Anyhow, for Christmas I decided to give my kid a set of Monsterpocalypse since she likes Godzilla, Power Rangers, Voltron, and various other giant monster battle themed shows/movies. Monsterpocalypse is another game by Privateer Press, in which you play a giant monsters and it's various reinforcements (tanks, critters, ect), and you rampage through town fighting your enemies giant monster. We just got around to playing the first couple games today and I have to admit I was shocked by how entertaining the whole game is.
The pros of the game:
- Prepainted minis: For me as a person who isn't fond of taking time to paint, this gives the minis a decent look on the table without spending time personalizing everything.
- Fast playtime: The game turns go by very quickly for the standard two player game. It usually only takes ~5-10 minutes for a turn to go by if you are planning out your next actions while your enemy is moving.
- Fast set-up: The game has it's own double sided poster style map which has markings for your buildings, spawn points, terrain, ect all mapped out. Makes it easy to get things rolling without figuring out if a tree should go here or there next to the river or not.
- Wide range of rules: The game can easily be played very simply, ignoring the deeper rules like power attacks and whatnot. Played this way with my kid and everything still worked perfectly. On the flip side, can go full bore and play with all the rules against my wife.
- RTS feel: It very much feels like you are playing Warcraft/Starcraft/Dawn of War with the way you spawn units. Lots of tactical thoughts have to be put towards how you spend your 'resources' when spawning, moving, and attacking with those units and your monster .
Cons of the game:
- Random: We got the starter pack and the first expansion pack labelled 'Rise". The two player starter set came with GUARD and the Martian Invaders, which aren't terrible, as I do like the GUARD and wife can stomach the martians, however each start box can have completely different forces and you have no power over what you get. The expansion box was very similiar in that aspect in that you know you were getting a monster and it's hyper form, a few units, and a few building, but you have no clue what you get. Unlike the starter box, the expansion also gives you a random selection of minis rather then based on force. To be fair though, there are newer boxes labelled DMZ which are faction specific so there is no guess work. Apparently only older boxes have the random aspect normally found with CCGs like Magic the Gathering.
- Paper map: While I do love the fast set-up of having a map that can be folded and put away, it's simply a matter of time till rips and tears begin to form. I had a seam in tonight's game tear slightly just with the cat walking across the board. Would really like to see these with some type of lamination.
- Not well known: There is not a single store near me that I can remember that stocks anything for Monsterpocalypse in recent history, and it certainly doesn't help that it has been ~ 6 months since any major new release/news for the game. Will have to special order everything to the local store most likely.
Overall the game is certainly fun, and easy enough for kids and adults to all be able to understand and play. If possible I would certainly tell you to give it a shot if you have a chance. It has a very different feel to it then most people that are simply used to tabletop games like Warhammer, WarmaHordes, Anima Tactics might be used to.
As always, whenever I do finally finish my Halberdiers I will get them posted. Unfortunately tomorrow already has a game of Super Dungeon Explore scheduled to play with the neighbor.
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