In May I had my friend Bryan ferry across the Georgia Strait to visit me
in Nanaimo. He was a foot passenger and brought over a few mecha, and a
rule set he'd been tinkering with. It is very much focused on being a
convention set (and/or run on the monthly Bonsor Game club nights)...so 2
hours, simple rules, multiple players, get results quickly.
Inspiration wise he looked to Kaiju movies with giant stompy robots that
kick the snot out of each other. Shooting was intentionally made very
weak. Grabbing and throwing the enemy is good. Rule of cool is the
highest principle. You want to climb a building and jump kick, lets
figure out how that works.
It was very early draft, so lots of material was tossed out, as we looked to establish a solid foundation before we added too many bells and whistles. Bryan wasn't convinced of my idea to have destructable terrain, but I thought it was amazing to level a town due to throwing your enemies through it. I thought it worked pretty well. While the combatants were probably a bit brittle, it was really easy to get taken out, and then grab another mech and charge in off the table edge to work on a grudge kill.
A mutual friend came by later in the evening and we drank beer and played another round. It was good to get another set of views and opinions on the play and see how easy it was for a new comer to pick up the rules and play effectively. I'm not sure when I'll have another go at playing but it was definitely a fun game for an evening.
Where would one be able to access these big stompy rules.
ReplyDeleteThat's a great question. We were playing off two mildly different versions and writing notes on them. I'll poke my friend and see if he ever did updates to produce the next version.
DeleteBryan is in Europe travelling, but he likes this post and said he still needs to compile the notes we made.
DeleteBig Stompy Robots sounds like a good name for a game where you know from the outset what you're about to get into. Love it.
ReplyDeleteTable looked pretty decent too.
Shame the destroyed terrain idea wasn't a hit, I think it's almost required considering these metal behemoths are supposed to be so big and destructive.
I totally agree with you. We will have to see if the designer thought the destroyed terrain was good enough for staying in the next iteration.
DeleteI was pretty happy with the table considering I hadn't even planned for something like this. It probably would have benefited from 1.5-2x the number of pieces though.
Great looking game Dave. I like the sound of destructible terrain. I wonder if terrain could have a toughness....landing on a concrete building would hurt more that landing on something softer like a wooden or mostly glass building or some trees. 😁
ReplyDeleteStill, having to have two sets of terrain might make it harder to run. But as I have both ruined and intact city buildings I might have a think about it. 😂
We definitely didn't want to complicate things. Convention game mindset where you want it to be self running after 30min or so. So probably just one level of terrain hardness I think.
DeleteHaving ruins as well as intact structures is tricky. We probably all have a couple pieces...but not enough for this.
That sounded and looked fun
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting. Looking at the pictures I don't think they channel it super well, but it was fun.
Delete