Gundam tabletops are all the rage! Gundam Assemble was announced proper, it’ll be out in November 2026, …why wait though? There’s plenty of rules sets to depict the weird and wacky world of mobile suit fightin’ in the Universal Century and beyond. One of them is MS Era.

 

Mobile Suit Combat

I’m always on the lookout for rules for playing swift, dramatic mobile suit combat, because since just over 2 years, I’ve developed a great fondness for the 1/144th scale gunpla kits (High-Grade and Real-Grade) depicting the glorious-to-goofy machines which revolutionized warfare during the One Year War (UC 0079).

Customizing older HG kits, painting them, decalling them, etc. is great fun. And it kinda tickles my eternal fascination with moving parts on models. On static models, which is 99% of what I do, I find it unnecessary, but since these Gunpla kits are posable by design, I really find it interesting to not only make them look pretty, but also durable. Also, I’m a wargamer, so I can’t really stand the idea of a kit only serving the purpose of being pretty. Sure, they gotta be pretty, but I also want to have LOTS and I want them do cause imaginary explosions on a gaming table. The whole ‘moving parts’ thing and ‘can I make this look pretty, but also survive the prettiness being toyed with?’ aspects don’t really make sense in that regard, but it kinda tickles me.

So I’ve been looking for wargames rules to get some games on the table. In late 2024 I tried Wiley Games’ Battlesuit Alpha, which works perfectly OK. It’s a good set of rules with a very cool activation mechanism, especially for multi-player games. However, there’s more out there to try, and recently, I stumbled across one of these things…

 

What Is MS Era?

“But Sigur, you silly man, MS Era is a series of these very good artbooks!”

Indeed, well-informed friend. They are/That is a very good artbook/s covering the One Year War. Or Universal Century timeline up to the end of the One Year War.

Along came Sean Patten, a.k.a. Ironhands / Ironhanded with his PROPER lovely, PROPER website.

Mr. Patten is a games designer who on his PROPER website has, among other lovely things, a whole number of home-made, swift tabletop wargames rules. Among them MS Era, “A competitive game of Mobile Suit Warfare, Tragedy, and Greed. And a great excuse to buy cool little Gundam figures! Rated PG.”. The rules instantly interested me, because they look very simple to get into but right away you can see that thought went into these. These look like that sort of stuff which can be summarized on one page and works for demo games.

 

 

How does MS Era work?

The main challenge in this chapter will be to keep my word count lower than on the actual rules!

In short, the rules allow players to have mobile suit fights between two or more sides, free-for-all brawls or even missions in which players are all on the same time and compete for victory points. Each player chooses a number of mobile suits based on a simple points system. There are several army lists, featuring the most common (well, and some fan favourites) MS from the One Year War, the Gryps conflict and the Neo-Zeon War (I think that’s the correct term. The Char’s Counter-Attack stuff).

A neat addition are some more common combat vehicles and even airplane (Magella Attack, M61 main battle tank, unarmed trucks, Hovertrucks, CoreBooster, …). Sadly no stats for the mighty Dopp, but with all the stats of other MS and vehicles, it’s rather easy to figure out stats for what ever you require.

 

Turn starts with an initiative roll, the side which wins gets to go first. They activate all their units one after another, each unit gets two actions (move, shoot, pick stuff up, repair [MS may try to repair themselves or others; basically roll a check and heal a point of damage]). Units may carry out the same action twice.

Measurements in the game are based on Sticks, the length of a Stick is determined by the scale you play in; as a rule of thumb a stick being thrice the length of the average MS’ height. A unit spending an action to move will move one stick.

Combat is based on dice pools. If a unit shoots at another unit, they roll a number of dice, determined by their Shooting value. Any fire beyond the range of 1 stick will be reduced by 1 die, the target rolls a number of dice according to their Defense value. A target being in cover/obstructed will add another die to their dice pool. Both sides roll their number of dice, the winner is determined based on the highest single die roll. If the attacker wins, the target takes 1 point of damage (two if there’s two unmatched dice higher than the target’s dice results, and so on). If a unit takes a point of damage, all their stats are reduced by 1, if a unit’s defense value reaches 0 it’s destroyed.

All very simple and cheerful, and it leads to results quickly. On top of that, there’s a few little thematic additions. A unit being reduced to 1 Defense gets DESPARATION and will add +1 die in melee, units may SACRIFICE themselves for others within 1 Stick, if a unit kills another unit it gets a REVENGE marker, meaning that attacks against that unit will gain +1 die until it takes damage. Just fun stuff like that.

 

The rules include 9 missions, plus 3 missions on which players are all on the same ‘team’ and compete for victory points.

 

Test Game

So I printed the rules, I decided to just throw together a game using what little terrain for 10mm sci-fi I have, no matter its state. So I threw together two forces and a scenario (Scenario#2, Engagement).

1 Victory Point is gained for each enemy unit which leaves the table (as the scenario description puts it euphimistically). On top of that there’s 3 Blips per player across the table. The game ends as soon as one side has no more units on the table.

The table measures 6′ by 4′, I used 30cm as the length of 1 Stick (models are ~13cm tall).

The Forces

Earth Federation Forces (E.F.F.)

From left to right:

RGM-79 GM with shield (+1 Defense die, first hit is negated and shield is lost)
RX-77-2 Guncannon
RGM-79SP GM Sniper II
RGM-79 GM with shield (+1 Defense die, first hit is negated and shield is lost)

5 points

Principality of Zeon Forces

 

From left to right:

MS-06 Zaku II with Heat Hawk (Assault Equipment – +1 Melee die)
MS-07B Gouf
MSM-07 Z’Gok
MS-06 Zaku II with Zaku Bazooka (Arsenal – +1 Shooting die until a target is destroyed)

5 points

 

 

The Game

Zeon forces start the game and enter the board.

The Gouf pilot moves up onthe flank towards the generators and has a look at the first Blip and uncovers a Minovski screen.

Minovsky/Minoffski/Minovski phsyics is an important bunch of MacGuffin technology to make the Gundam universe work. 

It allows for small, ‘clean’ nuclear power plants which emit a field of sub-atomic particles which mess with radio- and microwaves and most other tech-y things, they allow for certain space craft to enter Earth atmosphere much easier than usual, and so on. In M.S. Era terms, a Minovski screen grants a cover bonus to all units within 1 Stick.

The red zaku is much more cautious than his comrades and stays behind a large building.

His green pal avances at the other flank.

Earth Federation’s turn!

The Guncannon advances along the main road, right towards the enemy Z’Gok. The Blip right underneath him turns out to be a Minovski Screen as well. Most useful.

At the left flank, the red GM grabs a Blip, …

…which turns out to be valuable Intel, granting 1 Victory Point to the E.F.F. side.

At the other flank the Sniper II takes position to cover the wide open road as the GM advances cautiously.

With the Sniper II deterring the green Zaku to keep too close, the GM zips outof cover to grab the Blip at the next road crossing.

Turns out, the Blip was a bait. The GM gets up the shield right just in time to deflect a rocket-propelled grenade hurled against it, along with a muffled “Sieg Zeon!”.

The local Zeon sympthizers vanish in some alley, the GM pilot is rattled, but the projectile caused no damage. The green Zaku sees an opportunity and opens fire at he GM (whilst picking up another Blip, worth 1 Victory Point).

A Zaku Machine Gun is a different deal than a tiny anti-tank warhead handled by amateurs. The shield prevents damage once more, but is destroyed in the process and has to be discarded.

The other Zeon mobile suits try to close in to the enemy swiftly, each in their own way. The heavily-armoured Z’gok runs down the main road right towards the Guncannon…

…the Gouf picks up the last Blip remaining, which turns out to be important Resources. These can be ‘milked’ for victory points if a unit remains nearby and expends some actions.

Meanwhile the red Zaku sneaks forward into the next cover.

Since the Z’Gok is just in 2-Sticks range now, the Guncannon can fire to full effect (due to the extra sensors and whatnot).

…despite the tough armour and the Minovsky screen, the Z’gok takes a point of damage.

The Z’Gok stumbles out of the Guncannon’s field of fire and at the spur of a moment rams its Iron Nails into a nearby monorail to power back up.

The Z’Gok used its first action to move into cover, which seemed sensible considering the Guncannon’s firepower, came to stand right next to the monorail. For its second action the unit tried to repair itself and actually rolled a 6 to get rid of the one point of damage. The little episode wrote itself. 🙂

At the other flank, the green Zaku takes out the GM with a lucky hit, causing two points of damage.

The red Zaku finally is close enough to the GM and bursts out of its cover, Heat Hawk -a- swingin’.

The GM manages to deflect the initial blow, but the shield is torn from its hands and destroyed.

The Gouf storms in as well, but doesn’t cause any damage. The GM even manages to land a lucky blow on the Gouf.

Meanwhile, the newly powered-up Z’Gok charges at the Guncannon, causing one point of damage.

Despite the damage, the Guncannon retaliates with full force, causing two poins of damage.

With the help of the Sniper II (off camera 😛 ), it takes down the Z’Gok.

To their left, the luckiest GM in the universe takes out the Gouf.

…and then lands a devastating hit on the Zaku II as well!

This leaves just one more Zeon mobile suit on the table – the green Zaku. The pilot decides that being outnumbered 3:1 is enough of a reason to retreat.

 

Victory Points:

Zeon: 2
E.F.F.: 4

It’s a victory for the E.F.F.

 

Verdict

Boy howdy, these rules certainly are fast to play. 😀 The game, with all the slowness of first-time playing and solo playing, was done in less than an hour. I was surprised with how these relatively simple rules generate quite surprising, cinematic moments. I guess I went in with a heightened willingness for drama, as befitting the topic. People who are averse to a certain swinginess in results (a.k.a. ‘randomness’) may not love this. But for a swift brawl-y game in between SERIOUS WARGMING this will work.

One thing I thought of from turn#1 was that maybe alternating unit activation rather than full-on I-Go-You-Go would be a good idea for these rules.

MS Era is available here for free. The website includes everything you need to play, along with a surely very cool soundboard, which I was too squeamish to download so far. 😀 There’s loads of other rules sets on there as well, including SD Era, to go with the SD variant gunpla models, which proudly embraces silliness.

So yeah – good excuse to put these models on the table, good excuse to get more models. Table size might be a concern with such large figures. The bigger the better, I’d say, but 6′ by 4′ with 8 units present worked pretty okay. I hope I get to try more scenarios with these rules, because these might just be what I’ve been looking for in terms of mobile suit brawlin’.