Monsterpocalypse is a new miniatures game by Privateer Press that simulates giant monster movie scenarios, and I have to say that in terms of game play they hit their flavor spot on. Not only do all of the miniatures look like classic movie monsters of old, but the mechanics of the game really do revolve around gigantic monster on monster combat, like the old days of Godzilla versus Mothra This breaks the miniatures mold considering that most minis games focus more heavily on squadron or whole army based combat, and it's this breaking of the traditional miniatures game mold that makes
Monsterpocalypse so fun to play.
Last month we gave you a series of
Monsterpocalypse previews, showing off many different aspects of the game and the units that took advantage of these aspects. Well now the game has finally released, and we have had a chance to look at the game as a whole and well, we are still playing it, so that's a good sign. Maybe it's the movie monster goodness that keeps me playing, or maybe it's the fact that
Monsterpocalypse uses some truly innovative game mechanics, but I have to say it was good enough to addict me, and to cause me to proudly display my miniatures on my bookshelf. Though in some aspects it feels a bit more like a board game than a collectible miniatures game,
Monsterpocalypse is a fun, simple, and addicting game by any definition.
Miniatures gaming has always struggled with innovation. Think back to every miniatures game you have played. The objective was probably to either kill enough enemy units, or occupy enough “victory zones” of some sort.
Monsterpocalypse however manages to find a new balance in its theme of monster versus monster combat. You see, in old monster movies the focus was always on two monsters doing battle (or one monster destroying a city) which is primarily a one on one conflict. Miniatures games however have been about putting together entire forces or armies, so Privateer Press had to create a whole new system of miniatures play.
In
Monsterpocalypse each player takes control of a monster, and up to a fifteen unit army. Monsters are extremely powerful units with very high stats, several abilities, and an HP track, that take up multiple spaces on the map. Units, however, only have 1 HP each so one hit of any kind kills them, and although their stats are dwarfed in comparison to the stats of the monsters, they can work together to combine abilities and create powerful attacks that can hinder a monster's advances.
It seems as though the mechanics of
Monsterpocalypse are all about getting across that old school giant monster feel. Each turn you can either move your units or move your monster. Units generally end up skirmishing with each other, or combining fire on your opponent's monster. Monsters on the other hand rampage through the city, and either fight each other or cause massive destruction to their surroundings, and to the groups of enemy units occupying those surroundings. In fact, they even have special attacks that allow them to cause massive area of effect damage, crushing whole groups of units due to their wild rampages, tackles, body slams and other methods of mass destruction.
At first glance one might think this unbalances the game, but that is actually not true. The main resources of the game are the dice you use to roll and not the units you control. You gain dice for your monster by using your units, and vice versa. You can also use your dice to essentially infinitely spawn your units onto the battlefield so it's not like the opponent can kill your whole force and take you out of the game. Overall it makes the game feel a lot like a monster movie, with monsters causing untold amounts of destruction with tanks and planes and lesser monsters being destroyed by the handful only to have more to come and take their place. Still, as expendable as they are, it is generally effective unit strategy that wins a game of
Monsterpocalypse. The extra points of damage that they lay on the enemy monster, not to mention the hindering effect they have on the monsters advances, and the distraction they provide by keeping monsters' attention off of each other really adds up in the end.
Speaking of buildings, in addition to a 15 unit force you also bring to the table an “army” of up to 12 buildings which create the map that you and your opponent play on. Before each game, you and your opponent take turns placing these buildings down, so no two games of
Monsterpocalypse will ever be played on the same map. These buildings also have abilities which help you or your opponent's monsters and units, and they grant bonuses for being destroyed, so good building selection is key. If you are playing with a monster that is immune to fire, then oil refineries might be your key to victory by leaving fiery rubble that impedes your opponent. If you are more of a carnage and power guy though, you may look toward skyscrapers for the gigantic dice bonuses they bestow upon you for destroying them.
Back on the topic of dice, it's worth it to note that we aren't talking about your normal dice with numbers or pips on them, but rather dice that have a number of “hits” plastered on their sides. Action dice are your bread and butter and are generally used in your attacks or to spawn units or to do any other number of cool effects, but they also have the most number of blank sides on them and thus are the easiest to miss with. Boost dice are simply bonus dice that abilities or stats earn you and they are slightly better, and power dice, the final and most powerful die in the game, require you to go out of your way to earn and subsequently spend but they have the most hits printed on their side and they rarely ever miss. You can also use your power dice to activate your monster's hyper form, which makes them transform into an ultra radiated mutant Godzilla mode, so to speak, with different abilities and stats.
I'm not entirely sold on the hyper form mechanic to be completely honest. A game of
Monsterpocalypse ends when you manage to kill your opponent's monster both in normal form and in hyper mode, which is great, except this means that I am finding less and less of a reason to trigger hyper mode myself. Most hyper forms aren't actually unequivocally better, they are simply different, and since you'll go into it anyway when your normal monster is destroyed, I find it better just to conserve the power dice.
Still, there is a bit of flexibility in this system in that players have a variety of hyper modes to choose from. The standard hyper mode is an “ultra” form which is more often than not a beefed up version of the normal monster; however there are also limited edition “mega” forms out there that change the way the monster operates all together.
Another really enjoyable aspect of
Monsterpocalypse is that there isn't a whole lot of pressure to always have the rarest monster out there. Mega forms are not necessarily better than their corresponding ultra forms, and that is a relief for the gamer on a budget. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for units as it is always correct to include limited edition “elite” versions in your army, since they operate exactly the same way as your other units, but they also give a map wide stat bonus. Luckily, since elites are so similar to normal grunt units, most of the time your friends will simply allow you to name one of your grunts as an elite, proxying it to keep the game from being unbalanced, and to improve flexibility in army making.
Building a force in
Monsterpocalypse isn't hard, and as long as you have elite units you very frequently can stumble into good builds, but this depends somewhat on the faction you are playing. Factions like the Terrasaurs, focus on aggressive strategy and just about any build will give you a good deal of units with high stats ready to wreak havoc. However, factions like the Martian Menace or the Shadow Sun Syndicate have a variety of weird abilities that don't focus on raising stats, but instead focus on troop placement, mobility, and other strategic maneuvers. These factions are obviously more for the player who wants to play a control game or a game of attrition.
Luckily these factions feel balanced, which is very important. Even though the strategy for an aggressive force is more straight forward, and even though aggressive forces have just about the same win ratio against attrition forces, there is none of the “well you just played with an easy faction” pile-of-excuses thing you get from some other miniatures games. It almost feels like
Monsterpocalypse is a “make your own miniatures game” toolkit. Since the map changes with building placement, and play styles vary so deeply within factions, it's kind of like you choose the mechanics you excel in and run with them. The fact that there are many strategies that you can divide factions up into just solidifies this very balanced feel.
Monsterpocalypse is a blast to play and is simple to learn and I think that will attract many new gamers who haven't experienced miniatures gaming before. There aren't a whole lot of rules to learn, all dice boil down to “count the number of hits” so there isn't a whole lot of math, and everything is written clearly from the get go so there aren't very many rules disputes. This makes the whole
Monsterpocalypse community very welcoming as well.
Overall games of
Monsterpocalypse don't take long, and you can treat it like a pickup game, but there is definitely depth to the game once you get down to the deeper levels of strategy. Tournament players will want to
buy their miniatures individually, because even though there aren't a lot of miniatures out right now, it's difficult to get units in the faction you want to play in. Monster packs only have one monster and is hyper form, and considering that they cost just about as much as any other pack, you are much better off buying individual miniatures.
The real promise of
Monsterpocalypse comes from the future of the game. Currently most mechanics work based on units of the same “agenda” and there is one faction for each agenda. However, as new factions are created and new units are produced, most likely we will see differing units sharing an agenda, or even units that can change agendas or have multiple agendas. Even though currently we only see armies based all in one faction, eventually we will start to see an exploration of the deeper mechanics and when that happens I think the game will really start to evolve.
In fact the main downfalls of the game are specifically temporary. I'd have to say the greatest downfall, is the lack of units you have to play around with. Each faction only has two monsters at this point and a random sampling of units to back that monster up. The game just hasn't been around long enough to get into the deep variety some other Miniatures games have, and since the original launch set was rather small, the “building” aspect of the game at this point falls a little short. This will clear up as more expansions are released.
The miniatures of
Monsterpocalypse are simply beautiful. You can see it more in the monsters than in the units, as the units are comparatively small and there is only so much detail a small game piece can show. However, the monsters are really well done, something that pictures on the internet simply aren't doing justice to. The hyper forms on the other hand, well they tend to simply be a monster now made out of transparent plastic, so unfortunately the hyper forms are probably the least impressive part of the game. Regardless, that is easily overlooked because every other part of the game is extremely pretty.
I want to take this moment to mention the
Monsterpocalypse dice again. As I said before they are special dice, that can't easily be replaced, and because of this I wish they did two things differently with dice design. One, I wish they were bigger. The dice are actually kind of small and easier to lose than I would have liked. Two, I wish there were more of them. I don't understand what it is with board and miniature game companies now-a-days only giving you exactly how many pieces you need to play. Gamers are a clumsy lot and prone to losing tiny bits of plastic. A couple extras included in the starter pack definitely wouldn't have hurt.
Every other game piece in the game however is deeply thought through. They include a sliding HP tracker that keeps track of HP for both normal and hyper forms of your monster. This totally eliminates the need for any pencil and paper, token, or even “math in your head” system of HP tracking. The map is nice to look at and includes just enough detail without being difficult to customize. Even the rulebook has beautiful art, as well as clear representations of all game mechanics. When you purchase a starter park of
Monsterpocalypse, you feel as if you are buying a complete game, which is something you don't get with a lot of other miniatures games.
Monsterpocalypse is essentially a complex game wrapped up in the disguise of a simple game, which I think is as good as any miniatures game can hope for. It will attract new players, and hopefully older players can see past the veil of simplicity to the strategy contained underneath. It does feel in some aspects more like a board game than a war game, and there are some small gripes I'm sure gamers will find about both the system and the game pieces, but I think most of these complaints are fleeting and temporary at best. I'd have to say that
Monsterpocalypse is a middle of the road game, somewhere between the beer and peanuts games you play with your friends, and the intense army games you have leagues for at your local gaming store. As long as these are the expectations you have while going into the game, you can probably appreciate
Monsterpocalypse as solid and enjoyable.
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Presentation Rating = 8.2
The miniatures really are something to look at, as are the maps and buildings. A bit of detail is lost in the grunt units, and the hyper forms could have been done better but overall this is the sort of miniatures game that you want to display on your bookshelf.
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Gameplay Rating = 8.8
I really think that gameplay should be the first thing you consider in a miniatures game, and Monsterpocalypse does not disappoint. Just expect something different, because Monsterpocalypse plays differently than most other miniatures games.
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Support Rating = 7.0
It took Monsterpocalypse a good time to get their own forums, but now they are pretty active. Support for the game feels a bit more hands off than most, but it is there in the form of community building, tournaments, and rules support.
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Innovation Rating = 8.8
I really think that gameplay should be the first thing you consider in a miniatures game, and Monsterpocalypse does not disappoint. Just expect something different, because Monsterpocalypse plays differently than most other miniatures games.
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