So this is the moment. I am no longer fantasizing about beating an opponents face in with Gakura. He is sitting right here in my hands. Wow does this figure look amazing. I look into the fiery red eyes of Ultra Gakura. I sit and imagine the train wielding ape leaping over a building, crushing units, and swinging the train into the face of an opposing monster.
So let’s forget the subtleties and get straight to teeth marks and blood. My opponent is Tim (Author of Just a Dice Game). He has been awaiting the mole-men, so we both pick our monsters. Then we both decide to simply play with the faction packs (since that’s what all of you will be receiving next week). We each get the buildings from the starters, then we pull one of each building in the set (other than those in the starter). We divide them out and decide to play game 1 on…
I’ve had some time to think about how to use Gakura. I like maps with lots of buildings (particularly super-structures). I’m alright with playing Block War. There are better maps, but this will do. We roll our action dice and Tim gets the honor of going first.
He has six buildings to choose from. I have five. He’ll get an extra placement. I really don’t care, I just want to pound his face with Gakura.
I’m rolling with several super structures (notice the sports arena). I plan on playing a very offensive game, so I’m prepared to lay my buildings on his side of the map. Yet, I want to save the sports arena for my side (green energy drain).
The map is set. Sure there are some building slots empty (which I don’t like), but I’m still going to rip into the moles.
Tim had a solid turn 1. All of our units are power zone hungry, so he did well in getting his units onto those slots. I used my turn to secure a power zone of my own and to disrupt the power zone on the right.
Tim uses his very first monster turn to rip into the nearby building (posh apartments). Although I’m sure he doesn’t mind having power dice, I think his main motivation was that it had super structure.
Although I would like to save the posh apartments above for healing later… I had a better plan. I brawl the building, netting me p-die and killing the unit in front of me (thanks to demolish). Because of blitz I get to move forward 2.
After moving forward two I brawl the News Paper Office getting even more p-die. There was a unit on the red power zone which I also destroyed. Effectively destroying two buildings and two of my opponents units on power zones. My opponent had pushed his remaining dice, so he was forced to take a unit turn.
I had only used 1 a-die to move and 5 to attack, so I was left with plenty. I payed my hyper cost to go ultra then snuggled into that screen.
My red-eyed monster slammed his train into my opponent. He has lightning attack, so I was able to do 2 damage. Further, he has energy drain and power drain. This made Tim lose 2 a-die and 2 p-die (man is this denial the nuts). I then flexed back to alpha Gakura.
At this point Tim decided to attack full force with his units. He actually got a damage in with this swarm of moles.
So in response I decided to get a bunch of cheap power dice with super stomp! Tim knew a world of pain was upon his, so he jetted (with his 5 speed monster…).
He did a solid job of getting across the map actually. It was interesting, because I had used a-die to super stomp I only had 6 left. I couldn’t quite step, move, and then power attack. So I had to make a decision to take a weak unit turn or do something with Gakura.
I decided on a weak unit turn. Above you can see his units coming back at me on the subsequent turn. Something to note is the Mollok combo. The elite (with red) give b-die to the grunt which naturally has a b-die. So now they both have 2, but it doesn’t stop here. The elite gets +1 b-die for every adjacent grunt of the same name… So now he’s rolling 5 b-die and 2 a-die, without the third unit. These mole units are very solid.
I used my unit turn to move a unit of mine out of the way that would stop me from doing so. I calculated it and I could move and step or step and move to get next to the building that was next to his monster. I suspected he would use his unit turn to do damage to me.
The above is from Tim’s perspective. I used the a-die to make sure I could get to where I wanted to go.
And then I was next to his building. Because I had 8 p-die, I would actually lose p-die if I attacked the building and then subsequently attacked his monster. So with some forethought I decided to brawl his monster, use blitz to attack the building (which heals me), then because of demolish his monster would take a damage from me brawling the building, lastly I would net p-die from the attack.
To be honest I forgot he had riled. I didn’t think he could power attack me, but to my surprise…
He was able to take out my power base and do some nice damage to me.
On my unit turn I was able to position my units (above) in such a way to get two successful unit attacks in. Here’s how it broke down:
Attack 1:
Stealth Ape 1*2 (1 brawl a-die, 1 brawl b-die natural, 1 brawl b-die berserk from gakura)
Command Ape 1*2 (1 brawl a-die, 1 brawl b-die berserk from gakura, contributes 1 brawl b-die thanks to logistics)
Airborne Ape Elite 1*2 (1 brawl a-die, 1 brawl b-die natural, 1 brawl b-die berserk from gakura)
Total: 3*6
Attack 2:
Howizter Ape Elite 1*2 (1 blast a-die, 1 blast b-die natural, 1 brawl b-die from intensify from howitzer on power zone)
Howitzer Ape 1*2 (1 blast a-die, 1 blast b-die from elite, contributes 1 brawl b-die thanks to logistics)
Airborne Ape 1*2 (1 blast a-die, 1 blast b-die from elite, 1 blast b-die intensify from howitzer on power zone)
Total: 3*6
Not bad odds. Thankfully, they both hit and Tim was sent to Ultra.
On his unit turn, Tim successfully secured some buildings and had several power zones. I was ready to seal the deal on this game.
On my monster turn I payed my hyper cost and sailed in for two damage, costing him 2 a-die and 2 p-die.
I made a tough choice here. I could either stay in my Ultra form or flex down to alpha Gakura. Tim was down to 3 health. If he stayed where he was, I knew I could get 2 damage in with my units and do one with Gakura. If he ran, I could get one in with my units, then one in with Gakura getting me a ton of power dice from buildings. If this happened, I would then have enough p-die to take another monster turn and finish him off.
Alpha Gakura only had 1 health, so just in case something went wrong I would only lose my alpha instead of my Ultra who had 5 health at this point.
Tim decided to move back into a nice little screen with only 1 health left. I swarmed him with my units making two attacks (the same as above).
And there you have it ladies and gentlemen. Gakura’s first time out the gate and he smashed some mole-man face in. After all was said and done I had 1 health on my Alpha form and 4 on my Ultra. Not bad for round one…
At the end of the day, there are some things I probably should have done different, but won’t really know until we get some more testing in. I’m looking forward to a weekend of booster box opening so we can get these faction packs out to you guys. Cannot wait to start hearing reports from everyone.
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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. 
Wait, how did you do that? You’re supposed to hyper up BEFORE movement.
@Nate – Good catch. I hypered before movement. I typed it erroneously. Fixed.
NP. I’m thrilled with the Apes and loved this play by play. (but a faction pack ran out before I could buy one =( ) Definitely getting them and Tritons (and Gankura sounds like a step toward brawling being competitive). Still wavering on whether I’ll get some EC or not. Are you guys going to offer more faction packs?
So what was your favorite building of the group? After this game, what city + army do you think you’ll be bringing in the future? Do Apes so outclass dinos that even terrasaurs will be bringing monkey units? Will spikies (saurs and dons) fit in? Will Kondo confess to Terra Khan that he’s the father of Tyrannix? (find out next time on “as the world crumbles”)
On the last page when you’ve got Attack 1 and Attack 2, Attack 2 sounds like it’s mixing Blast and Brawl. I’m guessing the “Brawl” references were just typoes. Thanks for the battle report. Looking forward to more and with different factions. Let’s hear about some EC and Swarm action!
Apes are awesome. I didn’t know how I’d work with brawlers, but I’m liking it thus far. I want to play with Gakura against Sky Sentinel soon and see how that goes.
He would have cleaned your clock had he not pushed all of his A dice after his first monster turn, as it looks like he could have smashed through 2 buildings.
Was there any way you could have screened that turn?
I guess he learned not to always hold 2 A Dice back just in case!
Rather, he learned to always hold 2 A dice back to threaten a monster turn plus attack. The not was unnecessary.
Of course, but I would have played my turn 1 different had he had any a-die left. Something to note (although it didn’t matter here) is that saving 2 is not enough when going against a Gakura in mid to late game. If he goes Ultra and hits you twice, you have no a-die. This makes saving dice really inefficient.
If I was going up against Sky Sentinel I would use Mantacon. I don’t think SS would stand a chance.
I am wondering, did you get Superstructure mixed up with High Occupancy?
@sink – yes I intended to type high occupancy. Oops…
I understand that Gakura and Grindix are the new wonderful exceptions to the push over rule
In fact, drains/saps of various sorts look like they will be quite powerful, and I intend to write something up about that this week.
That said, I still hope you pointed out that he was a bonehead for pushing over so that he makes a good opponent for future battle reps.
William Hepler and I discussed Action Dice conservation at length the other day. For Instance, I rarely throw more than one when when I attack preferring to make the hits happen with P Dice.
Let it be known that this was his 5th or 6th game. On top of this, he was using all new buildings, monsters, and units. I also want to note that he missed his first power up, so he didn’t have any power dice to throw on turn one. I’m guessing his logic was that he knew how important power dice were, so he used a lot of a-die + his b-die to brawl the building for p-die. I also don’t think he understood the explosiveness of Gakura. It was to his surprise that I go back to back monster turns with that many p-die left over.
I still heart Gakura…