Mechaton (Giant Fighty Robots) is a game where you build small robots (tanks, mecha warriors, walkers, whatever) out of legos and then do battle on a tabletop, using a ruleset that's best described as a very, very, very simplified version of Warhammer or WarMachine. When I say "very, very, very" simplified, I mean that the rulebook is $6 and is about 10 pages of big text. So it's very easy to learn, fast to play, and fun.
Some of the robots people build are awesome, and legos are incredibly versatile. If you go through online retailers, you can get all the legos you need to build an entire squad of robots for under $30. Then all you need are the rules, some dice, a tape measure, and friends.
I've seen Mechaton played at PAX in the past, but saw no mention of it this year. I just ordered $30 worth of legos to get started. Any other Mechaton players out there?
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My advise would be to use the Lego Digital Designer (http://ldd.lego.com/), build your mechs, and then shop for the individual bricks on BrickLink.
BrickLink is basically a big register of stores, each one with its own inventory of legos. You can choose whichever store you want and then shop there, and they sell bricks broken down by type, color, size, etc. I found a great store yesterday called Bricksland which had a HUGE selection of parts, including a lot of the translucent bricks and hinges that make cool looking mechs.
http://www.bricklink.com/store.asp?p=catalinn
I got 463 individual bricks, in 43 varieties, for $35 with shipping. It's a fraction of the cost of the Lego store, and every piece is a piece that I know I'll use.
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This looks pretty cool. I've got a whole chest of legos back at my parents house from when I was a kid, might need to haul them to my place to see what I can put together.
BrickLick is indeed intimidating. I dug around on the internet until I found a store recommendation from a Mechaton player, and then it was very simple.
Enough legos to build at least 5 mechs and a few stations was $35, shipped. One mech in the Lego Digital Designer was $25.
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Would really like to try it this year!
What kind of design do you got going? I made 5 mechs for about $30 with LDD a couple years back. Has inflation hit that hard?
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It's really hard to say. Technically my [E] duties have me on shift all day, but I'm going to see if I can sneak away here and there (Protomen, Mechaton). I'll definitely be letting people know.
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Would this be of any use?
(Also I could probably build a robot that can locate other robots and push them off the table onto the floor. That's probably not of any use to anyone.)
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