Medabots (2001)

Hasbro

Date Reviewed: 6-6-2003

Critical Kobold Rating:      (2 out of 5 Dice)

 

Build to Battle. Collect to Rule. Don't Sneeze!

“Build to Battle. Collect to Rule.”

     “Medabots” are 2-inch tall plastic warrior robots. Apparently the idea for the action figures was taken from a Japanese computer game, and there's also a cartoon starring the little robo-heroes. Like most anime, the series plot is too convoluted and odd to bother following, so we'll deal solely with the minis game.

   The Medabots are, like all Japanese robots, very violent and competitive. Each little dude comes with an itsy-bitsy cylindrical “die” with six sides, a personal information card, and removable head and limbs. As the packaging gleefully points out: “La cabeza, los brazos, y las piernas disprendibles se intercambian entre todos los Medabots”!

     Well, that’s fan-tástico !


 

     Each player needs a ‘bot, the corresponding info card, and their die. There’s both a basic and an advanced Medabots game, but we’ll skip right to the advanced rules, since a turnip could master the basic game without much effort. Not that the advanced game is rocket science, but it’s still fun.

     Each body part of your ‘bot has a numeric target value listed on its info card. This value is the score your opponent needs to roll on their tiny die to lop that piece off of your fighting mini-mecha and claim the body part as their own. For those of you who don’t read Spanish, the quote above explains that all the pieces of the Medabots are interchangeable, so you can collect them and mix and match your ‘bot parts to create a truly ferocious, pants-wettingly fierce 2” tall dervish of death!

     Each die face has the image of a body part (left arm, right arm, head) on one half and a score listed on the other half. While the die is an elongated d6, the scores range anywhere from “10” to “100”. 

     When players face off, one person rolls their die twice. The first roll indicates which body part you’re trying to whack off of your enemy. The score from the second roll determines if you’ve scored high enough to swipe that piece, according to the owner’s info card. In a wonderful side note, if your teeny die ends up standing upright on its side, you automatically win that part.

     Players alternate turns until someone wins the arms and head of the opposing Medabot. In the spirit of generosity and good will, all body parts are returned to their owner after each game. (Mostly because, while I picked mine up in a local dollar store, these things can go for a few bucks each on Ebay. If we lived in a sensical world where we only paid for the 3¢ worth of plastic in these things, we could afford dozens of Medabots, and therefore could keep the parts we won in a glorious example of the spoils going to the victor.)

     Now, before you rush out and buy a Medabot willy-nilly, you should know that they are not all created equal! Oh, no, for where, then, would be the sport of it?

     For instance, two of my champions, the fierce Samurai and tufty-haired Whitesord, are subtly different. Hacking off Samurai’s right arm requires a meager roll of “16”, while his left arm needs a slightly higher “23” to be severed from his rugged torso.

     However, each of Whitesord’s arms must be taken with dauntingly high rolls of “85”! Sadly, Whitesord’s head is only slightly harder to take than Samurai’s. On my Metabee figure, one arm may be hacked off with a "34", while the other takes a "76". There's no real rhyme or reason.

     This is a mindlessly fun, VERY fast game. While designed, I think, for two players, there’s no reason you couldn’t gather several pals for a steel-cage robo-smackdown free-for- all.

     (And displaying the kind of obsessive-gamer mentality that I have, I’ve already considered “miniatures rules” for movement, ranged attacks, and terrain effects.)

     Now, be warned, the 'dice' that come with each figure are small, weightless cylindrical things that could easily disappear, never to been seen again, with one wild toss or one good sneeze. And an oddity that has no real effect on the game is the fact that the scores on the dice don't always coincide with the scores on the ID cards required to cut off limbs. Every one of the dice have sides labeled 10, 20, 30, 55, 75, and 100. However, my limb-severing target scores are things like 16, 50, and 85. If I can only roll a 75 or a 100, why bother having target scores in between?

    I suppose if you lose your tiny die, or if it gets eaten by your pet chinchilla, you could just as easily use a standard d6, with each face representing one of the escalating results printed on the official game dice. Since there's no sense to the numbers on the official die anyway, I wouldn't worry about what numbers are actually printed on whatever die you're rolling.

     The Two Dice rating this game earns in my review isn't because I don't like it; on the contrary, I find it highly amusing. But it is cheap and silly and takes about two minutes to play in its entirety, and is certainly not something yer gonna sit down and go at for hours on end. I mean, really, it’s intended for ages 6 and up...

     For more info, hop on over to www.medabots.com and get in on the carnage!

     (Warning: if you click on the above link, be ready to rock out!)

     And remember this piece of advice from the basic rules, O Brave Tiny Warrior, as you take the field of battle:

"El jugador que obtiene el azul no toma ninguna pieza."

     BONZAI!

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