Anyway, this past long weekend at a family gathering I played another game of Mighty Monsters with my nephew, getting some of the buildings I've used in other games onto the table again, but this time finally glued to their sidewalk bases. Out for the first time was a new building (the "Time Warp Movie Theatre"), my nuclear reactor cooling towers (eventually to be based), some small-scale felt roads and rivers I've had from Gamecraft for a while, my scratchbuilt forests, and a bunch of scenics and vehicles/figures from my 3mm Vietnam project.
I've also put some more thought into running MM at a convention, so I bought some cheap plastic shot glasses from a dollar store and labelled them for each monster (over 70 glasses!). If I was smart, I would have bought clear plastic glasses so everyone could see what colours of dice each monster has, but I didn't (and I'm not relabeling 70+ glasses!). To offset that, but also because I can see a use for them, I'm looking at Litko now about markers and tokens to get for the game. I also have now printed and laminated my monster sheets, though I may have a few tweaks to make for some of them.
The premise for the game is that the evil and/or alien kaiju have decided to prepare Earth for invasion from space by polluting the environment, including releasing radiation. So they've come to a certain American city to do so, while heroic monsters and the army have come out to defend the planet. The scenario takes its basis from the Stomp City Blues scenario in the rulebook, with each building (or block) being worth just half a VP to the bad guys (I had to ban my nephew from blowing up farmhouses - the schoolhouse was the minimum!), the reactors worth one apiece, and if a third went up then the whole plant melted down and a huge swath of land become alien-friendly - an automatic major victory. For the good guys, only a body count of bad guys could get them VPs.
A long tweet (or game convention blurb) about the subject might just look like this: Main-stream media won't report it, but through careful digging up of alternative facts, we present you with the mostly true made-up story of the Bowling Green Massacre! Bad monster hombres, probably coming up through Mexico or blue states have attacked Bowling Green's coal, or maybe nuclear, or one of those powers, plants, bigly! Only Godzilla can fix things!
My nephew had Destroyah and a Ultraman monster that I call and statted up as the Avatar of the Volcano God, I had an equivalent number of points in Godzilla, Mothra (1960s version), and four tanks and an infantry platoon.
The basic table layout, the nuclear plant and its four cooling towers are in the upper left, surrounded by a 15mm wall (proper chainlink fence still coming).
Sideview of the table, and my nephew going through the monster cards to pick who he wanted.
Close up of Bowling Green itself, with my buildings on their new bases, and the round building to the mid-left is the the Time Warp Movie Theatre (it has classic action movie posters up on its walls).
Destroyah flew onto the board, the slower moving (Avatar of the...) Volcano God behind. Destroyah has already done a number on the only working bridge across the river with his Oxygen-Destroyah (area effect) breath. The schoolhouse is next.
Destroyah keeps flying, for some reason still far away from the nuke plant. Godzilla and Mothra go out to meet the monsters, the army meanwhile tries to find a good blocking point. At the bottom you can see my monster dice cups!
It wasn't intentional, but I really like this and the next shots of Destroyah as a silhouette in the background. May try to sepia tone this.
Turns out Destroyah was really on an end-run through the city, destroying buildings with his breath weapon or his fists!
My nephew knew the Time Warp Movie Theatre was special too me, so he made sure to blow it up! (I still need to make ruined versions of the building bases, so smoke would had to do). But Mothra has swept in behind Destroyah now! The Volcano God is still plodding along, he's paused at the river now.
Godzilla had to do a bit of a two-step peek-a-boo game with Destroyah, but now we had him trapped! Unfortunately on Godzilla's first radioactive breath attack I rolled a 1, so no more juice until a reactor went up!
I was playing some kaiju music I bought off WarGame Vault or RPGNow (Bailey Records), but here I wish I had the Flight of Valkyries going!
A close up of Destroyah at NOE height.
Things are going to hell in a handbasket now in Bowling Green. Godzilla and Mothra are beating on Destroyah, but the Volcano God's gotten into the city and has the nuclear plant in his (fortunately short-ranged) sights. The army forces are trying to shoot him, but he is pretty well armoured, and one of the tanks also forgot to bring its ammunition... However, Bowling Green was saved from radioactive disaster when the Volcano God's first (and only) shot at the cooling tower missed. And then...
Big G showed up to fight him. Meanwhile Mothra had released a poison gas cloud that was putting some hurt on Destroyah. For some reason in his next turn my nephew decided to try to activate the Volcano God first AND chose to roll three dice, getting three failures, so Destroyah was stuck in the poisonous cloud of moth wing dust for another turn.
At that point though real life intervened - we'd played this over two mornings, avoiding my younger (2yo) nephews and their real life monster rampages, and it was a nice weekend so we packed up and spent the rest of it outside, doing proper summery things.
All told, I hadn't killed any monsters, so no VP for me; Destroyah was Stunned, almost Wounded, but nowhere near deaded. I'd only taken one Wound for Mothra's use of the poisonous cloud. Theo, however, had 3 VP for all of his rampaging destruction, so a Minor Victory to him. Again!
I like how you'e done the paper buildings on their own city-blocks. That works well for the way MM handles buildings. And a nice terrain setup overall. I might have to look at MM again. it didn't quite do it for me the first few times I played it; I prefer Giant Monster Rampage, although that has issues of its own as well.
ReplyDeleteThanks, I still have a lot of buildings to put together and base, including some 3d puzzle landmarks. Ultimately I'd like to fill about 6x3' with city terrain plus some waterfront around that for a convention game. Monster Island is another game I'd suggest checking out, I had a good time at a convention with a few years ago.
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