After a morning of waiting anxiously, Mike over at Privateer delivered today’s promised MonsterInsider update. This week, he highlighted the three Civilian units we’ll be seeing in Series 5: Hazmat Truck, Tanker Truck, and Fire Engine.
The Hazmat Truck does what you’d expect a truck full of Hazardous materials to do. It takes things out en masse with Explosion and Radial Attack triggers on Brawl as well as Self Destruct. But with no spawn tax (Civilians have no agenda) it should be easy to bring the truck back for more. Just be careful combining when the Hazmat attacks, since those triggers are just as likely to take out friendly units that get in the way.
The Tanker Truck is the perfect unit for all those factions out there that were splashing Power Pods before. Amplify and Hazardous mean that not only do you get more P-Dice, but if the enemy monster happens to step (or be dropped on) the Tanker, you’ll be doing more damage.
Finally, the Fire Engine brings hope that you might actually be able to hold a power base again. If you’ve ever had your opponent knock out a critical building by hitting it’s defense exactly, you’ll understand that Deflector Shield (Buildings adjacent to this figure gain +1 DEF from enemy attacks) is a very useful tool. Of course, if you clean the map the old fashioned way, with your opponent’s monster, this won’t affect you too much. Obviously, the Fire Engine also comes packing Extinguish for those hazards and All Terrain to get across the battlefield a little quicker.
While I don’t know that any of these are going to drastically change the game, I am interested to see how neutral Amplify and Hazardous will affect things with the Tanker Truck. I fully expect to see those in lots of armies.
Be sure to post your questions below. Zach will pull from those comments during the podcast with Mike later today.
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Two questions:
1) Will the civvie units have lower overall stats to compensate for their versatility?
2)It looks like the Hazmat and Tanker Trucks are the same model repainted from the image posted. Are they just repaints, or will there be some tweaks on the final sculpts to set the two apart?
I’m still a little confused when it comes to the civilians.
PPS had a contest a while back, seemingly to promote splashing as a viable tactic, but now they’re coming out with units designed specifically to avoid splashing, especially with the Tanker Trucks.
These two actions appear to conflict.
So, dealing with that, here’s a question that hopefully sounds semi-intelligent –
Does PPS plan on deterring splashing by putting out more and more civilians in the future that make splashing unnecessary?
Or are the civilans going to focus more on getting out abilities that are completely new, kind of like what we see in the Deflector Shields and Explosion/Radial Attack combo?
From the preview, it was suggested that we may want to invest in a full five units of the fire truck figure for use within our forces. Speaking for myself, I can’t see that happening personally. From the perspective of a UCI player with cheap access to sun drones, I would only need a couple buildings at most to secure, namely the Imperial State Building and a Government Building. In this way, by securing these two buildings I’d be able to generate 6 power dice on the first monster turn, seven if I’d used the Attraction action on the unit turn. I expect neutral units to have a cost of 2, so I believe in my first unit activation phase I’d be able to spawn my three sun drones and the fire truck, secure the two buildings and advance the fire truck into a position to allow coverage for both buildings, and still allow an extra die for the Attraction action. Building placement and map selection will be of critical importance for this to take place.
In the past, if I was forced to go first on a map that wasn’t well suited for my force, sun drones wouldn’t be the best choice due to their slow speeds and I’d be looking to secure power zones instead with my MRV. The trouble with that is that I’d then have to deal with guys like Axl using a pteradactix to Tow the MRV off of the power zone. With its Hazardous skill this may not be as desirable of an action as it may open up the possibility of a counterattack by throwing the opposing monster onto the vehicle and suffering additional damage. Of course, it’s also just as possible that the vehicle gets towed into a fire hazard like normal.
As for questions for Mike concerning the vehicles, I’d just like to be able to confirm whether they cost two action dice, and what sort of rarity will they have in the unit boosters. Would I be correct in assuming that they may be packed in a unit booster as 1 rare, 1 uncommon, 1 vehicle, 2 common, 1 buiding? Or would they just replace one of the common slots instead? His comment of suggesting we may want to have 5 of the fire trucks seems to infer they wouldn’t be all that hard to get. Maybe they’d offer vehicles in addition to the four other units? Doesn’t seem likely, as they’d then have to increase the cost of the boosters as well.
That’s all I can think of for the time being.
Given that it has Radial Attack and Explosion, is the Hazmat truck going to have lower stats to compensate or will it totally phase out the Explodomite? How do they compare?
Obviously the Hazmat truck has a brawl attack, but do either of the other trucks have any offensive capability?
What’s the spawn cost on each?
And do civilian vehicles benefit from red, blue, and green abilities?
I really don’t see the fire engine seeing much play, but the other two have good uses. The hazmat Truck has triggers that can do SUPER damage to a monster. I think they will cost 1 A-Die otherwise be out done by other agenda unit too easily, the main drawback is that they don’t benefit from red/blue abilities, nor ones like spotter and flanking which specify AGN attacks
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Im still unsure about neutral units. I don’t want them to take away the intentional playstyles the agendas/factions are supposed to play. in other words I am not sure I want all the agendas having similar access to all abilities. Does the Tanker Truck take away the uniqueness of the Saucer + Power pod combo etc.
It’s worth asking, but I can almost guarantee that Red/Blue/Green abilities do not apply, as neutral units are neither allies, nor AGN figures.
That’s probably how they balance out.
I was hoping for the Ice Cream truck.
Oh well, if the Fire Truck isn’t fireproof, I will be disappointed.
Then again, they are a part of your force…
We’ll see if Mike can get an answer to this.
If they’re in your force, they’re allies. My guess is Red/Blue no, Green yes.
You may be on to something here, Tekkactus.
Wasn’t it also revealed that they planned on introducing many green abilities with the buildings in set 5? We may know why now
My question:
Will these have Glass versions? Possible Tourney Entry Prize, anyone?
I hope not. A glass hazmat truck would be the single worst figure ever made.
So. Fireproof for the Fire Truck, Unstable for the Hazmat truck, speed 5 and defence 2 for both hazmat and tanker truck (speed 6 for the fire truck), and a cost of one to bring these guys out! Love his suggested strat of using a steelsteel crab in combined brawl with one of the hazmat tankers(especially in light of the hazmat having a native boost die on the brawl attack as well). Figures though, I’d just traded away a few weeks ago my only steelshell crab to a local player, bah!