Why hate on the TT?

We're playing the last leg of our mini campaign Thursday at 8pm if interested.

Stonecutter wrote: Damn it... now I'm gonna... buy this... fuck.

Good! It's a great game and it's crazy easy to get into now that they've gone non-collectible.

Stonecutter wrote: One more thing. If I buy a 2 player starter set, are there only 3 possible combinations (A/B, C/D, E/F) or could you wind up getting any 2 forces?

As far as I can tell, you could wind up getting any two forces. Does that make a difference?

quozl wrote: MonPoc looks really cool. I love Heroscape because it takes tabletop gaming and streamlines it. How does MonPoc compare, rules-wise?

It's definitely richer than Heroscape, but still far more streamlined than most tabletop miniatures games - with gridded movement and no Line of Sight rules, for starters.

The basic gameplay is pretty simple as it boils down to managing your ten Action Dice efficiently between your Unit Pool (where you can use them to spawn and move your minions around to secure buildings, run interference, or combine firepower to take a shot at the enemy monster) and your Monster Pool (where you beat the hell out of things with your monster.) The trick is in handling all of the game's cool little abilities - each unit has two or three abilities and each monster has four to six, and each building has a couple as well. It can seem extremely overwhelming at first, especially since they're all represented by icons on the figures' bases for lookup in a rules insert. -However-, this is easily, effectively, and stylishly solved by printing out any of the number of fan-created reference card sets that are available on BGG and elsewhere. These collect all of a single unit or monster's stats and abilities on a business or playing card-sized printout, and believe me, it makes learning and and playing the game INFINITELY easier. Once you get that sorted out, you're golden.

Jeff White wrote: We're playing the last leg of our mini campaign Thursday at 8pm if interested.

Argh, I'd like to check it out but I'm taking a summer class and have lots of work to do. It'll be all done by July 6 though!

JonJacob wrote: Personally I'm lazy and want everything I need in just one box already put together and set up for me. I don't want to have to build multiple armies and balance them myself. Boardgames come in a all included little package ready to go.

IF I had time for both then hell yes but I just don't.

Me too. One of my all-time favorite boardgames is actually more of a tactical miniatures game, minus painting, army-building, and rules lawyering: The Hills Rise Wild. Instead, it has six small factions, with a unique once per game ability for each figure. And the figures are cardboard heroes (fold-up paper minis) with customized corpse markers for each one. The rules are simple, but the map tiles allow for a certain degree of randomness, especially the random shack cards. Some players get irritated by the tape measure movement, but most find it somewhat freeing compared to counting hexes or squares of movement or ranged shots.

Seconding the recommendation on Monsterpocalypse. It's a really great great game, and being non-collectible just makes it better.

The best place to start is really to get two of the 2-player battleboxes. Each comes with 9 buildings and while that's fine to start with, you'd really want about 18 buildings in total to be able to fill up a map. I hear the DMZ boxes will only have a few buildings, and won't have the map, dice, rules etc. So yeah, get one or two battleboxes to start with.

As for the random factions in the battlebox, I believe you are guaranteed to get two different factions in your battlebox, but apart from that anything goes. I bought 5 battleboxes (2, then 3 more) and didn't get a Cthul army. I was able to trade for it (and also trade off my extra armies for other stuff) without much trouble. It seems pretty common these days to trade complete battlebox armies instead of singles.

What about Dust Tactics? How does that rate on the tabletop to board games spectrum?

SleightOfHand12 wrote:

Stonecutter wrote: One more thing. If I buy a 2 player starter set, are there only 3 possible combinations (A/B, C/D, E/F) or could you wind up getting any 2 forces?

As far as I can tell, you could wind up getting any two forces. Does that make a difference?

Nah, not really, it might make me more likely to buy a second set if I don't get the factions I want.

I would buy two copies of the two-player starter right up-front. You're almost guaranteed to get something you like, and you'll have eighteen buildings - you can get by with nine buildings right out of a single two-player starter, but with eighteen buildings you'll be able to really fill out the map.

And you buy the starters and inexplicably hate the game, I'll buy them from you. (I have Series 1-3 complete already, but you can never have too many buildings...!)

SleightOfHand12 wrote: I would buy two copies of the two-player starter right up-front. You're almost guaranteed to get something you like, and you'll have eighteen buildings - you can get by with nine buildings right out of a single two-player starter, but with eighteen buildings you'll be able to really fill out the map.

And you buy the starters and inexplicably hate the game, I'll buy them from you. (I have Series 1-3 complete already, but you can never have too many buildings...!)

Just had another post vaporize on me.

Is this game between print runs? It seems to be out of stock everywhere but amazon.

I think PP underestimated the demand for the Battle Boxes and they're still catching up with it. Looks like CCG Armory has them, though.