AESMAG - the Arbitrarily Egg-Shaped Mecha Action Game
Get a couple writers with severe wargaming chops together, a love of 80’s “mini” lightweight wargames, stompy robots, and a…. unique… sense of humor. Mix. Serve.
OK, maybe not serve. Not yet, anyway. How and when this is going to be released is not yet finalized, but having been handed a copy of the rules alongside people like Jon Mollison over at The Joy of Wargaming, I couldn’t resist digging in, especially once a friend took the time to put together an admittedly bare bones Tabletop Simulator module.
So I went ahead and set up a table. The shorter blocks are tall enough to be partial obstructions, the larger ones block line of sight. All are some form of building and inaccessible without jump capability. The blue zone is water - none of it is deep enough to be impassable, but it’s rough terrain, and I’m using a tentative rule that a unit in water gains an extra level of heat dissipation. Green areas are forest - rough terrain that blocks LOS if there’s a full hex, and is a partial obstruction targeting units in it at the edge. Brown zones are rough terrain that does NOT block LOS or provide partial obstruction. You can consider it a park or similar with walls, terraces, or other things that make passage more difficult but none of it is tall enough to cause sighting issues.
Note - other than definitions of rough terrain, and the difference between a partial obstruction and blocked LOS, the decision of terrain effects here is entirely up to me, and whomever I’m playing with. You can decide woods always block LOS.
I did a random roll for each side. For blue - a peacenik, a broom, and a jalapeno.
For red, they also get a peacenik, but the medium and small are a shmanzer and a roo.
So I go ahead and deploy them, and take the first turn.
Red wins initiative. Moving first has the occasional plus - see the Oppenheimer rule as the sole exception to “damage takes effect after the fire phase” - but at least the Battletech style alternating-pieces initiative doesn’t completely disadvantage the side “winning” initiative and going first. On the blue side, I probably have the peacenik moving too far apart from it’s support units. For red, the ‘roo took advantage of it’s “Jordans” to advance forward over the river and first treeline.
The ‘roo sheds its heat during mindfulness, and the next turn blue wins initiative. The Peacenik corrects its mistake and closes with its’ allies, while the others don’t stray too far forward - the roo could otherwise jump behind them for a unilateral shot of missile or gatling love. Red closes, and the roo stays grounded, keeping under cover - and it can now jump to nearly any point on the board to get a good position.
Blue gets initiative again, and tries to watch it’s six, but the ‘roo finds a position that is partial obstruction from the broom - it’s partial obstruction because it’s in the woods, AND would also be partial obstruction as it’s on the knife edge of a full woods hex, so in either case - has LOS blocked from the peacenik, and is behind the jalapeno, so it jumps in. The rest of red is making it’s way up the river.
There are only two units that can fire, the blue broom goes first. It’s shooting at a small unit, in partial obstruction, at a range of four hexes. It would normally be at medium range (4-8 hexes) but with the range band shifts is considered at long range , needing a 5 or 6 to hit, and misses with all three systems. Two of the systems suffer no penalties from the miss results, but the chaingun suffers a misfire: runaway chain gun, resulting in ten (half of 19 rounded up) attacks against the ‘roo, needing a 6 to hit, and all ammo expended. They all miss.
Outside of the Oppenheimer rule, the combat is simultaneous, so even if the ‘roo had been taken down by the broom, it still gets a shot off. Shooting out of the woods at three hexes, at a small target, is in the medium range band due to the shift from shooting a small target, and needs a 4 or better to hit. The missile pod hits with a five. The result is a 6 - so we need to roll on the critical hit table, but the result is a 2, so we assign max damage, and that is it. The chaingun misses with a two (and no penalty). Ammo is marked off for both the broom and ‘roo.
As a note, we’re using regular damage so each square is “x”’d out, meaning the 6 points of max damage from the small missile pod only cross out three squares. Otherwise, that Jalapeno would be in even more dire straights.
Wrap Up
With the first set of turns done, we’re taking a pause. The broom managed to completely screw up shooting at the red ‘roo, and lost all of its chaingun ammo. The ‘roo in the meantime badly dinged up the jalapeno. Also, after chatting with the creator of the TTS module, they intend to provide an example terrain key, and also moved/shot chits that were overlooked. One feature of AESMAG is that there are not a lot of rules in place for terrain, but the basic language of rough terrain, and partial and full blocking of LOS allows for a lot of flexibility out of whatever is crafted. They also hope to have tiles and or more options / models available to place terrain on the table.
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