Ten Years Ago - January 2016

I haven't done any giant monster gaming for a while now. I think I kind of fell out of love with all three of the rules I used for it, and haven't managed to convince myself to go back to one of them and remind myself what I liked about them. I even looked at writing my own, but never got very far with it. 

Anyway, my first nostalgia post for 2026 looks at this game of Giant Monster Rampage from 2016.  Maybe it will inspire me to get one of my set of rules out and smash up a few skyscrapers.

Giant Monster Rampage - Ghidorah vs Gambler Diamond

More Giants

I put together Crimson Typhoon design for 'Giants' the other day, so last night I tested her out.

The design is:

Built - Protector
Distance 4 - Dexterity 5 - Strength 3 - Toughness 3 - Energy 2

Blaster - Ranged, 12", 2 Wounds, Caustic, 2 Energy
Twin Arms - Melee, 3", 2 Wounds, Impact, Clamp, Twin
Left Arm - Melee, 3", 2 Wounds, Pierce

Obscure, Swim, Overload

I teamed up Crimson Typhoon with Gipsy Danger and pitted them against Pteradax and Gakura.

Gakura tried to engage Crimson Typhoon quickly by leaping across buildings, but Crimson Typhoon shot out one of his perches and the great ape fell into a lake where he would be seriously disadvantaged.

Meanwhile Pteradax and Gipsy Danger exchanged energy blasts as they approached each other, before getting stuck into a vicious close combat.

A view of the early fighting.

Gakura charged out of the lake and fought Crimson Typhoon, but the jaegers changed tack, looking to team up on Pteradax. To this end Crimson Typhoon hurled Gakura into the lake, forcing the ape to leave through terrain which would slow him down. The plan was that Crimson Typhoon would them move to support Gipsy Danger before the ape could get back into the fight.

As plans go, it was rubbish. Gakura charged out of the lake far faster than anticipated.

He attacked Gipsy Danger, who was forced back into the street along which Crimson Typhoon was trying to enter the fight. 

Gipsy Danger was taking a beating, and even more so when Pteradax joined the fight.

Gipsy Danger concentrated on Gakura, already injured by Crimson Typhoon, and brought him down. Pteradax smashed Gipsy Danger back into Crimson Typhoon, as the two jaegers struggled to move out into a more open area.

Eventually they managed it, forcing Pteradax back and injuring him badly. Gipsy Danger was also close to collapse at this stage, but Pteradax just couldn't finish her off.

Eventually Crimson Typhon managed to get in a series of clear shots with her blaster, and pounded Pteradax into submission.

The two jaeger designs held up well, and are actually quite useful, but I struggled with the Twin ability on Crimson Typhoon, which seems to be an expensive way to reduce your chance of hitting whilst allowing for the very remote possibility of two hits. I may replace it with a different ability to represent the way the twin arms can make life difficult for an opponent.

And the game played smoothly and quickly as well. I'm still not sure my tactics are that optimal, but I'm getting there. 

Gipsy Danger in 'Giants'

I had a go at doing some 'Giants' stats for Gipsy Danger yesterday, and then tried her out in a game.

I set up a two-sided fight with Gamera and Gipsy Danger teaming up against Pteradax and Gigan.

As you'd expect it quickly developed into two one-on-one fights. Gipsy Danger faced Pteradax. The flying mutant got off to a good start, but once the jaeger got going she eviscerated Pteradax.

Gamera and Gigan had been engaged in an even fight elsewhere, and neither had taken much damage but with Gipsy Danger now freed up Gigan was in trouble (Again).

In fact despite this he put up a much better fight, and inflicted some solid hits on Gipsy Danger, whilst using the jaeger as cover from the plodding Gamera.

But it couldn't last. The crew of Gipsy Danger soon got her attacks coordinated, and slowly battered Gigan into submission.

Afterwards I discovered that my build was slightly illegal, in that I had a characteristic too high (you can only have three of the five characteristics at a value of 4 or more, and I had four of them). I also realised a trait I'd put on one of the attacks wasn't really much use. So I made some small adjustments and came up with this build:

Gipsy Danger

Built/Protector

Distance 4 - Dexterity 4 - Strength 4 - Toughness 3 - Energy 2

Melee Attacks
Fist/Sword - Front, 3", 2 Wounds, Impact, Energise, Pierce
Vented Coolant - Front/Rear, 0", 2 Stress, 1 Energy, Cripple, Nullify, Uncharged

Ranged Attacks
Plasma Blaster - Front, 18", 2 Wounds, Caustic, 2 Energy

Other Abilities
Swim
Aura

Overload

The main attack is the Fist/Sword of course, which can boost its damage with Energise and use an opponent's stress to cause extra wounds via Pierce. The Coolant attack allows you to put stress on a foe. So the combination is to vent coolant and then use the fist/sword to convert that to wounds. If you are patient you can let your energy build up and boost the damage with Energise as well. 

Gipsy Danger's Toughness is not fantastic, but the fluff I've read suggests she has lots of exposed mechanics, so could be vulnerable to damage. However in the film she takes a beating and keeps coming back, so I gave her Aura, which allows her to block stress damage.

Destroy All Monsters Again

I tried another game of 'Giants' yesterday. It ran a lot more smoothly than the previous one, and I think I have a handle on most of the mechanisms now.

I used two of the same monsters as before (although swapped in a Godzilla figure for Tyrranix - the stats were the same), then added Gamera and Pteradax. Both used stats I lifted from the Facebook page; Pteradax used some provisional stats for Rodan.

I rolled for an initial target once again. The spread was a little better this time, with both Godzilla and Gamera gunning for Pteradax, Gigan after Gamera and Pteradax after Gigan.

Unfortunately this somehow ended up with Gigan in the middle again.

Godzilla had a way to travel to where the fight was obviously going to take place, so was out of it for a while. Pteradax moved in as swiftly as possible. But Gamera and Gigan soon got fighting, exchanging ranged attacks along a street.

Pteradax reached the fight, roosting on a skyscraper. Gamera backed off; their attack allowed them to hit multiple targets and they did so, steadily blasting Gigan and Pteradax with fireballs.

Gigan dragged Pteradax off the building to use as cover. And now Godzilla had entered the fight.

Both Gigan and Pteradax had battered themselves into a fairly terminal state by now, assisted by attacks from Gamera. They took to the buildings and moved to attack the currently undamaged Godzilla.

Godzilla swiftly dealt with the weakened Gigan. Meanwhile Gamera had retired to recover wounds and try to burn off some accumulated stress.

Pteradax challenged Godzilla.

It didn't go well. The flying reptile was tail-slapped into the returning Gamera. Gamera finished it off.

This now left Gamera vs Godzilla!

Gamera got off to a shaky start; they had some stress already, whilst Godzilla was still unharmed. Godzilla exploited this advantage, using tail strikes to smash Gamera into the surrounding buildings.

Gamera was soon up and fighting. Initially the two monsters exchanged ranged attacks, but Godzilla got the better of that fight. Gamera charged, hammering Godzilla back turn after turn and smashing through some more buildings. But Godzilla managed to open up some space, and a couple of blasts finished off the mighty turtle.

As I say, this was a smoother game than the last one, since there was less I had to look up. The only thing I needed clarification on was how being on top of a building affected ranges and reach. It appears that the author measures diagonally. I simply added the height of the building to any lateral distances, which is less fiddly.

I might fiddle around with how attack arcs work, though - I can kind of see how they work according to the rules as written, but they feel unnecessarily fiddly. I may adopt a simpler approach whilst still maintaining the idea that attacks have a designated arc and that rear attacks are something to aim for.

Destroy All Monsters!

I decided to try a more ambitious game of 'Giants' today, running four monsters. I used Tyrranix and Gakura again, using their stats from the rules (Atomic Reptile and Gigantic Gorilla). I added Mothra (again, there's a version in the book) and Gigan (using stats from a post on the Giants page on Facebook.

I set up a city on a 2' x 2' board, and ran the game with all distances halved. The scenario was a simple Last Monster Standing one. The buildings were just there to get in the way.

To start things off I randomly determined an opponent for each monster. The monster would attack that foe as a priority and then I would see how the game developed from there. In an amazing run of dire rolls, three monsters had Gigan as their target, whilst Gigan was focused on Tyrranix.

Gigan and Tyrranix approached each other along a street. The piece of card is a bridge. I need to make a suitable bridge. Tyrranix started the fight with an atomic blast, and Gigan responded with a laser shot. Neither monster did any damage to the other.

Gakura and Mothra were also approaching the fight now. Gigan was starting to look a little surrounded.

Mothra landed on a building, and tried to use her gust attack to blow Gigan away, but missed.

Tyrranix closed in as well, and also failed to hit Gigan, but Mothra managed a hit on the next turn, blowing Gigan into Tyrranix and knocking them both down.

They were both soon up and fighting, and Gakura now joined in. Gigan was under a lot of pressure at this point and, being trapped in a corner, had nowhere to run.

You can see that some of the buildings had been destroyed at this point.

Gakura set to work on Gigan, knocking him back into buildings and through the resulting rubble. Mothra was knocked off her perch as well.

Tyrranix took the opportunity to hit all three of the other monsters with an atomic blast sweep.

Gigan was now in real trouble. 

In fact he was so close to collapse that the mighty ape turned his attention to Tyrranix, leaving Mothra to deal with Gigan.

Mothra has no trouble - she has a powerful stinger attack which can use an opponent's stress to inflict extra wounds. Gigan had a huge stress total making Mothra's attack a knockout blow. The first monster had fallen.

Mothra swiftly switched her attention to Tyrranix and Gakura, who had both battered each other to the point of collapse.

Tyrranix was swept away from the fight with a gust attack, and Gakura fell to Mothra's stinger.

This left Mothra and Tyrranix facing off against each other. However Tyrranix was down to his last couple of wounds. Despite that he put up a tenacious fight, boosting his defences using his special abilities, whilst trying to edge around Mothra in order to gain enough room to use his atomic blast (ranged attacks in 'Giants' have a minimum range).

Mothra struggled to take down the big reptile, and was actually starting to take damage herself. But one final thrust with the stinger saw Tyrranix fall.

The winner - Mothra!

It took me a while to get going with the game; there are a lot of abilities to juggle and, it has to be said, I found looking up some of the rules tricky; things weren't always where I expected them to be. For the first half of the game it seemed that none of the monsters were going to do much damage to the others; they were making heavy weather of inflicting even one or two wounds. But as the game went on I got into the swing of things, and soon the damage began to mount. Obviously part of the problem for me was that I was running four monsters solo, so I had to hold a lot in my head.

Mothra's stinger is a very useful attack; she finished off three damaged monsters with it to win. Tyrranix's atomic breath was surprisingly good too; it has the Sweep option which allows it to hit multiple targets. Gakura  is nice and basic, with two useful melee attacks that  inflict steady amounts of damage over time, and a powerful knockback option. I never really got a feel for how to play Gigan, though. He has an attack like Mothra's stinger, that can convert stress to damage, but none of the monsters had enough stress to make it worth using before Gigan fell. The laser isn't a bad attack though, but Gigan was quickly hemmed in and never really got a chance to use ranged attacks.

Anyway, it was good fun, and I have a better feel for the rules now. 

Gakura vs Tyrranix

I tried my first game of 'Giants' last night, using a couple of my rebased Monsterpocalypse monsters.

I ran Gakura vs Tyrranix, using the Giant Gorilla and Atomic Dinosaur profiles from the rules. I set up a simple scenario; the monsters had to destroy buildings and scored a point for each section they demolished. Once all of the buildings were demolished then they could attack the Sacred Pagoda, which had two sections and was worth double points. There were no points to be had for wounding the opposing monster, but obviously slowing your opponent down couldn't hurt.

Gakura quickly set to demolishing buildings.

Tyrranix did much the same from the other side of the board.

With just under half of the buildings demolished Gakura attacked Tyrranix, leaping over the pagoda to land a couple of mighty blows on the big lizard. This was partially because monsters accumulate energy each turn, and if they ever exceed capacity then they take stress. The leap move Gakura used burned off some of this energy and avoided the stress penalty.

The main effect of the attack, though, was to knock Tyrannix over an area of rubble, slowing down his return to the area where there were undestroyed buildings, and giving Gakura a free run at them for a couple of turns.

However Tyrannix had his atomic breath ranged attack, which could be used on both Gakura and the nearby buildings. If he hit. Which he didn't; the stress he had accumulated worked against him.

Tyrranix moved back into contention as Gakura demolished another building.

However Gakura threw the giant reptile into some woodland, slowing him once again.

Only one building remained before the monsters could turn their attention to the pagoda. Gakura destroyed it.

But this now left an interesting opportunity for Tyrranix. If he could destroy both sections of the pagoda with his atomic breath he would, in fact, sneak one point ahead for a win.

It was a cunning move. But whilst he wounded Gakura in passing, he only got one section of the pagoda. Gakura quickly destroyed the remaining section to pick up the victory.

It took longer to run the game than the write-up might suggest, but I was constantly looking things up and checking abilities. Even with two monsters there's a few things to keep track of, although with more play experience this will become easier. The stress rules played their part, with a couple of points inflicted on Tyrranix by Gakura's first attack really counting against him when he needed to be sure of hitting things a couple of turns later.