Mobile Frame Zero at CanGames 2025
At this past CanGames, @xenovorous and I ran demos and a full game of Mobile Frame Zero: Rapid Attack (The Game of Little Lego Giant Robots)
Saturday:
I was running the demo table Saturday morning and arrived early to start setting up before the game. Shoutout to my friend Stéphane, who was operating a booth in the marketplace, and printed off the sign you can see in the background of the photo above.
For the demo games, we used a variation on the demo rules, giving each player a pair of 'soldier' frames, and starting all the teams equidistant from the station at the centre of the table. The purpose of the demo rules is to introduce players to the basic dice rolling & action rules, and the round & turn structure of the game, leaving out company creation and the rest of the rules to keep things simple.
Saturday morning's demo table went well, I had just over half a dozen players, and they all seemed to have fun while learning the rules.
Saturday afternoon, Xenovorous took over the demo table while I played another game.
Xenovorous had more players than I had, and everything was going well when I dropped by near the end of the afternoon game's timeslot (Xenovorous and I both have a fair bit of experience running this demo setup, so these events typically go smoothly).
Sunday:
Sunday morning, I was running the demo table again. I had less players show up than the previous morning, but folks still had fun and I also had some asking about the 'full game' in the afternoon.
Saturday afternoon was a 'full game' of Rapid Attack. The description that I had submitted specified that players could bring their own companies, or we would provide them. Xenovorous and I both brought multiple companies, and as it turned out, we needed them. I wish I had gotten more photos, but here's a few shots of a couple of the companies I brought:
We actually had a full table of five players, none of whom had brought their own companies. Some of them had played in a demo before, but none had played a standard game, so I started with our regular "here's how a frame takes a turn" demo speech and then Xenovorous and I did our best to assist the players through their turns.
Chaos in the middle of the battlefield. Frames from all five companies are visible in this photo.
The table at the end of the first round (camera facing north), and the second (camera facing east).
Set up and the first round ended up taking a long time. While the second round went much faster, we decided to call the game as we were getting close to the end of our allotted time. Two rounds is rarely enough time to change the status quo in a game of Rapid Attack, and this game wasn't an exception, the player who was in the lead at the beginning was still in the lead a the end.
Conclusions:
The demo games went well. Xenovorous and I are both experienced at running them and I think new players get a good introduction to the game and have a good time.
This year was the first time we had tried running a standard game of Rapid Attack at a convention, and I think we learned some things to incorporate into future games.
While had brought enough frames for all players to have companies, i think I left things too open-ended for players and company selection/comparison took too long. In the future, I'd like to have pre-made lists of companies for 2, 3, 4 or 5 players, and just ask them to select tactical positions (defense, offense, point) at the most.
The first round of the game also went far too slowly. While there may not be much to be done about that with a group of inexperienced players, I think things got a bit too chaotic at times with players asking questions, and other players trying to answer them or make suggestions. I wasn't prepared for that, and I feel that I should try to tamp down on the player cross-talk in the future.
All that being said, I think this was a successful CanGames, and I'm looking forward to next year.
More photos here: Mobile Frame Zero at CanGames 2025