One of the hallmarks of MechaStellar is combat with a backdrop against the stars. In this post we’ll look at a quick way to create asteroid terrain for your space battles. You will need some lava rock which you can find at garden or home improvement store or even Amazon as well as some clear acrylic flying stands and lastly a drill to put some holes into the rock. Below you’ll some photos of the asteroids and Gundam figures of various scales.
For this month’s roster update we have a long awaited update to the Stellar Warship roster for Mobile Suit Gundam. In addition to standard ship of the line units like the Magellan class battleship or the Chivvay heavy cruiser we’ve also expanded the roster to include heavy hitters like the Gwazine and the infamous White Base.
For this month’s update we are adding new units from Gundam Wing including some units requested by one of our all-star players that come from side story manga called Gundam Wing G-Unit, and was released in the US as Gundam Wing Last Outpost.
First up we have the upgraded version for most of the Gundam Wing pilots including Deathscythe Hell, Altron, Sandrock Custom and Heavy Arms Custom. We are using the Endless Waltz (EW) versions for imagery but we are keeping some of the original weaponry such as Sandrocks Beam Submachinegun and Altron’s Beam Stinger which were not present in the EW Movie. Heavy Arms however, we kept the greatly expanded loadout from EW because who doesn’t love 4x Gatling Guns.
In addition to that we’ve expanded the unit roster for Oz with the Taurus and Virgo units. While the Taurus is present in the Gundam 1/400 collection the Virgo unfortunately is not. You can however find SD versions of the Virgo which we have used in playtesting, it’s a little bigger and bulkier but at least the height is close enough to the 1/400 scale. These mobile dolls are powerful units and we’ve opted to try and make them as cheap as possible while maintaining their key abilities, this way your Gundam Wing pilots can mow them down by the dozens.
As a reminder you can always use proxy figures while playing, if you have a dozen 1/400 Rick Doms and want to use them as Virgo’s instead, go nuts! Some ingenious players will use standees to hold a printed out image of a Mobile Suit, similar to what you’d see in a lot of board games where a tiny plastic clip (standee) is holding up a cardstock image instead of a traditional miniature. And of course there are always virtual tabletops.
We’ve also included the Tallgeese II piloted by Treize Kushrenada, the Virgo II from White Fang, and the Mercurius and Vayeate used by Heero and Trowa while they fought off Quatre in the Wing Zero. (Wing Zero & Epyon along with Burning & Master Gundam are Tier 3 units and we’re holding off on those for a while longer).
Gundam Wing G-Unit / The Last Outpost is a sidestory taking place near the end of the TV series before White Fang is defeated. A colony that was developed Gundams comes into conflict with an Elite OZ unit, the Stardust Knights. We’ve included the custom Leos from the Stardust Knights as well as the variants for the Mecurius and Vayeate that appear in the sidestory. The principal protagonists and antagonists, the G-Units, Hydra Gundam and others will be released at a later date, they still need additional time for development and playtesting.
That’s all for this month, we have another Gundam update next month then after that we will have Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann!
For this month’s update we are adding additional units from The King of Braves: GaoGaiGar. This includes the massive King J-Der, upgraded forms of the original characters released last month, along with Gekiryujin and lastly the rock and roll robot Mic Saunders the 13th. We are also adding in our first Stellar Warships from a Super Robot series with the Amaterasu, the Izanagi and Susanoh.
King J-Der is the rival to our protagonist GaoGaiGar, he is an enemy of the 31 Machine Primevals and thus frequently finds himself fighting on the same side as GaoGaiGar. Gekiryujin is the younger counterpart to Chouryujin, who grows the most after watching the altruistic nature of Choryujin (formed by the two brothers HoRyu & EnRyu). Lastly, Mic Saunders the 13th is often the comic relief but also the more unique robot of the series, using different discs and harmonics to accomplish a wide variety of effects. You can also include his 12 brothers to form a brigade on the tabletop.
On the game downloads page we keep a poll to track user feedback on which mecha series they’d like to see added to the roster next. Normally we select the top two options of the poll which usually ends up being a Gundam show and a Super Robot show.
Thanks to a recent article by wargamer (https://www.wargamer.com/warhammer-40k-meets-gundam-mechastellar) we saw a huge spike in traffic for the month of May. As a result we also got a lot more votes in our poll for which series will be added to the roster next.
Before we got a huge surge in traffic, the top two choices were “The next Gundam AU” and “70s Super Robot Show” which was just barely beating TTGL and Dunbine. As you can see the results have changed quite a bit since then with TTGL taking a much larger share of votes.
To keep things fair, we are going to go with 3 choices winning this poll instead of 2. So in addition to the next Gundam AU (After War Gundam X) and TTGL, we are also going to do a 70s Super Robot Show since it was formerly the 2nd place finisher. For these we’ll do Combattler V & Voltes V.
Today we’re releasing MechaStellar VER9, thank you for all the feedback on the draft rules, profile and layout updates. Below you will find a summary of updates for VER9 as well as a roster rebalance to go along with the new layout. The VER9 Design Goal post covers several of these updates in detail.
This is one of the many test games we did for GaoGaiGar in the last several months using the MechaStellar VER 8.8 Rules. For this series of games the setting is a SRW style Earth with multiple factions.
The narrative was that the GGG organization was deployed to a Federation base where a Zonder had begun to Zonderize the Federation mobile suits there. It was up to GaoGaiGar, HoRyu and EnRyu to stop them.
Below the break you’ll find a write-up for the battle report as well as an after action report and MechaStellar designer commentary.
Here’s an updated draft for the VER9 Wargame rules taking into account feedback from players on the unit upgrades section. I’ve also tweaked a few items on VP scoring, and adjusted most ranges that were previously 6″ and 12″ to be 8″ and 16″ instead.
For this month’s roster update we have the Braves series, also known as the Yuusha series. The Braves or Yuusha series was a long running Super Robot series from the 90s produced by the animation studio Sunrise (most well known for Gundam and countless other Mecha series) and sponsored by Takara. The Braves series produced 8 shows over the decade, each show is independent of each other but have recurring themes and designs.
For this month we are releasing units from the first show, The Brave Fighter Exkizer, as well as the final and most well known show The King of Braves: GaoGaiGar. You can find the profiles here. If you are new to the Braves / Yuusha series then read this.
MechaStellar 