Heavy Gear Blitz Rules

  

I've only managed to play Heavy Gear a couple of times. The main obstacle is that when it comes to mecha games, BattleTech is the 800lbs gorilla in the room.

Therefore I have to pitch Heavy Gear to BattleTech players as an alternative to playing classic or Alpha Strike. And, any Heavy Gear game I run has to also compete with other games like Star Wars X-Wing, which feel more modern from their play sequences.

Anyway, the discussion is over on the Dream Pod 9 forum. If you play Heavy Gear or have an interest in mecha games, then check it out.
  

Editing of Interest

  

I've been a bit remiss in posting blogs of late.  So here's a picture of a recent score.  Heavy Gear Fighter; a card game for battling with Gears.

Apart from this I've been working on my novel.  I'm at that stage where things are moving forward and my full attention has been focused on editing my work. And when not writing, watching Person of Interest and Orphan Black.

I do actually have articles lined up, but they either need a lot of work to write up the notes, or finish painting the figures, or taking pictures of said figures, which is why you've not seen much from me.  However, this weekend I'm off to St. Albans for the Lardy Game Day, which I will write up for next week.
  

Heavy Gear Blitz Alpha Testing

Over on Dream Pod 9's forum one can find an announcement that they are revamping Heavy Gear Blitz, which in my opinion is a good thing, because as a beginning player I found the rules overly complicated, because of the way they were written, which kept confusing me.  They are also working in partnership with Arkrite Press LLC to relaunch a new edition of the RPG too.  I have really mixed feeling about aspects of Dream Pod 9's products; on one hand the games background setting is an absolute tour de force, and should be held up as one of the finest examples of an RPG setting.  Life on Terra Nova is almost like reading a historical overview of a real world.  On the other hand the tactical rules, as presented in Blitz are written in English words, but using a strange syntax and grammar exclusive to a particular type of nerdy wargamer where cool jargon over rides simplicity, and the need for clarity.

As an author who has just had her first novel mauled by my beta readers, I can tell you all that whatever one might think, one's writing is never as clear and concise as you would lead yourself to believe.  Rule number one, edit your writing by getting fresh eyes on the subject matter who won't read what you thought you wrote, but what you actually wrote.

Excited by finding all of the above out I put in a small order for some bits & pieces from DP9s site, and have been informed that my items are on there way as I write this entry.  So in the next couple of weeks some infantry, plus detail parts will arrive, and I'm planning on making some Chain of Command style patrol markers for my mecha games.  I also blagged four old out of print Heavy Gear books off eBay; a copy of Heavy Gear 1st Edition rules: A New Era Has Just Begun, and three source books, Into the Badlands, Character Compendium 1,  and a 1st edition copy of Life on Terra Nova to replace my tatty 2nd edition book.

Anyway, coloured me excited, because I would love a really good mecha orientated game that wasn't BattleTech to play, so I'm going off to spend some of my time critiquing the Blitz alpha draft to show that I'm doing my part, and want to know more etc.
   

Heavy Gear Blitzing

An overall picture of the table that we played two games of Heavy Gear over.  I think I might go back and re-do that river at some point.  Who am I kidding, I don't have the time, and if I did I need to finish off my other boards that are still to be done.

By the time you all read this I have played two games of Heavy Gear Blitz with my friend Roger, who has been most tolerant of my occasional brain freeze moments as I tried to get my head around a new game. We are both long time BattleTech players, and I have a lot invested both in time and emotional attachment to BattleTech that makes it hard for me to let go of it.

In a lot of ways BattleTech is too constrained by the assumptions inherent within the rules, and the fact that it has had way to much stuff added to what was, and still is fundamentally a Beer & Pretzel game of giant stompy robots.

We are using my Takara VOTOMS for this game. You can see Roger's three Diving Beetles to the right, my two Scope Dogs are to the left.  Fire surprisingly ineffective at this range, which was all of twelve inches or so.

   
Heavy Gear Blitz therefore feels very much like the new kid on the block, though truth be told it too has been around a while having first been released back in the early 1990s.

Unlike BattleTech, the Heavy Gear game has changed course a couple of times and the game today has taken new a direction by moving away form a hex based RPG combat system to becoming a miniatures based game called Heavy Gear Blitz. Dream Pod 9, unlike Catalyst Games Lab, sell miniatures, and one gets the impression that they make a fair amount of their money from selling same.

I've just taken out one of Roger's Diving Beetles here, which seemed to me to take forever.  Upside was we had gotten through a whole load of turns to get this far, so it's quick to play.

Let me start off by saying that if I were starting from a position of not knowing either game then without doubt I would choose to play Heavy Gear Blitz over BattleTech. I like the fact that the paperwork is is really streamlined down, and yet it stills manages to make one feel that one is controlling an awesome giant stompy robot.

Okay maybe not a humongous giant stompy robot, but still it works for me. However, I feel that it is unlikely that Heavy Gear Blitz, where Blitz truly does describe the lightening speed of the game, will become my number one robot war game. 

As you can see I've finally gotten my third Scope Dog into the fight just as I lost one.

The reasons for that are rather emotional.  I really found myself disliking the dice mechanics, which are based on opposed rolls that are added, or subtracted from the result rolled on a D6 to produce a margin of success, or failure.

I can see the maths, because Roger was kind enough to send me the odds for all the different margins. I can also see that at the end of the day that it represents a combined to hit and effect roll.

However, I just hated the feel of the mechanic. 

My turn to take the pain as the second of my three Scope Dogs is taken down by his Diving Beetles.

Yet there is so much to like about Heavy Gear Blitz game universe. The background setting is fresh and intriguing. The game play is fairly fast, and the range of available miniatures is good, if expensive. Quality is top notch though, and I'm not one to complain about paying for top quality, but quality doesn't come cheap.

This is where the game did a really good job of capturing the feel of VOTOMS as I weaved my Scope Dog back and forth trying toget the rear shot to improve my odds of getting a good margin of success role.  Roger's Diving Beetle goes down.

One of the other niggles I had with the game was the over complicated movement modifiers, which require a six sided dice to track models with an added interpretation for hull down versus stationary.

In my opinion, this really added very little extra value to the tactical feel of the game. And don't get me started on the jargon in the rule book, which drove me nuts. Also, in my opinion, some of the explanations of the rules obscured what was meant.

Last turn and by the skin of my teeth, I managed to channel Chiricoe Cuvie (VOTOMS Ace pilot) and take down the last of Roger's Diving Beetles.  Roger happily reversed this outcome for the next game, which seemed fair all things considered.

So, if I were starting from fresh, and had to chose a giant robot game, Heavy Gear Blitz would get a look in.  However,  I'm no longer a person who can tolerate jargon and complexity for the sake of increased immersion into a game system.  What I want is KISS: keep it simple stupid.

Your mileage may vary from mine, terms and conditions apply regarding tolerance of rule writing, and errors and omissions were no doubt made in playing this awesome game by myself and Roger.
  

Heavy Gear Mecha Style

It should come as no surprise that after getting caught up with lots of VOTOMS goodness last year that my eye has been drawn to Dream Pod 9s Heavy Gear Blitz. DP9 admit that their two games, Heavy Gear and Jovian Chronicles, are heavily inspire by VOTOMS and Gundam Universal Century respectively. I like some of the Gundam anime, but much prefer VOTOMS and the other seminal real robot series from the 1980s Fang of the Sun Dougram, which inspired FASAs BattleTech game.

Anyway, I searched for, and managed to get hold of, a second hand copies of some Heavy Gear books.  In my case it was copies of  Life on Terra Nova, and the Heavy Gear Blitz Field Manual.  The first at Dragonmeet, the latter from eBay.   I also took advantage of Dream Pod 9s PDF downloads through the DrivethuRPG site, which meant I was also able to grab Locked & Loaded Rev 1.1, and the L&L Quickstart Rules.  I'm not yet a big PDF rules fan, because I don't have anything other than my main monitor to read PDFs.  As and when I get uplifted to an iPad, I'm sure that this will change.

Getting back on track, I have been reading Life on Terra Nova, and I was really impressed with the background setting.  LoTN is not essential to being able to play Heavy Gear Blitz, but it didn't half wet my appetite for playing games of HGB, which I think is a pretty good result.  Certainly if I were running an RPG campaign then waylandgames.co.uk would be an essential resource for the HGB universe setting.

The Heavy Gear Blitz Field Manual is the current, and therefore most up to date version of the HG rules.  My understanding is that Dream Pod 9s Heavy Gear rules have evolved from an RPG skirmish game, then became became a hex map boardgame, and have finally morphed into their current incarnation as a tabletop miniatures wargame.  Something that I woud have liked to have seen happen with BattleTech, but that we won't see happening anytime this side of the apocalypse, because the business model of the two firms are entirely different. The difference being that Dream Pod 9 own their IP, whereas Catalyst Games Lab has a licence from Topps to publish rules for the game, but not the miniatures.

Since acquiring the LoTN source book and HGB rules, I've been on the look out for more stuff at the right price, as my budget is very tight at the moment.  What I little have I want to spend on the iconic miniatures that DP9 produce, and only buy the books that are absolutely necessary to play the game.  However, I do recognise that eBay only takes one so far, and I prefer to buy the miniatures directly from DP9 to support them as best I can, by at least putting what little spare money I have in their hands.

So this leads me to my recently acquired eBay bargains when I acquired the two books above. Namely Black Talons: Return to Cats Eye and Shattered Peace: The War for Terra Nova Book 1.

Interestingly, SP:TWfTN is in colour, while BT:RtCE is black and white it is also available in colour, which for begs the rather interesting question of why do this?  I can only imagine that there is sufficient sales for the colour version that make it worthwhile for them to publish it.  Certainly the illustrations look better in colour, but to be honest they look pretty good in black and white, and knock most BattleTech illustrations into a cocked hat.

Though this isn't an in-depth review of any of these books, what I will say is how impressed I am with the presentation and content of all the books I've read, and as a result I'm quite happy to contemplate buying further books as and when I have the money.  I now see that both the NuCoal and Southern Army sourcebooks will provided hours of entertainment and reading pleasure.