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 Albertorius wrote:

It is demonstrably untrue at least as far back as the edition before L&L, as I have the InDesign templates for those, provided by Robert.

I stand corrected. My bad.

Should've asked before now, but you know how it is... oh look shiny!

My question is this. Is there a reason why so much stuff is left handed, as in Gears holding weapons in the off hand?

 Paint it Pink wrote:
Should've asked before now, but you know how it is... oh look shiny!

My question is this. Is there a reason why so much stuff is left handed, as in Gears holding weapons in the off hand?

None stated, other than that way you have the right hand free to use for handling stuff, whereas the other is just locked as a gun (and you'll be using the HUD anyways so it doesn't really matter).

 Paint it Pink wrote:
Should've asked before now, but you know how it is... oh look shiny!

My question is this. Is there a reason why so much stuff is left handed, as in Gears holding weapons in the off hand?

I just took a quick look through my own gallery here and I don't see too many lefties in the blitz or rafm era minis. Are you referring to the new plastics maybe? I don't have any of those and am not familiar with their posing either.

The Tiger I know has left handed poses, theres a few others but i cant recall off the top of my head, and a fair number work left handed with weapons like bazookas pretty well.

The most common lefty weapons I saw at least in my own models were the obvious secondary weapons like DPGs and vibroknives.

Seeing as unless the pilot is using the manipulation gloves for something, and particularly if they have a weapon, the hands are more "turrets" than anything else and are handled as such by the pilot (and anything else is the NNet who's handling it). So it doesn't really matter much, other than for shooting angles.

That said, it can simply have been a preference of the illustrator, or maybe some pieces have been flipped over the years or to originally conform with the page layout or something.

I asked because several of the RAFM Gears are cast with the main weapon in the left hand, and in the DP9 infantry ranges I've bought I find left-handed figures.

Cool. I'm all for variety. Maybe the pilots are all gingers too!

 warboss wrote:
Cool. I'm all for variety. Maybe the pilots are all gingers too!

I could get behind 'gingers.'

After all, red heads are hot. Well Tachikoma who stars in my novels is hot, as in kick ass and chew gum kind of hot!

That works for me!

 Manchu wrote:
Maybe I’ll look in on this thread again in 2022.

Good news everyone! NK got some starter boxes in stock and I dutifully place an order. Looks like I get to join in the Heavy Gear fun after all!

 Manchu wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
Maybe I’ll look in on this thread again in 2022.

Good news everyone! NK got some starter boxes in stock and I dutifully place an order. Looks like I get to join in the Heavy Gear fun after all!

Just an FYI in case you didn't catch up on the messages, your last post back in August regarding the kickstarter (maybe that was the source I was looking for instead of the forum?) was lamenting that the layout keeps getting delayed for the new rulebook. It's still not done and no word on when it will be.

I’m fine playing out of the quick start book for now and also have some ambition to try Tactical.

What factions did ya pick up? Anything in particular cool you're looking forward to playing around with?

I got a few copies of the starter, so North and South armies. I don’t know enough about the game yet to have anything in particular in mind about the forces.

 Manchu wrote:
I got a few copies of the starter, so North and South armies. I don’t know enough about the game yet to have anything in particular in mind about the forces.

The newer plastics or the older metal starters?

The plastics.

 Manchu wrote:
The plastics.

Do you have some of the mid 2000's metals from before? If so, I'm curious to hear what you think of the comparison. It's always good to get some fresh takes in the thread that is frequented largely by mostly veterans of earlier editions (and frequently the first!).

 Manchu wrote:
I got a few copies of the starter, so North and South armies. I don’t know enough about the game yet to have anything in particular in mind about the forces.

Cool, I haven't had a chance to get my hands on any of the new starters except Caprice, but that said, I think the current iteration of Blitz is probably the best Gear combat ruleset and system DP9's ever produced. I'd be really interested in hearing what you think of the game when you get a chance to play it.

This is the first time I have owned any HG product at all. I haven’t assembled anything yet but will report back once I do. Looking over the sprues, I feel pretty happy about the purchase and the world of HG.

The quality of the plastics is really good. Is there a link to the current Blitz rules?

The Living Rulebook is free on DrivThru.

I haven’t really started to delve into the box or quickstart rules yet but I see there are a few options for how one builds the mechs. Any advice on this? This kind of thing is really tough on beginners lol.

 Manchu wrote:
The Living Rulebook is free on DrivThru.

I haven’t really started to delve into the box or quickstart rules yet but I see there are a few options for how one builds the mechs. Any advice on this? This kind of thing is really tough on beginners lol.

I can't give much advice on that regard, unfortunately, about army construction in this new edition, but to be on the safe side you'll need at least some regular grunts, which for the North and Shouth would be regular Hunters/Jägers with LRPs and LACs, so you could start with that.

 Manchu wrote:
The Living Rulebook is free on DrivThru.

I haven’t really started to delve into the box or quickstart rules yet but I see there are a few options for how one builds the mechs. Any advice on this? This kind of thing is really tough on beginners lol.

When you get a chance, go through Gear Grinder. While it's not as comprehensive as something like Battlescribe, it will let you construct lists, and has all the current unit variants and weapons options, with some well developed informational features.



For most of the mech builds, the variants are going to be in either weapons or role. A southern Black Mamba for instance has many different variants, initially just having a medium autocannon and a light rocket pod. A Blazing Black Mamba variant upgrades the Autocannon to a Rotary Laser (a more powerful, but expensive, weapon), while a Brawler Mamba swaps the autocannon for a grenade launcher that's less effective in direct fire but is able to hit targets entrenched targets much harder, and a Razor Fang upgrade is a command variant with a unique head and an R2D2-ish looking bit representing a satellite uplink and additional electronics.

Naming conventions are going to vary, what a Southern force considers a Razor Fang would be a Thunder variant in the North, a Chieftan variant in Peace River, or just "CV" in a NuCoal force, but if you spend some time perusing Gear Grinder you'll get a good idea of what most of the variants are generally about.

 Manchu wrote:
The Living Rulebook is free on DrivThru.

I haven’t really started to delve into the box or quickstart rules yet but I see there are a few options for how one builds the mechs. Any advice on this? This kind of thing is really tough on beginners lol.

If you make a forum account for the DP9 forums you can get the pre-layout 3.0 rules which are a bit easier to wrap your head around.

I've been steadily decreasing the number of GW things on my shelf, which as left room for me to be able to expand into games I've been on the fence about for a while.

So of course I finally took the plunge into Heavy Gear!

I picked up a Northern starter army, Southern starter army, a Mammoth, and a Naga.

So far I've assembled my Northern GP squad with a Headhunter, Hunter gunner, and two Hunters.

I've also built a Grizzly and a Kodiak Destroyer, with the other Grizzly going to round out my first FS support squad.

I feel confident enough to start running small demos once I get my Southern GP squad assembled.

With all that being said, I've got some initial impressions for discussion

The Good:
-Plastics are easy to assemble and have lots of weapon options on the sprue. The fact that they are also all labeled on sprue is a big bonus for a new player!

-Free rules are always a HUGE plus, full stop.

-The price of entry was INCREDIBLY reasonable. I've got two full 150TV armies with spare units to choose from and I'm invested at about $150 since I bought in during their holiday sale.

The Bad:
-I have some of the metal models, and the lack of details in the plastics compared to the metals was surprising. I know that metal captures detail better in 'traditional' miniatures, but I was not expecting that much loss in appearance

-The posability of the plastic models is disappointing. It seems like I'm going to have to cut some models up to start making them a bit more unique. In my Northern GP squad, I've got 'Hunter running forward and shooting', 'Headhunter running forward (but with the other leg up!)', 'Hunter looking to the right' and 'hunter looking to the left'. Not exactly a mind-boggling amount of customization options for poses.

The Ugly:
-I think I've finally figured out what made me so hesitant to get into Heavy Gear and possibly the largest barrier to entry for a new player: ACRONYMS! Seriously, there are so...many...acryonyms. Reading through the rulebook its overwhelming how many acronyms you have to remember for the game, and I think that a lot of new players would take one look at that ruleset and turn tail. After reading through the rulebook several times and watching several youtube batreps, I finally feel confident in the basic rules, and I understand the rulebook, but I really, REALLY wanted to get into this game and I doubt that most new players would work that hard to learn the language that the game is using. IMO, I think the ruleset is solid, simple and complex where appropriate, and a lot of fun, but I think that the wording needs to be reworked so that we can ditch these acronyms or at least stop using as many of them as possible!

Lets discuss!

Thanks for the review! I don't have the new plastics so can't comment about them other than just superficial thoughts from looking at other gamers' pictures. As a veteran of HG since almost the beginning (I got into Blitz on day 1 at gencon but missed out on HG fighter), I agree about the acronyms. It wasn't an issue for me during the first half dozen editions from 1994 to 2014ish but I definitely feel lost in the current version looking at the newly renamed weapons and rules as well.

Great writeup godswildcard, I shared that feedback with the Blitz team. Sounds like you've got awesome starter forces going!

The acronyms issue is a fair one to point out, between the factions, subfactions, individual fighting forces, equipment, weapons, unit types, etc, there's a lot of them, and part of that comes from the real world military scifi aspect of the setting, but it can be daunting. I find myself having a similar problem with GW games these days, due to their naming conventions where everything has to be a copyrightable package, and I couldn't tell you the difference between Space Marines Incursors, Infiltrators, Impulsors, Invictors, Intercessors, Inceptors, etc and it often feels overwhelming

Also as Warboss noted, some things got changed/relabeled between editions (though I think some of that probably helped clarity a bit, particularly removing the numbers like "MRP/36 vs MRP/9" and the associated Rate of Fire (RoF) acronym/ratings of +1/2/3, down to just "MRP").

On the plastics note, I think the Polar plastics show the greatest deviation in detail from the metals, the newer NuCoal, Peace River, and Utopia plastics, while still generally stuck with stiffer poses, are far better detailed and proportioned.

With the Grizzlies, Mammoth, and Kodiak, you'll want something with a Target Designator (TD) like a Cheetah or White Cat (or Iguanas for a Southern force with that Naga) that can be used to Forward Observe (FO) so they can make use of weapons that have the Guided trait (MGM on the Grizzly, LATM/MATM on the Mammoth/Kodiak/Naga) and engage targets that are likely to be out of line of sight and at long ranges, particularly as such FO units are also the guys you'll usually use to jam an opponent's attempts at such.

A friend of mine is starting a Heavy Gear RPG campaign in 2nd Edition (the BEST edition), so I'm painting some Pit Bulls for Peace River SWOS.



Actually my first time trying contrast paints and drybrushing on gear minis, I usually overpaint the heck out of them. Also I tried putting them on GW 32mm bases, which they fit pretty well.