In fact, the game has been played about 10 times since my Session 5 blog post. For this blog, I will only talk about the last two games played based on each Phase of the game.
CORE GAME OBJECTIVE: The Sazzarran player must destroy or control as many cities as possible in 6 game rounds. The UNRF player must control as many cities and land zones as possible while preventing the Sazzarran player from destroying the cities.
Victory Points are half of the Hit Point (HP) value of a City (rounded up). Land zones are 1 VP.
Sazzarran Player get full VPs (half the city HP value) for each destroyed city and 1 VP for each city controlled but not destroyed.
UNRF player gets full VPs for each undamaged or damaged city they control, and only 1 VP if they control a destroyed city zone.
If any force from both sides are in the same land or city zone, neither side gets any VPs.
When playing a four player game, players on the same side with their forces occupying the same zone get full VPs.
SETUP: The UNRF player gets to place all 12 of his Military Units (MUs) on the board. He can place them on any city, land or sea zone, although the cities are preferred to protect them against attack from the Kaiju.
PORTAL PHASE: The only change is the Sazzarran player gets to draw four Target City Cards, choose two of the cities, and discard the other two. If the UNRF player has the Crimson Valkyrie in play, and rolls a 4 or better on 1d6. then he gets to look at all four cards before the Sazzarran player chooses his two target cities.
RESOURCE PHASE: Both players draw five Tactic Cards. On 2nd and following game rounds, the players discard any cards, then draw back up to five cards to use in Resource and following phases for that game round.
Both players receive their Resource Points (RPs) for that round, and build their respective MECHA, Kaiju and Giant Steel/Shield Walls (GSWs). The Sazzarran player cannot build any GSWs until the 2nd game round, once he has zones controlled. Once a GSW is built and placed on the game board in a zone they control, the players get to place one of their MUs with each GSW. MUs are no longer "bought", but are automatically received. For the Sazzarran players, they get two MUs deploying with each Portal. For both players they get one MU each game round for each of their GSWs in play, including the Resource Phase that they were built and placed.
MOVEMENT PHASE: Sazzarran Portals are placed at the Target Cities and Sazzarran forces and Kaiju are moved first followed by movement of UNRF MECHA and MUs. Forces from both sides can move to any zone, whether friendly, neutral or enemy occupied in this phase.
BATTLE PHASE: Combat starts from top left hex zone, covering each hex column and going all the way to bottom right hex zone on the board.
There is still a maximum of 10 dice used, but if the total attack value is more than 10 from one side in a battle, then that player gets to use the excess as re-rolls. For example, if they had total of 12 attack, then 10 dice would be rolled and two of those dice could be re-rolled once.
After the dice are rolled, the players indicate if they are using any of their Tactic Cards. They place them face down in front of them. Once all Tactic Cards are placed, they are revealed. The Cards that have the die number of 6 are activated first to those that have a die number of 4 listed on them.
Players also use their dice to activate any abilities on their MECHA or Kaiju.
The dice results are used starting with the 6s and going down to the 1s. This way, the Sazzaran or UNRF player can destroy an opposing player's GSW with a 6. For the Sazzarran player this allows for any rolls of 1 to 3, and any 1s from the UNRF player to take effect as city damage. For the UNRF player this allows them to take control of the city zone if they manage to destroy all the Sazzarran MUs and Kaiju in the zone.
There is only one round of battle from all MUs MECHA and Kaiju in each zone, whether they are destroyed or not.
RE-DEPLOYMENT PHASE: This had to be brought back into play. The main reason being so it allows the MECHA and Kaiju to move back to a friendly zone with a GSW to heal/repair to full health.
The UNRF player moves his MUs and MECHA first, followed by the Sazzarran MUs and Kaiju. A player can only move their forces to a friendly or neutral zone, and cannot move through a zone occupied by opposing forces.
END PHASE: No change. This phase is used to determine if the victory conditions have been met. If so, the game ends. If not, the game continues until the game round indicated for the scenario, or certain victory conditions are met by either side.
Playing the game as indicated above worked out well so far. Gaining MUs based on Portals and GSWs in play still balances the game, especially with the UNRF player having all his MUs placed on the board on Round 1.
Using excess attacks as re-rolls also helped. It allows the players to put more of their forces into battle than being restricted in a 10 attack limit.
The victory conditions seem to be working so far.
The first game was UNRF 20 VPs and Sazzarran 18 VPs with 9 cities destroyed. You would think the Sazzarran player would have won with that many cities destroyed, but the UNRF player managed to have control over some of them, depriving the Sazzarran player of more VPs.
The second game was only played to Round 3 because the player had to leave, but the Sazzarran forces were losing with only 3 VPs at that point in the game.
The Sazzarran forces have to be played aggressively if the Sazzarran player wants to maximize damage to the cities and control as much as possible, forcing the UNRF player to split his forces to counter the Sazzarran advance.
That is all for now. Please provide comments/questions below about the game if you have any. Also, please Like and Share my ATC Games page, especially if you like this style of game.
