Mighty Monsterpocalypse

The more I play with Mighty Monsters, the more I realise that the points values for some of the special abilities are off. A lot of my games now are designed to test tweaks or outright changes to how some of these abilities work, or how they are costed. Some of it is just simplifying things, whilst other changes are more radical. One of these is Armour, which I have never found satisfactory. In the basic game you buy Armour for different body parts, which kind of makes sense when you design a monster as a series of body parts. But in fact most combat rolls are made against one body part - the Body/Torso. It's rare that you can justify the cost of adding armour to other body parts. In addition armour only protects against kinetic attacks - close combat and weapons such as guns and missiles. You have to buy a cheaper armour called Reisistance against other attacks, and buy it against each type - fire, cold, radiation and so on. This adds loads of colour, but makes buying defences prohibitively expensive. It also reduces the value of kinetic ranged attacks, since they cost the same as, say, electrical attacks, but can be resisted by normal armour, whereas against an electrical attack the monster needs to buy a specific defence.

So as you can see, I've really over-thought this Armour thing ...

My solution for buying it was to ruthlessly simplify things. Armour is bought against close-combat attacks or ranged attacks, with the latter coming at half the cost of the former. It isn't applied to a single body part - you either have armour, or you don't. It is considered light armour. At double cost you can make it heavy. I cost it as follows:

Light Armour vs Close Combat - 20pts
Light Armour vs Ranged Attacks - 10pts
Heavy Armour vs Close Combat - 40pts
Heavy Armour vs Ranged Attacks - 20pts

Next I looked at its effect. Light Armour allows you to ignore any attack that only hits by one point. heavy allows you to ignore attacks which hit by one or two points. This sounds quite reasonable until you realise that simply increasing the C value of an armoured body part gives you roughly the same effect at not only a lower cost (generally) but with the added bonus that it's harder to double the score. In other words, using either the original armour rules, or my change, it's cheaper simply to have a higher combat value than it is to armour up.

So I looked to see if there was a way to make armour have a different effect. I wondered if the Ironclad rule from Galleys & Galleons would work better - in that the defender rolls two dice against any attack, and takes the best. I thought that might work for light armour, with heavy armour allowing the defender to roll three dice and select the best.

I set up a game to try it out, using two of my new Monsterpocalype figures - Terra Khan fought Armordax. They stats are below, but they are both loosely based around Godzilla, but Armordax has heavy armour against close combat attacks and light against ranged.

I played the crystal scenario I've used before - monsters score points for ending their turn close to a glowing crystal, which then moves randomly each time a monster scores points off it.

Here are the monsters ready to go.

Armordax got the early movement rolls, and score points off the crystal.

Terra Khan closed up and used his radioactive breath, but couldn't defeat Armordax's armour.

The monsters charged ...

And the fight began in earnest.

Armordax tried to keep between Terra Khan and the crystal

But, of course, the crystal moves, and soon both monsters were chasing it whilst trying to stop the other.

It became fairly obvious that Terra Khan was going to have trouble taking down Armordax - the changes to the way armour worked made him too tough.

The game ran to a time-limit. Terra Khan had wobbly legs from the damage he'd taken from Armordax (who was relatively unhurt), and fell down as the game timed out. The score was closer than the damage suggested, but Armordax won it.

I had a rethink over lunch about how to work armour, and came up with an alternative solution.

Light Armour allows the monster to reroll any defence rolls of 1
Heavy Armour allows the monster to reroll any defence rolls of 1 or 2

I thought this would make it useful for the cost, whilst not making it a guaranteed defence.

I tried the fight again ...

This time Terra Khan got to the crystal first.

Again the monsters chased each other

But this time, whilst the armour was useful, it wasn't over-powered. It saved Armordax a couple of times, but didn't make it impossible to wound him.

Both monsters took damage, and stumbled as they tried to delay the other and get points from the crystal.

They dodged and moved.

But in the end, the game timed out into a draw.

The change I made for the second game felt better, and I will carry it forward into further games and see how it plays out.

Here are the stats for the two monsters, assuming the armour costs and rules described above:

Terra Khan

Head Q3 C3 - Energy Blast C4L, Fangs
Body Q4 C4 - Regeneration
Arms Q3 C2
Legs Q3 C3 - Amphibious
Tail Q3 C3

Armordax

Head Q3 C3 - Energy Blast C4S, Fangs
Body Q4 C4 - Heavy Armour (Close Combat), Light Armour (Range)
Arms Q3 C2
Legs Q3 C3 - Amphibious
Tail Q3 C4