Heavy Gear

Not really, honestly. You've got to fudge a few details here and there but in the end they just end up looking like spacecraft with a ground speed and a melee attack and all their weapons on turrets.

I've been using Mekton Z for any Heavy Gear RPG stuff, and so far that's been working pretty well.

The plastic starter sets are a god-send for the wargame. I feel bad for CEF players who want the huge hover-tank that their forces can take, as that single 70 point model is almost two hundred bucks...

>True or not, I'd definitely believe it.
srw.eternitychan.org/spotlight/tim-eldred-interview/

I read about it on here. So it's not exactly a verified source, but it sounds probable.

>My favorite story has to be this one: back in the mid 80s at the height of my Armored Trooper Votoms mania, I felt compelled to write the ultimate info-zine, the Votoms Viewer’s Guide. Spent several years building it, filled up well over 150 pages, and shared it with anyone who was interested. Slowly but surely that effort was rewarded in some very unexpected ways.

>For example, I sent a copy to Central Park Media and it impressed them enough to go after the series. Everyone knows the result: they successfully imported it and I got hired to draw the graphic novel and work on the DVDs.

>That alone would have been enough, but here’s something else that happened: Ianus Publications got a copy of my guide and was intrigued enough to go after the RPG rights. They developed a game on spec and tried to license it from Japan. Their effort was not successful, but they didn’t want all that development work to go to waste, so they changed some details and decided to rename it Heavy Gear.

>By complete coincidence, I was working for Sony’s TV animation studio during the time that they licensed Heavy Gear as a TV series. Talk about right place, right time–I ended up directing nearly a quarter of the episodes. This was as close as I could have gotten to drawing a Votoms TV show for the US.

Okay, so Tim Eldred is legit, apparently and he actually did do directing on the animated series. So yeah, I'd say to take his word for it.
imdb.com/name/nm0253137/

>srw.eternitychan.org/spotlight/tim-eldred-interview/

If only the TV show had ended up more like the original series. The original idea would have still had dueling, but it would have had the gears be their actual size (instead of 20 feet tall like in the show) and been more serious. The season finale was going to feature the beginging of the Earth Invasion and from then on, it was going to be a more serious war drama/action show.

But Starship Troopers was already airing, and execs were worried about brand confusion among audiences when they saw two CGI shows about guys in mini-mecha fighting a sci-fi war. So the series was retooled into what it ended up being.

The new starters are mostly great, except possibly for Caprice because there you get the opportunity to make an ARM11 murderball of crab tanks that Gear guns bounce off and which delete shit with railguns. Which most factions can't deal with, as I found out when I made a sample list, lent it to a friend and got fucking wrecked. It's generally a great game though.

That said I've been posting links to my HGB stuff in /awg/ -

ideaswithoutend.wordpress.com/2016/11/27/heavy-gear-army-backstory-the-mendez-connection-150tv-caprice/
ideaswithoutend.wordpress.com/2016/11/28/heavy-gear-army-backstory-red-sands-western-garrison-cef-line-formation-150tv/

That's the fluff for two of my forces, I think I've got it right. I've also done some battle reports, here -

ideaswithoutend.wordpress.com/2016/11/15/heavy-gear-blitz-battle-report-150tv-north-vs-south/
ideaswithoutend.wordpress.com/2016/11/29/heavy-gear-blitz-battle-report-150tv-cef-line-vs-south/

The 150TV Caprice murderball (with veterans and precautions especially) is pretty strong, but I don't think it's unbeatable. They're not quick, and the Accos (the best units in the box for securing objectives or attempting Detail Scans (outside of a Bashan)) aren't very tough to kill, so it's more about pitting your biggest guns (Particle Accelerators especially) against the Ammons until they're crippled, then forgetting about them entirely.

Lots of people say PAs are strong - is it the Haywire effect that does that?

I know it reduces all their rolls by one dice if it hits, or am I wrong here?

Yes. They lack armor penetration, and their range is short compared to a comparable weapon (in terms of penetration) like a Laser Cannon, but Haywire cripples the target for the rest of the turn, and when a target receives a token, they also make a marginal damage roll.

Just a clarification after reading it, when I say 'armor penetration' I specifically mean the AP trait, rather than their strength.

That does sound useful, knocking evade dice off a unit just means your other guns hit harder. Rematch time...

There's a reason that Caprice (and maybe CEF, I'm not entirely sure) comes with no PA options out of the box, and that the North and South boxes only have them as options for the Kodiak/King Cobra. They're just that good.

>action 1: kodiak braces then PAs Ammon
>action 2: open sights fire LATM at Ammon, which is now 1d6 dodging on 4+(?) vs your 3d6 hitting on 3+
>rest of squad standby, attached Ferret goes Active Sensors, getting a bonus from the fact it's try to FO a Strider, laser pointers it from 30" out, Crossbow Grizzlies drop a pair of ATMs on it
>laughingnortherners.jpg

Exactly. This is why cover and ECM defense is so important. Without them, anyone your opponent wants dead is going to eat a PA shot before getting drowned in missiles.

Man, it's been a long time since I last touched HG. I still have a thousand bucks' worth of Black Talon models on my shelf.

How's the RPG side going?

They Arkrite Press- owned by some DP9 employees- in charge of it. Nothing released yet as far as I know.

I see. Thanks.

Also, I like the South. North seemed boring as hell to me, but the South seemed like it had a lot of character.

Welp, time to suck up the reaming on DP9's postage and order a Mountaineer squad and North Strider.

2 Lion Lightnings with MPA, 2 Leopard Flash with RLs. Attach a Scimitar with HVB and a PEN11 Snub Cannon, too.

Interesting that you brought that up; I remember reading some dev notes that said the opposite -- that the south has characters, but the north has character. Basically he was saying that the south lacked any sort of unifying theme or identity and instead seemed to have a large number of unique personalities instead.

You can get something of an idea about that by looking at the Sub Lists available to the respective factions. The Northern ones do, obviously, have differences, but they all seem to be based around the central themes of the Northern forces.

The South, on the other hand, has four (versus three) really distinct Sub Lists that all do things their own way. Mekong Delta plays *so* much differently than SRA.

>...four (versus three)...

Scratch that, both have four.

Ok, a quick question - how customizable are the mechs in the table top and in the rpg ? Sell me on it, if you care.

>Tabletop
Short Answer: You can buy different versions of the same mecha, put grenades, smoke launchers, etc on them, and stick them in the appropriate units. Basically the customization goes as far as what your units are composed of, how they are equipped, what upgrades they have, and which sublist (if any) they belong to.

Battletech is probably the closest you can get to true customization without building the units from scratch. The advantage to Heavy Gear Blitz is that you won't have to put up with the ridiculously off-putting learning curve.

>RPG
Depends entirely on the system. I'm not very familiar with Silhouette (the system of choice for DP9), but Mekton Z lets you do basically anything you can think of.

In the game you pick a unit class and then there's a bunch of different loadouts for it, which tell you what other units they can be grouped with. Usually you can have two of the same kind of unit per squad.

For example the Jaguar class unit has 7 variants, any of which can be made into a squad leader unit. They are:

Basic (no limit on how many you can take)
Bazooka
Laser Rifle
Sniper Rifle
Shotgun
Guided Missile
Extra Rockets

From the other direction, if I want to take a Skirmish unit I can take any combination of 4-6 units with the Skirmish tag. Then I can attach up to half that number of units with a different tag (so add spotters to artillery units, for example).

Ok, so beside having the option to take some different weapons on units is there one model you can deploy as your "avatar" and pimp that one out ? Also how important are units beside the mechs ? I think I saw some photos of infantry.

Post a pic of it

There are two kinds of units that can be especially pimped out. Veterans are a limited optional upgrade, and they can take a variety of skills to increase their potency.

The second are Duelists, and they are always alone in a separate support unit. They can be in any Gear, but have access to Veteran skills, the armory, and their own special list of Duelist skills.

The game has lots of figures for aircraft, tanks, trucks, and infantry. You can play a list without them, or a list solely comprised of them, but I'd say the best balance is to have a little non-gear support. Infantry in particular make for good, cost-effective objective holders.

Done.

bump

>Depends entirely on the system. I'm not very familiar with Silhouette (the system of choice for DP9), but Mekton Z lets you do basically anything you can think of.

In the RPG, it's entirely up to the GM. If he wants to run a more gritty game, he can insist that you all use standard military issue or some scavenged shit with few frills.

Or they can decide you're a super special experimental unit and everyone has a custom built machine with all kinds of shit.

In the Silhouette, there's no real limit to what you can do except cost. You can make a bycicle with an FTL drive, antimatter cannons, and full sapient AI but it'll be expensive as fuck.

I was speaking from the RPG perspective, but is absolutely correct in that the Southern army lists are basically the fighting forces of four different nations melanged into one, while the North in general seems more regimented and standard issue.

It feels like the North is a single army with regional variations, while the South is three different armies subordinated under the SRA/MILICIA.

Ok, how expensive is it to get into then ?

Depends on the army. Right now, DP9 has just finished their Kickstarter pledge fulfillment and preorders for the plastic starter sets.

For about $80CAD, you get a plastic set for North, South, CEF, or Caprice that's somewhere in the realm of 150tv, which is an average sized force.

If you want to play NuCoal, Peace River, or any of the other factions, it's going to be more than double that due to the lack of inexpensive plastic sets.

It's also worth noting there's plans for a second KS next year for NuCoal, Peace River and Utopia plastics