The Terrasaurs

One could safely say that the world’s fascination with large monsters attacking cities began with a giant lizard attacking Tokyo way back in the 50’s. The kaiju genre just is not the same unless you have a giant lizard involved.

From where I stand, no other faction tells the kaiju story in Monsterpocalypse quite like the Terrasaurs.

When mankind pushes to hard on Mother Nature, Mother Nature has a habit of pushing back. Enter the Terrasaurs. These titanic beasts arose from the South American jungles to destroy what man has created. Pollution, nuclear power, and general disregard for the planet’s well being are the wrongs these beasts mean to set right. They aim to set the clock on man’s development back a few generations and restore nature’s longevity.

In game, many of the building feature abilities that benefit a specific faction or agenda. Most factions can count on two different buildings with abilities that specifically benefit them. The Terrasaurs have four such buildings, and all those abilities trigger off the building’s destruction. One of these abilities provides an additional Power Die, where the other restores Health to the Terrasaur monster. Thus Terrasaurs like to eat buildings.

Regenerating mid game is a huge benefit. Tacking on an extra Health at the right moment can buy you that one extra turn you need to win. In addition to the buildings that regenerate the Terrasaurs, Terra Khan’s Munch ability allows him to eat an enemy unit to regain Health. The option to regain Health from eating buildings or enemy units can make taking down Terra Khan a real challenge.

Most monsters do not have an option for dealing more than one damage with an attack in their Alpha form (power attacks being the exception). Terra Khan bucks that rule. As long as a friendly Terrasaur unit is adjacent to the enemy monster Terra Khan is attacking, his Feeding Frenzy ability lets him deal Super Damage (+1 damage) with his brawl attack. This again creates another great visual in your mind of Terra Khan ripping into the enemy monster while his surrounding units join in on the feast. There’s something very National Geographic about that.

Terra Khan does not travel alone; he comes with the mighty Armodax. Armodax is a stomping and smashing machine. If he is not sending an enemy monster through a row of buildings, then he is taking all of the surrounding buildings and units down with a thunderous stomp. Armodax deals extra damage with his Smash power attacks and gains extra Power Dice when he Stomps. His standard modus operandi is to Stomp everything around him into a pile of dust to gain a stack of Power Dice then run toward the enemy monster and hit it with a wicked Smash that sends it through three or four buildings. With Armodax, you can count on your city looking like a parking lot by the end of the game.

The Terrasaurs are built off of the story of the giant lizards that emerge from the costal waters to destroy the city and terrorize mankind. Their abilities encourage their players to play the part, and in doing so they recreate some of cinema’s great moments with awesome story elements that play out right inside your head.

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And Everything Else

This October, Monsterpocalypse debuts with the release of Starters, Unit Boosters and Monster Boosters, but we also have a whole collection of other goodies coming out that add a lot to your play experience!

The Accessory Pack
This pack has everything you need to take your game to the next level.

For those players that lose their dice or just want extras, this pack includes a set of dice just the set in the Starter. Getting four extra Boost Dice alone makes this purchase worth it. Sometimes combined attacks can stack up a lot of Boost Dice, and these extra dice help reduce the need to re-roll dice to get your result. Also, let’s be honest: The dice are small, and your cat could end up eating a couple of them. Having some extra dice on hand beats fishing through a box of sand to retrieve them.

The Accessory Pack also has another Health Tracker, which becomes important if you plan on playing multi-monster games. The Health Tracker is the best way of tracking your monster’s Health – with easy to read numbers, there will be no confusing the status of your monsters’ well-being. This saves you the hassle of having to keep track of your monster’s Health with archaic means from yesteryear.

Having trouble telling what figures belong to which player? The Monsterpocalypse Accessory Pack includes identification rings that easily slip on and off your figures but stay in place and declare to the world that those figures belong to you! The pack includes 15 small-base rings and 16 large-base rings. That’s enough rings to outfit your entire collection of figures for a multi-monster game (two monsters, two Hyper forms, 15 units, and 12 buildings). The rings even come in red or blue. Thirty-one rings to rule them all!

The Monsterpocalypse: Rise Map Pack
A map pack will also release with the Monsterpocalypse Launch Kit. This pack of three double-sided maps will change the game in a variety of ways. With differing numbers of foundations and a variety of configurations for those foundations and terrain features, just choosing a map can become as important as choosing your buildings. The player that goes second gets to choose the map, and he can offset the disadvantage of going second by selecting a map that suits his strategy. The map you choose to play with can provide you with that “home field advantage” just like the Green Monster provides a home field advantage to the Red Sox.

The map pack also includes the Government Building. We restricted the use of this building to one per player so that you would not feel the need to buy five copies of the map pack – you only need the one. This structure provides you with the Subsidize ability, which adds a Boost Die when you make your Power Up rolls to gain Power Dice. This improves your odds of successfully Powering Up by a lot and means you do not need to roll as many dice for your Power Up rolls, which leaves more dice for your monster to use.

The Monsterpocalypse: Rise Strategy Guide
The Strategy Guide features spoilers, tactical tips, and articles to help take your Monsterpocalypse experience to the next level. Inside you will find perspective and insight on competitive and casual play. We cover everything from each figure, to commentary on the abilities, to talking about all of the maps. Detailed in full color with diagrams and images, this beautiful offering will go miles toward enhance your game. This product even comes with a unique, double-sided map.

While none of these products are required to play Monsterpocalypse, you will find that they each have something to offer that makes your play experience more kick-ass. If you have any interest in the aforementioned items, you should speak with your local retailer to make sure that they bring in these products along with the Starters and Boosters.

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A Menace from the Heavens!

When I was a kid, my grandmother would talk about a UFO encounter where she and my uncle saw something that looked like a Star Destroyer fly over their car while returning from a fishing trip. I should note that my family lived in the Inland Empire of southern California, the prime location for aircraft flying to and from air bases in Nevada and the southern California desert. When the B-2 stealth bomber was revealed, I put one and one together to make sense of her story. Today, I would not say that I believe in alien visitors, but I would not completely rule it out. I am sure the truth is out there, but finding that truth just is not the same without Scully.

In 1938 Orson Wells turned the American radio listening public on their collective ear with his broadcast of the War of the Worlds. Lots of Greatest Generation Americans believed that aliens from another world had invaded the US. To be honest, those crazy lights over Phoenix in 1997 had me wondering whether or not we were about to make contact with alien visitors, and the reports in 2000 regarding “black triangles” over Illinois are pretty convincing.

So here we are in 2008, and we need to prepare for the next alien invasion. The Martian Menace is an awesome portion of Monsterpocalypse. While kind of born out of the kaiju genre, they draw their major influences from 1950s and 60s science fiction – which on the street of movie genres, live right next door to the early kaiju movies. The faction contains flying saucers inspired by the flying discs of yesteryear and three-legged walkers inspired by H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. The Martian Menace really feels right at home with the likes of Terra Kahn and Gorghadra as alien invaders have a long tradition as antagonists in kaiju films. Some alien faction was always summoning or building some monster to wreak havoc on the Earth and challenge the protagonist monster.

The Menace have simple goals: world domination through complete subjugation of the human species in order to harvest the Earth’s resources. Mars is a dead planet. The Martians depleted their own natural resources and put nearly their entire population into hibernation until their engineers and scientist could develop a fleet of ships capable of conquering the Earth. Evidentially the $4.30 a gallon we pay for gas has not dissuaded them from coming for our resources. Perhaps the prospect of Congressman Cannon’s Oil Shale bill has them excited?

Game-wise the Martian Menace may be one of the best factions in terms of producing Power Dice with minimal dedication to securing buildings or holding lots of Power Zones. The Power Pod units are certainly the most important figures in this regard in the Martian Menace arsenal. Though slow on its own, faster Saucer units can put this pod in place by using the Saucer’s Transport ability and the pod’s companion Cargo ability. The Power Pod’s Amplify ability allows you to gain two Power Dice instead of one for holding a Power Zone. With just a couple of Power Pods holding Power Zones, you can start to generate a good amount of Power Dice every turn. Also units like the Vanguard (with its Power Gorge ability to produce two Power Dice instead of one when it destroys a unit) gives the Martians a nice dice-advantage during play.

The Ares Mothership may be one of the most frustrating monsters to face. In her Ultra form she gains the Negation ability, which prevents Power Attacks within two spaces of her. This limits her opponent’s attack options, and it takes a while to grind her down. Her companion, the walker pod Deimos-9, grants the Hit and Run ability to all of your units. That ability allows you to attack and then move with your units, which is valuable for shooting a unit then retreating behind rough terrain, seeking cover, or just advancing deeper into enemy territory to harass units trying to secure buildings or hold Power Zones. Things just get worse and worse for your opponent when you move into your Ultra form. Deimos gains Lightning Attack (you can make a second brawl attack against the same target when you hit). When accompanied by Penetrator (reduces target’s defense versus brawl attacks) and Siphon (target loses a Power Die and you gain a Power Die when you hit), this allows Deimos to become quite the machine for suppressing your opponent’s Power Dice while delivering damage and gaining additional Power Dice. That’s a four Power Dice swing and two points of damage when you hit with your brawl attack.

The Martians are a crafty faction to play. They hit fast, gain Power Dice like no other faction, and they have a touch of Power Dice denial that can really send your opponent’s best laid plans to the cornfield.

When I first saw the Ares Mothership, I knew I wanted to play this faction. To me there is something really cool about taking something like the kaiju genre and making it your own by interjecting related and similar concepts and expanding those concepts, like we did with the Lords of Cthul and the Martian Menace. It broadens the appeal and makes it uniquely Monsterpocalypse. When you put that on top of a great game, you have a game worth playing. My friends, Monsterpocalypse is that game!

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