by Bob Barnetson

Privateer Press will soon be releasing Monsterpocalypse, a collectable miniature game (CMG) based upon kaiju: giant monsters fighting it out for supremacy… oh, and stomping some buildings flat in the process. The game is designed for two players, age 10 and up and comprises starter packs, random boosters and figures available through special offers.

Initial Impressions
Monsterpocalpyse is been the subject of much pre-release publicity, including a very slick website. The components (figures, dice, rules, playing maps) are very nice looking. The prepainted figures are well painted, although the array of different factions and units was hard to make sense of at first.

I was a bit surprised that the rule book ran 60 pages. Obviously, this is a more complex game than other CMGs I’ve played, such as Pirates of the Spanish Main. The quick reference sheets proved very helpful in explaining the basic mechanics of play. That said, I’m not sure the game is suitable for 10-year-olds as is indicated on the booster and starter boxes.

Components
The review package contained two starter sets, six unit boosters and two monster booster packages. The starter sets each contain a playing mat, quick reference sheet, game dice, 60-page rule book, miniatures representing an apartment building and a high rise, four units common to all starter sets, two versions of a randomly determined single monster and a monster health tracker. Starter sets retail for $24.99 USD. Unit boosters contained four random units and one random building. Monster boosters contain two version of a random monster. Both types of boosters retail for $12.99 USD.

Each of the components comes sealed in an individual bag inside a glossy cardboard box. The monsters, units and buildings contained in each booster are random. Although I didn’t keep a tally sheet when opening the packages, I don’t believe any booster contained more than one figure from each faction. This suggests building a themed army requires purchasing multiple boosters.

The printed components are well designed, full colour, and printed on glossy stock. The miniatures are made of bendy plastic affixed on a hard-plastic base. Each of the miniature is pre-painted and comes with a unit stat card incorporated into the base. The prepainting of high quality, with teeth and the eyes on a one-inch tall Terrasaur figure clearly picked out. There are multiple colours on each figures. For example, the Terra Khan figure has five colours with some blending of colours. The blending may be unintentional airbrush overspray, but the effect is nice. The figures show some mould lines and also assembly seams where they comprise more than one piece.

Each of the factions has a different visual identity. The Terrasaur, Lords of Cthul, Planet Eaters and G.U.A.R.D. factions are fairly pleasing and distinctive. I thought the Martian menace and Shadow Sun Syndicate were less inspired. The figures are approximately 1:1000 scale (my measurement) and could be used in other games, although none jump to mind. That might require detaching them from their bases.

There are 10 buildings for which stats are available in the game. I received four. All are crisply sculpted and have a fair amount of detail. The buildings are also approximately 1:1000 scale (my measurements). Again, they would might require detaching from their bases for use with another gaming system.

Of the 38 figures I received, two had slight breakage (easily fixed with glue), two had an incorrect stat card incorporated into the base, and one had the stat card inserted 90 degree out of alignment. Of the 10 buildings I received, one was incorrectly adhered to its base and one had slight breakage (again, fixed with glue).

There are two types of figures in the game: monsters and units. Each player’s army is led by a monster (advanced rules allow for multiple monsters per side). Monsters have both an alpha and hyper form, each with slightly different powers. To represent this, each monster has two different figures (one solid and one translucent). My impression after five playtests is that the hyper form seems to be more useful for individual combat, while the alpha form is more useful if the monster is leading a group of units. That said, I’m not entirely sure that applies to all monsters and it might be more accurate to say that the alpha and hyper forms are offer players different options.

The remainder of the army comprises up to 15 units. Each of the figures belongs to one of the themed factions (e.g., Martian Menace, Lords of Cthul). Although your army can be constructed with units from any faction, units work best when combined with other figures from the same faction. By making units from the same faction work better than a mixed army, Privateer Press has created an incentive to buy booster packs of units and/or trade.

At present, each faction belongs to one of six agendas. For example, the Terrasaurs are the only faction currently subscribing to the Radical agenda. The goals of each faction are part of the narrative of competing interests that underlies the game. When expansions are announced, they will include new factions that will work within one of the six agendas. According to the rule book, units from different factions but sharing the same agenda will have complementary abilities.

Agendas

• Protectors are the good guys. They try to defend a way of life even if it means demolishing a few buildings in the process.
• Radicals are only interested in an ideal, and civilization takes a back seat when it comes to advancing their goals.
• Fiends are pure evil, through and through. They destroy because they enjoy inflicting pain and suffering.
• Destroyers are motivated by wanton destruction. It’s nothing personal; just don’t get in their way.
• Invaders want what Earth has to offer, and they’ll stop at nothing to have it.
• Collaborators have their own objectives. Sometimes they work for the good of humanity, but other times humanity is just a stepping-stone.

Factions

• G.U.A.R.D. (Protectors) The giant robots and armored tanks of Globally United Advanced Research and Defense fight for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
• Terrasaurs (Radicals) The Terrasaurs, earth-shaking, gargantuan dinosaurs, prefer a simpler time before technology and progress changed so much of the world.
• Lords Of Cthul (Fiends) Dark beings from another plane come to enslave the human race.
• Planet Eaters (Destroyers) These ravenous creatures from a far away world want nothing more than to wreck our planet.
• Martian Menace (Invaders) These diabolical visitors from space have come to harvest Earth’s inhabitants and resources for their own insidious plans.
• Shadow Sun Syndicate (Collaborators) Mystery surrounds the motivations of these stealthy scientifically engineered ninjas.

Game Mechanics
Monsterpolcalypse is an igo-ugo game, with each side taking turns spending the 10 white action dice they are allocated. While the game also uses red power dice and blue boost dice when attack rolls are made, the white action dice act as both the activation mechanic and core of combat resolution.

Each side gets 10 action dice and they are placed in the unit dice pool. On the first turn, players can “spend” dice to bring units onto the board from the unit reserve, activate units to move, and conduct combat. As dice are used, they are moved from the unit dice pool to the monster dice pool. This creates some tough choices. For example, if a unit wants to conduct combat, it rolls (and thus uses up) a fixed number of action dice (assuming you have that many dice remaining in your pool) to determine the outcome. If a player finishes a turn and there are dice left in the unit pool, they player can push them to the monster dice pool.

The turn consists of a Unit Activation phase and then a Monster Activation phase.
A Unit Activation consists of:

• The Spawn Phase, when your units in Reserve can enter the battle map.
• The Advancement Phase, when your units advance.
• The Attack Phase, when your units make attacks.
• The Push Phase, when you may move any unused Action Dice into the Monster Pool.

A Monster Activation consists of:

• The Power Phase, when your monster can Power Up.
• The Hyper Phase, when your monster can turn into its Hyper form.
• The Advancement Phase, when your monster advances.
• The Attack Phase, when your monster makes attacks.
• The Push Phase, when you may move any unused Action Dice into the Unit Pool.

The map board is a square grid. Figures move horizontally and vertically on the grid and may also make one diagonal move per turn. Grid squares may be open, contain rough ground, a building or have a special use (e.g., a spawning square, a power square). Most units move on foot and are affected by terrain, but some units may jump or fly and thus interact differently with the terrain.

After the first turn, players can choose to activate either their monster or their units and spend up to the number of white dice they have in the activated figures’ die pool. Most commonly, players will activate their units and their monster on alternate turns to take advantage of the natural flow of the action dice from one pool to the other as they are used.

The combat dice are iconic, rather than numeric and have a combination of blank sides, sides with one hit, and sides with two hits on them. In combat, units and monsters throw up to the maximum number of dice noted for the type of attack (blast, crush, or power). As this number can be high, not all units will move and fight during a turn. Dice management thus becomes a central task of players.

Some units have blue “boost dice” that can be added to increase the effectiveness of the attack. Monsters can also use red “power dice”. These red dice are earned by completing tasks (e.g., destroying a building) thus play entails not only fighting an opponent but also securing buildings and strategic power spaces so a player can accrue valuable red dice for combat.

Once a player has the appropriate number of dice in hand, the dice are rolled and the number of hit icons are tallied. If the number of hits equals or exceeds the defensive value of the target unit, a hit is scored. Units are destroyed when hit and are then returned to the owning player’s unit reserve from which they may be re-spawned. In this way, the units continue to cycle back into the game, although spawning and moving the units up into combat is a drain on the owner’s limited number of action dice.

Monsters are able to absorb multiple hits and each hit is tracked on the monster’s health tracker. A monster is destroyed (and the game is over) when both the monster’s alpha and hyper form are destroyed. In addition to being able to use power dice in their attacks, monsters are the only figures able to use power attacks (e.g., body slams, head butts, rams, rampages). These attacks do damage as well as have special effects on other monsters, units and the buildings in the game.

In addition to have attack, defence and move values, many figures have unique actions, advantages, triggers and skills that can affect the game. Skilful use of these can provide a significant advantage to a player. All of these traits are shown as icons on a cardboard insert that is incorporated into the figure’s base. As the game normally entails monster-on-monster fighting, the choice of monster tactics and effect of monster advantages and triggers are important. Such fighting can be quite dramatic, with monsters being thrown or knocked about the board, causing significant collateral damage.

The picture above is of a monster base. The data on the left side and bottom are the figure stats and information. The information on the right side are abilities. In left column (top to bottom) are the figure’s speed (6), defensive value (5), and the maximum number of dice the figure can roll in brawl, blast and power attacks. Where there is a star followed by a number below and icon, this indicates the number of boost dice that are added to this kind of attack. Where there is a two-piece bar, this indicates the range of a blast attack. One black and one white bar indicates a range of three spaces while two black bars indicates a range of five spaces. The heart icon at the bottom of the column is the number of hits the figure can take before being removed.

The row on the bottom (moving left to right) indicates the figure’s faction, agenda and energy type. Certain game effects may do more or less damage based upon the energy type of the effect and the unit. The right-hand column indicates the unit’s abilities (moving top to bottom) including sacrifice, summon, telekinesis, power gorge, fling, flight.

The final component of the game are the buildings. Buildings are placed on the board in designated squares by players in an alternating fashion during game set-up and initial placement is constrained such that there are always buildings in the centre of the map. Buildings provide cover to units adjacent to them, securing buildings by having three units adjacent to them can yield power dice during the power-up phase of monster activation, and destroying buildings can yield power dice as well as create hazards on the playing surface.

The complete rule book is available as a pdf download. If you flip through the book, you’ll see two-page spreads containing background information on all of the factions. I found this interesting when I first read the rules, but a frustrating interruption when trying to interpret rules during play.

Game Play
You can see an abbreviated example of game play from GenCon on the TGN website. Some of the subtleties and strategy vare left out of this explanation due to time constraints, but it gives a good overview of game play. Not shown in the example of game play are the more complex power attacks that are used by monsters against buildings, units and monsters. For example, a monster can body slam another monster (i.e., pick it up and throw it to a new location). This inflicts one point of damage on the target monster (from the attack) as well as destroying any buildings and units the monster is body slammed into. The target monster may also take additional damage if it hits a building and potentially even more damage, if destroying the building creates a hazard.

The mechanics of a power attack are similar to that of regular combat. You can roll up to the maximum number of action dice for the monster’s power attack stat as well as any boost dice noted on the monster’s base and you must use a minimum of one power die (although you can use more). The distribution of hits on the power dice creates a significantly greater chance of hitting, which is necessary in order to generate enough hits to damage another monster. The requirement for the power die (which is easy enough to meet most of the time) does create some limits on the number of power attacks that are possible in a row—roughly approximating the effects of fatigue. A monster will also more often have skills, triggers and reactions that must be considered in resoling combat (there is a set order for applying these).

After reading the rules (two hours), my initial play through of the game took another two hours to bring the game to conclusion. Part of this reflects decision paralysis: there are so many features and options that both affect strategy and combat (and each is represented by an icon on the unit base that takes time to become familiar with) that I was overwhelmed playing even a small game. Subsequent games went faster, although I still found them mentally taxing.

The complexity of the rules creates something of barrier to introducing the game to new players, although ignoring the special skills and abilities on first play simplifies things. That said, my usually indulgent (and sometimes gamer) wife balked at playing as the rule explanation mounted. And the two game-savvy 14-year-old Games Workshop junkies I tried the game also grew frustrated quickly.

As I play games to relax, I usually have the most fun when the rules are easily assimilated and fade into the background. With five games under my belt, that has not yet been my experience with Monsterpocalypse. Additional play will change this, but I am having a hard time finding other gamers willing to make that investment in the system.

Despite the learning curve, the mechanics worked well and the rules answered my questions. I was a bit unsure about whether moving dice back and forth between the unit and monster pools would be tedious and it has not been so. The use of boost and power dice is very slick and when to use power dice can be a tough choice. Combat involves rolling a lot of dice and, in this way, is reminiscent of Warmaster. Overall, the combat mechanics work and the only area of complication is understanding the effect and sequencing of various reactions and triggers. Again, this got easier as my experience with the system increased.

Comments
Monsterpocalypse is a CMG of some complexity. Specifically, it allows players more opportunity to develop strategies based on differentiated force composition and tactical play. In this way, it feels more akin to Warhammer or Flames of War than CMGs such as Pirates of the Spanish Main or Starship Battles. This makes the game well suited for both tournament competition and expansions of the game over time.

The trade off is that the game is somewhat less accessible to casual gamers than other CMGs. For example, the game says it is suitable for ages 10 and up, however, the casual and more avid gamers I tried to teach the game to became frustrated with the complexity of the units and the amount of memory work required. With practice I expect they could master the game but, without any real interest in kaiju, I doubt they will want to play again. Although the game’s complexity is apparent when reading the rules on line, this will likely be less obvious to dad-and-lad game buyers in a store.

The single and mutually exclusive goal in Monsterpocalype (i.e., destroy both forms of the other player’s monster) colours game play significantly. It rewards power gamer tactics (e.g., careful army list construction, knowledge and aggressive use of special abilities) moreso than games with more complex objectives, greater fog of war, and conflicting but not mutually exclusive goals. Game designs of this sort often result in polarized reactions among players with different preferences so it is important to be aware of this before buying into the game.

The basic mechanics work well. The activation mechanic (i.e., deciding what to do with a limited stockpile of dice) is basically an opportunity-cost mechanic. It forces hard choices. I was struck by the potential options being knowable by the player (e.g., with these three dice I can do A and B or X and Y). With the exception of the outcome of combat rolls, there is little chance or fog of war built into the game design. The result is a “helicopter God effect” (where players are all knowing). This is not to my taste, but CMG fans may not find this problematic.

The use of activation dice (when combined with the ability of units to respawn) is useful in managing the size of forces arrayed against one another. With only 10 dice, having 15 units on the board is of limited utility because most will not get to activate in a turn. Further, units remain a part of the game throughout. Combined with their limited individual abilities, they are something of a sideshow to the monster combat (consistent with the kaiju theme of the game), yet they cannot be entirely ignored because of their ability to garner players power dice and also the potential of well positioned units to conduct combined attacks on monsters.

Despite working well as an activation mechanic, I’m not entirely sure what the finite number of action dice represent in real life. In a game of this scale, I don’t see what natural constraints there would be that would prevent each unit from activating each turn. Perhaps, though, it is unreasonable to expect a monster-game to be entirely grounded in reality. The activation mechanic does a nice job of forcing players to use all of the figures on the board. Because dice cycle back and forth between units and monsters, you can only play an “all monster” strategy by forfeiting turns where the dice reside with your units.

Rules page sample

A common criticism of random booster CMGs is that companies manufacture scarcity to drive sales of boosters. This is true of Monsterpocalypse. Not only are there different kinds of boosters, and figures of varying rarity, the game mechanics reward players for buying extra boosters. Boosters allow players to gain desired units to optimize their force. The more buildings there are on the map, the more power dice you can collect. And the more figures you have from a single faction, the more powerful your units are in play.

While I can see the value of a mixed starter package, I would really rather buy the figures and buildings I need, either individually or as part of a fixed set. Having six initial factions means it will be more difficult to collect a matching force buying boosters than other CMGs I’ve tried. As a mostly historical gamer (where one generally buys exactly the number of figures one wants), I find this random factor frustrating. It may be, however, that the target audience of Monsterpocalypse will enjoy the collectable aspect of the game. There are, of course, excellent business reasons for random boosters. Among them is that it reduces the level of stock a retailer must carry to sell the game and it prevents Privateer getting stuck with stock should one of the factions turn out to be unpopular.

The packaging compounds the wastage random boosters entail. Each of the booster boxes is at least 40% larger than necessary to accommodate the contents. Inside this box, each figure is contained in its own (unnecessary) plastic bag. Yes, a bigger box makes it looks like you are getting more for your money at the store and perhaps make packaging physically easier. But I experienced a significant let down when I arrayed the $150 worth of review items in front of me and found the quantity of the product was small and that I could barely put together single themed army of a monster plus 7 units.

An area of the game that I remain confused by are the factions and agendas. A backstory and narrative seem an important part of the genre, yet the game implications of the factions and agenda are fairly limited. You can have a force combining units of any factions, although this is not as effective as a force of units from the same faction. But you can also have units from the same faction on both sides, thus fighting each other. This helps make the random booster system work, but it strikes me as odd. Further, that one faction is interested saving Earth and another in eating (enslaving, profiteering from, etc.) it does not seem to impact the game at all, other than perhaps in the advantages and triggers monsters from different factions have. This seems like an area that could have been further developed to deepen the game and make the backstory more meaningful.

Conclusions
Monsterpocalypse is a well designed and lavishly produced game. The pre-painted units, monsters and buildings are well done. The terrasaurs are particularly striking in their appearance. The game mechanics are sound, although I did not conduct enough playtests to determine if any faction is over- or under-powered. That said, the complexity of the mechanics means Monsterpocalypse is not something to pull out and play.

For all of the production values, I was underwhelmed by the fun I had during my first few games. My reaction might change over time, but I think the game is more complex than what I want from a CMG in a niche genre and that I can’t really see myself investing the time required to become good at playing Monsterpocalypse.

Pros

• High production values.
• Game mechanics work well.
• More depth and options than most CMGs.

Cons

• Rule complexity may be off putting.
• Random boosters make raising a good force expensive and frustrating.