A Demo Game For Old Times' Sake

I ended up holding a demo game of Monsterpocalypse. I didn't play myself, instead walking both sides through the game phases and explaining the rules as we went along. For the most part I tried to leave both players to make their own decisions, but I did push them to use power attacks (which I walked them through) for several turns after the monsters got close enough, and gave suggestions on good plays when they asked towards the end of the game as the monsters' health started to get really low.

It was pure G.U.A.R.D. versus pure Empire of the Apes. We played using only base rules and models stats, with none of the rules on the models' cards (except High Mobility ofc, and sometimes Flight). The game was close, with King Kondo managing to pull off a rare win against Defender X. I believe both players knew a little about 40K but had no actual wargaming experience, and both seemed to enjoy the game. They seemed perfectly happy to not bother with the card rules; I think for their very first game just the core rules were enough for them to worry about. There was a bit of a discussion about the game's availablity, and it was nice to be able to say that there are digital models available.

A Game In The Background

I played a super-casual game with Contwrath. We were hanging out with a couple of guys at the gaming store so we were less focussed on playing the game and more on demonstrating it. In the end we stopped halfway as it was pretty late, but it was a very fun time. Highlights include Contwrath's Savage Swarm doing 9 damage in one turn to Kondo thanks to Xixorax's Super Damage on his Power Attacks. Building power bases and blowing up buildings
Xixorax is thrown around, leaving him in Hyper
Kondo is knocked down to 2 health in one turn!

The Double-Team

This was my first two-monster game of Monsterpocalypse. Since I don't have any faction with two painted monsters, I went for the classic team-up: the two monarchs, King and Khan! Karas was running Sky Sentinel and the typical fifteen Guard units, so I chose my four Bellowers for ranged attacks, four Carnidons and four Assault Apes to leverage Khan and Kondo's Blood Rage, the Pteradactix and the Command Ape for some movement tricks, and my cute little Brontox to help me push my lines up the board.

Game 1:
Karas won the roll and chose to go first. Again we treated all the buildings as apartment blocks. The triple foundations scared me so I tried to avoid filling them.

Karas made sure to grab some buildings and power nodes, while I focused more on getting models out and pushing them up the board.
Defender and Sentinel shot down a couple of high-priority units.
I tried to position my monsters to be hard to line up with.
We pushed up our units again.
Defender and Sentinel chained their throws to knock Khan into Hyper. I think Sky Sentinel took a point of damage for stepping into the hazard, which he shouldn't have.
Khan hit Defender with a melee attack with Super damage, then threw him into two buildings for five damage with another point of Super damage, for 8 damage total. Kondo then took damage to step into two hazards to throw Defender into another building, for three more damage, one-rounding him from full!
Karas split some attacks between Khan and some units, not quite managing to break Khan's DEF.
I responded by combining some melee attacks into Sentinel (I don't remember if they hit though).
Sentinel threw Khan into a building.
Khan returned the favour, then Kondo took another point of damage to line up for a power attack, but I think he missed the attack.
Karas focussed all his units to make two attacks on Khan; one hit, leaving Khan on one health.
Sentinel took his Rapid Fire attack into Khan, finishing him off, then threw Kondo into a Hazard. Kondo bounced away from the flames.
At this point Kondo was very low on health; I didn't want to take any more damage from stepping into hazards, and I didn't want to make it easy for Sentinel to land more power attacks, so I moved him to a safer position and used a Swat to throw a Strike Fighter into Sentinel.
Karas sent in his Strike Fighters to swarm Kondo, doing another point of damage.
I tried to get some damage onto Sentinel with my units, but with Khan gone the Terrasaurs were no longer getting Blood Rage and my Apes were all on the table and too far to help out, so I wasn't able to break his DEF of 9.
Sky Sentinel used Rapid Fire and a Fling to put two more points of damage on Kondo, leaving him on one health. Kondo could only do one damage in return with a single Fling.
History repeated itself once more as a swarm of human planes gunned the majestic beast down. Truly, it was human engineering that killed the beast.

Damn, that 11-damage turn was insane. We both thought it was basically over after that, but with no buildings left on that side of the board Sky Sentinel was able to live long enough to finish off the wounded Terra Khan, leaving him in a slow battle of attrition against King Kondo. With two attacks a turn and an army getting extra boost dice, against Kondo's limited one-on-one tools and no units able to take advantage of his buffs, I slowly fell behind, and Karas was able to grind out a win.

I don't really "get" King Kondo; I can see how he has a bit of extra survivability, and High Mobility helped to set up combos, but he just feels to me like he's missing a rule or two. I was a bit starved for power at times; I didn't focus enough on generating power with my units, and I kept forgetting about Kondo's Riled. I also struggle to make the most of melee units; ranged attacks are just easier to get value out of, even if they can struggle a bit with Cover.

While actually running Kondo and Khan alongside each other was very cool and thematic, it felt a little awkward in terms of unit selections and buffs. I dunno, I guess mono-faction just feels more natural to me right now. Guess I need to paint some more monsters.

Monkeying Around Town

Karas brought out his new Monsterpocalypse G.U.A.R.D. army for a spin, opting to try Sky Sentinel. I decided to run my Apes for a change.

Game 1:
I won the roll and took first turn. We played all the buildings as apartment blocks; someday we'll actually use the building rules... I brought in my flying apes first to take space... which didn't make much sense since they're the same speed as the gunners. Karas brought in his flyers because they get buffed by Sky Sentinel.
True to form, Kondo grabbed a plane out of the air and threw it at another unit.
Sky Sentinel hit Kondo with a blast but kept his distance.
My units killed some of his.
His units killed some of mine.
Kondo finally got his oversized opposable-thumbed-hands onto Sky Sentinel, slamming him into a building.
Sentinel repositioned and threw Kondo back, but Kondo bounced right back into his face, just to send a message.
Our units continued their battle over the center of the board.
With no buildings nearby, I decided to reposition. Kondo moved away, Swatting a unit into Sky Sentinel then stepping away a bit.
Sky Sentinel gave chase, throwing Kondo into a building. Kondo bounced to his feet to clear a power node.
I tried to run a fancy play, using the Rocket Ape and Command Ape to clear three units and repo back onto a power node, but I missed the third attack and couldn't step back onto the node.
Kondo slammed Sentinel again.

Sentinel retaliated with a throw first to generate a couple of extra power dice, before using them to power a blast attack to finish Kondo off.

Sky Sentinel seems a bit straight-forwards, but decent. Offensive stats might be a bit weak, but his higher SPD and DEF are nice. I'm not really feeling Kondo though. His damage output feels very low, with no extra attacks or super damage. Blood Rage is fine, but I never used it; it's easier to target models with blast attacks, especially when my melee units are a little slow and I don't have any movement tricks to deliver them. I feel like Grappler and Tantrum could be good defensive tech in two-monster games to prevent my opponent from lining up high-power turns, but neither of them did much here.

Anyway, I think we've reached the point where everyone understands the game well enough that we can start using two monsters each. That should make things interesting. I just wish I had time to paint up more of my monsters, so I could run two monsters while still playing mono-faction. Well, Khan and Kondo make a thematic pair themselves, so that's fine.

Actually Trying To Use The Rules

I got to play a game with Contwrath, who decided to buy in to Monsterpocalypse. He just received his models, so for now we used my stuff. He chose the Empire of the Apes, and I went for the good old Terrasaurs.


The Game:
We tried to pay more attention to model special rules this time, as well as actually using Cover and Terrain rules (which I've always forgotten or ignored until now). We stuck with basic appartment buildings though. I won the roll and chose to go first.

Pretty standard deployments.

I destroyed a building for funsies.

As did he.

My units start creeping up the sides.

His move up to meet them.

I start chipping away at Kondo with a blast attack.

Kondo responds with a brawl attack.

I take a second monster turn and nail Kondo with a Swat.

He does not activate Kondo again, going for a unit turn.

I knock a couple of his units off the power zones.

Despite this, by his next Monster turn Kondo is FULLY POWERED UP!

He still misses his Swat attack against Khan though...

I throw Kondo into a building, but he kills two of my units with a Tantrum.

The Apes push back against the Terrasaur units.

I send in reinforcements.

Kondo slams Khan for four damage, but is thrown into a building.

The Apes keep pushing for power zones.

As do the Saurians.

Kondo slams Khan into the double foundation again.

And Khan throws him back again.

With both monsters on just one health, the Ape units focus on Khan.

Throwing all the dice they can into a single attack, they get all the strikes!

"Not like this!" Khan goes down to a volley of gunfire!

We started a bit slow as Contwrath refreshed his memory on the rules. I feel like we both made better use of the units this game than in my previous games, securing buildings and jostling for power nodes etc. The monster side of the battle was a little subdued, partly because the units started to get in the way so we ended up not moving the monsters around very much. Overall it was a very fun game that I felt was was a bit more technical and a bit less "YOLO!" than some previous games, which makes sense when we were spending more time checking rules and so on. Still need to get that fourth Protectors monster painted...