For the holiday season, I decided it would be fun to come back and do another Megaton Mashup scenario to add to the joy of rampant mayhem and destruction. (Unlike last time, this won’t be a series, but you can expect the occasional scenario to pop up from time to time!)

So with the gift giving season here, I immediately knew exactly which monster I wanted to tackle next: Zavod 075. It really does love handing out presents…even if those presents happen to be nefarious War Walkers…

I’m sure none of you will be surprised to learn that Zavod uses the Minion rules. So, for ease of access, let’s insert the baseline rules for Minion models here.

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Minions

• Minions are units spawned throughout the game by a Villain’s special rules.
• Minions cannot secure buildings.

Minions and Players

• Players may not place Minions on hazards or impassable terrain unless that Minion could end an advance in that space without being destroyed.
• Minions are always considered enemy units by the players’ models, and Minions consider all models controlled by the players to be enemy models.

Minions and the Villain

• Minions are considered allied Faction units to the Villain and other Minions. Note that Villain cards and the Megaton Mashup Villain rules refer to any units (allied and enemy) in their description.
• The Villain will generally completely ignore the presence of a Minion model for the purposes of Ultimate Destruction unless the Minion’s or Villain’s special rules cause the Villain to consider the Minions as units.
• When resolving the Bully card the Villain only moves toward enemy units, however it will still make attacks against Minions if they are adjacent to the Villain.
• When a Villain advances into a space with a Minion, the Minion is destroyed like normal.

Minion Limit

• There may never be more than 10 Minions on the map at any time.

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And with that, here is the newest Megaton Mashup scenario!

Mirror, Mirror

Setup

This scenario uses Zavod 075 as the Villain. Zavod begins with 8 extra health on the bonus health card. Zavod uses two Vorata Walkers, six WW-82s (grunts), and two Propo Walkers as Minions.

Minion Spawning

Whenever Zavod puts any Minions into play, roll an Action Die for each one put into play: on a super strike, put a Propo Walker into play; on a normal strike, put a Vorata Walker into play; and on a blank, put a WW-82 into play. If more than one Minion is being put into play at the same time, roll for each one sequentially. When placing a Minion, place it adjacent to a building, if possible. When you roll to spawn a Minion, if all the Minions of the type rolled are already in play, reroll.

Zavod does not destroy a Minion it advances over if that Minion was put into play during the same turn. A Minion is still destroyed if Zavod rampages over it or ends an advance on top of it.

Whenever Zavod destroys an enemy unit with a brawl attack, after the attack is resolved, the enemy unit is replaced with a Minion.

At the start of each Villain turn, put one WW-82 into play adjacent to each Vorata Walker in play. If all WW-82s are already in play, put a Propo Walker into play instead.

While in alpha form, Zavod puts one Minion into play adjacent to itself before resolving its first Villain card.

While in hyper form and resolving a Villain card, the first time Zavod is adjacent to but not on a debris tile during a turn, Zavod interrupts the Villain card and removes the debris tile from the game. If a debris tile is removed by this rule, Zavod regains 1 health. Then, roll an Action Die: on a super strike, put four Minions into play; on a normal strike, put three Minions into play; and on a blank, put two Minions into play. All Minions put into play this way must be placed within the foundation from which the debris was removed.

Minion Special Rules

At the end of each Villain turn, each WW-82 must make a blast attack targeting the closest enemy unit within four spaces. Each rolls two Action Dice and two Boost Dice for each of these attacks.

The Villain and Minions reroll all missed attacks as long as one or more Minion Propo Walkers are in play. Each attack may be rerolled only once as a result of this rule. This rule replaces the Inspiration special rule on the Propo Walker.

So, clearly, Zavod loves Walkers of all types—although it did leave out the poor SPAR. There just wasn’t a good way to use them that made sense.

Zavod itself will be pretty easy to deal with; however, if you ignore the growing threat of the Minions, you’ll end up having a hard time producing Power Dice. That said, the Minions are a good source of Power Dice themselves, but DEF 3 with cover and (potentially) Disruption from the Propo Walkers doesn’t exactly make for the easiest unit to hit.

To make this more of a challenge, I suggest having a building in every foundation and not select monsters/units with Disintegrate. Also, buildings with the special rule Ephemeral should be avoided, as nothing will be left behind.

(Wait, what is the rule Ephemeral that doesn’t appear on any cards yet that I can see?)

Well, that was a weird misstep. I’ll just move on casually. No one will notice.

Anyway, I hope everyone is having happy holidays despite the unique difficulties this year has presented! And here’s looking forward to another great year of Monsterpocalypse come 2021!