Friday, February 22, 2013

Mecha Front

I've been busy at work on a new game called Mecha Front. It's going to be a skirmish level game focused on what else but giant stompy robots pounding each other into oblivion. It'll be a N-Scale 15mm game which means the mecha will range between 50-70mm tall depending on the weight class.

Standard units will be mounted on 60mm bases and the super heavy quad mechs will use either a 90mm or 120mm base. The game will be focused on quick action and game play, average model count is 4-5 mecha per side. Typical game time will be 30-45 minutes.

The rules will be maintained as a living pdf document so players will always have free access to the latest updates and it will allow for me to address any game play issues without forcing players to buy new copies of the rules.

Here are some of the rough concepts, I will update with samples of the rules and 3d renders as I progress. So far things have been coming together beautifully and I'm very excited about this project.


Neo-Bloc Units









NorAm Units




8 comments:

  1. Those are some very nifty designs. Particularly looking forward to those quads...they're scary!

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  2. Omfg! this is so awesome. I'm definitely going to kick start this!

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  3. If you'll print those as N-Scale you've got a solid customer right here. They can easily be based and put into my MW:AoD games.

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  4. Man, this is really going to be cool. I've been really impressed by the Tau bits you've put out and I can't wait to see a full mech! One thing I'd really recommend is working hard to make them multi-pose if at all possible. Dunno if plastic is an option...but that would be ideal. The resin you've used on your bits will work well enough - just stay the hell away from any trollforge "plastic" because it isn't plastic but low-quality resin.

    Rules - It's hard to be innovative, but a successful over-arching principle would be simple yet detailed. Fast game play is important! And please, make one-shot kills on Mechs an extreme rarity.

    At games day a few years back -maybe 5 years back - this gaming club had a game called Dreadbash and it was great. They had a simple system for hit-location based on a die six. See each dread had 6 locations - 2 arms, legs (collectively), torso, head and power source I think. Each location had 3 wounds as it were, which would have different effects so that as the game went on, you Dread got damaged and decreased in effectiveness in some areas, but could keep going. Each Dread had a datasheet card were you recorded the damage - kinda like warmachine.

    A neat addition was each dread had 2 shields which took damage before the model, and could be regenerated on a d6 roll of 6+. I thought that was neat as you never got killed or damaged on the first hits - though high ROF weapons could strip your shields fast and then start damaging your system...BUT damage to your power source would remove your ability to regenerate shields...all this detail was on d6s it was great! Anyhow, at Adepticon we can discuss rules further - I'll bring my Battlesuits so we can even test them out!

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  5. These are pretty amazing scans. I am not one of those guys that just digs everything that comes along, even though I am a Mech fan...and yours simply are amazing. However, Im bummed these are at N-scale. I know it is impossible to please everyone all the time, but Im a 6mm guy...and keep my small scale guys as close to that as I can. I do play in 15mm, but not as often as 6...

    Keep it up!

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  6. There are some very nice mech designs going on here and it is great to see taht you haven't been discouraged by the whole Macross thing.

    As a suggestion, a lot of those mechs look like they would translate well into small walkers for 28mm... have you thought of the possibility of making a 'cover' for the mechs to effectively up-scale the torsos and make them suitable for single 28mm pilots?

    It would mean that a simple cover that sits on top of the existing mech would give it a larger cockpit and if applicable, 28mm sized hatches.

    The guns look pretty much there already so they would be OK as they are.

    It is just a thought to widen the commercial opportunities.

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  7. Thanks for the comments guys :)

    Not working on Macross has been a very good thing it's allowed me to expand beyond my original game concepts and work on a much more exciting design. While I'm massively overhauling my previous system it helps to have done some of the groundwork already. There will be tons of new stuff added in and also making changes based on what I learned with the test games at last years adepticon.

    I expect to have a rough draft of the rules together in the next week or so, but being only one person it'll probably be a WIP for a little while. While I hope everything comes across how I'd like I have no ego when it coems to rules design so I plan to make it a living document and update it as the questions and balance points invaribly arrive.

    That said I'll glady consider all the feedback I get.

    It was a long debate on the scale, it would certainly be way cheaper to make them in 6mm, but the modeller in me won out with 15mm. I'm addicted to the fan sculpt 15mm versions of the battletech models that I've shown in my old posts. I think a lot of warmachines appeal is the big robots, which was sad because teh focus tends to be far more on the warcasters and infantry often performs considerably better than the jacks.

    I spent a lot of time staring at the warjacks and various n-scales and there's something cool about pushing a big bot around on a 60mm base that 6mm just doesn't quite offer.

    There is a possibility that at some point I can offer scaled down models for 6mm, but I have so much other stuff to do right now I can't offically commit to that yet.

    A lot of my previous parts have had a somewhat more subdued level of detail. Part of it was due to them being the learning curve when I started out and as I progressed with 3 I didn't want the newer parts to break from the established look I had. Launching the mecha designs at this point gives me a much stronger skill set to start at so I anticipate that the detail level will blow away all my previous work including the Macross stuff. (which is already the better part of 2 years old)

    I'm also investigating the possibility of doing these in plastic, it's a very long shot due to themoney invovled but if it happens I'd have a very major nerdgasm and probably die of joy.

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  8. If only BAttletech had had designs this beautiful when the Harmony gold thing stripped their Macross designs from the game, they would still have a player in me.

    GReat stuff. Can't wait to see them. And I really llike the style of your sketches too.

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