thread: 2006-05-18 : Mechaton: done playtesting
On 2006-05-19, Ninja Monkey J wrote:
Yeah. Here's my current favorite strategy:
Have at least one Defender. This guy's all fight and no defense (ironically). He's got two dice at Long range and two at Medium (formerly "Short"). He's unlikely to get into it mano a mano, so while he's got arms and legs, only white dice will work for fighting up close. If the bad guys are that close, he's more like an active wall than an actual fighter. He gets a green die because he's got the bird legs that make the other guys so fast, but it's a bit of a waste.
There's one Scout. The Scout has three Big Missiles (it's stupid to get out among the bad guys and not be able to make them back off, plus, as you'll soon see, there's not a lot of ranged firepower in my army). He's got one Blue die for ECM (no point in running to the front just to get blasted), one yellow die for scouting, two green d6s (plus a green d8!) for getting out there fast because he gallops on hands and feet.
Then there are four fuchikoma. Their primary power is being disgusting and insecty. They've got two arms that slide in between joints and pull out parts, and their four legs have claws that rip and rend. (2 reds for close combat). They each have a sensor so they can support each others' die rolls. And a free green d8 for not having any ranged weapons. A blue die for being small and hoppy. The crawly legs mean they can crawl over stuff, including each other, a fact I used frequently.
Here's how the strategy works:
Park the artillery near the vaporators. For act one, he's on attrition duty.
Get the scout out flanking. If there's an opportunity to spot someone well, take it. If there's an opportunity to damage someone early, take it. But that guy should be a defender at a vaporator. If it's undefended or underdefended (as in this game, where Emily's first roll was just terrible: I believe it was 11122, leaving her with a defend of zero), then awesome. Otherwise, just head for a vaporator.
Sic the fuchikoma en masse on one mecha. It's hard to ignore them. If you shoot one, there are three more exactly like it, so running away might be the best option. But they're fast, so you'd better be, too. Honestly, they don't have that many dice and smashing one early might be a good idea. But they run up and spot the shit out of that guy, so out of the sixteen attack dice (including the whites and yellows) there are going to be a couple of sixes, and if the defense isn't stellar, that mecha's gonna be hurting. In this case, she fell back with only two Whites remaining and one of my fuchis jumped a wall onto her face and ate it while the pilot inside the cockpit looked in horror at the rending claws.
I decided to take the left flank, which was a mistake; had I been able to delay Vincent on my right, he might not have gotten my vaporator and I still might have gotten the Scout or a fuchi out to take another one.
So, here's my assessment of the different designs, and combined arms:
??? The spotting works great. It means that having guys clustered up spotting for each other gives a huge boost.
??? The artillery in combination with spotters, well, duh.
??? The differences in design is tremendous. First off, HtH is usually neglected (for obvious reasons), so the fuchis were coming in with not only confusion (Which one should I shoot? Will it make any difference?) but because of their stripped down design, they had extra initiative, so they were usually moving before anyone else could. Dealing damage before anyone else can is a big deal because you're taking out offensive capabilities, for the most part.
The weaknesses, of course, are that my right flank was open because I couldn't be everywhere; the dudes were so tightly integrated that breaking them up made them substantially weaker. I effectively had three mecha for the price of six. Now, at the end, I broke a fuchi off and had it make a break for an open vaporator. Vincent's sacrificial mecha kept me distracted (which was foolish of me, but at that point, everyone was tense and adrenaline was flowing. That made for good tactics and bad strategy... uh, well, for me. Vincent and Emily were both making good decisions. I was anxious about my rapidly diminishing lead.)
I still want some sort of campaign rules where consequences carry over in some way. Like, maybe you can spend victory points to further alter the Doomsday Clock. But the primary reason I want that, I guess, is so I can make little mobile headquarter trucks and supply vehicles. Maybe I'll make some of those instead of vaporators and that will satisfy.
