MechaStellar Monthly Roster Update – June 2026 – VER10 Released + Ra Cailum and Rewloola

Hello everyone, this month’s update VER10 is finally released with only two major changes, one is adjusting the Finishing Blow mechanic so it’s not hyper lethal with high rate of fire weapons like machine guns. The 2nd is removing the defense dice bonus for Elite Squads. We’ve also included a one page cheat sheet in the Core Rules. Lastly the Ra Cailum and Rewloola as the iconic warships of Char’s Counterattack have been added to the MechaStellar Roster.

Recently we’ve been doing a lot of testing with small size units and small size weapons, this includes the recently released Aura Battler Dunbine, as well as future series requested by our playtesters. Unfortunately, while Finishing Blow has been working well with Super Robots, it has been absolutely unplayable with small size units gaining an immense advantage. This is due to small size weapons breaking the 10d10 dice cap and getting too many auto-hits.

Ironically, while writing a MechaStellar VER10 retrospective on the 2 years of updates, we had an issue with auto-hit weapons (like vulcans) and Finishing Blow from the very start, so we’ve come full circle on this.

While the change to Finishing Blow in the Core Rules does completely curb the problem, still small size units have not been very satisfying to play from the perspective of Playtesters. As for the DEV Team we’ve been struggling to make small size beam machine guns work with Yamato’s starfighters as examples.

We’ve been hard at work the last 2 months trying to resolve this problem. We’ve also taken a lot of playtester feedback onboard regarding the rules getting a little complicated in VER10. While brainstorming problems we eventually started calling the rules draft VER10.5. But when we finally made an R&D breakthrough we realized the core gameplay had fundamentally changed.

And so the next rules update will be VER11.

VER11 is going to reuse 70% of the same rules as VER10 but it will be different in 3 key areas.

The Rapid Fire stat is removed and instead each weapon is given a battlefield role giving each weapon type some unique gameplay advantages. Barrage type weapons (i.e. Machine Guns) have been a playtester favorite.
Pilot Skills are being reworked to make each skill have a distinct use. The Valor Skill has turned into an extremely fun skill to use.
Making the game easier to teach to a new players. This includes updating how Saves work and better integrating the Morale stat.

The next post will be a VER10 retrospective looking at the timeline of various changes.

After that we’ll preview some VER11 rules and then eventually some design goals posts. Please keep in mind while we’ve been aggressively playtesting, a lot of things will be subject to change. When VER11 hits open playtest, we’ll keep VER10 online just like we did for VER9.

If you’re interested in trying out the DEV copy of VER11 please contact us on social media.

https://linktr.ee/mechastellar

MechaStellar Battle Report – Space Battleship Yamato 2199 vs Aquatic Zeon in the drowned City

As a follow-on to our previous battle report we had the aquatic zeon force in a partially submerged city fight (using our imagination for the water of course). This time against the crew of Space Battleship Yamato (2199 version). Yamato is well known for having dynamic fights and ever changing scenes, and having it fight inside of a colony, especially a submerged one seemed like it would be on brand for the venerable series.

In addition to the Aqua Zeon force from before, since Yamato is a very expensive unit, we added in a Gelgoog force and several Zaku’s all equipped with Antiship rifles. The odds were stacked against the Yamato crew.

(In this particular game we were not using Squad rules, but we did in subsequent games in the series)

A Black Tri-Star moves to the center point, while a lone Cosmo Tiger II takes the high ground, captures the CP and rains fire down below. (In this map we set a condition that you can only capture the center CP if you take the high ground, which was often a death sentence.)

Yamato does what they do best, BLAZING AHEAD FULL SPEED WITH GUNS LOADED

It uses Havoc to blow up the cover and begin attacking the Hy-Goggs who burn through Momentum. For a moment there, there was a chance that both Hy-Goggs with antiship missiles would get blown off the field.

The Cosmo Tigers begin weaving around the battlefield firing their lasers and capturing control points.

After 5 Cosmo Tigers make strafing runs one of the Black Tri Star goes down!

The Gelgoog team presses forward but the Cosmo Tigers luck their way out of being hit

Meanwhile the ship hunting Zaku team begins blasting away at Yamato.

Since we’re using the 2199 version which has a wave motion barrier, we realize that barriers in general haven’t been updated in a very long time. There’s a long talk about how we want to better reflect them but ultimately it gets put on hold for this game and later games in the test series. It’s been several months since we played this battle report, in the meantime we did update the Barrier rules which you can currently see in the core rules document.

A Cosmo Tiger in reserve ambushes and almost kills a Musai. (This is one of several examples where we realized we needed to put more limits on Reinforcements / Ambush)

A new Round, time for a Gelgoog Cannon to start unloading into the Cosmo Tigers

A Cosmo Tiger takes the high ground and tries to finish off a Gelgoog to no avail, their superior HP pool weathers the laser fire.

Yamato blazes forward, keeps the control point and blasts three amphibious units off the battlefield. In this test series we were demo’ing having [AA] weapons be free counterattacks, which was nice when dealing with superior numbers.

This was the series where we were testing updated warship reactions for increasing AA fire (+X hits on AA weapons and +X DEF vs Missiles) which also helped.

Speaking of, we got lucky on the counter attack and took out another Black Tri Star here.

A Cosmo Tiger finally takes out a Gelgoog, but it’s backside is open and it gets taken down later.

Another Cosmo Tiger finishes off a Gelgoog.

The last Tri-Star plus the Zaku Antiship team kept hammering Yamato until it finally sunk.

With Yamato lost is there any hope left?

Certainly not for Earth, it was carrying the Cosmo Reverse System!!!

Remember the Goggs? Well they decided to ambush this Round and torpedo the Cosmo Tiger on the enemy player’s home CP.

Another Gelgoog down

REVENGE! For sinking the Yamato

Cosmo Tigers unfortunately can’t handle melee

Melee death #2

Melee deaths #3

After Action Report

Overall this was a complete blowout on the Yamato forces and a bit of a shock. Yamato was king in other playtests so we weren’t expecting it to go down so easily, and relatively without a fight. Granted…..Zeon did list-tailor to be antiship focused but still.

As a result of this playtest we made several balance tweaks to Yamato, updated a few core rules for Warships to give Warships more options to increase their chance to hit with regular weapons and [AA] weapons. We also tweaked all the fighters weapons, and adjusted the speeds for jets. This test series was also prior to the Dunbine release which had a major update for all small units which make almost all of them either cheaper or with +1d10 Evade die.

As for Yamato, adjustments to the HP formula helped it a bit, and it sparked an ongoing conversation regarding Barriers. For future games in this test series, we opted for the classic Yamato (sans the Barrier) which held up better. This game in particular resulted in a lot of favorable balance changes to warships and fighters so we hope you enjoy them.

MechaStellar – Monthly Roster Update May 2026 – CCA Jagd Doga

May’s update is a light one. Based on playtester feedback we are busy working on a balance patch, an update to Finishing Blow and a major core rules overhaul that will streamline a number of items to cut down on the amount of decision making on each turn or combat action. This will be a very big update for the game and we are hoping it will make overall gameplay much, much faster; turning a 1 hour game into a 40 minute game. Look forward to June!

MechaStellar – Monthly Roster Update April 2026 – Nu Gundam and Sazabi

For this month’s update we have the long awaited public release of Nu Gundam and Sazabi. As well as two other fan favorite mobile suits. Nu and Sazabi were first used by the Devs all the way back in VER4 and hit closed playtesting in VER6.

Since then Nu and Sazabi became a favorite pair from one of our all-star playtesters who proceeded to dominate his FLGS all the way back in 2021, if you’ve ever wondered why there were so many updates to Funnels despite very few funnel units (back then), now you know. Nu and Sazabi across many version had their profiles revised a total of 67 times.

Nu and Sazabi are very iconic mobile suits so we’ve put a lot of care into building them and rebuilding them for each version of MechaStellar for our playtesters, and now for the open public. Of the holy trinity of Super Robot Wars there is Mazinger, Getter Robo and Gundam. Typically with their final forms being Mazinkaiser, Shin Getter Robo and Nu or Hi-Nu Gundam.

We also included an optional ability for Nu to represent how in crossover games like SRW or Dynasty Warriors, Amuro and the Psycoframe have been able to do incredible things like turning off the Moonlight Butterfly of the Turn-A Gundam. Hope you all enjoy.

While SRW tends to treat Hi-Nu Gundam as a straight upgrade to Nu (and likewise the Nightingale as an upgrade to Sazabi) we prefer to treat them as a side-grade unit which is very similar in armaments but with a slightly different playstyle and unit stats. After all, Nu and Hi-Nu are meant to be the same unit but different incarnations.

Here’s a synopsis on the origin of Hi-Nu from legendary Gundam expert Mark Simmons

In Beltorchika’s Children, the Nu Gundam is still called the Nu Gundam, even though it does use a mega bazooka launcher at one point. That’s why the cover shows the standard anime Nu Gundam – it’s supposed to be the same thing.

Aside from the Newtype magazine illo that balofo posted, the original source of images for these guys is in the mecha profile section at the beginning of the Beltorchika’s Children novel. The Psyco Doga isn’t pictured in this section, and aside from the Nightingale, all the mecha are listed with the same names and specs and model numbers as the movie versions. (At this point, the movie specs had smaller head heights. That’s why everyone says the Hi-Nu is 20 meters; the book just listed the standard specs for the Nu Gundam, and at that point they were saying the Nu was 20 meters tall.)

So if the Nu Gundam is just called the Nu Gundam in Beltorchika’s Children, and they listed the standard Nu specs and description, where the heck does the “Hi-Nu” come from?

Well, in the book’s mecha section, designer Yutaka Izubuchi took some liberties with his designs and drew them all a bit differently. What we now call the Hi-Nu started out as, simply, “that cool version of the Nu Gundam that Izubuchi drew in the mecha section of Beltorchika’s Children.” It was only later that this cool doodle got its own name and back story and was recognized as a distinct mobile suit. The “Hi” prefix, confusingly, seems to be an homage to the original Hi-Streamer novels. 🙂

Of all these guys, the only one that was reasonably fully depicted and clearly identified as a unique machine was the Nightingale. It’s named that way in the Beltorchika’s Children novel (unlike the Hi-Nu), it’s depicted in the mecha profile section (unlike the Psyco Doga), and Izubuchi drew nice pictures of it for Newtype and B-CLUB magazines. The one thing it didn’t have in the mecha section, unlike the other features machines, was a model number.

Whew! That’s pretty long and detailed, but I’ve seen people getting this mixed up for decades, and I keep hoping that if I explain it one more time it’ll stick.

— Mark

For this April we are releasing Nu Gundam, Sazabi, Hi-Nu Gundam and the Nightingale. We hope you enjoy these Tier 3 Juggernauts and look forward to more in the future. Pictured above is the Nightingale from the “Gundam Artifact” collection which is slightly larger than 1/400 scale minis but still fits in nicely.

One last note, there have been some minor tweaks to a few of the weapons on the GBF rules.

MechaStellar – Monthly Roster Update – March 2026 – Dangaioh + Zeorymer

With the core rules update and recent balance patch for MechaStellar from the Jan/Feb update we are still doing some final adjustments on Nu Gundam and Sazabi for the Char’s Counterattack release. We also want to give them some more time to playtest with the new rules before getting a release. While we still work on that here’s an update for not one but two Super Robot OVAs, Hyper Combat Unit Dangaioh and Hades Project Zeorymer.

Dangaioh is this author’s first mecha anime OVA, found on the shelves of blockbuster one day many years ago. I remember the incredible flashy action and the names of the characters but not much besides that. I went looking for this series about 10 years ago, and thankfully the character names are unique enough that finding the name of the series was very easy. Dangaioh is a very short OVA by studio AIC and also extremely high budget in it’s initial episode. The opening song is done by two anime song legends Mitsuko Horie and Ichiro Mizuki (Aniki) and the Mecha designs were done by Obari. Dangaioh was at one point going to be a Mazinger OVA, but disputes between AIC and Toei caused it to become an original robot, with very similar attacks instead. To be honest, I absolutely love the design of Dangaioh, and the OVA in general. The only problem is there isn’t more of it.

Dangaioh episode 3 somewhat ends on a cliffhanger. Many years later a Great Dangaioh TV series airs, which only slightly touches the plot of the original Dangaioh and when it does so it’s at the very end of the show and ends on another cliffhanger. While the OVA is rather bittersweet the ending itself is still satisfying enough and lets your imagination provide it’s own final ending, the TV series does not add to that or improve it. I’d recommend skipping the TV series for that reason.

For SRW, Dangaioh debuted in Super Robot Wars Compact 2 Part 1: Earth Crisis

Our next series is Zeorymer. Another OVA with incredible mecha animation. The series is known for being rather violent and with a main character, whose, for lack of a better term, split personality is remarkably evil. It’s a short and enjoyable OVA with some really unique designs.

For SRW, Zeorymer debuted in Super Robot Wars MX

MechaStellar Monthly Roster Bonus Update – FEB 2026 – DANCOUGA

Hello everyone! For February’s update we had a very large balance patch which affected all units as well as a very big update to the MechaStellar Core Rules. Because of that we were not able to finish the full balance update for Warships or for Super Robots in time. As of today they are complete! As a bonus, and a thanks for your patience we are also doing a bonus update with the Super Robot show DANCOUGA which will be the first combiner show we add to MechaStellar. We’ve also updated GoLion (Voltron) to also have combiner rules.

Dancouga (1985) is a very interesting show. It begins as a military sci-fi show and the titular giant robot doesn’t show up for about 16 episodes. During this time, we see a devastating alien invasion of Earth with the protagonist being the some of the sole surviving military forces fighting back and using the latest prototype machines called “Cyber Beasts”. These jets and tanks are able to transform into an animal type form, so your tank might turn into a Liger or a Cougar or Mammoth and begin wrecking the place. Naturally all four Cyber Beast Machines can form up to form Dancouga! The keyword to combine is THX-1138, a reference to a movie produced by Francis Ford Coppola and the directorial debut for George Lucas.

While Dancouga starts off as a somewhat grounded military show, it later turns into what I would call an Anime version of “The A Team” with the protagonists going from place to place and solving the citizens problems. It’s very campy but also very fun, but also includes some of the sadder episodes of character development.

What’s very interesting is that after the first alien general is defeated the next one relies on mind games and subterfuge to defeat the Dancouga team. They quite literally start building mind control devices and try to turn Earth’s citizens against the resistance force. It’s a very interesting plot and a big departure from the rest of the series.

Dancouga the TV show ends on a cliff hanger that is immediately followed up by the OVA Dancouga Requiem for Victims (1986) which closes out the TV show as they travel to the alien’s home planet / dimension and fight the final battle of the war. Interestingly, the OVA introduces a number of supernatural elements that were only briefly alluded to in the TV show. What’s more, Dancouga’s signature sword is not used until the OVA, prior to this Dancouga relies on its fists (and Ryo’s martial arts) or it’s heavy fire power.

Following this is the OVA God Bless Dancouga (1987) which follows the cast on Earth living their new lives after the war. While the Dancouga Requiem OVA was a very good OVA, the budget in God Bless Dancouga greatly exceeds it and the animation is superb. It’s a very fun story with the introduction of a new enemy, the cast is all there as well as an upgraded Dancouga. It’s a bit on the short side and we don’t get as much character development as you’d like, but to quote Obari, “In the end, robots will battle each other”. The action and animation more than make up for it.

Lastly we have the OVA Dancouga Blazing Epilogue (1989). This one is a bit of a departure which different character designs and a much lower budget than God Bless Dancouga (and I would also argue less than Requiem too). The OVA is set even further down the line with the heroes mostly forgotten when another alien invasion shows up and the return of another familiar enemy. It’s not bad, but it also doesn’t really add much to the series. Unfortunately, the lower budget means the robot fights are nowhere near as impressive as the previous series.

My knowledge of Dancouga comes from SRW games and it’s plotline and characters were not my favorite so I didn’t have high expectations going into it. That said, I ended up really enjoying the TV show, OVA Requiem and OVA God Bless Dancouga. Blazing Epilogue doesn’t do much for me though. Give the show a chance and try out Dancouga on the tabletop!

Hopefully one day we’ll get a SMP of the Gundor Battleship

MechaStellar Battle Report – Big O & Baxingar vs Aqua Zeon in the Drowned City

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!

MechaStellar Design Goals – Squad System

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.

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.

MechaStellar Design Goals – Finishing Blow

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!