thread: 2006-10-30 : Mechaton developments
On 2006-11-06, Uriel wrote:
Maybe this is just me, but I think that Mechaton works poorly with only 2 players, especially when both have similarly strengthed armies. OK, partly this is just me venting my bitterness for getting my ass kicked this afternoon but anyway let me explain what happened... btw this is going by old rules posted here.
So I asked a friend to try a game with me and we both choose 4 mechas with 4 attachments each, the biggest and the best, and each with 1 rocket. Our armies are also very similar in build. So we're tied. We roll off, he wins and remove 1 attachment and 1 rocket (my houserule). I bump down one and he bumps up one.
So I start with (4+3)*4=28 victory points per unit
He starts with (4+3)*6=42 vppu
14 point difference to his advantage. Tough for me.
As the defender he gets to setup. 2 mechas in the middle. I space out my mechas with 2 in the middle to match his, and 2 at my stations. He finishes by placing 1 artillery guy at his stations and 1 guy right on top of one of my stations (with 2 blue dice, a hardnut to crack).
Is there anyway I could win this scenario? I got whipped. We both managed to kill off 1 mecha, with several mechas down to just whites, so he won with 36 points against 24. By being able to place his last mechas where ever he wanted he pretty much got to direct where the battle would be fought, in this case far away from his stations.
Given that our armies just differ with one dice I find that the vppu calculation gives some very odd results. For a 3 player scenario this, in my experience, is not so much of a problem since two of the players often naturally gang up on the defender in the beginning so smack him down a notch or two. With 2 players with as equal armies as you can get one player will always get a huge starting advantage.
OK, so I'm bad loser.
