Monsterpoc-umentation

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Today is Monsterpocalypse Document Dispersal Day! Many of you have seen our recent stream or have been keyed in to the discussions about the updates coming to Monsterpocalypse. Today, I’ll go over all the changes in one location as well as share some of my thoughts as a developer.

To begin, let’s go over everything that’s happening over the course of this month and today, in particular. Two new starter products, one for each Agenda, are finally on their way at the end of the month, and with them comes a remix rulebook. And in addition to that rulebook is a dynamic update to update the rules of several older models. The dynamic update serves three primary purposes: to bring more balance to the game, to remove some problematic interactions holding back development of new models, and to update the wording of some rules with the core rule changes in mind. Finally, there’s a small update to Crush Hour, the tournament system designed for Monsterpocalypse.

All of the documents and other supporting PDFs will be available today. That includes the new Monsterpocalypse remix rulebook, updated errata/FAQ, Crush Hour, and the PDFs of printable versions of all cards with errata. Later this week, physical versions of all of the cards with significant rules changes from the dynamic update will be available on our online store. We have done our best to ensure that the cost of shipping those card bundles will be as low as possible, so hopefully people all over the world will not find the cost prohibitive.

With the logistics out of the way, let’s move on to the rulebook. There are two significant core rule changes, along with some smaller edits that clean up wording across the entire document. Those two changes are to make the power attack Ram stronger and to provide a new concept, Full Advance.

Here’s how Ram used to function. Ram is a power attack that previously required your monster to be aligned with a building. If you hit the building, the power attack would deal 1 damage to each unit and monster in the two spaces on the exact opposite side of the building from the monster performing the Ram power attack.

In the new version of Ram, a monster need only be base to base (B2B) with the building. Further, if your monster hits the building, Ram deals 1 damage to each unit and monster in all 4 spaces on the opposite side of the building from the attacking monster.

There were several reasons we made this change to Ram. First, it was one of the least performed power attacks; people just didn’t use it that often because it was hard to use, the affected area was very small, and there just weren’t that many places on most maps a monster could even perform the power attack to actually accomplish something. We wanted to both reduce the requirements of performing the attack and increase its effectiveness. Ram should be a tool in a player’s arsenal—perhaps not one of the most commonly used ones, but it should still feel attractive as a potential solution in some circumstances.

That brings us to Full Advance. Many of you familiar with WARMACHINE will already know the term, and it has essentially the same meaning in Monsterpocalypse as it does in WARMACHINE. A Full Advance is the advance all units and monsters get for free during the Advancement Phase. A model gets one Full Advance each turn, but making a Full Advance has no effect on other potential advances a model may get from other sources.

This may seem like both a simple change and one that is overly technical, but Full Advance helps convey a simple idea to players and allows us to develop better rules. Several rules in the future and one in the past will now refer to Full Advance. The past rule is Aim—the old wording said if you hadn’t made an advance on your turn, the model would gain 1 additional Boost Die on its attack roll. Now Aim refers to Full Advancing—so, as long as a model doesn’t take its free advance during the Advancement Phase, it will get that Boost Die.

In several other instances, being able to refer to Full Advance has made for cleaner and better rules. Take for example this rule on a upcoming model:

Action: Herding – When this model makes a full advance, before moving, it can spend one Action Die to perform a Herding action. Choose one or more units adjacent to this model. At the end of this model’s full advance place each of the chosen units adjacent to this model. You cannot place any unit into a hazard as a result of Herding.

By attaching this rule to specifically the Full Advance, we’re able to keep a player from having several units piggyback on a Blitz action or any other advance that we might make in the future. By keying off of this one term, we can be sure there won’t be some unforeseen interaction in the future that takes the movement ability to 11, as it were.

The last major benefit of the Full Advance change is that we can drop some superfluous wording on several abilities. The words: “…even if this model has advanced this turn” are now a thing of the past. We didn’t errata out the words everywhere they appear (because they don’t change the functionality of the rules they appear in), but you’ll notice that future printings, including the current wave of errata, have dropped that language. There are other small instances of us dropping unneeded verbiage on rules; in general, if it doesn’t affect the rule, we only change it in future printings. Otherwise, you will see an errata.

Many other small things have changes that don’t dramatically change the functionality of the core rules, but it’s much worth it to read through the new rulebook with a close eye to detail. Also, if you are returning to Monsterpocalypse after having been away due to some hypothetical global crisis, you’ll notice many changes that were previously errata are now in the book itself. The wording on the way power attacks function and do damage has been standardized, the rule and attack timing table have been made much more robust, loopholes in how replacing models works have been closed, placing models is now an aspect of movement, the rules for assets have been added to the rulebook, and so forth.

The Errata/FAQ document has undergone some significant changes. Of note, the entire rulebook errata section is gone—with a new remix rulebook comes a fresh start. Also, all the dynamic update changes are in the document, although it is by no means the easiest place to see all the changes. For that, I suggest the updated card PDFs, which are organized by Faction. And finally, a couple more frequently asked questions have been added to the list.

The last document is Crush Hour. Along with updating it to include the names of all the maps you can use during the tournament, it comes with a change as to how the first turn is handled. Players will roll off like normal; however, instead of the winner automatically going first, that player now has the choice of going first or second. The player going second gets to choose the map. The first player sets aside two Action Dice from their unit pool, which they are not allowed to use for the first turn of the game. On that player’s second turn, they place those Action Dice into their unit pool before the turn begins.

The reasoning behind this change is designed to alter the tempo of the game ever so slightly. The change is to facilitate the errata to some models and a general goal to encourage early turn power base build up. That doesn’t mean that aggressive play is being heavily discouraged either—this is meant to be a small adjustment. Should the adjustment prove too much or too little, we’ll reexamine it in the future based on tournament results.

So, that’s the long and short of it! Hopefully this will help players navigate the changes and serve as insight into the development of the game. The Remix Rulebook, Errata/FAQ, Card Erratas images, and Crush Hour documents can be found here. Be sure to pre-order the new Monsterpocalypse starter sets today, coming to stores on May 28th.

Insider, Monsterpocalypse, News, Organized Play
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