Mechanical Mayhem

I continued my testing of some of the changes to special rules in Mighty Monsters last night, but took the opportunity to test some changes to the damage system for mechas as well. This is mostly tidying up some grey areas that occur when you have multiple pilots, as well as making a knocked out pilot less of a show-stopper. However I have also tweaked the damage effects so that all of the malfunctions can be recovered by spending actions, instead of some of them automatically lasting for a whole turn. This is firstly because 'one turn' is harder to adjudicate in multiplayer games, where the turn sequence is a little more random, and secondly because being disabled and vulnerable for a whole turn is pretty much game over for a mech. Essentially a damaged mech will now have to waste some of the actions it gets repairing and resetting systems, which kind of makes perfect sense. It gives some purpose to parts with no attacks or even a game use (some mechs have a head which does nothing in game terms, for example); you can now use the actions from those parts to reset things and avoid wasting actions from essential body parts.

I set up an all-mechanical game - two jaegers (Crimson Typhoon and Gipsy Danger) were defending an oil-refinery against an attack by Mecha Khan and Kajutaijuq. I'll post all of the stats below.

The first couple of turns were slow; both sides pretty much failed their activations on the first roll. However Mecha Khan drew first blood, damaging Gipsy Danger with its long-range missiles.

Kajutaijuq is uniquely designed to do well in this scenario, having high-speed hyperflight. As all the other mechs bumbled around failing activations, it slipped round their flank and attacked the oil-refinery, destroying it.

However the scenario also requires the attackers to destroy at least one defender, so a fight was inevitable. Crimson Typhoon moved quickly, grabbing Kajutaijuq and then attacking it with its numerous blades. Kajutaijuq responded by breaking the grapple, and catching Crimson Typhoon in one of its own.

Kajutaijuq tried to maneuver Crimson Typhoon to where it could throw the jaeger at Gipsy Danger.

Meanwhile Gipsy Danger was under fire from Mecha Khan's lasers, and took some more hits. Gipsy Danger still hadn't really got its act together.

The problem with grappling Crimson Typhoon is that Crimson Typhoon is all arms and close-combat attacks, and grappling someone doesn't stop them attacking you. Kajutaijuq was soon looking very poorly indeed, and had to eventually let go and take to the skies to stay out of Crimson Typhoon's reach.

Of course this left Crimson Typhoon free to assist Gipsy Danger. They very quickly took down Mecha Khan

Then they both turned on Kajutaijuq. The flying head was so badly damaged that its flight systems were malfunctioning, and it couldn't get the activations to move. It did get off a shot with its concussion blaster, however, hurling Crimson Typhoon into some ruins. This actually killed one of the pilots, and knocked the other two out, but they quickly recovered (aside from the dead one) and got the jaeger back into action. The two then jaegers fired their plasma blasters at it until they ran out of power, inflicting so much damage that whilst Kajutaijuq was still active, it was obviously out of the fight.

So despite losing the oil-refinery, the jaegers had won, with both of them still standing at the end. Here's all four combatants with their final damage dice - blue dice are the starting dice, yellow the first level of damage and red the serious damage.

The damage rules worked well; all I had to record were how many actions each mech needed to spend reactivating things, and what the effect was if they didn't. Changes to the pilot rolls meant that unconscious pilots did get to recover, keeping the mechs in the game. Playing mechs now becomes a more of a game of managing activations, instead of standing around being vulnerable for long periods of time.

The stats (all 300pts):

Mecha Khan

Head Q4 C2 - Reaction
Body Q3 C4 - 2 x Missiles C4L (Single Use)
Arms Q3 C2 - Elbow Thrusters x 1, 2 x Lasers C3M Linked

Legs Q3 C3 - Amphibious
Tail Q3 C3 - Blade

Kajutaijuq

Head Q3 C4 - Force Shield 3, Reaction
Body Q3 C4 - Concussive Force Blast C3S, Hyperflight, Light Armour (All)
Arms Q3 C3 - Claws

Gipsy Danger

Head Q3 C2 - Reaction, Two Neural-Net Pilots (1 x Heroic)
Body Q3 C4 - Spikes (One Use)
Arms Q3 C3 - Blade, Blaster C3S, Elbow Thruster x 1
Legs Q3 C3 - Amphibious

Crimson Typhoon

Head Q4 C2 - Three Neural-Net Pilots, Reaction
Body Q4 C3
Arms Q3 C3 - Plasma Cannon C3M, Block
Arms Q3 C3 - Blade
Legs Q3 C3 - Amphibious, Kicker

(Block is a new ability I'm testing as an alternative the Martial Arts in 'Mighty Monsters'.)

Mostly Monsters and Mechs

I tried a third game of 'Mighty Monsters' yesterday to try out rules changes. This time I added mechs into the mix as our game on Thursday showed that some of the damage effects are a bit ragged around the edges and very much advantage monsters (mechs and monsters take damage differently in this game).

I played the same teleporting crystal scenario, and used Armordax and Terra Khan again. The first mech to enter play was Mecha Khan.

Despite appearances, the second mech was not called Lord Snooty's Giant Poisoned Electric Head. But maybe it should be.

I call it Kajutaijuq. It flies and has mechanical pincers.

Terra Khan and Mecha Khan exchanged fire and basically used up their ranged attacks. Indeed pretty well all ranged attacks got used up in their first or second shots.

Kajutaijuq had a real advantage in this scenario, since its high-speed flying meant that it could chase the crystal around the board, and the ability to go to high altitude made it harder to engage in combat. I did house-rule that points for the crystal were only scored if an flying monster was a low altitude (where close combat is possible).

Everyone jostled for position in the middle for a while.

Armodax chased the crystal, whilst Terra Khan and Mecha Khan got stuck into close combat. I awarded a couple of points for each monster or mech defeated, so taking out an opponent was an alternative to chasing the crystal every turn.

Kajutaijuq dodged attacks from Armordax. The pink counter shows that the mech has its force-field raised.

Terra Khan eventually grappled his mechanical counterpart, and a serious of powerful bites wrecked the cockpit, disabling it. But the mighty monster's legs had taken damage, and Terra Khan was limping.

Meanwhile Armordax had brought Kajutaijuq to battle. The mech had some bad activations, which Armodax was able to exploit, smashing it to pieces over a couple of turns, and leaving it wrecked with an unconscious pilot.

This left Armordax and Terra Khan fighting out over the crystal. Armordax was slightly ahead on points, so simply avoided chasing the crystal and concentrated on keeping Terra Khan in place until the scenario timed out.

Armordax won on points, with the destroyed Kajutaijuq second. Terra Khan came a close third and Mecha Khan a distant final place, having never really got into the game.

I do feel mechs are a little disadvantaged vs monsters, although this obviously depends on design and scenario objectives as much as anything else. Mechs get reaction moves, which are useful, but I don't think they are quite as useful as the Berserk ability monsters get as their equivalent 'freebie'. In addition the damage effects mechs take can knock them out quite quickly after a couple of hits; I may need to tone down their effects a little. On Thursday we discussed making as many of them as possible recoverable by spending actions.

Anyway, here are the stats for the two mechs in this game.

Mecha Khan

Head Q4 C2 - Reaction
Body Q3 C4 - 2 x Missiles C4L (Single Use)
Arms Q3 C2 - Elbow Thrusters x 1, 2 x Lasers C3M Linked
Legs Q3 C3 - Amphibious
Tail Q3 C3 - Blade

Kajutaijuq

Head Q3 C4 - Force Shield 3, Reaction
Body Q3 C4 - Concussive Force Blast C3S, Hyperflight, Light Armour (All)
Arms Q3 C3 - Claws

Mighty Monsterpocalypse

The more I play with Mighty Monsters, the more I realise that the points values for some of the special abilities are off. A lot of my games now are designed to test tweaks or outright changes to how some of these abilities work, or how they are costed. Some of it is just simplifying things, whilst other changes are more radical. One of these is Armour, which I have never found satisfactory. In the basic game you buy Armour for different body parts, which kind of makes sense when you design a monster as a series of body parts. But in fact most combat rolls are made against one body part - the Body/Torso. It's rare that you can justify the cost of adding armour to other body parts. In addition armour only protects against kinetic attacks - close combat and weapons such as guns and missiles. You have to buy a cheaper armour called Reisistance against other attacks, and buy it against each type - fire, cold, radiation and so on. This adds loads of colour, but makes buying defences prohibitively expensive. It also reduces the value of kinetic ranged attacks, since they cost the same as, say, electrical attacks, but can be resisted by normal armour, whereas against an electrical attack the monster needs to buy a specific defence.

So as you can see, I've really over-thought this Armour thing ...

My solution for buying it was to ruthlessly simplify things. Armour is bought against close-combat attacks or ranged attacks, with the latter coming at half the cost of the former. It isn't applied to a single body part - you either have armour, or you don't. It is considered light armour. At double cost you can make it heavy. I cost it as follows:

Light Armour vs Close Combat - 20pts
Light Armour vs Ranged Attacks - 10pts
Heavy Armour vs Close Combat - 40pts
Heavy Armour vs Ranged Attacks - 20pts

Next I looked at its effect. Light Armour allows you to ignore any attack that only hits by one point. heavy allows you to ignore attacks which hit by one or two points. This sounds quite reasonable until you realise that simply increasing the C value of an armoured body part gives you roughly the same effect at not only a lower cost (generally) but with the added bonus that it's harder to double the score. In other words, using either the original armour rules, or my change, it's cheaper simply to have a higher combat value than it is to armour up.

So I looked to see if there was a way to make armour have a different effect. I wondered if the Ironclad rule from Galleys & Galleons would work better - in that the defender rolls two dice against any attack, and takes the best. I thought that might work for light armour, with heavy armour allowing the defender to roll three dice and select the best.

I set up a game to try it out, using two of my new Monsterpocalype figures - Terra Khan fought Armordax. They stats are below, but they are both loosely based around Godzilla, but Armordax has heavy armour against close combat attacks and light against ranged.

I played the crystal scenario I've used before - monsters score points for ending their turn close to a glowing crystal, which then moves randomly each time a monster scores points off it.

Here are the monsters ready to go.

Armordax got the early movement rolls, and score points off the crystal.

Terra Khan closed up and used his radioactive breath, but couldn't defeat Armordax's armour.

The monsters charged ...

And the fight began in earnest.

Armordax tried to keep between Terra Khan and the crystal

But, of course, the crystal moves, and soon both monsters were chasing it whilst trying to stop the other.

It became fairly obvious that Terra Khan was going to have trouble taking down Armordax - the changes to the way armour worked made him too tough.

The game ran to a time-limit. Terra Khan had wobbly legs from the damage he'd taken from Armordax (who was relatively unhurt), and fell down as the game timed out. The score was closer than the damage suggested, but Armordax won it.

I had a rethink over lunch about how to work armour, and came up with an alternative solution.

Light Armour allows the monster to reroll any defence rolls of 1
Heavy Armour allows the monster to reroll any defence rolls of 1 or 2

I thought this would make it useful for the cost, whilst not making it a guaranteed defence.

I tried the fight again ...

This time Terra Khan got to the crystal first.

Again the monsters chased each other

But this time, whilst the armour was useful, it wasn't over-powered. It saved Armordax a couple of times, but didn't make it impossible to wound him.

Both monsters took damage, and stumbled as they tried to delay the other and get points from the crystal.

They dodged and moved.

But in the end, the game timed out into a draw.

The change I made for the second game felt better, and I will carry it forward into further games and see how it plays out.

Here are the stats for the two monsters, assuming the armour costs and rules described above:

Terra Khan

Head Q3 C3 - Energy Blast C4L, Fangs
Body Q4 C4 - Regeneration
Arms Q3 C2
Legs Q3 C3 - Amphibious
Tail Q3 C3

Armordax

Head Q3 C3 - Energy Blast C4S, Fangs
Body Q4 C4 - Heavy Armour (Close Combat), Light Armour (Range)
Arms Q3 C2
Legs Q3 C3 - Amphibious
Tail Q3 C4

Volcano Fun

Caesar, John and I tried 'Mighty Monsters' again on Thursday, playing a modified version of the Volcano Fun scenario in the rules.

Each of us ran a pair of monsters or mechs, with a theme to each one.

Caesar ran a pair of Monsterpocalypse mechs - Mecha Khan (the lizard)  and Mecha Kondo (the gorilla).

John ran a pair of jaegers - Crimson Typhoon and Cherno Alpha.

I ran a pair of giant gorillas - Ape-X and the massive Gokura.

Caesar and John stuck to the sea at the start, in order to avoid potential lava flows from the volcano. Mecha Khan inflicted some hits on Cherno Alpha with its missile pods.

My gorillas were on the opposite side of the volcano to the two teams of mechs, so initially just watched the fight.

But what of the volcano? It would start erupting if any monster rolled more than two failures on their activation dice. I managed this on my very first turn. On the very first activation, in fact. The initial eruption caused earthquakes which could potentially knock monsters down, and flying debris, which could damage them (but didn't). After that it had a random effect, diced for at the start of each turn - see below.

Each subsequent time a player rolled two failed activations, the next player in the sequence could place a section of lava, which either had to be touching the central volcano, or an existing piece of lava. Any monster hit by the lava was 'attacked'.

And here you can see the volcano in action - Gokura and Mecha Kondo were closing on each other, but lava was already flowing from the volcano towards them.

On the other side of table Crimson Typhoon and Ape-X got stuck into each other. John threw Crimson Typhoon straight into combat, in order to avoid the ape's powerful plasma-gun.

Earth tremors knocked them both down, and they both took hits from lava.

Meanwhile the two giant gorillas, organic and mechanical, were slogging it out. Caesar brought up Mecha Khan to help his other mech though.

Gokura was now fighting two opponents. Points are scored in this scenario for defeating opposing monsters, so I concentrated Gokura's attacks on the weaker of the two foes - Mecha Khan. Avoiding its buzz-saw tail, Gokura grappled the mechanical lizard, and then over a couple of turns pulled it to pieces.

Crimson Typhoon and Ape-X both escaped the lava, but Ape-X got the iitiative, and fired a deadly series of plasma bolts from his gun, temporarily disabling Crimson Typhoon. The slower Cherno Alpha was coming up in support - but would it arrive in time?

No. It wouldn't. Ape-X finished off Crimson Typhoon.

Gokura finished smashing mecha Khan, but was taking a lot of damage from Mecha Kondo.

They were both knocked down by an earth tremor, and caught in lava. Mecha Kondo recovered first, and finished off Gokura.

Ape-X prepared to fight Cherno Alpha, but couldn't get off a shot with his gun.

Cherno Alpha slowly closed the range and plodded into action, giant fists flying.

Mecha Kondo bounded across the table (dodging lava all the way) and also entered the fight.

In one turn Cherno Alpha defeated them both!

John and I had defeated two opponents each, whilst Caesar had defeated one. But we gave John the win for having the last monster standing.

We used a few of my house-rules in the game and they seemed to work OK, but we found a few more grey areas as well (particularly with regard to how to adjudicate damage on mechs) which I will address at some stage.

As for the volcano:

At the start of each turn roll a D6:

1 - The volcano does nothing horrible this turn.
2-3 - Earth Tremors - Any monster not already knocked down, in the water, airborne, or that is amorphous rolls a single D6 against the Leg Q value. If it fails then they are Knocked Down.
4-5 - Volcanic Ash means that all ranged combat is at -1 this turn.
6 - Earth tremors and Volcanic Ash - Apply both effects for the turn.