Monsters Menace America

Monsters Menace America (Avalon Hill Games 1998)

Overview: This is a 2-4 player B-movie-inspired romp in which each player controls one of the mighty monsters and one of the branches of the U.S. Military. As each player attempts to enhance their monster with new and terrifying powers (laser eye beams anyone?) they also attempt to stave off other players’ progress by placing their military units in strategic locations. All of these events lead up to a final brawl known as the “Monster Challenge” and the fun doesn’t end until there is only one monster left standing.

The Game: Monsters Menace America has great charm and offers some great nods to classic monster movies. Each player (between 2 and 4 players) selects one of six monsters and one of four military branches with the National Guard used as a shared unit among the players. The monsters are terrific, some are clear knock-offs of classic movie monsters like Godzilla and King Kong while some are B-movie-inspired mutations from the Atomic Era.

Setup: The game board features a nice big layout of the United States along with parts of the Great Lakes region of Canada as well as northern Mexico. The spaces on the game board are arranged in a hexagonal fashion which dictates the directions that a monster or military unit can move. There are specific spaces for each monster’s “lair” or starting location as well as bases for military units to start from. Other spaces of prominence include Cities, Mutation Sites and Infamy Sites which will be explained in a little more detail below.

Additional game pieces: Aside from the board, the monsters, and the military units, there are also dice, Mutation Cards, Military Research Cards, and tokens for Stomp and Infamy.

The Monsters: Each player begins by selecting their monster and each monster has a stats card that lists that monster’s starting health, move (number of spaces per turn as well as environments the monster can move through), defense, number of attacks per turn, amount of damage per attack, and the monster’s special abilities.

Gargantis: A gargantuan mantis (clever, huh?), Gargantis has a Starting Health of 10, Move 3 (fly), Defense 4, Attacks 3, Damage 3, and a Special Ability to discard Mutation Cards at any time to gain 3 health apiece.

Konk: Just don’t call him “King”, Konk has a Starting Health of 10, Move 4 (land only), Defense 4, Attacks 3, Damage 3, and a Special Ability of +1 to hit fighters (doesn’t specify whether or not being atop a skyscraper is necessary here).

Megaclaw: The giant bipedal lobstah monstah, great with a side of butter, Megaclaw has a Starting Health of 12, Move 4 (land/lake), Defense 4, Attacks 3, Damage 3, and as a Special Ability this monster gets 3 Infamy Tokens instead of 2 when Stomping an Infamy site.

Tomanagi: Loosely inspired by Godzilla (oh who are we kidding? This is Gojira by another name), Tomanagi has a Starting Health of 11, a Move of 4 (land/lake/sea), Defense 4, Attacks 3, Damage 3, and Special Ability of 1 extra attack in the first round of combat in a sea or seacoast space.

Toxicor: This Blob-like creature has a Starting Health of 9, Move 4 (land/lake), Defense 4, Attacks 3, Damage 3, and for a Special Ability, when Toxicor mutates, the player draws two Mutation Cards, selects one, and shuffles the other one back into the deck.

Zorb: The giant eyeball with attitude, Zorb has a Starting Health of 11, Move 4 (land only), Defense 4, Attacks 3, Damage 3, and a Special Ability to get 2 Infamy Tokens instead of gaining health for Stomping a city.

The Military: Each player also controls one of the main four branches of the U.S. Military (Air Force, Army, Navy, Marines). As with the monsters, each branch comes with a card that shows what kind of units (and how many) that branch can deploy. For example, the Army has tanks and missile launchers while the Navy has jet fighters and submarines. Each unit has its own fighting stats and certain abilities/limitations that another unit may not have. For example, the Navy’s submarine units can only be deployed either on water areas or on/near coastal cities whereas the Army’s tanks cannot (obviously) be deployed to those water areas. The military also has access to two Giant Military Units: Captain Colossal and Mecha Monster. Those units have cards similar to the monster stats cards but cannot mutate and only become available through Military Research.

Monsters has a few main goals: For the military: positioning units to defend cities and bases as well as collecting Military Research cards to get enhanced weapons and to try to deploy the Giant Military Units.

For the monsters: collecting mutations to give your monster special powers and abilities, and Stomping (a technical game term) cities and areas of interest (like Graceland) to gain Infamy Tokens. The mutations and power ups gained from Stomping and Infamy will all come in handy in the Monster Challenge at the end!

Collecting tokens: As you move your monster across the map (hopefully) leaving wreckage in your wake, you will need to navigate towards the City, Infamy, and Mutation spaces. If your monster lands on a city space and is unchallenged, or has survived a military attack, the space becomes Stomped and a Stomp token is placed there. Each city has an associated dice score (1D6, 2D6, 3D6) which represents the number of dice you roll when a city gets stomped. The outcome of that dice roll gets added to your monster’s overall health score (up to a maximum health of 40).

Alternately, stomping Infamy spaces awards a certain number of Infamy Tokens – destroying Mount Rushmore should have its privileges shouldn’t it? Infamy Tokens can be cashed in during combat to receive extra attacks.

Finally, there are also mutation spots (Three Mile Island, anyone?) that, when landed on, allow you to draw a Mutation Card and see what kind of fun and nasty enhancements your monster will receive. It should also be noted that certain military units (missile launcher for example) may also trigger mutations depending on the dice roll.

Approaching the End Game: There are a limited number of Stomp Tokens in the set. When all the tokens have been distributed and the Board Game U.S. of A is a smoking ruin, the last Stomper declares Monster Challenge (hopefully with B-movie bravado!) and the monsters move at great haste to the nearest showdown location. What follows next cannot be described, it has to be experienced. While it’s not in the rule book, users should be prepared to make epic monster battle noises with each roll of the dice and each hit that lands. When the victor emerges, she or he should stand in triumph over the body of the defeated player and roar with monsterish delight.

Overall:

This is a very fun game, especially if you relish in its B-movie spirit. A few times I have found myself re-enacting the Giant Bender vs Giant Zoidberg battle from Futurama with the Giant Military Unit figure and the Megaclaw figure (you can tell I don’t get out much). Initially the rules take a little time to figure out, due in large part to the poorly laid out instruction book, but once you get into it Monsters Menace America is pure fun.