It’s hard for me to believe the original Monsterpocalypse Collectible Miniatures Game was released nearly a decade ago. In the rearview mirror of my mind, it seems both closer and farther than ten years in the past. I’ve watched my son grow up smashing Gorghadra and Defender X together amidst legions of tanks and alien invaders, and yet he hasn’t been around quite long enough to be ready to play the actual game. He has started painting miniatures, though, and by the time he gets his first Monsterpocalypse army painted this fall, he just might be ready to throw down.
Yes, you read that right. There are some big changes to this new vision for Monsterpocalypse, and while we loved the original version, we think we’ve definitely made some great improvements to this new edition. Whether you’re a seasoned monster-smashing veteran of the original game or are brand-new to oversized urban brawls, as long as you find the idea of giant robots duking it out with kaiju across a metropolis setting appealing, you’re going to like what we unleash later this year.
Monsterpocalypse puts you in control of a giant monster (or two…or three) and a small army of units like fighter jets, UFOs, or smaller-but-no-less-ravenous monsters that support your giant monster. Played out on a gridded city map populated by skyscrapers, factories, and other urban structures, your giant monster and his buddies wage war against another monster and his buddies. The action is governed by your management of a fistful of dice that alternates between two pools corresponding to your monster and your units, while strategic spots on the map provide extra power dice that can greatly increase your combat effectiveness. The fight lasts until only one monster (or monster team) is left standing to claim what is, by then, a pile of urban rubble. But then again, smashing buildings is half the fun of giant monster battles.
For the revitalized Monsterpocalypse, we went back to the classic Factions and characters and updated their designs before producing all-new sculpts. By producing the miniatures as hobby models that you get to assemble, paint, and customize, we’re able to manufacture them in our own factory, which allows us to add a ton more detail to the figures that we weren’t able to create when the figures were in pre-painted plastic. They’re also quite a bit bigger and chunkier than the originals, which is going to make them even more fun to paint.
At launch, there will be two Agendas: the Protectors and the Destroyers. But because we know it can be hard to choose between rampaging across a city with a giant dinosaur or doing it with a massive robot, each Agenda will contain multiple Factions that can be mixed and matched to create your own custom kaiju dream team of destruction. Stats and abilities will be on cards that come with the models, and you’ll be able to get all the dice and components you need in one of the two Agenda starters releasing this fall.
Soon after the release of the game will be our first in-store Organized Play events, for which we’ve created variant designs of some of the buildings to serve as in-game-usable trophies for the winners. And while the starters will include pop-up cardboard buildings to get your city started, a full range of buildings—just as detailed as the monsters—will follow, so you can erect your own beautiful skyline…and then knock it down as often as you like.
For all the awesome upgrades and details we’ve brought to this new vision of Monsterpocalypse, there is one word of caution I’d like to offer: the new models probably won’t stand up as well to being smashed together like toys. Fortunately, we’ve had a few years to get that out of our system! Still, the greatest enemy of the kaiju has ever been the four year old, and that’s not going away anytime soon.
In the meantime, keep an eye on monsterpocalypse.com for news and previews on the upcoming launch of the new Monsterpocalypse miniatures game, and get ready to reach out and CRUSH someone this fall!
What is PP's plastic like these days? When I quit Warmachine, it was some of the worst quality stuff on the market. Has it improved in the past two or three years?
Also, it doesn't say, but I'm hoping it is compatible with the buildings, maps, and figures from the original game. I still have my complete collection of the first three series.
Sqorgar wrote: What is PP's plastic like these days? When I quit Warmachine, it was some of the worst quality stuff on the market. Has it improved in the past two or three years?
Also, it doesn't say, but I'm hoping it is compatible with the buildings, maps, and figures from the original game. I still have my complete collection of the first three series.
The FAQ says that only new models are comparable due to the size change. It doesn’t mention buildings specifically.
So from my experience its still hit or miss. I got out of it because of the low quality. The resin stuff is great when they choose to use it, Its really brittle though, not sure if that's just how resin is, im not sure. My gripe was Id get models with with parts from several different mediums.. Petwer, plastic, and resin.
They say that the models aren't compatible, but if the new models are larger (and thus the spaces are larger) and they are just remakes of existing models, I think the originals could be decent (diminutive) proxies. The monsters no longer have their rules listed as icons on their base, so they are at least separating the rules from the models this time.
I have so many questions about this (hyper versions of monsters? price? buildings? does it even still use playmats? rule changes?) but it looks like I'm just going to have to wait until they feel like sharing more. They don't even have any pictures of what the game looks like on the table.
Chopxsticks wrote: So from my experience its still hit or miss. I got out of it because of the low quality. The resin stuff is great when they choose to use it, Its really brittle though, not sure if that's just how resin is, im not sure. My gripe was Id get models with with parts from several different mediums.. Petwer, plastic, and resin.
None of their models are plastic and resin, it’s either PVC or resin and metal.
They use their resin for just about everything now with some metal detailing. It works quite well for large models. Resin stops being brittle when its thick enough, so I'll assume that's what we'll see here. The units might be PVC plastic, but they've never been designed to be that detailed anyway.
I find the timing interesting. Everyone seems to be pumping out factionless, large character centric MOBA inspired games these days. This fits that mold to a T.
Sqorgar wrote: They say that the models aren't compatible, but if the new models are larger (and thus the spaces are larger) and they are just remakes of existing models, I think the originals could be decent (diminutive) proxies. The monsters no longer have their rules listed as icons on their base, so they are at least separating the rules from the models this time.
I have so many questions about this (hyper versions of monsters? price? buildings? does it even still use playmats? rule changes?) but it looks like I'm just going to have to wait until they feel like sharing more. They don't even have any pictures of what the game looks like on the table.
The bases appear to be the same size assuming the transparent plastic isn't just for showing off the model. I assume everything will be playable, just not tourney legal.
It says Buildings will be in Resin and mentions that its a second edition and not a completely new ruleset. I assume that means the playmats will still be a thing. I'd bet Hyper forms are out or are just represented with the same model. The transparent colored versions don't feel like they'd be a valuable addition to a hobby focused game.
The best part of the original was the awesome pre-painted minis. The bad part was the collectible aspect and the rules were horrible and much too fiddly so that the atmosphere was ruined.
The current "hobby" game I presume will no longer be random collectible, so good on that. However, not being prepainted is sucky and if the rules have not received a significant overhaul then it will be the same mediocre game. except dated. Also, my cynical side thinks they changed the scale to eliminate the ability to use the old models.
The rules were fiddly, but I'm not sure they were "too" fiddly. The worst part was the learning curve associated with having ten thousand icons on the figure bases, and it looks like that much has changed, at least.
As for the paint jobs - SOME of the figures had excellent paint jobs (like the Terrasaurs), even if it was just a quick once over with an airbrush. However, the Martians with their silver splotches on transparent plastic were an eyesore (wonder if they'll keep the transparent plastic around for them). The Shadow Sun Syndicate was also pretty terrible. And that's just the monsters, where they actually made an effort. The street trash had paint jobs that made HeroClix look good.
I admit that part of the appeal was getting a decent looking miniatures game on the table quick and easy - painted figures, terrain (everything you don't see in Warmachine). However, the blind buy model wouldn't fly these days, and they needed that model for the pre-paints to work out, financially. Also, bringing the models in house, rather than outsourcing to China for production and painting, could only be a good thing for PP (jury's still out on if that's good for us).
Prepaints died because they became way too costly to produce. Most of the reasons for that are true enough its unlikely you'll see prepaints again outside of... well, X-Wing, where all you need is a little color and wash.
The icons were definitely the huge failure of the original game. The models weren't actually that complicated, but understanding what each of the 3-6 little symbols for each model meant let alone how they worked together was a mess. Then each building had its own set of icons to figure out.
Cards would have made a huge difference, though I suspect PP will go straight into an app for this. Also, just having coherent factions will also help. The blind purchase model meant your army was a hodgepodge that made the situation worse by removing any faction based rule consistency (its much easier to remember that that rule is "All Terrain" when its on every one of your tanks for example). Most of the foibles in the rules were problems created by the need to support blind purchases, so hopefully moving away can fix that too.
I always loved the miniatures, and the game was allright.
What ruined it for me was the random blister. Even though i spent more than a 100€ on the game, i never had a playable army.
You buy a 15€ Monster blister a 15€ Unit blister, and end up with 1 Dinosaur Monster, 1 Alien Unit 1 Ninja Unit, 2 Chutlu Unit and 1 Dinosaur Unit.
It killed the game. I hope they don't bring back this outrageous " traiding collectible" madness.
New miniatures look even better, and not prepainted. Unless they mess it up again, pretty sure I'm in !!!
EDIT: The Monsterpocalypse site states there will be agenda playable starter boxes and then monsters and units blisters, but it's not clear if there will be randomness... finger crossed !
You actually had a playble army before. The old game had no faction coherency to try and sneak around the problems you mention. That didn't make for fun armies though, and it was a min/maxing disaster. Not a problem with the new edition though, according to the site:
The new version of Monsterpocalypse releasing this fall is a hobby miniatures game. The models will no longer come pre-assembled and painted and will not be sold in blind-buy boxes. Instead, players will purchase the models they want and then assemble, customize, and paint them to create a force that is uniquely their own.
Ah, after an 8 year wait after abandoning the game with no explanation or apology ever offered, Privateer Press finally flips one last bird at lifelong Monsterpocalypse fans by making all their old models invalid and illegal. Please rebuy everything from scratch at premium resin prices (but actually receive Relic Knights era budget PVC blobs instead ) because the new stuff is half an inch taller.
No, never again, PP. Your company is cancer that treats players worse than GW ever has in the height of Kirby douchebaggery.
I skipped this entirely the first time around because of the pre-paints and the random chasing.
This time around I probably won't be able to resist!
Could this finally be the Kaiju and Super-Robot game I've been looking for?
I hope so...
Monsterpocalypse FAQ
What is the difference between the 2008 Monsterpocalypse and the new Monsterpocalypse?
The original Monsterpocalypse game released in 2008 was a pre-painted collectible miniatures game. The figures in the game came pre-assembled and painted and were available through blind-buy booster boxes.
The new version of Monsterpocalypse releasing this fall is a hobby miniatures game. The models will no longer come pre-assembled and painted and will not be sold in blind-buy boxes. Instead, players will purchase the models they want and then assemble, customize, and paint them to create a force that is uniquely their own.
This change from pre-painted figures to hobby models has also allowed us to significantly increase both the size and the level of detail of the models as compared to the original game figures, creating a truly exciting kaiju-inspired hobby miniatures game line.
Size comparison: New Defender X (Center), original Defender X (right), and Grolar from WARMACHINE (left)
Are the models the only difference, then? What about the game rules?
The new Monsterpocalypse rules represent an improved second edition of the original game rather than a completely new game. In developing the new Monsterpocalypse, we worked hard to tighten and streamline the rules while keeping the core game experience of the original game intact. Perhaps the biggest change has been making two-monster games (with each player controlling two monsters) the standard, alongside the more traditional single-monster battles of the original game.
Can I use my original Monsterpocalypse figures in the new game?
Due to the difference in scale, original Monsterpocalypse figures will not work in the new game. All official Monsterpocalypse tournaments and events will require players to use the new hobby models for play.
You’ve previewed G.U.A.R.D. and Planet Eaters—what other Factions will there be?
Wave 1 of the new Monsterpocalypse will feature six Factions: the robot defenders of G.U.A.R.D., the cyber ninjas of the Shadow Sun Syndicate, the reptilian predators of the Terrasaurs, the sinister fiends of the Lords of Cthul, the destructive Planet Eaters, and the invaders of the Martian Menace.
Additionally, each of these factions has been divided into two larger Agendas: the Protectors or the Destroyers. When building an army, a player chooses an Agenda and then builds an army from a mix of all Faction models within that Agenda. Future waves may include new models for existing Factions, new Factions for each Agenda, or wholly new Agendas with all new Factions and/or existing Factions drawn from Monsterpocalypse’s rich setting.
How will Monsterpocalypse be packaged?
Monsterpocalypse will feature four different product types. The first and most important is the Agenda starter box. Each Agenda will have a starter box that contains a starting monster and units as well as all the materials you need to play the game, including the game rules, double-sided map, and custom dice.
New monsters will be available in Monster boxes, and new units will be available in Unit blisters. Finally, players can expand their cities with Building packs that will include a selection of three resin buildings to use when building their urban battleground.
How long does the average game take?
A one-monster game should take around 45 minutes, and a two-monster game should take around 90 minutes.
How many models do you play with?
Currently each player fields 1 to 3 monsters, 15 to 25 units, and up to 12 buildings.
Will there be organized play for Monsterpocalypse?
Yes! We will be supporting a robust tournament scene as well as thematically driven game play.
When will I be able to get my hands on Monsterpocalypse?
Monsterpocalypse will release worldwide in Fall 2018.
Love the new mini!
And I disagree with the sentiment that the new sizing means you can't use your old models - the pic they show seems to indicate that the difference isn't all that great.
Now sure, in 'official' tournaments, you'd have to use them, but other than that? Have at it!
I'd managed to collect the factions I wanted right at the tail end of the game last time around, so I got some decent deals. I'd still like to get a hold of the Voltron version.
I'm skeptical about the relauch. Will have to wait and see if it will be worth it.
I'm surprised, and a bit insulted that they're just 'abandoning' the old play system. I didn't think the prepaints were bad at all (I'm mean, what were they up against? Heroclix?), and I loved the fact that the rules were on the bases, it saves having a bunch of cards lying all over the table.
I have to wonder what happens to all the hyper and mega forms? Are they just, not a thing?
Do you use less units? They only had six or so, per creature here, but you could use 15 IIRC with each monster in the game.
Do the buildings still have rules associated with them? I always thought that was a cool feature to the game too.
As someone who spent those last 10 years collecting EVERY unit/monster/building/map in the game, I have to say, I'm not impressed by what they're trying to do. The 'NOW YOU CAN PAINT THEM', aspect of it feels very cheap, as, what was stopping you from painting your stuff before? You literally would have to prime and paint them, just like these new ones, just, no assembly.
I'm glad it's being rebooted, but, this seems like a bad way to do it.
The prepaints were quite good but they’re not going back to them because there’s no way to make them work again. The industry that enabled prepaints at a marketable price went away with China’s economic growth. That’s why the game was dropped in the first place and why it’s returning in this form.
I thought the reason the game went away was because someone bought the movie rights to the game and for whatever reason, they couldn't talk about the game anymore. There was a moment there when the movie was going to happen with Tim Burton helming it, but then Pacific Rim happened (and bombed). Actually, it's kind of ironic that they are going up against the Pacific Rim kickstarter because PR has been competing with MonPoc for years.
The more I think about this game, the more excited I become. I'm wary of some of the changes, but I'm not against them, and I've never been one of those "change bad" complainers that just want the old game, but better and free. I loved the game (still do), but recognize that there's absolutely no way that blind buys or prepaints would work in today's market
I feel like the game died at a really inopportune time. They were in the middle of making a bunch of new factions that were pretty cool, but it was kind of crumbling under its own weight. Too many different exclusive products that made it difficult to collect or care about (buy this map pack to get this building, this model is super rare and only found in one of ten blind packs, limited edition mega form pack, look ma! Voltron). It was just really, really difficult to get exactly the game you wanted without going through a lot of cash and a lot of money. This is a game a lot of people still remember fondly today, but one which made every terrible decision in the book back in the day.
With a better format and more stuff like the transformable monsters from Series 3, the game could've really been amazing. But the way the game was distributed just killed the game for a lot of people. I'm hoping that this second chance gives them the opportunity to make the game what it should've been in the first place.
The game died in the same age as every other prepaint game. Heroscape, Heroclix (it got better, but it was dead), DnD minis, SW minis, World of Warcraft had a game among others. They all died because the cost of production skyrocketed.
The industry itself was built around systems that could be marketed to big volume stores. This meant they had to maintain a very low SKU count with the SKUs themselves having to make pretty decent sale numbers. That was the big draw of blind purchase; Wal-Mart was only stocking 1 SKU at a time.
It was also more or less required to make the pre-painted plastic affordable. Since everything sold in the same amounts from a retail perspective, you didn't invest a ton of cash into a dud model that tanked the business. (Heroscape actually had a huge problem because of the packs of unique hero figures, fwiw).
Ultimately, all those games died because the market couldn't make them profitable. Nobody really said anything because no one wants to hear "we won't make this thing you want because we can't make any money selling it to you at the price you'll tolerate." Instead, everyone just kind of found ways to make the most out of what they'd already invested (DnD notably turned into unpainted board games like Raveloft) and moved on to other ventures.
LunarSol wrote: The game died in the same age as every other prepaint game. Heroscape, Heroclix (it got better, but it was dead), DnD minis, SW minis, World of Warcraft had a game among others. They all died because the cost of production skyrocketed.
The industry itself was built around systems that could be marketed to big volume stores. This meant they had to maintain a very low SKU count with the SKUs themselves having to make pretty decent sale numbers. That was the big draw of blind purchase; Wal-Mart was only stocking 1 SKU at a time.
It was also more or less required to make the pre-painted plastic affordable. Since everything sold in the same amounts from a retail perspective, you didn't invest a ton of cash into a dud model that tanked the business. (Heroscape actually had a huge problem because of the packs of unique hero figures, fwiw).
Ultimately, all those games died because the market couldn't make them profitable. Nobody really said anything because no one wants to hear "we won't make this thing you want because we can't make any money selling it to you at the price you'll tolerate." Instead, everyone just kind of found ways to make the most out of what they'd already invested (DnD notably turned into unpainted board games like Raveloft) and moved on to other ventures.
While I'm sure that MonPoc was probably dying (Series 5 was increasingly promo desperate and hard to find), they were showing images of Series 6 figures (never released) right up until they announced the movie rights being bought. After that, all communication just completely shut down. The website was only updated once afterwards and I don't think PP even mentioned it in passing again (until today). I have to assume that they would've at least released Series 6 in some format, given that it was largely finished, even if it meant a smaller, more expensive run.
Great to see this come back. Still play it on and off - even got a few new converts. After all this time it's a bit much to expect the old models/rules to be street legal but those new demos look good.
Looking forward to seeing the new versions of the other factions.
Sqorgar wrote: While I'm sure that MonPoc was probably dying (Series 5 was increasingly promo desperate and hard to find), they were showing images of Series 6 figures (never released) right up until they announced the movie rights being bought. After that, all communication just completely shut down. The website was only updated once afterwards and I don't think PP even mentioned it in passing again (until today). I have to assume that they would've at least released Series 6 in some format, given that it was largely finished, even if it meant a smaller, more expensive run.
They could have at least given us the stats and let us proxy so we could play the full 2nd wave factions.
And I disagree with the sentiment that the new sizing means you can't use your old models - the pic they show seems to indicate that the difference isn't all that great.
If the game is largely the same, it's played on a grid with no LOS rules. A half inch height difference in models is meaningless. Making old models illegal has nothing to do with their functionality, they just want veterans to re-buy everything, simple as that. One final middle finger to the game's most loyal customers.
Sqorgar wrote: While I'm sure that MonPoc was probably dying (Series 5 was increasingly promo desperate and hard to find), they were showing images of Series 6 figures (never released) right up until they announced the movie rights being bought. After that, all communication just completely shut down. The website was only updated once afterwards and I don't think PP even mentioned it in passing again (until today). I have to assume that they would've at least released Series 6 in some format, given that it was largely finished, even if it meant a smaller, more expensive run.
They could have at least given us the stats and let us proxy so we could play the full 2nd wave factions.
And I disagree with the sentiment that the new sizing means you can't use your old models - the pic they show seems to indicate that the difference isn't all that great.
If the game is largely the same, it's played on a grid with no LOS rules. A half inch height difference in models is meaningless. Making old models illegal has nothing to do with their functionality, they just want veterans to re-buy everything, simple as that. One final middle finger to the game's most loyal customers.
This was posted by one of the sculptors on boardgamegeek: "AS to the actual ingame issues with the older models, I can only conjecture that, while I've been told the new rules are very much based on the originals (streamlined and updated)there may be issues with model size when it comes to true line of sight etc. We've been upscaling most of the designs so far (between 15 and 35% depending on the model) This is conjecture on my part based on conversations where I got the impression it's moving slightly away from the more boardgame like aspects towards a more tabletop type affair, something like 2nd edition EPIC."
Sqorgar wrote: I thought the reason the game went away was because someone bought the movie rights to the game and for whatever reason, they couldn't talk about the game anymore. There was a moment there when the movie was going to happen with Tim Burton helming it, but then Pacific Rim happened (and bombed).
Sqorgar wrote: I thought the reason the game went away was because someone bought the movie rights to the game and for whatever reason, they couldn't talk about the game anymore. There was a moment there when the movie was going to happen with Tim Burton helming it, but then Pacific Rim happened (and bombed).
Pacific Rim bombed?
I guess it just about broke even with intl. earnings. But yeah, shy of 200 Million to make + usually a huge chunk of cash for advertising for an effects-heavy blockbusters. Made 100 Million US domestic and another 300 Million overseas. Very roughly half of its box office earnings go back to the studio as a rule of thumb.
I am definitely open to this, but not sure about the sculpts shown so far. They do look a bit more detailed than the originals, but not sure if it's worth needing to do all the prep to them!
Tangent, but for Kaiju-smashing fans, there's a pretty great video game version of this concept that just came out:
Graphics are nothing to write home about, but the developers are award winners and put years into their first game (Faster than Light) and now this one. Just thought I'd share
Sqorgar wrote: I thought the reason the game went away was because someone bought the movie rights to the game and for whatever reason, they couldn't talk about the game anymore. There was a moment there when the movie was going to happen with Tim Burton helming it, but then Pacific Rim happened (and bombed).
Pacific Rim bombed?
I guess it just about broke even with intl. earnings. But yeah, shy of 200 Million to make + usually a huge chunk of cash for advertising for an effects-heavy blockbusters. Made 100 Million US domestic and another 300 Million overseas. Very roughly half of its box office earnings go back to the studio as a rule of thumb.
Into the Breach is great. It's very much roguelike (prepare to die, lots) but the way it's all tied together is so very satisfying.
Weird to hear that about Pacific Rim. I would have thought it was more successful. Still, making $400m+ for $200m- doesn't seem like a bomb to me. It was good enough that they made a sequel.
Although... The bits I like best about the movie emphasise the size and weight, like the racheting noise inside the Gipsy Danger when it's drawing back to punch. The soundtrack is killer though.
Hearing that "monpoc is back" first filled me with excitement and fury. Finally!! After all these years!
The change in models and such is more of a "well ok" sort of situation, though, so on balance I'm interested in seeing how this all shakes out but I'll withold the fist pumping for now. It'll be worth it if the base game ends up better and maybe this means I can snag some of the old stuff for cheap on ebay.
Rosebuddy wrote: Hearing that "monpoc is back" first filled me with excitement and fury. Finally!! After all these years!
The change in models and such is more of a "well ok" sort of situation, though, so on balance I'm interested in seeing how this all shakes out but I'll withold the fist pumping for now. It'll be worth it if the base game ends up better and maybe this means I can snag some of the old stuff for cheap on ebay.
Change to models is to compete with todays industry standard.
Don't see the point of getting old stuff on ebay, if the new models are better and bigger.
This is cool news though. A buddy had whole tubs full of this stuff and we enjoyed it when it was a game.
Sqorgar wrote: While I'm sure that MonPoc was probably dying (Series 5 was increasingly promo desperate and hard to find), they were showing images of Series 6 figures (never released) right up until they announced the movie rights being bought. After that, all communication just completely shut down. The website was only updated once afterwards and I don't think PP even mentioned it in passing again (until today). I have to assume that they would've at least released Series 6 in some format, given that it was largely finished, even if it meant a smaller, more expensive run.
The issue was more a question of how expensive. From what I've heard, between the cost of oil skyrocketing (which affected both shipping costs and the cost of plastic_, the dollar plummeting (this was in the wake of the housing crisis), and China's labor force suddenly getting paid like real people, the production costs of prepaints were something like 7x what they'd been prior. At that production cost, nobody could selling models profitably to larger retailers, which was needed to place orders large enough to get the cost even that low. It was an industry built on hitting the bottom rungs of critical mass and as soon as that bar was raised, crumpled pretty hard. Since there's so much production time (which is why they died in 2010 and not right away in 2008) a lot of companies kept working on things for a bit in case the market returned, but as I've heard it, as soon as they got the quotes for the production costs it was pretty much over.
Probably not going to get Morphers right away, but I've got hope. I'd love to see Voltron, though I'm guessing the license is harder to pick up these days.
I always wanted to try and get into this, but never had the people to play it with. Now it's paintable, I might be able to get GW people to join me in playing it, as it looked fun!
Nostromodamus wrote: Pacific Rim 2 didn't need to happen, and the trailers don't excite me thus far.
Are you an 8 to 12 year old boy?
My son who is 8 is flipping out over the sequel and it looks nothing short of amazing for him.
Perhaps you might not be the target demographic?
If the movie is getting a sequel, it's quite obvious that it made enough money. While it might not have made huge numbers in the box office, the DVD, digital and Blu-ray sales probably added a huge chunk of revenue.
I can't help but think that this announcement was put together in haste after the new PR trailer was released an River Horses Pacific Rim miniatures game. It's far to seridipitous to ignore.
That said, I have a kid who is a huge Godzilla and Kaiju fan. I'll be taking a look at it for sure.
Nostromodamus wrote: Pacific Rim 2 didn't need to happen, and the trailers don't excite me thus far.
Are you an 8 to 12 year old boy?
My son who is 8 is flipping out over the sequel and it looks nothing short of amazing for him.
Perhaps you might not be the target demographic?
Considering it's PG-13 rated, 8-12 might not be their target demographic either.
In any event, just presenting my opinion, which is allowed on a discussion forum, right?
Are you an 8 to 12 year old boy?
My son who is 8 is flipping out over the sequel and it looks nothing short of amazing for him.
Perhaps you might not be the target demographic?.
To this day, whenever I think of the original I just remember the conversation leaving the film that reminded me how wildly different my expectations of the film were compared to the average movie-goer. Basically, my buddy walking out asked me, "if they had that giant sword the whole time, why didn't they just use it from the beginning?" I'm not sure I've responded to this day, so bewildered am I to the confusion of ideas that would lead to such a question.
lord_blackfang wrote: Making old models illegal has nothing to do with their functionality, they just want veterans to re-buy everything, simple as that. One final middle finger to the game's most loyal customers.
I am not sure if it is spite or if that would be ascribing actual competence, but if they are making new sculpts, why not make new characters so veterans would at least have completion to drive interest? It isn't like the originals are some lucrative IP that they can't pass up.
Rosebuddy wrote: Hearing that "monpoc is back" first filled me with excitement and fury. Finally!! After all these years!
The change in models and such is more of a "well ok" sort of situation, though, so on balance I'm interested in seeing how this all shakes out but I'll withold the fist pumping for now. It'll be worth it if the base game ends up better and maybe this means I can snag some of the old stuff for cheap on ebay.
Change to models is to compete with todays industry standard.
Don't see the point of getting old stuff on ebay, if the new models are better and bigger.
This is cool news though. A buddy had whole tubs full of this stuff and we enjoyed it when it was a game.
I did say "for cheap". Second-hand models for a now unsupported game are probably going to cost a fair bit less than brand new models for a brand new game. If I don't end up thinking that the new version is worth the new investment, I might be able to pick up lots or whatever that people are remembering to sell now that the name gets hype again.
They are rebooting the a game that has been dead for a long time. Those of us that still have their collection (and intend to keep it despite the reboot) must be relatively small, and the policy against using the old models strikes me more to combat the idea that someone could buy a complete collection off eBay for cheap. They can't stop the grognards, but it would undermine the entire enterprise if new players could avoid buying any models.
Also, I can't be the only one who finds the designs in Pacific Rim to be TERRIBLE. They are fine for a realistic movie, but as toys, they lack all sense of design and personality - and unless the new movie goes a long way towards expanding the options, they are extremely limited to a handful of designs (most of which were barely seen in the movie).
MonPoc did really well in that regard, with the Planet Eaters looking like something that stepped out of a 1970s Godzilla film and GUARD being influenced heavily by stuff like Mazinger Z. And old school aesthetic that really pops. Never was much of a fan of the Ultraman-inspired Shadow Sun Syndicate though. But then they mix in some Western influences, like the Martian Menace and Lords of Cthul - I think PP originally did an amazing job on creating the look. I'd put it up there with the PS2 game, War of the Monsters.
(I don't have any series 4/5 figures, unfortunately, but King Kong, giant insects, and massive sea creatures are pretty good too).
Sqorgar wrote: They are rebooting the a game that has been dead for a long time. Those of us that still have their collection (and intend to keep it despite the reboot) must be relatively small, and the policy against using the old models strikes me more to combat the idea that someone could buy a complete collection off eBay for cheap. They can't stop the grognards, but it would undermine the entire enterprise if new players could avoid buying any models.
Also, I can't be the only one who finds the designs in Pacific Rim to be TERRIBLE. They are fine for a realistic movie, but as toys, they lack all sense of design and personality - and unless the new movie goes a long way towards expanding the options, they are extremely limited to a handful of designs (most of which were barely seen in the movie).
MonPoc did really well in that regard, with the Planet Eaters looking like something that stepped out of a 1970s Godzilla film and GUARD being influenced heavily by stuff like Mazinger Z. And old school aesthetic that really pops. Never was much of a fan of the Ultraman-inspired Shadow Sun Syndicate though. But then they mix in some Western influences, like the Martian Menace and Lords of Cthul - I think PP originally did an amazing job on creating the look. I'd put it up there with the PS2 game, War of the Monsters.
(I don't have any series 4/5 figures, unfortunately, but King Kong, giant insects, and massive sea creatures are pretty good too).
SSS shared the weakness of the Martians tho maybe not to the same degree, which is that they were translucent plastic with like one metallic colour painted on top. If they were just a little more Ultraman they would be more striking. The Planet Eaters were by far one of the best designs because they didn't just look like an old monster film, they looked like an original monster film. They didn't simply copy something like the Godzilla and King Kong equivalents, or the Lords of Cthul. But yes, a very good mix of factions.
Venting a personal monsterpocalypse wish here.... I'd love to see the giant gorilla faction get morphed into a "giant mamals" faction. Imagine giant mutant otters and quokkas running around saving the world!
Are you an 8 to 12 year old boy?
My son who is 8 is flipping out over the sequel and it looks nothing short of amazing for him.
Perhaps you might not be the target demographic?.
To this day, whenever I think of the original I just remember the conversation leaving the film that reminded me how wildly different my expectations of the film were compared to the average movie-goer. Basically, my buddy walking out asked me, "if they had that giant sword the whole time, why didn't they just use it from the beginning?" I'm not sure I've responded to this day, so bewildered am I to the confusion of ideas that would lead to such a question.
Had to build up the limit break! Hey, at least it tracks with the sandbagging in Voltron. They fart around as the lions, then merge, then fart around more before calling the sword.
The worst faction when it came to painting over translucents was sadly Ubercorp. White is just a terrible color for prepaints when you're not going to get any proper shading on it.
eflix29 wrote: While I understand that scaling up the new miniatures apears to be a greedy move, well GW does it too ...look at old Death Guard vs new Death Guard...
But at least GW doesnt ban old miniatures from official events.
Supposedly it’s because the game uses True Line Of Sight I’ve heard, which makes the old models play differently than the new. Will have to make a compelling difference to get me to care enough to ban them locally.
Nostromodamus wrote: Pacific Rim 2 didn't need to happen, and the trailers don't excite me thus far.
Are you an 8 to 12 year old boy?
My son who is 8 is flipping out over the sequel and it looks nothing short of amazing for him.
Perhaps you might not be the target demographic?
Considering it's PG-13 rated, 8-12 might not be their target demographic either.
In any event, just presenting my opinion, which is allowed on a discussion forum, right?
My son is 5 and has been to every Marvel Movie out in the last 2 years. I wouldnt go by rating anymore these days =/
Nostromodamus wrote: Pacific Rim 2 didn't need to happen, and the trailers don't excite me thus far.
Are you an 8 to 12 year old boy?
My son who is 8 is flipping out over the sequel and it looks nothing short of amazing for him.
Perhaps you might not be the target demographic?
Considering it's PG-13 rated, 8-12 might not be their target demographic either.
In any event, just presenting my opinion, which is allowed on a discussion forum, right?
My son is 5 and has been to every Marvel Movie out in the last 2 years. I wouldnt go by rating anymore these days =/
Ages ago G became PG, and PG-13 became PG. If a movie advertises an R rating its almost certainly marketed to teenagers.
eflix29 wrote: While I understand that scaling up the new miniatures apears to be a greedy move, well GW does it too ...look at old Death Guard vs new Death Guard...
But at least GW doesnt ban old miniatures from official events.
Supposedly it’s because the game uses True Line Of Sight I’ve heard, which makes the old models play differently than the new. Will have to make a compelling difference to get me to care enough to ban them locally.
True line of sight has always struck me as such a bad idea.
Might dip my toe in this now the blind pack nonsense has gone. Some one mentioned the old PS2 game War of the Monsters(mystery to me why that didn't get sequels) and it does give off a similar vibe, of an affectionate tongue in cheek homage to the whole genre.
GoatboyBeta wrote: Might dip my toe in this now the blind pack nonsense has gone. Some one mentioned the old PS2 game War of the Monsters(mystery to me why that didn't get sequels) and it does give off a similar vibe, of an affectionate tongue in cheek homage to the whole genre.
I'll be honest, I thought the game was based of that PS2 game.
Every Super-Robot fan knows you need to 'charge up' your best move!
MonPoc classic simulated that very very well with the Ultra and Hyper forms of each monster. That sort of thing is probably gone now, even PP won't try to sell you two $50 resin models to represent a single monster.
War of the Monsters didn't get a sequel because the team split a few years later with the Twisted Metal team leaving and starting another company and the rest focusing on the Warhawk franchise. It's painful, but nobody in the game industry knows what they are doing (speaking from personal experience).
At this point, I think there is a Kaiju Curse (in the West, at least) where the good stuff dies a sad, quiet death while, for some reason, Rampage gets a movie starring the Rock...
Sqorgar wrote: At this point, I think there is a Kaiju Curse (in the West, at least) where the good stuff dies a sad, quiet death while, for some reason, Rampage gets a movie starring the Rock...
Right!? Although I do have a few fond memories of this terrible game
Every Super-Robot fan knows you need to 'charge up' your best move!
MonPoc classic simulated that very very well with the Ultra and Hyper forms of each monster. That sort of thing is probably gone now, even PP won't try to sell you two $50 resin models to represent a single monster.
YES! There was that whole other level of strategy/fun where you could take your favorite Monster, and choose to have their Hyper, Mega, or (in the case of King Kondo) Quantum forms, as their power up before the game. This literally meant you could adjust your strategy with the same base figures quite easily.
Sqorgar wrote:War of the Monsters didn't get a sequel because the team split a few years later with the Twisted Metal team leaving and starting another company and the rest focusing on the Warhawk franchise. It's painful, but nobody in the game industry knows what they are doing (speaking from personal experience).
At this point, I think there is a Kaiju Curse (in the West, at least) where the good stuff dies a sad, quiet death while, for some reason, Rampage gets a movie starring the Rock...
Yeah, Incognito had a lot of weird stuff happen to them post Dave Jaffe leaving Sony Santa Monica (yes, ,I know they were 2 different studios, but there was a connection back then). War of the Monsters is IMHO the best Kaiju Brawler game of all time. Followed by King of Monsters, and one of the Godzilla fighting games on GameCube. Aside fro WoM, one of the Gems Incognito made was their mountain biking game Downhill Domination, it was phenomenal! As for the Kaiju curse... You might be right. I mean, let's look at what's really been successful in the west from a kaiju standpoint. Cloverfield, Pacific Rim did better out of theatres, and has A LOT more brand recognition than you would think, Power Rangers, Voltron is making a comeback with that new (amazingly good) show on netflix, although it focus's less on the 'kill one kaiju per ep' as it's predecessors). But yeah, it's kind of a niche thing to some extent.
The more I try to wrap my head around this MonPoc relaunch, the more it's just not working for me. I have to agree with others, that it's hasty announcement has got to be due to the Pacific Rim game KS launching soon. MonPoc is one of the rare successes that PP has had outside of WarMaHordes, and it's really a shame that they cancelled it. I have to guess that the whole 'Tim Burton bought the rights, so its on indefinite hold' was all BS. What company buys the rights to something successful, then tells the creator to stop doing it? It sucks, as rumors were floating around of the possible new series 7 factions like, Giant Brain monsters, 50ft Women, Hillbilly steam robot militia (with guys in pickup trucks for units ), Dragons, Region specific Gods (Egypt, Norse, Greek). And I was really looking forward to what the series 6 'Legion of the Apes' combiner was going to be!!
On top of that, a lot of people are raving about how good Giant Killer Robots is. They could literally just do a 'Kaiju' expansion to that, and it would probably work better than most Big monster games.
MarkNorfolk wrote: Great to see this come back. Still play it on and off - even got a few new converts. After all this time it's a bit much to expect the old models/rules to be street legal but those new demos look good.
Looking forward to seeing the new versions of the other factions.
Scale change in and of itself isn't bad per se but doing so minimally just to invalidate the collections you sold a few years earlier so you can resell them is. I'm not surprised at all that Privateer Press did it either. Grandfathering in old rules and/or models seems to be the exception now with many industry "leaders" like PP and FFG rather than the rule.
I don't think the game will have true line of sight, especially if it still uses a grid. That's just an extra step on top of also using the grid for movement and counting distance - and line of sight is literally just "is it behind a monster or a building?" There's no gameplay reason why you'd need true line of sight unless you were building custom terrain, and we already know they are providing buildings.
(If it doesn't use a grid anymore, I'll still use one because my major metropolitan cities ain't erecting their skyscrapers without some proper city planning.)
So why the scale change? The simplest explanation is that they wanted the small figures (tanks, planes, tiny ultramen) to have more detail so that they would be more fun to paint and feel like a better value for hobbyists. Also, I'm looking at a Shadow Sun Syndicate monster right now and he's shorter than a warjack. What's the point of a kaiju miniature that looks tiny?
That makes sense. The whole reason why we have "heroic" scale miniatures is that miniatures companies wanted to larger figures to put more details into. Mebbe once we see the smaller units, the scale difference will be more obvious. http://theminiaturespage.com/ref/scales.html
BTW, What does PP have going for it? From what I've read on Dakka, Warmachine Hordes is not selling well because older models aren't popular (?) and MAP pricing. The new MonPoc looks like an attempt to a launch a new line with a known brand name, rather than create a new one, with production methods they currently use (ie. buy an unpainted unassembled hobby model).
I'll definitely be dusting off my current Monpoc figures and get some first edition gaming in. Really getting that b-movie city crushing monster buzz right now...
I did not expect to read this thread and have my heart strings tugged over War of the Monsters... Oh what they could do with current generation hardware.
I was never really a fan of the rules... It was fine at first as a light, beer and pretzels game, but as soon as you started thinking strategically and really analyzing what the correct move was in order to win, the game fell apart. Getting the first attack in was way too good, meaning you wanted to stay out of the other monster's movement range while hoping they accidentally entered yours.
I hope they found a way to fix it in this one (maybe your attack is a lot weaker if you also moved the same turn or something?) but I'm definitely not holding my breath. And I don't have a lot of interest in a game that gets less fun as you get better at it.
Zetan wrote: I was never really a fan of the rules... It was fine at first as a light, beer and pretzels game, but as soon as you started thinking strategically and really analyzing what the correct move was in order to win, the game fell apart. Getting the first attack in was way too good, meaning you wanted to stay out of the other monster's movement range while hoping they accidentally entered yours.
I hope they found a way to fix it in this one (maybe your attack is a lot weaker if you also moved the same turn or something?) but I'm definitely not holding my breath. And I don't have a lot of interest in a game that gets less fun as you get better at it.
Don't know what you're talking about, I've greatly enjoyed dozens of multi-hour thinking man's matches.
That's a really tricky thing in games in general though. Even in Chess the White side has an advantage.
If you'll all pardon me tooting my own horn, in Titanomachia I solved this by having players buy Initiative points, out of the pool they use to buy Titans and Terrain, and the highest Initiative goes first (and next in multiplayer games).
Nurglitch wrote: That's a really tricky thing in games in general though. Even in Chess the White side has an advantage.
If you'll all pardon me tooting my own horn, in Titanomachia I solved this by having players buy Initiative points, out of the pool they use to buy Titans and Terrain, and the highest Initiative goes first (and next in multiplayer games).
I remember first encountering a gambit initiative system like that in Risk 2210.
Nurglitch wrote: That's a really tricky thing in games in general though. Even in Chess the White side has an advantage.
If you'll all pardon me tooting my own horn, in Titanomachia I solved this by having players buy Initiative points, out of the pool they use to buy Titans and Terrain, and the highest Initiative goes first (and next in multiplayer games).
I remember first encountering a gambit initiative system like that in Risk 2210.
You bid resources and highest resources got 1st.
I should look into that; I wonder how the new Monpoc solves it.
Broke it out over the weekend. Just played some 2v2 monster throwdowns as they're a little less crunchy. Honestly, I'll be thrilled with just about anything as long as they solve Iconpalooza. That's just madness to try and decipher.
Still, there's really nothing quite like MonPoc. In many ways its what people want out of Warmachine when you try and teach them power attacks. It's definitely not a flawless game, but its so, so good. Here's hoping PP hasn't forgotten what the game really needed in a 2nd edition.
It would be a huge help. There's still probably too many different things in a MK1 army for cards to completely solve the problem (2 monster cards, up to 12 building cards and 15 units, though realistically its more like 20 unique things total, which is still a lot). It depends a lot if they do things like Elite versions of units and hyper forms though. How buildings work is another big question. The streamlined agendas should help a lot. A ton of the building rules are variations on "X bonus for Y agenda" and aren't even relevant in the game. There's a ton that could be done with buildings in general. I'm definitely excited to see what's new in the new edition.
If nothing else this will be a good source of stuff for my boy to purchase. I'm wondering if they'll use their traditional resin or their new hard plastic for the models. The newish resin isn't great for detail but easy to mod. The hard plastic is almost a GW level of detail but just as hard to mod as you'd expect.
I'd assume Resin. PP's sprue plastic kits are nice, but they haven't done much in terms of variety with them. They've had very poor results when doing organics in it too. The newer resins seem like PP's preferred medium currently and also feels like the best fit for what they're doing here. They get some great detail out of the stuff as long as its a 40-50 mm model from what I've seen.
EDIT: Just noticed the press release states the models will be metal/resin mixes.
It would be a huge help. There's still probably too many different things in a MK1 army for cards to completely solve the problem (2 monster cards, up to 12 building cards and 15 units, though realistically its more like 20 unique things total, which is still a lot). It depends a lot if they do things like Elite versions of units and hyper forms though. How buildings work is another big question. The streamlined agendas should help a lot. A ton of the building rules are variations on "X bonus for Y agenda" and aren't even relevant in the game. There's a ton that could be done with buildings in general. I'm definitely excited to see what's new in the new edition.
There are some really nice cards available for the first series on the Esoteric Order of Gamers:
That's always been the problem. I've never had luck finding sets with everything. That's actually what's wrong with how PP released the game in the first place. There's just reference sheets with rules for the models in that wave of releases, so you have to have a bunch of different references with varying amounts of completion to make it work.
I'd be 100% on board with a digital solution. Anything not on my tablet feels clunky these days. I'll be curious if PP goes digital right away or waits to see if the game sticks though. Right now the two games in War Room share a library. I'm not sure if they'd go with a new app or cram it in to the existing one.
It would be a huge help. There's still probably too many different things in a MK1 army for cards to completely solve the problem (2 monster cards, up to 12 building cards and 15 units, though realistically its more like 20 unique things total, which is still a lot). It depends a lot if they do things like Elite versions of units and hyper forms though. How buildings work is another big question. The streamlined agendas should help a lot. A ton of the building rules are variations on "X bonus for Y agenda" and aren't even relevant in the game. There's a ton that could be done with buildings in general. I'm definitely excited to see what's new in the new edition.
IMO Cards are a step up from having to constantly look at the rule book, but having everything on the model, trumps that. You basically just had that rule sheet thing with all the symbols listed on it, which was pretty much a card already. It was that point in time when PP thought everything had to be tied to a specific symbol, sort of like when GW added phrases like 'Hammer of Wrath' to things. Once the second series of Monpoc came around, there were just so many symbols, it was hard to follow. And the fact that there were faction specific ones, made it difficult to figure out where you needed to look on the sheet, if you weren't sure of the symbols origin. It was not a perfect system, but I thought it was a step in a good direction for them.
So will the teeny Tiny dice be back? Will we just use plain old D6's? There's a lot that's unanswered which makes me think they haven't really done all that much work on it yet. I went to the PP forums hoping to find more info, or at least people discussing pros & cons, and that forum is DEAD! holy crap, I used to go there a lot, and it seems to have become much less popular these days. I only found one thread on it, and it wasn't even a quarter as long as this one. Oh well... Might as well try to scan ebay for those few megas I still need.
Doesn't War Room still charge you like $80 to get digital versions of the cards PP has on their website for free? I'm fine with digital rules (as an OPTION), so long as they aren't used to nickel and dime players.
I also noticed the PP forums are dead now. Apparently, PP made some bone headed decisions concerning their community and it made everybody leave. I'll be honest, I'd feel much more comfortable with MonPoc coming back if PP weren't currently in their "worst of everything GW did wrong during their darkest period" phase.
PP kind of panicked after the Magic judges lawsuit and gutted their volunteers. This included the forum mods, so they massively cut down their forums in the process. I'm not sure how sad I am about this, as they were previously a sprawling bloated mess that didn't really facilitate useful discussion anyway.
In some ways, the CID forums function like the old forums used to, just in a more limited and controlled manner. The old forums were basically a collection of people wishlisting changes and wailing about their problems. The CID forums serve as an outlet for that, with the benefit of limiting the discussion to just things that will actually be changed.
Anyway, we’re verring off topic. The devs have joined various monpoc groups on Facebook. I’m curious whether monpoc will receive the same open playtest design of wm.
Such a thing should be a testament to how well the kaiju concept was instituted in Monpoc. I could have used Godzilla IP gashapon, but why when there is an even richer assortment of models to choose from?
Monpoc wasn't killed by the game itself, it was killed by a series of shockingly dumb business decisions.
Blind packs ESPECIALLY for the monsters is where i lay 95% of the blame for the games depth. The remainder id put into outdated presentation of the stats via clix-style "tiny symbol+extensive legend" instead of stat cards, and releasing the 6 new factions who could simply not compete with the existing 6 and their deep rosters+power multiplying faction buildings.
The faction buildings were definitely a rock headed decision. "oh gosh I can either place a bunch of neutral buildings me and my opponent can use, or I can put down this one that's owned by me and shoots a laser. Hmm which will I pick".
Going back to monpoc over the years has been like going back to old PS2 games. At first you remember all the things you loved about it and you love the nostalgia bur then you come across all the stuff that's horrifically outdated compared to modern games and you peter out.
Automatically Appended Next Post: There was also the usual PP creative bankruptcy when it came to variation within the factions for monster designs.
Quick, you have 10 seconds to come up with giant rampaging dinosaur monsters.
Such a thing should be a testament to how well the kaiju concept was instituted in Monpoc. I could have used Godzilla IP gashapon, but why when there is an even richer assortment of models to choose from?
Wow! Excellent job on the retheme. And using Gorechosen for a Kaiju battler is an inspired choice.
The series 2 factions definitely had overall monster diversity. The series 1 stuff, is very repetitive for sure. Dinos were honestly better than most. Shadow Sun is where to go for monster homogeneity.
It's actually not THAT bad, but I Chomp NY definitely had a duplicate monster for each faction that gives each faction something easy to cut from the roster.
the_scotsman wrote: Monpoc wasn't killed by the game itself, it was killed by a series of shockingly dumb business decisions.
Blind packs ESPECIALLY for the monsters is where i lay 95% of the blame for the games depth. The remainder id put into outdated presentation of the stats via clix-style "tiny symbol+extensive legend" instead of stat cards, and releasing the 6 new factions who could simply not compete with the existing 6 and their deep rosters+power multiplying faction buildings.
The faction buildings were definitely a rock headed decision. "oh gosh I can either place a bunch of neutral buildings me and my opponent can use, or I can put down this one that's owned by me and shoots a laser. Hmm which will I pick".
Going back to monpoc over the years has been like going back to old PS2 games. At first you remember all the things you loved about it and you love the nostalgia bur then you come across all the stuff that's horrifically outdated compared to modern games and you peter out.
Automatically Appended Next Post: There was also the usual PP creative bankruptcy when it came to variation within the factions for monster designs.
Quick, you have 10 seconds to come up with giant rampaging dinosaur monsters.
the_scotsman wrote: Monpoc wasn't killed by the game itself, it was killed by a series of shockingly dumb business decisions.
Blind packs ESPECIALLY for the monsters is where i lay 95% of the blame for the games depth. The remainder id put into outdated presentation of the stats via clix-style "tiny symbol+extensive legend" instead of stat cards, and releasing the 6 new factions who could simply not compete with the existing 6 and their deep rosters+power multiplying faction buildings.
The faction buildings were definitely a rock headed decision. "oh gosh I can either place a bunch of neutral buildings me and my opponent can use, or I can put down this one that's owned by me and shoots a laser. Hmm which will I pick".
Going back to monpoc over the years has been like going back to old PS2 games. At first you remember all the things you loved about it and you love the nostalgia bur then you come across all the stuff that's horrifically outdated compared to modern games and you peter out.
Automatically Appended Next Post: There was also the usual PP creative bankruptcy when it came to variation within the factions for monster designs.
Quick, you have 10 seconds to come up with giant rampaging dinosaur monsters.
I'm interested in the examples of stuff that's horrifically outdated. What's outdated in the old Monpoc? Full disclosure... I never played.
Mostly what I listed. The minis were sold clix-style, with a 15$ pack containing one blind pack monster. With 12 monsters total per expansion, and no value to have more than 1 of any kind of monster, you basically started burning money really quick. The concept was at least not a deal-breaker with the "5 critters+1 building" boosters, because at least having multiples of the critters was OK, but it also served to make it impossible without trading/ebaying for someone to decide to "play" any one given faction.
The symbols on the base+Legend style of conveying special abilities was also heavily rooted in the clix design paradigm. This was a game where the position and facing of your monster was absolutely crucial, and so you'd either have to lean over them to try and read the bitty symbols or pick your monster up and hope you could put him back down in the correct spot.
Balance was similarly wonky. Like I mentioned, the third expansion "all your base" introduced a "base building" for each faction. When setting up the game board, one of the first things you did was take turns with your opponent setting up buildings, and it was part of the strategy to use buildings that benefitted your monster. If you were playing a radiation based monster, your board tended to have tons of nuclear power plants to power him up/introduce hazards that only hurt your opponent. If you were playing the sacrifice-based cthulhu faction, you wanted high density population buildings like apartments. etc.
The base buildings, IIRC, had absolutely no balancing factor to them. They were just outright superior in every way to standard buildings because they were basically aligned to give exactly what your faction needed. I just happened to get five of the martian building (blind packs FTW...) and when I played them with my martians the first time, my brother and I just stood there scratching our heads and wondering how he was meant to have any chance with normal buildings - the martian building was a laser turret that basically meant I started with a full roster of troops on the board while he had to spawn his on.
Later down the line, the faction buildings and the general depth in the roster meant that when they tried to introduce new factions, they kind of fell flat because Giant Gorilla Faction had a choice of two monsters and five units, while any given faction from the base game had at that point six or seven monsters, 20 units, and the Pay2Win building in their arsenal.
The core of the game was really solid, and these were more annoyances than deal breakers. The faction buildings being HEAVILY limited or eliminated would solve a ton of the actual balance problems. But like I said, the weird little inconveniences start to add up when you play a game like that, much like plugging in your old favorite from the PS2 and realizing "wait, what the heck? I can't skip this animation/cutscene I have to watch 10,000 times? If I don't get to the save points I just have to start the whole level over? God, these graphics are way squarer and crappier than I remember, kind of making my head hurt..."
it was basically just a more modern skirmish-level miniature game stupidly marketed like the already contracting clix game genre.
the_scotsman wrote: Monpoc wasn't killed by the game itself, it was killed by a series of shockingly dumb business decisions.
Blind packs ESPECIALLY for the monsters is where i lay 95% of the blame for the games depth.
You have to remember that MonPoc was not created for, or marketed to, miniature gamers. It was a mass market item meant to be sold in bookstores and large retail chains. Blind packs were, unfortunately, required for the business model to work. I think it has been gone over in this thread previously (fewer independent products, unpopular models not clogging store shelves, differently valued paint jobs, etc) and if you look at the available prepaints still around today (HeroClix, Pathfinder Battles, D&D), they are majority blind packs.
It wasn't so much a dumb decision as it was poor timing. MonPoc could've been extremely successful based on how the collectible miniatures market was doing at the time, but MonPoc came in on the tail end of it when market conditions basically wiped them all out. It was very much similar to how the comic book market died. The collectible market became too obsessed with rare versions that were exceedingly difficult to find (super rares, limited promos, lame variants - MonPoc did all these things), not to mention oversaturation of the market (it could only handle two or three, but there were dozens) - and then the price of plastic went up making the whole thing untenable.
Going back to monpoc over the years has been like going back to old PS2 games. At first you remember all the things you loved about it and you love the nostalgia bur then you come across all the stuff that's horrifically outdated compared to modern games and you peter out.
I go back to PS2 games (and earlier) all the time. I think there were different design sensibilities that have changed over time. As we've moved towards more streamlined and, let's face it, easy gaming experiences, we've lost a LOT by doing so. That's not to say that MonPoc was a perfect game and that there isn't room for improvement, but I think the game's flaws were just as obvious at the time. I don't think the passage of time has made them any more or less egregious.
There was also the usual PP creative bankruptcy when it came to variation within the factions for monster designs.
The variety within the factions needed help, but the factions themselves were great. The problem is that they were limited to only 1 or 2 monsters per faction, per series (there's what? Five monsters per faction?), then dumped them all and started six new factions. If they had spent more time and attention on the core six factions, it would've ended up with better variation and design. Maybe the new MonPoc will do exactly that this time around? (though I never picked up series 4/5, so I wouldn't mind them getting to the second group sooner)
Yeah, I mostly agree. And I do think there are some aspects of the game that function better than modern games (I like Monpoc FAR more than I like the slightly similarly styled Warmahordes, both in theme and gameplay). But in my eyes, a monpoc marketed more like WMH than Heroclix would be a slam dunk. The actual gameplay with its level of complexity and list-building strategy made far far more sense as a real miniature game.
Yeah, there's five monsters per faction, but you know you're in trouble when your designers can't even come up with two unique ideas for the first TWO of several of your factions. The first set is where you're supposed to really wow people and knock it out of the park with your cool ideas. and with the dinosaurs, the Martians, arguably the comet kaiju they did a decent job of that. but some of the others...lol.
Quick, ideas for a cthulhu faction! "Oh, oh, Cthulhu! And...uh...Cthulhu with tentacles instead of legs? Man, I hope people don't notice that these are all just going to be Cthulhu..."
I guess to me there's more of a clear delineation between the games I played when I was a kid (Pokemon cards, Mage Knight, Monsterpocalypse, Axis and Allies minis) and the games I was picking up and collecting after college (40k, WMH, Malifaux, etc). I know the former games are still around, but it seems to me they've definitely left their golden age, kind of like how you still have hundreds of MMORPG wow-clones but largely people have a lot less patience with those kind of game design elements they used.
If the game continues to expand, they could always introduce new
factions and monsters by having more limited events that force you to
choose between monsters. They're trying that with warmachine and it's
(mostly) going over well. It hasn't taken offf, but they're trying to find the right
balance between making a game with unlimited releases work within
a limited format without retiring models or warcasters.
I guess I'm not terribly surprised a game that hasn't been updated in almost 10 years feels dated. On that note, there's a local Heroscape tournament this year that's probably going to be dominated by Raelin and the Krav Magna agents.
Definitely though, MonPoc's biggest sins were rooted in its method of distribution. It was a viable market at the time and meaningfully expanded the market so I can't hate on it too badly (I started Warmachine almost entirely on the goodwill MonPoc earned) but I'm not at all sad to have learned to paint and moved on from my prepaint days.
the_scotsman wrote: Monpoc wasn't killed by the game itself, it was killed by a series of shockingly dumb business decisions.
Blind packs ESPECIALLY for the monsters is where i lay 95% of the blame for the games depth. The remainder id put into outdated presentation of the stats via clix-style "tiny symbol+extensive legend" instead of stat cards, and releasing the 6 new factions who could simply not compete with the existing 6 and their deep rosters+power multiplying faction buildings.
The faction buildings were definitely a rock headed decision. "oh gosh I can either place a bunch of neutral buildings me and my opponent can use, or I can put down this one that's owned by me and shoots a laser. Hmm which will I pick".
Going back to monpoc over the years has been like going back to old PS2 games. At first you remember all the things you loved about it and you love the nostalgia bur then you come across all the stuff that's horrifically outdated compared to modern games and you peter out.
Automatically Appended Next Post: There was also the usual PP creative bankruptcy when it came to variation within the factions for monster designs.
Quick, you have 10 seconds to come up with giant rampaging dinosaur monsters.
I'm interested in the examples of stuff that's horrifically outdated. What's outdated in the old Monpoc? Full disclosure... I never played.
Mostly what I listed. The minis were sold clix-style, with a 15$ pack containing one blind pack monster. With 12 monsters total per expansion, and no value to have more than 1 of any kind of monster, you basically started burning money really quick. The concept was at least not a deal-breaker with the "5 critters+1 building" boosters, because at least having multiples of the critters was OK, but it also served to make it impossible without trading/ebaying for someone to decide to "play" any one given faction.
The symbols on the base+Legend style of conveying special abilities was also heavily rooted in the clix design paradigm. This was a game where the position and facing of your monster was absolutely crucial, and so you'd either have to lean over them to try and read the bitty symbols or pick your monster up and hope you could put him back down in the correct spot.
Balance was similarly wonky. Like I mentioned, the third expansion "all your base" introduced a "base building" for each faction. When setting up the game board, one of the first things you did was take turns with your opponent setting up buildings, and it was part of the strategy to use buildings that benefitted your monster. If you were playing a radiation based monster, your board tended to have tons of nuclear power plants to power him up/introduce hazards that only hurt your opponent. If you were playing the sacrifice-based cthulhu faction, you wanted high density population buildings like apartments. etc.
The base buildings, IIRC, had absolutely no balancing factor to them. They were just outright superior in every way to standard buildings because they were basically aligned to give exactly what your faction needed. I just happened to get five of the martian building (blind packs FTW...) and when I played them with my martians the first time, my brother and I just stood there scratching our heads and wondering how he was meant to have any chance with normal buildings - the martian building was a laser turret that basically meant I started with a full roster of troops on the board while he had to spawn his on.
Later down the line, the faction buildings and the general depth in the roster meant that when they tried to introduce new factions, they kind of fell flat because Giant Gorilla Faction had a choice of two monsters and five units, while any given faction from the base game had at that point six or seven monsters, 20 units, and the Pay2Win building in their arsenal.
The core of the game was really solid, and these were more annoyances than deal breakers. The faction buildings being HEAVILY limited or eliminated would solve a ton of the actual balance problems. But like I said, the weird little inconveniences start to add up when you play a game like that, much like plugging in your old favorite from the PS2 and realizing "wait, what the heck? I can't skip this animation/cutscene I have to watch 10,000 times? If I don't get to the save points I just have to start the whole level over? God, these graphics are way squarer and crappier than I remember, kind of making my head hurt..."
it was basically just a more modern skirmish-level miniature game stupidly marketed like the already contracting clix game genre.
the_scotsman wrote:Yeah, I mostly agree. And I do think there are some aspects of the game that function better than modern games (I like Monpoc FAR more than I like the slightly similarly styled Warmahordes, both in theme and gameplay). But in my eyes, a monpoc marketed more like WMH than Heroclix would be a slam dunk. The actual gameplay with its level of complexity and list-building strategy made far far more sense as a real miniature game.
I don't know about a slam dunk. Over on Board Game Geek, there's strong resentment that the game no longer has prepaints. Even if the gameplay doesn't change much, that change is enough to alienate a lot of the non-mini gamers. PP probably won't be able to win them back.
Still, as a mini gamer, I think the changes are an improvement. The idea that rarity was considered a balancing agent in old collectible games was absurd. In theory, it meant that players wouldn't have access to all the rare elements and would only have one or two, but in practice, it resulted in people with money having ALL the rare, super powerful game elements in a single match. A static distribution model that uses more strict army building rules would go a long way to fixing many of MonPoc's most awful balance issues.
Yeah, there's five monsters per faction, but you know you're in trouble when your designers can't even come up with two unique ideas for the first TWO of several of your factions. The first set is where you're supposed to really wow people and knock it out of the park with your cool ideas. and with the dinosaurs, the Martians, arguably the comet kaiju they did a decent job of that. but some of the others...lol.
I don't really have a problem with it because I was never really in control of what models I got. I ended up playing multiple factions rather than limiting myself to just one, largely because I couldn't. So having variety between the factions (which is great) was enough for me.
I guess to me there's more of a clear delineation between the games I played when I was a kid (Pokemon cards, Mage Knight, Monsterpocalypse, Axis and Allies minis) and the games I was picking up and collecting after college (40k, WMH, Malifaux, etc). I know the former games are still around, but it seems to me they've definitely left their golden age, kind of like how you still have hundreds of MMORPG wow-clones but largely people have a lot less patience with those kind of game design elements they used.
MMORPGs are a good example of what happened to MonPoc. Before WoW, there were dozens of MMORPGs and each one of them was unique (and a little bit clunky). Several of them were brilliant. After WoW, you just had WoW. The variety of the market dried up in a few years and the genre is essentially dead. Same thing happened with the CCG market (I'd kill for Star Wars Customizable Card Game to return), and with the collectible miniature market. A new market appears, lots of experimental and interesting works are created for it, a slick market leader moves ahead, the market can't sustain multiple products once the fad wears off, only the slick market leader remains and its only competition is from products trying to emulate it.
Hopefully, MonPoc will pull a Netrunner and bring a brilliant older game and put it in a format where it can finally be successful.
I think one of the wonkier things about the original game by far was the way you built your army. Like most things, they seem to be a result of making the distribution model work more than making the game the best it could be. See, there weren't really factions; there were agendas. Those monkeys in series two weren't they're own thing; they were dinosaurs. Your units weren't even restricted to faction in any meaningful way and most competitive unit pools made Imperial Soup look like distilled water. A lot of people didn't play it like that, and I was of the opinion the game was better if you didn't.
I'll be very curious how they make things work in the new game. On one hand, it sounds like they're blurring the lines further by reducing things down to two agendas. On the other hand, by making 2 monster games the norm, I'm hopeful that units will be tied more closely to monsters and mixing will largely be a result of pairing similarly aligned monsters. For a while now when I break the game out I've just played 2 monster tag teams using the agenda alliance wheel and I think the game would benefit a lot from being designed that way from the outset.
As I've said elsewhere; MonPoc seems well positioned to compete in the MOBA inspired "Champions" crowd; and armies of 2-3 monsters from different factions within a single agenda would make my day as long as the units were a better reflection of the monster(s) they're fighting for. The funny thing for me about MonPoc is that honestly I've never cared about multiple monsters in a faction. I'd probably be quite happy with 1 monster "factions" and a ton of different factions under the agenda banners overall.
LunarSol wrote: I think one of the wonkier things about the original game by far was the way you built your army. Like most things, they seem to be a result of making the distribution model work more than making the game the best it could be. See, there weren't really factions; there were agendas. Those monkeys in series two weren't they're own thing; they were dinosaurs. Your units weren't even restricted to faction in any meaningful way and most competitive unit pools made Imperial Soup look like distilled water. A lot of people didn't play it like that, and I was of the opinion the game was better if you didn't.
I'll be very curious how they make things work in the new game. On one hand, it sounds like they're blurring the lines further by reducing things down to two agendas. On the other hand, by making 2 monster games the norm, I'm hopeful that units will be tied more closely to monsters and mixing will largely be a result of pairing similarly aligned monsters. For a while now when I break the game out I've just played 2 monster tag teams using the agenda alliance wheel and I think the game would benefit a lot from being designed that way from the outset.
As I've said elsewhere; MonPoc seems well positioned to compete in the MOBA inspired "Champions" crowd; and armies of 2-3 monsters from different factions within a single agenda would make my day as long as the units were a better reflection of the monster(s) they're fighting for. The funny thing for me about MonPoc is that honestly I've never cared about multiple monsters in a faction. I'd probably be quite happy with 1 monster "factions" and a ton of different factions under the agenda banners overall.
Oh crap. MOBA exactly describes the miniatures game I'm
pretending to design on the side. Monpoc activations would be
perfect for something like that.
You can definitely tell that the rise of eSport gaming has had an effect on the tabletop industry. I don't think its any surprise that digital rules with frequent balance patching have become more and more the norm in the wake of Hearthstone's success. Likewise, the MOBA space appeals to a lot of table top players AND designers and seems to be driving a lot of new game design from obvious examples like Judgement and Godtear along with things like Aristea.
I feel vindicated a bit for rebasing my figs on clear bases. This has to mean they are going to cards if the info is not on the bases.
Spoiler:
And a bit of concept art, which isn't shocking since it seems to adhere nearly identically to previous designs for the monsters, with perhaps a bit more detail.
Such a thing should be a testament to how well the kaiju concept was instituted in Monpoc. I could have used Godzilla IP gashapon, but why when there is an even richer assortment of models to choose from?
Wow! Excellent job on the retheme. And using Gorechosen for a Kaiju battler is an inspired choice.
Thanks Chris. Coming from you, I will take that as high praise.
I think this is an unfair assessment. As Sqorgar mentioned, this game was made to be marketed to a mass audience, they needed concepts that resonated with larger groups of people. You might find them bland, but the first 6 factions were still pretty well done.
Planet Eaters - These always felt like some kind of anime, or power rangers monsters to me, not a ton of differences between them, but still pretty interesting.
Cthul - They were par for the course Cthulhu figures. You're correct that they didn't have a lot of variance, but people LOVED them. I saw more people playing them, then any other faction.
G.U.A.R.D - basically the US army meets the power rangers. the tanks and other unit vehicles were the most fun parts of this one.
Shadowsun syndicate - Think, the super team that was Ultraman, if they were Yakuza scientists.
Martians - I liked that they had a mothership as a monster. Lots of WotW walkers, too. Fun 50's style retro.
Terrorsaurs - Yup, basically godzilla. But to be fair, only one triceratops. A T-Rex, Anklyosaur, Pteradactyl, Triceratops, and some other.. thing... essentially a T-Rex with a beak?
the_scotsman wrote:
The symbols on the base+Legend style of conveying special abilities was also heavily rooted in the clix design paradigm. This was a game where the position and facing of your monster was absolutely crucial, and so you'd either have to lean over them to try and read the bitty symbols or pick your monster up and hope you could put him back down in the correct spot.
Though facing did matter, it was a grid based map you played on. Not hard to remember where something was a all. And the monsters had all their symbols in your pamphlet/card as well, so you didn't have to pick them up at all.
Balance was similarly wonky. Like I mentioned, the third expansion "all your base" introduced a "base building" for each faction. When setting up the game board, one of the first things you did was take turns with your opponent setting up buildings, and it was part of the strategy to use buildings that benefitted your monster. If you were playing a radiation based monster, your board tended to have tons of nuclear power plants to power him up/introduce hazards that only hurt your opponent. If you were playing the sacrifice-based cthulhu faction, you wanted high density population buildings like apartments. etc.
The base buildings, IIRC, had absolutely no balancing factor to them. They were just outright superior in every way to standard buildings because they were basically aligned to give exactly what your faction needed. I just happened to get five of the martian building (blind packs FTW...) and when I played them with my martians the first time, my brother and I just stood there scratching our heads and wondering how he was meant to have any chance with normal buildings - the martian building was a laser turret that basically meant I started with a full roster of troops on the board while he had to spawn his on.
Later down the line, the faction buildings and the general depth in the roster meant that when they tried to introduce new factions, they kind of fell flat because Giant Gorilla Faction had a choice of two monsters and five units, while any given faction from the base game had at that point six or seven monsters, 20 units, and the Pay2Win building in their arsenal.
Oh, yeah... Series 3 was a mess. The faction buildings/ Installations were super problematic. I recall a tournament a week after series 3 released, and it already had a rule that you couldn't take more than 2 Installations in your list. So silly. I really didn't get the whole 'combiner Monster' thing they did that series either. It seemed like a mechanic they developed just to lay the ground work for Voltron. I hated it. I tried playing one of the monsters once, and never did it again Why would you take 4 puny units on the table, and have to perform a specific series of actions, just to use a monster that was 'slightly' better than a regular one. dumb.
I liked that there were agendas which transcended each series, so you could mix between factions easier. It helped when the new factions started, as you could play with a different factions units, but just didn't get all the bonuses.
And the new factions were AWESOME!
the Subterrainian uprising was really out of left field.
The savage swarm was giant bugs!
Empire of the Apes was great! albeit, not a lot of difference between the monsters, but, I mean, one unit was a gorilla with a howitzer! c'mon!
The Tritons were cool with a nice mix of sea beasts and weird nautical craft.
The elemental monks had all the cool fire/earth/wind/water stuff.
But Uber corp... oh man, they were GREAT! a big old corporation that has no creativity, so they just rip off other monsters. they had Mecha/Mechana/Robo versions of stuff from all the other factions. So cool!
I found the rule book online if anyone wants to check out what it was like.
Check it out before they delete it like the rest of their old MonPoc stuff.
The Morphers were generally really powerful. You could spend way more white dice on them then a normal monster turn and put out a good number of attacks. The Cthul one was probably the most broken monster in the game this side of Mega Zor Magna(sp?), which is kind of too bad because its also one of the most thematically cool of all the morphers. The Guard one is also solid and the Terrasaur guy is funny, if a little weird. The others.... meh.
I'm not a fan of the plain basing, clear is fine but I'd rather there be a little raised lip on the edges, that way if people do want to flock or add sand or whatever it won't be right up on the edge where it can wear off.
* Elite units still exist, and are differentiated by their paint jobs.
So far not a whole lot has seemed to change. Using cards instead of icons on bases simply means keeping a stack of 22-25 cards to the side for reference, max. But more realistically it would be closer to less than half that.
If the game is still on a square grid, then the "you can't use old figures" is a pure business move as we suspected. The comparison picture makes it look like the base sizes are very close, so I expect the old figures to fit onto new maps just fine.
It's no different to them banning the plastic models from Undercity and Widower's Wood from Warmachine/Hordes. The number of people that affects depends on how many people play at PP-run events, I suppose.
As for the symbols, having them on a stat card or on a base makes no difference - they're still a pain in the neck to use. That was one of the worst issues with Warmachine mk2 for me; getting rod of words I could understand and replacing them with icons I kept having to look up.
MarkNorfolk wrote: Hopefully the cards would have descriptions of the powers on, like the fan made cards from 1st edition.
This.
There is no point doing away with icons on the base if they just put icons on a card.
The cards will have full text descriptions, not be just a jumble of iconography salad. Many fanmade gaming aids proved to be more popular for not only new players, but for many vets as well since referencing the cards was far easier to do that look in one of two rulebooks for exact wording when needed.
Yeah, those cards are good. Hopefully the ones for the new version do write out abilities in full. Unless they're introducing Warmahordes-style damage grids or are increasing the number of abilities a ton, they should have plenty of space on a double-sided card.
On a different note, I just realized that they seem to be just calling this "Monsterpocalypse" again. Not Monsterpocalypse 2.0 or Monsterpocalypse Resurgence or Shin Monsterpocalypse or whatever. I hate it when companies do this.
For some reason, they seem to be afraid that putting a number on the name is going to scare people off. Not putting one just winds up being really confusing. I've seen new players get really confused about which Warhammer and Warmachine books are still current because they don't actually say "8th Edition" or "MK 3" on them. Of course, other industries are also really bad about this (see how there's like four movies that were just called "Godzilla").
On a different note, I just realized that they seem to be just calling this "Monsterpocalypse" again. Not Monsterpocalypse 2.0 or Monsterpocalypse Resurgence or Shin Monsterpocalypse or whatever. I hate it when companies do this.
There's probably not going to be a lot of confusion for new MonPoc players, since MonPoc information is extremely difficult to find on the web and there's basically zero chance that they'll encounter the older MonPoc in the wild.
LunarSol wrote: The Morphers were generally really powerful. You could spend way more white dice on them then a normal monster turn and put out a good number of attacks. The Cthul one was probably the most broken monster in the game this side of Mega Zor Magna(sp?), which is kind of too bad because its also one of the most thematically cool of all the morphers. The Guard one is also solid and the Terrasaur guy is funny, if a little weird. The others.... meh.
The morphers were all stronger than the average monster of their faction. The tiny dudes were actually key to it, too. Interacting with the map like units instead of monsters was very good. The Shadow Sun one was one of the overall best monsters in the game because it could use the dispersal trick, where if it was in its big mode and shifted down the small monsters would teleport back to spawn points of your choice if they ended up in impassable terrain. Repositioning outside of your ordinary monster movement was very powerful and doing it so spectacularly and for free was tournament-winning.
It's interesting to note that the Privateer Press HQ building had its own rules in the first iteration of Monpoc (and was only available as a map pack bonus fig. Not really that rare) and is now just an alternate sculpt for a building called "Corporate High Rise" made available through their organized play rewards.
This is interesting yet a bit distressing, as I despise promotional figs. But I am comforted knowing its is just an alternate sculpt that doesnt have any different rules. Because promotional stuff that changes game play is a big red flag. Cosmetic changes aren't a big deal to miss out on.
Sounds like a good plan. Alt sculpt buildings are a terrific option for prize support since anyone can use them. We don't need anywhere near the building variety the first game had. That was just a total mess of rules, particularly if you didn't have a ton of duplicates and played with a varied city built from random boosters.
Agreed. I'm kind of shocked they didn't make buildings promotional in the first iteration. Everyone wants buildings. Not everyone wants a mega for a monster they don't play.
Creates less of a "Gotta chase 'em all down". Not completely gone because promotional figs do that by design, but it's lessened.
Hellfury wrote: Agreed. I'm kind of shocked they didn't make buildings promotional in the first iteration. Everyone wants buildings. Not everyone wants a mega for a monster they don't play.
Creates less of a "Gotta chase 'em all down". Not completely gone because promotional figs do that by design, but it's lessened.
Buildings don't quite have the wow factor, but PP did package buildings with map packs, and I think some buildings in the later series were super rare (like 1 in every 10 packs or something).
I don't have as much of a problem with blind buys as most people (though with MonPoc, paying $15 for a single monster you probably already owned sucked), but I HATE promos, rare foil cards, kickstarter exclusives, or distribution rarity. Give me a flat random distribution, don't make the game into the haves and have nots, and don't design wildly overpowered gameplay elements for the haves.
I own a fairly complete set of MonPoc because the sealed cases were "randomized" by being 1 of everything. Buy a case, get it all. Don't buy a case, spend way more trying to get what you want. I don't at all miss this system, but MonPoc was at least easy to work around.
Wave 5 they definitely added a lot of chase rare gimmicks. The character units were absurd and something like 2 of 6 per case, and I think of the Tokyo buildings you only got 2 of the 3. There were also the civilian vehicles which were all pretty OP.
The concepts look almost identical to the old sculpts. I'd call them out for not being original, but I fully admit, I'd hate it if they had strayed too far from the original designs. The new sculpts I'm guessing are going to match these original designs even better, which is cool.
I admit, I am very tempted by that Terrorsaur, here's hoping the model is as nice as the sculpts they've shown so far. Very interested to see what the Ares mothership looks like as a sculpt as well.
I remember the old Privateer Press HQ building! It was one of the few things in the game that was marked 'indestructible'. I would put it in the middle of the table and King Kondo would continue to throw the other monster into it.
I'm liking the idea that some buildings are card, and and some aren't. Makes packing things up a bit easier. Though now you have the added issue that your units and monster are much more fragile then before.
The card buildings is a good idea, I think, for a starter set. I also like the fact the models aren't that removed from the originals. Here's hoping the Martian 'Tripod' monsters are a little more sturdy!
The Martian walkers are definitely models that would benefit from metal legs and a resin canopy. I must have gone through a few of each of Deimos 9 and Phobos 7 before I found models that weren't rickets handicapped Invaders.. :(
I'd also like the 'power dice denial' to have a bit more of an impact. It was Deimos-9's main tactic but it struggled with it and it became a real no-hoper after the later waves were released.
I snagged some pics at AdeptiCon - those little tanks look absolutely beautiful in-person, and even the large models were much more impressive than I had thought. And I love the clear basing!
I tried to wheedle out some info, but they just said the Cthulhu faction looks awesome and not too much else. That makes sense, though - I painted those models for my counts-as tyranids even in the prior version. Now that they're designed to be assembled and painted, I'll bet they're fantastic!
This is a shame...I hear nothing but good things about Monsterpocalypse (old edition, of course), but I can't stand the aesthetic. I feel like I'm missing out, but the 'Power Ranges' vibe is a killer for me.
What got me pretty excited at AdeptiCon (and it's probably covered in the news here) was having them describe how you can take any of the "Defender" monsters, and pair it with any of the "Defender" tanks/minions. Same goes for "Invaders" (forgive me if I'm using the wrong name).
So, if you like any one of the big models, you can pair it with these sweet little tanks . Personally, I don't like this Gundam-style one, or the monster it's opposing, but I LOVED their old Cthulhu sculpts, and am hopeful one of the big Defenders will also appeal to me
Only downside is if the release schedule is slow - they're definitely leading with these two sets, but other sets should follow shortly thereafter...
The models aren't pre-painted anymore, right? Did they have some unpainted/unassembled stuff for perusal so you could see what you were actually buying? Because I can't paint like that (it's a much nicer paintjob than I can do, and I like it!).
I thought that crocodile thing in the background was a Gojira for the game. However, it looks like it's on a round base, so it must be for WarmaHordes...
Shame, that would have gotten me straight in buying on this.
100BostonFan wrote: Are they allowing you to mix factions or do you have to pick one?
There's only going to be 2 factions Protectors and Destroyers. It also sounds like 2 monsters will become the norm, so likely you'll be able to mix say, GUARD with the Terrasaurs, but not with Cthulu.
100BostonFan wrote: Are they allowing you to mix factions or do you have to pick one?
There's only going to be 2 factions Protectors and Destroyers. It also sounds like 2 monsters will become the norm, so likely you'll be able to mix say, GUARD with the Terrasaurs, but not with Cthulu.
The way it's been laid out, there's going to be 2 Agendas made up of 3 factions each:
Protectors -G.U.A.R.D. -Terrasaurs -Shadow Sun Syndicate
Destroyers -Planet Eaters -Lords of Cthul -Martian Invaders
You can mix Monsters and units in each Agenda.
Also, in regards to size, PP has this image up on their new MonPoc website:
The Warjack on the left is roughly the same size as a Dreadnought.
What got me pretty excited at AdeptiCon (and it's probably covered in the news here) was having them describe how you can take any of the "Defender" monsters, and pair it with any of the "Defender" tanks/minions. Same goes for "Invaders" (forgive me if I'm using the wrong name).
So, if you like any one of the big models, you can pair it with these sweet little tanks . Personally, I don't like this Gundam-style one, or the monster it's opposing, but I LOVED their old Cthulhu sculpts, and am hopeful one of the big Defenders will also appeal to me
Only downside is if the release schedule is slow - they're definitely leading with these two sets, but other sets should follow shortly thereafter...
The other Defenders were giant ninjas ala ultraman.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Seeing them side by side...except for a couple monsters here and there I doubt id buy much of the new stuff. its just so...exactly the same.
The other Defenders were giant ninjas ala ultraman.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Seeing them side by side...except for a couple monsters here and there I doubt id buy much of the new stuff. its just so...exactly the same.
Shadow Sun is more of the Ultraman style giant ninjas. The other defenders were kind of a similar idea, but warrior monks that summoned giant elemental avatars. Ninja like definitely, but notably the ninja itself was made almost entirely of fire or water or whatever.
the_scotsman wrote: Seeing them side by side...except for a couple monsters here and there I doubt id buy much of the new stuff. its just so...exactly the same.
Just looking at that side by side, the new sculpt is bigger and more detailed than the original.
malfred wrote: People would complain if it didn't look the same lol
This is true.
And if we use deductive reasoning to read between the lines, PP reusing former designs with a slight detail upgrade gives tacit permission to keep using CMG era models to play the new game.
malfred wrote: People would complain if it didn't look the same lol
This is true.
And if we use deductive reasoning to read between the lines, PP reusing former designs with a slight detail upgrade gives tacit permission to keep using CMG era models to play the new game.
I think you'd be missing out though. I repainted my old Ape force, and as much as I preferred my repaints to the models out of the box, they were pretty much ass to paint.
Oh I'm not saying avoid the new hobby stuff. I'm buying in on many of those. Especially hard to find units like power pods.
I'm just combating the ever lasting kvetching I'm seeing from a lot of the grognards online about not being able to use old models in the new game.
PP were silly to rationalize their need to sell models with the excuse of scale.
I believe reality to be that the old models will be fine and that the evidence of the same kaiju/units being produced is tacit permission to continue using old models, at least in the short term.
Hellfury wrote: tacit permission to continue using old models
What do you mean? The only venue where permission would be an issue would be organized play. At that point, we're talking about explicit rather than tacit permission, where TO says yea or nay. I would be surprised if PP wanted people using old MonPoc models in events they sponsor.
Yeah, I think PP is trying to avoid people spending a bunch of money on the new figures, painting them up real nice, bringing them to a tournament, and getting squashed by some one who bought a bunch of the old pre-paints on ebay for $20.
A better thing they could have do is just make it so anything that hasn't seen and updated release yet, is legal in a official tournament. Once it's out, you have to use the new models. Similarly, If you still wanted to use the old models, perhaps you could have a rule that for official tournaments, they have to be rebased and repainted. I would rather play against someone with a crazy modded original model of the Ares mothership, compared to someone with a new model and 3 colors (or whatever PP's rule for being 'completely painted' is) slapped on it.
Hellfury wrote: tacit permission to continue using old models
What do you mean? The only venue where permission would be an issue would be organized play. At that point, we're talking about explicit rather than tacit permission, where TO says yea or nay. I would be surprised if PP wanted people using old MonPoc models in events they sponsor.
A couple posts above that, I remark more on it.
Hellfury wrote: And if we use deductive reasoning to read between the lines, PP reusing former designs with a slight detail upgrade gives tacit permission to keep using CMG era models to play the new game.
Long and short of it is this, if they really didn't want anybody using old models at all, they would have rebuilt the entireline from scratch.
Well, consistency of product is a thing - and even if they completely redesigned it fans would probably be asking for revised versions of the original figures.
They've been talking fall. Judging by their recent release pattern, they'll probably have their schedule full releasing Crucible Guard through August, with MonPoc aiming for a Sept/Oct release.
Do we know if they're launching with only those two starters? They literally picked, for my personal tastes, the most dull options out of their catalog. :-p
NewTruthNeomaxim wrote: Do we know if they're launching with only those two starters? They literally picked, for my personal tastes, the most dull options out of their catalog. :-p
Just these two to start. I'm not really surprised as they've always clearly been the game's initial concepts with the other factions expanding on the core robot vs monster idea. There's a reason they were on opposite sides of the old Agenda wheel. I suspect we'll see the other factions released in similar pairs.
NewTruthNeomaxim wrote: Do we know if they're launching with only those two starters? They literally picked, for my personal tastes, the most dull options out of their catalog. :-p
Rumor has it that Lords of Cthul and Shadow Sun Syndicate will be the second factions with releases. If I'm remembering correctly though, I think they intend to just have one starter per agenda (not faction). This is backed up by the fact that they are the Protectors starter and Destroyers starter, and not GUARD starter and Planet Eaters starter.
Personally, I think they are the two best options, as they are the most indicative of the feel of the game (giant robots vs aliens) and most mass market. If they were to do Shadow Sun vs Cthul, the posters and ad sheets would give off a very different vibe.
Still looking like a zero effort nostalgie cash grab, down to using 16mm chessex custom dice, which are gonna be awful to use in fistfuls on the 70cm mat. Never mind having 4 entire sculpts to launch the game with.
lord_blackfang wrote: Still looking like a zero effort nostalgie cash grab, down to using 16mm chessex custom dice, which are gonna be awful to use in fistfuls on the 70cm mat. Never mind having 4 entire sculpts to launch the game with.
Surely 'zero effort' would just be reprinting the original game as is, with no alteration what so ever.
lord_blackfang wrote: Still looking like a zero effort nostalgie cash grab, down to using 16mm chessex custom dice, which are gonna be awful to use in fistfuls on the 70cm mat. Never mind having 4 entire sculpts to launch the game with.
Surely 'zero effort' would just be reprinting the original game as is, with no alteration what so ever.
Well the version bans using the old figures, so they can get money again from people who already own it all.
lord_blackfang wrote: Still looking like a zero effort nostalgie cash grab, down to using 16mm chessex custom dice, which are gonna be awful to use in fistfuls on the 70cm mat. Never mind having 4 entire sculpts to launch the game with.
Surely 'zero effort' would just be reprinting the original game as is, with no alteration what so ever.
Well the version bans using the old figures, so they can get money again from people who already own it all.
That's a different argument, and for official tournaments. I intend to use my old stuff where it fits in for casual games and where nonofficial tournaments allow.
I was just pointing out that game rewrites, figure design and sculpting and final production with all it's costs and logistics issues can hardly be called 'zero effort'. As for 'nostalgia cash grab' - that can be leveled at the new Necromunda/Adeptus Titanicus/Guilds of Ravnica/Battletech... hell, there have been reprints of Car Wars and OGRE. They're all at it, to be honest. And to PP's credit this wasn't run as a Kickstarter.
The little dice were fun, but engraved dice is really all that matters. The old ones were disastrous and didn't hold up to even a little bit of casual play.
Just got a huge collection of the old Monpoc stuff from a friend the other day. I was sorting through it to beef up my existing collection, and it's crazy how much stuff was released for the game. Really too bad that is so abruptly got pulled from market, as it's a really fun game. Does anyone know how many of the quantums actually got released? I have King Kondo, but apparently more were made, but I've never seen them on ebay.
I really can't say I"m interested in G.U.A.R.D. or Planet eaters, so I guess I'll have to wait for terrasaurs before I start playing.
I really can't say I"m interested in G.U.A.R.D. or Planet eaters, so I guess I'll have to wait for terrasaurs before I start playing.
They're just doing 2 sides and apparently 2 monster games will be somewhat standard. I suspect GUARD/Terrasaur combo armies will be a thing long before there's enough monsters to run pure Terrasaur.
lord_blackfang wrote: Still looking like a zero effort nostalgie cash grab, down to using 16mm chessex custom dice, which are gonna be awful to use in fistfuls on the 70cm mat. Never mind having 4 entire sculpts to launch the game with.
Surely 'zero effort' would just be reprinting the original game as is, with no alteration what so ever.
Well the version bans using the old figures, so they can get money again from people who already own it all.
And how exactly does PP propose to "ban" me from using all my old figures, given that these look like nearly identical scale?
Are they going to break into my house and douse my box of figs with gasoline? They want to give me literally zero reason to ever want to purchase the new figs (they evidently did no redesign on them visually) so I'll just bust out the massive collection I ebayed for when the original game went south and enjoy the new edition without a single purchase.
Sadly, unless they do a really good job promoting this game, I see this game to be a gigantic commercial flop.
lets take a gander at ol' ebay...
Let's see, I can buy a lot of about 10 randomly assorted monsters and 30 randomly assorted grunts for roughly 30$, or basically the entirety of a faction for 60$. I can splash and buy a big lot of someone's collection for about 250 dollars, getting me everything I need to play pretty much every faction from the original game (seems like the second expansion is much rarer and more aggressively priced, but they're going for the originals first.)
Why is anyone going to drop what will probably be 50$ for a new, slightly HD monster in super fun to work with PP resin when they could spend that same 50 bucks to get all 5 monsters and 40-odd grunt units from the old game on ebay?
skullking wrote: Just got a huge collection of the old Monpoc stuff from a friend the other day. I was sorting through it to beef up my existing collection, and it's crazy how much stuff was released for the game. Really too bad that is so abruptly got pulled from market, as it's a really fun game. Does anyone know how many of the quantums actually got released? I have King Kondo, but apparently more were made, but I've never seen them on ebay.
I really can't say I"m interested in G.U.A.R.D. or Planet eaters, so I guess I'll have to wait for terrasaurs before I start playing.
There were 6 other Quantums, only 2 of each were made for Gencon Masters (IIRC) prizes. Considering the tiny print run and the fact they were the last MonPoc minis ever, I imagine they were just regular monsters stripped and repainted in house by PP, not actually manufactured.
I'd expect "banning" the old figures would work the same way as banning third party models for other games. Nobody would care unless its a PP sanctioned event.
Yes, that would pretty much be the only way they'd be able to attempt to 'ban' old stuff, and even then, I'd bet that most FLGS wouldn't even care to try and enforce it.
AduroT wrote: At the least I know I’ll continue to use all the old buildings over those cardstock ones.
Having broken the game back out (actually for Rampage/Pacific Rim 2, but PP just kept me from putting it back) I'll say the buildings are probably more worth replacing than the monsters. The monster prepaints hold up pretty well (particularly Wave 2 stuff) but the buildings are very soft, kind of tiny and lack detail. The smaller buildings have very few windows and kind of look like oversized cartoon houses and the skyscrapers are about the same height, so they're just skinny without really being that tall.
There's some winners still. The stadium and PP building is still pretty great and the landmarks still do the job. The bulk of buildings though I think I'll be happy to see replaced with the new style.
Cryptek of Awesome wrote: IMO this game wins the award for coolest most fun sounding concept paired with the most 'meh' models.
Glad it's coming back for those who wanted it and I'll keep an eye on future releases.
I'll second this response pretty hardily. The initial release models aren't particularly bad sculpts, they are just kind of mediocre and uninspiring. The concept however, sounds amazing. Rampage the miniature game is just too cool of a concept to pass (though I did skip it before because I didn't like the prepainted, random packed nature of the game). Hopefully some more inspiring looking stuff will show up soon.
AduroT wrote: At the least I know I’ll continue to use all the old buildings over those cardstock ones.
Having broken the game back out (actually for Rampage/Pacific Rim 2, but PP just kept me from putting it back) I'll say the buildings are probably more worth replacing than the monsters. The monster prepaints hold up pretty well (particularly Wave 2 stuff) but the buildings are very soft, kind of tiny and lack detail. The smaller buildings have very few windows and kind of look like oversized cartoon houses and the skyscrapers are about the same height, so they're just skinny without really being that tall.
There's some winners still. The stadium and PP building is still pretty great and the landmarks still do the job. The bulk of buildings though I think I'll be happy to see replaced with the new style.
Replace the old plastic buildings with new resin ones when those are available, sure. The old plastics are probably still better than the cardstock boxes in the starters though.
malfred wrote:I'm worried the martian walker monster will be super brittle in resin.
malfred wrote: I'm worried the martian walker monster will be super brittle in resin.
Being PP's new resin, you have the opposite problem. It wont break, but it'll be easy to accidentally shave a piece off - it's pretty soft compared to normal resin.
The models are looking nice. Sounds like some of the tiwddly bits of the game got adjusted to be more sensible. I'll want to play a demo first but this looks like a good game to play with the family
ChargerIIC wrote:The models are looking nice. Sounds like some of the tiwddly bits of the game got adjusted to be more sensible. I'll want to play a demo first but this looks like a good game to play with the family
It really kind of needed to be. As much as I adore the original game, the building rules were kind of a mess and there were a lot of really trivial ways to abuse the way triggers worked. Most of the complication was in the units and buildings and dumbing that down to make monsters more meaningful would be a great change overall.
I had a passing interest when this originally came out, since at the time I was really into Wamrachine, but the random booster system threw me off.
Now it's the buildings, I liked the idea of real solid buildings on my table rather than cardstock. I just don't place that much value in something I could do myself.
I'm hoping if this does take off we'll see some third party buildings - it seems like it'd be easy enough to cast up.
PP is going to make resin buildings themselves, they’re just not in the starter boxes. Tournament OP kits will have alternate sculpt resin buildings as well, with the first one being PP headquarters.
are the buildings confirmed to be cardstock? the pics of the starter boxes I've seen have all been "An Artists Impression" of the contents. (it looks like the graphic artist had an afternoon to produce promo for product that doesn't exist yet, not enough time to do it convincingly - just flat art skewed into a 3Dish shape) the fact that they had rotating 3D wireframes of buildings in the video suggests that that there will be propper solid buildings (or why go to the effort of 3D modeling buildings?)
Z-Ray wrote: are the buildings confirmed to be cardstock? the pics of the starter boxes I've seen have all been "An Artists Impression" of the contents. (it looks like the graphic artist had an afternoon to produce promo for product that doesn't exist yet, not enough time to do it convincingly - just flat art skewed into a 3Dish shape) the fact that they had rotating 3D wireframes of buildings in the video suggests that that there will be propper solid buildings (or why go to the effort of 3D modeling buildings?)
The starter sets will include 8 (I think) cardboard buildings, but PP will release resin building models at a later date in packs of 3. I don't know about the new version, but in the last one, the buildings themselves were unique and had special rules. There were about two dozen different ones too - though I think they mentioned simplifying it a bit.
Personally, as much as I like MonPoc, this new version is looking pretty expensive. $50 a monster (with two the expected game size) + $20 per 3 units (15 is the desired count) + $??? for sets of 3 buildings (need at least 2 or 3 sets) - it's starting to look like a basic game of MonPoc will cost over $200 per player.
So... I had started to finally warm up to the idea of the new Monsterpocalypse, but that video kind of soured me on it again. I know no one in it is an actor, but their 'excitement' was rather transparent. Everything they talked about was already in the original game, so, why do they make it sound like this is a whole new experience? I'm still puzzled why they would feel the need to completely exile all the old game stuff if not much will have changed. They could have easily just scaled everything to the original figure's size, and released new characters from the same factions, instead of remaking ones we already had. People who enjoyed a particular faction would have bought in for the new stuff, and new people would be able to jump in with the new items. I get that they wanted to get rid of the whole Hyper/mega/quantum forms, but these could have been served by just having a specific paint color, or even just a counter on the newer figures to indicate they were Normal/Hyper/Mega/Quantum King Kondo (for example). The whole thing just seems very forced, and rushed. Why release when you only have two monsters? Just wait, get at least 6, and then release them. Are they trying to capitalize on Pacific Rim 2's coming out? It wasn't that big a hit, overshadowed but Infinity war, and everything else. At least release the terrorsaur to capitalize on Jurassic World 2!! The whole thing is giving me flashbacks to the gawd awful release of Age of Sigmar a few years back. At least there they gave us a nice pat on the head with 'End Times', before the kick in the butt. And they still let us use all our old figures too.
Sorry, a bit ranty...
I do like PP, and Monsterpocalypse, this just doesn't feel right though.
P.S. - Did they switch the lore around on the Shadow Sun Syndicate? Before they were a bunch of Yakuza/Triad underground scientists who had developed unstable 'secret techniques' for making giant fighters. I always thought it was a cool take on that 60's Ultraman schtick. Now they seem to be a soulless mega corp with 'dubious' goals. However, that whole concept was so better served by the faction 'Ubercorp', where they were just out to boost their self image, and had no originality so they just copied the existing monsters, making an entire faction of 'Mecha- clones', which was AWESOME!!
They probably didn't actually change the SSS lore, but they're probably presenting it differently since they're no longer designed to ally with the Martians.
As for the presentation, I try to remember that it has been a decade since the original and for a general audience that either never played or didn't really remember the details of the original. They're selling it like a totally new thing and for a number of people, it is.
I am disappointed in the weak launch, but it is a fair number of SKUs since they're getting units out right away. If they have 6 monsters out by Christmas I'll feel a lot better about it than I do right now.
ScarletRose wrote: I had a passing interest when this originally came out, since at the time I was really into Wamrachine, but the random booster system threw me off.
Now it's the buildings, I liked the idea of real solid buildings on my table rather than cardstock. I just don't place that much value in something I could do myself.
I'm hoping if this does take off we'll see some third party buildings - it seems like it'd be easy enough to cast up.
E-bay to grab the old buildings?
I’d get back in Monsterapocalypse, but I have a complete set of the old stuff I want to use, and I’ve got enough on my plate as-is. Would love to pick up their old Voltron set, and I’d be a shoe-in for the new if they came out with another Voltron set based on the new Dreamworks series.
There's a lot of nice, subtle changes in it, but it is definitely not a significantly different game. I've liked what I've seen on the stat cards so far as well.
Seems like a good idea to refresh this thread as release is September 21.
To remind everyone, launch products will include a Protectors agenda starter pack and a Destroyers agenda starter pack. "Agendas" in Monsterpocalypse are basically alliances of factions. The Protectors starter comes with miniatures for the G.U.A.R.D. faction (giant robot plus futuristic vehicles) while the Destroyers starter comes with miniatures for the Planet Eaters faction (cyborg moster aliens).
The G.U.A.R.D. come with Defender X, 4x G-Tanks, and a Repair Truck. The Planet Eaters come with Ghorghadra, 4x Belchers, and a Destroyer crawler. Each starter also comes with the custom dice necessary to play (26 d6s!), 6x cardboard Apartment Complexes, rubble/fire markers for destroyed buildings, game tokens, and a poster game mat to fight across. Each starter pack costs MSRP 49.99 USD.
September releases also include two booster packs each for both G.U.A.R.D. and the Planet Eaters. Each faction will get a booster pack that comes with the same Units as the starter packs (so every model except the Monsters; Defender X for G.U.A.R.D. and Ghorghadra for the Planet Eaters) for MSRP 19.99 USD. G.U.A.R.D. will also get a booster pack that comes with 4x Strike Fighters and a Rocket Chopper for MSRP 24.99 USD. Likewise, the Planet Eaters will get a booster pack with 3x Chompers, a Destroctomite, and an Explodohawk for MSRP 21.99 USD.
OK so how do you build an army? First every army must have at least one and up to three Monsters and that limits the size of the game because (1) each player must have the same number of monsters and (2) the number of Monsters determines how many non-Monster miniatures (called Units) each side cane bring. PP designed this version of MonPoc around each player controlling 2 Monster and 20 Units each. If each player controls a single Monster, they will each also control 15 Units. All miniatures in an army must be from the same agenda but need not be from the same faction. You can only ever include one instance of a named Monster in an army, so no armies using 2x Defender X for example.
October will see models for two further factions released: the Shadow Sun Syndicate (giant robot ninjas) for the Protectors and the Lords of Cthul (Lovecraftian horrors) for the Destroyers. Shadow Sun's first Monster release will be Zor Maxim for MSRP 21.99 USD. Shadow Sun will also get a booster with 4x S-Type Shinobi and an Interceptor for MSRP 21.99 USD as well as a booster with 4x Sun Fighters and a Shadow Gate for MSRP 25.99 USD. Lords of Cthul's first Monster release will be Cthugrosh at MSRP 24.99 USD and they will also get two boosters: one with 4x Spitters and Taskmaster for MSRP 21.99 USD and another with 3x Squix and 2x Meatslaves for MSRP 27.99 USD.
The 26 dice each player will need will also be released as a separate pack in October for MSRP 11.99 USD.
November releases will include five different Buildings - army lists must also include 6-12 Buildings! Now, if you get a starter pack, you can just use the cardboard Apartment Buildings they come with. But other building types will give you (or your opponent, depending on how a match is going!) certain bonuses in the course of play. Buildings coming out in November are:
Awesome design.........check
Great sculpture.............check
Good casting.................check
Pose diversity................ FAIL !
Extra Bits.........................FAIL !
The two latters dont bother me much on tanks, flyers & co, but really are a downer on organic units.
First, no list may have more than one instance of a given Monster. So there's no real reason for multiple poses/sculpts of Monsters.
Second, as to how Units work, you just take X amount of Units given how many Monsters each player has. The game is designed for each player to control 2 Monsters and 20 Units. There is reasonable Unit variety in each faction and a list can include units for any of the three allowed factions that currently make up each agenda. Units are mostly deployed to hold objectives and secure buildings, the main show is Monsters fighting. And when Units are destroyed/killed, they just go back to the pool of Units you started with to be cycled back in if you can/want to. So there's not a great premium on distinguishing between various instances of the same Unit.
I think the bigger issue is distinguishing between various types of Units from the same faction. But I guess paintjobs could help there.
I think the bigger issue is distinguishing between various types of Units from the same faction. But I guess paintjobs could help there.
Not sure what exactly you're referring to here. If you mean the difference between the Standard and Elites of a unit, the bases for the Elite have a little star built into them to help them stand out.
The make or break for me will be the actual gameplay reviews.
(Do we have any yet?)
I can give it a shot.
I played the game extensively in its initial release and it remains to this day a favorite that I still bust out on occasion. Having played a few games of the new edition with the cards released at GenCon, I'm happy to say the game hasn't lost an ounce of its charm and what changes they've made are almost entirely improvements. Highlights I've noticed with the new edition:
- VASTLY improved play materials: So the old version relied entirely on symbols and was just a mess to keep straight in your head. Switching over to normal stat cards is a pretty obvious improvement, but they're really well laid out and end up organizing special rules better than the original as well.
- Free Movement: So, one of the problems in the original game was that you had to pay to move your units. This was okay, but it made melee stuff super inefficient and overall useless. Free movement is an enormous difference and I'm curious to see how the meta adapts to it.
- Tougher Monsters vs Units: Monsters in this edition have had their defenses raised quite a bit but also get a bonus to their attack to compensate in monster vs monster encounters. Where this really helps is that it makes it significantly less possible to get a monster with 2-3 damage in combined unit attacks a turn, which makes the unit game more about capture and protect than it used to be and lets the monsters themselves duke it out with one another.
For the most part though, the game hasn't really changed. It's still using the really clever system of an Action Dice pool that you use to spawn in your units and make attacks. Dice you spend on the unit moves over to your monster's action pool which you can then use next turn to fuel a turn with your monster. Initially it's very tempting to spend all your dice in one pool and just pass back and forth between monster and unit activations, but as you get experienced with the game, there's definite value in leaving dice unspent, as it leaves you with the flexibility to active either your monster or unit as the game warrants.
The goal is to destroy the enemy monster, but your attacks generally only deal a single point of damage a turn, which turns into something of a slap fight. This is where the game's second economy comes into play. As you destroy buildings, take and hold objective spaces on the map, and crush enemy units, you earn power dice. Power dice can be used to boost the accuracy of your normal attacks if needed, but primarily let your monster do power attacks to really harm the enemy monster. Power attacks are pretty varied, but involve shoving buildings over on the enemy, picking up enemy units and throwing them at things, stomping over a line of units, and most importantly picking up the enemy monster and throwing them through buildings for significant damage.
It's just an immensely satisfying game and nothing has come close to capturing the kaiju feel for me. The game starts with a beautiful city scape and ends with one monster standing atop the other among piles of burning wreckage. It's easily one of my favorite games ever and the new edition hasn't lost a bit of the fun of the original.
Seems like it's going to be hard for PP to keep up with monthly releases for the game though. they'd be wise to take it slow.
The original game had 54 monsters (not counting Voltron) and something like 90 units, not to mention dozens of building options. They look to be simplifying that somewhat, but even then, there's plenty of material for them to release.
) because the new stuff is half an inch taller.
Oh, yeah... Series 3 was a mess. The faction buildings/ Installations were super problematic. I recall a tournament a week after series 3 released, and it already had a rule that you couldn't take more than 2 Installations in your list. So silly. I really didn't get the whole 'combiner Monster' thing they did that series either. It seemed like a mechanic they developed just to lay the ground work for Voltron. I hated it. I tried playing one of the monsters once, and never did it again Why would you take 4 puny units on the table, and have to perform a specific series of actions, just to use a monster that was 'slightly' better than a regular one. dumb.
