Assembling the UEDF

With progress on Sixmillopolis going well, I figured it was worth putting some time into a few armies to fight over it. Since Robotech: Tactics was the incentive that pushed me to re-start working on Sixmillopolis, a pair of Robotech armies was the obvious choice. Rather than use the original Robotech: Tactics rules that the models come with, the plan is still to write army lists using the Epic: Armageddon rules system.

The invading alien Zentraedi are already base-coated. They aren't finished by any means, but they're far enough along to put on the table and play some trial games to test out the rules/stats I've given then.

That leave their opponent - the United Earth Defense Force (UEDF). While the original Robotech: Tactics game only includes mechs, one advantage of porting it over to Epic is that I can easily include conventional infantry and tanks as well. I'm a big fan of including conventional forces in mech games, because (IMO) they really help give a sense of scale. Sure the mechs are the stars of the show. But if you see a battlemech just sitting out on a plain how can you tell whether it's 6 feet tall, 10 feet fall, or 50 feet tall? Buildings help, but having some tanks and especially human-sized figures running around underfoot really makes it clear how huge the mechs are.

Anyway, on to my initial UEDF force. In honour of the country that gave us the original Macross anime, I decided to make it a contingent from the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF). The initial force will consist of;

•  1 Company of 10 Type 90 Main Battle Tanks
•  2 Platoons of 3 Type 96 wheeled APCs (as recce vehicles)
•  2 Tomahawk Destroids
•  1 Veritech Fighter

The complete JGSDF force, plus a Veritech in support

MBR-04 Mk IV Tomahawk Destroids

VF-1 Veritech Fighter

Company of 10 Type 90 Main Battle Tanks

Two platoons of Type 96 wheeled APCs

The Type 90's I'll just be treating as Leman Russ tanks for now, and likewise the Type 96's as Salamanders. For the Tomahawks, my initial stats are this;

Unit	Type	Speed	Armour	CC	FF	Weapon	Range	Firepower	Notes
Tomahawk Destroid	WE	20cm	4+	5+	3+	Dual Heavy Particle Cannons	45cm	2 x MW2+, Slow Firing	DC4, Walker, Fearless, Reinforced Armour
						Dual Gun Clusters	30cm	4 x AP3+/AT6+
						Missile Pod	60cm	3 BP

Stats and rules for the veritech I haven't figured out yet, and they present a bit of a challenge. At this stage my initial thought is to have separate stat lines for each of the Fighter, Guardian, and Battloid configurations, and have changing modes be a move-equivalent action. A veritech in Fighter mode coming in to land in Guardian or Battloid would use the Air Assault rules, but I'll have to review those (and for that matter the whole aerospace operations rules) to see if there are any clarifications needed for how they apply to veritechs.

As a rough guess this would come to around 2000 points in Epic, but I'm not worrying about points too much at this stage. For now the goal is to play a few trial games and see if the assigned stats work out on the table - is the power balance between units about right, do they behave the way they are shown on the TV show, etc. Once the stats are locked down, then it will be time to start playtesting points values.