by Felix Flauta / malfred
Usually, my wife overlooks the negative impacts of my gaming: miniatures spilling all over my
office, spray paint fumes wafting into the house, my hands covered in little slashes of paint. Today
, however, she just can not help but actually comment on the scene set before her.
The Scene
My Armodax force standing beside its buildings and other Terrasaurs.
That looks silly, she says, that's not even in scale.
But this is Armodax, I try to tell her, and Terrasaurs! And look! It's like the worst city planners ever!
If you look at the images, you'll see what I mean.
She doesn't pay attention to any of this, by the way. She's a smart lady, my wife.
Monsters
Monster form
Each monster has two forms that you have to defeat, an alpha and a hyper form. This clear green
plastic is Armodax's Ultra Form.
Hyper Forms have different powersets from their Alpha forms. So in this example, Alpha Form armodax
gives his units the ability to move after they make a melee attack. Ultra Form Armodax is immune to
Super Damage. (One way to win games is to deal more than 1 damage point a turn with your
monster through Power attacks).
He's very limited in what he can do, but I'm trying him out as a way to learn the game.
Units
Each force has to have 10-15 units in it. You can have five of any one unit, and only
five total Elite units in your army. These are spawned on points on the map.
Carnidons are my basic brawler. They're the cute dinosaurs that are kind of beefy. They're
solid in hand to hand combat and Armodax gives them the ability to hit and run and protects
them somewhat from ranged attacks.
Raptix are the skinnier dinosaurs. They jump, which makes them Armodax's anti-air fighters. They
also provide flanking to other units, which improves their chances to hit targets.
The low guys in back are Brontox. They're durable power point campers and objective holders.
In addition, they can spawn more units due to their Nesting abilities if they're on a Spawn
point. It's a nice way to both play some defense and bring some more expensive Elite
units onto the map.
And speaking of Elite units, the green tinted backs of the units and red text on their base
indicate that this army has elite Carnidons and Raptixes. They have abilities that make units
around them stronger.
Buildings
Buildings in Monsterpocalypse provide various effects for your monsters. Some buildings give you
bonuses, some provide hazards when they are destroyed, some help you when you send your
units to protect them, etc. Since different buildings provide various effects, it's not strange to
see someone bring a hodge podge of buildings to a game in order to maximize the effects for his
force. Essentially, anyone putting such a city together would be fired and no one would live there
due to its schizophrenia.
Take my display layout for my force. I have two nuclear reactors, two oil refineries, five apartment
complexes and three downtown high rises. Would you live in chernobyl range of TWO nuclear reactors
AND two oil refineries? Would you work or live in a high-rise there?
But in the game, the Apartment Buildings can be used to heal Armodax when he beats it up, the
Oil Refineries can be used to create fire hazards when they're destroyed to deal extra damage to
enemy monsters, and the Nuclear Power plant can help Armodax generate extra power dice.
Their use is strictly utilitarian.
What makes the game even more schizophrenic is that both me and my opponent take turns placing
our own selected buildings around the map. So Nuclear Reactors can, and will, be placed by
high population centers.
The Plan?
Two options:
- Make the most of hit and run and use the Raptix and Carnidons in conjunction to crush enemyunits and buildings. Armodax stomps any building he can't control.
- Try to get the power dice early in the game, but then switch Armodax to his Hyper Form to use his Super Strength to toss and stomp the enemy using multiple monster turns.
The second plan is possible because of how the game uses action dice. Your monster and units
share a pool of dice that go back and forth, but you don't have to use all your dice all the
time. That way, you can save up dice to take your monster to town (so to speak) with
multiple turns where all you do is beat on your opponent.
The Verdict
Yeah, it's a collectible game.
Yeah, I'm hooked.
