6:59… 6:59…6:59…

The alarm clock on Steve Blanchard’s nightstand peacefully blinked with a dull rhythm, as he watched the seconds slowly plink away.

6:59… 6:59… 7:00.

Suddenly, but not surprisingly, the darkened apartment was filled with buzzing as Steve heavily lurched himself out of bed, slapping the worn-down OFF button of the dollar-store clock. It was just another Monday morning; nothing out of the ordinary. Steve quietly got dressed, poured himself a cup of coffee, and pulled open the shades. Outside his window was a sixty foot tall dinosaur grappling with some sort of alien monstrosity. Steve sighed.

Just another average Monday.

This is Monsterpocalypse, Privateer Press’ excellent kaiju themed miniatures game, and I’m Jeff Gum, the new staff writer who’s going to be talking about it with you on a regular basis.

Before we bust into the dinosaurs and UFOs, though, I want to give you a little backstory on how I came to find myself in this position. Close your eyes and imagine, and I’ll take you back with me to the start of it all (Don’t actually close your eyes, since you’re still going to need to read this). You see, I’m a longtime collaborator of EoV’s senior staff, having worked with many of them back at Magic Deck Vortex (where I’m still actively serving as a forum moderator). A few months ago, the Eye Guys came to us and asked if there were any MonPoc players who wanted to write a series. At the time, I was both too busy and too inexperienced to reasonably handle the job properly, so I didn’t respond. Things can change, however, and change they did, and so I contacted the appropriate people, made some calls (they were technically Facebook messages, but that’s not the cliché), and set up shop here, albeit a few months late.

I have a bunch of ideas on what I can write about, especially with the release of the new Big in Japan expansion so close, but before I get into the really in-depth stuff, I want to dial it back a bit. You see, while browsing EoV I see a lot of talk about this game Battle Spirits. I’ve read a couple articles on it and I’ve been pretty entertained by them, but here’s the issue: I haven’t a damn clue what they’re talking about. Battle Spirits, like Monsterpocalypse, is a game that’s chock full of jargon and unique phraseology. Just like I haven’t the faintest idea of what a yellow core on your nexus is (can a Nexus even have a yellow core?), I realized that my potential readers’ eyes are going to similarly fog up if they don’t have advanced knowledge of what “Armodax is granted Power Drain from the green ability of the Stock Exchange I’m securing” means. So, before we go anywhere, I want to give you guys a brief crash course on what this game I’ll be talking about every few days is.

Please note this: I’m not going to be able to teach you all of Monsterpocalypse in one article. I’m already five hundred words in, and I haven’t even begun yet. That’s not what this is about. What I’m attempting to do is to give you a basic knowledge of what the game is, its basic structure, and a couple commonly used terms. Hopefully I’ll whet your appetite enough to actually try to learn to play, but in a worst case scenario this will serve as a primer for those who don’t know how but still want to read along for entertainment’s sake. I aim to entertain.

Now that all of those lengthy introductions are out of the way, the few of us who are still reading can get down to the nit and the grit. Monsterpocalypse is a miniatures game based on kaiju films and B-movie sci-fi, as you might have noticed. A Monsterpocalypse army is separated into two parts, comprised of three types of figures. These are your Force and your City.



Your Force is made up of your Monster, its Hyper Form, and up to fifteen Units (Like I said, jargon heavy. Bear with me). Your Monster is the head of your army and it is what the whole game hinges around; when the Monster dies, you lose. Monsters sit on 2x2 square bases. Each Monster also has something called a Hyper form; think of it as their version of going Super Saiyan. A Monster’s Hyper Form and Alpha Form (the regular one you start in) each have their own health stat, and a player loses when both run out. Monsters come packaged in random boosters with their Alpha and Ultra forms, but there’s at least on other option to choose from for Hyper forms, Megas and Quantums, which are given away as various prizes. Units are the 1x1 square based figures that assist your monster. They function similarly, but there are some distinct differences. Units are separated into Grunt and Elite types; while you can have up to 15 units, only five of those units may be elite. As you can imagine, they’re stronger than grunts.

Your City is made up of up to twelve buildings. You get one building in each Unit Booster you buy (yes, Units and Monsters have separate boosters), so beginners may not have that full twelve. Don’t worry about it; there have been some competitive strategies that run as little as 3 buildings (the minimum is two). You don’t directly control buildings, but the buildings you bring to a game directly influence the features of the map, so a well planned city is a crucial part of the strategy of the game.

What sets Monpoc apart from other miniatures games is its dice system. Rather than having a predetermined number of things you can do on any given turn, you pay for your actions using dice. Pay for them, Tekk? Yes, dear reader. You see, on either side of the game map are two areas to keep dice; one for units and one for your monster. At the beginning of each turn, the player decides whether he or she will use his units or monster that turn. Whenever you pay a cost, that many dice are moved to the opposite side. The ten dice you have to work with are white, and they’re called action dice (colloquially, a-dice). However, there are also red power dice and blue boost dice you have to work with. Power dice you earn by controlling or knocking down buildings, destroying enemy units, or other objectives. These dice can be used as a one-time boost to your monster’s attack, and they’re also what are used to pay for the cost of transforming into Hyper. Like a-dice, you can never have more than ten p-dice at a time. Finally, some attack stats are marked by a star and a number. That number is the amount of blue boost dice get added to that attack for free. While you get four boost dice when you buy a starter set, in reality the number of boost that can be added to an attack is unlimited; if you need more dice than you have, just mark your roll and use them again.

Speaking of attacks, those are the last major thing we need to talk about. Monsterpocalypse has three types of attacks: brawl, blast, and power. The first two should be self explanatory: brawl attacks are melee, and can be made against an adjacent enemy, while blasts are ranged attacks that come in short (3 squares) and long (5 squares) varieties. Power attacks, while not something totally unique, are one of the defining features of Monpoc. Power attacks are special maneuvers that only monsters can perform. While they can only be performed if you are in perfect alignment with the enemy and have at least 1 power die to spend on the attack, they have powerful side effects, such as smashing the enemy into a building or clearing the board of units with an earthquake inducing stomp.

This information only scratches the surface of what it takes to play Monpoc, but at this point you should at least be able to have a basic understanding of what we’re talking about from here on. If what you’ve read seems like your kind of game, you can find a handy PDF of the full rulebook here.

Monsterpocalypse, the more I think about it, is a lot like Battle Spirits. It’s a simple, cheap alternative to miniatures games. As any Warhammer or Warmachine player can attest to, the cost of minis stacks up incredibly fast, so a game where a top tier army can be built for around $100 is a blessing.

Coming up, I’ll be talking about one of the new Mega forms being released in the wake of the newest expansion’s delay. Those of you who are familiar with my work in the past should be able to guess who this monster is, but for those of you who don’t, I promise you’ll be seeing typical Tekk in full swing soon enough.

In the mean time, meet me in the forums and let's talk some monsters!

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