| Game Reviews From a Parental Perspective! | |
|
|
|
| Home | Forums | Review Archive | Columns | Feature Articles |
|
Home >
Review Archive >
Unplugged Games > Monsters Menace America (Boardgame)
Format For Printing | Tell A Friend | Digg | Slashdot | del.icio.us Scroll down for our Kid Factor. 
Monsters Menace America is a very light wargame suitable for someone looking for a fairly simple game with little army pieces, large plastic monster pieces, and a healthy dose of silly theme. The object of the game is to rampage around the United States, slowly accumulating Infamy, Mutations, and Health Points while trying to prevent your opponents from doing the same. At a specified point, the game ends and all the monsters come together for a giant smack down fight. Whoever survives the final fight, wins the game. The result is a fun game, playable in about 90 minutes containing some strategy with a healthy dose of luck.
 The game starts by assigning each player one of six different monsters. Monsters are fairly similar, but each has slightly different characteristics. The main differences are in their speed and mode of movement. Some monsters can move over or onto water, while others can't. Players then select one of the four armed forces: Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Army. The National Guard is also present but is usually not controlled by a player. Players then set their monsters on the board and the game starts. Players take turns moving their armed forces units and their monster around the board. When their monster stops movement on a town or city, they can roll dice to gain some health points. Armed forces can be moved around to either defend other cities from opposing monsters or can be used to directly attack other players' monsters in order to try and reduce their health points. Monsters can gain infamy points by ending their move (stomping) on famous locations (like Mount Rushmore) or on a military base. In either case a Stomp counter is placed on the board to symbolize that that location has been wiped out. A final option is to end a move on one of four mutation locations, which gains the player a mutation card. Players can only visit each location once, but mutation locations are never "Stomped". Mutation cards are always some sort of useful modification to your monster, such as gills, speedier attacks, or the ability to fly. Due to "professional courtesy" of some sort, monsters do not attack each other until the end of the game and armed forces never fight each other. However, combat between the armed forces and monsters is important throughout the game. Monsters must stop moving if they enter a square containing units and combat results. Combat is played in two rounds. Whichever unit (monster or armed forces) is attacking rolls the dice first to apply damage. Casualties are removed and then the defender can counter attack. This is repeated once for a total of two rounds. If any army pieces survive two rounds of combat, the monster always retreats. Each armed force has two types of units that can be placed on the board and they are all different. The Navy and Air Force have powerful, fast single-use cruise missiles, while the Army and Marines have rugged, harder to hit tanks. Monsters are quite powerful as they have three attacks in each of the two fighting rounds. They may also make one extra attack at any time by spending an Infamy token they have collected previously. Due to their power, monsters only have to retreat from combat against fairly large troop formations. The main point of troop combat is to slowly wear down the leading monsters and to prevent their access to the more lucrative (ie. larger) cities on the board. In the rare case a monster is entirely defeated, it is captured and placed in Hollywood (duh!) until it can gain back enough energy to break free and rampage again.  Once fighting is finished, a player may either place armies onto the board (typically a mix of his own and some of the "neutral" national guard) or may draw a research card. Research cards typically grant you special army units or enhance your armed forces in some way. Some of the most enjoyable research cards include two that grant you control of little "mini-monsters" which are sent out by the population in order to curb the invasion. One of the most powerful research cards grants you the power to control all the National Guard units on the board. As with the Mutation cards, some Research cards are more powerful than others, making the game a bit more random. However, players who don't like randomness can typically stick with placing their armies onto the board rather than drawing cards. Once a specified number of "Stomp" tokens have been used up, each player gets one more turn and then the final battle royal occurs. One monster is selected as the primary attacker and then calls out an opponent. The two monsters fight out a battle using any of their resources (Infamy and Mutations - all the armed forces are out of the picture). The winner gains health points equal to their opponents health at the start of the fight and may then call out another monster to fight. Players will typically save up all their Infamy for the final fights, as Infamy allows an extra attack at any time. By first preying on the weaker monsters a less powerful one can sometimes build up enough health to take on more powerful ones. The winner of the game is the last monster standing. The game has a nice progression, as monsters slowly build up in power and the game board begins to fill up with armed forces. Resources begin to get a little scarce and there are races to reach the most powerful (and thus useful) cities first. Finally, the end of the game occurs and the battle royal is a huge dice-rolling fest with occasional surprise upsets. There is enough randomness to allow any somewhat competent player to have a shot at the win, but players who make good decisions have a better chance of winning. There are multiple strategies for the win. Players can focus on collecting huge amounts of health points to be difficult to beat down, try to collect many infamy tokens to quickly defeat any attacker, specialize in upgrading their monster through mutations, or some combination of the three. With a strong theme, a fairly short playing time, and nice components, Monsters Menace America is a quality game. I would gladly play it with middle school and early high school students or on occasions where I don't want to have to think too hard about my decisions. However, due to the somewhat random nature of the game (in the inequality of the Research and Mutation cards) I would typically rather play a game that depends on a bit more decision-making skill. 
This is an excellent title for middle school or young high school students, not too long to play and easy to explain. There is a large amount of death and destruction in the form of monsters "stomping" on cities and fighting off the armed forces. However, this comes across in a very playful manner, similar to a young child roaming his or her backyard with a toy dinosaur and "stomping" on pretend cities in their sandbox. There is room for making decisions, so older players won't be bored, but the whims of the decks of cards can help the fortunes of younger players. The game rewards good decisions, so that better players will win more often, but there is enough player-player interaction so that weaker players can act as a check to prevent another player from becoming too powerful.
Format For Printing | Tell A Friend | Digg | Slashdot | del.icio.us Home > Review Archive > Unplugged Games > Monsters Menace America (Boardgame) |
Read the GamerDad 2007 Holiday Guide!
|
Please Note: GamerDad is not intended to be read by anyone under 18. We stay clean, but be warned! Content Management System developed by Redbird Solutions. |
