Death By Robot

Memorable Endings Part 9.

Here I am talking about the robots you find in games ranging from Traveller to Space Crusade and BattleTech. As a skirmish game, BattleTech was ok back in the mid-eighties and has just had a reboot in 2022. I bought about 8 mech's to have a go with back in the late 80's but found the game tedious having to do a lot of math. I was probably not in the right frame of mind calculating action outcomes for minor game incidents. So, I invented my own skirmish rules for the battle mechs that simplified the overall attack and defense attributes of various mechs. But really a giant mech battle is not where it's at for me. Having said that I am waiting to play a game of GKR (Giant Killer Robots) so that opinion may change.

By choice I like a human sized, human imitating sort of robot in game. One that is superior to me and knows it. This gives one of the most satisfying wins there is. Nothing like exclaiming, "in your, what I presume is a face, Manoid".

Looking back the most challenging robo encounters have been with the corridor clogging Chaos Dreadnaught from Milton Bradley's Space Crusade. It wasn't fast, it wasn't maneuverable, but it didn't need to be because it just needed to block a long corridor section and thus impede your opponent's ability to move. Usually by killing everything in front of it. Coupled with supporting minions of chaos covering its rear to avoid being out flanked it was a near unbeatable death trap. Nearly aways forced into frontal assaults loses were unacceptably high. Both my opponent and I knew that, so with both vied to be the chaos player if the scenario had a Dreadnought in it. Now the icing on the cake of this death dealing mech was that you could pick and choose its weapon load out. In addition to two storm bolters the upper pylons could swap out different heavy weapons. Brilliant. further expansions saw mechs with 4 swappable weapons pylons but that was just overkill. Is there such a thing in skirmish games?

Man Up with Chaos Androids led By Something humanoid I no longer remember.

Some BattleTech Robots, Survivors Of The Psychedelic Wars

Corridor Clogging Chaos Dreadnaught And Scout For Scale.