Experimental Rules #3 - Hero Mechs (Preview)

In case you don't recognize it, that is a Proteus mech from White Dragon Miniatures and a good illustration of one reason why I have woken up having made a full U-turn on a decision I made right at the start of Zero Dark's design process.  That decision was "no hero mechs".

There are several reasons I've changed my mind:

1.  The evolution of the setting and the game means that it makes more sense than I thought it would at the outset.  As I've fleshed out the experiences of the X Teams on the Fallen Earth, and their encounters with Defence Mechs, so it made more and more sense that they should have something other than the good old "explosive" upgrade to deal with them.  This came into sharp focus when I decided to create a new bogey called the "Combat Mech" - a bigger, tougher version of the Defence Mech.

2.  There are so many just gorgeous mech minis out there in the right scale to feature in a skirmish game, of which WDM's Proteus is just one that has consistently caught my eye.  When there is such a wealth of miniature inspiration it seems mad to constrain players' creativity to just the Defence Mech.

3.  People kept asking for it.  And if my former life as a business strategist taught me anything it's that telling people repeatedly that there's no demand for what they're asking for is a recipe for failure.

However, although I've tagged this in the "experimental rules" series, this is really an early sample of my thinking for patrons to let me know if I'm barking up the right tree.  So here are some early concepts I'm toying with:

- "Mech pilot" is a new specialism.  Just as EWOp comes with the spelldeck upgrade and Sapper comes with the Sentry upgrade, so Mech pilot comes with the X Mech upgrade.  But mech pilots count as two heroes for X team building purposes.

- X Mechs and Motorcycles can both be mounted and dismounted.  Mounting either requires an A(13) test for the original hero.  Other heroes can also hypothetically mount abandoned mountable gadgets (there might be more than just these two), but not mechs (they're just too complicated for someone else to operate them in battle).

- An X Mech is a lot like a remote in that it's almost a character in its own right.  I'm not sure whether to put it in Allies or Gadgets, at the moment, but I'm veering towards Gadgets because, unlike a Remote, it only activates when mounted.  But an X Mech is "built" the same say a hero is, with a point-buy system and a list of upgrades which include the Weapons upgrades for heroes, plus a bunch that are unique to X Mechs.

- X Mechs are Cyl6.

- An X Mech has a separate wounded state to its pilot.  When an X Mech goes OOA, the pilot is ejected (bonus automatic action) in the wounded(1) state.

- X Mechs count as synthetic, so can be hacked, dominated and possessed, but only when mounted.  Sappers also get the re-roll to medic tests on a wounded mech, even when it's dismounted.

- X Mech pilots can be synthetic, but they cannot be hacked, dominated or possessed whilst mounted.

Those are my thoughts, so far.  Let me know yours.  Am I wrong to change my mind?  Are you worried that X Mechs will unbalance the game?  Does the idea of an all-X Mech team get you  excited?  Should "mech pilot" be a trait, not a specialism to allow EWOp Mechs and Doc Mechs?