The Mecha Hack: How to handle Evangelion?

Don't go off on one on about how Eva sucks. Don't go off on one about how Eva sucks. Don't go off on one about how Eva sucks!

Ahem. The Mecha Hack Mission Manual, as revealed in its assorted previews, gives us a Hybrid class. A half machine, half kaiju monster, a Hybrid works likes a normal mecha until you run the generator down, where upon it goes apeshit. This is a nod to the hugely popular Neon Genesis Evangelion, or simply Eva, a franchise I haven't liked for about, ooooh, twenty years? I'm gonna keep it brief, but the reason for my distaste is twofold. The first, the personal one, is that I battle with mental health issues, so I do not get along with the tone anymore. The second is how toxic an influence it was on the Mecha genre, as it (re)popularised the idea of such shows being absolutely miserable experiences. I'm into this stuff to have fun, not to feed my assorted issues. There's my bias, up front. So, you have the basis for running an Evangelion, or Evangelion-adjacent, campaign now. Assuming you wanted to, how would you? Here's some answers.

The Challenge

The key thing is tone. Eva is not that interested in creating an internally consistent setting that maps easily to game mechanics, Unit-1's stated height is given as between 40 and 200 metres for example. It's more about mounting horror and mental breakdown. The anime is effectively an Ultraman homage for the fashionably grim, and, SPOILER ALERT FOR EPISODE 2 OF A MASSIVELY POPULAR TV SHOW, has no actual mecha in the regular cast. The Evangelion units are mutilated Kaiju on extension cords, and fights are increasingly desperate as the so-called Angels are immune to most attacks. This includes most of the mecha-scaled weapons demonstrated in the show, so there's an element of puzzle-solving, at until the crushing despair becomes ever-present. And then there's the religious aspect, which people make a bigger thing of than is merited. You could lean into that, but it's set dressing, in much the same way scifi usually co-opts old religions like the Greek pantheon. Meanwhile, The Mecha Hack is meant to be simple, quick and fun. So then, the heavy lifting is probably gonna be done in the role playing side. And there's nowt wrong with that. But if you wanted to make the Hybrid more mechanically like an Evangelion, you could replace the Mawbeam ability with the following.

External Power: While attached to an external power source, you gain Advantage on Reactor rolls. If you are not, instead roll your Reactor Die at the end of each Moment.

This neatly demonstrates the feast or famine nature of your average Eva, as opposed to just counting down. You could build further by mapping out Tokyo-3 with power points and how long the cables reach, and so on. The point here is to increase tension without adding paperwork. If players want to run off batteries, they can, but it has to be a risk. Also note that I am assuming that AT fields are either subsumed into HP, AP, or Gamesmaster Fiat. Yes, you could make it a rules mechanic of its own, but it's not interesting enough.

Sanity, and other afflictions

It can reasonably be argued that much of Evangelions runtime, and especially the "End of" film, sees young Shinji Ikari going insane while inside the belly of Unit-1. This is what happens when your director is clinically depressed and also lost track of the budget, poor guy. The film remakes are reputedly less traumatic to watch, but I've no inclination to check. This prompts a question of "should this be a rules mechanic?". Well, good news, the Cthulhu fanbase beat me to it! And the answer was "yes". More specifically, The Cthulhu Hack offers easily adapted and minimalist rules for existential terror and dribbling lunacy. Which work much like the Reactor Die mechanic, which I was quite impressed with. Granted, piloting a giant robot requires a rethink as to what violent acts would be a strain on sanity, but I leave working that out as an exercise for the reader.

Wrapping Things Up

Yeah, I don't especially like Eva, but that doesn't mean you can't like it. Nor do I dismiss it as RPG fodder, which is why this article exists. Some ideas you just have to write down, ya know? And, if you try this?

Well, lemme know how it turns out.

Not-Lego: The MyBuild Mecha Frame Titan 6012

So, I got this immediately after the Sergeant because I was so impressed. Did it live up to expectations? Yes. But let's talk a little more about why.

The Titan is the largest single robot in the line, if you define things in the purely humanoid sense. They also do scorpions and robot/support-vehicle sets, but even then the Titan is relatively titanic. The Mecha frame is basically the same as the Sergeant, but it uses more of the 2x2 blocks and various extenders. A pilot figure is again omitted, but if you have one you'll notice it sits in the belly rather than the upper chest. Everything is just, more. The body is more built up and opens from the front. It's legs are rather thick, putting me in mind of Front Mission or Heavy Gear with its toes and shoulder weapons. The arms match everything else, going for a fashionable asymmetry, with twin machine guns on the right. It's about a third bigger overall than the Sergeant, while its head is about the same, making it look more  threatening through both proportions and sheer mass. If Sarge is a medium, this is a heavy. Its a good look.

Functionally it doesn't disappoint either. You gain finger joints, toe joints, and you can just about pull off a high kick. It's not super-posable, but this is one of those situations where you don't reasonably expect it. It's made of not-Lego and is built like a tank, how posable can it be without spoiling the effect? Or hitting a physical limitation of the medium? It can certainly wield its assorted weapons well, although this is an area where they maybe cheat a bit. There's a few plastic rods acting as gunbarrels and structural support for the Hammer. 

 

 

All-in-all? A lot of fun.

 

 

3D-Print: The Hammer Class Battlekroozer Conversion (Battlefleet Gothic)

 

As I've alluded to previously, the Ork Fleet didn't really come into existence fully formed, more that it got expanded later on. Its a thing happens occasionally with GW product, a good example being Goblin teams in Bloodbowl, circa 1994. They were meant to be comically bad, but players ended up relying on star players, which were reworked into regular team members later on. In order for Goblin Teams to be enjoyable for most people, they needed their Roster expanded to include Trolls and chainsaws. And why not? It added such character. The Hammer Class has a similar feel to me. Given that a Hammer A) has less issue with Bombers, B) sidesteps leadership issues by moving crews around, C) has a Lance equivalent, and D) no official model, its easy to view it as a quick fix. A tacit admission they didn't get things right in the first place. That said, after this we did get the big 4 battleships.

So, about making one. Hammer Class ships are supposedly built off Looted Imperial battlecruisers, so many players have opted to orkify a spare humie ship, but aftermarket prices for those are rather high. So, the key component here is a 3d printed proxy from Scourge Scenics, which was then built up with gubbins ala the Lite Kroozer. I'd been wanting to play around with printed stuff for a while, and was pleasantly surprised with the resin material itself. It's not as good as the original plastics, but there's nothing to apologise for. The main creative challenge was striking a fine line between crudely refitted space cathedral and just crude. I think I pulled it off. 

 

 

I named it “Eminent Domain”.Where next? Well, I do have one of those aforementioned battleships, but that would be something I'd paint alongside another project. Like a Space Hulk, I dunno.

 

 

Not-Lego: The MyBuild Mecha Frame Sergeant 5011

Yes. Lego + mecha, twas only a matter of time. So, do I need context? Building bricks, or to acknowledge the brand leader, legos, are something which I imagine everyone knows even if they don't take an active interest. Even if you don't build yourself, the odds are you know it as THE multi-franchise toy merchandising brand, with an unusually good 2014 film. However, the Lego company proper did not make this, their patents expired in 2011, although there was legal drama. A company out of Taiwan made this, one of no doubt dozens easily dismissed as bandwagon jumpers. MyBuild does however seem to be something of an innovator, although I don't have much experience with third party bricks or proper lego, so I could be wrong. 

 

 

Now, the main thing here is the "Mecha Frame", a name both generic and completely accurate. It's this that imparts the fundamental robotness of the enterprise, granting some impressively robust joints. I did have a concern at first that this would somehow be cheating, and yeah, it does a little. The cockpit block is a V shaped piece of only one obvious use, but the bits that actually move are adaptable as real legos. This holds true for the set in general. For comparative purposes, this was more than twice the price of those Superhero mechs Lego does currently, but seems to be closer to their £18 price bracket in terms of complexity and quality. Part count was surprisingly high, and while I suggest shopping around, this does feel like a product aiming to exceed Lego in a fairly specific way, not merely undercut them. There's even hints of an anime-style fiction on the box.

As an experience, this as not so much "up my street", as "awaiting at my door with take-out food”. There's a feeling like, I dunno, some lego competition winner was approached by the company and given free reign to design around the frame. It is impressively complex, but never intimidating. There's a big focus on exploiting plastic colours, giving it a digital camouflage look, with mechanical greeblies in the corners. I did have some problems matching said colours to the manual at times, but nothing serious. Posability meanwhile is largely ideal, being able to balance on one leg without issue. And then there's the features. You get to build two submachine guns, a rotary grenade launcher, a largely decorative bayonet, some kind of paratrooper kit, and options for variants. I've spent a lot more to get less. The only complaint I have is that the set omitted a pilot figure, which prompted a scrabbling through my desk drawers. It's now used by Julius Caesar.

Then I got another!