MechaStellar VER 8.8 Design Goals – Mental Math & Focus

Kou Uraki face 0083 — Wait what was your shooting accuracy again?

This is the 2nd in-depth post looking at the changes made in VER 8.8, you can read the full VER 8.8 summary here and the design goals post on the weapon rebalance here.

With the update to VER 8.7 we upgraded several of the Pilot Traits to have 2 effects, a good number of these ended up giving a +1 Evade bonus. While this was a nice bonus, especially for several units who were middle of the road for Evasion, I personally got a lot of great feedback on these our players and other members of the team regarding that. Mainly that with VER 8.7’s goal of reducing mental math, adding a slew a +1 Evade bonuses runs counterproductive to that goal.

And that’s a great point! So in VER 8.8 we went about trying to scrub as much mental math as we could from the game. No longer will your gameplay halt every time a Skilled or Ace pilot comes up and you have to add in several steps of bonus accuracy and bonus evade, and “what was the target number again??”

Lesson learned! Let’s see what we can do instead.

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MechaStellar VER 8.8 Design Goals – Short Range Weapons Update

This update kicked off with the complete reworking of the thrown weapons from last month. Our first new series added in 2023 is G Gundam, we began prototyping units in April and started playtesting in July of 2022, with G Gundam being the next release all forthcoming units receive heavy playtesting the two months leading up to release.

During the playtests for G Gundam models, one unit in particular stood out. Gundam Maxter almost exclusively uses short range weapons, with a pair of magnums and several different punches including a cyclonic, burning jet of fire, and semi-visible bursting machine gun punch. We were able to utilize existing weapon profiles to at least give each punch a different special effect but something was lacking. What we observed was that many of punches (and even the twin magnums) felt rather samey, and it didn’t feel like there was a good time to use one over the other.

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MechaStellar FEB23 Update – VER 8.8 Released

For this February’s update we are updating the Core Rules to VER 8.8 with a renewed focus on trimming down Mental Math we’ve updated several Pilot Traits and the Focus action. We’ve also updated the short range weapons (16″) including beam boomerangs, heat rods and the infamous Rocket Punch as well as Machine Guns and Gatling Guns. Lastly, “Finishing Blow” has been added to add some more variety to Melee combats when it comes to assigning ATK and DEF dice.

We’ll have two in-depth posts exploring the weapons update and the focus/pilot traits update, here’s the first one focusing on short range weapons and machineguns. We’ve also updated the VER 8 Example of Play to match the rules update. Below the break you’ll see the summary list of updates for MechaStellar VER 8.8

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MechaStellar VER 8.7 Design Goals – Unit Profile Sheets

Here’s an indepth look at some of the design decisions that went into the MechaStellar VER 8.7 Unit Profile Sheets Update. For your convenience I have included the relevant summary line item list for each of those categories from the main update post as well.

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MechaStellar VER 8.7 Design Goals – Core Rules Updates

Here’s an indepth look at some of the design decisions that went into the VER 8.7 Core Rules Update for MechaStellar.. For your convenience I have included the relevant summary line item list for each of those categories from the previous post as well.

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MechaStellar JAN 2023 Update – VER 8.7 Released

For this months update we have a major update to the Core Combat Rules along with a balance patch and overall UI improvement to the Mecha Profile Sheets. We’ve also added new units to the roster based on player requests. Below the break is the summary of updates, you can read a more indepth breakdown on a few updates in a follow up posts.

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MechaStellar Battle Report – Amuro, Koji and Ryoma Vs Zeon Aces and Big O

For this battle we set up a SRW style game where universes collide with Amuro, Koji and Ryoma in the Gundam, Mazinger Z and Getter Robo on one side and on the other we have Big O and some of Zeon’s Aces including Char’s Gelgoog, Mikhail’s Kampfer and two of the Black Tri-Stars. (The 3rd Tri-Star was killed by Amuro in a previous battle and this was a follow-up grudge match). Rounding out the roster we have a Zaku I sniper and a Zaku II with a magella top cannon versus Kai’s Guncannon providing long range support for each player.

For the narrative on this battle the player’s decide that Zeon had hired Roger Smith under false pretenses informing him that Getter and Mazinger were possessed robots holding memories of the past and rampaging through the area. The player’s remark that after the battle and Roger discovers the ruse he would most likely switch sides.

For the battlefield we are still using some Greco-Roman style ruins that we used previously in a few Mazinger Z match-ups. Below the break will be the round by round battle report as well as a post-mortem on the mecha tactics employed.

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[MS] Miniatures for Gundam 1/400, 1/300 SOG, Standart, Ultimate Operation, Assault Kingdom

Gundam Miniatures, Gundam 1/400, Gundam 1/300 SOG, Ultimate Operation, Standart, Assault Kingdom — Zaku I Sniper sleeping on the job

On this page we’re going to discuss the different miniatures available for Mobile Suit Gundam for use in the MechaStellar Wargame Rules.

This post will feature the Gundam 1/400 collection, the 1/300 S.O.G. range, and a number of ranges that some estimate as 1/200 to 1/220 scale but for the sake of convenience we’ll call them 1/200 for this write-up. We’ll examine the pros and cons of each Gundam mini collection and at the end we’ll have a number of comparison shots showing the different ranges side by side.

To see a guide for larger figures such as Robot Spirits or Gunpla click here.

The primary purpose of this guide is to let you see the size of various Gundam models. That way if you decide to start collecting and want to mix and match you know which ranges work well together and which figures you want to battle it out on the tabletop.

When playing MechaStellar as a SRW style game with mecha from different franchises 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.

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MechaStellar VER 9 – Tabletop Gundam Gameplay Example – Round 4 and Round 5

In this series of posts we are doing a Gameplay Example for MechaStellar. Click on the following links to see posts for Round 1, Round 2, and Round 3. You can look at the Mecha Unit Profiles for the Federation and Zeon on the downloads page.

Below the break we will cover the 4th and 5th rounds of a 5 round game of MechaStellar. We will go turn by turn each round and include some insights into Gundam Tactics.

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MechaStellar VER 9 – Tabletop Gundam Gameplay Example – Round 2

In this series of posts we are going to do a Tabletop Gundam Gameplay Example for MechaStellar usings units from the 08th MS Team. You can look at the Mecha Unit Profiles for the Federation and Zeon on the downloads page. Click here to for Game Setup and Round 1.

Below the break we will cover the 2nd round of a 5 round game of MechaStellar. We will go turn by turn each round and include some insights into the Gundam Tactics.

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