Global pandemics have a way of throwing a monkey wrench into release schedules, but things are getting back on track around here. I’ve been talking about a lot of newfangled releases lately, but this time, I’m getting back to the basics and just discussing a new monster.
Blastikutter is the second monster released for the Subterran Uprising Faction, and he shares a lot of similarities with the Leviathron release. Both monsters are part of Factions that are rolling out slowly, and both of them also recently got units for their Factions.
The first thing that you’ll notice if you look at Blastikutter is that he has two heads. He also has evenly divided weapons—a big gun on one arm and a big chainsaw on the other. When designing this monster, I wanted to find a middle ground between those two weapons and address the idea that having two heads is better than one.
The first idea I latched onto regarding the two heads was that this monster could perform two actions each turn. That meant we also needed to put two actions that would see a good amount of use on his card. We tried a lot of combinations. It took a while to get actions that didn’t feel too powerful when combined or that weren’t applicable enough of the time. In the end, we went with a unit action and something generally supportive. Action: Blitz can come in handy in a number of situations. My favorites are getting one of my own models out of the way if I’m using it to screen Blastikutter, but I also really like it for launching fast units up the board to put more pressure on my opponent. Action: Extinguisher was added to balance out a bit of the Ignite that was added to the game in the last few months and to allow Blastikutter and his allied monster buddy some flexibility when dealing with hazards. Blastikutter’s High Mobility will let him ignore a hazard while advancing, but the perfect place for a throw is often on a hazard—and sometimes it puts you in too much danger to take a damage to get where you wanna go. Extinguisher means you can often clear a safe path.
Next, I wanted to represent that vicious-looking chainsaw on his arm. We have a lot of rules on attacks that mess with your opponent’s dice, but they are usually very limited. Hammerklak’s Crunch ability established that the monsters in this Faction have a press-your-luck theme, so I wanted to go for something that could reward you big for rolling lots of dice. Cut Power takes away your opponent’s Power Dice when Blastikutter hits one of their monsters with a brawl attack that rolls super strikes, and each super strike takes away a die. That means if you’ve managed to disrupt your opponent’s power production in a serious way, you might deny them the use of any Power Dice with a good roll. And everyone knows: an opponent with no Power Dice is a sad opponent.
Finally, I wanted a lighter support ability for the monster. Extinguisher and Blitz let him manipulate the board for advantage, so I added the passive ability Earthworks. This makes Subterran Uprising units near Blastikutter a little harder for your opponent to destroy with brawl attacks. This can help screen this monster from attackers that rely on Lightning Attack to clear a screen, and it makes it harder for your opponent’s units to brawl your units when they are around your monster.
For Blastikutter’s hyper side, I wanted to do something else to represent his two heads, and I wanted to follow the Subterran monster theme of having them ramp up their attack power in hyper. To show that ramp up, he goes up to 6 Boost Dice on his brawl and blast and gains Energy Cycle. That means his attacks are fairly accurate, and he can throw more Action Dice into brawl attacks hoping to trigger Cut Power and then get a die back. To show his two heads capability, we gave his brawl and blast attacks Follow Through. This may feel strange in a world where monsters have Lightning Attack and Rapid Fire, but I don’t see this guy as a primarily shooty monster, and wanted to be careful to keep Cut Power under control. Follow-Through is best used to hit a monster with a brawl and then target a unit or building with a blast, but it offers flexibility in more ways than that.
And with that, all the monsters that were scheduled to come out before the major Faction launches this summer are available. Pick up your own Blastikutter today and take this flexible monster for a spin. Or two.
