Mechaton: The battle for Madison

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

So this isn't a roleplaying game per se. I did buy it at the Forge booth at Gen Con so I hope this post is alright. This isn't a post examining deep issues, it's just a post about a fun game with a few rules problems/questions.

I had some friends visit from out of town this weekend. We normally get together about four times a year to game all weekend. Mostly we play board games. Most of us have been gaming, RPG and otherwise, over ten years. Saturday we sat down to play some Mechaton. This is the first game I've got to play since my demo at Gen Con and it was a lot of fun. There's some pictures here. There will be more pictures added later. Anyway...

We spent some time making Mechs. I think it may have been an hour or two, but have been disputed. I think we may have experienced Lego time. Talking crap while building mechs with legos was a lot of fun. We had four teams.

Brett's team had two mechs. Optimus Crime had a artillery range weapon, a direct fire weapon, a spotlight, and wings. Tagger had two spotlights, jump jets, and a clear shield.

The Chiken, a Trike, and a Foot was the name of Nickies team. She had three mechs. The Chicken was the coolest mech I think. It had a direct fire weapon, a jump jet tail, a chain... um... unit, and I'm not sure if it was a spotlight, or another direct fire weapon. The Trike had little melee pincers, and I think two ECM suites for defense. The foot hopped around and had little melee pincers and a direct fire weapon.

The Shortbus Mechs was the name of Mitch's team. I don't think he had names for his. He had a mech with a direct fire weapon, a plasma torch for melee, and an ECM suite for a shield. His other mech had an artillery range weapon, a radio, and an ECM suite for defense.

Assault Force Clyde: Orbital Insertion Team was my team. I had Three Mechs. Top Heavy had a large Fusion Gun from Total Sol Industries for an artillery piece, two Depleted Geranium machine guns, and one antenna locator manufactured by the insectiod race from Beeranus (Bee-ranus) for a spotlight. Redrum had one Double Barreled Rocket Accelerators for an Artillery weapon and two Depleted Geranium machine guns. The Custodian had his family's cherished Mech Plunger a cherished symbol of their honor and station as a melee weapon, and a shield.

Set up

We originally made a mistake in generating the scores. Mitch was reading the rules while we were taking all the cool pieces. Part of the problem may have been that the example in the book uses his name. He had us subtracting or adding from 12 rather than 5 and then multiplying by 5. We got the points figured out later in the game during down time caused by a phone call, but we had to argue a bit about what the book said. We are either dumb or it's not as clear as it could be. So we ended up having the wrong person start as the defender and perhaps the wrong primary attacker.

Brett started as the Defender and put Optimus Crime at just under 12 units which was direct fire range since we had a 6 long stick. He put Tagger nearer to his base.

Nickie was the Primary attacker. We had a problem with the term perimeter. A formula that explicitly states that Perimeter is a circle centered on the defenders base whose radius equals the distance of the defenders furthest placed mech from said base, would have been helpful. You probably don't want to state it quite like that though.

We got it all figured out and got everything placed.

Fight!

Now it was time to fight. I won't go into a detailed play by play here, but here's the highlights. Nickie had the Chicken make a run for Brett's base. She also brought the pain towards my base with her other two mechs. I countered with some Melee from the Custodian focusing her attention on him while my other mechs bombarded targets of opportunity. Mitch moved forward and was an equal opportunity exploiter not really focusing on anyone specific till later in the game. Nickie destroyed The Custodian over about half the game, but lost the Chicken to Brett's superior spotlight tech. She also took my base, with the Trike, but had to retreat as I blew most of her attachments off. Mitch lost his artillery mech to Top Heavy. Again spotlights. I got all of his attachments in a shot. I then used my artillery to blow off Brett's attachments as he started attacking my artillery pieces. I hardly moved my artillery as we were on a large table and I stuck myself in a corner. The only time they moved was to retake my base. We ended at the running down of the clock.

During the game we made noises for explosions or weapons fire, picked up and gestured with our mechs, and basically acted somewhat kid-like.

Brett was the winner on points, Mitch was second. Nickie and I tied but I yielded third to her as her mechs were much more involved and were incredibly hard to destroy. Which means I lost, but there was only one enemy mech with the ability to fight back so I was happy about blowing off all those attachments.

A problem we had is we were curious about what happens when the mech loses all it's attachments. when you have two white dice left, you can put them to blue (defense), or green (movement). Can you also put them to Red if you can get into HTH range and call that ramming? We decided no, but ramming rules would be really cool.

What we learned:
Spotlights can be brutal, if you can hit. I expect to see everyone with spotlights next time. The consensus was the game was too slow because of damage occuring on a 5 or 6 normally or on a 6 with cover. Next time we are likely going to try reducing each by one, although I think if every mech had spotlights it would have went much faster. All my big damages were from a good spotlight roll.

The final opinion:
A really fun game that we had a little trouble with on our first run but everything should go just fine next time.

[brettspiel]

Yeah this was definitely a fun game. I'd recommend playing on a slightly smaller area then we did and making it round, because the corners are easier to defend even if vulnerable to "hit anywhere" artillery.  I'd really like to play the shorter 3-player setup in the book.

My main question was in regards to the die assignment. Unless I missed something in the rulebook (and that's entirely possible, as it was passed around a bit), the way it's worded, a mech should be able to assign a white die to any of the options (attack, spot, move, defense) whether or not you've rolled the proper colored dice. 

For example, we played that a mech can always assign a white die to defense, whether it has a defense attachment or not.  The same goes for movement - we assigned a white die to movement even if we didn't roll a green die.   However, we also said that you couldn't attack or spot without the proper attachments, but I don't think the rules as written support that.  If it is correct that you can't attack or spot without the proper attachments, it then follows that you shouldn't be able to move or defend without the proper attachments as well.

I really like the simplicity of this game, and the charm of the LegoMech is awesome, but the dice mechanics explanation could use some clarification.  The rules are written with some basic assumptions of how the LegoMechs work, but those assumptions aren't communicated as clearly as I'd like.

Brett

[Valamir]

Spotlights can be brutal, if you can hit. I expect to see everyone with spotlights next time.

Just checking, are you playing with the rule that mechs can't spot for themselves?  Only OTHER mechs can take advantage of a Spot (including mechs from a rival team in a multplayer battle).  Also that placing a spot can only be done at Direct Fire range.  I found that both of those rules worked to ensure that Spots were not overwhelming.

The consensus was the game was too slow because of damage occuring on a 5 or 6 normally or on a 6 with cover. Next time we are likely going to try reducing each by one, although I think if every mech had spotlights it would have went much faster. All my big damages were from a good spotlight roll.

One thought I had was to make cover strength relative to the height of the obstacle.

So no cover (including 1 high obstacles) would be a 4
2-3 brick high cover would be a 5-6
and 4+ high cover would be a 6.

Combine that with the rule that shots that miss due to cover damage cover, and you have the recipe for battering walls into oblivion.

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Hi Ralph,

Is the spotlight rule in the book? We must have missed it if so. We were letting a mech spot for itself. The second option sounds kind of cool, diminishing cover means you get to blow something up and more blowing stuff up is good.

[cdr]

Assigning your spot dice is step h, done after attack and move in step g.  So you can't spot for yourself.

In my little demo games I missed that naming your attack target and spotting target happen BEFORE you roll your dice, although it's right there in the rules so I have only myself to blame.  It was fun anyway, but I'll get that right in the future.

If there's a rule about only being able to spot at direct fire range, I totally don't see it in my copy of the Gen Con rules, but think it would be a great idea!  Also I'd be curious as to whether you can spot through cover.

--Carl

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

Spotting can, indeed, only happen at Direct or HtH ranges.

[brettspiel]

How about die assignment? 

Can you assign white dice to an option if you don't have the attachment (i.e., haven't rolled the corresponding color of die)? 

Logically, you should be able to Move and Defend without attachments but not Spot or Attack (unless ramming?). 

Mechanically (rules-wise) I don't see anything that says you can't *always* assign a white die to an option.

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

You can attack at HtH with Whites by punchng, biting, knee-groining (my favorite phrase ever), or whatever. But unless you've actually got guns or some equivalent Reds, you can't attack at greater range. As I understand it, this was an accidental omission from the rules.

So your intuition is correct.

[lumpley]

Joshua's right. I somehow managed to leave that sentence out of the book.

-Vincent