By Zach Bunn on his journey to play Monsterpocalypse competitively for $30 a month.
Last time I wrote about adding the first few pieces to my collection outside of the starter pack. So, this is where I stood after last time:
Monthly Budget: $30
May Budget Remaining: $23.34
April Budget Remaining: $0
Currently Spent: $36.66
Currently Own:
1 x Sky Sentinel
1 x Ultra Sky Sentinel
3 x G-Tank
1 x Mobile Ops Center
1 x Apartment Building
2 x Downtown High Rise
1 x Insurance HQ
1 x Carnidon
1 x Spitter
1 x Vanguard
1 x All other start materials
After getting those much wanted additions to my army, my thirst for more units got even greater. So, as I mentioned last time I would look to purchase a Bank HQ and
some G1 strike fighters when they were back in stock. So, now that everything is back in stock, here is what I threw into my cart:
1 x Bank HQ
1 x G1 Strike Fighter
1 x Repair Vehicle
Altogether with First Class shipping, this would run me $19.66 (as you will see in the below image). For readers out there, since I ordered it today after 2 p.m. it won’t ship until the next weekday. So, if you ordered today (Friday) your order wouldn’t go out until Monday afternoon. If you ordered on Monday after 2, your order would be going out on Tuesday afternoon. Or, better yet if you ordered Monday before 2, your order would go out that day! But… since I know the right people, I can just go get them.
I feel like my choices, since my monster is currently Sky Sentinel are relatively obvious. You don’t have to be a genious to realize that Bank HQ works well with Sky Sentinel. Then, if you’re playing guard, can you really go without a Repair Vehicle? Lastly, the G1 Strike Fighters will go well with my G1-strike Fighter [Elite].
I had intended on doing a write up of a few games and how things were going for me, but I’m actually going to cut this short and this weekend I’m going to shoot a video documenting my experience. Be sure to keep your eyes out next week when we post the information on the video.
If you have any suggestions on what I should pick up next or reasons why I should have picked something else, feel free to let me know in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you.
Monthly Budget: $30
June Budget Remaining: $30.0
May Budget Remaining: $3.68
Currently Spent: $56.32
Currently Own:
1 x Sky Sentinel
1 x Ultra Sky Sentinel
3 x G-Tank
1 x Mobile Ops Center
1 x G1 Strike Fighter
1 x G1 Strike Fighter [Elite]
1 x Repair Vehicle
1 x Bank HQ
1 x Apartment Building
2 x Downtown High Rise
1 x Insurance HQ
1 x Carnidon
1 x Spitter
1 x Vanguard
1 x All other start materials
Related posts:
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It looks like you are starting ok, but you need to get your numbers up, before you go with buildings. Sky Sentinel can put the hurt on with G1 strike fighters, more so than any other current unit type that guard has access to. Your first priority should be to get 4 grunt and 2 elite G1’s. That could have been done with this month’s budget, but next month is just as good.
Tactical note: with 10 A-dice in unit pool, you can do the following turn. Spawn 2 grunt and 1 elite G1 fighters (4 dice); move them up to 8 spaces each (3 dice), and attack in unison at one target (3 A dice, 9 B dice). That is a almost guaranteed hit on anything.
Rocket choppers; you want 2 grunt units of them, at least. Spotter pretty much is the equivalent of 1-2 A dice, and the chopper does not have to contribute to the attack. Those can be gotten after the G1 fighters, though.
A good goal may be (working with what you have to start with)
4 grunt G1 strike fighters
2 Elite G1 strike fighters
2 grunt Rocket Choppers
3 grunt G-Tanks
1 mobile ops center
2 repair vehicles
1 ‘tech’ piece
According to my calculations (assuming that you continue to order from this site); finishing this army comes to $23.79, minus whatever ‘tech’ piece you use. A second repair unit is nice to have, the more you play with guard, you find that the flexibility is worth it.
Your ‘tech’ piece can be things like like a Ion tank, or a cross faction unit, such as a spikodon, or grunt marauder. Marauders are flyers, and have explosion, which allows you to eliminate several units in one attack. If you add it in to a combined attack with your G1 fighters (marauder in lead), you can hit a unit, and damage the monster, if it was adjacent.
Buildings: a oil refinery makes your units (and monster) +1 spd; allowing your fighters to strike anywhere at will. A radar dish works in a similar way, but the long range attacks mean that your choppers will be close, and your fighters farther away to get their full effect. One of each works wonders.
Good luck with all of this. Sky Sentinel is easily one of the strongest Guard Monsters (and can be considered to be one of the strongest in the game as well).
Sorry, but this blog is just boring. I thought you’d be building your force mostly by buying boosters and doing trades, then making the best of what you have, including cross-faction stuff, and posting some cool against-the-odds battle reports. Instead we get to read which 3 singles you buy each month to get your perfect force. At this rate you’re probably 2-3 months away from even playing your fist game.
Trust me when I say it will be a lot more enjoyable and exciting in the weeks to come. If it’s not, I look forward to you telling me about it! We are actually shooting a video tomorrow of gameplay with my current army. Look for it next week and be sure to let us know what you think.
Zach
I agree, I am also disappointed that he is just buying singles online. Mostly because he picked a relatively high priced website and didn’t even appear to “bargin hunt” at all which is what you NEED to do when on a budget in the first place.
Ebay will generally get you a set of IchompNY limited buildings for like $25 (which all but the crystaline building is REALLY good for guard). Finding a good online store that has the map packs or strategy guides for sale along with decent prices on singles is also a good way to get the most bang for your buck out of shipping. Local game stores that happen to have minatures for sale are also the cheapest, keep your eyes pealed for those when you can.
Players: Players will gladly sale you stuff on the cheap, or trade with you if you are the kind of person that buys boosters and your shop’s group isn’t already firmly established. Another trick is to go the sealed event tournies, if your group is established, ALL those figures are probably extras and they will either sale/give them to you.
Also on that note: Ebay and other trading websites will have large lots of entire factions. If there are no megas in the lot, they will go for about $40. Usually there are no buildings with those but you can take your time getting those since many people will be happy to hook you up or even allow you to borrow the ones they aren’t using for the purpose of a tourney.
Really? Are there lower priced websites if I don’t want to mess with Ebay? I couldn’t find any…
Zach
No, there -aren’t- any websites that have better prices. Trust me, I’ve done the research. Even if the price is only a few cents cheaper, Covenant is the price leader.
Now, onto the meat of your posts. I’d stick with one Agenda, if I were you. It ensures that your units have been designed to work -very- well together and gives you tons of B-dice to play with.
An Oil Refinery is nice, but if you want to roll across the map with your G-tanks and G1 Strike Fighters, I can’t think of a better building to have than Radar Arrays.
At any rate, I’m enjoying your journey into an army on a budget.
popularcollections has better prices I think. they also have buy lists so you can trade in figures that you don’t need for the ones you do need. That’s how I got all the stuff I wanted and stayed within budget, traded in stuff I didn’t want and saved myself a ton of money. Interesting blog though. Good luck.
Yes there are, although you wiil have to be willing to look several pages deep within a search engine to discover them. Generally, they are your typical brick and mortar stores that manage to get a half-assed website together to sell their stuff… but there are a few online stores in there as well.
Still waiting for the video (am genuinely interested in seeing how this works out, as I, too, am attempting to play Monsterpocalypse on a budget).
Video is coming Wednesday! Was going to be on Monday, but we decided to give you guys a preview instead!
Any luck uploading that video? I don’t mean to grief you too badly, but we’ve been waiting close to a month for it.