Just wanted to put this here even though it's not really BWG related... So, while I wait for Game Salute to get their schedule in order to start on all the weird west stuff for BWG, I've been working on my next game. Everything on my end is done, I'm just waiting in line so to speak. I'm hoping they'll get moving in the next month or so.

Anyway, my next game is a sci-fi Mech gladiator arena game called Mechadrome. Some of you have read the preliminary rules several months back, I'll have an updated public version done very soon. It's got a professional sports kind of vibe, where it's the most popular sport 1000 years from now and different armies and races and corporations sponsor teams to show off their latest hardware. Mech pilots are zillionare celebrities and everyone in the galaxy tunes in for Monday Night Mecha, wearing their favorite team colors and starting drunken barroom brawls when they lose.

The initial concept art for the mechs is being worked on right now and I should have something to show in a week or so I think. I'm at the point now where I need to nail down a format, so I'm wondering what you guys would rather see?

The game uses the same rules for BWG, right down to most of the weapon stats and all. Instead of heroes, professionals and henchmen we have Heavy, Medium and Light mechs. It will be a 15mm scale game, but the smallest mechs will be the same size as your average 28-30mm figure. Starting teams will have 7 models, and that will be 4 light mechs, 2 medium mechs and 1 heavy mech. I'll be starting with 2 teams .. the Terran Titans sponsored by Earth's military and the Team Bushido sponsored by the Mitsufugi Corporation that will have a kind of anime look. There will be others too, like martian tripod mechs, cybrogs & andriods, alien biomechs, space pirates with hacked together mechs and more. You can use the mechs right out of the box, or design your own team and easily swap around the weapons and other parts since everything will be designed to snap together real easy.

Anyway what I'm trying to decide on is if I should go the all plastic boxed game route, and do something similar to the new starter set from Dropzone Commander. Or, metal figures (with maybe the heavies in resin?) sold separate and just a rulebook. The latter is the cheapest method and because it's cheaper I could get more models done for the same amount of starting cash. However the whole idea of building your mechs from scratch with weapons you can swap around easily makes me feel like plastic is the way to go. With metal figures, you could customize everything, but you would probably have to glue your weapons on for them to stay properly unless you get creative with magnets.

The 3D sculpting for plastic models will cost about 3x as much as the 3D sculpting for metals, and the 2 technologies aren't really compatible. Plastics need CAD software, but most 3D sculptors who do metal or resin figures use programs like Zbrush, and I've been told by the manufacturer that the files just don't mix well. I don't want to have to pay to sculpt things twice. When it comes to the Kickstarter campaign, I would likely need something like $70,000 to fund the plastics, and we'd need like $40k to unlock each new team. With metal figures the funding level would be more like $10-20k, and maybe $10k for each new team.

So I'm leaning more toward metal to be honest, because I'll be able to get more done. But I would much rather have plastic models, so they will be easy to build and play with. What would you rather see?


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also .. here are the first rough sketches for the Terran mechs. Light, Medium and Heavy. Light mechs are more like an oversized battlesuit, so the guy moving around inside will control the arms and legs.

These are really rough, just meant to show the basic shapes. The final detailed pics will be done soon.

Sounds alot like Heavy Gear Arena by DP9. Best of luck to you as the mecha genre is definitely one of my favorites. I'd probably suggest starting out the initial KS with metals/resin and then putting in a higher stretch goal(s) of switching factions/units to plastic. Just make it clear from the beginning that it is your goal (if you decide to go that route) so no one can legitimately complain that they only pledged for metals.

yeah, I never played Heavy Gear and I'm only a little familiar with it. The models look cool though. I hope it won't be too much like it in the end. I was thinking of it more like Battletech, only you measure stuff instead of having hex spaces and you can build your own mechs. And more simplified rules, just basically making it BWG with robots. I've been thinking about adding a hit location kind of thing though, so weapons can get blown off.

Also the idea is you can play the arena game with teams of 7 or so models per side, or you can expand using the same rules but having bigger battles that are all out wars the different armies are fighting, not a team sport. And those bigger games could include tanks and other vehicles, bases with a few troops on them, flying things, maybe even super heavies. But that would all come much much later.

One idea I had was to start as metal and switch to plastic like you suggest, but I wanted to get away from having to sculpt things twice. I was thinking in the KS there would be a sweet spot pledge for like 2 teams + the rules and other goodies. At a certain level we can unlock the full boxed game and then everyone who pledged that level will automagically get the full boxed game instead. Though maybe we can do something like having the heavies done in plastic first, since they're bigger and the smaller mechs could still be metal at first. The molds alone will cost something like $12,000 per sprue. I'm guessing we'd need something like 3-4 sprues for a full team. so I'm just scared we won't be able to afford plastics unless the campaign really took off.

Metal is fine by me...but shipping cost will increase as well.
Resin or PVC would be the logical bridge. Great detail and low weight.
Good Luck!!

I don't mind metal for regular sized figures, but once they start getting into the multi-part range I don't like metal as much since you have to pin everything, and then there's the big pieces that can warp just enough to not fit together snugly as the metal cools. I think the heavy mechs are going to end up around the size of an average warmachine jack or space marine dreadnought.

PCV could work, but I'm hesitant because I wasn't too impressed with the quality of my Sedition Wars figures, lots of warpage and crazy mold lines for some of them. PVC also still has high priced molds too, so I'd rather just do a traditional injection molded kind of model kit if I were to go with plastics. Been chatting here and there with Wargames Factory, so if I do plastics I'd want it to be with them for sure. I just have to get the final concept art all done first before we can move forward at all. Just worried the higher sculpting price will also be out of my startup price range, but I don't want to do a KS campaign without at least showing some model prototypes or 3D prints. I don't think the campaign will do too well if all I have is some concept art.

So.. waiting to get the final art done for the fist 2 teams and then I'll take it from there I guess

Here's a really really rough sketch of the Team Bushido light mech.



I should have detailed more final pics of the Terran Titans next week some time

If you go the kickstarter route could do plastic as a stretch goal?

Yeah I may try something like that. The issue was that if I have them sculpted for metal, I'd have to have them re-sculpted for plastic since the 2 kinds of software aren't compatible. But we'll see once I get the art done for the 2 teams I'll be able to get a good idea of what it will all cost and I can take it from there.

I'd also like to do some ruined building terrain too if I can, but those would probably just be resin. Been having a hard time finding good cityfight style buildings in 15mm, so I may as well just make my own

 Necros wrote:
Yeah I may try something like that. The issue was that if I have them sculpted for metal, I'd have to have them re-sculpted for plastic since the 2 kinds of software aren't compatible. But we'll see once I get the art done for the 2 teams I'll be able to get a good idea of what it will all cost and I can take it from there.

I'd also like to do some ruined building terrain too if I can, but those would probably just be resin. Been having a hard time finding good cityfight style buildings in 15mm, so I may as well just make my own

You'd likely find it'd sell for the terrain alone within reason. Look at the success of the DZC starter, it does well but including terrain (not something always greatly available to new players) is something that doesn't seem to occur to many games producers.

I would try for plastic from the get go, hopefully with some scenery as a separate pledge level to get those buyers in, that will help offset the price for plastic tooling.

Even better with plastic if there was something that would fit well for not terminators or the new bigger ones, as that could help sales.

Yeah terrain is something I'd really like to do. I was thinking of going the boxed game route and having cardstock buildings like Dropzone Commander and some board tiles.. and then do resin or plastic buildings as a stretch goal later on.

I just worry about needing a funding goal of like $75k if it's all plastic, and then not making it

 Necros wrote:
Yeah terrain is something I'd really like to do. I was thinking of going the boxed game route and having cardstock buildings like Dropzone Commander and some board tiles.. and then do resin or plastic buildings as a stretch goal later on.

I just worry about needing a funding goal of like $75k if it's all plastic, and then not making it

I'd be fine with cardstock, like i said the main terrain reason is for new players as it gives something quick and easy to use to block LOS and look pretty so they can focus on the models and gameplay.

If the funding fails at $75k plastic first time round, couldn't you do a relaunch later in metal? It'd give you a good idea of if the game could reasonably make that much to begin with right?

Yeah that's probably what I'd do. Or just break it up and sell everything as separate sets and a rulebook instead of a big boxed game.


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Oh and.. kind of wondering, would it be "bad form" to do a KS campaign for this, and a BWG KS as well, within a few months of each other? BWG will be run and delivered by Game Salute. It's a Game Salute product line, all I really do is write it now. but I'll be doing Mechadrome myself though.

Not really bad form, mantic does it all the time it seems But it boils down to what you have your heart set on, do you want to follow what you did with BWG or do it along a different track?

Well the plan is to have both games going at the same time.. like Mantic has their sci fi and their fantasy games.. same idea here. So hopefully I'll get to the point soon where I have something new coming out every month or so for BWG or Mecharome or the 3rd game I'm planning.. but the 3rd would be a couple years away, want to make sure the first 2 are up and running and able to support themselves.

If Game Salute is running one, and you are doing one more yourself, I can't see there being a problem with there being 2 running close to each other.

I think you should make a goal to do plastic right away, with as much multikit stuff as possible. Some high end plastic kits that can be changed around would sell very well I imagine.

Yeah I'd like to jump right into plastic, it's just scary because it costs so much up front before you even get to the molds. Sculpting for metal is cheaper and safer, but then if I sculpt for metal I have to pay to have everything re-sculpted for plastic. So once I get the art all done I'll get my quotes and see what will work best. I don't think I want to go with PVC or Restic or any of those other things, just because the PVC molds are also pricey so if I'm spending that kinda money, I may as well do real plastic with Wargames Factory. I guess PVC is a good in-between for if I don't want to do metal, but I'd rather go for the high quality if I can afford it.

If I do plastic what I'm hoping to do is have the heavy mechs on 1 frame, and a medium & 2 lights on another.. so they would be packaged as 1 heavy or a squad of 3, or the whole team of 1 heavy and 2 squads. And then if I can do the big boxed game it would be 2 full teams, a board or separate board tiles and some cardstock buildings. Right now I have the rules written for boards with hex spaces, but I think I'm going to drop that and go for good old measuring instead.

But if I ended up going with metal, I think a big boxed game would be too expensive because of the metal figs, so I'd probably sell that as separate box sets and a rulebook. And then maybe still do the board and buildings as a separate thing.

Just gotta wait to get the finished artwork before I can start getting quotes But I definitely want to have both teams sculpted at least in 3D screenshots before I do a KS campaign. I don't think it'll work if it's just based on some artwork. I think that's what kind of hurt the BWG campaigns. If it's models people really need to see what the actual models will look like.

Is it possible to modify models designed for plastic to work in metal? That might be something that is easier to transition for.

I can understand the fears of trying to do it in plastic. That is a huge investment, and you would have to be able to make 2 starter armies up front, and have plenty of fun stretches (I want more dice!) too.

There will be dice Each team will have their own little emblem, so I was going to make special dice for each team with their emblem on #6. So far I have 6 teams planned. We'll start with the Terran Titans vs Team Bushido. Then I have the Redsand Raiders who are martians with tripod mechs. Driodstroyers are cybrogs and andriods with mechs with lots of lenses and tencacle hoses and stuff like that, kind of like the seekers from the Matrix. Buccaneers are space pirates with a road warrior feel with rusty mechs hacked together from other parts and starship hulls and stuff. And the Aphid Swarmers are an alien bug-race that drive not-nid Alieny bio-mechs. There will also be some free agents that you can add to any team, like hired guns in BWG.

So we'll start off with the first 2 teams. Each team will have 1 heavy mech, 2 of the same medium mechs and 4 of the same light mechs (maybe 2 different poses). You add the weapons you want to personalize them, and other equipment like booster jets or shield generators or extra armor. Basically a light mech gets 3 slots for weapons & equipment, mediums get 4 and heavies get 5.

Unlocking a new team will probably be a pretty hefty goal though.. just guessing we would need 3 molds (heavy + med & 2 lights + weapon sprue). Molds alone cost around $12k each. So I'd have to mix in some free agents and other smaller goals inbetween. I was actually thinking about pairing up 2 teams each as their own separate boxed game like for Season 2 or Season 3. Each boxed game would have the full rules and everything you need to play so you can just buy the set with the teams you like best, or buy them all or just buy the minis separately. So, if we don't get high enough, I could do each new season as a whole separate KS campaign, after the first one has been delivered of course.

Got some new art tonight. Here is the updated design for the Terran Titans light mech, and also the Team Bushido light mech

Here's the Team Bushido Medium Mech

And here's the Heavy Terran mech

Ohhh I like the Terran Heavy, not too sure about leaving the soft fleshy part exposed mind

Nothing fleshy on him at all and he's also going to have a shield generator on his back, so he'll have 4 armor (like hp) and 5 shields

Then I shall rephrase to "clear perspex bullseye" still the designs look damn cool, liking the terrans a lot.

Forgot to share this one.. here is the Terran medium mech .. still a WIP, he's not playing a drum with a wrecking ball. Still needs to get some more weapons added

What will the goal of the matches be? Scoring points in some way or just killing the other team?

What type of arenas will matches be played in?

For terrain you should look into working with Proxie Models. Ken is located in York, so you could stop by and check it out yourself if you wanted to do a little roadtrip.

If you go for plastic you'd need a lot more people to sign up for it and if you encounter issues, then you'll have a lot more unhappy people to deal with. With metal you can do it for less and need fewer people to support you.

Maybe you can do your first kickstarter for metal/resin and then in a few years if the game has legs you could do another one for different plastic models. That way everything from the first KS would still be useful for gamers and you could still sell it alongside the plastic stuff.

There will be different missions with different goals. There's the basic set up and kill game, but other things like take & hold objectives, capture the flag, king of the hill and other things like that.

The arenas will be (mostly) abandoned cities, derelict space stations, canyony asteroid bases and more. The boxed game will come with a basic cityfight arena where the board will look like streets and city blocks, and ruined building corner pieces for terrain that you can lay out all over the board for obstacles.

I was actually about to contact Ken about using his bases for the models

I am actually leaning more toward metal and resin. I'm going over the basic costs for the molds and sculpting in my head and it's making my brain hurt. If each frame is gonna cost like $12k and what if I end up needing 3-4 frames between the heavy, medium and light mechs + weapons + bases. And then there's the sculpting charge on top of that too. But, I'm still going to get the concept art finished up and then get the estimates and see if we can make it work. I'd much rather have the full boxed game with plastic minis, but I'll have to see what I can afford. I don't want to rely 100% on kickstarter, because that would be such a high funding goal that people would probably just laugh at me. So I want to see what I can afford to do with my preliminary budget and take it from there.

So I'll see how it goes. If it ends up being too high, I can start with metal and resin and maybe follow Dropzone Commander's lead and do a plastic 2-player starter set later on. Or possibly save that as a really high stretch goal. Maybe if I start with metal and have a sweet spot for 2 teams + a rulebook, if we can do the boxed game as a stretch then people at the sweet spot get an automagical upgrade to the full box.

Got my vote for more off the wall objectives. Cat and mouse games or even a mario kart style race could be interesting too.

And here's the Team Bushido heavy mech

I'm a little torn trying to think of the best way to handle the mech / pilot stat cards. There's such a small area to work with. I'm thinking like BWG the weapons and upgrades (upgrades = skills) on the back, attributes and name on the front. But, should the name on the card be the name of the pilot, with a picture of the pilot? Or the name of the mech, and a picture of the mech?

In the game world, the pilots are what makes the team.. they're all huge bajillionare celebrities like pro sports people nowadays. But, each pilot has their own mech and pit crew, kind of like auto racing. In many cases they build the mech themselves or at least help plan it's construction or programming. The game piece is going to a mech, so I'm starting to think a "pilot card" might be a little confusing. Should it be like "Joe Shmoe piloting The Punisher" or "The Punisher piloted by Joe Shmoe"

And also ... I kind of like the small playing card sized stat cards mostly because it's easy to put your whole team in a 9-slot baseball card page, or easy to find separate sleeves for protection, and it's just a standard size. But, I'm starting to wonder if maybe it would be better to use larger sized cards for each mech, more along the lines of Dust Tactics, or the character sheets in Descent? Or would that be too big and unwieldy when you have 7 or more models on your team? Just thinking that would allow the space to have all of the stats, weapons and upgrades all on the front so you don't have to flip the card over at all. But then, you wouldn't be able to have any card sleeves... and the reason I care about the sleeves is I wanted to have hit locations.. when you fail your save you roll 1 D6 to see what gets hit, so you can lose weapons instead of armor sometimes. So, having the sleeves you could just mark off damage with dry erase marker instead of messing up your cards.

Anyway .. just seeing if anyone has any preference or ideas Currently planning on the standard sized cards but open to suggestions...

Are you set on pilots being in certain mechs? How about the mechs providing a base for the most of the stats, with the pilots skills modifying the stats plus bringing the abilities? So say Light Terran A has Move- X and Defence-Y. Pilot A gives it say a +1 to move and a relavent ability because the pilots a speedfreak say and stripped off the weight. Pilot B ups the defence but maybe lowers the speed slightly. See where i'm gping with this or did i miss your point?

I like the idea of different cards for mechs and pilots. FFG's X-Wing game has different pilot cards players can use to add variety while keeping the miniatures the same and that seems to add a nice level of variety to the game from what I hear.

Eventually you could even just release an expansion pack with different pilots to add more variety.

Actually thats the way I had it originally. You had your mech stats, and your pilot stats and added them together.. but a few of the testers thought it was too much math and would be much easer to have 1 card to rule it all. So, thinking of it like warmachine where you have a card for each warjack. or BWG where you have a card for each gang member. Just not sure theme-wise if it should be more about the pilot or more about the mech. The fluff and fiction is going to be more about the pilots, but in the game you're playing with their mechs.

I guess I'm thinking of it kind of like the movie Pacific Rim, where the robots had a name like Gypsy Danger, but they were nothing without their pilots. I was thinking of doing the stat cards something like this, but I'd need a much bigger card if I'm gonna get all the info on 1 side. It would probably have to be more like an index card than a playing card.



But then, if I do the bigger cards we could incorporate the pilots maybe like a headshot off to the side the way they do it on TV when they show you football stats. But then.. without a card sleeve I think it will be tougher for people to track damage on their mechs so I would probably have to drop the hit location thing, if there's no way to mark off the damage on your card without messing it up.

Rather than adding stats together maybe the pilots should just add modifiers? Maybe allowing re-rolls for failed tests or adding a die type to a roll? Or having some tests based on the pilots' skills and some on the mechs' attributes?

Aim or reflexes or concentration could be pilot skills and mechs' attributes could modify them. Light mechs add a positive to reflexes, and heavy a negative. Heavy mechs could give a bonus to concentration because they're not going to get knocked around as easily as a light mech.

Just some thoughts.

Hmm.. yeah that could work. What I was just thinking was that there would be different pilots with different professions, and each profession gives a different upgrade (basically skills) to your mech. I had it like that at first, but took professions out so all upgrades would be based on your CPU level so people could customize things more.

The way I have it now, it's got the same stats as BWG, just renamed. Strength = Power, Quickness = Speed, Stamina = Energy, Intellect = CPU.

Strength is mostly just for melee combat. I used to have have that like BWG where it's the amount of weapons you can have, but I decided to change that too. So now now light mechs can have 3 weapons or equipment (like shield generators or booster jets), mediums get 4 and heavies get 5 (and some day super heavies will get 6 )

speed = how many inches you can move, instead of everyone moving 6 like BWG. And now running is an upgrade you can take, and for lights they can go 3", 2" for medium and 1" for heavies.

Energy is how much power you can devote to weapons, and it gets used up activation, and refreshes in the next game turn. So if your Energy is 5, and you shoot a gun that costs 3, you have 2 points left to shoot something else with a different gun, or boost your shields or whatever.

CPU is just how many upgrades your mech can have.

And then ranged & melee combat are the same as BWG.

Light mechs are like henchmen, and get 10 pts to add to attributes. Mediums = professionals and heavies = gang leaders or hired guns. In your team you get 1 heavy for every 2 mediums, and 1 medium for every 2 lights, so a normal team is 7 models with 4 light mechs, 2 medium mechs and 1 heavy. And 1 medium mech will be the Team Captain who adds +1 to every attribute.

Anyway, I have the test version of the skirmish rules pretty much done for now, so I'll clean them up and post them in the next day or so for anyone that wants to check them out


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Was just thinking, maybe I can include an additional card with each team captain model, kind of like how warmachine has 2 cards for a warcaster. I could add his bonus team skill on there, plus the special team weapon rules, and maybe a little fluff. and the standard pilot card can have the basic weapons & skills for easy reference

As usual, life happened, so I didn't get a chance to finish the preview rules.. but they're just about done. mostly just have to format stuff. It will be just the rules though, not much fluff or anything yet. I have the finalized art for each mech now. There's been a few tweaks but the overall design is the same. I'll post the final ones shortly too.

I think I'm going to go with tarot sized cards. Basically gives me an extra inch or so in the height, so I'll have some more room to work with. And you can get sleeves for them too for the players that want that. And I think I'll go with the "pilot's name piloting mech's name" format. But, the art on the front of the card will show the mech, with a headshot box showing the driver's face. Kind of like how they do it on TV nowadays when they're showing you a player's stats or position or whatever. And then like BWG we'll have the attributes on the front, weapons & upgrades on the back.

So I sent the art out to some sculptors now to get some quotes. I was planning to just have 3 sculpts done per team, not including weapons.. so 1 light body, 1 medium and 1 heavy. I think for the lights though, we might have to do each one as a separate pose, so they aren't all exactly the same. That might work for metal, but if we do plastic then they will probably have to be the same. guess I'll see how it goes.

Also thinking about dropping the starter sets from 7 to 5 models.. for costs mostly. So a starter would have 4 lights and 1 medium as the team captain. Then we'd probably sell heavies and mediums separately, and extra light mechs in pairs. That will give us a lower starting costs, and we can unlock the heavies as stretch goals if I can't afford to sculpt them ahead of time.

Sounds like a solid plan.

Here's a Pilot Card mockup I was messing with. They won't have the starfield background in the end, each one will be a full color pic of the mech, maybe I'll keep it for the back side though.

I thought it might be good to use icons for the different stats instead of text. So top to bottom left to right we have Armor, Shields, Ranged Combat, Melee Combat, Power, Speed, Energy and CPU.

Not sure about the armor and shield icons though... thinking the armor icon should go with the shields, since it's a shield and all... but then, what do I do for armor? Robots don't have hearts. Maybe a + sign like the red cross? it's not really health though, it's armor.

Anyway here it is

I like them! Will you be doing blank cards too?

Yep.. I'll do blank cards and also a more traditional roster sheet. I think I'm going to have to change up the back of the card a bit, right now I can only fit about 9 different things, but I need to be able to fit up to 13, so there will be room for up to 6 weapons, 6 upgrades and I'd like to add the special team skill to each card too. I might play around with some other layouts, maybe go for horizontal style instead of vertical.

I'd also really like to do an online team builder that will spit your team out into a handy PDF that you can print, or you can just view it online on any device. For BWG too. Programming that is beyond me though and I'd rather spend what little funds I have on the models and stuff right now. Maybe that can be a stretch goal after the models are all funded

I think I'm gonna post the rules tonight. I wanted to get some of the diagrams and stuff done first, but I think it will be better to wait till I can at least get some 3D sculpts done and use them to illustrate stuff better. I'll just keep updating it as I get more stuff done, but the text is all done now.

OK, as promised, here are the skirmish rules

http://www.blackwatergulch.com/temp/mechadrome-test-v06.pdf

It's all just plain text, about 20 pages. You will see things like "insert diagram here" or "see page ### for whatever" .. that's just for my reference for later when I do the pretty version. I'm going to be working on the pretty version next so it'll be laid out nice, and then once that version is done I'll make a more official announcement about the game and show off all the art on the news sites and stuff. Things are still a little rough right now. For now, if you want to test it out, you'll have to design your own team, and the rules for custom teams is at the end. If you've played BWG you'll see it's pretty much the same exact game, just with robots, and just a few tweaks to the team creation part.

Anyway, I'd love to get any feedback .. you can reply or PM or email me

Next, I changed the pilot cards to landscape format. I think it works much better this way, and I should be able to fit all the info I need on the backs for the bigger mechs that will have more weapons and upgrades.



And, I just got the updated rough drafts of the first 2 team emblems, so here is Team Bushido and Terran Titans. Really liking how they came out.

Just updated the emblems above, just got cleaner almost final versions. Still not totally finished, but almost there

I think I'm going to change up the mechs as they would be included in the boxes and take more of a "warmachine" approach, and not have each one be an individual pilot. So the main character in your team will be the team captain. Then instead of adding "bill smith piloting this or that mech" you'll just add a "Crusher Medium Mech" or "Annihilator Heavy Mech" .. those mechs will always come with the same weapons and upgrades. A team captain's mech would be based on an pre-existing model, but enhanced with extra upgrades or different weapons and the model itself will have extra detals and stuff. I think it will be easier for me to balance and package everything, and I won't need to print up a bajillion different character cards that way. I'll also be adding "free agents" who are more like a hired gun in BWG, each in their own unique mech that can be added to every team.

You'll still be able to build your own custom teams and mechs though, I'm thinking it might be easier to sell weapon and equipment packs separately for conversions and stuff.

Necros, while I love the idea of hockey jerseys, they're expensive as hell for a small run... like 50 bucks a shirt :-\

Yeah, thats about the best price I could find too. I was just thinking they wouldn't really be something I'd be making a profit on, just ordering them for those that want them and make the price as cheap as I can.. and then maybe make a few bucks if we end up ordering a bunch. Was more like just something fun to do as a 1 time only special thing. I'll be getting a couple done for myself just for con demo gear while I'm at it I could get em for other folks too if anyone wants one.

Considered some other kind of sports paraphernalia for it instead? Baseball caps maybe? (I mean in terms of cheaper for yourself, I get the sentiment behind it but theres no sense putting yourself out when you can get a similar sentiment for cheaper)

Yep hats could work too. And mugs, keychains, clocks, mouse pads, whatever

Maybe what I can do is set up a cafepress shop or one of those other sites that do custom merch, and folks can get a bunch of different things made if they want it. that's a ways off though, just want to get the game going first.

So far the concept art is interesting.

Any plans for Romen gladiator mecs?

Yep definitely a possibility Really we can do just about any kind of Mech. I'm starting with some more traditional looking things to get it out there, and we can expand to all kinds of themes. Each team is really just 3 models, a light, medium and heavy. Then you add the different weapons & equipment to make them uniqueish.

So I'm going to be starting off with the Terran Titans and Team Bushido. Next up will be the Redsand Raiders (martian tripod mechs), The Droidstroyers (android/cyborgs), The Buccaneers (space pirates) and the Aphid Swarmers (bug alien bio-mechs).

After that I have some ideas for other teams, but they would probably have to be for season 2

If you stick to all 1 team, you get a preferred weapon upgrade where each team has a certain weapon they can use better than anyone else and get a to hit bonus. But you can also make an "all star" team and have mechs from a bunch of different teams. Kind of like BWG how you can have anyone from any gang fighting together.

Like the idea of encouraging team "loyalty". Sounds rather like bonuses from a team sponser company to me :p

Careful with using the term "droid." That's a Lucasfilm copyright if I remember correctly.

If I remember right that only applies to the straight use of "droid". Extending it out like that should be fine i believe. Hell i'v got final fantasy loaded up at the minute with things like "zwiedroid". Just dont shorted it sown and yo ushould be fine.

Hmm.. never knew droid was copyrighted. Does that mean Verizone has to pay uncle george every time someone buys a smartphone?

In the game world they were going to be called "Androids" for some retro goodness, and the team name would be Droidstroyers.

One thing I'm not sure about is the Aphid race, I can't help but think that another game might be using that too, but I can't find anything. Don't want to look like I'm copying, but the I thought the name sounded cool and it's a real kind of bug too

 Necros wrote:
Hmm.. never knew droid was copyrighted. Does that mean Verizone has to pay uncle george every time someone buys a smartphone?

Yep.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droid_(robot)#Trademark_use

Sheesh.. next thing ya know GW will try to copyright space marines. Oh wait...

Not too late to tweak the names a bit so I'll think up something else

So, I just got some estimates from a printer for the boxed game, not even including the miniatures it's gonna be $19,000 for the minimum of 1000 copies. ouch. But then, 2000 copies would be $28k. The more you get the cheaper it becomes.

So yeah, it's not gonna be a boxed game a this point. Maybe later on when the game has been around a while and it has a following big enough to support it and I can do an awesome all plastic uber version. I might still get the game board and cardstock buildings done though.. either a 6 fold board, or would separate 12" squares be better? I was thinking each square would be 1 city block, with a road on all 4 sides, so when it's all together it will look like a small downtown city area. So that's why i was thinking separate tiles would be more flexible, but would it be a pain if it's not a 1 piece thing and easy to knock around if they're separate?

Also thinking about the bases. I was going to go with square bases for the board game version, and have a grid for movement, but as a normal skirmish game maybe I can stick with round? I kind of liked also having the flat front for the firing arc, it's 180 degrees along the front edge of your base, so it's easy to figure out where the line is. With round bases it would have to be "draw an imaginary line across your base" like BWG. I like the look of round bases better, but I thought squares would make things a little easier. Kind of torn now.

Hell even motorola did back in the day
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2009/11/06/motorola-pays-lucas-for-its-droid/

But Android should be fine, the only thing you have to do is avoid shortening it to just "droid" in the official material.

Liking the sound of progress so far, and let's be honest anyone who nitpicks over lack of a 2 player box set is going to be the minority. As long as the kickstarter gives some models and the retail lets you buy in packs, who cares?

Have you considered going for a medium between the two, namely hex bases? If it had to be one or the other, i'd vote for rounded. It's unusual to see square bases on anything outside of fantasy games that need things to line up in rank if I recall?

What was the scale going to be? Games and Gears has their Kickstarter with 10mm city tiles.

this is going to be more like 15mm scale, but the light mechs will end up being the same size as your average 28-30mm mini. Mediums around 40mm tall and heavies around 50mm.

I don't mind the hex bases, they could work, but I haven't found many in different sizes already available. They seem to all be about 25-30mm, but I'm going to need bigger ones for the heavy mechs. But then, I could probably get Ken at proxie models to make custom sized bases if I end up needing them. I saw heavy gear uses hexes though, and battletech. So I thought round would be better so I'm not copying I kind of would like to stick with the rounded edge warmachine style bases though, since it's what BWG uses and it would be more efficient to stick with one kind for all games... even though I'm not a fan of ordering them from the UK.. mostly because I'm just too impatient to wait for the shipping

I've been thinking about team building, wondering if maybe it would work better with a 40k style force organization chart kind of thing, but not as strict?

The way it works now is you can take whatever you want in your team, but you need 2 light mechs for each medium mech on your team, and 2 medium mechs for each heavy you take. So if you want just 1 heavy, your team will be at least 1 heavy mech, 2 medium mechs and 4 light mechs. I'm thinking that will be what the average team would be like.

What I'm thinking now is you could have multiple team captains or squadron leader types. Each one will have a certain amount of slots open for adding mechs to your team. Each slot = 1 medium mech, or 2 light mechs, and you need 2 slots for 1 heavy. So the team captain gets 5, squad leaders get 2, so a big team with a captain and 2 squad leaders would have 9 slots to fill with stuff.

Team captains have a special skill available to any friendly mech within 12", squad leaders can extend the captain's ability range and wherever they are on the board, any mech in 6" can use the captain's skill even if the captain is way on the other side of the board. I think the squad leaders would only really be for larger games though, a team captain will still be able to field a full team of 1 heavy, 2 total mediums and 4 lights. Or you could mix it up and do all light mechs or all mediums, or 2 heavies and 1 medium. Just thinking it this way would give players more options.

The fame point values will still be the same, so you can play against a team with the same amount of fame for an evenly matched game. heavies are 4 points, mediums and 2, lights are 1, and your team captain and any squad leaders are +1 point.

What do you think of that idea? I was just thinking it would be more flexible and a good way to expand your teams for larger games. I still think a good team size will be around 10 models though, like BWG. But some folks like to play big games.

Normally i'm actually a fan of FOC charts, however with only 3 types of unit i'd have said it seem's really restrictive, both for players and for any canon teams you want to make without the use of exception rules. Say one of the teams favors the use of light mechs, preferring speed and hit and run tactics or weight of numbers, or a team who favors heavily armoured behemoths.

However, with it being like BWG mechanically it may work out rather well, but i'd say keep it in mind. Theme wise, it isn't Big Damn Heroes>Leader>bunch of mooks. It's a team sports game (with stompy robots) so yeah, just keep that in mind depending on which you lean towards as more important with this, how it plays mechanically or as an experience so to speak.

I'll do some tests both ways and see what seems more fun. Thinking about the new method more, that might not work after all, seems like it'll be easy to min-max.. like you could take a team with a captain and 2 heavies, and that would probably stomp all over normal teams

Also, I think it's going to end up taking longer to get the KS campaign going for this. I decided I want to get all 6 teams drawn up first, just the starter set so each will be 1 medium team captain and 4 light mechs. Then I want to get the Terran and Bushido starters sculpted, printed and cast so I can paint them up and have pics of the real painted figs and a nice how to play video. Then I'm thinking to start the campaign will be to fund the first 2 teams, then each additional team as a stretch goal, followed by a goal for each heavy.

Also planning to put together some terrain kits, mostly ruined buildings. I'd like to try and do something modular like GW's cities of death, only in 15mm. Been talking with Proxie models about that, so I might be able to do them in plastic

Sounds like you've got it planned out, all i'll say is just remember a captain and 2 heavies may seem powerful,but remember in play theres going to be terrain and objectives. 3 mechs isnt going to give much board control, and am i safe in thinking the heavies may end up being slower? Plus theres target saturation to consider with teams of lights... just some stuff to keep in mind.

Also: how much terrain cover are you thinking for this? 2-3 pieces per quarter bored like 40k or say infinity/DZC levels of stuff eveywhere?

Yeah you will need a lot of terrain (because I'm going to make it and I want people to buy it ) .. but I'm thinking of it as mostly a "cityfight" style of game. Lots of ruined buildings. I think the cardstock buildings & board from Dropzone Commander would be a good idea of the amount of terrain you'll need.

if I can do my own printed board, I was planning to have the center of each square be like a city block, with about 2" of road going all around each edge. So it would look like a grid style city road system, and each 12" square should have 1 or 2 buildings.

Heavy mechs can be kind of fast. Their Speed can go up to 6 so then would move 6", but they can only run 1". Mediums can run 2" and lights can run 3". I think I'm going to change that around though, and have heavies not able to run, mediums can add half their speed if they run and lights can double their speed.

There's also booster jets, that add 3" to your movement and you ignore terrain in your path as you're jumping over stuff. Thinking about changing that to say heavies can't have boosters, only medium and light. Or maybe heavies need 2 boosters? so if they do that, that's 2 less weapons they would be able to have.

Worth considering at least. To me the heavies seem like something youd use to slowly lead a charge covering the lights behind it, or sit on a cross road to give it support avanues of fire. When I hear "heavy mech" my first thought isnt "120 mph and can do backflips".

Slightly more off current topic though im growing a lot more attached to the terran light designs. Remind me a bit of the mechs from lost planet.

Yeah, heavies can have any stat up to 6, mediums 5 and lights 4. But for a heavy you are going to want to focus mostly on combat and energy.. you'll need lots of energy to fire those extra weapons, and a high CPU is also good for having extra upgrades.

I was kind of thinking about changing movement & actions around a bit though. Your speed is still how many inches you move, but your Energy = how many actions you get. Moving up to your speed in inches = 1 energy. Firing 1 gun or using an upgrade or special action = 1 energy. So, you can move as much as your energy will allow, if you don't plan on shooting.

So if your energy is 4 and speed is 3, you can move up to 12" and not shoot. Or 6" and shoot 2 weapons. Or stand still and shoot 4 weapons. Or move 3", shoot 1, move 3", shoot again. Or shoot 3, then hit your booster jets to jump behind a building and get in cover. This would probably mean removing running from the game, you wouldn't really need it anymore.

Weapons wouldn't have an energy rating anymore, just power and range, but I think heavy weapons would take 2 energy to fire, since they're heavy and all, and each heavy only has 1 heavy weapon.

Also, i'm going to be getting a new medium terran concept done. I think the light is my favorite, and the heavy bushido too I like the medium now, but it feels like the chicken legs don't fit with the way the light and heavy look so the current one will become one of the Free Agents that can join any team. The new one will be kind of a cross between the heavy and light. Then I'll also be getting 3 new light mechs for the terrans and bushido. Same basic look as what we have, just the others will have different weapons and poses.

So, I'm getting a new version of the Terran medium mech drawn up, I want to go for something more of a cross between the light and heavy. I felt like the chicken legs we have now don't match the other 2. So the current terran mech will become the first Free Agent, who can join any team like hired guns in BWG. Or you can use it as a standard medium mech if you're building your own team. Also I have Bob Naismith doing the 3D sculpts for the light terrans this week. Hopefully I'll have screenshots to show off real soon.

I'm working on the "public preview test rules" now, that will have all of the diagrams and stuff. I'm also going to make preliminary pilot cards for each mech that will go in a starter set, and maybe even some printable minis as a paper standee so it will be a big print & play thing, if people don't want to use proxy models. Will take a little while to finish that. I was kind of thinking of doing the printable minis when I get the 3D sculpts done, so I can use screenshots of the fronts and backs instead of just the concept art that's 1 view.

1 other rules change.. Right now I have it where light mechs can have 3 weapons, mediums 4 and heavies 5. I decided to change that to be like BWG, where you can have as many as your Power (strength) will allow.

I also officially changed it to have Energy = amt of actions like I talked about before. I did a quick test game and I liked it.. but I'm kind of wondering if it could end up being a pain for some players, where you step out of cover, shoot, and then jump back in so it will be really tough to ever get a clean shot at someone. I'll have to play some more and see. So if a pesky mech keeps hopping behind a building, you could blow it up then blow him away.

The energy=actions thing could make some mechs go really far in one turn, especially heavies that could add extra points to speed.. so I was also thinking of adding a max movement per activation.. heavies max at 6", mediums 9" and lights 12".

Here's a quick WIP sketch for the martians

Final martian #1 .. not sure if this will be the light or the medium. If it's light then the next one will be bulkier and more armored, but if we make it medium then the next one will be wimpier looking I think we'll make this the light version though probably. He's equipped with 2 death rays, and every martian mech gets a shield generator, so they always have +1 shields. Just keep them away from germs.

Decided to make the one above be the medium mech, here is the light mech. I think the actual models will have the legs more elongated so they are taller, and so they can fit on the same sized base as the other teams. Likely to be some changes when it comes time to sculpt too. I'm thinking the lower pointy part of the legs will probably have to go, so that there's some surface area to glue the legs to the base. Also may give this guy a more pointed roof to match the medium too. We'll see how it goes.

Also, after lots of feedback I have the next version of the text rules ready to go. Here's a link if you'd like to read them
http://www.gangfightgames.com/temp/mechadrome-test-v07.pdf

Added the changes I mentioned in the last few posts, plus there's more weapons, each team is defined and I also added the rules for Capture the Flag and No Mech's Land scenarios.

I also decided to add a turn limit to the game, so each game will last 8 turns and you calculate your points based on how many kills you got. The games I've been playing seemed to be in the 10-12 turn range, so I thought 8 would be a good point to try and rush and get as many points as you can in the time limit.




Tomorrow or over the weekend I should be getting some concepts for the Aphid Swarmers, and next week I should be getting the first screenshots for the Terran light mech sculpt

Think I finally nailed down a card layout that I like. Back down to the standard playing card size instead of tarot. I'd like to stick with what's most common. That way players can easily find sleeves or use baseball card pages, and they'll also fit the clamshell packs I have. So here's what I have now.. it will just have color art in the end

Got the final logos




And here's the first Aphid, a light biomech with extra armor and 2 powerblades. Going for a "part bug part dinosaur" kinda of thing. The medium will probably be more crab looking though, only with cannons instead of claws.

Dang I am liking that Aphid :O More like trained animals than giant mecha heh.

Yeah that's kind of what I was going for They are a race that doesn't use metal, all of their vehicles and buildings are made out of chitinny stuff that's bioengineered and grown instead of manufactured. But since human-run Galactic Mechadrome League decides all the rules and regulations, if they want to play in our sandbox they have to adapt their designs to work with human tech too.. so their mechs are half giant monster and half robot

I think the final mini might be a little more upright.. but still this guy is only gonna be 30mm tall like the other light mechs. Some will have cannon arms, or lobstery claw arms and other stuff

Just got the initial sculpts for the light bushido mech.. he did that first instead of terrans. gonna wait till the next round of pics to show that off since some stuff has to change and it's mostly just a basic shape right now.

kinda sounds like Wexter from Axe Cop




Automatically Appended Next Post:
http://axecop.com/comic/ask-axe-cop-8/

Hmm.. how about the Aphid Wexler Pattern Light Biomech with Chaingun Salvo

huh...and now as much as i like those aphids i'm finding myself looking at toy dinosaurs and spare gun bitz....

Here's the concept art for the top secret 7th team *




* not really

WAIT! I thought this was going to be the 7th team!

Dino Riders for the win!

Can we not have the best of both, a gundam riding a trex?

So, I'm also working on some papercraft terrain for the game. Will be mostly ruined building corners and that sort of thing. They will just be PDFs that people can download off my website, I figured it would be an easy way to get some obstacles going for the game if you don't normally play 15mm games.

Just starting to plan them out now, but I'm starting with a modular road system like the pic below (only it will be nice and textured in the end.) My idea was to have a bunch of 4x4" squares with straight roads and a sidewalk on either side, and then also right or left turns, T's and +'s too. You print out the pieces you want, mount them to a board if you want, and cut them out, then lay out the road pieces you want on your board.



Would that be a pain to play with though? a whole bunch of paper road squares mixed in with buildings, all made of paper or cardstock.. I worry it will be easy to knock things around and make the game annoying.

Also, just thinking aloud... looking at thegamecrafter.com, I could have the roads professionally printed if I stick to the 4x4" squares. It could be a heavy cardstock that's just 1 sided, but probably kind of pricey for a "page" of 8 tiles. Or, I could go with double-sided playing card thickness for a lot cheaper. But, it would be pretty much print on demand, so I wouldn't need to buy tons of it, folks that want pre-printed could order right from them and I'll get a little cut. Sounds like a better deal to go with the thin cards, but I think they would be tougher to play with and would slide around easily. But, I wouldn't be able to have the buildings printed unless I go with a pro printing option with die cuts and all that stuff, and I'd need to order like 1000 copies so it could end up being expensive.

Next up, aphid medium. Armed with 2 crusher claws and 2 acid guns



I think for the actual sculpt I'm going to have the body a bit wider and the legs a little closer in, but you get the idea

If the large isn't a giant scorpion made of metal and nightmares i'm going to be a little disappointed

Actually, yes it will be will have a similar look as this, just larger and with his heavy weapon as the scorpion tail

Gonna move on and get the last 2 teams done first then go back and do the heavies. Still waiting on the screenshot of the sculpts for the Bushido, hopefully will have them soon.

And here's the new Terran Medium mech. This will be the team captain armed with a chaingun, railgun and missile pod, plus booster jets and a shield generator. The flag is just to say "Hi, I'm the team captain" .. going to have an extra flag or banner piece that you can add to any mech that will be your captain so you can tell them apart, or leave that piece off if it's just going to be a normal medium mech. Also planning to reuse the banners for objective marker models too

And here's the Light Bushido sculpt so far. Still not done and not posed yet but I like where it's going. Just asked to change the animal looking face to something more like a samurai armor mask

Would you be annoyed with multi-part metal figures?

Been thinking about how to sculpt the minis, and it might be good to do them sort of like the Warmachine jacks, where you have 2 legs, a body and weapon arms. But that might only work because they're big.. would gluing 2 little legs to a torso, to make a 30mm tall figure? Or should I try and go for 1 full body and just separate weapons? Or 2 legs & hips, separate torso, separate weapons kinda like a space marine?

I personally like the idea of having more pieces so you can make your own cool poses. But maybe I'm just used to GW kits that are plastic... a little worried multi part metals would be a pain to build, and break easy. Would I be better off just saving that kind of thing for the larger heavy mechs? Would mono-pose light mechs be a bad idea, even if they'll all have different weapons?

What do you guys think?

I actually have no problems with multi part metal, so long as the pieces arent microscopically tiny (been building 6mm tanks, i'd take giant metals over them any day). Though I think this falls into the usual metal vs other material debate generally. I dunno, my vote goes to metal at any rate. Like to feel the weight of the money i'v just blown

Yeah, I'm kind of thinking of them like my PHR walkers from Dropzone Commander.. They have 2 legs, hips, a body and then the weapons/arms. I think I'd do something similar, but keep the hips and body as 1 piece. But my light mechs will be a bit bigger anyway.

I'm feeling like it's gonna be the only way to show all the cool details mechs will need like the cogs and pistons and armor plates and all that stuff. It's not a cowboy wearing jeans...

I'm also going to see about handling the 3D sculpting myself for most mechs.. maybe not the first batch since I'm still a noob, but I'm learning fast. Cutting out the high sculpting costs will let me just make what I want when I want without having to rely on Kickstarter for everything. BWG is another story though, I think Mechs will be a lot easier to sculpt than people.

Working on the rulebook still, got delayed since I've been learning 3D modeling.. and holiday stuff. And Assassins Creed 4.

Kind of curious about the rulebook ... do you like seeing character stats in the rules? Or should I just do all that with cards?

I was going to leave them out to save space, since all the info is on the cards, but I'm wondering if it would be worth it to add a little bio for each mech. It would be 6-8 pages per team probably, and with 6 teams that could be 48 pages. I'm up to 50 or so right now, with very little art.. adding art will bump it up to around 60 probably. The BWG rulebook is around 80 so that's what I was aiming for. An 80 page book will probably cost around $25.

Also been thinking of going with Wargame Vault for the book & card printing.. I can order a bunch for the KS orders, and then it would be print on demand if anyone wants to order one after that. And they can ship from the UK or the US too which is nice.

Round 2 for the Light Bushido mech. got a pose now and the mask is more defined, kind of minotaury. I just asked if we can drop the cone hat idea and just have a more flat top, where you can stick an optional missile pod, so it's over the head instead of over the shoulder

Another thing I've been thinking about, is changing around the starter sets.. instead of 4 lights and 1 medium, it would be 5 lights. The team captain gets +1 to all stats, so he'll still be tougher than the rest.

Then we'd have medium mechs sold separately, and heavy mechs separate too. Each team would have several team captains, similar to Warmachine having different warcasters, each with different powers. We'd eventually do medium and maybe even heavy team captains too.

I'm thinking for retail we'd have the starter set, plus a blister/clamshell pack of 2 shooty lights, 2 melee lights, 1 shooty medium, 1 melee medium and then 1 box set for heavies where you can build 2-3 different versions. And then each team captain sold separately too. I'm not a fan of wall-hanging blister packs, but I guess it does make the most sense for minis, getting separate boxes made for every little release is pricey.

So for Team Bushido you'd get 5 mechs like the one above. The team captain will get the minotaur looking mask, the others will be more basic.

We're also going to lose the cone hat and leave a spot up top for an over the head missile pod, kinda like a space marine terminator with cyclone missiles.

So, I'm learning how to do 3D sculpts which I hope will save time (and money) later on down the line. Since I have sculptors working on Team Bushido and the Terran Titans, I decided to start with the Redsand Raiders (martians).

It will take me a while to get the first one down, but I'm making some progress. I made a different post under dakka's painting and modeling blogs to track my progress rather than clutter up this one. So far I have the legs done for the light mech, but still a long way to go...

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/569221.page

Wrong page link

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/569221.page

ha.. oops, thanks

So I have Bob Naismith finalizing the Team Bushido starter set. It will be 5 light mechs. They will pretty much all have Powerblades since that's their preferred weapon. Each starter set for each team will come with 2 melee oriented lights, 2 ranged, and a Team captain. So for Bushido the Captain will have a sword, blaster pistol, missile pod & booster jets. Melee mechs will be a sword, shield & booster jets and the other 2 pistols & boosters. Ranged will have a plasma gun and a railgun, both will be kind of like a rifle, with a powerblade bayonett and missile pods over their shoulders.

Dave Kidd is my new sculptor who will be doing the Terran mechs. Going to deviate from the concept art a bit and have the pilot inside a full cockpit instead of exposed, mostly so it will be easier to do the molds and stuff. The chainguns are going to have an ammo drum instead of ammo belt going around the back, also for molds. These will have the standard weapons that other teams will use too.

Bushido's weapons are a different style since they're more humanoid looking instead of mech looking, so they are wielded like pistols and rifles. The Nexus Guardians will be a similar style so they will probably share the same weapon bits. But also since they are more humanoid some of them might be more like a single piece sculpt with weapons and all, not as swappable like the more mechy mechs. Guess we'll see how it goes iin the final sculpts. The bigger medium and heavy mechs will have a lot more options though.

I'm still working on the Redsand Raiders mech and learning 3D sculpting as I go. I will probably have to wait until Dave gets the Terran weapons finished before I can finish mine, as they will be a universal fit that will need to be able to work with the redsand raiders, aphid swarmers and buccaneers. I'm trying to keep the amount of bits (and initial sculpts to pay for) lower by sharing them among other teams. They also won't change much since they're all the standard weapons approved for use by the Galactic Mechadrome League

So, I'm kinda torn.. trying to plan out the best way to structure the eventual Kickstarter campaign to get the most stuff unlocked if we don't get tons of funding. I'm expecting it to do about the same as the BWG campaigns, not planning on a goldmine or anything.

At first I was thinking it would be best to unlock each team's starter set. Since starters are going to be 5 light mechs, that would mean we would need to get a lot of funding (probably 40-50k) before we can fund the first medium mech. It would be great to generate that much, but I want to be realistic with my expectations. So now I'm thinking I should just focus on the first 2 teams, the Terran Titans and Team Bushido. The main funding goal would be to unlock both starter sets, then we move on to unlocking the medium mechs, then the heavy mechs, then the 3rd team's light, mediums and heavy and so on.

But I'm just torn because I'd also like to have the variety of having lots of different looking teams and mechs, but the way the game plays I think you really want to have mediums and heavies to have a fun game, at least that's how my own playtests went.

The campaign probably won't be till around March, but I want to decide now so I know which preliminary sculpts to focus on. So what would you rather see? 6 different team starter sets of just light mechs? Or 2-3 complete teams?

I think I would prefer to have complete teams and to get the other teams later.

Here's the next batch of sculpts for Team Bushido.. now you can see all the different versions and guns and stuff Still some minor tweaks left but they're almost done

Gonna be getting some custom dice made for each team, for the Kickstarter. Here they are.. Terran Titans in blue and Team Bushido in red. I think like BWG it will be a pack of 6 for $10, but I think I might offer them where you can get 6 of just 1 team, or 3 of both if you want.

I've been stuck for a while between if I want to have generic mech names so players can easily have 2 of the same model, or have each one be a unique character. I think now I'm going to go with the latter, and since each set will come with extra weapon bits people can easily make their own characters & mechs too. I was going to have it like where you would add in a "Leadspitter" mech if they want one with 2 chainguns for example, and you could have 2 or 3 Leadspiiters in your team. but now I think it'll be better if it's more like Leadspitter is the pilot's callsign.

So on that note, I'm also kind of torn... should I have the same pilot characters driving light, medium and even heavy mechs? So Leadspitter's light mech would just have 2 chainguns, but in a medium mech he might have 3 plus a buzzsaw to help in melee or shield generator. At first I was thinking a separate character would be for each mech and each weight class, but I was thinking it might be fluffy if there's a set amount of pilots in each team, maybe 10, and each one has their preferred loadout for each weight class... And I could sell full team decks too as print on demand through Wargame Vault for the folks that want to collect them all, but there would still be PDF cards like I have for BWG now.

So if I did that method, I think we'd have 5 pilot characters in the starter set, 3 new ones in light mechs, and 2 new pilots in heavy mechs. And eventually, maybe fluff it up more and develop custom paint patterns for each guy too. One pilot might like racing stripes, another one might want flame patterns or lightning bolts. I was originally going to do a gallery in the rulebook showing a different paint scheme for "home" and "away" games, but giving each pilot their own nascar-ish "heraldry" sounds like it could be fun too.

Here's the first shots of the Terran light mech sculpt



you can click for the gallery image and enlarge it if you want.

The little man is for scale, this one will be a bit smaller than the Bushido mechs, it's more like an oversized battlesuit. He'll be 25-28mm tall, the bushidos will be more like 32-35. Anyway, he'll have a bunch of weapon options and a couple of different poses too. He's still not finished, a bunch of detail still has to be added and we need to finish the different weapons.

Also, I've been doing some sculpting of my own. First I started messing with a martian mech, but since I'm a noob it didn't come out so well. So I decided to switch to terrain and put together some building kits. The first one I'm working on is a bunker. This so far is only about half done, I have a lot of detail to add. it will probably come in 2 halves cut down the middle, so you'd get 2 halves to build a bunker. And other kits will be modular so you could just add 1 half to have a doorway leading into a larger admin building or something like that. Anyway here's what I have so far

Another update for the terran light mech

here's the concept for the aphid heavy mech

Gonna be doing an update to the mech attributes, this is mostly just for how I'm designing the stats for each team. I'm going to put together team rosters for the rulebook and I thought this might be a better way to go to list out each pilot. So, each team's mech and weight class will have the same stats, right now if you make your own mech from scratch you just get 10, 15 or 20 points to raise attributes however you want for light, medium or heavy. Now it will be 5 points less, so lights have 5 points, Medium mechs have 10 and heavies have 15. Then each pilot will have 5 points that add to whatever the mech's base stats are. So while a team's mech stats won't change except for more points depending on the weight, the pilots will all have different attributes. The cards will have the math already done, but in the team roster it will be broken down more.

So I'm thinking it would be something like this

Terran Titans Light Mech - Pwr: 2, Spd: 2, Eng: 2, CPU: 2, RC: 2, MC: 1
Terran Titans Medium Mech - Pwr: 3, Spd: 2, Eng: 3, CPU: 3, RC: 3, MC: 2
Terran Titans Heavy Mech - Pwr: 4, Spd: 3, Eng: 4, CPU: 3, RC: 4, MC: 3

Pilot A - Pwr: 1, Spd: 1, Eng: 1, RC: 1, MC: 1
Pilot A in a light mech - Pwr: 3, Spd: 3, Eng: 3, CPU: 2, RC: 3, MC: 2

Every pilot will have different stats that get added to the base mech stats, and each pilot has their own standard weapons and upgrades they always use, but I think the only pilots that will get printed cards for each weight class will be the team captains, just so I don't have to print a bajillion different cards. I might do PDF cards though with different pilots in different mechs and if all goes well I'd like to do an online team builder app too, later on. So I imagine in the app you'll pick the mech you want, and then choose from a list of pilots, or design your own. Then it will let you print out a single card, or combine everything into a whole team roster. And hopefully also have it where you can track your wins and losses against other players that also have the app. No idea how to do the programming for that kind of stuff though, so it's just a wishlist thing for me right now

More new stuff happened today. Been chatting with the sculptor about lots of different mechs that are planned and I came to the decision that it would probably be better to have the different styles of mechs be based on race, not on team. So, now, every human pilot in the game will drive a mech like the Terran Titans. Those earlier Bushido mechs I was showing on will be used for a different alien race later on.

So this means, since both the Terran Titans and Team Bushido are human-based teams, their mechs will all look the same, however they will come with different equipment. Terran Titans are more of a shooty team, so they will have more guns. Team Bushido is more melee oriented, and they will all come with Booster Jets for standard equipment, so they're all jump troops basically. So I guess it'll be kind of like space marines, where there's different color schemes and heraldry and playstyles for different chapters, same idea here. However, as teams grow and expand some will add other races to their ranks too. All this is mostly just going to apply to the first 2 starter sets.

So this also means, since the first 2 starter teams are going to be humans, they'll all have the same body, just different weapon loadouts and different color schemes. And then for the Kickstarter we'll have a much lower funding goal since I'll be producing 1 set of sculpts instead of 2 to begin with, and we'll be able to unlock the goals for the medium and heavy mechs and whole new races a lot sooner

And that leads me to the next pic.. Got the top missile pod turret done now, and also since the shoulder armor is going to be separate pieces, we're going to make different team emblems and other rank insignias and stuff like that

Another small rules update, I decided to remove equipment (Booster Jets, Shield Generators and Reinforced Armor) and make them upgrades instead, and after a lot of games and testing I decided to change the amount of weapons back to the original amount, 3 for light mechs, 4 for medium and 5 for heavy.

Also going to change heavy weapons to be where any mech can wield them, but they just take up 2 weapon slots, and you need a power of 4 or better to have one.

I have the updated rules more or less done now, I'm just waiting for the sculpts to get finished so I can use renders of the different weapon bits for the armory section in the rulebook, and renders of the mechs for the diagrams and stuff. So that should be around next week or so, hopefully.

The terran light mech is really coming together now that the weapons are getting done Here's a few shots with some new guns.

At the top we have a blaster pistol, missile pod and chaingun. The blaster pistol will probably be a swappable piece, so you can plug in melee weapons instead like buzzsaws, crusher claws or jackhammers. Or if the pieces are too teeny we might just make separate whole arms. Left & right versions of each of course.

Next comes an alternate chaingun design for when size matters, and a plasmagun. I might actually save the big chaingun for the medium mechs and the stubby one for lights, And at the bottom the boxy looking gun is the railgun



you can click the pic for the zoomable gallery version

So, I'm putting the rulebook together.. it's about 50 pages, digest sized. I still need to add a lot of art that I probably won't be able to do till after the kickstarter campaign. I'm kind of wondering what's the best way to handle the teams. Do a couple of pages as a fluffy bio? Make a team list with all 15 players for all 6 teams? Or something like a full page bio for each player? The latter I don't know if it's a good idea, because that will be 90 pages since I have 6 teams.. I mean I could, but that would crank up the page count which means it will be a higher price. I was hoping for $20 or $25, but that many extra pages could make it $35-40. I want to keep the rules as cheap as I can, since it's a new game and all. Some day in a couple of years if it has a good following I can look into doing a big hardback book, but right now I feel like that's too pricy for a game that's brand new and all.

in BWG, I don't list out any characters in the rules, it's just all in the cards. Since I was aiming for 80 pages for the rulebook, I was thinking maybe just a generic list that's 4 pages per team.. but then do separate team rosters that have a bio for every player and expanded fluff and painting guides and all that stuff, as a PDF or Print on demand book on wargame vault. Maybe 20 pages each. Would that be a better way to go, or would it be better to just add all of them to the main rulebook and have it all in 1 place, kind of like the way Privateer does it?

Nice to see this coming together so quickly for you.

Just as a wild tangent, have you considered writing new rules from the ground up instead of re-skinning BWG? Seems like a lot of Mech specific features and themes could be brought through with different mechanics, like what you see in Mech Attack or Battletech. What I mean is at the moment it kind of feels like the teams could still be made up with cowboys instead of giant robots.

Yeah, it's not an exact copy of the rules. It plays mostly the same, I guess you could kind of compare it to Warhammer fantasy & 40k. You'll still attack and defend them same way, but there's other differences.

In BWG you have professions. And when you activate you move 6" and then you can attack once or twice if you have 2 pistols.

In Mechadrome, there are no professions. You have an amount of actions equal to your Energy attribute, and then you can use those actions to move or attack or do other things. So if your energy is 4, you could move 4 times in a row, or shoot 4 times, or move, then shoot, then move, then shoot again. You move an amount of inches equal to your speed, so on average you'll only move 3 or 4 inches at a time. If you need to move 10 inches, you'll have to use a few actions to move the full distance.

And then there's other things like your mech can have booster jets that let you jump over terrain or up onto a roof, or shield generators that increase your shields (like defense) or extra armor to add to your HP.

New screenshots, here's some melee weapons Crusher Claw, Buzzsaw and Jackhammer



Next day or so I should get the siege drill arm done, and then the final poses, so on the minis they won't look like they're standing around bored. Then after that we'll get started on the medium mech

And another quick pic, here is the siege drill.


And Dave is starting on the poses now. mosltly just different leg positions. There will be 4 different poses so the starter sets can be all unique. Well, to start with there will be 5 light mechs in the starter sets, but in the Kickstarter when we unlock the medium mech stretch goal I'm going to have a bonus where every starter set automagically gets a medium mech upgrade for the team captain


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oh also I just got a nice bit of fluff for the rulebook too, so I'll be adding that into the preview rules. Planning to get that finished up and then I'll post em next week when I finish redoing my website (for the 800th time)

Got some new sketches today, these are the Light and Heavy mechs for the Bionic race & Nexus Guardians team. These are just quick sketches, not done yet, but this is the look we're going for





As usual you can click for the bigger gallery version

I made a high res group shot render and got a couple different angles. This is what will come in the Terran Titans starter set. You can click the pic for the bigger gallery version



I'm still waiting for 1 more alt body with a different leg position, and the Team Bushido and plain shoulder pads pieces then I can send them all off for printing

And here's the Medium mech for Bionic race The light will be similar, just no arms and more snake-like and the heavy will be even bigger and meaner that this one. All bionic mechs will also have built in melee weapons with their tentacle blades so the Nexus Guardians will be more of a melee oriented team, but there will still be a good amount of guns too.



I'm also going to be getting the aphid artwork redone, so they will be more robotic instead of organic, but still have the same general look. They'll be like robot bugs, I guess kind of like Necron tomb spiders or the cenitpede thingy from Forge World. I thought that would better fit the look & feel of the other teams

And even more art for the Bionic mechs. Here's the light mech



And here's the Heavy Mech



Next I'll be getting the Aphid mechs reworked to be robo-bugs rather than not-tyranids. So I should have that art done soon too.

Almost done updating my website .. here it is so far

http://gangfightgames.com/index2.php

I just need to finish the Mechadrome page, but I have the latest rules on there now if anyone wants to check it out. It's the pretty PDF that has art and stuff in it now rather than the plain text version I posted before. I just have to get the art added to the site and do pages for the different teams and then I should be set. Once that's done I'll start posting it around the web to try and build a little buzz leading up to the Kickstarter next month


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Oh also, here's the new version of the heavy aphid medium and light will be done soon

I am loving the biomechs also very keen for the 15mm card stock terrain.
Will you be doing non destroyed card stock buildings?

I will be following this project close sly.

LGW

I have a few plans for terrain. I still want to do the cardstock terrain since it will be cheap, but I think that might end up being a PDF that you can print and make yourself rather than a pre-printed set you can buy. But I might be able to do a print-on-demand version with Wargame Vault. We would do both complete and ruined versions of the buildings, and I'm also planning a road system based on 4" or 6" squares, so you could print out the squares you want and stick them together to make a city board layout.

I'm also planning physical terrain pieces that I think is going to end up kind of like a 15mm version of GW's Cities of Death or Deadzone tiles, so it will be all modular wall pieces you can stick together to build just about any kind of building. At first I was going to do these in resin, but I will probably be working with Proxie models to get them done in good ole fashioned plastic. But it will likely take a while to get all that put together so I don't think it will make it into the Kickstarter next month. We do have some other Proxie kits that we'll be selling though as add-on items...namely the 15mm ruined brick buildings and possibly scaled down versions of some of their 28mm terrain. The modular wall panels will probably end up being a separate campaign for later this year.

I'm intrigued I will admit. I do think this is a game which really needs a campaign/league set up where mechs show some wear and tear over time.

Yep I'm working on some campaign/league rules. I wasn't going to include them in the main rulebook though, I want to keep the book short & sweet & cheap. So the league play would be like an optional PDF. I was going to do it kind of like an escalation league, where you start with a starter set and earn fame points after games to add more mechs to your team, or upgrade your current pilots to bigger ones.

Another idea I had was where everyone starts with a light mech, with just 2 weapon arms and no upgrades. After each game you'll earn a certain amt of points that you can use to buy additional weapons or upgrades for your pilots, or upgrade to a heavier mech. You would still have to follow the team organization rule though where your team has to have at least 2 light mechs for each medium and 2 mediums for each heavy .. and some day 2 heavies for each superheavy

Just don't make where a league requires new players to buy a bunch more mechs right off to be included.

Have you an idea of the price ballpark for a starter?

Yeah, it's not going to be like where you need to buy tons of stuff. One thing I'm doing with the universal arms is most of the mechs will all be using the same weapon pieces, so you can get creative with magnets if you want and use the same weapons on a light or medium mech.

No idea what the prices will be like though, till I get the master metal mins done. I'm hoping it will be around $35 or less. Each starter will get 5 bodies, 5 basic shoulder pads, 5 team shoulder pads, 5 weapon sprues that will have a left arm & right arm version of the weapon, and 5 missile pods or booster jets. So, there's a lot of pieces that could end up driving up the costs, but I want to give players lots of options for custom mechs and conversions rather than just 5 static minis.

If we can unlock the medium mechs then every starter set will get an automatic upgrade to get 1 medium mech for the team captain, so it would be 4 lights and 1 medium, instead of 5 lights. That won't change the price in the kickstarter, but it might change it for retail. But again I won't really know till I get everything made.

I'm also planning on selling "League Sets" for each team that will be like a bigger starter set, you'd get the same 4 light mechs, 2 mediums and 1 heavy. And also full team sets that will be 8 lights, 4 mediums and 2 heavies. Every team will have 14 pilots for the official roster.

I'm also planning to make a small 20-ish page Team Playbooks for each team too, with a roster and painting guides and fluff. The roster will pretty much be the same info as what's on the pilot cards, but the book will have a 1 page bio with art and pics of minis for each pilot on the team. The team playbooks will be a PDF download and a print-on-demand version through Wargame Vault. I'll probably include one for free in the full team sets though.

I was going to include the full rosters in the main rulebook, but decided it would be better to keep them separate to keep the page count and price down.

Planning to add some new upgrades to the list for the next rulebook update, but I probably won't make the next version till the KS is about ready to go. But here's what I was thinking of adding...

Assault Mech - Combine 2 melee attacks into 1 big roll, like Salvo for shooting. Has to be either basic attacks, or 2 of the same melee weapon.

Recon - If you have line of sight to an enemy, it won't get a cover bonus if your teammates shoot him

Infiltrator - You are always considered concealed when you're in cover.

Strider - +1 speed, light mechs only.

Last Laugh - Your escape pod has a hidden turret, when your mech blows up and your pilot ejects you can get free shot at whoever blew you up with a Power of 3, and +1 to hit penalty.

Deflector Shields - If you get shot and make a successful saving throw you can deflect the blast at any enemy within 6", but it consumes 1 Energy every time.

Combat Drop - If your Mech has Booster Jets, you don't deploy with the rest of your team. On the 2nd game turn you can land anywhere on the board, but only out in the open, not in terrain. Landing uses 1 energy, so you can use remaining actions to attack or move into cover or anything else.

Just had a crazy idea, I think I'm going to change the guns around to do damage based on the Mech's power attribute.. same as melee weapons. And like melee most guns will be +1 power, but heavy weapons will be +2.. and then each gun will still have their own special ability like they currently do. I'll list the actual number with the gun info on the pilot cards for easy reference though.. so if your power is 3, your little chaingun box will say power 4.

I was just thinking this would be a good way to make the power attribute a little more valuable. it just kind of feels useless on a mech that won't get into melee combat.