Heavy Gear: Tactical
Dueling Supplement
 The Interpolar War caused a dramatic decrease in the number of dueling events taking place across the planet. Most of the better Duelists found themselves drafted into the polar armies or on the run, and few viewers were interested in witnessing arena fights when their city-states were under attack. Once the war ended, however, the arena promoters made sure things went rapidly back to normal. New dueling events are heavily romanticized, the action sequences are unbelievable and the fans are eating it up like never before!
Tactical Dueling explores the various settings where modern Duelists and other fighters meet in battle. Along with some background information on the Duelists’ traditions, the core of the sourcebook contains rules for playing arena battles with the tabletop wargaming rules introduced in the Tactical Miniatures Rules. This sourcebook includes:
- Rules for fielding your own Duelist characters (with variable stats and abilities);
- Stats and special rules for arena features and traps;
- Racing and rally racing rules, with pit stops and quick repairs;
- Advanced one-on-one fighting;
- Modeling instructions and suggestions for arena terrain pieces;
- Conversion notes for dueling machines' miniatures;
- Datacards for the dueling vehicles shown in the Heavy Gear universe.
A few six-sided dice, a copy of the Tactical Miniatures Rules, some miniatures, pen and paper are required to play the game.
DP9-108, 80 B&W pages + 4 color pages
SRP $19.95US/$21.95can
ISBN 1-894578-62-7
Credits Add-on
Christian Schaller did a lot of work on this book, computing all the modified Threat Values for the customizable dueling vehicles, organizing the datacards, and more. Unfortunately he is not credited in the book itself. We apologize for the mistake.
Arena Tabletop Scenery
The various arena scenery items shown in the pictures of this book were made out of foamcore sheets covered with a metal texture printed on paper and glued on. The technique is fully described in Chapter 5, page 71. The files are in the standard PDF format (you'll need Adobe Acrobat or a graphic program to use them).
Designer's Notes
Dueling and arena combat have been part of the Heavy Gear universe since the very beginning. The concept of five-meter tall combat walkers yielding swords and staff the size of a telephone pole had a graphic appeal, to say the least. The Terranovan dueling traditions and cultures were extensively covered in previous books, notably the aptly-named Duelist’s Handbook, and we later discussed Caprice’s own version of the duelists in the Life on Caprice sourcebook.
So why yet another book on the duelists, then? The main reason is that although we’ve covered their way of life extensively, we never gave rules for many of the stunts and extreme maneuvers they are able to accomplish with their war machines. With the release of the Heavy Gear television series, which centers on the exploit of two teams of extremely skilled duelists, we felt that there would be a lot of inquiries on how to translate the screen action to the tabletop. This book is an attempt to remedy this by offering detailed rules for everything from one-on-one melee combat to high-speed racing, complete with pit stops. A large part of the book provides support for the budding arena promoter ranging from modeling tips to read-made datacards.
So put on your helmet, close the cockpit hatch and be ready to face the most demanding foe ever… the dueling fan!
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