Let’s take a little trip back. Further back. Almost there.
Ok, right here. At the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. This famous English victory is the focus of Shakespeare’s Henry V. Why so grandiose? Because English soldiers were outnumbered by the French by at least 4 to 1. How could the English, exhausted by retreat and lack of food, defeat four times as many Frenchman, mostly noble-born with full stomachs? Two factors decided this battle. Terrain and Range. Coincidentally, the focus of this month’s installment of Monsterpocalypse strategy!
MonPoc simplifies the grotesquely arduous task of traversing 300 yards of muddy, tilled soil with clean, well laid-out maps, but the lesson here is still true. Using terrain to force a melee based army to approach your entrenched position, and then firing on them with a superior and accurate ranged force has proven time and again to be one of the most effective tactics in battle. Genghis Khan developed a pan-Asian empire through the use of highly mobile archers on horseback. The US Air Force played a pivotal role in WWII, decimating German factories. Heavy hitting, highly mobile ranged firepower wins battles.
So how can we adapt this stratagem to the world of Monsterpocalypse. It’s easy to rest on preference as a method of army construction, but if you’re getting serious about crushing your foes, its time to take a serious look at a ranged army.
First of all, I must admit my love for melee based forces. They’re fun. Its that simple for me. A pack of Chompers or Raptices evokes mental images of a pack of ravening fiends, all harassing a behemoth striding through the city. Tactically, this is just not true. If (generally) slow-moving melee units ever make it to my opponents monster, they just don’t hit as hard as the ranged units in the game, and it often takes much longer term planning to have the units arrive in the right place. So, all you Brawlers out there keep brawling. Just don’t be surprised if you can’t get to my monster.
Now its time to discuss how to utilize the Blasting strategy with your army. Step one is to make sure that your Monster supports blasting as much as is possible. Some great examples are Zor-Voltis, Sky Sentinel, and Rogzor. Of the three, Rogzor probably grants the best abilities to the worst shooters in the game. Planet Eaters’ slow moving Belchers don’t fill the Mobility requirement we’re establishing, and short range on Scorchers make’s them touch and go to use. Sky Sentinel presents a wonderfully straight forward, dynamically mobile army chock full of G1 Strike Fighters. This army is hamstringed by a lack of Explosion or Chain Reaction, two of the most potent unit triggers in the game. This brings me to Zor-Voltis. Quite possibly the best choice for a terrifyingly mobile, wickedly powerful ranged army!
Shadow Sun Syndicate absolutely has some of the best ranged units in the game in the form of Katanas and Sun Fighters. Anti-Air trumps monsters like Sky Sentinel, Ares, Mega Yasheth, and Pteradax, just to name some of the more vicious flyers. Red High Impact is tricky to utilize properly, but immensely powers up this force. The real beauty of this force lies in its ability to avoid the huge momentum swings caused by four-unit-destroying Explosion attacks by utilizing the blue Hit-and-Run from Zor-Voltis. Remember, though, that only the leading unit gets the trigger, so make sure you lead with a central unit to break up a big group into smaller ones. An Interceptor, maybe one shadow gate, and one Elite C-Type round out this type of list quite nicely, giving you answers to threats like Mega Zor-Maxim and Sky Sentinel. In fact, any monster with a high hyper cost is worth disrupting if you’re going to shoot them anyway. Even Interceptors can get in on the fun next to a Katana, netting you an extra boost die.
It’s also critically important to make sure you understand how to format a map for this type of army. Learn to create firing lanes that deny your opponent a chance to sneak to your side of the board, and scatter Bank HQs across the map to use as waypoints on the way to his side. Don’t forget that Blasters also excel at destroying an opponent’s infrastructure, denying precious P-Dice.
With this type of outlook on blasting, you should be able to apply the techniques I’ve outlined to just about any force. After much brutal experimentation, I’ve learned that a melee army just can’t keep up with a blasting army if skill is comparable on both sides of the map. So, outfit your force to lay down the long-range beats and watch your opponent shudder.
-KenMonster
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Ken is a 23 year old student in the Southeastern United States studying Geology and training for MMA. He enjoys Ultimate Frisbee, Dungeons & Dragons, BBoying, and his newest favorite activity: Monsterpocalypse.
He received tactical training during his short but informative stint at the US Air Force Academy and has applied those lessons to small, plastic Monsters. It is his ultimate hope that his blogs here will enhance your play and understanding of the game while giving you some tools to really Reach Out and Crush Someone. Smash On! 
Now Ken, you know I’m forced to disagree with you. My entire army brawls. Are you telling me that I am doomed to defeat against an equally skilled opponent using a force built for ranged assault?
Bah! Nonsense. Maybe if we’re talking about pure unit v. unit combat…then of course. But forces that rely on brawlers do so because their Monster allows, or sometimes FORCES, them to. Take Xaxor for instance. All Brawlers get +1 B-Die and Jump? That’s incredible. One Explodohawk is rolling 4 B-Die. Explodomites are rolling 3 with Explosion.
The potential for punishment is there, but you make a good point as far as positioning and movement is concerned. If I can’t get to you, I can’t hurt you. Though, so far, this has never been a problem. The maps are not massive – only 17 spaces all the way across, and the spawn points start you out around 3-5 spaces out generally. That’s really not much distance that you’re required to cover, so it mitigates the typical advantage of mobility. Besides, you have to get in range of me, and that’s typically 5 spaces – the movement of every one of my brawlers.
I agree with most of what you’re saying here, but if I see my opponent playing a ranged army, I don’t feel like that decreases my chances for victory. It just makes me change my playstyle a bit =) If they want to bunker down and wait for me, I just won’t come, and will continue to send Explodohawks and Explodomites until they come to me!
I’ll agree with you on Jump really improving a brawling army. But, my friend, after playing 15 or so games simply testing this theory under diffenrent circumstances, brawlers just aren’t as good as blasters. =(.
I’m not telling anyone to stop playing brawling armies. Far from it. I just want them to be aware of the disadvantage inherent in needing to be adjacent to your target to hit it.
As examples, Xaxor, Ghorgy, Raiden, Terra Khan, Rakadon, and Armodax have all ben handily dispatched by myself or my play partner, both of us playing ranged armies. And these were not close games (except for the time I missed every power up against Mega Ghorgadra and still won…)
So, play what you love! I have a Terra Khan army I break out every once in a while. But when its for the prize, Pteradax leads a battery of Bellowers (^_^)
SMASH ON!
Then I hope that I don’t see you at GenCon! =)
I am the aforementioned “play partner” to KenMonster.
What he said is most accurate. The generic superiority of ranged units is one thing, but if these units were to be supplemented with, as mentioned, Chain Reaction or Explosion, then it’s quite simply a game over. Take a note of most of the videos or pictures you see of people securing a power base. Note the nice tight groupings, the clean lines, the simple linear geometry. Note then the two units that kill, via a ranged attack with Chain Reaction or Explosion, as has been demonstrated, certainly 3 but as many as 4 or 5 units in a single combined attack.
Disrupting a power-base in such a manner is one thing, though when facing a brawly based army its certainly another, though not entirely dissimilar. Most maps, via the placement of buildings or natural obstacles will have at least one or two choke points between the opposing forces. When bringing units in range for your brawl attack, it will typically, against a seasoned player, take more than one turn. As they do so they will typically travel down natural or artificial corridors to get there, all the while increasing the odds of massing your units adjacent to each other. Meantime your opponent should keep you at arm’s reach and if played well have a radar secured and make that prospect all the easier. Then, it’s a simple matter of placing a well positioned ranged attack to remove the threat posed to him.
This is, of course, not going to be a factor with every faction: i.e. Lords of Cthul and to lesser extents a few others. Though ranged units gain by leaps and bounds in their logistical ease, they in turn sacrifice very little in firepower when compared to the typical brawling unit. This in itself lends to an unbalanced field that can be exceedingly easy to exploit by a player of even modest ability or experience.