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Any interest in a Transformers tabletop wargame?

A long long time ago I made up a set of rules...sometime after the 1st movie (the cartoon). Over the years I tweaked it. When the last movie came out...I polished it again, figuring I would make a run at promoting it as a collectable tabletop game to WizKids or whomever held the rights. Well I realize that ship is never gonna sail, so it's time to share.

In honor of the movie coming out this summer, I figure what better group to share with than the folks in the forums I frequent.

The game is based upon the 1st Gen cartoon. No you don;t need the Toys to play. I use everything from Battletech minis to Epic dreadnaughts to Mechwarrior click figs to represent the robots. You will need a copy of MS Word for the rulebook and MS Excel for the robot record sheets. Also I based the game on a D30...yeah I just lost most of yah didn't I. No worries, you can still play with a D6 (use as D3 for tens) and D10 (ones).

You can get all these over at Transformers: The Wargame

I have added all the statistics for the 1st Gen robots, and what I call Gen 1.1 which includes the Dinobots, Jetfire, Devastator / Constructicons, and Insecticons. I've got the stats done up for all the robots thought the classic movie. With time I'll mod the game for the current movies.

I tried to add all the aspects of Robot fighting that will make the game different. Shooting, ramming, Pickup and throw other robots. Pretty sure the initiative system is unique too. Not an I go/you go...each robot has it's own Init rolled every turn. Anyway you can see the details in the rulebook.

Any questions feel free to post here, or on the Blog...I'll do my best to answer them as fast as possible.

Enjoy,

Rangerrob wrote: No worries, you can still play with a D6 (use as D3 for tens) and D10 (ones).

Using this method it would be impossible to generate any number less than 10...... UNLESS you counted rolls of 31-39 as 1-9.... which can get very confusing, and counter intuitive. (Most people won't understand that the 3 only counts if the other die rolls zero.)

Lordhat wrote:

Rangerrob wrote: No worries, you can still play with a D6 (use as D3 for tens) and D10 (ones).

Using this method it would be impossible to generate any number less than 10...... UNLESS you counted rolls of 31-39 as 1-9.... which can get very confusing, and counter intuitive. (Most people won't understand that the 3 only counts if the other die rolls zero.)

Yeah...my bad for not posting a chart.

D6 roll - Result
1 or 2 = 1 - 10
3 or 4 = 11 - 20
5 or 6 = 21 - 30

Have you sent this to the guy who draws/writes Shortpacked? His Livejournal is filled
with pictures of his latest transformers toys.

no.....just no

Well...thanks for at least looking.

Malfred...nah I've only shared this with my local gaming group, and with this post here.

I'd rather just use Heavy Gear with Transformers instead of Gears. Good effort though.

I've often thought about this. Form a tabletop perspective having two (or more) models per character would make it difficult to model (toys are all different scales so that's not a good idea either) but they all came with stats on the back of the box so the game mechanics would just require you to write a ruleset that adapted the existing attributes.

Ha, my brother has been into transformers forever and I've thought of this several times as a way to blend our hobbies. Now the real question, which is the real origin of the Constructicons? Personally the "they were infected by the Decepticon virus" or whatever it was never flew with me.

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:Ha, my brother has been into transformers forever and I've thought of this several times as a way to blend our hobbies. Now the real question, which is the real origin of the Constructicons? Personally the "they were infected by the Decepticon virus" or whatever it was never flew with me.

Built by Shockwave along with Jetfire.

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:Ha, my brother has been into transformers forever and I've thought of this several times as a way to blend our hobbies. Now the real question, which is the real origin of the Constructicons? Personally the "they were infected by the Decepticon virus" or whatever it was never flew with me.

Werent they Autobots who betrayed the cause?

Or was that just my personal canon?

Remember that "The Secret of Omega Supreme" has brain-damaged old Omega being led on by Optimus Prime. I'm more inclined to believe that Omega Supreme's memory of the events is distorted by time and not a little post-traumatic stress disorder; the bot has some serious rage issues.

In series 1 of the cartoon, Megatron builds the Constructicons on Earth, simple as.

In series 2 however, it's "revealed" that the Constructicons were actually ood guys on Cybertron back in the day. Megatron attacked them (and Omega), put them in some machine and turned them into bad guys.

In the third season (confusingly), we see the Constructicons building Megatron. Wierd.

In the UK Marvel comics, we see the Constructicons being built by Shockwave, and given life by Optimus Prime's dismembere'd head.

That was easy. ;-)

There is already a sort of Transformers wargame, called Attacktix. Check it out.

I kind of like the fan-idea that they were built on Cybertron, built Megatron (either before or after being turned to evil.. Don't remember that cartoon), , then were for some reason dissasembled partially and had to be 'built' by Megatron on Earth in much the same way I 'built' my Ikea furniture.

Tek:

The events in Heavy Metal War need not conflict with the events of The Secret of Omega Supreme. There's a fantastic essay out there in the web that provides an interesting critique of Omega Supreme's credibility as a witness. In his flashback, for example, the Constructicons have their Earth designs and have Decepticon symbols on them even before being attacked by the "Robo-Smasher".

Take the Combaticons, for example, whose bodies were built on Earth to house personality components (an early version of "sparks") that were taken from a Decepticon penal filing cabinet.

Moreover take Optimus Prime's own cartoon origin as Orion Pax, who was rebuilt as Optimus Prime after being smashed by Megatron. So, in that sense, Alpha Trion (originally himself named A3) built Optimus Prime and Elita-1, despite their common design as Autobot-brand Quintesson robots.

I like to imagine that the Constructions were part of the Quintesson's Decepticon line of military robots, combat engineers to support front-line Decepticon robots. Then, of course, time and modifications, rebuilding, and repair takes its toll and millions of years later we have the robots still know as the Constructicons.

That's building on the cartoon background that Autobots and Decepticons were two product lines of the Quintesson factory-world of Cybertron, essential differences in design that millions of years of politics, inbreeding (redesign), cross-pollination (stealing each other's designs for new robots, etc), and the occasional technical advance have managed to blur.

Well we will probably have a new birth of the Constucticons story given to us in the new movie.

I'll stick with the Season 1 cartoon story for now.

Interesting idea given that i'm a TF fan.

LOL - awesomesauce


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Just read the rulebook, cannot wait to play this.

Will you be posting up the other Generation 1 Bots (Warpath, Seaspray, Dirge, Ramjet) and the Gen 2 Bots?

Edit: Sorry, I threadmanced

At some point I will add the robots up to Gen 2 (Cartoon movie).

I have done all the Giant Robot Teams, Omega Supreme, Warpath, etc...

Feel free to send me a PM with any questions, then you don;t have to worry about Nercoing the thread.