Tag: Gundam War Game

MechaStellar VER11 Core Mechanic Update

In making VER11 we wanted to improve on the Core Mechanic from VER10. VER10’s biggest change from 5-9 was to change the core mechanic from “Attacker declares target, and defender rolls” to “Both attacker and defender rolls”, something we hadn’t done since VER2.  This core mechanic remarkably streamlined the game, having both Shooting and Melee use the exact same mechanic and gave us a lot more design space to use, since now a unit could have improved attack of defense, each rolling their own dice pools, whereas previously we only had 1d10 of Evade per shot meaning we were constrained on a units Shooting and Evade bonus.

It was a big success and made the game significantly easier to teach resolving our #1 FAQ of “Why can’t I roll dice to attack”.  That said, keeping units balanced against each other and allowing higher performance units to dominate meant giving bonus +HITs and +DEF.  While not a huge burden, it did introduce additional mental math to the game. 

One of the guiding philosophies behind Version 11 has been deceptively simple:

Can we remove one more calculation from every attack?

Over the past several versions, Mecha Stellar has steadily moved away from passive bookkeeping and towards active decision making. Momentum generation has been simplified. Weapon abilities have become more distinct.

What if passive HIT and DEF bonuses simply disappeared?

It Started With A New Playtester. Interestingly, this discussion didn’t begin with mathematics. It began with language. One of our newest playtesters, who is bilingual in Japanese and English, repeatedly stumbled over mechanics that experienced wargamers barely think about. When they saw:

Beam Rifle

  • ATK 5d10
  • +3 HIT
  • HIT on 5+
  • CRIT 10+

They continually expected the +3 to modify the dice rather than the final result. Experienced players perform these calculations almost automatically, but new players don’t have years of wargaming habits to fall back on.

VER10 Attack process

Resolving the attack requires players to:

  1. Roll attack dice.
  2. Count successful HITs.
  3. Add passive HIT bonuses.
  4. Roll defense dice.
  5. Count successful DEFs.
  6. Add passive DEF bonuses.
  7. Add Shield and Cover.
  8. Compare the totals.

None of these steps are individually difficult. However, they occur during every single attack. That raised a simple question.

Why Are Players Doing This Math At All?

The profile generator already calculates:

  • Weapon bonuses
  • Role bonuses
  • Performance bonuses
  • Frame bonuses
  • Pilot bonuses

Players never actually perform that arithmetic themselves. So why are we still asking players to perform the final arithmetic every single time they attack?

One of VER11’s design principles was “what can we change to make this game the faster and easiest to teach”.  So we started experimenting with removing bonus +HITs and +DEF entirely.

VER11 Dice Pool Development

First we had to decide how we would get rid of these bonuses. Were we going to roll them into the attack dice pool, have them affect your target number (TN) to hit, or something else entirely. For a quick thought exercise we ran a game and just took every +HIT or +DEF and turned it into bonus dice instead just to feel how swingy the variance would be. Instead of:

Instead of Beam Rifle

  • ATK 5d10
  • +3 HIT

Simply put: ATK 8d10

Likewise, instead of: Evade 7d10 +3 DEF

Simply print: Evade 10d10

It was a super simple idea to implement but unfortunately…several problems immediately appeared.

Concern #1 – Reliability

One of the biggest arguments against removing passive bonuses was consistency. Flat bonuses make advanced machines feel reliable. A veteran rifle currently attacking with:

5d10 +3 HIT is remarkably dependable.

Changing that to: 8d10

Creates roughly similar averages…but noticeably more variance. Elite machines would occasionally roll poorly. Initially, I wasn’t convinced that was acceptable.

Concern #2 – Weapon Identity

Another concern quickly followed. If every passive bonus simply becomes more dice…would rifles and machine guns begin feeling too similar? Fortunately this was resolved as we were developing the weapon trigger system which created Barrage weapons (machine guns), crit weapons (rifles), siege weapons (bazookas), etc

Dice Pool Warfare

The initial model worked well, but we weren’t sure exactly how we wanted to build the dice pools for each unit. We had to develop a system where the WEAPON, PERFORMANCE, MECH COMBAT ROLE, PILOT all influenced this dice pool.  Of course, we had to keep this within the 10d10 dice cap, since exceeding that cap proved disastrous for late stage VER10.

We wanted a system where units started off around 4-6 d10 and could max out at 10d10.  With 4 inputs of Weapon, Performance, Mech Combat Role and Pilot, it was going to be very hard to keep this within the 4-10d10 limit.

The first step was to flatten performance, initially 1-4, with One Year War = 1-2, Zeta = 2-3, CCA+ (F91, G-Reco, etc.) = 4, which roughly corresponded to dividing all current performance by 2.  Later when dice were at  a premium it was further collapsed into 1-3, with 1 = OYW, 2 = Zeta, 3 = CCA+.  We also flatted Frames to 1 (grunt) 2 (superior unit) and kept the high Frame units provide a performance boost, this way original RX-78-2 Gundam (Frame 2, Performance 1) was on the same playing field as the average Zeta grunt like the Hizack (Frame 1, Performance 2.) 

While flattening performance does take away a lot of the nuance we had before on building mobile suit profiles and making each one very distinct, MechaStellar still has a lot of levers we can pull with both combat role and equipment loadout that we can still make the dozens of GM, and Zaku variants / descendants feel different from one another.  The tremendous upside is that people can much more easily field older models vs newer models, using their favorite models without having to dive deep into an upgrade system.  With our goal of making it easier and more fun to teach newer players this was a huge boon.

With Frame & Performance providing a bonus of 1-4, that limits what space we have avaialble if we want to keep all weapons around 4-10d10.  Now we only have 6d10 left to play with on our maximum limit.  And we still have to factor in the Weapon’s base dice, Combat Role (Sniper, Battler, etc.), & Pilot.  And also consider if there will be any other bonuses, like Target Lock gaining +1d10 ATK.

Mech Combat Roles & Pilot

This became a really challenging problem for the design team with essentially two camps.  We know we couldn’t have both pilot and mech role provide the same exact bonus because we had a limit of 10d10 and not much space left.  Earlier in the development of VER11, when we still had +HITs and +DEF, pilots gave a bonus +1 Hit and +1 DEF, with those gone we would have to decide what to do.

CAMP #1 (including this author)

  • Pilots should improve the number of dice rolled
  • Mech Combat Roles should improve your chance to Hit (Sniper Shoots on a 3+, Battler melees on a 3+, versatile Shoots and Melees on a 4+ etc.)

CAMP #2

  • Mech Combat Roles should improve the number of dice rolled
  • Pilots should improve your chance to hit (Sniper pilots shoot on a 3+, Brawler pilots melee on a 3+, versatile pilots hits and shoot and evade on a 4+ etc.)

Both camps had good reason for how this fit the verisimilitude of piloting a mech.   We went back and forth on this a lot and prototyped two different types of profiles for VER11, which was quite a burden on our layout editor but we’re grateful for them doing double the work.  While neither camp was wrong, and both options worked well we eventually decided on Camp #2 since it felt more correct that the pilot was improving the odds, while the machine was providing the ceiling.  In essence, only a true pilot could bring out the full potential (DEF on a 3+) for the Tallgeese (DEF on a 3+ with a huge defense dice pool) or a Gundam Dynames (Shoot 3+ with a huge def dice pool).

We had rebalanced all combat roles at the start of VER11, in VER10 a role would have a bonus ranging from +0 to +4, while in VER11 it ranged from +0 to +2 shortening the variance.    So before a Sniper might be +4, a firepower unit Shooting+3, a Raid unit Shooting +2 etc; this has all been collapsed down to a max of +2 on Shooting or Melee.  This meant we could do either +2d10 dice, or improve target number (TN) to hit like 5+ to 3+. 

But on the pilot side of things, we had simplified everything that Elite pilots HIT and DEF on a 4+, while an Ace unit HITs and DEF on a 3+.  But later on, we had the idea to further expand this.  Since one of VER11s goals was to reduce the number of “oh I forgot I have this ability” we ended up moving all previous pilot traits to optional upgrades, while all pilot bonuses became passive bonuses, allowing a unit to improve their TN for shooting, melee attack, melee defense, evade or morale.  We found it a lot better to have pilots modify TNs for both attack, defense and morale keeping it all one unified mechanic, rather than pilots improve Morale TN but provide bonus dice to combat.

Finalizing Weapons Dice

So with our goal of 4d10 – 10d10 on the dice pool we have the following.

  • Frame & Performance 1-4
  • Mech Combat Role 0-2
  • Pilot 0 (but improves your TN to Hit or DEF)

With a cap of 10d10 that leaves us with (-4d10 Frame / Performance, -2d10 Mech Combat Role) = Weapons can at most be 4d10.

So we set the majority of weapons with attack dice of 2d10 to 4d10.  Weapons will be further differentiated by their Triggers which we’ll cover later.

Likewise for Defense, a mobile suit would be 3d10 Evade and 1d10 Melee DEF plus similar bonuses on Frame, Performance, and Combat Roles.  Super Robots would often be 2d10 Evade 2d10 Melee DEF with flexibility there for the slower Big O or Ideon types and the more agile Daitarn or Raideen types.

MechaStellar VER11 Roadmap

MechaStellar VER10 had a long run and it was a significant departure from VER 5-9 which had the paradigm of you attack with a flat number of shots and your opponent rolls dice to evade.  Instead VER10 set a new paradigm with both the attacker and defender rolling dice to HIT and DEF.  This solved our #1 FAQ of “Why can’t I roll dice to attack?”.  VER11 will continue with that paradigm, reusing a lot of the same rules and thought processes from VER10 while cutting down on the number of things you need to remember on a mech profile and trimming down mental math.  VER11 will have the following major changes.

We will also cover these in depth in their own separate posts.

Removal of Bonus Hits & DEF

MechaStellar VER10 would have you roll your attack dice then apply a modifier, for example 6d10 + 3 HITs, so if you rolled 4 Hits your total would be 7 Hits.  Likewise for Defense.  VER11 is removing these modifiers and it will simply be dice pool vs dice pool, i.e. 6d10 vs 5d10; and whoever rolls best wins.

This had the advantage of being much faster with less mental math.  It also becomes more exciting because the variance on attacks or defense is much, much higher.  Sometimes you’ll have 6-10 hits, othertimes you might have one or none.  Likewise, this is also the biggest disadvantage.

That said, MechaStellar VER11 is significantly less lethal than previous versions.  And Pilot Skills will let you either mitigate that variance or multiply it, leading to some dramatic moments on the tabletop.

Mech Performance has also been flattened from 1-10 to 1-3 to represent three different eras. It’s now significantly easier to field your favorite units like the 08th MS Team even against superior models from Char’s Counterattack and still hold your own or reenact you favorite scenes like Unicorn’s Torrington base or Kondoh’s Revival of Zeon.

Rest assured, that unit roles like Sniper, Battler, etc. which provided bonus Hits or Defense before will still improve your unit.  Likewise, elite pilot bonuses like Barrage / Bullseye etc. have been folded into the Weapon trigger system, as well as passive pilot bonuses.

Weapon Triggers

The biggest change to VER11 is the inclusion of Weapon Triggers and the removal of Rapid Fire.  While working on small size units you would see in Dunbine, Votoms, or Code Geass, our previous paradigm of low damage but massive +HIT bonuses was not working out.  We were looking for alternate ways to make machine gun types weapons effective, without the tidal wave of hits they were causing.

This eventually led to the development of the “Barrage Trait” for machine gun type weapons that gave you a lot of extra dakka on your rolls while preventing weapons from going over the 10d10 attack dice cap.  Barrage was instantly a huge hit at the playtester tables, and eventually spawned the question of “should other weapons have Trait’s too?”

To do so, Rapid Fire, one of the last legacy items from our 40k roots was eliminated and replaced with Battle Field roles like Barrage Bullseye, Siege, AOE, etc.  Which were all big successes.  Eventually we decided that “Rolling a 10 = CRIT” should be removed and instead replaced with the weapon trait.  For example Barrage 10+, Siege 10+, Bullseye 10+.  Then for the sake of weapon balance the “crit numbers” now called “Trigger numbers” would change to be Barrage 8+ or Bullseye 9+ etc.

Weapon Triggers were the longest development items in the 4 months of VER11 dev time (April through July).  There will be multiple Design Goals posts featuring weapon triggers, how we prototyped them, the mechanical dead ends and the final products.  Since that will likely be a weeks worth of posts, those will come at the of the VER11 Design Goals series.

Here are some sample Triggers. Additionally, the number of saves you roll is no longer equal to the number of unblocked hits.  Instead it’s based on the number of Triggers rolled, making the game significantly less lethal when you cannot avoid a hit.

  • Critical weapons still Crit (2 Hits instead of 1).
  • Barrage weapons roll lots of dakka dice without needing to be in Rapid Fire range.
  • Bullseye weapons can target any unit and gain Crits vs targets without cover.
    • Elites no longer ignore the targeting rules
  • Siege weapons blow up cover and generate 2 Saves per Trigger.
    • See more on Saves below
  • Pierce weapons improve their Save i.e. Armor Penetration for each Trigger.
  • Counter weapons are the only weapon that can counterattack by default.
  • There are also Combination Triggers that combine 2 of the above Triggers.

Saves

Armor Saves are no longer the only Save in the game.   Now each weapon has a Save assigned to it, and all weapons can force a Save every time you roll a Trigger.  Since Saves are now tied to Triggers instead of Unblocked Hits, only lucky rolls are lethal.

  • Armor Penetration (AP) = Standard Pass the Save or take 1000 DMG
  • Stun Save (ST) = They remove actions or deal 500 DMG
  • Push / Pull (PP) = These Move the target or deal 500 DMG.
  • Break Saves (BR) = This weakens the targets Shield / Armor or deals 500 DMG.
  • Mobility Saves (MB) = The target loses a Move action or takes 500 DMG.

Morale

Momentum have been renamed to Morale Points.  You now gain Morale by making a Rally save at the start of your turn or from Control Points you captured at the end of the round.  Morale Point gains are more rare but Pilot Skills are now cheaper.

Pilot Skills & Elite Units

Pilot Skills have been revamped, with Flash and Iron Wall having clear identities.  Many Skills are now cheaper, while Valor is now integrated into the Finisher system.  Boost / Power / Havoc are now tied into skill usage for Flash / Valor / Zeal. 

Elite Units now have built in passives like improved TN to HIT, DEF or Morale.  Captains play just like regular pilots while Captains orders and Pilot Traits are now upgrade options.

MechaStellar VER11 Design Goals Schedule

  1. VER11 Core Mechanic
    1. Removal of bonus HITs and DEF
    2. Dice pool warfare
    3. How Mech roles & Pilots now provide bonuses
  2. Elite Units
    1. Passive bonuses from Elite Units instead of “remember this trait” making it easier to run a SRW game
    2. Traits and Captain’s orders moving to upgrade options
  3. Pilot Skills
    1. Revamped and cheaper pilot skills
    2. Boost / Power / Havoc and the Finisher Phase
    3. Multiple posts on the evolution of pilot skills
  4. Morale
    1. Changing the pace of Momentum regeneration
    2. Taking the 3 separate momentum generation systems and unifying them
    3. Adjusting roles and mech stats to play into Momentum generation and CP captures
  5. Weapons and the genesis of Triggers
    1. Target Lock & Triggers
    2. Barrage Trigger Evolution
    3. Siege Trigger Evolution
    4. Finisher Evolution
  6. Expanding Saving Throws beyond Armor Saves
    1. Adjusting lethality of the game

The desired end state for MechaStellar VER11 is to make this version the most fun but also the easier version to teach to you and your friends. As you’re reading through the design goals posts, if you see an opportunity to make the game more fun, simpler or easier to teach, please don’t hesitate to comment and let us know. Thank you all for your support and loyalty over the years.

MechaStellar VER11 Released

August 2026 Update – MechaStellar VER11 Released

MechaStellar July Update – VER11 Playtest Photos

Hello everyone, we are going to postpone July’s update while we continue to finalize the core rules and mech profiles for MechaStellar VER11 currently targeting for August release. In this post we’re sharing some recent playtest photos for MechaStellar VER11.

We’ve had some major improvements on Squads, Warships, Momentum Generation and Lethality. In the most recent Gundam focused playtest we had only 50% casualties in a grunt game at Round 5. We think you’ll enjoy VER11 which will be a more streamlined form of VER10, with units surviving longer, better integrated morale & mechanics, weapons each embracing a specific battlefield role, and a more strategic feel to spending Momentum.

In the meantime we will continue doing VER11 Profile Previews once or twice a week.

And we plan on doing about 10 or so Design Goals posts leading up to the VER11 release in August. Stay tuned!

MechaStellar VER10 Retrospective – Timeline Post

In this post we wanted to share a brief timeline of VER10. In the next post we’ll go more in-depth in some of the mechanics.

VER10 had a lot of iterative development, making small or minor tweaks to the core rules to either fix loopholes, broken combos we didn’t foresee, or just for clarity.  A lot of rules from 2024 survived all the day to 2026, with tweaks of course.  As a retrospective we thought it would be fun to look through each update and count which ones survived all the way till the end.

March 2024 – Begin VER10 DEV Playtest

May 2024 – Begin Closed Playtest

System Debuts

  • Core Mechanic for shooting lets attacker and defender both roll (VER4-9 had only the defender roll Evade vs Shooting)
  • Melee Clash now follows the same mechanic, overall attack gameplay was streamlined and much faster
  • Barrage / Bullseye and Dodge / Guard moved to Elite only abilities
  • All units can move twice by default
  • Rapid fire is now listed on the unit profile
  • Armor Save bonus was removed
  • Older Pilot Skills moved to the Climactic Events section
  • New Pilot Skills mirror their SRW inspirations with simplifies and more straightforward uses (+5 Hits, +5 DEF, etc.)
  • Mech Profiles moved from 6 per page to 4 per page, to improve readability with larger text areas
  • Machine guns and beam pistols got a Support ATK / DEF mechanic which encouraged having squads of units in close proximity
  • Auto-hit weapons of AA Missiles and Vulcans proved to be a big problem with the OG version of Finishing Blow.  This problem would come full circle when testing out small size units 2 years later with a new version of Finishing Blow.
  • Shields – Switched to a defense bonus at the expense of Evade dice.

August 2024 – VER10 Open Playtest

Starting off the roster we have Mobile Suit Gundam UC – One Year War (OYW), Gundam Wing, Mazinger, Getter Robo

The DEV version of VER10 had very low lethality with HITs vs DEF often had 0-1 expected hits with most weapons, and machine gun types averaging 3-4 Hits.  Because of this, the balance between Valor (bonus hits) and Zeal (bonus attack actions) was probably the best the game ever had.

As VER10 hit the open playtest stage and certain game elements became modified, the expected number of hits started creeping up.  About a year later, we noticed that Zeal was often the preferred skill for most high end units, beating out Valor.

SEP2024

  • Space Battleship Yamato Released
  • Combattler V, Voltes V and Shin Mazinger updated to VER10
  • Core Rules Updates –
  • Counter became universal on all units [Lasted most of VER10]
  • Finishing Blow became universal on all units.  [Lasted all of VER10]
  • Sensors now gave a boost to Defense as well as Offense [Lasted all of VER10]
  • Support Attack for E[X]plosives got stronger [Lasted all of VER10]
  • Momentum shifts went from M<3 to M<5 [Lasted all of VER10]
  • Zeal text was updated to avoid the gamey’ness of using zeal to them trigger a momentum shift [Lasted all of VER10]
  • Various points and VP adjustments. 
  • VP would later skyrocket near the end of VER10.  At the start the RX78-2 was 8VP (most units were 3-12VP), at the end it was 280VP (most units are 50-500VP)

October 2024

  • Updates to Combat Roles [Revised many times]
  • Added Unstoppable, Assault and Heavy Arms roles [Throwback to VER6, lasted all of VER10]
  • Updated size [Revised many times]
  • Updated HP Math [Revised many times]
  • Updated points for Shields [Revised many times]
  • Updated Indirect Fire
  • All units got +1 defense die [Lasted all of VER10]
  • Allowed the Power stat to be used to fuel weapons [Lasted all of VER10]

NOV 2024

  • Garmillas Fleet from Yamato added
  • Most of AEUG, Titans units updated to VER10
  • Dual Sensors added for Firepower and Sniper Types [Lasted all of VER10]

DEC2024

  • G Gundam Added
  • Updated the Wargames Supplement which included many unit upgrade rules
  • Core Rules Updates
  • Battle-Tested level added to Elite pilots for well trained but often nameless pilots [Lasted all of VER10]
  • Updates to Morale
  • Updates to Commanders orders

JAN2025

  • GoLion (Voltron), GoShogun, Brygar and Baxingar added to the roster
  • Converted Gundam X and G Gundam to VER10
  • MechaStellar VER10 Gameplay Example added featuring Zeta Gundam + Guncannon vs Gouf Custom and Gundam GX-9900 [This example is now painfully out of date.  Please forgive us ='( ]
  • Added rules if you break the 10d10 dice cap [Lasted all of VER10]
  • Updated Target Lock to be bonus dice
  • Updated Crash
  • Updated Boost
  • Updated starting Momentum
  • Units with multiple pilots like Combiners and Warships, now have pilot traits always active instead of the previous “choose 2” gimmick.
  • Size HP bonus revised again
  • Captain’s Orders updated
  • Warships can now use Focus & Iron Wall [Lasted all of VER10]
  • Moved “Improvise” from Pilot Skill to “Events”
  • Removed reroll from most weapons
  • Removed VP penalties from Simple Battle
  • Updated various upgrade traits

FEB2025

  • Updated Turn A Gundam to VER10
  • Gundam Build Fighters rules updated to VER10

MAR2025

  • Converted many G Gundam fighters to VER10
  • Updated Finishing Blow to be roll d10s for potential 1000 DMG
  • Added Retaliate as a Counterattack option for VER9 feel
  • Updated Climactic Events and Battlefield Hazards module

APR 2025

  • Gundam SEED added to the roster
  • Zeal became limited by the current Round to prevent alpha strikes [Lasted all of VER10]
  • Revised AOE weapons again

MAY2025

  • More Gundam SEED units
  • Converted Secondary Objectives to VER10

JUN2025

  • More Gundam SEED units
  • Warships got a massive force multiplier update
  • Updated VP again
  • Updated HP again
  • Updated Finishing Blow again

JUL2025

  • Gundam SEED Stargazer added

SEP2025

  • Updated Battle Damage to VER10
  • Updated Starting Momentum [Lasted until the end of VER10]
  • Updated Finishing Blow again
  • Armor Saves back to 3 dice
  • Massive balance patch to HP, Move, Sensors to move everything to a base of 4, i.e. Move 4″/8″/12″ etc. and complete updating of points, weapons, etc.

OCT2025

  • Gundam SEED Astray added
  • Rebalanced Warships & Large Units
  • Updated many pilot traits to have a base of Hit on a 3+ or DEF on a 3+ [Lasted all of VER10]

NOV2025

  • Added Aura Battler Dunbine
  • Added a flow chart for rules summary

DEC2025

  • Added more units for Dunbine
  • Rebalanced all small size units and also warships

FEB2026

  • Added in the long awaited Char’s Counterattack (Jegan and Gearas) to the Roster
  • Added Dancouga to the Roster
  • Added a Squad System
  • Retooled Support Weapons
  • Returned Counter to be Elite only
  • Armor Saves back to 5 dice
  • Updated Finishing Blow again [Lasted almost until the end of VER10]
  • Added in “Elite Levels”
  • Changed what counts as “Elite Upgrades” and thus affects Elite levels
  • Added a speed upgrade
  • Massive change to HP and VP
  • Allowed for certain weapons to go above the 10d10 attack dice cap [Eventual deathknell for VER10]

MAR – JUN 2026

  • Added Dangaioh and Zeorymer to the roster
  • Added Nu Gundam and Sazabi
  • Issues identified by an all-star player involving small units, trait stacking, counter + finishing blow dominating the battlefield
  • Extensive playtesting of small size units and finding the limits of the current VER10 design space with regards to number of attacks and Finishing Blow.

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.