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Heavy Gear, Gear Kreig. I am a fan of giant robot combat. I am particularly fond of Battletech. How do these games play? What scales do they use? How do they play as compared to Battletech, VOR, and 40K?

(Notice: I do some work for Dream Pod 9 and thus amy be considered a corporate shill. But I'm honest about it! )

Heavy Gear is 1/144 scale (roughly 12mm, and compatible with a lot of n-scale railroad scenery) and focuses heavily on 'combined arms.' The mecha, Gears, are flexible and can fill many roles, but there's things tanks or infantry do better. Gears are roughly between tanks and infantry in the overall power scale.

Heavy Gear is based around (generally) forces with 3-4 'combat groups' with each group being a tank or two, 4-5 Gears, or 4 squad (of 3 bases, so 12 bases total) of infantry. There's ways to do lists with smaller and bigger armies, too. The Combat Groups have no set coherency, although sometimes being close has advantages.

The mechanics are based on opposed rolls and the newest version (Heavy Gear Blitz: Locked & Loaded) is
'tuned' for fast play. it's deeper than a clicky game or many of the prepaints, but it's faster to play than some of the older wargames (including the older Heavy Gear rules). Gears can and do die quickly. Getting hit is abd, as there's very little 'ablative armor'.

I'd recommend looking closer at Heavy Gear if you like 'psuedo-realistic' mecha, a deep background, mecha that are powerful, but aren't the kings of the battlefield, and some great minis.

I prefer HGB over Battletech because I prefer the background and I think the mechanics flow better. Battletech, to me, feels more like battleships blasting away at each other much of the time.

Compared to 40k, HGB has a much more responsive community and developers, and while there's some odd balance issues, the flaws aren't as core to the rules as they are in 40k in my opinion. the setting is also a bit more realistic, as it's more of a true science-fiction setting than the space opera of 40k.

I think a few things should be corrected/detailed/expanded in Balance post.
For full disclosure, I'm a ex-Heavy Gears player, who got frustrated with some serious problems with the game and the apparent unwillingness to fix or (for a while) even acknowledge them.
Just so we are clear, the game can be played and enjoyed. Sadly, the actual game is somewhat different from what is advertised and from what reading the rules may lead to believe.

Balance wrote:
The Combat Groups have no set coherency, although sometimes being close has advantages.

That true, but, if you decide to play, you should realize than the high number of area of effect weapons mean that being close has more disadvantages than advantages. That is not a problem with the game, it's just something players used to forced coherency tend to forget.

Balance wrote:
Gears can and do die quickly. Getting hit is abd, as there's very little 'ablative armor'.

That is mostly false. Getting hit is bad. It's also almost impossible at more than about 3-6". Artillery is efficient at longer range, but your average gear is not.

Balance wrote:
Battletech, to me, feels more like battleships blasting away at each other much of the time.

While Heavy Gear feels like myopic hunters that cannot hit a moving target trying to fight.

Balance wrote:
Compared to 40k, HGB has a much more responsive community and developers, and while there's some odd balance issues, the flaws aren't as core to the rules as they are in 40k in my opinion.

The flaws aren't as core to the rules, but their effects on the game is much worse.
As for the responsiveness, well, see my disclaimer.
I would add that I took part in the playtest for the current rules of Heavy Gear (Locked and Loaded.)
My group spotted and reported many problems. Most were not fixed.
Later, during discussions on dp9's forum, we where told that one of those problems (the inefficiency of ranged attacks) was not detected before the publication of the book. Reach your own conclusions.

Balance wrote:
the setting is also a bit more realistic, as it's more of a true science-fiction setting than the space opera of 40k.

That is quite true, and is part of my frustration. The setting is nice, well developed.
And put an emphasis on ranged combat, while the game does not.

Well, there's little to add about Heavy Gear L&L I think.
I fully back everything Mrondeau said, and I have to add I was in the same playtest group too, in fact, I'm the one who volunteered our group for playtests. (You can check that in the credits section)
In a few words, the universe and miniatures easily grade as "way cool", but the game itself simply doesn't work, due in no small parts to serious unbalances within the rules.
If you want more detail on the topic, I'll refer you to the previous thread on the topic, especially the exchanges between Balance and I.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/265925.page

edit : typos and style.

Heavy Gear sits between Battletech and 40k in terms of complexity and number of models on the table. Total cost of investment is roughly equivalent for a Space Marine force versus a Heavy Gear force, due to Heavy Gear being highly detailed, fully metal models, whereas Battletech tends to be cheaper than either 40k or Heavy Gear - this is more a function of most games being 2-4 Mechs, so your total investment is around $100 USD after books. HG is around $200 for a 1000 TV force and books, equivalent to 1500 points of Space Marines + books. The Heavy Gear models are very detailed and well sculpted, with only a few 'bad models' floating around (at least in my opinion), whereas Battletech has lots of bad models and extremely few good models (Mad Cat Mk II, Mad Dog, Thanatos).

HG games typically have 12-20 models per side on the table and is very heavily objective based. There is a semi-steep learning curve, but it lends its self very well to compartmentalizing the rules; one game you start with just combat, the next electronic warfare, the third game you add in airstrikes and artillery, etc. Compared to Battletech there's more math but quicker resolutions of results (if you get a good hit, things tend to die), whereas compared to 40k there's more tactical depth and very few units are totally pointless.

One thing that's very different from either Battletech or 40k is that army creation is complex and extremely flexible; you can quite possibly field any model in the range within certain factions; as a collector that's a fantastic appeal. As Balance points out, combined arms are very big in the game. Heavy Gear has vehicles being the 'strongest' units, followed by Heavy Gears (the robots), then the infantry. Infantry can serve as effective aggressors against the larger units, though they tend to find it a bit harder against main battle tanks.

Depending on how 'realistic' you want to approach the game, you may find the close-ranged nature of some combat not compelling or even off-putting. At times the game play is not quite 'realistic' but rather 'cinematic', despite the background's attempt at being realistic. If you have ever seen VOTOMS then the gameplay will seem to fit, though it can be frustrating at time.

There are free quickstart rules available at http://www.dp9.com/index.php?option=com_jotloader&task=files.download&cid=256&Itemid=62, and if you are wiling to PM me I could see if there's a demo squad member who's nearby who'd be happy to let you try the game. I honestly think all three games have things going for them, but HG really needs a demo to show off its stuff.

Let me know if you have any specific questions or want an example of play, and I"ll see what I can do. Good luck choosing!

So game size is like VOR. What is the overall rules like? Aside from the imbalance real or imagined, how does the dice roll/what style of system does it use? Two dice similar to Battletech, D10, D6 3D6 like clicks?

Roll are either against a threshold or opposed. You roll X dices (usually 2 or 3) and pick the highest, add the appropriate mods, if you've rolled higher than the threshold or your opponent, the action is a success.
In an attack, damage is your margin of success (ie. how much you beat the defense roll), time the damage multiplier (DM) of the weapon used.
Squads activations are alternated between players, like BT, that's pretty much the base rules.

The basic mechanic is that you have a skill level, usually 1-4, for attack and defense. You also receive modifiers for your vehicle depending upon what you've been doing during the turn. For instance, a Hunter gear moving combat speed using its ground movement system would have a -1 Defense mod. and a 0 Attack Mod. It is being shot at by a high performance Black Mamba gear that has stayed stationary that turn for a -2 Defense Modifier and a +2 Attack Modifier. The pilot of the Hunter has a Defense skill of two and the elite Mamba has an Attack skill of 3.

The Mamba rolls three dice (his skill) and rolls a three, two and four.

The Hunter rolls two dice (his skill) and rolls a one and a five.

Each model takes their highest roll and adds their modifiers. The Mamba gets a total of six (four +2) and the Hunter gets a total of five (five +0). You then check out the degrees of success or failure. You need to get at least a positive difference (the Mamba beats the Defense roll of the Hunter by 1) in order to hit.

Every weapon has a x# damage. That's the multiplier for your degree of success. So if the Mamba was using its Medium Auto Cannon with a Damage of x10, you would do 10 Damage to the Hunter.

The number of damage boxes you inflict is then your total damage divided into the armour of the target. The armour of the Hunter is fifteen...meaning the Damage Roll is not high enough to actually inflict a box of damage (fifteen does not divide at least once into ten).

Hope that made sense... but that's the basic mechanic for attacking and defending in the game.

*Stats are from memory here guys... so cut some slack if they're wrong*

I won't comment on the game rules. I like 'em. They're different. Do I wish my gears could hit something a bit farther out? Yeah... but it's a skirmish game. You don't have that many models anyway so making weapons less accurate does increase play-time.

Take that for what you will.

Heavy Gear Blitz uses D6s. Multiple D6 dice are rolled equal to skill levels: Most qualified pilots have 2, but veterans and elites might have 3 or 4.

However, the highest roll is taken, with additional 6s adding +1 to the roll. So rolling a 4,6 is a 6, while rolling a 6,6 is a 7.

A core concept is 'Margin of Success' which is essentially the difference between the attacker and defender's rolls. Say you're shooting and roll a 5 and I roll a 3. The MoS is 2 (5-3). This is useful as weapons do damage based on MoS x the weapon's fixed damage number. A certain gun might have DM (Damage Multiplier) x12, so in the above example with MoS 2 that gun does 24 damage.

The advantage here is that it is opposed rolls, but there's no need to do multiple rolls for hitting, wounding, and then armor saves. One 'set' of rolls does it all.

The damage number is compared to the unit's armor to determine how serious of a hit. If it's less than the armor, no damage is done (the shot bounced off), 1x armor, 1 damage box. 2x armor, 2 damage boxes. 3x armor, the unit is destroyed outright.

Most units have 3 damage boxes, but I think they range from 2-5 across the entire current list of units. Infantry is fielded as bases that are removed as wounds, and there's some special infantry rules. but they're not too bad.

Raising skills above three tends to be a unpopular option as the odds don't encourage it. It's not as broken as a couple RPG rules where raising stats a certain way could actually make things worse, but the difference from 2->3 is much greater than 3->4.

Ammo tracking is generally done based off the attack roll as well. Roll poorly, and weapons may go out of ammo. Something I like is that experienced pilots will generally go out of ammo less often, reflecting better fire discipline and skill. Big weapons, like anti-tank missiles, are often limited to a set number of shots. In general, the goal is to minimize tracking, with each vehicle or squad of infantry represented by a small card. One thing that does need to be tracked is movement modes/speeds which the Pod provides printable counter sheets or sells special dice to track.

megatrons2nd wrote:What is the overall rules like?

Everyone else has covered the dice mechanics, so I'll talk a bit about model roles and general game play. First, as I mentioned before, Heavy Gear has a strong theme of objective based play, like many modern Skirmish games. Generally you receive 'assault' style objectives the more elite your force is, and 'garrison' style objectives the more 'green' your force is. You choose freely the level of army you want to play, based upon what models you have obviously; but there's alot of mixing of troops as well.

Since you're familiar with 40k, let me use that as analogy; in Heavy Gear you get four 'priority levels' (from 1-4) that represent how 'elite' your force is. At PL1, you don't have any access to Elite or Fast attack choices, and can only get 1 Heavy Support for every Troops choice you get (there is no analogue for HQ choices). At PL2 you can only take 1 Elites choice for every 2 troops you take, and 1 Fast Attack for every troops choice. At PL3 you replace your troops choices with fast attack, and you actually have to take 2 fast attacks before you can take troops choices. PL4 means you replace troops with elites.

There's also a 'Veteran' options, which you get 1 for every PL; so at PL3 you can make 3 squads veterans. This unlocks the 'best' upgrades for that squad. However the higher your PL, the greater the expectations are for your army; you must achieve far more success with a PL3 to be considered successful than a PL1 force. So tailoring your army choices to objectives has great strategic depth. One disclaimer I have is that the army creation can be very in-depth if you choose to min-max your force, as there are some forces that allow for 'mixing' different models into the squad descriptions. Keeping everything straight can be a bit confusing, but the forums tend to be a great help in those cases.

Once you have your army, game play proceeds in a IGO/UGO fashion on a per-squad basis. The recommended game-play surface is either 3'x3' or 4'x4', with medium to heavily packed terrain. Larger boards are possible, but flat, featureless boards that are common in 40k make for very unsatisfying gameplay. A typical gear can cover about 12" per turn if it moves instead of shooting, with foot infantry restricted to about 6" move flat out. Combat speeds vary from 4-8" by model, and is where most action occurs. It's possible to shoot over blocking terrain, with greater accuracy then in 40k, and these types of attacks can be very lethal.

Gameplay lasts 5 turns, give or take. I typically find that a game takes 3-5 hours for 5 turns with 1000 TV (points) worth of models, since positioning is very important. You can shoot at any point of a model's movement, so urban terrain opens up great tactical corundrums where you have to decide how best to expose your model for a killing shot, knowing that at close ranges you are very vulnerable yourself.

My recommendation would be to grab the quickstart rules, throw together a 4'x4' urban board and have at each other. That's my preferred way to show off the rules. Good luck!

Thank you. Next questions:

How big are the units?(I caught the 1/144, I mean the actual average unit dimensions/mini size)

What is Gearkreig like?

Your average HG Gear is about as big as a GW Marine, but I'm not familiar enough with Gear Krieg to answer the other question.

Gear Krieg used to use the sillhouette system (rather complex). The version being published using the Battlefield Evolution uses a much simpler mechanic of a to-hit number and kill number for all units. Weapons simply allow you to roll higher number dice to attack, increasing your chance of not just go for the hit number, but rather getting the kill number and precluding an armour save.

Models are freely available in 1/144th for WWII, and DP9 sells walkers like mad to add in the superscience.

The Gear Krieg minis are actually 15mm as I understand, so they should be compatible with a lot of vendors for your 'normal' infantry, tanks, etc.

Hi Megatron,
I am a current and enthusiastic player of Heavy Gear Blitz and I think something should be noted.

mrondeau wrote:

Balance wrote:
Gears can and do die quickly. Getting hit is bad, as there's very little 'ablative armor'.

That is mostly false. Getting hit is bad. It's also almost impossible at more than about 3-6". Artillery is efficient at longer range, but your average gear is not.

This is really a point of perspective about the game itself.

HGB is meant to be a fast paced close range dog fight with big (not giant) robots.
Gears (and anything else) do die Very fast when in close and mixing it up.
Many people however attempt to play HGB as a long range fire fight because that (to them) is realistic.
But if you stand off and try to win by by long range fire power alone you can get frustrated.
Range is the hottest topic on the HGB forums (followed closely by how deadly Hand Grenades are).
But if you like getting in close and mixing it up then HGB may well be for you.

I will be called fan boy for saying this but give it a try you might like it and dont go by what anyone else (even me) tells you until you have.

Mechmerc wrote:

mrondeau wrote:
That is mostly false. Getting hit is bad. It's also almost impossible at more than about 3-6". Artillery is efficient at longer range, but your average gear is not.

This is really a point of perspective about the game itself.

HGB is meant to be a fast paced close range dog fight with big (not giant) robots.
Gears (and anything else) do die Very fast when in close and mixing it up.
Many people however attempt to play HGB as a long range fire fight because that (to them) is realistic.
But if you stand off and try to win by by long range fire power alone you can get frustrated.
Range is the hottest topic on the HGB forums (followed closely by how deadly Hand Grenades are).
But if you like getting in close and mixing it up then HGB may well be for you.

So, in other words, you are stating that ranged warfare is inefficient in Blitz, and that simply rushing in to a big furball in the middle (ie. ranges under 3"-6") is the best way to play the game ? That's something we all fully agree with, really.

HudsonD wrote:rushing in to a big furball in the middle (ie. ranges under 3"-6") is the best way to play the game ?

That's not quite fair; if your objective is to kill something then yes, you either need to close range or orchestrate an indirect attack. Playing with terrain skirmish style terrain alleviates this (legitimate) concern somewhat since you will be moving through it and jockying for position. But there are many ways of winning any given match.

IceRaptor wrote:
That's not quite fair; if your objective is to kill something then yes, you either need to close range or orchestrate an indirect attack. Playing with terrain skirmish style terrain alleviates this (legitimate) concern somewhat since you will be moving through it and jockying for position. But there are many ways of winning any given match.

That's quite true, but then, the objective themselves are... a whole another topic.

and that simply rushing in to a big furball in the middle (ie. ranges under 3"-6") is the best way to play the game .

No; because just killing the enemy isnt your only goal (but like every game it can help).

I've had as many games where I havent met my opponent in the middle as games where we have done so. It depends on my force choices, missions, and even my mood.

By the way; a lot of gamers actually LIKE getting in close in a "big furball".
The close range of Heavy Gear may be "meh" to some players but that doesnt make it a bad system.
Not every game is for every player.

Mechmerc wrote:

and that simply rushing in to a big furball in the middle (ie. ranges under 3"-6") is the best way to play the game .

By the way; a lot of gamers actually LIKE getting in close in a "big furball".
The close range of Heavy Gear may be "meh" to some players but that doesnt make it a bad system.
Not every game is for every player.

This is very true.
Some players enjoy tactics, depth, firefights and manoeuvers. Some players enjoy a big scrum in the middle, with full games that'll last half an hour or so.
The second type has every reason to love HG:L&L, while the first one will be quite disappointed after a game or two. Unfortunately though, it seems the marketing efforts are targeted toward that first type of players.

Using a lot of terrain seems to help break up 'scrum' issues.

Balance wrote:Using a lot of terrain seems to help break up 'scrum' issues.

Quite the contrary, in fact.
See, cover give a penalty, so you need to be closer not only to remove the range penalty but also so that there is no cover between you and the target.
Since half cover is -1 (and full is -2), in practice you can't shoot through cover.

For those who don't know, HG's dice rolls are dominated by the modifiers, and a +-1 has an huge effect.
In part, the problem with ranged attack is that most attack modifiers are negative, and the defender can get to +2 easily (by saying "Top Speed").
The attacker need a modifier greater or equal to -1 for a good shoot, with an advantage of +2 VS the defender.
So -1 vs -3 is an acceptable shot, as is 0 vs -2 or +2 vs 0.

When playing with no terrain, you hit another problem: many expensive models (think tanks and the bigger giant robots) have horrible defence modifiers, so they become useless.
They have high armour, but it does not nearly compensate for the -2 or -3 (and it goes lower) you get on your defence roll.

mrondeau wrote:
When playing with no terrain, you hit another problem: many expensive models (think tanks and the bigger giant robots) have horrible defence modifiers, so they become useless.

While it does absorb some of their damage dealing capabilities, those 'big models' do have actions that can mitigate their DEF modifiers, so YMMV on this point. The big tanks in particular can be very difficult to kill.