Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

DP9 is offering a bunch of deals and sales for the combination of the Heavy Gear Arena release and the holidays. First, the Super Holiday Sale is on: For every $50 ordered, select $10 of free stuff. Also, there's multiple options to get a deal on the Arena rules, starter set, etc.

On to new stuff:

At the moment Arena is the big release. There'll be some Heavy Gear Blitz! stuff coming up soon as well, but there's a lot of Arena stuff shipping out next week

What is Arena?


Heavy Gear Arena is a fast paced, highly customizable tactical battle game set in the award winning Heavy Gear setting. For centuries, Terra Nova's best pilots have taken their Gears, advanced robotic fighting machines, and pitted them against each other in the world of sports dueling. Only the best stay in the games and earn their legendary reputations. Of course, reputations only get you so far. Winning equalsí money for upgrading your team and its equipment, the support of your adoring fans brings fame and more importantly the corporate sponsors, or just the thrills, pilots come from all over to find the thing they're desperate for in Khayr ad-Din.

Take on the role of team manager and build up your team to pit against the competition.

It's got customization and campaign-style experience rules as well as being a variant of the Heavy Gear Blitz! system focused on showy gladiatorial mecha combat instead of military actions.

The Heavy Gear Arena rules are available as a stand-alone full-color book or as a Starter Kit which includes a small-format B&W version of the book, 4 Hired Gun minis (Grizzly, Hunter XMG, Black Mamba, DartJager) plus extra weapons, dice, and a measuring tape.

We are also offering bundles to get the full-color rulebook and the starter set, and to add the PDF if you want an ebook version as well.

The heavy Gear Arena stuff is available direct from Dream Pod 9 or our retailers, including The War Store. The rules (PDF and full color) will be released on November 26th, while the Starter Set will be released on December 10th. (A few of the minis aren't quite ready yet).

Speaking of minis, new mini releases include the Duelist Upgrade Pack, the Gladiator, and the Boa.

The Duelist Upgrade Pack is a selection of weapons and equipment to customize dueling gears, including shields, spikes, and melee weapons.


The Gladiator is Paxton Arm's purpose-built dueling gear. This kit can be used to represent a Hired Gun "special character" or as a ride for a Duelist and includes a range of weapon options for this role.


The Boa is a Southern Gear design. It's an older model, but popular in Arenas where it can use it's size and armor. It also incldues several weapon options, and can be built to represent a named Hired Gun.

BTW, I don't have the rules in hand myself yet, but the Hired Guns are named characters that can be recruited for a single game in a campaign when a hand is needed.

There's a few more Arena releases in the immediate schedule for December/January, as well as some Heavy Gear Blitz! stuff.

(I am a paid shill for DP9. Please don't egg my house.)

I hadn't heard of this game until recently, but it does look very nice to me

Hey, paid shill how high are those standard suits?
Just curious whether they would fit as Tau Crisis Suit alternatives.

They won't. They're barely the size of a Guardsman.

Kroothawk wrote:Hey, paid shill how high are those standard suits?
Just curious whether they would fit as Tau Crisis Suit alternatives.

I've wanted them big enough for just such a scenario for ages but they are just that much too tiny. Wish they were bigger. They are so nicely detailed and creative.

Wrong scale, kroothawk.

This might be just the thing. Hope the local shop picks it up.

Is this gonna be like Necromunda with mechs ?

HudsonD wrote:Is this gonna be like Necromunda with mechs ?

Seems like it. I decided not to get into Blitz! But Arena is a whole different beast, it's basically my greatest childhood dreams in mini wargaming form. (Yes, my greatest childhood dreams were of gladiatorial mech fighting)

It's more like Blood Bowl with Mecha, to get picky... I haven't actually read all of the rules yet, but there's some fun stuff like hiring 'rodeo clowns' and keeping the crowd and sponsors happy...

One unusual bit is the focus on winning crowd favor. Beating the enemy is important, but you need to do it with style.

Nice.
I take it there's some sort of pilot progression too ?
How big is a team ?

This woulda made more sense 10 years ago when the terrible cartoon came out and had this seting instead of the actual game setting.

As for scale, the original game when it released was 25mm scale where as these are 10mm I believe. You can occasionally find the original mechs on ebay and they're much better replacements for crisis suits, perhaps a little oversised.

Assuming these are the same size as Heavy Gear Blitz figures, they're in 12mm scale (human height is 12mm); quite an odd scale to work at.

The larger mechs are, if I recall correctly, about 35mm in height.

12mm scale, or 1/144, which is also just about n-scale for compatibility with a lot of model railroading stuff.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I'm just getting a chance to read the book myself. There's a TON of 'talents' and 'Combos' for Duelists. Talents are always-on traits like specializing in a specific Gear chassis, while Combos are special abilities that can be used as an action in a match.

The 'Campaign' stuff is interesting. The 'Manager' is an actual 'character' in that he or she has skills and traits. There's mechanical differences between playing a Manager that's an underworld type and an ex-military officer trying to run a dueling team. (Spoiler: The mob guy knows people that know people but may occasionally be asked to do things like "send a message" to an opponent, while the ex-military guy might get some military-trained pilots that just mustered out and are looking for a new job.)

It's pretty in-depth.

The Gear modification rules are also quite different from the core Silhouette rules... It's a simpler "slot" system that lacks some of the finesse, but makes it easier to handle frequent weapon changes.

Kalamadea wrote:This woulda made more sense 10 years ago when the terrible cartoon came out and had this seting instead of the actual game setting.

The "terrible cartoon" may be one of the reasons that they didn't release something like this back then. From what I've heard, the cartoon was actually supposed to have a more sophisticated storyline that involved both teams working together against Earth after the initial season was over, but management (not DP9's) canned that idea. Given that, if DP9 had at the time decided to release something like Arena, they probably quickly dropped the idea.

I'll also note, though, that arena fights have been around since the beginning of the setting. The primary source of income for the 'trash city' Khar ayd Din has always been the arena matches. The Jarak Twins (mentioned on DP9's home page as pilots of a Grizzly and Hunter XMG, like the ones included in the Arena starter) were in some of the old pieces of fluff - as arena fighters who had deserted from the Northern military. The difference now is that if you want to run an arena-style campaign, you don't need to adapt various bits from the main book and duelist rules.

Of course, it's also possible that someone noticed the Blood Bowl video game was doing reasonably well and got an idea...

I still remember both of the old video games. I loved those things, and the RPG.

Never even heard of the blood bowl side, though I caught about have an ep of the horrid cartoon.

Balance wrote:
I'm just getting a chance to read the book myself.(...)
It's pretty in-depth.

Man, the more I read about Arena, the more I want to get my hands on it...
I take it Arena keeps the same silhouette base, but how does it play, compared to Blitz ?

The older 1/87 (or 20-22mm) Gears are indeed fitting for Tau, see the folowing pic from my website:

more info here: http://www.adpublishing.de/html/tau.html

You can still get them on ebay...

From what I've seen at the GenCon demo, the biggest change from Heavy Gear Blitz! is that it's really focused on the 'arena' mindset. Blitz! is pseudo-realistic military, and as such encourages playing in a 'get in, kill the target, get out' mindset. No problem, that makes perfect sense.

Playing that way in Arena may win the game, but in a campaign situation you may find your team falling behind. Experience points are earned for doing 'cool stuff' like setting up combos, throwing enemies around, and similar.You need to win, but do so in a flashy manner.

The base rules are a slimmed down version of the Blitz! rules, but with several tweaks. Some of these are based on the Gear UP! changes to speed up game play, but a few are new.

Balance wrote:From what I've seen at the GenCon demo, the biggest change from Heavy Gear Blitz! is that it's really focused on the 'arena' mindset. Blitz! is pseudo-realistic military, and as such encourages playing in a 'get in, kill the target, get out' mindset. No problem, that makes perfect sense.
Playing that way in Arena may win the game, but in a campaign situation you may find your team falling behind. Experience points are earned for doing 'cool stuff' like setting up combos, throwing enemies around, and similar.You need to win, but do so in a flashy manner.

So... Gladiator with gunz ?

"I wasn't the best because I killed quickly.
I was the best because the crowd loved me."

HudsonD wrote:
So... Gladiator with gunz ?

Basically. Though melee is a really important part of the game.

Here's box art for the boxed set:

HudsonD wrote:"I wasn't the best because I killed quickly.
I was the best because the crowd loved me."

I love the idea, will be interested to see this. Some of my problems getting into some of these more skirmish-based games from other companies (I'm thinking of this game as well as the super dungeon explorer) is that I wish I could see a demo of a game first... maybe putting one up on youtube would help those of us who can't usually make it to cons! (Sometime after next week when it is released, of course...)

Looks like the PDF's out already...

Dead tree version of the rulebook has been delayed. Apparently someone forgot about Thanksgiving in the US when they were figuring out the release timetable.

It'll be out along with everything else on the 10th of next month.