Mobile Frame Zero

What?

Mobile Frame Zero 001: Rapid Attack is a tense tactical game of giant robot squad battle. Build your mobile frames of LEGO® or other building toys and bring them to the table to fight for control of the tabletop!

How long is a game?

About two and a half hours for three players. I like 3-player games, but 2-player and 4 player games work well, too!

Do you work for LEGO®?

Nope! We’re just big fans. You might even want to build your frames out of other building toys like Mega Bloks or Gundam models!

But you’ll sell kits, right?

Nope! I’m leaving that to others, like Mobilefra.me! The rulebook includes building instructions and you can see the amazing mecha players make from their own collections at the Mobile Frame Zero Flickr group and the blog No B.S., Just ABS.

How does it cost?

I know a lot of wargames cost a ton, but we want to make this accessible like Car Wars, Battletech, and other games were when I was a kid. The rules are $25 in print, PDFs are $10-$20 and Creative Commons, and a company typically cost far less than an army of commercially produced miniatures.

What do you mean, “tense”?

Mobile Frame Zero: Rapid Attack is a game where you never have enough time or material to make your plans easy. When your robots take a hit, they lose vital parts! When you make a decision, you know Doomsday is coming and you can’t take it back! There’s never enough cover to safely get where you need to go!

Can I play with my kids?

I’ve had a great time playing with 10-year olds. One of my favorite opponents is 11. He crushed me last time by being smart and committed.

But it’s fun for adults too?

Anyone who likes tactical wargames and LEGO® will have a great time. It has actual tactical depth and even a little strategic planning of resources. There are reasons to keep your guys together and reasons to split them up, reasons to use artillery, direct fire, hand-to-hand weapons, or even use unarmed scouts. The best players design squads to work together, supporting each other’s weaknesses.

Can I make up my own factions and mecha?

Of course! That’s the point of LEGO®, right? Building what’s on front of the box is fun, but using the parts to make your own stuff is the core of the excellence! We’ll even show you how to make your own setting and house rules.

Who are you?

We’re Joshua A.C. Newman (author of Shock: Social Science Fiction and Shock: Human Contact), Vincent Baker (author of Dogs in the Vineyard and Apocalypse World) and Soren Roberts, one of the Internet’s best-known LEGO® designers. Vincent’s son Sebastian is our apprentice game designer.

56 responses to “Home”

  1. Hey awesome to see a website going up! WordPress is wonderful :) Let me know if you have any questions on building it! I’m super stoked about the tabletop game guides my friends and I are getting soon!

  2. How exciting! The site is up and running! I’m chomping at the bit to get this game going. I’ve built a small army an it is ever growing. I plan to conquer the hearts and minds of table top gamers everywhere! Any word on when we can get the rules for a little beta action?

    • Search “mobile frame hanger”. It’s a forum on which the game creators have been posting rules previews (enough that some of us have run simple games).

  3. As this seems to be an FAQ, you might as well add “When will it be ready?” even if you don’t have a great answer to that right now. I’m sure it will be frequently-asked.

    This looks really cool, I’m bummed I missed the Kickstarter, but you certainly didn’t need my help there!

  4. Great to see your website go live. I wanted to help in the Kickstarter but missed the deadline by a few days. Very excited about picking up your game. When will it be released and where will I be able to get a copy of it and some of your really cool robot sets.

  5. Is there an official recommendation of how many and approximately what types/colors of dice will be needed to play this. I bought a copy of Mechaton a couple of years ago, though I’ve never played. I know I don’t have enough dice, though.

    • Yeah, but I can’t remember off the top of my head. Check out the dice roller web app in the sidebar, though!

    • The game “Perudo” comes with 5 red dice, 5 blue dice, 5 green dice, 5 yellow dice, and 5 black and 5 orange dice (substitute for white?), though no d8s. It retails for about $20, and I find to be a great way to get the necessary dice without too much trouble.

  6. Any chance there will be a game at Brickworld in June? Will rules be available by then? I’m running the Lego Pirate Wars there and wouldn’t mind running a session or two of this as well.

    • There’s a distant possibility I’ll be there, but if you want to be certain and run it yourself, I’d love to answer any questions you’ve got to make it go as well as possible!

  7. You folk deserve statues, made of bronzed lego, in several cities.

    My kids are massively excited by this game – only a little less than I am. I here pledge to spend more than reasonable amounts of money on anything you care to sell.

  8. When Lego attempts to buy you out, b/c your awesome idea is selling them tons of pieces, don’t settle for owning less than 50% of the franchise!

    Later, when the animatable programmable ARDUINO robotic Lego’s come out, make sure you own some of that too.

    Meantime — I’m playin’!
    (And I just got out some Legos & discovered — your bot builds are kinda hard to make!!!!)

  9. Wow! This reminds me of the time I created a medabots tabletop game out of legos! I was hoping there would be an online store.
    I am so happy to see this website built.
    Best wishes!

  10. So excited for this game! Finally a mini’s game where I can just build new units instead of having to buy them all the time!
    How will gaming stores be able to place orders for this?

    • Eventually, I’ll have a setup for game stores. Until then, it’s just me to you, publisher to player!

  11. rule question: can artillery fire over complete obstructions like buildings? so far our house rule is that if there is no line of sight whatsoever between the shooter and target, then you can only fire if the target has been spotted, and even then it counts as being in cover. This makes some sense for Direct Fire as well, but I’m interested to see what your intent is.

  12. Where are you guys located? If you’re in or around Mass I know some gaming stores that would love to host sessions.

  13. Lex, you’re in the MA area? I’ve been thinking of contacting Eureka Games & Puzzles to see if I can demo MFZ on one of their game nights.

    • I’m out in western mass actually, in Northampton, there are a few small places out here that would like to demo it, like Off The Wall games in Hadley, but if you let me know my friends and I may make the trek to Brookline to play a demo.

    • Lex, I ran a demo a few weeks ago at Modern Myths! I’ll probably do more once my time frees up a little later in the summer!

  14. I live right up the street from you guys in Holyoke. Are there going to be any demos soon locally ? and is it possible to buy a copy of the game so I can demo it with my local gaming group ?

    • Hi, Jay! I ran a demo recently at Modern Myths and will do another sometime soon once the game’s finished. You’ll be able to buy it in July sometime, is my guess.

      I’m glad to know more locals!

  15. Joshua, you should shoot me an email at some point, I would love to organize some demo sessions and pick your brain about RPG stuff.

  16. So what’s up with the project? You got me addicted to reading your updates on Kickstart and now you’ve gotten quiet.

    • Hi, Steve! I’m working hard on the project! Expect a big update soon. You can also keep up with things over at mobileframehangar.com.

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