Monsterpocalypse Monday: Starting out Savage

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The Savage Swarm blights the land and darkens the skies. These insects are purely primal creatures, driven to reshape the world into a haven for their mutated kin. Dynastavus channels rather than leads the swarm, focusing their destructive impulses. Today, we have a sneek peek into a menace that has been unleashed on our unprepared planet.

The Savage Swarm will be part of the new Destroyer starter. The new starters don’t just feature entirely new monsters and units but two new maps as well. Today, you’ll also be getting a look at one of the new cities.

First, let’s see what happens when a mixture of a wasp and a bee is mutated into a horrific monster…

There are many new concepts going into Dynastavus. Before we even do a deep dive, note that she is an aggressive attacking monster. You will discover right away that she possesses unbalanced health totals—7 health in her alpha and only 3 in her hyper. This was done to balance out her even more aggressive hyper form. You might suspect she’ll have a hard time utilizing her hyper if it has only 3 health, but this is where Hard to Kill comes in. If Dynastavus suffers any damage in her alpha, and her health would be brought down to zero, she instead regains 1 health. So, what happens if her health total becomes a negative number? In Monsterpocalpyse, negative numbers are never defined, and so they don’t exist for the most part. (We’ll be updating our FAQ to indicate that if any stat would become a negative number, it becomes zero instead.) That means if she is at 5 health and is thrown into two buildings and a Toxxo, instead of suffering 6 damage and being destroyed, she will suffer 6 damage and be left with 1 health.

This is also the first time Weapon Master has ever appeared on the alpha form of a model. Balancing Weapon Master in alpha is difficult—on a brawl attack, it means you can bypass almost any defensive screen and still get 2 damage through to an enemy. Finally, she makes her Dire Ants hit notably hard on their brawl attacks. Between Penetrator and Flank from a Destructomite, you can potentially get 1 damage on a monster with just two or three units.

In her hyper, she is devastatingly simple. Lightning Attack and Weapon Master make for a good combo. She becomes faster and more accurate with her attacks, but her claim to fame is to be able to do 4 damage with brawl attacks. She doesn’t need any positioning to be right; she just does it. Being able to more or less ignore the state of the game and still do solid damage certainly screams wasp to me.

I’m sure none of you thought you needed tank-sized ants in your life, but here they are just the same. You’re welcome.

Dire Ants do pretty much exactly what you would expect. They work together extremely well and utilize their mobility and thick carapace to get into position. Their blast attack is very short range, but it does come with Penetrator, so they can be utilized to channel a combined blast attack to great effect. Remember Team Tactics stack—so as long as they are involved in a combined attack, they essentially have one more Boost Die on all their attacks. In that sense, they are similar to Chompers. The difference is that Dire Ants are better at combined attacks, and Chompers are better on their lonesome.

Speaking of lonesome, this next model is the brave scout of the Savage Swarm.

If you like to make blast attacks, the Spy Fly could well be your best friend. Between Spotter and Pointer, they are the end-all-be-all of blast attack supporting units. With their speed and mobility, they are able to get almost anywhere on the map, meaning that hiding from the eyes of the swarm is a fool’s game.

That brings us to one of the two new starter maps! Today, we are looking at River City Rampage.

This map has a ton of water on it. You have the river running through the center, making it difficult for some units to get to the opposite side of the map easily. Oftentimes, however, the two water squares on either corner will be even more consequential. You might not get a great feel just by looking at the map how often those two measly tiles will block you from being able to secure the two buildings with the power zone between them. All and all, this map has proved to be a ton of fun to both play on and create. I am really looking forward to seeing what players will make of this new challenge.

That wraps up the new and exciting additions to the Savage Swarm. We already have plans in the works to add more to the Swarm, but those additions are just a little bit too far into the future to discuss now. Trust me, though, they’ll be just as exciting as these current updates are! In the meantime, I hope everyone checks out the two new Monsterpocalypse starters when the debut soon!

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