Monsterpocalypse

[Von Calyptra]

So a while back, I saw Pacific Rim, and it made me want to play games with kaiju. So I dug my old Monsterpocalypse stuff out of my closet, ordered some new models on line, and browbeat a couple of friends into playing some games with me. And because Monsterpocalypse is easily one of the best games I've ever played, it's all I've been focused on since.

If you haven't heard of it before, Monpoc was a collectible, prepainted game done by Privateer Press (Warmachine/Hordes). It's dead now, but can be readily acquired from various online retailers/ebay.

Each kaiju in the game has two models, a standard version, and a powered up version (alpha form and hyper form).

The hyper forms are all one color and translucent. They're kind of neat, and I had originally planned to only paint the alpha forms. In practice though, whenever I'd replace my painted alpha with the translucent hyper form, I'd feel a little disappointed. So I'm going back and repainting the hyper forms as well.

The vinyl plastic these models are made of is pretty awful to work with. I've more or less given up on trying to remove the mold lines.

The Martian Menace:

Deimos-9

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Ultra Deimos-9

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Ares Mothership

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Ultra Ares Mothership

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Units

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[Von Calyptra]

And my Lords of Cthul

Yasheth

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Cthugrosh

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Units

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[Corien Sumatris]

Hey! So you say that Monsterpocalypse is one of the best games you've played. I'm looking to expand my horizons, I mean I love GW and I will always play WHFB, and 40k but I just want something a little different. I've dabbled in Warmachine, Malifaux, and I would like to know what the playstyle of Monsterpocalypse is? Is it a boardgame like how malifaux is usually or is it freereign like warhammer/warmachine? Is it still all dice based? Does it have a lot of strategy or more just clash/smash? How long does a game normally take to play? Are there many others around still who play it?

 

[Von Calyptra]

You can download the rulebook here (scroll down to series 4 rulebook). Basically, your resource is dice. Every turn you decide if it will be a unit turn or a monster turn, and dice rolled and/or dice spent to do things get shifted from the active dice pool (say, the monster pool if you're taking a monster turn) to the inactive one (in this case, the unit pool). Your monster gets power dice (which hit a lot more often than action dice) from destroying things; power dice make taking back to back monster turns a lot more viable.
Units constantly cycle back into play. Whenever your units are destroyed, you can just spend action dice in a unit turn to respawn them.
Kaiju can use power dice to execute a wide variety of wrestling-style power attacks, allowing them to slam, smash, headbutt, throw, etc the other monster around the city. Pitching the other monster through buildings, particularly buildings that burst into flames when destroyed, is a great way to do a lot of damage.
Each player brings their own buildings as part of their army, and the buildings all do things. Units can secure buildings to gain special effects (securing a radar array gives you extra range on blast attacks, securing an oil refinery gives you some extra movement, etc) and to provide extra power dice when you power up.

I find that a game typically takes a couple hours, though setting a time limit on turns would help a lot with that.

To play, you'll need to get either a starter set, or some maps and a component pack (which gives you a health tracker and a full dice set) for each player. There's also a module available for Vassal. Team Covenant has an extensive wiki for the game which includes the stats and rules for every model, so theoretically you could proxy everything.

The last set for the game, Big in Japan, was released three years ago. The game continues to have a cult following, including the fan run MonCon every year in Tulsa. Finding players in your area might be tricky though.

 

[Corien Sumatris]

Oh I'm sure finding players will either be tough or easy! Is it expensive? My idea is to get 2 armies and then use it as a board game so then I can just get my buddies to play without them having to spend tons of money.

 

[Von Calyptra]

That's been my plan.
The game's sets are divided into two blocks. The first set of each block (Rise and Now) are foundational, with the follow-up sets being supplementary to them. So if you got a bunch of Rise, that would basically be a complete game, minus expansions.
Contents of packs are randomized, but contents of cases of packs are not, so a sealed case of monster boosters will give you one of each monster for the set with no duplicates (except for All Your Base, which only had six monsters). A unit booster case gives you one each of the rare units for each faction, and at least one of each building. You can get a monster case and two unit cases for under $200, which will yield six viable armies, one for each of the initial factions (though people will probably want to pick up a few extra things as singles).

I'm assuming you'll try the game before spending hundreds of dollars on it.

I think you can get an army from ebay and online retailers by just buying singles for around $50, though you'll still need buildings.

 

[Corien Sumatris]

Nice!! Thanks for all of the info buddy! I'll do some research and see if there is any of it going on around my city!