So,What the heck is this you may ask, well I asked this of myself as I was walking out of my local store this weekend. Well, I have had my eye on this game for a long time, in fact about a year ago my buddy Mike G brought this over to my place to give it a spin, and I liked the game.
You see, way back when, I played a little game called Battletech (or Battle robots for those old enough to remember that!) I loved Battletech, I collected a ton of Mechs and had just about every source book and novelsthat FASA put out. The only problem was that my game group never really got involved with it. So the only time I got to play was in local Battletech tourneys. Soon I had shelved the game and moved onto something else.
Well when Mike G brought over Heavy Gear a year ago, I thought why not try it out. I fell in love with the game and was ready to jump into it with both feet. But life has a funny way of changing ones priorities. So alas I did not get into Heavy Gear.
Then this past weekend, while at my local shop, I kept eyeing the starter sets. So I decided what the hell, I have the money I better jump into this now. So I took the plunge and brought home the Northern Army starter box as well as a set of counters for the game.
So what did I get, well I am glad you asked, inside the box you will find two rulebooks, Locked and Loaded and the Field manual. You also get a set of dice and a tape measure. Also there are 4 Jaguar gears, 4 Hunter Gears and 2 Grizzly Gears as well as 2 drones and optional weapons.
The nice thing is that there seems to be a ton of support from the company (Dream Pod 9) . The other thing is that the scale of the game is 1/144th or N scale, so there is a ton of terrain out there (Model Railroad stuff!).
So stay tuned while I suit up into a Heavy Gear and give the game a whirl and building and painting some Gears.
TK
Looks like a great product. Looking forward to seeing these painted up!
ReplyDeleteI've been looking at HGB for a while, but it's always seemed a bit to expensive to get into.
Interested to hear more about your experience with this, good write up! I myself tried this out several years ago back at Gen Con So. Cal ... the last year they were in Anaheim I think. Anyway I won their little demo tourney and was awarded a pre-painted northern force ... which of course prompted me to buy a pile of stuff from their booth and then go home and ebay the hell out of the system. For me sadly ... I had a little run and then nothing ... no one back home would even try it :( So I never got a shot to see how it would play in the home gaming group. I still have all the minis sitting in a tote in the attic, waiting for the right time to break them out. Perhaps this winter ... anyway looking forward to hearing about your experience with the game. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteI've had parallel experiences with Heavy Gear as Lord of Excess has had (apart from winning free stuff from DP9 that is).
ReplyDeleteStill, hope has sprung eternal with me and I've held on to my Heavy Gear miniatures all these years. With the newest buzz on the internet, it seems Heavy Gear is finally beginning to gain some traction with the general gaming public...and I now have a friend who wants to try the game out!
As for the price point of their products, whereas I don't think they're too expensive, I do agree that picking up their models always seems to have an associated sting attached to them...not in a bad way, I just never find myself saying / thinking "I'd be a sucker to not buy twice as much."
Still, I think the rules are pretty good--different enough and written from a different set of experiences that the game is a refreshing change.