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Tiny update on Twitter from GAMA:





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.


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.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ctaylor wrote:

 Hellfury wrote:

 highlord tamburlaine wrote:
It still shocks me that this is such an underused genre on the tabletop.

The world needs more kaiju games!

Agreed.

It's why I took the models and art assets from Monsterpocalypse and used them to make a retheme of Gorechosen called "Destroy all Monsters!"

http://fortressat.com/forum/10-ameritrash/200000-my-kaiju-is-fight

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.

It’s not super prominent but the insider announcement offhand mentions that the figures will come with stat cards.

the_scotsman wrote:

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.

Anyone: uhhh Godzilla knockoff, pterodactyl, T-Rex, triceratops, velociraptor.

PP: Godzilla knockoff, triceratops, pterodactyl..... triceratops triceratops triceratops.

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.

http://files.privateerpress.com/monsterpocalypse/Monsterpocalypse%20Now%20Rulebook.pdf

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.

So far, it's been confirmed that:

* No icons on bases

* Map is still square grid

* Cards come with figs

* 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.

Hopefully the cards would have descriptions of the powers on, like the fan made cards from 1st edition.

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.

Some stuff taken off of JR's twitter feed.

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").

 TheWaspinator wrote:

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.

They don’t number the Warmachine editions either really.

 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.

Thanks for posting those, Malfred.

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.

Thanks for those pics, Hellfury - looking really good, and I love the clear bases!

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.

Dallas posted these in the Monpoc fb group.

That tank’s eyes look really overstressed, like he Really needs a nap.

Those look really nice!

That tank is asking: "Dude, does anyone need a tank? Because I'm right here."

I know it's probably part of a nearby WMH display, but the brief idea of a giant rampaging slave gretchin made me smile