Monsterpocolypse

Well I saw the video demo of Monsterpocolypse and I am bit bummed out. I had hoped for more of an action point based ruleset and instead its you move/you fire I move/I fire, big monster moves/fires.

There is a dice spending element which seemed senseless through casual veiwing but may have some effect in gameplay.

www.tabletopgamingnews.com/2008/07/26/15966

I'm still going to buy a starter pack or two. I love some of the figures. If the buildings become cheap, I'll be using them to pimp out my war on terror set. Whoohoo!

Steve"SmashySmashy"Avery

The figures do look pretty cool. I could see getting some just for the novelty.

Well its out now and though I've seen news of being sold out and huge popularity, I have yet to find anyone who has bought any. Even here on F:AT the whole Monsterpocolypse has been overlooked. I was talking to the manager of a local gamestore and they haven't sold even one set yet.

So whats the story? Its past my pricepoint to buy without having played it at least once.

The plastic vulture in me hungrily eyes the unsold packs on the shelf but the gameboy in me wants this game to be a success.

I just don't have room for another CMG, or time to chase figs. Looks neat, but an easy "pass" from me.

There is zero chance of me ever getting into another collectible game. If I had more money to spend, I would buy more cards for the two CCGs that I still play: Shadowfist and V:tes. Those games are still in print, and there are still people that I can play them with locally. Even if a great new CCG or CMG came along, my friends wouldn't play it because (and this is a direct quote from each and every one of them) "I can't afford to get into another collectible card game." And this isn't a passing phase, this is a consistent response for about a decade now.

At Gen Con people waited in line for hours to demo this game and get the free fig, but the most common response I heard was 'meh'. There are a million special ability symbols to memorize, and the rules didn't seem to get anyone excited. Like Ken, this is an easy one for me to pass on.

I've bought into it some and I am quite pleased with the game. I had higher hopes for it than it actually turned out to be, but it is fun nonetheless.

Since I'm a miniature gamer at heart this game shows a lot of promise because there is a lot more depth in it than other pre-painted collectable games and the strategies and tactics of it are more in line with miniatures. It shows that pre-painted games can have more depth to them than others like the A&A: War at Sea line which ended up being a bust for me.

Basically like any other miniature game or collectable game the army construction meta game is present. Each of the monsters has their own strengths that flow thru to the grunt units and though the monsters for a faction use the same units, selection of those units differs depending on which monster you pick.

One thing that I don't like about the game is the way the monsters are packed. At 13 bucks a pop I think it was a bad move to randomize those. The monsters you should know what you get. Out of the six monsters I originally got, three of them were dupes which really pissed me off.

Basically what you have is two games going on at once. The small grunt units have a chance to harm the monsters but you need to combine fire to really do any damage and even then the chances of damage are only about 70% and cause one damage. So the main purpose of them are to secure buildings which provide powerups and other bonuses to your monsters or deny your opponent the ability to secure objectives or buildings.

Then the second game is the monster on monster combat. There you have a bunch of fun options of picking up and bodyslamming the other monster and depending on what you slam them into buildings could cause additional damage especially if the building is explosive or radioactive causing an additional damage. For example if you pick up your opponent to body slam them you cause a damage. If you slam them into a building that causes an additional damage. Then if the building explodes and catches fire and they aren't immune to it that causes an additional damage. Therefore one attack could cause three damage. That's why I say the ground units with the ability to only cause one damage are just there to pluck away at the guy with their main purpose to secure buildigns and objectives.

Overall I had higher hopes for the game but the final execution was satisfying. Like other collectable games though I hope it does fail so I can get the models on the cheep! It does give me hopes though that some other prepainted miniature games will actually look at depth of gameplay because quite frankly I am a miniature gamer at heart, but really hate painting those things.

LvT

Stephen Avery wrote:

There is a dice spending element which seemed senseless through casual veiwing but may have some effect in gameplay.

This was one of the reasons why I was disappointed with the game. The amount of dice that you have really don't matter too much. There are never enough to use the troops in a realy effective way. Since they spawn your troops, you move with them and you attack with them, you're always limited to what you can do by the number of dice. But when they swap over to the monster side usually once in combat with the other monster there are more dice than you need or can use.

I tried once to try to split the dice up because you can choose to activate either the monster or the troops if you have dice on either side so it isn't a rigid "My troops/Your troops; My monster/Your monster" flow but with you always being short on dice for the troops it felt like when I did that I ended up handicapping myself for a turn.

LvT

I might have been interested if it wasn't randomised and collectable. As others have said: an easy pass.
(Looking forward to the Godzilla game though.)

Notahandle wrote:

I might have been interested if it wasn't randomised and collectable. As others have said: an easy pass.
(Looking forward to the Godzilla game though.)

And that is the shame of it. Really the game isn't good enough to feed the collectable aspect of it, but if it wasn't randomized and collectable I think the game would have been a pretty good hit.

The Godzilla game...Are you talking about the one that Berg is designing? I was reading the playtest report on TOS and it really didn't seem all that interesting. It seemed like all the monsters did once they engaged was stand there and hit eachother back and forth and dance around the same 4x4 square grid. I'm interested to see where it goes, but what I saw (which granted isn't much) didn't impress me. In true Berg fashon it sounds more like a simulation rather than a game. MonsterP actually has a game behind it.

LvT

Yeah, the Berg one. I haven't been keeping up with whatever's going on because I'll read up on it when it's published, and make a decision then. But a 4x4 square grid sounds ugh - some 4x4s for the monsters to throw around would be a lot better! In the meantime I'll still hope it won't be Euroed into death by boredom.

For both Monsterpocolypse and Godzilla, it sounds like using the figures with Heroscape may be the way to go.

I've bought two starters and have played it once. I enjoyed it quite a bit. The other CMG I've played the most is Heroclix so that is my main point of reference. MonPoc plays quite differently IMO. My partner in crime Cold_Fuzion at TOS didn't care for it much, but I really liked it.

Using units to hold buildings, or points on the map in order to gain power dice seems to make it a bit more tactical than a simple charge and smash game, although at its heart it is of course, a charge and smash game. It did seem quite difficult to hit creatures, which seemed to indicate that getting more dice in your pool is truly an important aspect to the game. Overall I thought thematically the mechanisms worked and game play was entertaining.

The figures are of course the star of the show, moreso than the mechanisms of the game. I love the Kaiju theme. The buildings, monsters and units are all well done and give the game some zip.

I hope to be able to get some more games in. In our first play we glossed over many of the specific reactions and triggers. My initial rating is a solid 7. A good game, that might grow on me if I get to play it more often.

Van "I love plastic too" demonium.

Blind purchase.

Pass.

Collectible.

Also pass.

Although it's a neat idea even with flawed gameplay, I have a hard time shelling out even harder earned dollars on $10 boosters and $25 starter sets.

On the postive side, the scuplts and buildings are very nice. Just not $120 nice, which is the average cost of fielding a decent army.

I quite enjoy this game. I generally enjoy miniatures games but seldom get to play them as I don't have the time (nor fine motor control in my hands) anymore to paint the figures. MonPoc solves this for me by being a pre-painted. I'm not really fond of the collectible bit of the game, but as CMGs go Monsterpocalypse doesn't seem to be as bad as some and its not really that expensive compared to miniatures games. I really like the theme and the figures look great. As for the game system, it's really just a further refinement (or even simplification) of the dice resource management system used in Privateer Press' Warmachine and Hordes miniatures games.

I'm going to start nosing around for a cheap set of these. I have some games I'm selling off and surely there is someone who wants to unload some in trade.

Steve"GameVulture"Avery