No Zaku!

Pictured, an image graciously provided by one of my playtesters, a 1v1 between an MS-18E Kampfer with shotgun, and an MS-09B Dom with 120mm Machine Gun. This match lasted about 5 minutes, but the hour long session saw every match go differently.

 I've been into Gundam since the Pandemic. No doubt, you remember how things were then, shut in with nothing much to do. What I watched first, what got me into it, was Iron Blooded Orphans, but I quickly took a shine to UC shows after watching 08th Mobile Suit Team. From there I watched Stardust Memory, War in the Pocket, and Thunderbolt, and was hooked on UC. Then of course came a watch of the OG, then Zeta. It was one fateful trip up to the city, window shopping with friends, that brought me to a small chain hobby store that carried Gunpla. I walked out of there with a High Grade kit for a HiZack, for $13.99. From there, I started picking up such kits whenever I saw them out and about, since they're cheap as dirt and fun, and I've found myself with a decent collection of Zeon suits (Operation British was justified, Zeon did nothing wrong), and other such UC antagonist factions. I began to think on uses for these models, besides looking nice on a shelf.

This brings me to my wargame, No Zaku! It's a 12mm wargame (1/144 scale, in other words), running on a D10 roll-under resolution. It leverages the poseability of Gunpla to make the gameplay feel more kinetic, requiring that you actually lay the muzzle of a weapon on the intended target to make a valid shot, etc. It models things such armor, armor penetration, the different movement modes of a unit, and the skills of the pilot to come as close as possible to the feel of the source material. And while the main focus is UC content, other AUs slot in just fine. I, for one, have extensively playtested with another who has a decent IBO collection. Despite the focus on details, the game typically takes less than an hour to play with Mobile Suit Teams of 4-5 each.

You may wonder about some of the stranger choices, such as the D10 over the D6. I personally like the pseudo-percentile nature of it, particularly in roll-under. Simply apply modifiers to the target number, and you know exactly what your odds are, simple as can be. 

Another is the Action Points system over the more typical paradigms, such as phased "move plus action" as in Warhammer. I wanted moment-to-moment choices to matter more, and specifically wanted reactions for the tactical feel. A major inspiration for this was Xenonauts, a spiritual successor to old school UFO Defense/X-Com. And indeed, in playtests, it has shown to be more deliberate and tactical than most other wargames I've played, let alone 12mm ones. 

Yet another is the TL system, which is inspired by Battletech. I like the idea of having capabilities increase with a tech scale, rather than just making the "better" units more expensive. This allows for the general points ceiling to remain similar at different levels of play, and allows some fun list-building with obsolete Mobile Suits. I've personally run a few games with a TL1 Zeon list against the aforementioned friend with the IBO collection, swarming him in veritable UC 0079 shitboxes versus what amounts to UC 0100 era tech at TL4. 

The biggest eyebrow raiser might be the weapon ranges. To be blunt, it's for the sake of selling the premise of to-scale Mobile Suit combat all the way. This lends the game a LoS-shooting kind of gameplay at table scales, but also opens up the possibility of floorgame play if you've got the ambition!

I'm overall very enthusiastic about this system as it stands, and it only stands to improve. While the project is very much indev, the initial result is promising. More mechanics, more content, and more polish are in the pipeline at any given time! The link to the living document is here!