Super Dimentional Fortress Macross

When I was a kid, I watched Robotech. It was one of the early anime influences on me. In junior high school, I rediscovered Robotech through a friend who had the Palladium game books. It was at this time that I discovered that Robotech was a bastard creation of the late Carl Macek, who took three unrelated series and slapped them together. As offensive as I found the concept of changing someone elses work, I came to love Super Dimentional Fortress Macross and Genesis Climber MOSPEADA in their original form. Soon after that I discovered how incredibly awful Palladium's game system was, and the search for better modern rules lead me to Cyberpunk and Mekton.

So there is a silver lining to the incredible pile of crap that the Palladium Robotech game represents.

Macross gaming holds a special place for me, but has been stunted by very limited miniature availability. I have a couple of the lead Battletech knockoff Valkyries... but not enough to really do anything with. I've also picked up a several soft plastic Valkyries from Japanese vending machines over the years - but Zentran mecha have been notably absent - so again, little utility in gaming.

Imagine my suprise at finding something on Kickstarter. Imagine my mixed feelings at it having both the Palladium and Robotech names attatched.

I decided to back it anyway. The rules have nothing to do with Palladium's percentile system, and they seem to realize that by keeping the three eras of Robotech distinct, Macross fans like myself will show interest.

So at the end of the year it looks like I'll be getting a good number of (round about a dozen) Valkyries and tons of Regults and such. Gotta start thinking of squadron colors. The Macross Compedium has a breakdown of a Valkyrie group being:

Group        Squadron     Team         Tactical
Commander     Commander    Leader       Fighter
                                   --- VF-1A
                      --- VF-1J --|
                     |             --- VF-1A
         --- VF-1J --|     
        |            |             --- VF-1A
        |             --- VF-1J --|
        |                          --- VF-1A
VF-1S --|          
        |                          --- VF-1A
        |             --- VF-1J --|
        |            |             --- VF-1A
         --- VF-1J --|
                     |             --- VF-1A     
                      --- VF-1J --|
                                   --- VF-1A
Type
S            J            J            A

I'll probably bastardize that down by removing the group commander level and upgrading the squadron commanders to S variants. Even with that I'm looking at fielding two squadrons, thus two paint schemes. I might do that, especially if the models can be clearly numbered. Otherwise I might make groups of four (S, J, and two As) in 3 or 4 different squadron schemes. Yeah, I actually like the sound of that better. One will be the tan scheme cannon fodder squadron, a Skull squadron (possibly of the movie scheme rather than the series), the Blue Impulse inspired scheme Max flew with... and something else yet to be determined.