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
Hello everyone, for this month’s update we have Aura Battler Dunbine. A personal favorite of Yoshiyuki Tomino and one of the many ‘Real Robot’ Mecha series launched by Sunrise in the 1980s. Aura Battler Dunbine is also the first isekai anime, and follows Show Zama and other people from Upper Earth who are transported into the fantasy world of Byston Well. People from Upper Earth are notable for having remarkable Aura Power which allows them to pilot Aura Machines, generally Aura Battlers or Aura Bombers and fight as flying knights. Dunbine is without a doubt one of the best series Tomino has created with a rich world, a multitude of warring factions, excellent character drama and also one of many series that earned him the name of “Kill ’em all” Tomino.
For this month since most of the Dev staff was busy with the holidays it’s only a small update but you’ll see the rest of the Aura Battlers in the December update. Since Dunbine (and later Xabungle) feature a lot of warships we’ll be including those in the Warships PDF.
Additionally, we’ve updated the Core Rules to include Flow Charts in the rules summary section, an upgrade to Boost to deal with the Zeal, and some upgrades to Warship reactions.
Hello everyone! For this month’s update we have the long requested Gundam Seed Astray with the Red Frame and Blue Frame as well as a pair of their upgraded forms both of which debuted in Super Robot Wars W. We also have all Warships updated to the latest balance patch as well as new units including the Eternal and Kusanagi from Gundam SEED, the Nazca and Laurasia class, and various small craft like tanks, jets and helicopters. One of the nice things about Gundam SEED is that some of these look very generic so you can easily grab some cheap Jets and Helicopters and field them on the tabletop now.
We’ve also made a few more minor balance adjustments based off of Warships (which in turn affect the quasi-warship Meteor units or Big Zam) and a few unit rebalances based off some recent playtests. (Battle reports forthcoming). Last but not least, we consolidated a few more pilot traits we missed in the last past. While there’s less variety than before, we feel confident that the gameplay is going faster, smoother and units in general are benefitting from many of them having either built in ATK 3+ or DEF 3+ and a 2nd ability.
Summary of Unit Updates
Warships Rebalanced
Big O + Big Duo rebalanced
Hy-Gogg + Z’Gok E + Gogg rebalanced
Based on feedback Rebalanced machine cannons / gatling vulcans to be 10d10 base attack dice
Various points adjustments / rebalances (mostly minor)
Core Rules Updates
REV107 – Based on feedback you now rotate your model when making all attacks, not just melee attacks. If your unit is 2+ Size larger, you are not considered engaged. Size 2+ Units are tall enough to melee attack an enemy on the High Ground. The Fly requirement to engage is limited to only Warships / Aircraft. Rapid Fire can no longer be used on Counter. Renamed Target Lock to Lock On, because abbreviating it to TL confuses my simple brain when I make battle report notes, sorry 😥
REV106 – Updated Reinforcements to allow for units to arrive and activate instead of missing an entire round. Moved Control Point setup to before Deployment since it’s now standardized in all game modes. Updated CP setup to be 8” or 16” away from table edge.
REV105 – Updated Battle Damage that E[X]plosives cause damage when disabled. Challenge now requires an Elite unit to issue, to ensure elite units with challenge related abilities get to use them.
REV104 –Updated Warship Captain’s Orders to be simpler with more broad application letting you turn an [M-1] ability into [M-0]. Updated and renamed Warship Overwatch, moved “all weapons fire” to actions section. Updated warships to 90° turning.
REV103 – Clarified Push / Pull that you lose [M-1] or take 1000 DMG if a failed save would push you into another units / terrain / off high ground. Updated examples to match. Updated VP in Simple Battle.
Wargame Rules Update
REV32 – Updated VP in Simple Battle. Updated Level 2 Pilot traits for Warmonger, Unfaltering Courage, Steel Resolve. Updated Fierce Reputation.
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.
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).
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 this segment let’s cover Balance Updates.
(Also, Super Robots have been updated on the game downloads page)
Points Update
We’ll start off with the upgrade options for available for your units. A few new ones were added, a few were updated, and VP in general was streamlined where +50pts now equals +5VP, with the exception being Performance the biggest driver of VP increases.
The most commonly picked upgrades for Playtesters were one of the ‘Free Skill’ upgrades such as Superior Instincts (Flash), Overzealous (Zeal), Fearless (Valor) and Persist (Iron Wall). And there’s a reason for that, at the time 50pts for a [M-3] free skill was a steal, especially so when Momentum was always critically low for aggressive players.
We confirmed this on the Dev team where a very cheap 250pt unit and a partner unit with a wealth of upgrades including free skills ended up hammering a 1000pt Freedom and Justice over and over again. (Battle Report forthcoming). The free skills were the driving victory factor here, after bumping up the point cost the gameplay became more fair. We tries several adjustments in this test series but eventually settled on +100pts per level which we find to be a bit more fair, while also making other options more viable for their points cost.
As a silver lining, we’ve removed the type restrictions on Flash / Iron Wall. We’ve also raised the cap by 50pts on Unit Upgrades (although the Free Skill upgrades are exempt from that).
Elite Bonuses
These have been reworked a bit mostly on the melee side, since one option was proving to be much better than the other. Now both have an equivalent with Bullseye/Barrage, and a bonus effect like making it harder to counter or easier to disengage. Similarly, the upgradable bonuses you can give your pilots, have been split on the Melee side similar to Bullseye and Barrage.
Speaking of Barrage, we’re also rolling back changes for ‘Auto-Hit’ effects. Barrage no longer gives auto-hits on +Hit weapons, instead it’s limited to giving auto-hits only if you go over 10dice of attack. AOE weapons were proving to be too potent, blasting through cover with enough auto-hit effects to wipe out virtually any unit. Now Heero Yuy has to try a little before vaporizing the target. Fortunately, all machine gun types weapons were rebalanced and for the most part are all stock 10d10 on attack, so barrage remains the best (and most thematic) choice.
Weapons Update
As mentioned above there were big changes to AOE weapons and machine gun type weapons. We also did a big overhaul of high damage weapons. We noticed that some of the melee weapons were remarkably high damage and it only took a couple hits to cleave through heroic type units. We’ve since adjusted how much damages boosts are worth and you’ll see a lot more reasonable damage numbers on melee weapons, bazookas and cannons.
Similarly, beam weapons are now generally -100 DMG but +1 PEN across the board to further differentiate their feel from conventional kinetic weapons. Weapons with a [Free Attack] special clause went up again in points costs, and so were rebalanced to be weaker at their same price, or significantly higher in points which affects units like the Gouf series for instance.
Lastly, but certainly not least the points weighting for attack dice has increased again with this primarily affecting DMG 300+ or PEN 5+ weapons. Many of these weapons either went down in dice to around 6-7d10, or they went up in points costs as you’ll notice in the unit profiles.
Unit Update
Doing a complete overhaul of all weapons and shields necessitated a rebalance of all units. So you’ll see a lot of points adjustments, or some units stayed the same points costs but had to be adjusted elsewhere such as lowering their HP or sensors. HP went through another overhaul, some reoccurring feedback we’ve gotten is that the heroic type Frame 4+ units like Gundam’s, often feel too fragile compared to a grunt suit. We’ve adjusted the HP formulas (and VP formulas) such that higher Frame units have consistently higher HP while also trying to maintain the lethality where the average grunt can still and will be destroyed by a well placed beam rifle shot.
On top of that, a lot of our more rare units got a lot of care and attention on their rebalance. G Gundam as a whole has moved up to 1000pts each, representing how they are the finest machines their country put out. Likewise, the Wing units has a good boost to better represent their grunt killing prowess.
Super Robots also received considerable glow ups, as the Gundam sheets have been overall increasing in costs it’s time to make some of the iconic Super Robots significantly more expensive, and thus more powerful as well. Some classic favorites will retain their cheap 250pt version, while others are getting bumped up to 750-1000pt options. Do note, that even a cheap unit with a bouquet of unit upgrades can still menace significantly more expensive units if you play them right. That’s one of the fun options we’re happy to keep designing around in MechaStellar.
MechaStellar 