Well, we actually played twice, for a total of 2 hours and fifteen minutes including setup of terrain and whatnot. And me teaching my opponent the rules.
MechaWar is an abstract mech combat game by Precinct Omega. It's part of their One Pound Wargames line they just started and costs £1.00 GBP
precinctomega.co.uk/s/catalog/1
The game was designed to be used alongside the mech sprues sold by EM4 miniatures. One pound for rules + £2.55 GBP for 5 mechs makes for a very, very low entry cost per person.
link
While I have a few sprues of EM4 mechs, I also have some Battletech and Reaper CAV miniatures. There are also some local BT fans who hate how long Battletech takes to play. So I emailed one of them and invited them to try MechaWar with some house rules to make it represent the BT universe a bit better.
The house rules:
Optimum Range X – normally in MechaWar, the distance between shooter and target is part of the target number you need to roll to hit. With Optimum Range 24", for example, instead of using the distance between the mechs, you'd use the distance between the target and a point 24" away from the shooter.
Indirect Fire – BT has missile boat mechs that like to hide and lob missiles at mechs spotted by other lance-mates. Half the fire power on these attacks, and you can't move and shoot if you fire indirectly.
Short Range – With LBX autocannons, multiple smaller lasers, and a variety of other weapons that have a shorter ranger in BT, we needed something to allow mechs that are great close up but terrible at greater distances. This one is simple-- double all range penalties, but get more firepower dice. 50% more.
Jump Jets – Simple ability to move a bit slower but ignore terrain, jump up onto terrain, etc.,.
Alpha Strike – MechaWar doesn't bother with heat management, so we added in a simple Alpha Strike action. You get +2 firepower dice, but your systems take one damage each. You can spend repair actions normally to vent this heat damage.
Separated to-hit and to-damage – The default rules have a single stat that you roll against to determine both hitting and damage. This stat is also the hit points of the mech, so when it hits 0, the mech is wrecked. This means it's impossible to design easy to hit, but hard to destroy mechs and hard to hit but easy to destroy mechs. So we made the other defensive stat the hit point stat.
Vulnerable – If your "to-hit" stat goes to 0, all hits against you are criticals after that.
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For the first game we played "A Matter of Honour" from the rulebook. It's a duel scenario where the first mech destroyed decides the outcome. We decided it was a dispute over a mining facility in the Chaos Marches in 3020. Rather than an all out war, the two factions agreed to settle it via a duel.
We had enough terrain that there was no real LOS across the four foot table that didn't have major cover bonuses for the target.
The game has alternating activation and reactions, so there is a ton of back and forth during the game.
My opponent took an Atlas (super tough short range assault mech), a Stinger (scout), a Rifleman (sniper) and a BattleMaster (general purpose assault mech). I had a Longbow (missile boat mech), two Shadowhawks (general purpose mechs) and an Enforcer (medium weight sniper mech). I also had some off table artillery I could call in (house ruled like the indirect fire rules above).
After a short 10 minute "this is how the game works" session, I told him he could operate his mechs how he thinks they should work based on his knowledge of BattleTech. He did, and it worked.
The game opened up with my Longbow taking a good firing position and opening up on his Rifleman. After taking some damage, he used a reaction to move to safety.
He then started an advance with the assault mechs up the middle, hugging terrain, while his scout started a wide flank. I got my long range guys into good sniper spots and sent everyone else up to spot.
My opponent picked one of my shadow hawks as the target to take down quickly for a victory. He ended up getting the Battlemaster in a position where it was able to walk out of cover around a crag and put some serious damage onto my Shadowhawk. I ran as a reaction, escaping the barrage of the second action his Battlemaster had.
I avoided getting anywhere near the atlas, but it still took pot shots at me here and there. My damaged shadowhawk ended up getting shot at again by his Rifleman. I backed it off again, but ended up being in striking distance of his cout mech, who zoomed in and blasted my mech into a wreck.
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For our second game he played the escape mission from the main rules. One person starts in one corner of a 4x4 table and has to escape off the other corner. The other played starts with everything off the table, but when they arrive, they can enter on any table edge. Having played this before, I knew that slow mechs were terrible choices to make for this mission. I advised my opponent that going with slow mechs would make this difficult. He still opted for the Atlas, but filled the rest of his lance with shadowhawks. I went with half shadowhawks and half wasps and outnumbered him severely.
I was the attack, which meant he lucked out. You have to roll under the mech's speed on a d10 for them to show up as the attack, and it was entirely possible that if he was the attacker he would never see the Atlas on the table. Instead he got to deploy it right away.
It began it's relatively slow march across the table, moving 12" a turn while there was no immediate danger and slowing to 4 or so once my stuff got closer.
I ended up coming in from both sides about half way down the table. My plan was to try to isolate shadowhawks with multiple mechs of my own and stay away from the Atlas. He made this very difficult as he kept his mechs closely packed.
I ended up setting up firing lines that he'd have to cross through on his way across the table. He'd trigger them, shoot at me ineffectively in my good covered position and then I'd react by shooting or moving to the next position and firing from there.
I started losing mechs when he suddenly did a massive direction change. His whole force stopped advancing into my string of ambushes and went perpendicular from the path to his destination. While I had fast mechs, he ended up engaging half of my force with all of his, and then once they were dealt with, he turned and faced the rest head on.
I tried to keep fading and set up positions to slow him down, but I should have ran as soon as he advanced off against my forces on one side. Instead I tried to go for the kills on the mechs I had damaged in the ambushes and ended up getting fired upon at close range by the Atlas.
In the end, I choose the survival of my mechs over a suicide run to try to get VP. I destroyed 1 shadowhawk and nearly a second, but lost 2 shadowhawks and 2 wasps in exchange. The rest of his lance escaped.
Overall, I like this game. If you want a simple non-universe specific mech game that plays fast, I recommend it. If you have a particular fictional vision for your games, you'll have to do some house ruling like I did for the Battle Tech universe.
The next two games in the product line are AirFrame and BattleGroup which add aerospace fighters and tanks, infantry and artillery, respectively. Hopefully I'll be able to participate in playtesting them, but either way, I feel I already have a good foundation for fast play sci-fi games with MechaWar. And the price was certainly right.
paints some Synths from the Fallout game.
