It's Another Giant Monster Rampage

What better way to start the weekend than demolishing a city with four building-sized creatures hell-bent on crushing skyscrapers and each other? Yes, it's time for another game of Giant Monster Rampage.

Whilst I'm aiming to give my WWII London's Burning scenario another go at some stage, I went for the more traditional Japanese-style battle for this game, trying out some figures and designs I'd not used before.

This was the city I set up:

As ever, I went for Lego architecture. The two park areas in the middle were classed as woods, which meant that they slowed movement. A few objects (tanks and vehicles) were scattered around for the monsters to throw at each other.

On to the monsters themselves. All were attacking the city; this was a straight fight for points, which could be scored for demolishing buildings and inflicting damage on the other monsters. Here's the cast:

From Left to Right: Craniax, Kinguana, Metacrinus and Rodan

Rodan is a straight lift from the Godzilla movies, whereas the other monsters are all my own work.

Craniax
An alien spaceship with a mind-control ray. The pincers and drill provide a limited close-combat capability, whilst a holofield protects it from long-range attack. The model is a toy I picked up years ago, and repainted.

Kinguana
If you were making a Godzilla knock-off movie, Kinguana would be the star. A good mix of ranged attack, via flame-breath and close combat abilities, with defence based around simple toughness. I picked up the Kinguana model at a local market on a toy stall.

Metacrinus
A mutated plant horror. Metacrinus can attack with a debilitating pollen spray, as well as poison-tipped tendrils. The figure is constructed from some alien plant toys, a load of milliput and florist-wire tentacles.

Rodan
A giant pterosaur. Well, near enough. Rodan can fly, with a destructive sonic-boom, and his wing flpas can cause hurricane-force winds. In close combat he uses his beak and wings to good effect. Rodan is a Bandai HG figure I got from Ebay. Ebay is a great source of such figures, and is where I acquired much of my monster collection.

(If you want the full game stats let me know and I'll post them in the comments)

I didn't note down a blow by blow account of the game (which you will no doubt be pleased to hear), but I did take a few pictures.

The monsters advance into the city from all directions. You can see a few buildings missing already:

The game initially settled into two sections. In one Kinguana set about destroying everything in sight, whilst Craniax used his mind-control to also have Kinguana destroy everything in sight. With Flame Blast this turned out to be an effective tactic for both monsters.

Here we see Craniax subjecting Kinguana to another mental attack:

On the other side of the city, Rodan flew back and forth using sonic-booms to knock bits off buildings. Metacrinus waved tendrils at buildings, but was relatively ineffective when it came to damaging them. One opportunity was too good to miss though:

A Gas Blast on Rodan dropped him out of the sky onto the building below, destroying it.

Kinguana got very god at lining up shots for maximum destruction:

In fact Craniax and Kinguana were doing so well it was obvious that the other monsters were going to have to stop them. Rodan used his mighty wing flaps to push them both away from the juicier targets:

This left them no option to fight each other. Kinguana gave Craniax a good pummelling, as revenge for all the  mind-control, and knocked the alien ship out of the sky:

But Craniax retaliated, going airborne again, picking up Kinguana and, in a stroke of good fortune (a critical hit) throwing him half-way across the table into a massive skyscraper, demolishing it totally:

By this stage you can see just how much destruction the monsters have caused between them; most of the buildings are now rubble. The game was rapidly moving to the stage where the monsters could only pick up points by beating each other up.

This they set about doing, with surprisingly little effect at first:

Craniax and Kinguana set about each other again, and Craniax actually started to take a serious beating:

Rodan had a lot of fun flying back and forth using his sonic-booms to cause damage where he could:

Metacrinus just flailed wildly in his general direction, causing little real damage.

After eight turns I called it a day. No monster had actually been knocked out, but Craniax was looking a little weak, and both Metacrinus and Kinguana had taken a bit of a beating as well from various sources. Only Rodan had any serious fight left in him. Only three of the fifty-three original building sections in the city remained standing.

Time to tot up the points:

Craniax - Wounds 2, Buildings 14, Total 16. Most of the building points were caused by using Kinguana's Flame-Blast via Mind-Control.
Kinguana - Wounds 9, Buildings 17, Total 26. Again, it was the Flame-Blast that did the damage. Being a spray attack it hits everything in range, and Kinguana made good use of atomic power to extend this range wherever possible.
Rodan - Wounds 6, Buildings 10, Total 16. The sonic booms (Emission) worked well, and it was only some lucky save rolls by the buildings that prevented Rodan from getting a higher score.
Metacrinus - Wounds 2, Buildings 9, Total 11. Metacrinus was probably playing out of his league, although the ability to launch close combat attacks from outside of retaliation range was useful.

So Kinguana was the runaway winner, with Craniax and Rodan tying for second place. Craniax was fun to play; hovering on the fringes and getting the other monsters to score points for him.

So, after that diversion it's back to the WWII monster designs.

Update: Well, it's amazing what you stumble across by accident - the model I used for Kinguana is, in fact, one of a monster from the Ultraman universe called (for some reason) Red King. Red King is very strong, but doesn't have flame breath. But I like the name Kinguana, so it's staying for now.