Quid Nunc, Precentor?

was talking nonsense with JT over the table, and discussing the need for a promo during the holidays. but what to play? something accessible, simple to start up, and great fun!

the first answer came in the form of the Urbie Derby.

players:
scenario supports multiple Player Characters. the more the merrier!1 Urbie-Master/GM needed

equipment:
handy-dandy RS
buttload of Urbie Minis/coke bottle caps/chess pawns
minis for the Player Characters
poker cards for initiative purposes

gameplay:
player chooses his own mech and is given a 3/4 pilot. all Urbies have 4/5 pilots

each player starts out hot-dropped on a random map sheet, 1 per player. if the GM is feeling venomous, play city maps. scatter would be fun!

3 Urbies per player are hot-dropped too. Urbie force composition is randomly determined from the Urbie-Master RAT. (at this point, lazy me really ought to draw up this table to showcase my evil Urbie designs, but as mentioned i'm lazy. suffice to say that over 20 RL10s on an Urbie is wicked sick! so is an Arrow IV...)

Special Rules:
Killing: a mech is considered destroyed if
a) the mech has lost at least 1 leg and 1 arm
b) the mechs pilot has been killed
c) all centre torso internal structure has been destroyed
if multiple players fire upon a single urbie, the mech whos weapon lands the killing blow is determined to have killed the Urbie for scoring purposes. initiative in the attack phases must be adhered to for this reason, as kill-stealing is a definite tactical possibility!
if a player's mech is killed, that player is out of the game. he may be deputised to help the Urbie-Master if there are a lot of mechs in play, to speed things up.
Urbies Fight To The Death: there is no forced withdrawal for the Urbies. not like they can get away at any decent speed ;)
Braaaaaaiiiinnnsssss: Urbies attack the nearest target. no-one said you couldn't draw off the Urbies and let them hammer some slower sucker...
Respawn: whenever an Urbie dies, roll 2D6. on a result of 11+, not one but 2 fresh Urbies respawn. roll on the Urbie-Master RAT for each new Urbie spawned to decide its configuration, then hot-drop, accounting for scatter.
Great Justice: if a player manages to kill/mission-kill a pristine Urbie in one round of fire and/or physicals, or the mech dies from effects related to said attacks in either the weapons, physical or heat phases (falls on ammo bin, overheats and blows up etc) the player gains 1 edge point to be used at any time to influence his/the Urbie-Master's rolls. this may not be used to interfere with another player character's rolls.
My Brother's Keeper: players may not fire upon, physically attack or otherwise molest other players' mechs. Urbies may only fire upon or kick player character mechs. come on now, who the hell is going to score a punch, charge or DFA with an Urbie?
Special Ammo: all ammo types considered LvlII in the BMRr or covered in TW may be used by either the players or the Urbie-Master. when the mech is first deployed, the controlling player must declare the ammo type (even if conventional) and which bin exactly the ammo is located.

Scoring:
and now the fun! to calculate a player's game score, simply take the total BV of the Urbies he killed before being overrun, divided by the BV of his mech (not adjusted for pilot). this encourages the use of mechs other that 100-tonne Gauss-Zillas.

so yeah... any comments and suggestions? i wanted something not too complex, and yet fun to play both for new players and experienced players alike!

Some more new tricks learnt

Important rule change concerning infernos from Total Warfare: they no longer heat up a mech by 6 heat for 3 turns. Instead, each missile adds 2 heat for that turn.

Jon and I played it out today. I was using a Battlemaster/Javelin tandem, while Jon was using a Stalker/Spider tandem. Both of us had a Warrior H-7 and a Vedette tank. All L1 tech.

We found that infernos, while not as instantly deadly to vehicles as in the past, are still more than capable of neutralising them through critical hits. Against mechs, the use of single heat sinks made the infernos devilishly useful, but only if enough of them hit at the same time. Infernos can really mess up somebody's day, especially if they calculate to just 4 over. If hit by 7 infernos for 14 hit, that would force a shutdown at a roll of 6+ at 18 heat. We also determined that infernos now would make TSM a lot more tricky to maintain.

I'm thinking of testing the new inferno rules against L2 tech. Probably next week.

Vengeance Gambit Update

Woot! Managed to have the game of Vengeance Gambit finally at Settlers Katong yesterday! Kenneth and Jeff played the Feddies, Jon and Guan Yew played the Wobblies, while I refereed and Damien watched the fun!

The buildings will be taken down, all that's left to decide is whether the Feddies can take down enough Wobblies. Given the number of gauss rifles on their side, and the overrated Wobblie experimental C3 Level II(Zucker's boys), I'm still giving a slight edge to the Feddies.

Of course, when the MD VTOLs enter the field, it'll be quite different...
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Newcomers to the game, feel free to introduce yourself! Old timers, pop in the comments too!

The Wobbly Guy