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Hey there, all!

Heard from a friend of mine that there's a minature game based on Japanese monster movies (Godzilla, Gamera, Ultraman, etc.) called "Monsterpocalypse. Does anyone out there know anything about it?

-Jason

no but i googled it and found this: http://www.h2.dion.ne.jp/~magara/gamera.jpg
and this:http://www.yellow-menace.com/images/posts/monsterplaybig.jpg
to me, it looks like chess, with monsters

Monsterpocalypse is Privateer Press's collectible miniatures game that they released this month.

It's fun. Collectible, not so fun. But still fun.

You have a monster and your goal is to beat up the other guy's monster. Simple as
that. But there are things that try to prevent you from doing so.

1. Units. You have little units that you use to gain power points and secure buildings, which give
you access to power dice. Power dice boost your chances to successfully do things with
your monster. Your monster also gains power dice for units destroyed.

2. Buildings. When you start, you and your opponent place buildings on a map. Where you
place the buildings may depend on the different rules. Some factions have crazy good interactions
with specific buildings. If your units
have secured a building, you gain bonus power dice, and if your monster destroys a
building he gets power dice.

3. Dice resource. The game uses three kinds of dice as a resource: Action, Boost,
Power. Action dice are finite and travel back and forth between your monster and
your unit pool. Therefore you need to activate units in order to use your monster and
vice versa. Boost dice are bonuses that have a higher success rate than action dice. You
get these for having abilities that provide bonuses. And power dice allow your monster
to do crazy things like throw monsters, Rampage through units, slam things, etc. They
also have the highest success rates.

4. Monster forms. When your monster dies, he switches to his other form. This other form has
a different ability set than his regular form. You can also make him switch forms, but it costs
dice to do so.

I was watching a few guys play it and was interested in it as a quick board game type game. The big monsters come in a box with their power form and units are in another box.

If you knew what faction the giant monster box was for, I'd probably give it a whirl, but even the giant monsters are blind boxes which was a serious turn off to me. Especially because I only really liked the Martians.

I checked eBay and for the monster of your choice you seem to pay $2 more than the random box plus shipping. I'm just not a fan of this kind of marketing.


In the future if someone at the LGS is looking to sell or trade what I want, I may get into it some. Until then I'll let others waste their money on random chance.

The monster and its power form come in the same box.

malfred wrote:The monster and its power form come in the same box.

I kinda said that in my first sentence.

HorrorFan wrote:

malfred wrote:The monster and its power form come in the same box.

I kinda said that in my first sentence.

Sorry I mis-parsed your sentence.

HorrorFan wrote:The big monsters come in a box with their power form and units are in another box.

I thought you had written that "their power form and units are in another box" when in fact it
was "big monsters come in a box with their power form" + "units are in another box."

My bad.

malfred wrote:

HorrorFan wrote:

malfred wrote:The monster and its power form come in the same box.

I kinda said that in my first sentence.

Sorry I mis-parsed your sentence.

HorrorFan wrote:The big monsters come in a box with their power form and units are in another box.

I thought you had written that "their power form and units are in another box" when in fact it
was "big monsters come in a box with their power form" + "units are in another box."

My bad.

You know, I did the exact same thing...

Anyway, than think kinda sucks about the different models being shipped and purchased as a "luck of the draw" package. I'd much prefer to see what I get up front.

So far I have not been impressed with it. The rules are free off the Privater Press website. It is not a "beer and pretzels" type game. The reviews I have read have said it's mediocre at best. It's collectible and extremely expensive considering how few pieces of anything you get in the boxes, and there already been mass complaints about poorly made pieces.

I was pretty excited about this game until I read the rules, which are available for free on the Privateer Press website.

My opinion of the rules is that they're not really my cup of tea; too much firking about with dice, dice rolls that result in nothing happening, and a lack of licensed Toho monsters.

Maybe it's sour grapes, but having seen the final product I'm decidedly less irked about not getting an interview for the game designer opening PP had recently. I wouldn't want them to Mongoose any of my work.

I've been kicking around getting this, and finally broke down tonight. I picked up the last starter box, and myself and some of the guys sat down to check it and play a game of it.

a.) The monster I got was broken. Sure, it's just one arm that I can easily glue back on, but still...

b.) You can't play the game with the starter box. It requires TWO starter boxes to play the game. Wha? That's just stupid.

Pretty much all the other guys there right then decided they no longer cared about it, so I may have just wasted the $25 it cost me to get the not so starter box.

Aduro wrote:I've been kicking around getting this, and finally broke down tonight. I picked up the last starter box, and myself and some of the guys sat down to check it and play a game of it.

a.) The monster I got was broken. Sure, it's just one arm that I can easily glue back on, but still...

b.) You can't play the game with the starter box. It requires TWO starter boxes to play the game. Wha? That's just stupid.

Pretty much all the other guys there right then decided they no longer cared about it, so I may have just wasted the $25 it cost me to get the not so starter box.

Yeah I feel your pain. A few bad games with a new game and everyone writes it off. Happened to me when the WoW TCG came out. Was too easy to get card advantage, knowing this concept I scared everyone off.

I've been looking at getting into Monsterpocalypse as well. People at my FLGS have said good things to me. But I really hate the randomness (I can overcome that with a few extra dollars though), it's why I quit playing TCGs. I've never actually seen the rules or someone play the game infront of me before either. All in all I'm wary about it, but I still think the flying saucers are pretty cool.

You can download a copy of the rules from Privateer Press' website.

Here's another topic, for further reading:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/219357.page

Well, the dice double as resource pools.

And the trick is to stack odds in your favor. If you want to make something happen
with your units, you use flanking abilities or combined attacks with units that gain
free boost dice to stack the odds. If you want to guarantee certain results with your
monster, then you need to start building the power dice and using those to gain
even better odds.

A unit or monster's strengths lie in where they gain free boost dice. You wouldn't brawl
when a blast gives you boost dice, and vice versa. If you're successful, that builds
your model's power dice, which makes it even easier for you to continue powering up. Power dice
also unlock the devastating power attacks.

Like I said before, I really like the mechanics of the game.

You CAN play with the starter. The game is likely to be a low power dice generating
game, but you'll be able to play.

Starter is

Random Monster
fixed 2 buildings, x number of units

It's enough to play, but you'll be missing out on a bunch of stuff without more
buildings (to womp things around and smash things up and generally just take
advantage of faction specific abilities) and your units' action pool will be hobbled
by paying more for other faction units.

The problem with the starter set is that it's not enough for two people to sit down and play a game and learn it. It requires TWO starter sets to play the game.

That's pretty standard, isn't it? Each player has to get their own starter?

malfred wrote:That's pretty standard, isn't it? Each player has to get their own starter?

Nope, most starters for CMGs have enough for 2 people to sit down and run a game straight out of the box. Perfect for Demos.

Malf, do you need a Zor-Maxim? I pulled 2(out of 3 monsters, also have a Rogzor) and was gonna see if anyone here has any double(or just plain any) monsters they're willing to trade if they need one. Not really picky, even though I really want a Cthugrosh or Yasheth.

I've played a couple of games so far and I have to say, I've found the game enjoyable. I also haven't gotten any damaged pieces, but there were apparently some minor glue mishaps with a couple of the buildings and one monster.
The game plays well, though I will say that there not really being enough dice in one starter to play is irritating. Privateer apparently underestimated how well the game would do, too, so there haven't been enough starters. The game is a tad expensive for what you get, but not really that out there compared to, say, Axis & Allies. Of course, now I have monsters I don't want. I'm not a big fan of collectible games overall.
Despite all of that, it's fun, and I've enjoyed myself. I don't regret getting into it.

So I won a LGS gift certificate at a WM/H tourney over the weekend and used it to pick up the starter box (damn those free gateway drug samples!).

I went ahead and grabbed a couple unit boosters too.

The short demo game after the tournament was fun and I expect I'll enjoy this game for a while. The collectibility aspect does not appeal to me, but I can feel the itch growing.

Fortunately, there was another guy who wanted the Monster that I received, Zor-Somebody, and traded me Cthugrosh for him. If I'm gonna play this game, its gonna be with the elder gods!

Unfortunately, even after a small bit of trading, I hardly pulled any units from my desired faction. I have a rather nice complement of Terrasaur units, but only a couple Cthul units. My Press Ganger gave me a pretty fair trade to increase my model count, so that was cool (one power pod for an apartment building and 4 grunt units), but it's definitely going to be a pain to actually construct a cohesive force. I know I can play using any units, but I'll suffer for it.

A couple other guys just started getting into this at the same time as me, so we should be able to work out the trading to everyone's benefit.

Game night! Well, technically 40k night, but it's the only night I hang out... I bring in my Starter Set hoping they've got more in and I can talk someone into buying into the game, or finding someone who already has. No new Starter Sets, but the cool guy who works there had himself already purchased something like ~5 of the Booster Packs. I talk to him about some of what he has, what he wants, what I have, ect. I decide if he's going to play it, other people will, as he is after all the cool guy. I pick up a Monster Booster and a Unit Booster. A few good units, but the building is the same as the Starter, and my monster is the same as what I got in the Starter, who also happens to be my least preferred of the six factions. A poor start.

I forget how the order on everything else worked out, but I end up getting two more Monster Boosters, another Unit Booster. Cool guy gets several more boosters, and we talk another guy into getting a couple of each booster. End of the night, random guy's got Cthulu and a half dozen odd units for him. Cool guy's got a Planet Eater and half dozen odd units, both power rangers and 8-10ish units, and both martians and a half dozen units. I've got Godzilla with five units and Big-O with six units, plus a spare power ranger and martian tri-pod. It all worked out really well.

We kind of play a game with just the initial walk thru rules, Big-O vs Martians. If you don't use the full rules and just use the ones they use to teach you the basics, those Martians REALLY suck compared to my tanks. Gonna read up on the rules more and try to get in a real game next week. Cool guy plans to start a league for this, and a bunch of the 40kers there looked really interested, so my hope in this not being wasted money is greatly restored.

I've been playing this game since it came out...which was like a month ago...and it has been a blast to play. While the game is really designed for one on one tournament play, the game has some serious strategic depth to it. Every monster and faction plays different and players must use different tactics to defeat each monster. Due to the mechanics of the game, A skilled player will know how to fully use both their units and their monster to ensure victory. While it is a collectible miniature game, faction purity is very helpful for victory.

Best of all, this game really captures the feel of Japanese monster movies. Units get tossed into a meat grinder while the monsters completely level the city around them with all sorts of cool WWE style moves. Each of factions does an excellent job of capturing stereotypical faction from monster movies.

In short, at least give this game a try, it is really fun to play.

Plat: sorry I took so long to notice the message. I don't need any monsters at this time.

malfred wrote:Plat: sorry I took so long to notice the message. I don't need any monsters at this time.

It's ok, Malf. My post elicited a PM response from another member willing to let go of an Ares Mothership in exchange, so the job was still done.

I been considering trying this. The demo was pretty fun. How much does it cost about to get a force together for one faction? Kinda trying to decide if I want to try this or World of Warcraft minis.

Avariel wrote:I been considering trying this. The demo was pretty fun. How much does it cost about to get a force together for one faction? Kinda trying to decide if I want to try this or World of Warcraft minis.

The starter, which you'll need, is something like $24.99. Then I'd suggest going to Bartertown to get the specific items you want. Unless you want to take your chances with the whole collectible thing.

The number of models you'll need for a full game is one Monster (regular and hyper) and 15 troops.

The starter ($25) gives you one monster (regular and hyper), four troops, one building, and all of the accessories that you need (map, dice, health tracker).

The troop boosters ($13) give you 5 troops and one building.

So, you'll need at least one starter and two troop boosters. If you can finagle a clever trade or two you can stop buying there.

If you know exactly what faction you want, it will be easier, and possibly cheaper, in the long run to just buy individuals.

Note that you don't have to have all models from the same faction, though that does give you benefits.
G-Tanks for example are a solid troop no matter who your monster is. Power Pods are also good. A pack of mixed terrasaur troops can easily take down enemy troops and possibly even hurt a monster.

The down side is that all of these will cost you an extra die to put into play and your faction specific abilities will not work. Cthugrosh for example will not benefit from the Terrasaur Raptix flank ability, and he cannot sacrifice it to gain a health point either.

I thought you got two buildings in the starter? Or am I crazy?

yeah,
looks interesting... I read the rules and it seems like it could be fun. (rules can be found a the bottom of this page http://monsterpocalypsegame.com/free-stuff#downloads)

the starter set is for one player
"This Monsterpocalypse Starter Set contains everything one player needs to start playing"

I think making it collectable will get more of the ugly forces out there, so that every one isn't playing g.u.a.r.d. or whatever... but i think i'll wait till there is a good online seller base that has established the going rate for the common and rare items. maybe even complete packages of forces... battle mats and buildings etc...

I play magic the gathering but I don't buy booster packs anymore ( I have a huge crate of MTG cards ) , I think I save money in the long run by designing a list and paying 20p to £10 per card. building a deck runs me £50-£150 that way... that's the equivilant to 20 - 60 booster packs and pretty much no chance of building the deck I want...

I can see the same thing happening with this game... buying 6 monster boosters and still not getting the one I want. Also while buying online, be sure to buy from reputable sources, I guess it would be easy for a online seller to pop packs open see a common monster and close the pack up again?

Panic...