Armour Astir Advent
https://weregazelle.itch.io/armour-astir
A game about mechs fighting eachother! What else to do with a giant robot, I mean You could stand around and yell about ideology for a while, but what is this? Gundam?
Touchstones: Gundam (Turn A especially), Breath of the Wild, Escaflowne, Mazinger, Ghibli movies (add a quarter)
Genre: Mech game, PBTA, High Fantasy
What is this game?: Armour Astir: Advent is a game about mech pilots fighting against an oppressive empire, fighting using not only head to head mech combat, but also stirring dissent, using backhanded diplomacy, and guerilla tactics
How’s the gameplay?: AAA has one of the most unique bits of gameplay I’ve ever seen in a PBTA game, refer to the Apoc World write up for the basics of the game, because there’s a lot to unpack here. AAA’s got a ton of standout mechanics, Let’s start with Gravity Clocks! You got 3 Gravity clocks to use on anyone, and one to use specifically on your rival, Gravity clocks represent the volatile relationship you have with 4 different characters, the clock always has a value, starting at +1, that you can add to any roll related to that character, when you do so, you tick up the clock, when the clock is full, your relationship levels up, you change the nature of your relationship and that +1 becomes a +2 babyy, This encourages players to choose carefully what relationships they want their characters to focus on, and adds a lot to the Drama. AAA also has its really cool mech creation system, it’s a bit too complex to get into here, but its less like Lancer’s Subway style mech creation, and more like cooking from a recipe, you get to create some of your own abilities, and pick from a few pre-made ones, all mechs also have a type, which works into a weapon triangle type mechanic where certain mechs are better against other mechs. Another thing about AAA is the Faction Turn, the player’s rebel group is made up of many smaller factions, each with a different role, while the empire is one group with small divisions, the idea is that while the authority is one imperialist gestalt, the rebels are more of a confederacy of farmers, local mercenaries, villagers, etc, but because of this, a lot of drama and miscommunication can happen, the Faction turn represents this, its intricacies are a bit complex to really get into, but basically during each Conflict turn, players run a scene where they instead of the big damn heroes, play as random soldiers and mooks from the individual factions, and try to fight back against imperial schemes, or try to solve local problems, this is meant to humanize the soldiers in the war, as well as show that the players aren’t the last bastion against the Authority. That’s about it for the gameplay, I tried to be brief but AAA is just something really really special when it comes to how it plays, there’s a ton of other intricacies I couldn’t even touch on here Oh right, half the playbooks don’t even use mechs, they can fight during mech battles but are significantly worse during them, they’re instead intended to help on the intrigue part of the war, commanders, celebrities, diplomats, footsoldiers, people who would be more connected to other parts of the war that aren’t just the mech fights, during mech fights they play on the “B-Plot”, basically a second narrative layer usually going on around the same time as the mech fights, think of it like a gundam episode where the main newtype child is fighting against a person who could have been a friend in another timeline and at the same time the soldiers inside the main base need to figure out who’s been stealing their food supplies
What’s the setting (If any) like?: AAA is Setting Agnostic… kinda, there’s 3 universal constants:
- There’s an authoritarian group known as the Authority, being fought by a union of scattered factions under one banner known as the cause
- Magic exists, is fairly common place but restricted to certain people, and is connected to how mechs work
- Some smaller chunks of lore like the existance of Angels, Demons, Eldritch entities, smaller scale vehicles called Ardents, etc, stuff you’d expect to see in any fantasy setting
What’s the tone?: AAA is a game with a tone set by players, but the overall tone is not asimilar to that of most post Gundam mech anime, there’s an overwhelming sense of war being hell, but there’s still hope in fighting an evil fascist empire, also there’s always expected to be a little bit of Angst
Session length: This is one of the few games I’ve written about I’ve actually sadly never played, but from reading the rules AAA does lend itself to longer, 4 or so hour sessions
Number of Players: 4+ is recommended
Malleability: AAA is as said above, setting agnostic, if its got mechs you can run it in AAA
Resources: AAA has a fanmade google sheet, a few fan-made expansions, and two official expansions, Encore (more playbooks) and Amor Astir (romance rules, yeah idk either)
AAA is one of those games that is just a mechanical treat, everything works really well and serves a greater tonal purpose, just a really good game