Maschinen Krieger

Maschinen Krieger (Ma.K) is a science-fiction world created in the 1980s by artist Kow Yokoyama. It has a retro-future vibe, with the kit - initially battle-suits but then walkers, grav-tanks and aircraft - being based around components from plastic model kits. Ma.K has seen a range of kits and action figures, a comic and even a film or two.

There's a full history HERE.

Anyway, Slave 2 Gaming have the licence to produce miniatures for Ma.K in 15mm. And, to go with them, they are developing a set of rules. Last night Drew put on a game of Ma.K so that we could try out the latest iteration of the rules and have a look at some of the lovely figures.

Four of us played each running a force of infantry in battlesuits and a few support weapons and vehicles. Darren and I faced Ross and Drew.

I had a splendidly big tank that saw off one of Ross's units before it left the baseline. Combat is pretty simple and done with a single 2D6 roll. You determine a hit number, based on the attacker's quality, range, target size and cover, then look to roll over it. Excess pips over the roll add to teh damage you cause, and all damage in excess of the target's armour rating is recorded as hits. On a big thing like a tank that just whittles down hit-points. On squads you remove figures. It's similar to the Rampant idea of reduced model units.

Here's some of my units on the baseline. I had two squads of regular armoured suit guys, plus a support team, one squad of very heavily armoured suit guys, the big tank and a couple of floating drone things (like the probe in 'Empire Strikes Back), one armed with a rocket-launcher and the other a magnificent laser-pointer, which did no damage but made anything targetted a lot easier to hit.

Here's some action on the other flank where Darren and Drew were fighting it out in some ruins.

Here's my heavily armoured suit unit emerging from behind a wood to have a pop at some of Ross's troops. They also turned out to be heavily armoured, requiring us to get either very lucky or to close the range to get any effective hits.

Some of Darren's troops.

A floating drone. I'm not sure what this one was armed with.

One of the walkers.

The token next to the unit shows that it has activated; the rules use a Bolt Action activation system, with tokens being drawn from a bag to show who gets to activate a unit. Units can take two or three actions, depending on type, but no more than two actions of a type. So, for example, a unit cannot move three times, but it could move once, shoot and then move again.

You can engage in close combat. That's what I tried to do with my tank, in an attempt to overrun some of Ross's infantry. 

The reality; the tank is operated by an AI and was damaged. So it had to make a malfunction check before it moved and, typically, failed, so sputtered to a halt halfway to the target.

Some close quarter fighting in the ruins.

A walker skulks on the edge of some ruins.

You'll notice that I haven't posted much of a narrative. With four players and initiative switching from unit to unit it was hard to keep track of the overall flow of the battle, especially as it was a head to head encounter. We advanced, shot at the enemy and then tended to fall back as counter-strikes reduced the attacking units. Combat can be pretty brutal, and units retire if they hit half-strength. They can rally, and come back, but fight with less effect

It was an enjoyable game with a wonderful aesthetic; I like the big clunky Ma.K. battlesuits a lot. The rules were easy to follow, although we suggested a few tweaks. Certainly keen to give them another go, maybe in more of a mission-based scenario next time.