Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

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.

Would cards solve iconpalooze?

 malfred wrote:
Would cards solve iconpalooze?

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.

 LunarSol wrote:

 malfred wrote:
Would cards solve iconpalooze?

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:

https://www.orderofgamers.com/games/monsterpocalypse/

They make a huge difference. Sadly, the other sets didnt get cards like this.

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.

For better and for worse, we have war room 2 now

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.

 LunarSol wrote:

 malfred wrote:
Would cards solve iconpalooze?

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.

Well, there's a free option. With War Room you're paying for convenience.

And officially, rules still get handled through the forums.

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.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Veering too

 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?

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.

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

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

 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.

the_scotsman wrote:
Monpoc wasn't killed by the game itself, it was killed by a series of shockingly dumb business decisions.





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.

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

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

I mean, I’d list triceratops 9x and gamers once lol


Automatically Appended Next Post:
*gamera

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.

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

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

I'm interested in the examples of stuff that's horrifically outdated. What's outdated in the old Monpoc? Full disclosure... I never played.

 Nurglitch wrote:

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.

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

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

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:

 Nurglitch wrote:

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.

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

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

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.

Okay, interesting stuff. Thanks!

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.