Armageddon 2089

[Signer]

Just picked this book up and I have to say its beautiful. Everything is printed full color on semi-glossy paper. The Warmeks are all full color CG.

Anyone dreaming of a d20 Battletech game couldn't do any better than this. It has the same feel as a BT game but uses d20 system well. One of my favorite changes deals with Mek combat. In BT they split the round into a movement phase and firing phase to prevent the faster mechs from always getting the rear arc. In A2089 your meks have power points based on your power supply, so if you want to use your energy to run behind an enemy you can't open up with everything. BTW the Mek combat in this game includes facing and locational damage.

The setting is very intriguing. America and Europe are at war with most of the other countries either trying to get out of the way or profit from it. America embraces the Bush Doctrine (a term from the book) and becomes paranoid isolationalists. Europe becomes the European Federation an authoritarian and greedy superpower. The UK gets screwed, caught between the US and EF when it tried to suceed in 2085, civil war broke out and the EF attempts to depose the Prime Minister. The US does help and uses superior Meks to drive out the EF. Now the UK is caught between the superpowers. As you might guess the politics of this setting might irk some, but it is a very well done setting. Neither the US nor the EF is portrayed as the "right" side and campaigns can focus anywhere.

All in all I highly recommend this if your looking for a non-Mecha (more Battletech) style d20 game.

 

[EarthsShadow]

Out of curiosity how many pages is this book for 45 bucks?

 

[Zenon]

304 pages.

I'll agree with Signer, it's a beautiful book. I spent most of this afternoon giving it a quick read through.

As he said, the history/background is nicely done, nobody is really a "good guy" so RP options are wide open and nobody gets painted with the bad buy brush.

From what I looked over of the system, mech combat looks fairly deadly. Scanning and detecting your opponents to nail them first looks like the way to do it (the game includes comprehensive rules for just such a thing, including all sorts of modifiers).

On a first read through I saw very little errata (of course an in-depth read through will produce more). The WTC date had an incorrect year (2002 instead of 2001) on page 3, although IIRC I saw it correct in two other places in the book. The others I noticed were a wrong page referece for a Table (under the mek piloting skill: referenced 102 and should have been 92) and a missing word in a sentence (can't remember the exact page for that one).

Hopefully one of our resident ENWorld reviewers will post a full review of it soon.

 

[arosslaw]

Not a bad looking book, true, but I put it back on the shelf when I saw that every page had a pattern background on it. Maybe my eyes are getting old, but I'm tired of having to work to separate the text from patterns in my RPGs. Heck, some of white wolf's stuff is totally unreadable, not to mention several recent WotC books.

So, this is one product line I'll be passing on. I just hope the B5 stuff doesn't have the same problem.

 

[jonrog1]

I thought the classes were interesting, balanced, and easily convertible to advanced classes for D20 Modern folks. The WarMek rules were fan-damn-tastic. The "build-a-company" rules weren't as clear or simple as they could be, but obvioulsy well though out.

But glossy pages AND background patterns? Good god, I had to keep rotating as I read to keep the reflected glare down as I read outside. In natural light. When your book's hard to read in natural light, that requires some rethinking.

Not a "recommend because it does a milliion things right" like SPYCRAFT or DRAGONSTAR, but a "definite recommend for big robot world" if that's your gig.

 

[Razuur]

I had no problem reading it. and I thought it was beautiful fro beginning to end (with the exception of the non mech vehicles, and the character drawings for the classes.)

Razuur

 

[DragonLancer]

Is it a military-campaign game?

 

[Ranger REG]

I have to agree that the background layout is distracting when reading the text.

Also, I can't help but feel nostalgic about those infer-, I mean interior artworks, akin to those displayed in early BattleTech products.

But what really got my head scratching are some of the ... to put it gently ... unique warmeks. I mean those head design are basically "hanging" from a curved pylon strut, almost resembling the rotating security cameras that pans left and right.

Granted, this is just a preliminary at-a-glance review. I've yet to delve deeper in my copy of Armaggedon: 2089.

 

[D.Shaffer]

To put it bluntly, while I like the book and the rules, many of the meks are just ugly as sin.

 

[Ranger REG]

Sins would object to that pale comparison. After all, one of them is Vain.