Volcano Fun

Caesar, John and I tried 'Mighty Monsters' again on Thursday, playing a modified version of the Volcano Fun scenario in the rules.

Each of us ran a pair of monsters or mechs, with a theme to each one.

Caesar ran a pair of Monsterpocalypse mechs - Mecha Khan (the lizard)  and Mecha Kondo (the gorilla).

John ran a pair of jaegers - Crimson Typhoon and Cherno Alpha.

I ran a pair of giant gorillas - Ape-X and the massive Gokura.

Caesar and John stuck to the sea at the start, in order to avoid potential lava flows from the volcano. Mecha Khan inflicted some hits on Cherno Alpha with its missile pods.

My gorillas were on the opposite side of the volcano to the two teams of mechs, so initially just watched the fight.

But what of the volcano? It would start erupting if any monster rolled more than two failures on their activation dice. I managed this on my very first turn. On the very first activation, in fact. The initial eruption caused earthquakes which could potentially knock monsters down, and flying debris, which could damage them (but didn't). After that it had a random effect, diced for at the start of each turn - see below.

Each subsequent time a player rolled two failed activations, the next player in the sequence could place a section of lava, which either had to be touching the central volcano, or an existing piece of lava. Any monster hit by the lava was 'attacked'.

And here you can see the volcano in action - Gokura and Mecha Kondo were closing on each other, but lava was already flowing from the volcano towards them.

On the other side of table Crimson Typhoon and Ape-X got stuck into each other. John threw Crimson Typhoon straight into combat, in order to avoid the ape's powerful plasma-gun.

Earth tremors knocked them both down, and they both took hits from lava.

Meanwhile the two giant gorillas, organic and mechanical, were slogging it out. Caesar brought up Mecha Khan to help his other mech though.

Gokura was now fighting two opponents. Points are scored in this scenario for defeating opposing monsters, so I concentrated Gokura's attacks on the weaker of the two foes - Mecha Khan. Avoiding its buzz-saw tail, Gokura grappled the mechanical lizard, and then over a couple of turns pulled it to pieces.

Crimson Typhoon and Ape-X both escaped the lava, but Ape-X got the iitiative, and fired a deadly series of plasma bolts from his gun, temporarily disabling Crimson Typhoon. The slower Cherno Alpha was coming up in support - but would it arrive in time?

No. It wouldn't. Ape-X finished off Crimson Typhoon.

Gokura finished smashing mecha Khan, but was taking a lot of damage from Mecha Kondo.

They were both knocked down by an earth tremor, and caught in lava. Mecha Kondo recovered first, and finished off Gokura.

Ape-X prepared to fight Cherno Alpha, but couldn't get off a shot with his gun.

Cherno Alpha slowly closed the range and plodded into action, giant fists flying.

Mecha Kondo bounded across the table (dodging lava all the way) and also entered the fight.

In one turn Cherno Alpha defeated them both!

John and I had defeated two opponents each, whilst Caesar had defeated one. But we gave John the win for having the last monster standing.

We used a few of my house-rules in the game and they seemed to work OK, but we found a few more grey areas as well (particularly with regard to how to adjudicate damage on mechs) which I will address at some stage.

As for the volcano:

At the start of each turn roll a D6:

1 - The volcano does nothing horrible this turn.
2-3 - Earth Tremors - Any monster not already knocked down, in the water, airborne, or that is amorphous rolls a single D6 against the Leg Q value. If it fails then they are Knocked Down.
4-5 - Volcanic Ash means that all ranged combat is at -1 this turn.
6 - Earth tremors and Volcanic Ash - Apply both effects for the turn.