Tag: Gurren Lagann

MechaStellar Battle Report – Garmilas + Zaft + Baxingar VS Gattai Super Robots!

In this MechaStellar battle report we have a Super Robots Wars style game loaded with combining (Gattai!) robots.

The game rules and mech profiles for MechaStellar can be found here: https://mechastellar.com/game-downloads/

You can read other battle reports on this tag: https://mechastellar.com/category/battle-report/

Backdrop & Factions

On one side we have the Garmilas Fleet from Space Battleship Yamato which has forged an alliance with ZAFT from Gundam Seed represented by a squad of BuCUEs as well as the Cosmo Rangers J9-II and the Baxingar robot. Since Baxingar has a space Shinsengumi vibe we thought it would pair well with Garmilas empire. As for Garmilas and ZAFT, well, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, with the Plants looking on as Garmilas launches meteor bombs at Earth. Team Meteor Bomb.

On the other hand we have a heavy super robot force, with several interstellar robots including GoLion (Voltron) and GoShogun as well as the far flung Gurren Lagann. Then we have Earth’s defender, GaoGaiGar, and a pair of GM Customs, all that the Federation could muster. This is team Earth Defense.

It’s a bit of a wild mixup of forces, but that’s what MechaStellar is all about. Grabbing the robots you love and trying to figure out a good story to have them fight over.

Team Meteor Bomb

  • Garmilas 2x Destria Heavy Cruiser
  • Garmilas 2x Kelkapia Hi-Speed Cruiser
  • Garmilas 3x Astro Fighter Debake (we’re using one fighter to represent a squad of 3)
  • ZAFT – 3x BuCUE (we’re using a LaGOWE to easily identify the squad leader)
  • Baxingar

For Bonus Objectives they are using Baxingar’s Last Stand which gives bonus VP for each Save it fails.

Team Earth Defense

  • GoLion (Voltron)
  • GoShogun
  • GaoGaiGar
  • Gurren Lagann
  • 2x GM Custom

For Bonus Objectives the team is using Defender of the Universe which gives bonus VP for controlling or contesting CPs.

Note: Unit Point Costs have changed drastically since this game series was first run, with some of the Super Robots being a lot higher in points.

Battle 1

GoLion starts the battle off and uses its Foot missiles in the Blue and Yellow lions to strike at the BuCUE squad, blowing up the cover. The agile BuCUE unit manages to dodge any serious damage.

Baxingar with it’s advanced deployment range, takes the midfield Control Point (CP) immediately. He uses the Zeal pilot skill to first attack the cover GaoGaiGar was hiding behind, then it fires off some powerful Antiship missiles vs the less agile GaoGaiGar. Fortunately, Protect Shade keeps GaoGaiGar alive to continue fighting.

GaoGaiGar moves up to return fire with Broken Magnum but Baxingar dodges it. The Garmilas Hi-Speed Cruisers move forward and continue to blast the slower GaoGaiGar wiping out its Protect Shade barrier and causing considerable damage.

That said, GoShogun is just as agile as Baxingar, it presses forward and strikes at the Garmilas Cruisers with the GoSaber, absorbing a hail of [AA] fire from the warships, but it manages to sink one cruiser.

The ZAFT BuCUEs use the Zeal skill, they launch into melee, attacking GoShogun with their double-bladed beam sabers. Then they disengage from melee and rush for the next control point.

Fortunately, Gurren Lagann and a Zeal skill gets their first. The GM Customs provide covering fire.

At the end of this round Team Meteor Bomb controls their deployment CP plus the center, although that will soon change as GoLion charges in Round 2. Meanwhile Team Earth Defense has their deployment CP + the Eastern CP. Both sides earn [M+4] Morale Points to use in Round 2.

Round 2

GoLion surges to the center CP and locks Baxingar in melee. The two melee specialists lock blades but neither score a strong hit. Meanwhile, GaoGaiGar moves towards the center CP.

The Garmillas fleet continues blasting with their positron cannons but GaoGaiGar and Gai’s courage somehow defies all odds and survives.

Gurren Lagann moves in and uses its drills to sink one of the Destria heavy cruisers. Meanwhile GoShogun hacks at another one.

The BuCUE squad captures the Eastern CP and fires their railcannons at GGG. The GM Customs move in to engage and contest the Control Point.

At the end of the Round, each player controls their Deployment CP while all other CPs are contested. They each earn [M+2] Morale Points for Round 3.

Round 3

In a shocking upset, Baxingar wipes out GoLion beating the Beast King in glorious melee combat, and with Zeal also manages to finish off GaoGaiGar who was already down to his last 300 HP.

GoShogun takes out another Kelkapia Hi-Speed Cruiser. Gurren Lagann has a chance to finish off the Destria Heavy Cruiser but instead….

BLINDSIDE – Gurren Lagann attacks from behind hoping for an easy victory.

That said, Team Earth Defense has been blowing through Morale Points to sink Garmilas warships. However, the benefit of the heavy warship force was that Baxingar hasn’t been spending that many Morale Points. They use giga Flash, and Billy the Shot with his blind swordsman otherworldly senses, manages to whir around and deals a devastating counter strike putting Kamina and Simon out of action.

The GM Customs at least held their own, taking down 2x BuCUEs while the Squad Leader escaped.

At the end of the Round Team Meteor Bomb has 2 CPs while Team Earth Defense has 2 CPs, each player earns [M+4].

Round 4 & 5

GoShogun engages Baxinger in the center, the last two Super Robots facing off. Baxingar has pulled off an amazing feat so far fighting off so many super robots, but can he last?

Alas, he is finally brought down. The last BuCUE captures the enemy deployment CP and fires on GoShogun who proves too agile to bring down. The GM Custom fires on the BuCUE but doesn’t score significant damage.

We continue to Round 5 with the last 3 units all surviving.

Heavy destruction on both sides, but for Team Meteor they had a huge victory, destroying several super robots yielded a huge amount of Victory Points.

Obviously a different strategy was needed here.

Game 2

This was a rather quick game. Due to some bad rolls on both sides it resulted in huge casualties by Round 2, but some fantastic camera shots to go with it.

Baxingar one-shotted GoLion in Round 1, and the Warships took out GoShogun. Meanwhile Gurren Lagann spiralled through the entire BuCUE formation.

This game GaoGaiGar got to use the Goldion Hammer to absolutely obliterate some Warships. A victory for Team Earth Defense, but the dice results skewed the game a bit.

Intermission

For the next game we opted to rotate the battlefield, making it much wider but with a shorter mid field. It was easier to fight in melee but also harder to control lots of CPs, one of Team Earth Defense’s objectives.

Game 3

Another Round 1 bloodbath with Baxingar going down immediately after GaoGaiGar lands a HELL & HEAVEN attack, shortly thereafter the Destria Heavy Cruisers blow GGG off the battlefield.

Meanwhile GoLion and Gurren Lagann do what they do best, by rampaging and smashing through giant warships.

The BuCUEs capture a control point and then are engaged with GoShogun who slaughters 2 of them in 2 Rounds. But thanks to the “Boost” rule the BuCUEs get to move each time they use Flash. The lead unit maneuvers behind GoShogun, goes first in Round 2 and makes a potent Blindside attack combined with Focus bringing him down.

But it doesn’t end there!

The hero BuCUE takes out Gurren Lagann next.

Off screen the warships get lucky and take down GoLion.

The lone GM Custom, last remaining Team Earth Defense unit manages to bring down a cruiser. He later avoids getting gunned down by the Astro Fighter Debake squadron.

Absolutely unexpected BuCUE victory!

While Team Earth Defense did pretty well on bonus objectives, no one expected the BuCUE would be the super robot reaper. The loss of all their forces was a huge amount of VP that launched Team Meteor Bomb to victory.

This was a fun trio of games with a lot of twists and turns, and heart pounding super robot battle cries anytime a theme song rotated through the playlist. We had a lot of fun playing these games and we hope you enjoyed reading!

MechaStellar VER11 Design Goal – Finisher Evolution

In making MechaStellar VER11 we had a lot of new and interesting design challenges to improve the game.  Our overall goal to take VER10 and make it faster, more fun and easier to teach.  Finisher is the 2nd most modified Trigger since we started developing VER11, coming in right after Barrage.  Ultimately, Finisher was removed as a Trigger but we thought the development process of ups and downs, repeated dead-ends then eventually repurposing Finisher into an alternate system would be worth the deep dive.  So keep reading below.

At the start of VER11 Finisher had the following ability.

  • Finisher
    • When target is below 50% HP, each Trigger deals +1 Hit.  (Can Stack with Critical)

This is probably the simplest and cleanest version of Finisher we ever had looking back on it.  It was also quite potent making it the most commonly used combination trigger, combining with Critical, Bullseye, Siege, etc making every combination deadly.

On the flip side, it was completely inferior to Critical outside of Combination triggers.  That meant we were always looking for different ways to implement Finisher.  Finisher in VER9 and VER10 went through many different revisions providing several different frameworks, some loved, some hated by players.  Finisher in VER11 is major improvement over all previous versions, both from a balancing, thematic, and enjoyment perspective.  But before we get to the [Finisher Phase] let’s go through Finisher’s evolution.

With the VER10 Finisher Rules of make X+ Hits to Trigger a Finishing Blow we tried with

  • Finisher
    • Each trigger lowers the number of unblocked hits needed for a Finishing Blow.

This was very similar to VER10 but didn’t help our lethality problems, or all the problems we had in VER10 so it was scrapped.  It also had a number of sequencing problems when it came to attack and defense, when a targets shield could be used, and whether it would be broken (by the finisher).  Here’s a DEV chat on the topic.

How about a system where Finisher trigger immediately activates Finisher phase?

Only way this works is to make defender roll first, then attacker, then finisher phase. 

Yeah, but sequencing gets clearer for Shields / Siege

Ok, but it gets ugly because now you have to commit to Flash / Iron Wall before knowing the attack.  I mean yeah, it might have that Gundam EX Vs feel, but has big potential for feels bad moments; and heavily lets the attacker probe defenses without burning momentum.  Again not a bad thing but probably not a good sequence, even if it gave us fun nostalgia for VER 4-9 with defender rolling vs attack.

At the start of VER11, the number of Saves you rolled was still equal to the number of unblocked hits (capped at 5).  Same as VER10.  We were looking at ways to modify this and make the game less lethal, since high attack beam weapons were still extremely lethal.  One option was Finisher.

  • Finisher
    • Each Trigger generates an unblockable Hit.

This way a Finisher weapon was creating Saving Throws regardless of the opponents defense roll.  A novel concept, but ended up being a mess for mental math later.  Around this time we were also developing the saving throw system in parallel which we’ll cover in the next post.  At the start there were only Armor Saves (just like VER10) with some unique ones like Stun versions or Push / Pull versions.  We then added in a “Finisher Save”.  Here’s some DEV notes during this time period

Next version – Finisher triggers generate Finisher saves if there are any unblocked hits.  But that gets weird with armor saves and finisher saves having different generation mechanics, Armor Saves is one per hit, Finisher Saves is per trigger , probably confusing for new players.

Next version – Finishers are just Crit weapons, but a passive bonus in the Finisher phase, they cost more than Crit weapons (maybe too strong and doesn’t help me blow up shields, without going to finisher phase)

Next version – Finisher weapons all have Siege (thus every roster can deal with shields now) and also a bonus during Finisher phase, which is Crit on trigger, they cost more than regular siege weapons

Next version – Finisher does generate finisher saves.  Turn ARM PEN weapons into PEN 8+, now all saves depend on triggers {{this is when we prototyped what became the final Saving Throw system}}.  Save = Triggers lowers lethality on beams, if we kept it as unblocked hits = saves then finisher saves would be super overkill. 

However, it can get kind of weird if you have more saves than hits, do you still cap saves with hits?  What happens if you get 5 Triggers and thus 5 Saves but there only 2 unblocked hits; okay well I guess 2 Hits and 5 Saves.  Alright, but what about squads?  How do I split up 2 hits and 5 saves across 3 units???  {{We eventually solved the Squad issue}}

Next version – Unified trigger and save mechanic.  [E]nergy weapons and Finisher weapons cause armor saves and finisher saves respectively, where # of Saves = # of Unblocked Hits (Max 3).  The trigger for these weapons raises the save cap by 1.  For example, Finisher 8+, roll 2 8s, the cap is now 5, better get 5 unblocked hits through to maximize that

Next version – Finisher = Crit if target HP<50%, or Tac Adv (Blindside, high ground etc.).  Maybe anti grunt if we do Frame 1-2.  Conditional = Bonus in Valor phase.

Next version – That was way too complicated, let’s revert back.   1 Trigger = 1 Save.  If there are 0 unblocked Hits then there are 0 Saves.  Otherwise, Hits and Saves are not dependent on each other.  How about we just get rid of Finisher Saves for now, and Finisher = Each Trigger is DMG+100.

This became our go to Finisher for the longest time.

  • Finisher
    • Each Trigger gives DMG+100 to each unblocked Hit

That said, as hinted in some of the DEV Notes earlier, we had also been developing a [Finisher Phase] system simultaneously.  Eventually, we combined that concept with the Valor skill such that using Valor meant entering the [Finisher Phase] on your attack.  Valor was extremely well loved by playtesters.  But more on its development later.

As we developed the Finisher Phase we also realized that we no longer needed to have separate Finisher weapons.  You didn’t need to have “Drill Attack”  and “Giga Drill Breaker” as separate weapons, each costing separate points (and often a lot of points).  Instead you could “Drill Attack”  who’s special ability was “[Finisher Phase] Role change to Breaker”.  Thus your regular weapon with Pierce as its Trigger switches to a combination trigger like Breaker (Pierce + Crit) during the Finisher Phase. 

We could then apply this to various fighters, GaoGaiGar’s Heaven and Hell going to [Finisher Phase] Role Change Overkill, Wing Zero’s Twin Buster Rifle max output would [Finisher Phase] Role Change to Dominate, Sky Gridman having a laser circus would [Finisher Phase] Role Change to Swarm. It created a lot of distinct possibilities with minimal mechanics needed, instead reusing what was existing.

Your super robot could attack normally and when you wanted to fully commit to the attack and use Valor, suddenly you cut loose, do the impossible and make a massive powerful attack.  It meant we no longer had to make Finishing moves dependent on Momentum (now Morale Points), or Power, or single use, etc.  It was just dependent on you using the Valor skill.   Everything was finally coming together.

Now that the [Finisher Phase] system (and the 1 Trigger = 1 Save System) was completed we realized it was time to say goodbye to Finisher as a Trigger.  It was a fun way to start of VER11’s development, but now it’s true power was codified in a distinct game mechanic, satisfying one of our design goals to leverage existing systems rather than create new mechanics.  In this case, leveraging the valor skill (which itself went through a dozen iterations) and weapon abilities to build out the finisher phase creating dramatic and anime accurate moments on the tabletop.

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!

Battle Report – Gundam X & Gurren Lagann

Below you’ll find a battle report using the MechaStellar VER 9.2 Rules with units that released in the November 2023 Roster Update. For this match we are using 1/144 scale Gundam figures, Revoltech for Gurren Lagann, Enki and Lazengann and the recently released Moderoid Infinite Combining Gurren Dan Lagann. At the end we have a mecha tactics after action report.

On one side we have the GX-9900 from After War Gundam X as well as Gurren Lagann, King Kittan and most of the Gurren Brigade (Dayakkaiser, Kid Knuckle, Mo-Shogun, Sawzorthn, Twinboekun). On the other side we have Gundam Virsago and several Jenice and Septems represented by Zakus and Goufs as well as the Spiral King’s Lazengann and Viral’s original Enki. Total points is 2300 on each side.

Simon & Rossiu – Commander Trait – Bold Leader

The Spiral King – Commander Trait – Unyielding

Continue reading “Battle Report – Gundam X & Gurren Lagann” →

MechaStellar Battle Report – AU Gundam vs Getter Gainax

This MechaStellar Battle Report involves a 3vs3 match using the Supreme Robot Warfare (SRW) module. On one side we have three AU Gundam’s including Shining, Wing and the GX Divider piloted by Domon Kasshu, Heero Yuy and Garrod Ran. On the other side we have Armageddon Getter Robo, Eva Unit 01 and Gurren Lagann piloted by Ryoma, Shinji, Kamina & Simon.

Narrative

For this SRW game we reasoned that the Gundam Pilots were being forced to fight against their will, possibly Relena, Rain and Tiffa were being held hostage by the Romfeller Foundation or New UNE. Meanwhile, NERV has become the last bastion for the resistance following the 7th Space War, they have a rag tag team of robots and pilots to resist the New UNEs far superior resources.

Below the break we’ll have a Round by Round battle report with plenty of photos of tabletop mecha action.

Continue reading “MechaStellar Battle Report – AU Gundam vs Getter Gainax” →

[MS] – Gurren Lagann Miniatures

In these post we’ll go through some of the miniature, models and figures you can use for Gurren Lagann while playing a game of MechaStellar.

When playing MechaStellar we advise you to pick either a Versus movie scale (all figures are roughly the same height) or an approximate scale where some very large robots (i.e. 100+ meter robots like Daitarn 3 or Ideon) are represented by larger figures while everything else is around the same height. You can read more about the recommended size and scale here.

First let’s start with the smallest figure available. Pictured above is one of the Gurren Lagann Gashapon (capsule toy) next to other gashapon toys with the RX 78-2 Gundam (1/400 scale) on the left and Mazinger Z on the right.

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MechaStellar Roster Update – Sept 2023 – Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann

For this month’s update we have long awaited Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann!  This is a fondly remembered mecha show that became a phenomenon when it first released in 2007 being picked up by a large swath of the anime blogging community and soaring in popularity on various image message boards and forums being enjoyed by mecha fans and general viewers alike, it was later picked up for US Broadcast in 2008.

Continue reading “MechaStellar Roster Update – Sept 2023 – Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann” →

[MS] Design Goals – Giant Robots

Typo on Gundam Alex should be 18m vice 28m

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post we’d like to talk a little bit more about how sizing will affect the game. Since MechaStellar is intended to allow you to recreate a Super Robot Wars style tabletop skirmish that means we need to have someway to differentiate Mecha that are much larger than others.

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[MS] Design Goals – Titan Class Mechs

In MechaStellar we have two types of Mecha, a Mobile Skeleton or MS Class and a Titan Class. While the MS class is principally there to represent high mobility units like you’d see in Mobile Suit Gundam, Aura Battler Dunbine, Votoms or Zone of the Enders, the Titan class was envisioned to capture Mechs that tend to lack aerial mobility but offer considerably more durable and often with significantly more weapons. Titan class mechs can run the gamut of Mobile Armors, Getter Machines, Guy Melefs, Jaegers or even Evangelions. As we’ve been doing more Titan-only playtests recently this would be a good time to discuss this class of Mechs.

Continue reading “[MS] Design Goals – Titan Class Mechs” →