Alpha Bandit

This, my friends, is the first playtest ruleset for Mobile Frame Zero: Alpha Bandit. Before I go into any detail about the whole thing, Here's the link to download it. Now, I will warn you that the thing is only four pages long, and doesn't describe everything needed. But it gives you a really good idea of some of the mechanics that will be implemented in this MFZ Space Combat expansion.

There are a couple of really cool ideas, and a number of tidbits that are revealed through this playtest document. One of them being the fact that there will be frame companies in space. They hang out with your ships and can be "catapulted" to objectives and other ships to either capture them or do some damage. These frame companies can have an "Ace" which can be of any color except white (Red, Blue, Yellow, Green) and they all grant a d8 of that color and a special ability. How these will all play out is still a little fuzzy. but it should be really cool to see how these frames help shape the battlefield in the cold depths of space.

Another few things of note, the ruler for Alpha Bandit is 10 units long (instead of the standard 8 for Rapid Attack), and the click hinges actually are a part of the movement and maneuvering mechanics. For each maneuver point (your green die result) you can either increase or decrease your current movement by one, or click the hinge one click. Your ship must follow the ruler in it's movement. This means that ships will not be able to turn on a dime and will require some extra tactical thinking to get the most out of your positioning.

There isn't an official "scale" for the ships yet (at least if there is, Josh hasn't hinted at it yet). But from some of the stuff Soren has put together in the past for MFZ we can assume it'll be somewhere around stuff like this:

There is still a ton we don't know about Alpha Bandit, but it is awesome to see that the first "expansion" to MFZ is coming along. I'm really looking forward to seeing how this develops.