More on Mechaton

So Nathan and I haven't had a chance to finish our game (last night he was at Grandma's), but I've been thinking about a few things.

I really like the built-in objective rules. I used to play a lot of Battletech, and we rarely ran scenarios… we just plopped mechs on the map and fought until one side was blown up. In Mechaton, the objective is to end the game with the most points, and you get points by blowing up mechs and capturing enemy "stations". And since, in the default setup, everyone has multiple stations, strategy involves balancing between guarding your stations while capturing your opponents' stations.

After we got playing, I also realized how tight a balance/compromise choosing attachments is… you only get a maximum of four attachments on a mech. But you have six categories… three ranges of weapons, defense, movement and spotting. And artillery range weapons can't shoot into direct-fire range and vice-versa. So if your only weapon is artillery range, as soon as an enemy closes into direct-fire range, you can't touch him until you can close to close-combat range. (And even then, since you don't have close-combat weapon attachments, you only have your "core" dice to attack with.)

So choosing attachments is a strategy issue… flexibility in weapons means restricted choice in defense, movement and spotting. Throw in the fact that having less than four attachments increases your initiative, having no ranged weapons gets you a free d8 movement die, the optional rule that you can double-up on weapon attachments at a particular range to get to add a d8 to your attack dice, and the fact that how many mechs and attachments you have determines your team's basic score increment, choosing a mix of attachments is non-trivial.

I'm wondering how popular close-combat weapon attachments are. Since you can use your "core" dice for close combat, unlike ranged combat, you can still punch for just as much damage as if you took a close-combat weapon attachment. It just gives you fewer dice to choose from.

I suppose I should explain how dice work… remember how I said you needed umpty-seven colored pairs of dice? Weapon attachments give you two red dice at their specified range. Movement attachments give you green movement dice. Defense attachments give you blue defense dice. And spotting attachments (targeting lasers, radar, etc) give you yellow spotting dice. Then your mech itself gives you two white dice, which I call "core" dice.

So you pick up all your dice (after deciding which weapon you're using) and throw them all at once. Pick your highest die of each color for that function… or pick a white die. White dice are "wild"… they can be used for anything. If you don't have, say, a defense attachment, white dice are the only way to get defense dice. Same for movement, spotting and attacking. The only thing white dice can't do is attack at range if you didn't roll red dice for a ranged weapon… but if you did, you can use white dice instead of red if you need to.

So you can build a mech with nothing but four ranged weapon attachments (for that extra firepower optional rule) and still be able to move, defend, spot and punch at close range. But it lowers your choices… if you want to defend, you're going to have to use a white die, and you've only got two to choose from. Much nicer to roll some blue dice and have a wider range to choose from and be able to use the white for something else.

I'm liking how simple this game looks, but how carefully balanced it is. The cover rules are similar… they're abstract, and at first glance seem a little odd, but they seem to be very playable.