Rummaging the Collection: Heavy Gear Blitz

 Hi!

As part of my continuing rummaging of my collection, I've found my Heavy Gear Blitz figures!

Heavy Gear Blitz Frames

I remember picking up these along with a fair few other odds and ends back in 2008ish and they sat in boxes until much more recently when I was looking for some heavy power armoured types for 15mm gaming so I pulled them out of their box and spent a rather frustrating time removing mold lines, flash and gluing the tiny guys together. 

Scratch built drone.

The sculpts are really good but the hard pewter was very unforgiving to actually clean and put into order and the experience rather put me off the game as I couldn't bear to delve any further into the game. Instead these three are all that I've completed to date and I'd pretty much forgotten about them as they were at the back of my cabinet.

Following my ongoing attempts to get my collection into order, I took a peek at the state of the game and it appears that there is a 3rd edition of the rules and its supposed to be pretty good too. On top of that, the core units have now gone from multi part pewter, to plastics which is a real boon.

Heavy Gear has been knocking around for quite a long time now (originally dating back to 1994!) and does seem to have a dedicated fanbase but for some reason it just hasn't engaged with the wargaming market as a whole. Merely look at Youtube and theres tons of content for Battletech, another big stompy robot game that has been around for even longer but seems to have a much larger reach.

The setting essentially pits the North and South against each other on an arid world called Terra Nova and there's tons of background, invasions and new factions turned up since the games release and I suspect, lots more to come over the coming years so there's a lot of scope to create some interesting scenario driven games or even campaigns, even if you only keep to the bare minimum of forces as its quite easy to play a good game with four or five models a side.

Coupled with DP9 providing lots of free paper terrain and downloadable rules, it wouldn't be too much of an investment to dip ones toe in.

The rulebook is available as a free download through WARGAMES VAULT and I've been peering through it and it seems like a pretty decent mecha based skirmish game, more akin to an Anime style than the mighty mechs of Battletech and features higher levels of tech but also a quicker gameplay.

Maybe its because until recently the figures weren't readily available in the UK (Dream Pod 9 is a Canadian company) or maybe because it originally developed from an RPG system but for whatever reason, I can't help but find myself drawn to it. 

As of time of posting, the miniatures are available in the UK via a few online stores so there must be enough interest for them to have stocked the range and I have to admit I'm sorely tempted to pick up a pack to see how I get on with them as even if I don't end up using them for Heavy Gear Blitz, I'm fairly sure they'd see action as either knights in Epic, power armour in 15mm or robots in 28mm...

But inkeeping with my attempt to refrain from flinging myself headlong into new projects, I am going to be 

With that being said, I think I'm going to print out some of the terrain DP9 has produced and make some standees so I can try and get my head around the mechanics, which seem fairly straightforward, once you get the hand of the abbreviations and whatnot as I'm genuinely curious to see how the game plays and if I enjoy it enough, I may pick up a frame or two and see how I get on...

I'll post my progress in the next week or two once I've got the standees done, the terrain stuck together and post a brief overview of my experiences as it is one of those games I've seen from time to time but never really delved into.

In the meantime, All the best!