[FT-ish] Mechboys vs. RoboDad

Or: another FT-Jr. conversion with Giant Robots.

Here is a little rainy sunday quasi-AAR for FT Giant-Robot-for-kids
rules. This is a game I played with Zev (6) and Benjamin (3.75) using lego
mechs. We used my starmat, and no terrain, though that may come at a later
time.

The biggest changes to FT (2.5) I made for the converstion were fore movement.
I took a piece of standard (8.5x11") construction paper and made a template
for movement. Each robot rolled initiative, and movement was done in initative
order (so it was generally better to 'lose' initiative, but I didn't press the
point for the boys). A robot could walk anywhere within the
template, and turn to face any direction, _or_ a robot could jump
straight ahead (or fly, for Benjamin) twice as far as it could walk. After all
movement was completed, you could turn your robot up to 90 degrees in either
direction (to keep from sneaking behind).

Some images of the game can be found at the bottom of my Quick and Dirty Mini
Page:
http://nift.firedrake.org/QADMinis.htm

I tried to keep the weapon and system mix pretty straightforward and similar:
All robots had 2 Firecons, Walker engines ('MD4'), A Jump rocket (FTL), Level
1 screen, 6 Armor and 24 Hull. Mechboys:
The The Yellow Robot (Robot Benjamin) had a Lasergun (2B3-FH), Targeting
laser (1B1), and a PowerSword (1PulserC-FH),
Red Robot (Robot Zev - the boys have a ways to go in the naming
department),
had a Multigun (1B3-FH+1PulserC-FH), a Missile Launcher (1Ptorp-FH), and
a Targeting Laser.

RoboDad: I was the Green robot, and I had two Missile Launchers
(2Ptorp-FH),
Targeting Laser, and RocketPunches (2PulserM FH). Plus, because I was a
going up 1 vs. 2, I gave myself a Shield, - basically 12 more points of
armor (it didn't matter in this game, but it was two rows of Phalon layered
armor.

The game was pretty quick and simple - we closed by jumping and walking,
then turned as best we could and slugged/slashed/blasted it out. I
didn't try to keep distance to take advantage of the pulser M's and paid for
it by
dying pretty quickly. Benjamin enjoyed rolling his 13 laser/sword dice
(they could barely fit in his hands) all at once. Zev liked scoring 5's and
6's with his missiles. The turn we managed to close within 24 MU, they blew my
Shield away and I poked at their armor. By the time I was two hull away from
death, I'd gotten two thresholds on Robot Zev and one on Robot Benjamin
(I'd
given myself a further rule to divide my fire between the two opponents as
evenly as possible). A good time was had by all.

I'd like to play with some obstacles to get around or jump on top of next. I
would consider amending the rules to allow a Jump backwards as well, and there
are all kinds of other tweaks you could add for robot combat. But
all-in-all, the game was not too complicated or too long for Bnejamin,
and was a change of pace for Zev, who played Full Thrust Jr.with me yesterday.