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I would have liked to start game 4 this past weekend but I was out of town. Luckily I got to go by Ikea and get some stuff to help things.

This is what I have planned on using in game 4. It would be a straight up slugfest.

Valkyrie Squadrons x3
Area Denial Squadronx1
Spartan Squad x1
Defender Squad x1
Monster x1

400 Points
Total Units (21)
12 Veritechs (3 of which are superior)
2 Spartans
2 Tomahawks
4 Defenders
1 Monster

Vs
Attack Squadron w/Recon Pod x1
Recon Squadron w/Regult Squad x1
Recon Squadron w/Light Arty Pods x1
Artillery Squadron w/Recon Pod

400 points
Total Units (42)
27 Battlepods
4 Recon Pods
3 Glaugs(Officers Pods)
6 Light Artillery Pods
2 Heavy Artillery Pods


Now I've had a few inquiries on my impressions on the rules. I've quite honestly strove to the best of my ability and knowledge to keep things as close to what information we have available on what the rules will be and how it will play as possible. I was going to look at adding a few new rules to add some flavor. These would be rules for additional movement types and terrains that have not been seen in the demos so far. I would also rename the rules with these changes so that there would be no questions as to which rules set was which.

Now back to first impressions. I initially assumed that things would go boom fast and often. That is not the case. There is no comparison with Battletech. Things do die often. Units with high piloting and gunnery skills, a healthy command point pool, and some luck can survive much longer than other units. Command points are basically what you use to allow a unit to do special actions, attacks, extra attacks, dodge attacks, and roll with hits that they take to halve the damage. A well designed force in Tactics with a decent pool of Command Points can survive a long time. The command points are also pooled for everything that is on the table. This means that units that are not in the fight can indirectly assist and add to the life expectancy of other units on the table. Some may grumble at this but trying to count command points for each squadron would add too much complexity to a game that tries to keep things simple and straight forward and I think it does a great job of doing just that.

Moving units and firing them in turn means that if you have 4 squadrons on the table and it is your turn to activate them you have to know when to move one in the back that is not going to cost you anything or when to move a unit up from before it gets shot up or so that it can hit another squadron hard. Tactics. This whole move and fire and damage takes effect immediately idea means that you have to have more thought and planning than games like in battletech where everyone moves and then fires and a unit that is blown to smithereens will still get to roll it's attacks and do it's damage before it is taken off the table. Not so in Tactics.

Movement is simple and straight forward although I've made a few assumptions. Turning is not shown or mentioned to take up movement but I assume that any turn greater than 90 degrees takes one inch of movement away. So a destroid with a move of 5 that turns around all the way has spent one inch of the 5 and can move 4 more inches if it chooses to do so. I've also taking into consideration running up hills or through some rubble.

Lines of sight are harder to determine, at least for me, since I have a big head and fat fingers and tend to knock things over so I tend to use a camera to try to take a picture from in front of a unit to determine it's LOS. Hexed games with fixed heights have rules, sometime really complicated ones, to determine LOS.

Attacks, now here is where having a good GUN or gunnery skill comes in. Since many units only fire one shot in a turn you really need decent gunnery in order to do some damage.

Now I think I know how things are converted from the RPG to tactics. The cool thing is that you can play out your RPG part and then go out to the table and play out a large battle with your character and his stats and abilities. This means that your super fast, mighty morphin, awesome character with unrealistic stats that is just as deadly in the Tactics games as when playing the RPG. Once you spend an hour or so to kill a bunch of pods in a large scale battle that would take all day using the RPG rules you can then revert back to the RPG mode if you want to, go back in to sit around a table and drink a beer while the GM continues the story. The ability to go back and forth opens up more possibilities for the avid gamer since you can enhance an RPG experience. Most RPG's you cannot go out and take part of some super large castle assault because trying to manage all the other units from archers to catapults to people trying to break down the castle door would just be unfeasable and crazy when you use the normal RPG rules. With Tactics you can swap back and forth.

Combat is fairly true to the show and missiles fly left and right but some units have weapons that give them a chance to blow up the missiles coming at them or they can attempt to dodge them just like we've seen 1000 times in the cartoon. The Zentraedi officer is a deadly foe as well as a captain flying around in his VF-1S veritech. Generic units have important places and serve to enhance the game and absorb damage from the leaders. If your not careful a squad of plain battlepods can wind up humbling any player. I've enjoyed the 3 games that I have played so far with the rules that I have put together. All 3 games were solo games though since I live in the middle of nowhere and was testing the rules set.

If you'd like to know anything else just let me know. I'd be happy to answer any questions or try something specific in the game.




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Oh again here is where you can get the stuff I have laid out so far.

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B0VSNzmthd1vSUhEWklpejNwb2s&usp=sharing

Maybe this will help. I've started creating Squadron Org Charts so that others can know how things are organized. I hope to start a game later this week. I'll make some for all of the units.

A couple more, now I need to get back to work.

Another one

Took lunch and finished them off

I was looking at the old counters/standees that I had made and realized that it was a pain and that I wanted to change something. The fighters on the popsicle sticks would allow me to mark them with unit # and wing name on each stick easily and do the figures double sided. It sucks when I try to take a picture from a game and have to move around for a good angle just so that the fighter picture is visible and that the stats that are on the back are not. I found a way to mirror the images so that I can print both sides and have the information that I used to have on the back written with a sharpie on the popsicle stick.

Here are images of what the back used to look like and the mirrored image

Updated the Force Orgs per a suggestion. No more white backgrounds.




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Almost Ready, I think I can get the game going this weekend. Yay!

Ok all, I'm sorry for the wait. I've redone my guardian mode and veritech mode counters so that they are double sided and then marked the unit numbers on the popsicle sticks. I also organized my stuff a lot better so it's easier for me to set up and play.


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I've now got all the counters set out and getting ready to go!

I've also found a few new counters that I might make for the next game. Some of you might recognize them.

No I plan on having the destroids preset in the city with two flights coming in from each back corner. The Zen forces will line up on the other side of the table.

Any Strategy suggestions?

This is the initial setup.

I'll try to start this afternoon. I have someone coming over who may want to play. I'll have to wait and see. Either way I got something due for a class tonight and have to get that done first.

The crappy thing is that every time I go to attach photos on Dakka it crashes my firefox browser. Any Ideas?

Oh, and feel free to suggest tactics for the battle that you would like me to try out.

I've got the rules up to 43 pages now but that is with Force Org Charts, and Charts with game stats and info on them. In reality the rules themselves will only be around 30 pages long.

I combined the Force Orgs and Charts that I had in Power Point onto the word file to try to keep it all on one file.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0VSNzmthd1vUGtOTU5NTXpWckU/edit?usp=sharing

I'm still working on fire, smoke, hidden units, and some additional rules.


I should have some time tonight to play out a turn or two for everyone.

Added the malcontent Force Orgs

OK, so I could not start a game, 3 year old and 5 year olds made sure of that. But I could do other things as I sat on their bed growling at them to go to sleep.

I've finished the rules and combined everything from the tactical briefing to force orgs onto one pdf file and am now messing with damage cards while I should be working diligently. Take a look.

Sorry about the long delay. Classes and Home life and me wanting to do all the stat cards for all the units delayed things. I also added some better examples and pics to the rules. I need to go back and add some HTH combat examples. Here are the rules,force orgs, and stat cards. I've also had a few requests to use what miniatures I have so I got out all my old battletech stuff and checkek out what I have that may be used. Here is a pic of my minis, most of them I painted when I was like 10 plus anotehr pic that I just thought looked cool.

Minor Rules Update 10/29/13

Updated Stat Cards 10/30/13

Done with the Stat cards. Added HTH for all units and also added the Quel-Gulnau. I had to update the Glaug stats also. A couple things. I added the chin cannons to the stats and made then anti-missile to add to the Glaug's longevity and also added the spawn ability. This means that any unit with "Life is Cheap" that is within 12 inches of the Glaug has a chance of coming back into the game on the Zentraedi's starting edge. I also dumbed down the top mounted cannon from inescapable and overwhelming to just overwhelming. So now a unit may attempt to dodge the shot although it may not roll if hit to halve the damage it takes.

Since the Glaug's cost went up 5 points each I changed the units involved a bit.

UEDF
Squadron 1
Area Denial Squad

Squadron 2
Close Combat
Defender Squad
Monster

Squadron 3-5
Veritech Squadrons

23 Units
2 Tomahawks
4 Spartans
4 Defenders
Monster
12 Veritech

Zen
Squadron 1
Attack Squadron + Recon Pod + Quel-Gulnau

Squadron 2
Recon Squadron + Light Artillery Squadron

Squadron 3
Artillery Squadron + Recon Pod

Squadron 4
Recon Squadron + Regult Squad

43 Units

27 Battlepods
6 Light Arty Pods
2 Hvy Arty Pods
4 Recon Pods
3 Glaugs
1 Recovery Pod

I should start Monday Night

Is that pic of the sdf-1 from the new manga, Macross the First?

No idea, I just thought it looked cool and saved the pic


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Updated Rules and Stat Cards including Quel-Gulanu and Jotun

FYI to all, Game 4 will likely be postponed due to an unexpected find. Looks like there is a Robotech RPG player here in town that would like to try Tactics this Friday so I will pick it all up and maybe start it later down the road. I had already played out 2 turns but playing against a live person will be a lot more fun

I've updated the Stat Cards with the weapons names. I abbreviated them because I did not think they would fit but I got it to work. File is up above just under the carshed SDF-1 picture.

Starting to try some SC Units. What do you think?

A masters one

Updated Stat Cards for 2nd edition rules with some of my own stat conversions not directly based off of the KS stuff.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Updated rules and HTH combat. Look under the crashed SDF-1 pic

Mike check your private messages.