"New Robotech Battle Report - 1/200 Scale" Topic

On July 17th we ran another Robotech game. For rules, we once again used an adapted version of "Mobile Soldier in Action".

The game was set on Mars. For those familiar with the Macross Robotech cartoon series, it would have fit approximately into Episode 7 – "Bye Bye Mars".

The SDF-1 space fortress, trying to return to Earth after a "miscalculated" space jump to Pluto, had landed on Mars to gather supplies from an abandoned human base. The Zentreadi, 40-foot tall aliens pursuing the SDF-1, had set a trap, and ambushed the SDF-1 and its supply crews.

In this game, a shuttle has crashed with a VIP officer from the ship. The RDF sent a force of mecha to make a recovery, while the Zentreadi moved in looking for a prisoner!

The RDF had two destroids (a Gladiator and an Excalibur) and three Veritech Fighters (two VF-1A and one VF-1J). The Zentreadi had an ace pilot in an Officer's pod, three light missile pods, one heavy missile pod, a scout pod, and eight standard battle pods.

The table was small – 4' x 4', with the prize in the middle.

To retrieve the objective, a mecha had to keep base contact with the shuttle for two turns. As an added wrinkle, the destroids were not allowed to retrieve the VIP (after all, in the cartoon, the destroids were never allowed to do anything cool).

This game became very violent, very quickly (fun for me). The destroids deployed far forward, and went down in a blaze of glory within two turns, taking a few pods with them. (I will upload some photos of the last stand later – I forgot to upload them last night).

The Zentreadi advanced after blasting the destroids, and Veritechs arrived on the second turn.

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One VF-1A stayed in fighter mode, and managed to blast the recon pod, but the Zentreadi massed fire and blasted it from the sky.

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The second VF-1A went to battloid, and started blasting pods. However, it did not last long either. By the end of the third turn, the RDF side was down to the VF-1J!

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The VF-1J raced to the shuttle. With a better pilot and better armour than the VF-1As, it endured a barrage of close range fire from the pods.

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The VF-1J survived two turns of abuse (but sadly for the RDF, was not able to give much abuse back thanks to some bad luck on the dice) and recovered the VIP by the fifth turn. All it had to do was win the initiave, and it would fly awar. It failed rather badly on that score, and the aliens blew away the fighter.

Defeat for the RDF? Cut to commercial….

I really enjoyed the game. Had an appropriate cinematic approach consistent with Macross – destroids show up, get blown away, followed by the VF-1As. It was all going to plan for the RDF until they failed to roll well with that last initiative check.

Overall, I think the RDF had the short end of the stick in terms of balance of forces – but then, they still nearly won, and in the cartoon the RDF was always outnumbered anyway!

I hope the pictures turn out on the sight. I will upload pics of the destroids later today.

Thanks for the cool battle report. The Scenario sounded fun and the pictures were really nice as well.

Where are the Robotech figures from? I love the old series and would love to give these rules a try myself.

-Tom

I loved the Robotech series! Where did you get the miniatures for the game?

Where did you get those wonderful toys ? ( paraphase j. Nicholson --Joker) what is " Mobile soldier in Action rules ? I never heard of them

The game looks like it was a lot of fun, thanks for posting the report and the pictures.

There must be something in the air this week. A friend and I just played a 1/200 Macross game of our own. We set the scenario on the surface of the SDF-1 in deep space, with the Zentraedi trying to get inside the battle fortress. Five destroids (three Tomahawks, a Defender and a Spartan) and a Valkyrie faced off against nine Regult battle pods, a light missile pod, a scout pod, a Glaug command pod and a Queadluun-Rau powered armor. Alas, the RDF took it in the teeth in our game, too. They got wiped out and five of the pods managed to get inside the fortress. I guess civil defense will have a bit of a job ahead of them…

Mike

"Puny micronians, I will crush you all!

Lord Khyron"

Nice stuff!

The miniatures they are using are 1/200th scale model kits. They are so-so to come by on ebay. the Glaug and Queadluun-Rau powered armor are much harder to come buy though. =( Still trying to find some for the price of one limb instead of all my limbs.

The models are 1/200 kits by Nichimo or Testors "ROBOT". It's a bit of a crap shoot on ebay, but I recommend the artillery pod kits – they can be made into either artillery pods, or just regular soldier pods, and they tend to be cheaper than the soldier kits, which are rarer and therefore more expensive.

Nichimo is generally better, as you get two models in a kit.

Tachikmoa – that sounds like a great scenario! I will have to try one like that sometime.

Ming31 – Mobile Soldier in Action is a set of rules (they are free on the Web – I've lost my link but I'm pretty sure someone can find it for you on this site) designed for the Gundam universe. We use a modified version.

Greg

Tachikoma – that sounds like a great scenario! I will have to try one like that sometime.

It was fun. We threw it together at the last minute as a playtest, so unfortunately we didn't have a camera available or I would've taken some pictures. The Zentraedi players were really getting into the game, and each pod that got into the fortress brought a chorus of "Where's Minmay?!" from that side of the table.

Mike

We're using the same models/figures that you are, except for the Queadluun-Rau, which was one of the Bandai 1/144 scale kits. It's theoretically out of scale, but the animation was never consistent, either… or at least, that's our story, and we're sticking to it.

There is a "gashapon" set out there with a Queadluun-Rau (and a Glaug, although the model is much better) if you are looking for a female armour in 1/200. At the same time, you are right about the scale in the animation. One shot, the Zentreadi are bigger than a battle pod, the next, the fit inside of it. I would be curious to see how the 1/144 scaled up the 1/200, because if it's close, I might get some male power armour…

I'll see if I can't wrangle up some pictures of the 1/144 powered armor (male and female) alongside the other mecha. We find that we don't mind the size difference, but it's a matter of taste. Each powered armor kit comes with a pilot figure as well, if you're interested in having some infantry around. The pilot is a size match for a 1/170 scale Valkyrie battloid.

Does rather look like a ton of fun..where does one get the rules?

Fricken Schweeet… Thanks!

I wish the models were easier to come by… i'd definitely be hosting some games in my neck of the woods.

Maybe with the upcoming live action movie products will start to appear again…

A.

Here's a link to the rules:

link

He has some others up there as well that look fun.

Greg B, any chances on seeing your modified version? My email's mecha_avatar at hotmail dot com if you feel like sharing.

Thanks,
TOm

Here are the pictures of the destroids which I forgot to upload last night.

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The Gladiator pilot made a rather brave charge against the odds…it didn't work out….

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Avatar – I will send you the mod I used.

Greg

Greg shots Greg. Look forward to reading your mod!

-TOm

*Great shots Greg*

Amazingly well done Robotech kits!

Tachikoma – if you find any pictures of the 1/144 armour scaled up against the 1/200 models, that would be great! If it's not too far off, I would love to add some power armour to the games. Send me a PM if you have any success.

Cheers,

Greg

Can someone send me the rules modifications for Mobile Soldier in Action? If someone could email them to me at ryan.przybyl@gmail.com, that would be great.

I've started buying some of the Nichimo kits for the battle pods, haven't gotten the RDF stuff as of yet as I'd like to get some of the pods painted first.

Looks like fun, can't wait to give it a whirl.

Thanks.

Could some send me the rules modifications as well? email address is scasson0 at gmail dot com

Thanks

Cosmic and Digital – I sent you file, but send me a PM if the email did not get through.

Cheers,

Greg

Greg – got your rules.

Also – where are you getting the fighter mode models? I looked at a complete list of the Nichimo 1/200 scale models, and they don't seem to make a fighter mode model – only guardian and battloid mode?

I see Yamato is now making some 1/200 scale veritechs?

Cosmic,

The fighter models were Testors ROBOT kits. I don't know if Nichimo ever made them…the Testors sprues and Nichimo sprues look almost identical to me, but I don't know much about how these kits came to the world. Like everything Macross, there seems to be a way to only get three quarters of the job done, and involve a bunch of different companies – seriously, who does a line of Valkyrie models and doesn't have fighter mode???

But venting aside, my advice is to look for the Testors ROBOT VF-1A kits on Ebay. The only fighters I ever found were VF-1A variety, but you can switch out the heads with the guardian mode model kits to create fighters with the right amount of recesssed head lasers.

There are models for the super/FAST pack VTs in fighter mode as well – even harder to find.

I don't know much about the Yamato veritechs, other than they look very pretty on the computer screen! I hope to get some at some point, if only to have the YF-19 VT available for a game.

Another option – go with 1/144 fighter mode models/toys, which seem widely available – as other posters have observed, scale was "variable", to say the least, in the cartoon.

Good luck.

Greg

Pretty cool write up, Greg, and excellent photos. I have MSIA, but haven't tried it yet. Any chance you could send me a copy of your conversion?

dymihail AT gmail DOT com

TIA

Wow great stuff there! The mecha look spectacular and it's obvious you've put a lot of work into making all of this come together.

I definitely have to look at the rules you're using for these scenarios. I've been toying off and on with modifying Battletech rules to provide a suitable "heroic" feel to everything to give Robotech-esque combat for some of our games here for my group, with varying success. A look at different rules might be in order though.

Demon Hunter,

I conitnue to fiddle with the MSIA adoption – the way we play it right now, we have to use buckets of dice for the missiles (I don't think the group minds, and I love it, but not for everyone). Also, I find MSIA is more set to maybe three or four mecha per side, as opposed to many, many mecha (at least for the Zentreadi side).

If you find any other cool rules out there, let me know!

GB

Justicar – I just emailed the doc to you. If you don't get it, send me a PM.

GB

Greg B, I'm $300 USD worse off because of you!! ;) I just grabbed 16 of the Nichimo kits off EBay, and am itching to get building. Can I beg a copy of your mods too?

macrossmartin(AT)yahoo(DOT)com

Brilliant, inspiring stuff that did a great job of making me think of the good fun I had at age 13, just discovering anime, wargaming and developing a serious crush on Lisa Hayes…

MacrossMartin – Glad to hear it! At least you got 16 kits. Imagine what $300 USD at Forgeworld gets you? Enjoy!

Get some green stuff too. The kits are literally intended to be screwed together, and mounted on the wall with a !#@$$#ing suction cup! I used green stuff to fill in the holes on the battle pods where the screw was supposed to be inserted.

Enjoy!

Wow, those are some sweet-looking models.

Sounds like it was a fun game. I'm actually working on a Macross game based in DP9's Silhouette system, for a combination of RP and wargaming.

I'm actually planning on running it via a VTT, as in my corner of the woods there's no other gamers. To do this, I need plan-view images of the units.

I was hoping, since you have such a lovely collection of models, if you could take some pictures and send them my way.

@cykotek – I can try to take a few pics…I don't really have a great camera though. Let me know what email addy you want me to send them too.

Cheers,

GB

Hi Brian – we played a con in Brandon, Manitoba a few weeks ago. We actually used a modification of Lord of the Rings from GW to play. You can see some pictures of the game at this link: link

I found Gerwalk models were easier to make as conversions. I think there used to be VF-1A gerwalk models out there in the scale.

Good luck with your project!

Greg

Ahh, more lovely photos! A whole Zentraedi-fleet's worth of thank-you's, Greg!

Brian – for flight, you are correct, we pretty much just let the VTs fly where they want. I try to balance that a few ways:

- the Zentreadi always massively outnumber the VTs (which is part of the look and feel of the setting to me anyways).

- a VT in fighter mode can be hit by any alien model anywhere in the table that has range; often VT players who are too keen and race over to the Zentreadi to "have a go" get lit up in response.

- the VT has more combat capabilities in the other modes, so the VT player can use the fighter mode to get anywhere they want, but in battloid they can shoot more with the gun pod etc.

In general I tried to give the VT different abilities in different modes to incent the players to use the different settings of the fighter a little bit. In the games we have played so far, the VT players typically "fly in", and then only use the fighter mode to try and get away from trouble.

I'll send you my "charts" when I have a moment, but bear in mind they are pretty home-grown, so you will probably want to play around with them. I am endlessly tweaking them myself.

Greg