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So first thing is I made my game board so that it can be altered or picked up at will. Nothing is permanent. I can shift, add, and remove terrain to fit my desires or simply pack it all up and put it away. I did not use most of the city in the first two games and decided that I should make it a little smaller so I took out about 1/3 of the city.

I had a plan to set up forces but I did not have the printouts to set up the way I planned to so I had to alter the forces that I would use this time slightly for the printouts that I did have.
UEDF
2x Valkyries Squadrons 80 Pts each
Brawler Squadron 70 Pts
230 Pts Total

Total Units
2 x VF-1J
6x VF-1A
2 Tomahawks
2 Spartans

Zen
Attrition Squadron + Recon Pod 80 + 15 pts = 85 Pts
Recon Squadron 70 Pts
Attack Squadron =80 Pts
235 Pts Total

27 Battlepods
2 Glaugs
2 Recon Pods

I made some cheat sheet for the stats and to remind me of things that I can do with command points and I also show my sheets that have the units on them that I use for tracking damage. They were made by someone else and I do not use anything but the damage bubbles but it makes things flow easier.

Here are my cheat sheets and I leave it open to you guys to make suggestions for strategies for each side. This is a straight up brawl match.

Binding all the cards together like this makes it really easy to track and control damage as you play.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I Could split my veritech squadrons up into halves and try to get an attack bonus for being in front and behind the enemy but there are so many Battlepods that that might not be the best idea. The Spartans and Tomahawks are going to run to positions where they can lay down a nice fire pattern and help level the playing field a bit. The veritechs will have to come in and lay down some effective missile spreads and take out the enemy recon pods or the UEDF will be in for some serious hurt. My 2 cents. Any ideas?

If you are not familiar with the rules here are a few game videos. They are about halfway down the page.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rrpgt/robotech-rpg-tacticstm/posts?page=7

Ok Turn 1
Both sides gathered their Command Points. The UEDF, one for each unit for a total of 12 plus two for each VF-1J for a grand total of 16. The Zen player raised 4 per Glaug and 2 for each recon pod for a total of 12.

Initiative is rolled but kinda pointless at this range. UEDF 4, Zen 8.

Zen move the attrition squadron of 12 battlepods with its supporting recon pod since it does not have a Glaug and their 48 inch range top cannons.

The UEDF moves their Destroids since they are way to far to be of any use. The Spartans move 7 and the Tomahawks move 5 each. They want to try to get into a position to help the veritechs and stand off against the pods.

Zen force move their Attack squadron and then the UEDF moves some more veritechs. Basically everyone moves and nothing more happens.

Turn 2, rinse and repeat, UEDF rolls a 5 for the initiative and the Zen player a 9. Again a quick look shows that the Glaugs will not be in range if they move first so the Attrition Squadron with its 12 Pods and Recon pod move first.

The UEDF again moves the Destroids up buying time to position their veritechs.

The Zen player moves the attack squadron in the left flank of the Zen forces. The move move through the trees. The Glaug is in range of a VEritech squadron and shoots at their leader striking him with a roll of a 4. The Top mounted cannon cannot be dodged or rolled against and the fighter would have taken 6 points of it's 14 MDC but his flight mate help absorb the blow by spending one command point and both fighters take 3 points of damage.

One veritech squadron moves towards the middle of the map. The Zen recon squadron moves up and takes a potshot at the other veritech squadron leader but misses rolling a 1.

The rest of turn 2

Turn 3
UEDF rolls a 9 thinking they have it made the Zen player rolls an 11.

The Zen attrition squadron rolls up and has 7 pods in range and with LOS to shoot at a Veritech Squadron. The Zen Battlepods have a gunnery of 1 and a +1 for the recon pods electronics, plus they have enough units to put out a large volume of fire ( 7 units vs 4 veritechs) to get another +1. Fighters have a defense rating of 6 so the pods will need 3+ to hit. 4 pods fire on the leader and one on a wingman. The pods attacking the leader roll 5, 4, 3, 1 respectively and score 3 possible hits. The VF-1J dodges (playing one command point) and rolls a 5, adding his piloting skill of 3 he meets or beats all the attacks. The wingman is hit once with the Zen player rolling a 4, 2, 2. He also tries to dodge (paying a command point) and rolls a 1 which is an automatic failure. He spends another command point to roll against the blow and reduces the 4 he would have taken in half to a 2.

In turn the fighters change into guardian mode which does not have the fast mover trait so they can fire more than a single weapons system if they pay for it. The Squadron moves in and pays 4 command points so that they can all fire missiles and their gun pods.
Each Veritech fires 4 missiles at a pod and then two concentrate their Gu-11 gunpods on the recon pod while the other 2 wingmen aim at battlepods not targeted by any missiles. The Zen player gets a free dodge vs missiles for any and all units within 12 inches of the recon pod due to its electronics.

I've changed one thing from the KS rules by adding missiles from the chart in the RPG and giving all missiles a +1 to strike and a +2 for some specialized missiles. These ones have a range of 24 inches, do 5 damage (enough to wax a pod), and have a +1 to strike. The previous games I have missiles that had no bonus and that did 4 damage and they seemed really weak.

The UEDF gets much better results this time because none of the pods manage to dodge rolling 1, 2, 2, and 3 against the missile strikes. The Zen player has 3 pods that are hit by 3 missiles each, I forgot to use their anti-missiles trait for their top turrets which blow up the missiles on a 5+ roll on a D6. The fourth pod rolls high enough on his dodge to evade one of the two missiles that would have otherwise hit it. The Zen player rolls for that pod reducing the 5 damage to 2 and paying one command point.

The Zen recon squadron in the middle moves up and opens up on the veritech squadron with 6 pods and the Glaug. The Recon Squadron has +1 for the number of units firing (7 vs 4 veritechs) and +1 for the Recon Pod. The Glaug and 2 pods target the leader and 4 pods target the other veritech. The Glaug hits, rolling 5's and adding his GUN of 3 and the +2 for the suppressive fire and the recon pod for a total of 10. No way the veritech can dodge that unless he rolls a 6 which is an automatic success. One pod also manages to hit. Th eUEDF player spends one CP and dodges rolling a 5 plus his PIL skill of 3. Enough to dodge the pod's attack but not the Glaug. The UEDF player spends a command point to have a nearby veritech protect the leader splitting the hit for 6 damage among the two and he spends another command point to roll against the second attack from the glaug and takes 2 more damage.

The UEDF player moves the second veritech squadron in and attacks the Recon Squadron. They stay in fighter mode and can only fire one weapons system. Missiles again fly and take out 3 Battlpods and two of the VF-1J's missiles strike the Glaug doing 4 damage as the Zen player spends 2 command points to roll against each missile strike.

The Zen attack squadron moves up and only the Glaug is in range and it shoots at a VF-1A doing 6 damage since its top cannon cannot be dodge or rolled against.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Now that they are engaged I think the best bet for the UEDF is to kill the Glaug officer pods and Recon pods and take all the Command Points away from the Zentraedi. We'll see if they can manage it on turn 4!

Great looking city terrain! I like the lasercut bridge too (and I'm sure a bit of paint would really spice it up). The transition from countryside to buildings is realistically done.

 bosky wrote:
Great looking city terrain! I like the lasercut bridge too (and I'm sure a bit of paint would really spice it up). The transition from countryside to buildings is realistically done.

Thanks Bosky! I really like the way they turned out. Going from city to country was just too abrupt before and I decided I needed a way to break that up. An entire table with just city seemed too much to me. Here is a quick link to what I did to make the river divider between the city and the countryside if your interested. It's part of an entire thread that goes through the step by step process of how I made the terrain and what I decided to do along the way.

http://www.robotechgamecenter.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=208&start=60

I think next time I will try a small town by using only the smaller buildings and have some countryside all around the few buildings in the middle.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
here is what it looked like before I did that river
http://www.robotechgamecenter.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=208&start=50

and how I used quarter rounds to make the river look like concrete embankments around it
http://www.robotechgamecenter.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=208&start=50

Yeah I'm a big fan of "thematic" or realistic terrain setup, where you basically take a chunk of the real world and translate it onto the table, instead of arbitrarily alternating placing terrain and ending up with an un-unified mess.

I wonder if there are any little cheap toy cars you could buy that would be to scale. I think that'd help reinforce the giant stompy robot look.

Also awesome Marauder picture in your 4th post. Well I don't know the Robotech name for it, but Marauder was the BTech version at least

I thought of some cars and par benches and street signs and all but after playing a bit I know that with my fat fingered hands they would just get bumped around and get in the way. It's still something hovering in the back of my mind though. I was thinking of getting some more buildings from Burn In Designs first.

http://www.burnindesigns.net/

I am waiting for another week or two. They told me that they had a few new designs coming out.

Turn 4
Refill Command Pools after they wound up empty last turn.

Rolled Initiative, it was close Zen rolled an 8 and the UEDF.......a 9. Just what they needed.

The Blue Squadron moves up and behind the battlepods. This serves 2 purposes. They all get a +1 to fire on the pods and the pods must turn around in order to fire their main weapons back. This means that the pods cannot focus fire or get accurate for their weapons. Focus fire allows units with this trait to fire two weapons when they have not moved. The particle cannons on the pods get a +1 bonus when the pod had not moved because they have the accurate trait.

The UEDF pays 4 of their 16 command points to have each fighter fire two weapons systems so that they can fire their cannons and missiles at same time. The missiles and cannon shots are spread out among 9 enemy units as missiles are focused on battlepods and the cannons on pods not targeted by missiles. The result is 4 dead battlepods, including both recon pods and one damaged. The others make their dodge rolls. The zen player had spent 2 command points to provide a -1 to the UEDF strikes and granted a free dodge against missiles but the UEDF rolled a massive amount of 5's and 6's and the Zen dodge rolls were mostly 1's and 2's. Very bad activation for the Zen forces.

The Zen forces activate the Attack Squadron that had just come out of the trees and that is near the UEDF Orange Squadron, hoping to score kills before they can strike. 9 pods and the glaug move up and unload. 5 pods fire at one fighter and score 2 hits. The veritech spends one command point to dodge and fails his dodge and spends another 2 command points to roll with both attacks. He takes 4 damage. The other veritech is attacked by 4 pods and gets 2 strikes and the process is repeated as hid dodge fails and he has to roll twice taking 4 points of damage. The Glaug hits the leader and the UEDF player spends another command point having a fighter help protect his commander and they both take 3 points of damage. This leaves the VF-1J with 4 MDC left.

The UEDF moves the next fighter squadron and they change to guardian mode and unleash swarms of missiles at the pods and now that they recon pods are gone the Zen player must pay if he wants to try to dodge the missiles. The missiles are spread out among 4 pods and the Glaug. \
The Glaug manages to fails his dodge against 3 missile hits and the zen player rolls 3 times to keep him alive. Two more pods are dead and one more takes 2 damage adding to the 2 it had already take and leaving it with one point left.

The remainder of the attrition squadron of 6 pods moves up and attacks the orange squadron doing only 2 points of damage.

The UEDF move up the Destroids as they still are struggling to get into the fight.

The Remains of the Recon squadron, a Glaug and two pods fire on the Orange squadron with the Glaug managing to finish off the commander.

Turn 5, last one for today. It only took 15 minutes with me writing things down and taking pictures. I imagine in a real game this would have lasted only 10 minutes or so with multiple players.

Refilled command pools
UEDF 13 and Zen 8 now with the death of both recon pods.

Now I think things are going easier for the UEDF than I had thought they would. I think it was a combination of me forgetting anti-missile rolls for the pods and making them do one more point of damage, enough to kill a pod with a single shot if not rolled against. Before two missiles would be needed to get a kill. I'll have to play again and see since also the UEDF missiles rolls have been great and the Zen dodge rolls terrible.

The UEDF win the initiative 10 to 7. The UEDF moves their orange squadron behind the enemy battlepods to get the leg up on them and then they spend 3 command points to have them fire two weapons systems. They fire off loads of missiles and their gun pods at the pods. They manage to strip the Glaug down to a single point and kill off two more pods.

The Zen take their move and move the attack squadron over so that they are still out of range of the Destroids and can pound on the veritech fighters. They split their fire to three pods per veritech and the Glaug tries to add his firepower to another veritech but misses. All three veritechs take minor damage.

The second veritech squadron moves over and opens up but only with missiles to save on command points. I remembered the anti-missile rolls for the pods this time. Mostly ones and a single four. Not a single 5 or six needed to blow up the missiles targeting them. 4 more pods added to the death pool.

The remaining zen concentrate on the remaining VF-1J and manage to kill him knocking a chunk out of the UEDF's command pool.

The Destroids are still too far away to be of any help.

Hitting veritechs in Guardian mode is hard because they have a DF of 5 plus hover which basically makes it a since it reduces strike rolls by one. The poor gunnery of the pods is what is helping the veritechs. Now that their bonuses for the recon pods and superior numbers are gone their time is limited. Good thing the UEDF got lucky and took out the recon pods early.

At this rate the veritechs might have to run for it and let the destroids take some punishment before they wind up dying since most of the veritechs have severe damage.

Turn 6 and on

The UEDF now have 10 Command Points and the Zentraedi 8.
I rolled initiative and both sides rolled a 10. I rerolled and the UEDF wins 8 to 4.

The UEDF moves their orange squadron up around and behind the Zen attack squadron and unloads with 16 missiles on 7 targets. Being behind the enemy gives them a +1 to strike bonus and it means the Zen pods will have to turn around when they activate if they want to shoot their particle cannons at the veritechs.

The Glaug was shot with 4 missiles and hit with 3. Their was no way for him to survive unless he dodges which he fails. Every single one of the 6 pods was hit by at least one missile. Two manage to make their Anti-missile rolls and shoot the missiles down with their top turrets and two others manage to dodge their missiles. The other two go up in flames.

In retaliation the Zen attack squadron turns and unloads on the veritechs. 2 of the 7 pods pods did not have to turn and can take advantage of focus fire to fire two weapons at the veritechs that they target plus the particle cannons will get another +1 since they have the accurate trait. Each veritech is hit by a single particle cannon shot. Two veritechs attempt to dodge but perish and another rolls with the blow after failing to dodge and takes 2 damage leaving it with only one point left.

The other UEDF squadron attacks and fires off missile salvos at the pods. The Glaug is fired on by 6 missiles and each of the two pods are shot by 3 missiles each. The Glaug is miraculously hit with 5 missiles. If you are hit with 4 or more you cannot dodge so the Glaug disappears. Both pods get lucky and make their anti-missile rolls and survive.

The surviving two pods fire on the nearby fighter. The Zen player uses command points so that each pod can fire two weapons systems. Only a 22.3mm cannon on the undercarriage of one Battlepod manages to hit a veritech.

The Destroids are just coming into range with the Spartans at just under 24 inches they need to fire some missiles and the Tomahawks just under the 36 they need to fire off the heavy particle cannons. The Spartans damage one pod and the other shoots the missiles down. The Tomahawks manage to take down the other pod that they are targeting.

Having no more command points and no leaders the Zen Battlpods flee over the next 2 turns. Of the 8 left only 3 make it off the table alive.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
A few comments. One is that the strike bonus for missiles might be a little too much. So I'll have no bonus for regular missiles and only a +1 for the special warheads that are more accurate but that do less damage.

Also forgetting to roll the Anti-Missiles on two turns may have really hurt the Zen forces.

The battle was well fought. The Veritechs also had some lucky attack rolls and were out of missiles at the end of turn 6 so they had to rely on their GU-11's from there on out.

Using the Zen to try to flank the veritechs and spreading out more to help prevent them from having missiles strikes hit multiple targets may also help out next time.