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To add to the glue topic, I use, love and swear by LOCTITE superglue!

When it comes to metal, glue doesn't matter as much to me, as I'm an obsessive pinner. In my opinion, better to do the job once, and do it right, than to hope that only chemical bonds and careful handling will keep everything safe.

Valhallan- that's why I started using greenstuff in my joints with the gorilla brand super glue. The glue by itself is pretty strong... but I have yet to have any joint that I've used the combination on break.

I've tried pinning but find it's an art that eludes me so this is my solution, which while time-consuming, I think is not more time-consuming than pinning, and is extremely strong.

GBL wrote:
For what its worth, Paulson.

I have followed other companies through the Metal -> Resin -> Plastic transition, and am a more than capable modeler. If there has to be metal, bring it on.

Agreed. Even if its all resin I can handle that. Ill replace any easily damaged bits like thin gun barrels with plastic or metal rod myself, no big deal.


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 Cyporiean wrote:
Throwing my vote into the 'I don't care about material, chicks dig giant robots' category.

I knew I liked you for some reason...


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 paulson games wrote:
Not a joke, I'm curious as to what brand of super glue you guys use?

Gorilla Impact Tough

 Mad4Minis wrote:

GBL wrote:
For what its worth, Paulson.

I have followed other companies through the Metal -> Resin -> Plastic transition, and am a more than capable modeler. If there has to be metal, bring it on.

Agreed. Even if its all resin I can handle that. Ill replace any easily damaged bits like thin gun barrels with plastic or metal rod myself, no big deal.

I am a big fan of the Resin N Scale Battletech Garage kits that have caught on recently, I can see these models being that quality or higher. I really don't see what the problem is.

I like big bots and I cannot lie!

I think I might use something very similar to BSI, but the nozzle cap is completely different, Atomic Glue from Udisco, which distributes models for a good part of eastern Canada (none of the "kiddie stuff" we like to play with) But I'm an obsessive pinner anyway, I enjoy the modelling and painting parts much more than the playing. My friends all have terminal cases of the two-kids-or-more.

Ugh, I couldn't imagine having to fullfill that many pledges in resin. Paulson, you have my sympathies... as for my money you knew it was a shoo-in.

Rock my world, good sir.

From the Artwork, I like the looks of it! ^_^ Might have to take a look more of the Neo-Bloc, as that seems to interest me.

GBL...I have recent purchased 2 of those N scale kits and they are nice. The same quality for Mecha Front would be perfect.

 Mad4Minis wrote:
GBL...I have recent purchased 2 of those N scale kits and they are nice. The same quality for Mecha Front would be perfect.

Agreed. I was looking for a good rules system to run them with, and this popped up. I think they may be a little out of scale unfortunately.

Perfectly happy with metal miniatures! I've actually bought metal 15mm WW2 stuff over the plastic examples, despite the cost, just because I prefer the tactile-feel element of pushing little metal vehicles around a board.

I also feel that, even at such a small scale, metal has got that little bit more definition in some of the details than plastic sometimes has.

In answer to the glue question, I use Rocket - quite expensive, but the medium thickness stuff is wonderful for gluing metal.

I tend to glue metal models with a combination of BSI cyanoacrylate and my tears of frustration.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I tend to glue metal models with a combination of BSI cyanoacrylate and my tears of frustration.

If you mixed it with the blood of a virgin, you'd be alright.


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I've just done sum' thinkin' (yes, one of those days) and I wouldn't mind using those mecha as a more modern version of a Sentinel either, honestly. If the Sentinel was any good, mind you.

GBL wrote:

 Mad4Minis wrote:
GBL...I have recent purchased 2 of those N scale kits and they are nice. The same quality for Mecha Front would be perfect.

Agreed. I was looking for a good rules system to run them with, and this popped up. I think they may be a little out of scale unfortunately.

The N scale is equal to 10mm, Mecha Front is 15mm, so off by a bit. Might have to adjust movement and ranges a bit, but other than that it should work fine.




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 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I tend to glue metal models with a combination of BSI cyanoacrylate and my tears of frustration.

I always use an accelerator with superglue.

I have a pretty extensive collection of the Macross Nichimo brand plastic kits as well as the Dougram stuff by Takara and had the scale of those lines in mind when I was doing early concepts for Mecha Front. (The dougram stuff is a mix of 1/144 scale and 1/200 scale) They tend to be a bit on the taller side so they fit very well for the mediums and heavies. They are significantly taller than what my light mecha will be but there's not much in the rules that uses a fixed height measurment or requirement. The only thing that would be a draw back is that you'd give up some degree of cover. But even when standing behind levels one buildings light mechs are usually in partial cover and never completely concealed so it likely won't be too bad.

All those kits fit nicely on 60mm bases whcih is what I use for mecha front, and movements and ranges are talken from the foot print of those bases so you wouldn't need to rescale anything. So if you have a bunch of those kits just toss them on some bases and they'd be a great option for test playing the game or running your own customized units. It's basically what I started with when I was working on my earlier Robotech game and then re-engineered for Mecha Front.

Buy your bases from http://proxiemodels.com/ they are a good deal and I'll be using his bases for my game (plus I already use them on all my n scale models)


There's tons of good priced Valkyries by Nichimo that can be had as cheap as 2 kits for about $5. For the Dougram stuff the 35th aniversery packs is the way to go and you can get them on Amazon it's about $100 for 10 kits so they break down to around $10 a model. Here's the Dougram kits on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/COMBAT-ARMOR-DOUGRAM-anniversary-Collectors/dp/B0052WVN34/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1368923288&sr=8-5&keywords=dougram


All those kits are a bit static in pose but really easy to repose with some imagination and double so if you pick up some large beads or wooden spheres at a hobby/crafts store so that you can articulate the shoulders or elbows a bit more. They can shape up very nicely with a small touch
of modelling love.

Here's an example of one with the joints reworked with what I think are 5 & 10mm spheres







The downside to the nichimo/takara stuff is there's nothing that'd fill in for a quad very well, you could probably get a larger scale crab gunner of blizzard from dougram but you'd have to shorten the legs considerably and they still would look very anorexic. The larger scale kits are also a bit harder to find and tend to be pricey so it's not all that great for proxying. But being a devote lover of all things mecha there's always appeal in having as many differant kits as possible just because they are awesome

For ligh mechs some of the armored trooper votoms toys and models may work. I don't own any of those so I can't recommend any particular kits but they are smaller so I think they'd work ok.

Also the gashapon toys for front mission are *the bomb*, cheap really well detailed with lots of articulation and on ebay for about $10 a piece.


The classic mechs designs for those series are simply awesome to have and they helped shape a lot of the foundation concept that's evolved into Mecha Front. IMO you can never have enough mecha and I recommend to get some of those, just make sure to budget so you can also pick up my models when they are out I have spent crazy amounts of time and money on those japanese kits and if you put in the work to update stuff like the hands and pose I can't recommend them enough as they are an excellent price and it's also a nice part of gaming and modelling history to work on.

The older kits also directly inspired Battledroids/Battletech and were the liscensed as the original minis for the game before they started doing the metal versions. Battletech came about because at the time of the game creation you could buy the kits from vending machines and they decided to write rules for them, and then later started making their own smaller scale stuff in metal.

Love that link. For an old school battletecher its Wolverine, Battlemaster, Shadowhawk and Griffin oh my!!

How would they scale up with the N scale Zeus & Highlander IIc I got from LordNth?

The blockhead and bigfoot (aka wolverine and battlemaster) are both the same height and are even height with Nth's Zeus model. Battletech shortened their verison of the wolverine, in dougram it's the same height as the bigfoot/battlemaster.

The soltic & dougram (griffin & shadowhawk) are smaller and are the height of the highlander, but they seem a bit smaller as they don't have as much mass.

A lot of the differnat mecha had their scale reduced when they were translated into battletech to convey the diferant weight classes. But if you aren't hard set on scale and don't mind mixing lines they are really awesome for doing a classic 3025 battletech themed game in a larger scale, or stanging your own version of Super Robot Wars. If you want to go deeper into the SRWars pattern there's also several gundam kits hat are in 1/200 scale and several gashapon figures that also fit very nicely. I lean more towards the battletech theme, adding gundam into a btech mix is a mortal sin that should be punishable by death

rigeld2 wrote:
http://www.camodipkit.com/

All I need now is the minis.

Those guys need to redo that video in hi-rez, like, yesterday. All I could see was a pixellated skull being dipped into a vat and then looking just as pixellated. Then I turned it off.

 paulson games wrote:
The blockhead and bigfoot (aka wolverine and battlemaster) are both the same height and are even height with Nth's Zeus model. Battletech shortened their verison of the wolverine, in dougram it's the same height as the bigfoot/battlemaster.

The soltic & dougram (griffin & shadowhawk) are smaller and are the height of the highlander, but they seem a bit smaller as they don't have as much mass.

Awesome news, thanks. Looks like Ill have to try and scrape up $100 for that set. Im not actually looking to reproduce Battletech, so size discrepancies are fine, as long as they match in with the mecha I already have, which it seems they will.

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I tend to glue metal models with a combination of BSI cyanoacrylate and my tears of frustration.

If you mixed it with the blood of a virgin, you'd be alright.

Shouldn't be too hard to find one in your average game store...


@Paulson: Is there a hard date for the beginning of the kickstarter?

Just want to add my support. I own several of your models and you do great work and id love to have the big stompy robots youve got art for smashing eachother up on the table. Ive looked iver the rules you have and it looks great so far.

Little confused on the initiative rules though

keisukekun wrote:
Just want to add my support. I own several of your models and you do great work and id love to have the big stompy robots youve got art for smashing eachother up on the table. Ive looked iver the rules you have and it looks great so far.

Little confused on the initiative rules though

Thanks I appreciate the support from the LOTB members, the crazy N scale stuff on there was a huge influence on me.

As for the initiative stuff what part is confusing? I should have an updated rules set available this week and if there's stuff I can clarify I'll try and fit it in.



Base idea is that at the start of the round each player rolls initiative for each individual unit they control. Then the unit with the highest initiative goes first and does whatever actions it has available. Once that unit has no more actions the next highest initiative unit goes. Unlike Btech/40k/Warmachine players do not have seperate turns, so all the action is resolved based on what the individual initiative order works out to be.

Example:

Player John has two units, player Mike likewise has two units.

John rolls a 5 for unit A, and an 8 for unit B.

Mike rolls 4 for his unit C, and 10 for his unit D.

So the order of actions would go Mike Unit D goes first, ---> then John Unit B, ---> then John Unit A, ----> then Mike Unit C.

Does that help?



As for the kickstarter date I'm waiting on the first test print to come in before I sumbit everything to KS. I should have the model in by end of the month and I anticipate that will all be in place by the first week of June. Exact date I'm unsure of as it can take KS several days to a week for them to review it for approval.

Thats how it sounded when i read it. So then would it be possible for one side to move all his units before the other side can move any of his? You should provide a few examples (i don't remember seeing one) as its a unique concept (at least i haven't heard of it before). It just seemed like it would be unweildy when fielding larger forces so i wasn't sure if i was understanding it right. How many turns does a game normally last? So far it seems like combat would be pretty devestating. Less plinking like you see in bt sometimes and more smashing the crap out of each other.

Thats how it sounded when i read it. So then would it be possible for one side to move all his units before the other side can move any of his? You should provide a few examples (i don't remember seeing one) as its a unique concept (at least i haven't heard of it before). It just seemed like it would be unweildy when fielding larger forces so i wasn't sure if i was understanding it right. How many turns does a game normally last? So far it seems like combat would be pretty devestating. Less plinking like you see in bt sometimes and more smashing the crap out of each other.

Depending on how the dice resolve it is posisble that a player might end up moving and shooting with all of his mechs before the other player has a chance to. That's what we'd refer to as "A Bad Day"

That situation can be really strong but in most games it'll be a very rare occurance with full sized forces. When it comes down to an end game turn it can happen more often; when one player might have 1 mech while his opponent has 2-3, that single mech will be very hard pressed but if you only have a single model vs a pack then your are in trouble regardless of how the iniaitive pans out. (there will be modified initiative rules for large games with forces above 6 units, they will be managed by squads) To help keep track of turn order players use tokens next to their units to designate what iniative order they act on and also use tokens to track how many actions a unit has. (or has spent)

To help offset things a bit reactionary fire is crucial, while you take the shot at a penalty it has the potential to stop or even destroy an enemy mid turn. Reactionary fire triggers off of an action completeing within a models field of vision. So if they move into view they can be shot before they have the opportunity to aim and shoot. The trade off is mechs that engage in reactionary fire do so at the cost of not having that action during their own turn. While the game mechanics are fairly simple the timing of actions can add a lot to the strategy used.

Combat is very quick, missiles are super deadly and can often one-shot the lighter mechs and even the largest mechs can be brought down with a lucky roll. The game is meant to focus on movement and very rapid combat. So far with standard sized forces of 5-6 mechs per side the average game play is 3-4 turns. Even though the game is quick its meant to engage both players with almost every action so it feels like you're active more than other game systems.

Yeh thats what is really getting me excited about this game. I am not fond of games without a reaction system. I love infinity and the simultaneous combat of BT so this rule system is getting me excited for its unique take on initiative and its reaction system. I like all parties to be involved in all parts of the game.

I have a very small amount of exposure to Infinity and it has some really cool mechanics, but as somebody completely new to that game I find the sheer amount of mechanics and complexity a bit overwhelming. Their reactionary element is cool but still having a "you go; I go" turn sequence is kinda meh especially when you can rambo a single unit like mad while the rest of the team does nothing.

The initiative system I'm using is more reflective with RPG stuff like D&D where individual charaters each have a seperate initiative score. Typically that tends not to work as well with miniatures games, but it can if the model count is low. Because it's a bit out of the box It takes a game or two for tabletop players to get used to the flow, but it's second nature for my friends who are primarily RPG players. Nothing too original or crazy, but it initially feels slightly differant than a lot of other miniatures games.

Im fine with metal. Whatever it takes for you to be able to make a mech game with these aesthetics

I'd prefer resin, it's just nicer to work with.

There are some very cool designs here, I really prefer the bipeds to the quads though.

Im not so much of a fan of missiles being "super deadly". I can see players changing mechs to carry all missiles, games becoming nothing but a bunch of missile carrying mechs trying to alpha strike eachother. It kinda makes the guns pointless.

 Mad4Minis wrote:
Im not so much of a fan of missiles being "super deadly". I can see players changing mechs to carry all missiles, games becoming nothing but a bunch of missile carrying mechs trying to alpha strike eachother. It kinda makes the guns pointless.

I had this thought as well. It would allow for a sweet ECM and ECCM mechanic, which is a nice role for light mechs. Light Unit kitted out with ECM suites running interference for the heavy hitters and causing all kinda hell for target acquisition of fire and forget weapons. Rules can be adjusted I'm sure this early in the games life cycle. I presume lots of play testing will need to be done to balance weapon loadouts. I trust Paulson to fine tune his baby til it sings!

Also, if missiles need to be locked on to fire, that might prevent them from being used for reaction fire.

Missiles being limited in payload might also offset the disadvantages of guns.