So, it was relatively easy to construct what I felt was a competitive army for $30 a month in a matter of 4-5 months. So where does Monsterpocalypse on a budget go from here? Well I’m not done seeing if players can play this game on the cheap.
Of course I’m going to be upgrading my Sky Sentinel army (at least I hope) once Monsterpocalypse Now releases, but I also want to see just how cheap players can play starting with the new set. That being said, instead of playing with a certain ‘budget’ per month I am just going to try to play cheap.
So in the mean time (before Now releases), I’m going to go ahead and start talking about the monster I am likely to pick up (Gakura) compared to my Sky Sentinel build. Although we don’t have all the information on the Empire of the Apes units, I would like to do a side by side comparison of Sky Sentinel and Gakura. I’m also going to do some general theory and strategy that can be done with both.
So let’s start by comparing the alpha forms of both monsters.
Sky Sentinel
Faction: G.U.A.R.D.
Agenda: Protectors 
Energy Type: Mechanical
Speed: 7
Defense: 7
Brawl: 6*1
Blast: 6*2
Blast Range: Long
Power: 5*1
Health:5
Ability: Flight
Ability: Ground Control (Blue)
Ability: Wing Leader (Blue)
Ability: Anti-Air
Ability: Radar (Red)
Gakura
Speed 6
Defense 6
Brawl 6*3
Power 6*2
Health 6
Abilities:
Blitz (Brawl)
Demolish (Brawl) (Choose 1 figure adjacent to the target building. That figure takes 1 damage.)
Berserk (Berserk)
Jump
Super Stomp
Stat by Stat, Sky Sentinel is obviously a much different monster than Gakura. After playing Sky Sentinel a few hundred times, I have come to realize that winning with Sky Sentinel has very little to do with Sky Sentinel himself. It has more to do with him allowing your units to become little monsters. Then if they decide to come at you, you make them pay by going to Ultra Sky Sentinel and blasting away.
Now let’s look at alpha Gakura for a moment. He’s a little slower, with only 6 speed. His defense is a little lower, at 6. But his attacks are superior. Although he doesn’t have a blast attack, he has 3 boost on his brawl and 2 on his power attack, where Sky Sentinel only had 1 on his brawl, 2 for blast, and 1 for power. He has also been blessed with an additional health, which somewhat (although not completely), makes up for the one less defense.
Now in step the abilities. While I am used to fielding a monster who grants a ton of abilities to his units, Gakura only has one such ability but it’s not so different to ole Sky Sentinel’s, Berserk. I love the fact that all of my units (I’m guessing most of the mini apes) will be brawlers and are now going to get +1 brawl b die. This makes each of them much better.
He also has jump. Without this I would have passed on this sexy miniature. If a monster doesn’t have jump or flight, I just don’t see myself using it. Super stomp made it’s way on to this monsters base, which is quite pleasing to me. This means instead of my units securing buildings I can just field annoying buildings and send my units to be even more annoying. Then when I do need power dice I can just stomp my way to 10 dice. This is similar to Sky Sentinel, in the fact that my units don’t normally need to supply constant power dice.
Now we get to the juicy stuff. I’m not used to a monster with BIG abilities. And that is just what Blitz is. Before I started looking at Gakura, I actually didn’t even know what this ability did. (I know… Shame on me). Anyways, for those of you who don’t know, this is a brawl trigger. When I make a successful brawl, I can move two spaces and then make another brawl attack. This is perfect for four things:
1. Getting past a 1 unit screen
2. Getting past a building screen
3. Moving next to an enemy monster, attacking, and then moving two steps further to prevent a power attack
4. Getting away from the other monster by moving and stepping, brawling a building or unit, moving two, and then brawling another unit or building
Now, this last ability (which is new to the set) makes Blitz just the nutz. Demolish. The ability grants me the capability to do 1 damage to a figure adjacent to a building that I successfully brawl. Think about this! I can brawl a building, gain the power die, move two to become next to your monster (or another building) and then make another brawl attack. Absolutely phenomenal.
Ultra Sky Sentinel
Faction: G.U.A.R.D.
Agenda: Protectors
Energy Type: Mechanical
Speed: 7
Defense: 7
Brawl: 6*2
Blast: 7*3
Blast Range: Long
Power: 5*2
Health: 5
Hyper Cost: 4
Ability: Flight
Ability: Ground Control (Blue)
Ability: Wing Leader (Blue)
Ability: Lightning Attack
Ability: Radar (Red)
Ability: Low Flyer (Blue)
Ultra Gakura
Speed 6
Defense 6
Brawl 8*4
Power 7*3
Health 6
Hyper 4
Abilities:
Energy Drain (Brawl)
Lightning Attack (Brawl)
Power Drain (Brawl)
Blue Berserk
Jump
Ultra Sky Sentinel is really just a more impressive version of his alpha form. His attacks get marginally better, he gets lightning attack, and his units get low flyer (they can have cover). Because he doesn’t normally have a massive power base and his hyper cost is 4, it’s not really that effective to flex. Overall he is a mean monster to deal with though.
Let’s take a look at Ultra Gakura. He is similar to Sky Sentinel in that I don’t think (notice I use think here only because we don’t have the unit info yet) he won’t have too much of a power base. He keeps Jump and Blue Berserk which are his two staple abilities.
His attacks also get a major beefing. His brawl is rolling with 4 b-die and his power attack is rocking out to 3 b-die.
He replaces his other abilities with Energy Drain, Power Drain, and Lightning attack (all brawl triggers). This is absolutely fantastic for mid to late game play. When you make a successful brawl, your opponent loses a power die and an a-die from their monster pool. Because of lightning attack, your opponent should be losing 2 a-die and 2 p-die every time your monster gets to theirs.
If I can get Gakura to your monster on a turn when you are stuck without a-die or have two or less a-die, you will be in a fantastic bind. Basically, I can easily take two monster activations with no repercussions. I can attack with 2 a-die, 4 b-die, and 3 p-die to successfully hit a 6-7 defense monster most of the time.
This really helps to stop monsters that take successive monster turns due to shuffle, fission, etc. (Zor-Magna). If they go down to two you can stop their plans in their tracks.
I would take the time to compare the Mega forms (both to each other and to the Ultra forms), but I really just don’t think either of them are nearly as good as their ultra forms. Others might disagree (especially with Mega Sky Sentinel), but I honestly just prefer the Ultra’s on both.
Next time I’ll be delving into current unit and building selections from older sets. Once again this is going to be strongly theory-crafted. I can’t say what the new units and buildings will bring, so any of this could change. But based on the information I do have, I’ll do my best to construct a solid strategy.
Until next time…
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Zach is a long time gamer who has been writing and playing games competitively since 2003. In 2007 he founded Team Covenant and has since been joined by several awesome individuals who have helped in the pursuit of the ultimate mission of Covenant: gaming reborn. 
Forgive the likely noobishness of the following comment, but here it comes anyway. I notice that Chain Reaction allows you to chain react, and react, and react, etc. as each successful attack triggers the next one. My question is this: does the same thing apply to Blitz?
The way I read the ability, it sounds like the movement can only occur once, but the rest of the ability appears to be independent from that. If that’s really the case then… WOW!
Now, you’d be in a tricky position to completely wipe out a form with it, as the blitz trigger has to go for “[an]other legal target” so you can’t just pound away on the monster. But (again theorypocalypse here) if you can hit the monster, hit a unit, hit the monster, hit a building, etc. taking a monster form out or at least severely damaging it is entirely possible. I’ll be interested to find a formal ruling on this.
Interesting. I assumed that this trigger couldn’t go ‘infinite’. Over to the rulings forum I go…
If you go over to the monpoc forums and search “blitz” the first thread that comes us explains it all. You only get the trigger on the first attack.
Blitz: “Once each turn, advance this figure up to 2 spaces, even if it has advanced this turn. After you resolve this attack, you can use the dice in play to make the same type of attack against 1 other legal target.”
Critical words: “Once” & “can”.
“Once” of course implies that this trigger only functions one time in any given activation. But “can” is quite interesting. It may indicate that the subsequent attack is optional. So you could theoretically move the two spaces but not attack. The language for other similar attacks that use “dice in play” such as (US Americans) Lightning Attack and Fling do not have “can” included. By that same reasoning I suppose the interpretation of any trigger with the words “may” or “can” could also fall into this optional department… my view after reading all the stat rules that involve the word “can” or “may” is that if they occur in the correct context they are optional. Would be interesting to have an official take on this for clarification to know for certain.
Well, kinda sorta. Except kingbobb isn’t necessarily representative of Privateer Press’s rulings department. Most likely, he’s right. Still, the wording they used, specifically the way it’s broken up into two sentences (only one of which begins “Once each turn…”) leaves me inclined to treat it as two separate events from one effect.
Obviously, until DC or someone else from Privateer says so, we have to play it as our local judges rule. Were I judging, I’d probably rule that it only works once per turn as a single thing (both movement and attack falling under the “Once each turn”). But the player in me that wants to dig out a new trick and bring something powerful to the table is desperately hoping it gets ruled the other way.
I don’t want to see something overpowered come out of this, but if I could come up with this interpretation, it’s not a huge leap to think that other players have been playing it this way or might try to play it this way in the future. A solid answer from PP would help things get settled and, possibly, shake things up for those Blitzing figures out there. I know Steven would love me if his Barreller could pop off more than one Blitz per turn.
“Once each turn” probably applies to the entire effect, not just the advancement.
Great writeup Zach, but I’m not quite sure that Demolish -> Brawl is too impressive. The only situation in which it would be a “good” play is if your opponent’s monster has no A-Die in his monster pool and is next to a building. Otherwise you’re just setting yourself up for a power attack. If this is the case though, it’s incredible, as those P-Die gained from brawling the building will allow you to take consecutives.
I’m quite interested in playing against Gakura – and more than anthing, I’m interested in playing Sky Sentinel against Gakura. I can’t wait for that – can’t wait!
And yes Philip, that Barreler would destroy my opponent’s powerbase in one go.
On a similar track to Galactus. The advancement must occur given the current wording. You can advance 0 spaces, but you have to advance.
Honestly, the more I read it, the more I think they were (effectively) trying to cram two effects into one trigger. First you get to move and secondly you get to attack. The wording makes it awkward and I don’t have any idea whether their intent is what I imagine it to be, but were I a betting man (and thankfully I’m not, otherwise I’d be broke) I’d bet that the attack trigger was originally meant to go off after every successful brawl. Why else would it be critical to specify that it’s against some “other legal target” instead of the same one? If you could only do it twice, then attacking the same monster more than once really doesn’t seem that out of line to me.
Hopefully we’ll get some official thoughts on it soon and all my speculation can be put to rest.
What is cool though is that now your opponent, assuming he has some wit about him, will realize this. This means he can’t use buildings as screens any longer, which is absolutely critical. Imagine the bind my sky sentinel is in when he is forced to find complete unit screens (still going to happen, but just imagine). It simply limits them.
Hopefully I can make something happen with all of this though.
Can’t wait to find out.
At the moment it would appear that Blitz works as everyone previously thought. Still no formal word from the Privateers, but Donald-bain says that Blitz can only have an effect once per turn. I’d still like to hear it from DC or someone in that department, but Donald’s got a very impressive track record on that forum. I’d say his interpretation is almost as good as gold when it comes to rulings.
DC confirmed Donald’s interpretation. I’m glad for the clarification, though I still wish the wording hadn’t left room for misinterpretation in the first place.
Ha. I didn’t really question it from the start. But that’s just because I’ve seen how his rulings go in person. Things are almost always intended to not be infinite or broken.
Really I didn’t see this as being infinite at all. It could have gotten pretty bad if you could get into a position where you could ping-pong between a handful of units/buildings and a monster, but that would be very rare. At most you’d probably see 2-3 damage to a Monster through this or maybe just destroying that many units if they were somewhat clumped (or a monster’s space apart, give or take that 2 space advance). Not necessarily any stronger than Chain Reaction, in that light, other than that it would let you ping a monster multiple times, potentially with Super Damage, if you could get it in the right factions. One of those really shiny combos that Steven loves so much that would only happen once every forty-fifty games or so.
“When I make a successful brawl, I can move two spaces and then make another brawl attack. This is perfect for four things”
The move part of “Blitz” is applied at the same time “Hit and Run” is, and thus has the same problem : it can’t be used to enter squares occupied by the target of the attack. So, Blitz isn’t perfect at all for the 2 first things mentionned in this article.
Nice article, I can’t wait to see what Terrasaurs units you’ll bring next to Gokura (my personnal preference is Raptix, a lot of them
).
Hmmm… this makes gakura a lot less interesting. I feel like it’s intended to work the way I wrote about, but I’m not sure. I’m going to make a post about it on the forums.
Heh. Zach, I feel I just learned about the inherent flaw in perceived intent and formal ruling. The figures aren’t removed until the last step of the attack and you have to move when the trigger resolves, so unless they make an exception (something I doubt they’d do) Blitz doesn’t let you walk through the building’s remains as it crumbles around you.
Uh…it should please you to know that this convinced me to play apes. I was on the fence, but the look at Gakura you provided was all I needed. Keep them coming! (Deja vu…)