Monster Island

'Monster Island' was the first giant monster game I owned and played. After the time I've spent recently messing around with 'Mighty Monsters' I got nostalgic for its old-school charms, and dragged out my copy to see if I could remember how to play. It's a much simpler game both in terms of monster design and mechanisms than either 'Mighty Monsters' or 'Giant Monster Rampage', so I picked it up again quite quickly after a read-through. I also found the notes I'd made about fifteen years ago (when I last played it) in which I tried to clear up various issues with the balance of certain combat moves and the costing of some movement abilities.

Anyway, I took a Godzilla design from the book, a giant plant-monster design I found from an old game and put together a new design for Crimson Typhoon, and tried a quick game last night. It was kind of a 'score points for being near the pagoda' type of game, but that wasn't really important.

Here's the protagonists - Godzilla, Metacrinus and Crimson Typhoon. Monsters have four characteristics (Strength, Agility, Health and Mind) from which are derived a number of secondary characteristics (Life, Toughness, Daze, Move and Evade). A monster has 30pts to spend, with characteristics costing 1 point per point. Special abilities are also bought out of the 30pts. So Godzilla is:

STR 8, AGL 5, HTH 8, MIND 2, Swimming 3" (1), Atomic Breath 6D6 (6) - 30pts
(Life 40, Toughness 8, Daze 10, Move 7, Evade 15)

I apologise for the poor-quality pictures. The light wasn't very good, and I was tired and not concentrating when I took them.

The three monsters closed on each other from the corners.

The plant-monster Metacrinus attacked first, with its pollen spray causing some damage to Godzilla. Constant ranged attacks are discouraged in this game by monsters only being allowed to use them every other turn. Combat consist of rolling 3D6 to hit - you add your own agility, apply modifiers and have to equal or beat the opponent's Evade score. Damage is scored by rolling a handful of dice, with anything beating the target's Toughness being subtracted from their Life. If the damage taken exceeds the target's Daze score, then the target is stunned.

Godzilla closed up and used his atomic breath on Metacrinus, who shrugged off the considerable damage using its one-off Hardy ability, which allows a monster to ignore all of the damage from one attack.

Crimson Typhoon had closed up now. The jaeger's attacks were not as powerful as those of Godzilla or Metacrinus, but it could attack twice per round to make up for it - in 'Monster Island' a figure can only make one attack per activation. A couple of strikes with the mech's bladed arms seriously injured the plant-creature.

Godzilla's atomic breath finished off Metacrinus. The plant was an obvious first target for sustained assault because it could regenerate, so there was no point in half measures when it came to damage. In addition it had a dangerous venom attack, which needed to be avoided if possible.

One quirky but fun feature of 'Monster Island' is the fact that if you take down an opposing kaiju, you are required to spend the whole of your next action bellowing your triumph/celebrating. So whilst Godzilla was doing that over the fallen Metacrinus, Crimson Typhoon moved round for a sneaky rear-attack.

Fortunately for Godzilla, he managed to get the initiative on the next turn, and was able to face his attacker. But Crimson Typhoon had spent a round intimidating the giant lizard (another move allowed in 'Monster Island'), and had a nice combat bonus lined up even without the rear-attack.

The jaeger attacked, with the first blow damaging and stunning Godzilla. The second attack was a mighty kick which sent Godzilla sprawling.

And that was really the beginning of the end. Crimson Typhoon had the edge on initiative, and was able to keep up sustained attacks on Godzilla, who couldn't get into a position to retaliate. He made one more attack with his breath, but missed.

And that was it. More attacks from Crimson Typhoon saw Godzilla defeated.

In terms of defence Crimson Typhoon isn't that tough, and had a decent attack connected, Godzilla would have probably got the edge. But the jaeger is hard to hit, and in this game that's what counted.

I enjoyed the game, but there are some areas that need tweaking and house-ruling. I've mentioned the combat moves above - some of them are, quite simply, better than others, making certain moves pointless. There's an issue with initiative in that a kaiju with a good initiative score can hold its action, but it doesn't really cover what happens if more than one monster does this. And whilst there's a bonus for doing a rear-attack, there's not much more information of facing or even how you determine the 'rear' (this is a real peeve of mine with a number of rules - giving bonuses for flank/rear attacks whilst not defining flank and rear). These are not insurmountable problems, though, and I might have more of a fiddle with the rules sometime.