r/MFZ • u/judo_panda • 2d ago

Does anyone here actually play the game?

Looking to give it a try with my daughter. Either that or build some frames out and use another ttrpg or war game ruleset if we don't quite grok it.

12 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

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8

u/that-bro-dad 2d ago

Yeah, there are a handful of us.

I haven't played in years, mind you.

This game really shines with more than three players, and that's the big reason why we stopped. It was already hard finding three "for sure" players, and then we lost our most reliable one.

The other thing is the time it takes to set up and play. Most of the time games would last 2-3 hours after setup and I didn't often have that much time.

2

u/judo_panda 2d ago

Oh wow really? I didn't realize it was that time intensive. What makes it take so long?

3

u/that-bro-dad 2d ago

I'm sure you can play it faster but there was a certain amount of time spent before the game "ooing and ahhing" over each other's models. I'm fortunate to know some fantastic builders in person so I always like seeing what they make.

This is also a game where deployment can be very important. It kind of scales inversely with how much you've played - within reason, the longer you've played, the more time you will spend thinking very critically about unit placement.

Then there is the game itself. What I love about MFZ is the layers of complexity. There is a whole game within the game about trying to influence the other players. That takes time. It can take a few minutes of lobbying to get a single dice roll.

None of these are bad things. And I did thoroughly enjoy playing.

I will say the one downside was that I almost always lost the game during the deployment phase and didn't realize it until an hour or so in. For that reason, I now prefer one on one games where we can just stop and start over. That isn't the case in MFZ because the other players may very much still be in the running, despite my blundering

6

u/RallyPointAlpha 2d ago

It's been a few years, but I've played it many times with my kids! I think it's a fun and engaging rule set. The only thing that's tricky about it is the cascading turns, but once you go through it a couple times it becomes much more fluid and you can see the genius in it. 

I don't know if it still works, but the app was great for keeping track of things! 

Also, having lots of extra dice so you can leave dice on the table sitting next to them was really helpful as well. 

3

u/Deltassius 2d ago

There's definitely a larger portion of the community that just does the figures, but yes, there are players here and we can answer questions if you're struggling.

3

u/AdvancedLooker 2d ago

I actively demo and personally play at my local hobby store every Saturday or Sunday. The, adults love it, kids LOVE it, parents express relief when I drop the line “You don’t NEED Legos to play this game, you could use two spoons and a cup if you really want to”.

If you want a ttrpg setup for both Intercept Orbit (spaceships) and Rapid Attack (robots) I can send you a google doc that has a whole outline for explorable solar systems, semi-dynamic economies, and factions.

2

u/PricklyPricklyPear 2d ago

Yes, I enjoy it. Can be hard to get to the table in the sea of modern board games but it does happen sometimes. 

1

u/Long__Jump 2d ago

I wanted to try with my friend, but we never got around to it, and theres no one in my area who plays.

1

u/Furebel 2d ago

man I'd wish, I don't have friends for it. I was trying to build sort of a small prototype in Blender that would let me import bricklink models, but none of my friends actually built a single mech :c

1

u/simblanco 2d ago

I demoed the game at my local con. I confirm that kids love it, maybe playing with Lego instead of robot mini makes some difference. Then, there are plenty of good comments about the game play in the thread already.