BCZ Retrospective XX: Melee Weapons

Before we get to Melee Weapons proper, I should probably spare a few words on the expansions' only new Weapon keyword: Remote. Originally I had planned for things like the funnels from gundam or other attack drone-esque weapons to be represented by Support Upgrades, but players reported back that it wasn't scratching their Remote Weapons itch. The game needed to have Remote Weapons that used your Might stat and could be shot down to disable them. So I did just that. There's not much else of a story to them, really, I gave them fairly low defensive stats to compensate for the fact that disabling them requires one enemy to spend a turn not actually shooting you. Like I said back when I wrote about "Go, Funnels!", these don't have a passive Upgrade for balance reasons... But in hindsight I suppose I could've given them an Advantage to attacks and some other bonus, it didn't have to be an extra attack each turn.

So, Melee Weapons! I said a long while ago that what the Melee Weapons in BCG lacked wasn't attack power but versatility and utility value. My goal with BCZ's Melee armory was to add a few options for raw damage while trying to make viable options for attacking at range, crowd control or niche options for specialized builds.

Assassin Blade
Assassin Blade is one of the straightforward damage options, though it is best suited to groups with multiple meleeists rather than a single dedicated duelist. It's also quite effective in the hands of Grunt swarms focus firing a single PC. It draws inspiration from the flanking and sneak attack mechanics found in D&D and other RPGs that encourage having multiple PCs ganging up on the same target.

Countersword
This is a Technique for tanks. With a Pulling Field build, it is somewhat tricky to use but is very rewarding when you do pull it off. It can lead to wasted turns the rest of the time, however, and that's what makes this a very conditional and meta-dependent Weapon... Unless you take I Am Your Opponent, in which case you can force an Enemy to trigger your Countersword, swinging with a fairly strong attack that can potentially Maim or even destroy the offending Enemy before they get to finish their own attack. It's not a straightforward Weapon, but I think it fulfills its purpose.

Great Crusher
This is our first new area of effect Melee Weapon, it either murders tightly packed Grunt squads or debuffs them to the point where they pose much less of a threat. The Range isn't particularly amazing, though. Great Crusher draws an obvious inspiration from the Goldion Crusher of GaoGaiGar, though less on the whole "reducing things to light with a planet-sized weapon" part and more on the way it usually appears in videogames.

Hook Launcher
Positioning-based strategies, particularly those using Guardian of Steel, can be very hard to defeat. That's why BCZ includes more forced movement to disrupt those strategies and add an element of counterplay. It is not a hard counter, because it is a One Shot, so you have to focus fire the hooked target or you'll barely get any value out of it. The forced Dueling can buy you some time to help with this, assuming the target doesn't have Slippery Chassis.

Kamaitachi
Another area of effect Melee Weapon. This one needs a sizable Systems investment to reliably hit more than one Enemy, but it doesn't suffer from in-built drawbacks like Slow or One Shot. You could even use it without any Systems as a counter against enemies with an Active Defense like ECS. One of the best of this bunch.

Magnet Rod
Remember when I mentioned Weapons for niche builds? This one is for PCs with low Energy. You can get by at low PLs without an Energy of 1 or 2, making it a solid pick. And at high PLs, nearly everybody has 5+ Energy so this will always trigger if you choose to stay at 3-4 Energy. It's not amazing, because Energy is kind of a really important stat, but if it's a low priority for you then this is worth taking.

Pressure Point Attack
It's a Resonance Cannon but even more flavorful. It trades Range and repeatability for Crippling and, um, non-Unreliability. It's a solid pick for Duelist builds that need a finisher but don't want to use Techniques.

Rocket Sword
A secondary Weapon for the Boosted Lance builds that are, otherwise, really bad at dealing with mobs and have little reason to do anything but spam Boosted Lance every single bloody Turn (and maybe use Lightspeed Assault once). It's basically Bombardment for Melee PCs, otherwise. Good stuff.

Shocking Swordwhip
This used to be a ranged tanking Weapon, penalizing attacks that didn't target you. After the change, it simply has Crippling (which is a much more effective and straightforward debuff) but is Unreliable so you need to stack Advantages or get lucky to make it hit. It is handy for the right build, if not spectacular.

Stumbling Fists Style
Very flavorful. The combination of keywords makes perfect sense given the name and what the Weapon does. It's very good for Support PCs with 0 in Might, assuming they don't have Unarmed. If you want to make a battlemage build with Tacticool Approach, this is a great primary Weapon to use while building up to Electro-Sapper Pods.

And that's it. I have very little negative to say about most of these, which shows how much of a better handle I've got on the power level of Melee Weapons as a whole. If I absolutely had to tear them down, I'd say that Shocking Swordwhip, Great Crusher and Hook Launcher could take more trouble setting up than they're worth, and that you need to be PL2 or 3 at least for them to be viable, but that's it really.

Next: New Shooting Weapons.

Gimmick Out.