Destroy all Monsters!

I can't say enough good things about GW's most recent boardgame, Gorechosen. So, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, this retheme of Gorechosen is a love letter to GW after all the years that GW has spurned my affection. As in, I like what I see, but there is still alot about what GW is doing with this game that I want to change.

It is a great engine to build from. Assymetric, a tad unfair, not too random, the pace flows well, feels satisfactory at its often short conclusion, actually fun. A dream for a rethemer who wants a solid design foundation to allow their creative juices to flow all over. A blank boardgame canvas made of high quality materials.

My love for Kaiju is strong, as I enjoy the campy, over-the-top feel of the shows and movies since early childhood when I used to wake up at midnight to find my dad watching them on late night tv and stand behind the couch watching with him, silently in awe. They are just fun diversions that require little thought from the viewer. You can sit back and enjoy the ride set forth before you. I have a nearly complete set of Monsterpocalypse kaiju that sit in storage waiting for a decent game opportunity to come. Monsterpocalypse is the gold standard of kaiju rethemeing, mostly because it has a large pool of kaiju to choose from, has a consistent art style throughout, scaling is decent, there are a plethora of buildings to use (not so good on scale though), good art assets, and finally, they are prepainted.
While I would rather sock up a brawl with Godzilla, Ultra Man, Gamera, King Kong, "Q" (anyone remember that movie?), etc., these alternatives do fine and offer a consistency I wouldnt ba eble to find by throwing together models from these seperate genres.
Monsterpocalypse is a fine game, if you want a deeply immersive lifestyle game. But that's where Monsterpocalypse missed the boat. It was too complex, even though it is a solid game. It misses that quality that make kaiju so compelling to begin with. The Gorechosen engine is a great way to accomplish that feat in a kaiju game, finally.

The real beauty of this though, for me, is that I can use the resources from another retheme I made for Krosmaster Arena (now called Kaiju Arena, but that's a story for another time), and quickly retheme this game in a matter of days rather than weeks or months of graphic redesign. Nearly everything in the Destroy all Monsters! retheme was present in my hard drive prior to this.

The following Monsterpocalypse kaiju models were chosen because they were either the best looking/unique/fun representatives of their Monpoc faction, or had a good relation to kaiju present in popular culture. Or both.


So far, this is what the board looks like. 18" x 18" total. Each space about 2.75" wide. Easily accommodating any kaiju. Lots more work to do, but I think it's a promising start:

It's recommended to open the game board in a new window. The low res doesn't do it justice at all.

I am leaving the spots on the board for "Pits and Obstacles" free from designation, since I want this board to serve as both sides of the Gorechosen board. This keeps the board uncluttered and better serves the supension of disbelief. Maybe even leaving it open for free placement of buildings during set up rather than being set in stone when printed on the board.
I'll add 2 or 3 Monpoc buildings to each clear acrylic 2.75" hexagon tile, and place them on the board to rep obstacles in the proscribed areas. The pits (or its thematic alternative) will just be a card hex placed on the board to rep them. Ive been using the hazard sites from Monpoc to rep them, and place a hazardous building on top of them. A kaiju pushed into the hazardous building takes D3 damage, the building is destroyed and the space now serves as a thematic alternative to the pit. This slight tweak still fits within the design framework present in Gorechosen, but serves as a thematic boost. Kaiju pushing other kaiju into buildings and busting shit up is half the fun.

Here are some example cards which were already in Kaiju Arena as faction card backs but are now Headline card faces representing initiative:


I am not only using the kaiju from Monsterpocalypse, but I am also using art assets and even background ideas which arent bad to begin with. Factions and their symbols being no exception. There is one card for each faction. Since I am using all 12 kaiju factions, I'll have to print a deck of 48 cards just for the Headlines/Initiative.

The Headline cards represent an image of a survivor at the beginning of the apocalypse, armed with gun and using rosary beads as insurance, charting out his escape with a map, You can't have a kaiju anything without some anthropomorphic elements for the participant to relate to. So I chose the newspaper in Monpoc called "The End Times" as a way to bridge that gap between human relatability and kaiju action. I attempted to recreate the cheesy headline alliteration/hyperbole as best as I could. If you got anything that's better, by all means please speak up. I could use, and would appreciate the help from you creative writers here.

The Fate of the Slain reference has been changed to "Military Resources". I quite like this thematic alternative, as we need a military presence in any kaiju scenario. But their actual presence on the field is never woth mentioning other than how ridiculous their attempts at thwarting kaiju are. So its fitting that their influence is represented by a mere die roll.


Thats it for right now. Back to working on this a bit more.

My reason for posting this here instead of my blog is because I think there is enough interest here to share this as Game Pimp Porn, and hopefully might even be able to get some decent feedback and design criticism.

I wish we were neighbors

how much to print out a version?

Awesome idea! I've read a lot of good things of Gorechosen, but apparently it is not as good 2 player. Any thoughts here?

SuperflyTNT wrote: I wish we were neighbors

Me too, then I'd have constant game buddies.

Mr. White wrote: how much to print out a version?

Depends on what youre going for. If its just home PnP, then the cost of paper and printer cartridge. Could be really cheap if you make card standees for the kaiju and buildings.
Otherwise, I think between $25-$40 depending on what services you use. I plan on printing the board on dye sublimated neoprene that people use for mouse pads and ccg playmats, rough cost is $25. The cards should be about $10-$15 through a printer service.The real cost is the Monpoc figs. They are harder to find nowadays, but they are also considerably cheaper when you do find them than they used to be. Each Kaiju is roughly $3-$5 each nowadays, same with the buildings.

Vlad wrote: Awesome idea! I've read a lot of good things of Gorechosen, but apparently it is not as good 2 player. Any thoughts here?

I dont think it's that great to play with 2 players. By the time two players are left in a 4 or 3 player game, they should be close to expiration themselves so that it doesnt turn into a dumb long slug fest. If this is played two players, I think each person should control two models. It's the only way I can think of making it enjoyable for 2.
But really its a 4 player game.

Update:
It took me a few hours to refine the 3.5" x 5.5" player card templates for use in Destroy all Monsters! , but here are a couple Kaiju Kard examples:



The project is chugging along.
{edit]
Ooops. I forgot to mention the wound/injury track.
The reason why it isn't seen on the cards is because I plan on using dice blanks to track the wounds/injuries. Black dice for injuries, a red die to track wounds.
But I could change that for people if they want tracking done on the cards. Maybe small holes in the card to allow battle ship pegs to track it, as one example?

I don't mind chasing the minis, but for the mat and cards are you going to have them up on something like artscow that we can order from?

I'd like to kick something at you for your work though.

I'll have all files freely available at request for no charge once completed. Then you can upload them to whatever service you choose. I use Printerstudio nowadays. I dont do artscow anymore. But if that service is someones preference, then I'll have links ready.

I wont have them available as a link of convenience for copyright reasons. Been through that with GW already during the Space Hulk debacle.

People just have to ask.

I haven't played gorechosen because the theme doesn't really appeal. This does.

I say this because having not played gorechosen I don't have any experience to pull from for design suggestions to help this along...

Action card template is now complete. Had to make this fucker from scratch today and it gave me a few fits trying to remember how to recreate newsprint effects. I've been away from Photshop for a year.
It's not the most visually stunning card ever, but it's still better than the GW original (IMO).

I am pretty pumped to get this done. I hate sitting on a project for long periods, since they run a high chance of being incomplete the longer they take.
Just need to finish the board, the critical injury cards, and the rulebook layout, then this could be played. 2 of those 3 components are time consuming however.

Looks great! Digging out the monsters this evening to get ready!

Almalik wrote: Looks great! Digging out the monsters this evening to get ready!

Do you have these specific kaiju? If not, I can easily change the pics and names and such to accommodate different kaiju if needed.

Colorcrayons wrote:

Action card template is now complete. Had to make this fucker from scratch today and it gave me a few fits trying to remember how to recreate newsprint effects. I've been away from Photshop for a year.
It's not the most visually stunning card ever, but it's still better than the GW original (IMO).

I am pretty pumped to get this done. I hate sitting on a project for long periods, since they run a high chance of being incomplete the longer they take.
Just need to finish the board, the critical injury cards, and the rulebook layout, then this could be played. 2 of those 3 components are time consuming however.

I found a cool ass free service that allows you to enter text headlines, paper names, and stories which it then prints as JPEG newspapers. I used it for Hoodrats and basically used it as a background for event cards/global effects.

Of course I've got those ones! Actually I think you and I are the two diehards on this site.

Also, apparently Warner Bros won a bidding war early this year for a Monsterpocalypse movie with Fede Alvarez directing. It would be foolish of Privateer Press not to release new Monpoc stuff to along with this right? RIGHT???

Thanks, Pete. I tried several, but I was never satisfied with the results to use them as cards, so I just took the time to learn how to make several of my own.

@Almalik, yeah the missing series 6 kaijus would make me so über happy. The Heavens Kaiju for elemental champions would be bitchin'. One would think it would make sense to begin production again with the movie, but... You know how that goes.

This will likely be locked in production limbo again, delaying any potential gaming material again. Or whatever. I've long given up waiting, but I would buy into series 6 in a heartbeat.

Finalized the Initiative cards yesterday with a few changes.
First, the card back has the headline that simply says "Initiative!" placed with a photoshopped pic of a mk92 Maser Beam Tank model multiplied in the pic to look like a tank formation on the move. The rosary and pistol were removed, as it just crowded the card.


On the faces of the initiative cards, I took out a large chunk of the column text, and replaced it with a faction symbol. This makes checking the card out easier when flipping, as I noticed a slowing down of the game when testing this out due to folks reading the cards or looking closely at the kaiju pic on the front page before they were able to recognize who it belonged to. The faction symbol just grants immediate recognition. Theme is great and all, but on a mechanism like this, it shouldnt slow down the game. Flash the card face, and go.
I also took this opportunity to give each faction a different headline on each of their four initiative cards.
*Alert! Abuse of Alliteration Approaching!*
It's not a huge deal, but I know I would have later regretted not taking the time to do this little bit of extra work.


So barring typos and such, this part of the retheme is stamped finished.