Godzilla vs Gamera

The Most Shocking Blogpost You Will See THIS CENTURY!

Representing Toho Studios - GODZILLA!

Representing the Daiei Motion Picture Company - GAMERA!

This is always a classic fight, and one I like to do to try out rules. Both monsters are the primary characters of their studios; it's like putting Spiderman and Batman together. I've played this out twice before - Godzilla won it when I used 'Monster Island', dumping Gamera in a volcanic vent. Gamera won the 'Giant Monster Rampage' refight. So this is the decider!

I posted the stats for each monster in the previous post. And I ran the same scenario we used on Thursday - one monster attacking the city and the other defending. I diced, and Godzilla was determined to be the attacker, with Gamera as the heroic defender.

Godzilla went first and headed for the nearest building.

Demolishing it he then used his breath weapon on another building. He destroyed that too, but a roll of '1' meant that he lost his ranged attack for the rest of the game. Not a good start.

Gamera got off to a slow start, going airborne for greater speed.

Godzilla improvised a ranged attack, picking up rubble and throwing it at nearby buildings, but with no effect.

Gamara closed in. His breath weapon inflicted the first hit on Godzilla.

He then dodged out of the way of Godzilla's attacks - being able to fly is very useful when your opponent can't.

Ignoring Gamera, Godzilla headed downtown.

But Gamera was back on the attack - a body-slam followed by a bite. Impressive ...

... and enough to inflict some real damage on Godzilla (the yellow dice). Godzilla retaliated by demolishing another building.

Unfortunately in trying to bite Gamera he fell over.

But he quickly got up and grappled the giant turtle.

Only to drop him when a bad activation die roll caused him to fall over again. Not missing the opportunity Gamera laid into him with bites and punches.

Godzilla attempted to regenerate, needing two body actions to succeed. A yellow dice failure meant a roll on the wound effect table, and another knockdown saw him knocked out. Gamera had won!

Gamera Triumphant!

ROOOOAAAR!

I realised as I was writing this up that Godzilla could have gone beserk on his final round, healing one wound automatically, and getting three body actions, which would have allowed the regeneration of a second wound. So he would have been back into the fight with a vengeance. But I'm not really sure what he could have achieved - Gamera is very difficult to damage, and once locked in close combat it's very hard to escape, especially if your opponent is airborne. Multiple monsters would help - allies are always good. But really I think I need to be playing with lower points vale designs, and much lower C scores - I have been working with 3, 4 and 5 as standard values, but I think 300pt monsters with C scores of 2,3 and 4 may be the way to go. Most combat manoeuvres give the interesting effects only if you can double or triple the opponent's roll, but this is very, very hard to do with powerful monsters, even with multiple actions put into the attack. With lower C values I think that there are more, and more interesting, ways to exploit the combat manoeuvres.

And here's an indication of how much Japanese monsters have crept into our house - my daughter's cockatiels had a couple of babies earlier this year and one is named ... Rodan!