Combo: Ares Mothership and Power Pod

First Place – February Article Contest
by Mike Reynolds aka “Atrix”

Alpha Ares Mothership has a special little friend.  A unit so complementary, it is clearly a match made on Mars.  I speak, of course, of the always useful Power Pod.  This inseparable pair share a confluence of abilities that form a multi-layer cake of combos.  The key abilities are Alpha Mothership’s Transport and Power Pod’s killer combo of Cargo and Refuel.  This combo will have you opponent wishing for Ultra Mothership and Negation.

Transport gives Mothership the ability to spawn Cargo adjacent to her as an action.  Cargo is what makes Power Pod, well, cargo.  And to top it all off, Refuel is an action where one figure adjacent to the Power Pod may make an advance immediately.

So, what does a Martian player get with all these abilities?  Well, you get one the most flexible combos in the game of Monsterpocalypse.  First, let us speak of the opponent-frustrating Transport.  Often when playing Mothership, a Martian player must rely on Power Attacks to do consistent, high amounts of damage to the opponent’s monster.  And, you may not always have the five power die laying around to Power Up into Ultra form to prevent retaliatory power attacks.  So, after tossing your unfortunate opponent’s monster head first into a Nuclear Power Plant (you did bring five Power Plants, didn’t you?), Alpha Ares Mothership gives birth to beautiful baby Power Pod on her now exposed flank.  You feel that?  That warm, satisfying feeling of foiling your opponent’s plans?  It’s nice, is it not?

Now let us suppose that you were not able reserve any Action die to allow for a double Mothership activation; not unlikely given how often we Mothership players use stepping and Flying to strike from unimaginable distances.  No need to feel like we have left ourselves at the mercy of our opponent, we have a unit activation coming up, time to Refuel.

So, unlike the “lesser” factions, who must leave a single Action die in their monster pool and waste an entire activation to run their monster away with that lonesome die, Martians can follow up a devastating Mothership power attack with a full unit turn AND get Mothership out of dodge.  While your Vanguards are adding insult to injury, and shooting a monster when it is down, use your Power Pod’s Refuel action to move Mothership to a more protected location, where she can lay in wait to strike again.  Throw in an Oil Refinery and Mothership will have 8 movement at her disposal to get to just the right spot on the map.

So, this combo works best in certain situations.  A clever Martian must consider what your opponent has to follow up with after Mothership’s activation.  Mothership is sitting there in Alpha form with at least one side protected from alignment.  Will your opponent follow up with a monster or a unit activation?  The obvious portent of such knowledge is your opponent’s action die pool.  If all his action die are in one pool or another, it is pretty clear what he or she will be doing next.  If he or she has a split of die in both pools and a handful of power die, it could go either way.  Hmm, how do we decide if now is the right time to strike and pull out the Transport/Refuel combo?  Many things need to be considered.

If you know a full monster activation is coming up, we need to look to see if having Mothership in the final location after the throw or smash will give their monster the opportunity to follow up with an equally devastating power attack.  You have one side protected with the Power Pod.  Can they get to another side? If so, what is the likely power attack they will follow up with?  Are they likely to hit with the die they will have available?  How much damage will it likely do?  A Monsterpocalypse player must learn to accept that damage is coming to your monster.  Often times, regardless of what you do to prevent it.  The thing is, that is not such a big deal as long as you are doing more damage, more quickly.  If Mothership can pull off a three damage power attack and your opponent can only answer with two damage AND there is not a great disparity between your health an your opponent’s monster’s health, you are still on top.  Life in Monsterpocalypse is as much of a resource as the die are.  Feel free to trade life for advantageous attack opportunities.

Well, fellow marauding Martians, what if a full unit activation is coming up for your opponent?  The thing to watch out for is your opponent taking out your poor Power Pod before it gets a chance to Refuel Mothership.  We can help protect against this by dropping the Power Pod on a square further away from your opponent’s units and spawn points.  This will encourage your opponent to use Blast attacks to take out our fantastic little Pod.  Hopefully, you opponent has to spend tremendous resources to get in range of the Power Pod and fails his blast attack because of the cover Mothership is offering to her progeny.  Don’t mess with mamma’s kids.  And if your opponent does manage to destroy your lovely little Pod, fear not, you have a unit activation coming up with a great number of fast, flying, cheap units to form a new screen for Mothership.  And, if you are positioned close to one of your own spawn points, feel free to spawn a Power Pod, move it up and Refuel Mothership anyway.

As with any well-balanced game, every combo has a counter.  And they are a few to watch out for with this combo as well.  First, watch out for explosion.  Ultra Defender X, Rogzor, and Spikodons can wipe the smiles from our Martian faces with a two-fer shot that takes out our Power Pod AND nails Mothership for a point of damage.  How rude.  Mega Zor-Raiden has a nasty counter as well.  He can brawl the Power Pod, Hit & Run up to our dear Mothership, and Chain Attack for a painful power attack.  Ouch.

So, watch you back, all you masters of Martian mayhem, and pack those Power Pods into your list.  I  take four or five along a handful of big mamma’s little helper, the Saucer.  And may Mars triumph!