Battle machines is a Wargame that uses a 35mm grid and a army of mecha called a battlegroup. The game created with a simple goal: be as easy to play and customizable as possible. It revolves around the aforementioned giant mecha fighting to control territory but they aren't that interested in preserving what's there at the moment.
The game takes place during the 34th century. Humanity has made a breakthrough in space travel. By altering the gravitational effect of their ships they are able to create permanent portals through space-time. When they get out there they discover nothing but loads of planets with no life and lots of mining potential. Colonies are set up and after 150 years there is a war between the colonies and Earth. The war is stopped after 50 years with the invention of mecha. The poorer colonies could not afford these new weapons and they surrendered to the richer colonies who then surrendered to Earth.
That was 400 years ago. Planets have changed sides hundreds of times and colony ships still fly out to try to find new planets just to reduce the fighting. Human rights don't really mean anything anymore and if you're anywhere other than on Earth you're probably going to get stepped on by the mecha you're mining metal for. Everything got worse, and it won't get any better.
You can find the wiki with the rules here: Battle Machine Wiki
Tropes used:
- Abnormal Ammo: Flaming black holes, anyone?
- Apocalypse How: Type 0 events happen just through the course of playing a normal game. Depending on the value of the planet it could be recolonised or just simply strip mined.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Any mecha with more weapons than it can fire.
- Beam Spam: Spam shot. A weapon upgrade that adds D6 extra shots can be added to any weapon, so it could be beam spam, bullet spam, rocket spam, self contained miniature black hole spam...
- Blood Knight: Carman Skiric, the guy who gave use to the wonderful page quote.
- BFS: And axes, chainsaws, hammers, spears...
- Critical Failure: It is possible for a mecha to damage itself while running too fast, EMP itself with a malfunctioning energy shield, overheat its minigun and fall into the enemy's shot. In one turn.
- Critical Existence Failure: A mech will fight at full capacity until its last point of DAM is lost. But considering how quickly a mech can be torn apart by the weapons on offer, it's not like there would be much time to notice a problem.
- Chainsaw Good: The chainsaw weapon or any melee weapon with the "continuous" ability. On an individual note, Carman Skiric has a unique mecha with FOUR chainsaws.
- Energy Weapon:
- These turn up all the time. Most of them reduce the armour of targeted mechs.
- The rather nasty Focus Laser. It shares an ability with the chainsaw.
- Faster-Than-Light Travel: By tearing holes through reality itself.
- Gatling Good: Just one of the many weapons is the Biggy Gun, which can be upgraded with the Spam Shot to gain 3d6 shots.
- Lightning Gun: The lightning weapons.
- Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: The reason kinetic weapons are still around is justified by this.
- Impossibly Cool Weapon: The "Misc." class weapons. With the right upgrades any weapon can become this.
- Macross Missile Massacre: It's easy to make weapons that do this and they are terrifyingly destructive.
- Mars: Serves as the command base for the solar system's mecha armies.
- Mecha-Mook: The TH series drones are the closest thing to a mook in this game. The bomber type is prone to exploding.
- More Dakka: Lots and lots of it!
- Power Fist: It's big, strong and can throw dead opponents through buildings.
- Rocket Punch: Because hitting someone in a giant mecha is cool. The mecha exploding afterwards is AWESOME!
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: There really isn't; any weapon can rip apart all but the most well defended mecha and that's before we get into the really powerful weapons.
- Transforming Mecha: The transforming mecha base, with a healthy dose of turns red.
- Serial Escalation: Well, where do we start? How many variations on a minigun wielding Humongous Mecha can you create? How many buildings can a mecha rip down with its bare hands? How many explosives can be mounted on one mecha before it becomes impractical...?
- Bonus points for having a walking fortress (a super-sized humongous mecha) called Beyond the Impossible.
- Spider Tank : The spider mechs, exceptionaly strong, really tough, and go over rubble without issue. However, they are a bit on the slow side.
- Shotguns Are Just Better: Averted, while cheap and with low energy requirments, shotguns don't have a lot of power or range.
- Wave-Motion Gun: The void weapons. It's also possible to make any weapon into one with the right add-ons.
