.
Deathscythe is up next, he uses Boost to gain Fly and bounce between the top of terrain pieces and moves in to intercept Baxingar. He gets into melee engagement range and pops off the Machine Cannons and Vulcans from the high ground, with Finisher it scores 3000 DMG!!!
Harlock Player: If I could sustain these rolls I would have crushed the Earth Sphere alliance. In retrospect I’m lucky Baxingar didn’t use Counter and knock me off after using Vulcans.
The Beam Scythe with high ground advantage scores only 3 hits after Valor vs Flash, but luckily nabs a failed Armor Save and Finisher Save scoring a big chunk of damage.
End of Round Momentum
Space Revolutionaries = 7
Team Fabulous = 7
Round 3
Baxingar is up first, and challenges Death Scythe. He starts with a close combat attack to smash him off terrain, and he chooses “Tear through the Ranks” which will give +1 Action regardless of if he destroys Deathscythe thanks to his “Merciless Melee” pilot upgrade.
Valor is worthwhile here, and even with Flash Deathscythe gets nailed for 3 hits and 3 failed Saves pushing him off high ground and into a building for 2000 DMG.
It then uses its Hyper Beam Cannons as a free action to shoot at the Arcadia, doing small damage, but Harlock Counters with the Space Buster. Dreaded Captain is a great combo with counter, but the Baxingar team has incredible Morale and so it leads to low results. Lastly, Baxingar fires off it’s Foot Missiles scoring more damage on the Arcadia.
The Harlock player is in a tough spot, if he activates the Arcadia he can’t move closer to any enemies and can’t trigger a Momentum shift (they are critically low on Momentum right now). For Deathscythe, he has to choose to either reengage Baxingar or try to support Heavy Arms.
Duo opts to save Trowa. He goes in for melee with Treize, burning off Momentum with the Fearsome trait, then Valor vs Flash scores 3 Hits on the Beam Scythe and 1 failed Armor Save, but Tallgeese survives.
And Counters. Deathscythe barely survives. But on Treize’s turn, the Tallgeese finishes off Deathscythe, too low on Momentum. He then takes the center control point and high ground.
Trowa declares revenge on Treize. He uses a Move action for a Momentum shift, then disengages, and uses Zeal to unload on Tallgeese with 2x Fire Support Missiles and then moves into rapid fire range with the Quad Gatlings.
Thanks to Flash and Boost Tallgeese survives with 300 HP.
Harlock Player: So close to a Revenge VP boost!
Treize uses Grand Strategist twice for Support ATK to give Big O an edge. Laser Vision followed by Sudden Impact destroys Heavy Arms.
Down to one unit! Albeit an expensive 2000pt unit. Can the Legendary Captain Harlock pull off a victory still? Let’s find out.
Harlock moves closer to Tallgeese generating a Momentum shift, it’s Space Buster forces Tallgeese to use their last Free Flash. Then as the last unit, Pulsars + Missile Support ATK blows Tallgeese off the building.
Enemy Commander destroyed Round 3.
Harlock then claims the central CP, currently it’s their only CP.
End of Round Momentum
Space Revolutionaries = 4
Team Fabulous = 7
Round 4
Harlock is lucky enough to go first. Space Buster with Dread Captain luckily drains Momentum then a Rear Arc attack of the Pulsar Cannons annhilates the low HP Baxingar.
Big O moves forward and with Laser Vision and Big O Thunder does a decent chunk of damage to the Arcadia but it’s still not close to 50% HP.
End of Round Momentum
Space Revolutionaries = 6
Team Fabulous = 5
Round 5
Roger Smith in the Big O is up first, he needs to knock the Arcadia below 50% HP to score some serious VP and win the game. Big O challenges Arcadia for a massive defense boost thanks to “Ye Not Guilty”.
Even with Valor and Finishing Blow, Big O’s piledriver arms were unable to break through Harlocks defenses and bring the Arcadia below 50% HP.
The Arcadia returns fire is also unable to push Big O below 50% HP.
Victory Points
Space Revolutionaries = 414VP
Tallgeese +180VP
Commander +30VP
Baxingar + 204VP
Team Fabulous = 288VP
Deathscythe +149VP
HeavyArms +139VP
If they got Arcadia below 50% HP that would have been +151VP enough for a Victory! Close match!!
After Action Report
Team Fabulous
I was initially planning on using Big O to tank hits and have Tallgeese & Baxingar team up move up the flanks to destroy whoever was unlucky to get in there way. When I noticed two of my heavy hitters had a really fun ambush ability I completely changed my strategy. I got really lucky Tallgeese didn’t get blown up in Round 1, but thanks to that my heavy hitters got in super close in Round 2.
I was really impressed with Big O, although I’m kicking myself for not using Final Stage! Baxingar is interesting, I used Army of One with the free skills, but it probably would have been better if I put more free skills on it. I also feel like it’s too much of a glass cannon so I need to be more careful with it in the future. Treize in the Tallgeese was fun with strategist but I’m not sure I rolled a single Crit defense after Round 1 ='(
Space Revolutionaries
I was very worried after I lost both my mobile suits and only had a Warships left. I was counting on Arcadia to blow through Baxingar with it’s paper thin defenses, I knew Big O would be tough to bring down and same with Tallgeese being a dodge tank. Boy did I get lucky though, if they had a little more Momentum and kept Treize alive I certainly would have lost.
Overall I’m happy, ever since the major warship update, warships can now hold their own on the battlefield, and Harlock being the best of the best really showed off at the end.
I do think if we raised the points for our armies a little bit, I could have upgraded Heavyarms and Deathscythe to be a lot more dangerous. Overall really fun game! I hope our favorite Big O player enjoys hahaha.
Forthcoming Rules Update
Thanks to this battle we’re making various updates to the MechaStellar rules
Updated Fearsome / Warmonger Trait
Updating the defensive profile for Tallgeese
Updating weapons on the Arcadia
Update to [AA] weapons
Updating the range of Ambusher abilities to be 20″ instead of 16″
Update Warship Overwatch ability to be Counter focused
Update Antiship weapons to give Finisher instead of bonus hits against large targets
Lower the [M] cost to disengage by 1 if your unit is larger
Bumping up Big O & Giant Robo to be Size 2 to represent their bulk / weight. Rebalancing weapons to compensate.
Updated Captain’s Orders and Overwatch to be a simpler and with broader usage
MechaStellar 