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

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.

Monster Atoll

I tried another game of Mighty Monsters yesterday, with designs very much based around close combat - the jaegers Crimson Typhoon and Cherno Alpha on one aide, and the kaijus Brutathrax and Mogul on the other, the first a crab-creature and the other an acid-spitting worm with legs.

All the combatants are amphibious, so I left my sea cloth on the table, and used islands as the terrain.

You can see my venerable cork pieces in use here, as well as some new wooden islands/hills I picked up on Saturday at the Illawarra Festival of Wood (really). They are burls from fallen trees, and the five pieces you can see in the foreground of this picture cost me a grand total of $10.

The monsters had to destroy the pagoda at the other end of the atoll, and defeat at least one jaeger.

Cherno Alpha moved up on Mogul, taking some hits from the kaiju's acid spit.

Brutathrax looked set to be engaged by Crimson Typhoon, but some terrible activations by the jaeger allowed the kaiju to sidestep and move to the pagoda by another route. Moving onto the islands took a movement action, so movement around the table was faster in the straits between them.

Crimson Typhoon and Cherno Alpha both attacked Mogul, the latter pounding the monster with his mighty fists.

Crimson Typhoon saw the danger to the pagoda, though, and finally got enough movement to block the advance of Brutathrax. Scoring damage on the well-armoured kaiju was a different matter, however.

Mogul kept falling back, throwing seemingly endless quantities of acid at Cherno Alpha, who was beginning to look somewhat damaged by now. Both kaiju had also taken a couple of hits, however.

Brutathrax got past Crimson Typhoon and headed for the pagoda.

It was easily destroyed. Now the kaiju just had to take down a jaeger.

The wounds the monsters had taken were beginning to tell, though. Brutathrax stumbled, and Crimson Typhoon was able to get in a few more hits.

But Mogul was holding out, despite the slow pounding Cherno Alpha was dishing out.

Mogul's wounds also caused it to stumble, but that didn't prevent another acid attack, which hit the jaeger's cockpit straight on, disabling both pilots and causing the mech to shut down.

A win for the monsters!

The game was a chance to try out the new terrain pieces, but I also used it to tweak a few more rules ideas I'm playing with.