WeaselTech - All Systems Radical, Dude

 Occam's Laser

If you're exceedingly clever and/or can read, you may remember the campaign log I was keeping of a Star Wars Solo Wargame using Nordic Weasel's "Five Parsecs From Home". I do intend to get back to that sometime! But I am a man ("man", really) of varied and sundry tastes. I'm the hedonism-bot of gaming; novelty, inventiveness, new things please! This is, I am certain, entirely unconnected to my ADHD.

I apologize for nothing

Anyway-- continuing the trend of this veering dangerously close to a Nordic Weasel Fanboy Blog, I am going to leap right into Ivan's newest product. WeaselTech!

Apparently the poor man has been hounded for a mech game about as long as Mitch McConnel has been hounded by the Collections Department of Hell. But unlike Lucifer the Prince of Darkness, Ivan's fans look to finally be getting what they wanted!

In any case, I have been somewhat bitten by the mech bug lately and hopefully Ivan has just given me a particularly robust and long-armed scratcher with which to itch.

Glancing At The Weasel

I'll start with a quick run-through of the rules; not a proper review (which may come later, once I've gotten some hands-on experience with the system). This is just to get some context for the later AARs.

The game makes no bones about its influences; Macross, RoboTech, and a host of other Large Big Robot Battle Pow Pow anime with which I'm personally unfamiliar. This has two notable impacts on how the game plays:

1. Rather than the plodding land-battleships of BattleTech, these are the fast-and-furious laser-belching type of mech.

2. There is an entire sub-system for tracking the rivalries and romantic entanglements of your mech pilots.

The broad structure of play is mostly recognizable if you've played a Nordic Weasel game before (most especially the 5 X from the X series); you have a wargaming-scenario which impacts a downtime procedure which itself wraps back into a wargaming-scenario. Where WeaselTech departs from the formula is in the downtime procedure more than the wargaming-scenario.

Each wargaming-scenario is a "Mission" and three Missions constitutes an "Operation". The downtime is then split between stuff you do between Missions (gain XP, roll for commendations, see who has gotten in a love triangle) and stuff you do between Operations (research new equipment, check on the status of the overall conflict, roll for promotions).

That might sound like a lot of homework, but let's not pretend that you've got something better to do. You're playing a solo-wargame! Somewhere my high school bully's hackles are up; they do not know why, but they know in their bones they have to shove someone in a locker. Even most normal wargames marinate in loneliness and math, why would this be any different? Don't act like you're better than me. You're not better than me! I'm not crying you're crying! Loser! You're the loser not me--

I'm okay I'm fine I'm okay

Sorry, lost the thread there a little.

Taken altogether, my impression is very much that WeaselTech is deservedly distinct from the 5 X from the X series-- though it is also solo-oriented and campaign focus, both the scenario-wargaming mechanisms and procedural structure give it a very different texture.

Keep your eyes peeled as I set up for a solo campaign of my own using this system!

I'm out.